2-minute practice to make change last with Lisa Broderick, a co-author of Permanence: become the person you want to be and stay that way.

We sat down with Lisa Broderick, CEO of Marshall Goldsmith Advisors and co-author of a new book Permanence: Become the Person You Want to Be and Stay That Way, to unpack a 2-minute practice that helps high-achievers, leaders and teams start compounding wins into lasting change. 

We walk through the Daily Questions Method and the crucial shift from outcome obsession to effort tracking. Lisa explains why willpower collapses under stress, how comparison culture hijacks identity, and how a tight feedback loop builds lasting habits using your brain’s reward system. 

Beyond the core ritual, we dive into other practical tools you can use immediately to grow and improve permanently.

Feedforward replaces backward-looking critiques with future-focused guidance you’ll actually act on. The hero exercise turns admired qualities into your personal North Star. The wheel of change helps you decide what to keep, what to let go, and what to accept—so your motivation stops leaking into unwinnable fights.

For teams, we outline a simple rollout: lightweight 360s to pick 3 behaviors, a shared cadence, and leaders modeling effort scores.

Expect a clear, repeatable framework for personal growth and culture change, one that takes minutes, not meetings, and scales from individual habits to organizational norms.

Ready to trade resets for lasting results?

Subscribe, share this with a friend who wants to grow, and tell us: which 3 behaviors will you track this week?

Short BIO:

Lisa Broderick is a seasoned C-suite executive, corporate board member, and nonprofit founder with three decades of leadership experience across diverse industries, blending science with personal transformation.

Author of the international bestseller All the Time in the World, which was translated into dozens of languages, and a frequent contributor to Psychology Today, Lisa distills human behavior, science, and systems thinking into complex organizational and behavioral insights.

Her books deliver practical, results-driven strategies that empower individuals and organizations to achieve lasting success. 

Learn more about Lisa and get the book: https://permanencebook.com/

Transcript

Framing The Mission: Lasting Change

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Changewired Podcast. My name is Angela Shorina. I'm your host. I'm your partner in change, personal and collective transformation, your executive health and high performance coach 360, and just someone who is passionate and obsessed with change, better change, faster change, and probably most important, lasting change. Because if it doesn't last, who cares? And I couldn't be more excited today because we have a guest who couldn't be more aligned with the mission, with the purpose of this podcast to create lasting change. Not in years, but in days. And again, most importantly, to make that change last. So it produces lasting result and impact. It improves the quality of your life, of your work, and who you are becoming. Today, my guest is Elisa Broderick, a seasoned CCU'd executive, corporate board member, nonprofit founder, economist by training, data scientist who has spent more than three decades helping CEOs and organizations turn a strategy into lasting behavior change. She currently serves as a CEO of Marshall Goldsmith's advisors, and she co-authored the new book Permanence that we'll be talking about today with the legendary executive coach Marshall Goldsmith, often called the father of CEO coaching. Guys, today you don't want to miss today's podcast episode. Because we're gonna talk about something that most self-development books don't address. How uh not just how to make a change, but how to uh make that change last, how to stay changed and just build on that. You'll hear why even the world's most powerful leaders quit new habits after just a couple of weeks, unless they build the right kind of accountability system. We're gonna talk about why tracking effort beats tracking outcomes and how to do it. The power of active questions, and how changing one sentence structure can change how you behave. Why willpower collapses and how to make it last, how one daily reflection practice creates this neurological feedback loop that compounds your action and results. We're gonna talk about tools like feed forward, the hero exercise, the will of change to redesign who you are becoming. We'll talk about the neuroscience, the dopamine, the comparison culture, identity anchors, and why scrolling might be the new smoking, and how you can actually use scrolling to benefit you. And here is what I probably love the most about this podcast episode. It's not about hacks and high performing complex strategies, it's about something small and doable that produces over time transformational results at that last, again without some heroic effort, but just with two minutes a day. So, guys, if you ever set a goal and slipped back into your old doing, left a training inspired but unchanged, wanted to become a better leader, partner, parent, human, and struggle to maintain momentum of change, or wonder why insight alone doesn't translate into behavior change. This episode will give you a framework that is deceptively simple but backed by real data from some of the most accomplished leaders in the world. Stick around to the end because we break down exactly how to start, whether it's personally or with your teams, without overwhelming yourself, but instead transforming yourself. One simple reflection. One day, one step at a time. So without further ado, please enjoy our conversation with Lisa Broderick. Lisa Broderick, thank you so much for coming as a guest to Change Warrick Podcast. I'm really excited to have you here today.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

Angela, thank you so much for inviting me. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Yes, and I told you before recording that I'm gonna tell you why I'm so excited. Because I feel like you are someone who you are the guest who is the most aligned with the mission and purpose of this podcast to unlock more human potential and create more positive impact. I feel like that is also your mission and the purpose of the book that we are about to discuss. So thank you so much for being a guest on Change of Art Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

Well, I am so flattered you would say that. I did notice that my the work I've done in permanence, my book coming out, exactly matches your work, working with human biology instead of against it, and helping leaders and organizations stop resetting and start compounding their wins. And that's exactly what you do.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Yes, it's uh the change, the process of change, I think that's the commonality in our work and making this change last and produce the positive impact that it can produce. Before we begin talking about the book that we are here to talk about, Permanence, I would like you to tell our listeners a little bit more about you, Lisa. How did you come to do this work, writing this book, or where did you start? I don't know, you can start as early as childhood if there is something that sparked your interest for the work you're doing today.

The Daily Questions Study And Results

SPEAKER_01 6:04

Well, I wouldn't want to age myself, but honestly, I've spent more than 30 years working with CEOs and boards and organizations, helping them turn strategy into change and behavior change that actually holds up under pressure. That's my training. And so my work now, and even then, has focuses on has focused on performance and integrated systems and accountability and leadership and behavior. Today I serve as CEO of Marshall Goldsmith Advisors, working very closely with Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, who is the developer, the creator of this method called the Daily Questions Method. He's been doing this for decades, more than 40 years. And he's actually really widely seen as the father of CEO coaching, the you know, the originator of that way back in the time of Peter Drucker and all of his mentors going back. And so how this work began was Dr. Goldsmith called me up one day in 2023 and said, Lisa, I want you to do some research for me. Which, if you know Marshall, he's very energetic, he's wonderful, he has a lot of ideas, could have meant just about anything. And what he wanted me to do was he wanted me to work with him to reach out to his high-profile clients who are among the most renowned CEOs in the world, we'll say, including world leaders and business leaders, and follow them throughout a year, asking them daily questions, a set of daily questions to see if they got better or worse over time. It was quite an interesting study. And so I'm an economist by training going way back. And now I'm so I'm a data scientist and I work with uh I work with coaching and I work with executive coaching now. What better project than for me to combine the two? Follow these wonderful leaders in their leadership over time and collect data on them. So I embarked on this uh wonderful adventure. And the adventure took me around the world calling these leaders once a day and getting their answers to a certain set of questions, which I'll share with you, and plus personal questions that were very personal. And through state dinners and changes and political change, oh, the anything you could imagine, follow them throughout the year of their life. And that's what the book is about. It tells the stories, it tells the data, it tells the results, how they became the people they wanted to be in real time, and how they stayed that way.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Yeah, it's uh well, such a fascinating uh experiment, I bet. Like the stories you heard and like what you witnessed while uh asking all these questions uh every weekday. What did you discover? Like what were what surprised you? What uh did you not expect uh doing this experiment, or maybe expect it as well? Like what was the most interesting?

Accountability Over Willpower

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Well, uh Dr. Marshall had done this a couple of times in the past. This was a this was new in the sense of who these people were. And also what he's noticed, he's noticed many things over the decades. If people started on their own without a buddy system or a coach, they usually quit after two weeks. So that's number one. So you need a system, systems thinking, right? It doesn't match their biology. They're just not going to do it. If they continue to do it, all of the all of the cohort, the people in the cohort got better over time. And so over the course of a year, by six months of daily questions, and these are again, these are daily questions that Marshall developed himself, which I'll share with you. Did I do my best to be happy? And did I do my best to build positive relationships to have meaning? They asked some pretty personal questions too, like, did I do my best to forgive my parents? Imagine. Did I do my best to forgive myself? So asking all of these questions, I quietly listened. If they needed to discuss something, we definitely did that and went on to the next day. By about six months, everyone got better and stayed that way for the balance of six months. And so over the course of a year, everyone, all the entire cohort got better and stayed that way. So then we did two things. We half the cohort dropped out and were no longer called by me, and half continued. Well, six months later, guess what happened? The six, the the people who continued with it stayed better, and the people who did not continue with it got worse. They did not stick with it. And also the most interesting finding, at least it was interesting to me, considering who these people were, I asked them, what was it about the daily questions process that caused you to stick with it and become better over time? And their answer floored, both me and Marshall. They said, all of them said, I didn't want to suffer the embarrassment of not of having told you that I didn't even try. Now, think about who these people are. So you have people who are in senior levels in leadership and business and government and all kinds of things, academia around the world, changing their behavior for the better over time because they didn't want to tell someone else that they hadn't even tried that day. Yeah. The power of accountability. Accountability. There it is. And so, and so that that is really what it's about. And the the book again tells the stories, it has the questions. It really, again, working with the work that you've done over so long, people's biology, it's the systems thinking and doing things that are friendly to biology are essentially the same thing in my mind as a data scientist in economics, which studies people's behavior, right? People's economic behavior. You have to set up a system that's set to win. Permanence is a system that sets you up for winning. It gives you the questions. The book actually has the a journal, a blank journal in the back, so you can start right away. It has a set of six questions so you can get going yourself. It has places that you can write your own questions, and we help you through writing your own questions. And we suggest working with a buddy. Imagine two people who are improving their lives together, someone you trust who you know is actually going to make that daily phone call, and you'll call them. That's a system that's set up for permanent change.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

Yes. You know, it makes me think of my experience with clients who struggle with certain behaviors, and they come to me to actually start doing those behaviors. And the only thing that changes is me being there. It's not like they develop uh superpower discipline or I don't know, more willpower. And also what surprises me is I always ask them to ask themselves, like, where do you have the most results, the most consistency? And they always bring up those areas where they have this external accountability with some sort of accountability, and where they struggle is usually where they lack that accountability, like some sort of accountability. Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

Well, you know, and again, what what we notice willpower collapses under stress, number one. So you get back to accountability. The stress in the in the in the experiment that we did that was that I was going to call them every day. So that was automatic accountability, and then that accountability kept them doing it. If you're doing it on your own, motivation spikes fade quickly. Yes. And then just because you had one inspiration, you know, one insight, that's not behavior change. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

As you know. I always like to also say that self-mastery in any work, like asking yourself these questions or any other rituals and behaviors. It's like shower. The if you want to stay clean every day, you gotta take it daily. So the same with like any tool, if you would like to have this permanent change, change that last that keeps on giving, then you gotta do it consistently. That's right. Yes. And go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Change initiatives, uh, ask people to override their biology mostly, especially in companies, especially in professional environments, instead of designing it with people's biology in mind. And I know that's very near and dear to your heart and your work.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

Yes. You know, I wanted to ask you though, a question about the title of the book, permanence specifically. The reason why I wanted to ask you is because uh you were writing about the process of change, right? And then the title of the book is permanence. So uh the how do you navigate this uh uh conundrum of change, but then permanency and where I don't know, do you find the middle ground somewhere?

What Permanence Really Means

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Very often there are paradoxes in life. What people aspire to, right, is really is not it, it's it's it's aspirational. Permanence is definitely aspirational. I want something and I want to be able to rely on it. And right now, people can't rely on very much. That's where permanence comes from. And so if you do this, it's not only Marshall's written many, many books about change. This is his work, his life's work about staying that way. Become the person you want to be and stay that way. And there is almost nothing out there about how to stay that way. And people want permanence. So we wanted to give people something real, something they could rely on. Here's the rely, here's the promise we'll make. If you do this every day, you will change and you will stay changed. There is no problem.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

I guess it's uh the permanence of the improvement that you that you get. It's not that you're gonna stay the same person all the time. It's just that you make the improvement solid so you can then build on it and then move forward instead of always or going back and forth.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

And people's people's change, people's questions change over time. After about six months, we often do 360s, right? So a 360 assessment, you're aware of that, where stakeholders are asked around the person to answer feedback questions. And based on those questions, based on the results of a 360, we can change the questions so that they're even more. So literally, people are reinventing themselves and changing, becoming more and more and more the person they want to be over time, reliably, literally forever for their whole lives, as long as they do it, because they're changing and improving the questions.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Yes, and they're doing it regularly. I feel like you know, the 360 feedback and the questions or this regularity of chicken in, it's really how it's meant to work. Whereas in most organizations, you do, you know, 360, maybe a couple of times per year. And just this, and also the same with a lot of leadership development and different trainings. You do it, I don't know, once a quarter, once maybe twice a year, sometimes even just once a year, and then you expect permanent results, right?

SPEAKER_02 16:28

Or change how it's gonna last.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

Behavior needs to be reinforced daily or it decays. That is that is and we we'll we just tell people the truth. That is the truth. And you and you need self-accountability as feedback, and people are weak. Marshall tells the story, he has someone call him every day, and it's Marshall, and he invented it. You would think you would think that the person who's so in touch and so able to create these change theories would be able to do it. And he actually says in the book, uh I admit it, I need help. I can't do this, I can't do this on my own. And so he invented daily behavior, daily questions as a behavior anchoring system. Right? It's like go ahead. No, so self-accountability is the feedback loop, it's built in.

Neuroscience, Scrolling, And Identity Anchors

SPEAKER_00 17:14

It's what did I want to say? Lost the train of my thoughts, but uh uh, I was I wanted to ask you about the obstacles. You in the book, you talk about obstacles to this permanence in our change. Can you speak more to that? Yes, because very often my clients would ask me, like, why is it so hard? Like it's good for me, right? Why don't I just do it and do it forever from now on?

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Well, pressure, number one, right? And it's pressures everywhere, stress is everywhere. It triggers fear and ego and old patterns, right? You drop into your own patterns. And so when any type of pressure occurs, any type of stress occurs, the brain defaults to what it used to think was ideal. And then people lose their way when they need it most. So they need an anchor. And so what we talk about in the book, the daily pressures of we call that, you know, the comparison culture and the success cultures, where everybody is seeing what everybody else is doing online, although what everybody else is doing online may not actually be true about what they're really doing. And so the pressure mounts on someone who's judging themselves and their own life and the quality of their accomplishments against a standard which is unachievable because it may not even be true. And as you scroll through your phone, it gets more and more and more and worse and worse. Where's your anchor? Right? Where's your identity in all of that? If you had set up this system, you might experience that during the day. I do, and I've had a you know a pretty good career. And at the end of the day, I do my daily questions, and I know that I have an anchor in my own identity, that I am becoming the person I want to be. And most leaders and most leaders in businesses underestimate the power of this.

SPEAKER_00 19:00

Uh and and you mentioned in the book that the whole world is designed to distract you from who you are, right? Yes, exactly. And so if you don't have any way to focus yourself back on what matters to you, on your values, on who you aspire to be, then it's so easy to just get lost in other people's opinions and the messages out there. Look at the neuroscience behind it.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

And I know you're aware of that, right? The neuroscience of scrolling, scrolling is dopamine, right? And so I heard it said scrolling is the new smoking. And so, you know, you people are just addicted to this bad habit. And what you need is you need effort instead of outcomes, instead of an outcome fixation, which is what permanence does. And these daily questions become a behavior-anchoring pattern for your neurology, for your neuroscience. And then once again, self-accountability is the feedback loop. You feel better about yourself, you get a dopamine hit because you did it. Yeah, because you compared yourself.

SPEAKER_00 20:03

Um, but then again, you know, you mentioned that some leaders would quit it or not do it. Like, what do you think, or what do you know contributes to this for them stopping doing that? Well, why what I'm asking actually is about very often we people we need to see some sort of result right away. And with this question, with this self-work, it's not often sometimes you don't see like apparent results right away. So, how do you maybe what's the advice to people to keep themselves going if you actually do see?

Active Questions: Effort Beats Outcomes

SPEAKER_01 20:39

And so, if you know, if you were to begin daily questions today, you would have the six questions and then you would pick three behaviors to you that matter. Let's say you're shy and you don't smile in meetings. So you might pick that. And let's say you're also shy and you don't make eye contact. And these are two very important things for leadership. And let's say you want to be a leader in a company, right? And let's say that you have a you have a lateness problem and you're late. Again, not a great quality for a leader, and you want to be a leader in your company. So you pick three behaviors, and then you use something called active questions. And this is why it was so surprising when we learned why the cohort of leaders changed over a year, why they said they did what they did. Because uh Marshall's daughter, Kelly Goldsmith, invented this way of asking questions called active questions. So if you were to use your, if you were to have in your book, did I smile today in a meeting? Did I make eye contact and was I on time? You might answer no, no, no, and you'd feel pretty badly about yourself. But Kelly changed the question. Did I do my best to smile in meetings today? Note the did I do my best? Did I do my best to be on time? Did I do my best to make eye contact with everyone I saw today? If you do that, you're going to reflect, and especially if you use a buddy, doing Your you may not have done it all the time, but you can say in the affirmative that you did your best. And again, back to why the leaders changed. They didn't want to suffer the embarrassment of telling me that they hadn't done their best. They hadn't even tried. It is a rare day when someone does not even try and they know they should change. They may score score only one where one is closer to no, and you know, and 10 is closer to yes. They may score a three or a four, but they're gonna get up to six, sevens, eights, nines, and tens pretty quickly. All the data points to that. And that's your reinforced behavior.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

I feel, well, you probably know that the this active questions are so powerful because they focus the focus on what you can control, your effort versus what actually happened then might not be uh 100% in your control. And it also reminded me of this concept of growth mindset, right? But very often, like what I find frustrating, frustrating that people or leaders in organizations, they talk about growth mindset, but they almost never give you exact like tool. How do you actually do that? And so people are like, Yes, we are of growth mindset, we're gonna be thinking this way, right? But the very often again, there is no simple tool to actually empower that kind of thinking.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

And this question, so I feel like the solution and this process, again, for everyone listening, pick three three three behaviors that matter most to you, right? Track your effort daily, not on long, not in longer periods. It doesn't, and it doesn't need to be perfection, track your effort, create a visible feedback loop, make the answers, write down the answers to your questions on a scale from one to ten, one being closer to no and ten being closer to yes, and build reflection in at the end of every day, not at the end of the quarter, if you're a leader in a company. Every day. And when you start to see that feedback, and when you start to see those eights, those fives and sixes become eights and nines and tens, that is the dopamine hit that will that will compel you to keep going and compel you to want to change more. Just like losing weight. You lose your first 10 pounds and you are super excited. If that this system, and I know you this is near and dear to your heart, change in days rather than years using this system, basically.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Yeah, and that allows you to see the most motivating thing for a human brain, the progress, right? Like how you do better and better. And and then also what I noticed when I started doing these questions is you naturally your brain gets into this mode of, well, why didn't I do my best? Or why didn't I do better than I expected, right? And your brain will start searching for the right kind of answers that will empower different behavior, which then helps you to improve in real life in whatever matters to you. And it's such a powerful and simple uh concept.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

It's not heroic, it's simple, it's quiet, repetitive, self-reflect, daily self-reflection, but it is powerful.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Yes, and uh a couple of questions. What do you think makes it the most powerful? Like in a sense of, I don't know, maybe there is some science or something that you also know for could share, in a sense that why, for example, questions like this work so powerfully, but then you know, different systems of motivation or habit from information often don't. Or, for example, maybe even better question for companies, right? They think about leaders think about this difficult, not difficult, complex incentive structures, and very often they would have uh not zero but minimum effect. And uh questions like that, yeah, I feel like can have so much more profound influence.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Well, it is the combination, as we've said, of uh personal accountability that's in small steps. Number one. Number two, you're tracking effort, not outcomes. Companies track outcomes, unfortunately. And we know they have to do it, but building people-centered systems that include things like daily reflections, this can be done with teams. It can be done if we have companies doing that where they bring on everyone in the company and they're all doing their daily questions. So if you have daily self-reflection built in as a culture in the company, and I talk about culture a lot, a culture of self-accountability, number one, a culture of growth, personal growth, a culture of effort, not just outcomes, where the company values it and and makes it part of part of its value and part of its leadership, and the leaders are demonstrating that they are doing it, you have a very powerful combination for companies to really turn themselves around.

Culture Change At Work: From Outcomes To Effort

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Yeah. And speaking of companies, um, could you perhaps suggest uh some good way to start on this? Like let's say they want to introduce it in a couple of teams this practice of daily questions. Is there, I don't know, a better way to start on that, like in terms of systems or how, when, based on your experience?

SPEAKER_01 27:10

Yeah, well, you know, the uh the this book, which is but was designed to be just a simple, uh, a very simple and very brief read and a delightful read. It's written in the first person as though Marshall and I are speaking to the reader, which is so fun. And the audiobook is even more fun because Marshall interrupts me. And so we go back and forth, and I I on I interrupt him. He's sort of we're we're both speaking in in the audiobook at the same time. It's really wonderful, it's magical, I think. And so for a company to introduce this, they could introduce it the way that permanence does. And that is set people up, have a meeting, do 360s, number one. They're very inexpensive ways of doing 360. We we actually use AI and 360s now to generate 360s that are simple links that people answer. The all of the stakeholders in a company can answer questions about every other person in the company very quickly in a week. And so everybody would have a 360 to know what they want to work on. You develop questions out of the 360s, you start with the six daily questions, and then you add the three behaviors you want to change most. You set up a simple daily tracking system where everybody sets it up so that it could be a reminder on their calendar on their computer. There are many apps out there that the company could employ and they're free. Right now, Marshall is introducing Marshall Goldsmith AI, and Marshall Goldsmith AI includes daily questions as a brand new feature. And we're doing an experiment right now on people using daily using AI and and daily questions in their behavior change. And then, in short order, bringing the team on board, have people start doing their daily questions and reinforce it with a culture of self-accountability where people talk about it, not in a way that's embarrassing. You'd never you'd only be embarrassed if you if you only answered if you'd answered the question, I didn't even try my best. That is the only embarrassing moment. You were so upset or in a bad mood that you didn't try your best. Well, that happens. It's extremely rare. Think about it. It's very common that you didn't smile at someone in a meeting. It's extremely uncommon that you didn't even try all day to smile at someone in a meeting. And the combination of that, even for the team, you have teams have cultures as well. So the culture of a team is that self-accountability. Everybody will be doing it. And then again, the neuroscience kicks in, they have the dopamine hit, the positive reinforcement that they are actually doing this. If it were weight loss, they've lost the first 10 pounds and they're going to keep going. When you start to get all tens, especially on the behaviors that you care about, the three behaviors you want to change most, you are really you're you become someone who wants to stick with the system for the long haul. Because you really never have a behavior that you don't want to work on. There's always something.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Yes. And thank you so much for breaking down this, you know, this process and making it so simple. I would recommend leaders, listeners, to just uh re-listen to it and make a note of it, maybe take the transcript through AI and design the whole process. Yeah, you made it sound so simple and it should be. And yes, I'm looking actually forward to introducing this method to the teams I'm working with as well. Wonderful. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. If you don't mind, I would like you to also ask about a couple of other self-mastery, self-development tools that you mentioned in the book that I really like. I I I read about them in previous books by uh Marshall Goldsmiths, but yeah, I think there's like so good that we need to mention them. One of them is feed forward, right? We all know the feedback. Could you talk about that tool? Because once I learned, I'm like, why did people invented feedback in the first place?

SPEAKER_01 30:49

Yeah, do you really whenever someone asks for feedback, I think that they brace themselves for bad news, right? Because it's going to be something that they already did that was bad. Feed forward is the opposite. Imagine instead of ever asking for feedback, you asked your partner, or you asked your coworker, or you asked your manager at a company, or you asked your team leader, what is it that I can do beginning now to be better? What a positive question. First of all, the person is enormously flattered that you would that they would be asked. People are not asked that question almost ever, right? Number one. Second, you didn't do anything bad. It's just like active questions in that sense. You can't fail. They're telling you what you could be better at. Now, if you are the giver of feed forward, you need to restrain yourself. Do not make it into something that they did bad that was in the past. That defeats the purpose. And when you give that type of feedback, you are literally inspiring someone to an ideal, to an idea of themselves. That again, back to neuroscience, is the dopamine hit? That's positive. Wow. If I just, my my team member said, Lisa, you could be so much more impactful in meetings if you smile during presentations and you make eye contact. He didn't say that I didn't do it. Yeah. I might wonder, but you know what? I know the truth about me. That's the thing about, and that's actually not true of me, but it could be true of anyone. We all know the truth about ourselves. So it's not, it's not as difficult to hear as feedback, which is always difficult. You're not afraid to get it. It's inspirational, motivational, and it's an insight into you that you can use. And guess what? You can apply it to your daily questions. Yes. Uh I was thinking that. Feed forward on a team. Imagine a team did feed forward of themselves. You sat in a team meeting and people gave feed forward to one another, and then it became people's daily questions if they wanted them to be. Yes. That is a terrific system for improvement.

SPEAKER_00 32:50

Yeah. And it's uh I I love that uh what I love about feed forward is it makes it it accepts the person as they are and communicates the belief that they can do better. Right. And here is how, right? And so that, as you said, it makes uh it starts it with such a more positive note, and people now think about how they can be better, not how inadequate or bad they are in the at the moment. Yeah, I absolutely love this practice and hope listeners and leaders will adopt it more often than so simple. So simple.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

You just change the question. Not feedback, not something that happened in the past that you can't change that you might feel bad about, and insight, an inspiration for the future instead.

How Teams Can Start with Daily Questions

SPEAKER_00 33:38

Yeah, speed forward. That's exactly, you know, when I work with my clients, that's what I do. Okay, this happened. How can next time we we can do better? So the the works beautifully for behavior change. And the the second exercise is the hero exercise that I really, really loved. Uh because I believe it's just such a a good exercise to uh understand the the most important things that you aspire to be. Right. So can you tell listeners about this exercise?

SPEAKER_01 34:10

I can. And so imagine, you know, so much of the book is about inspiring people to be better and then giving them a system, a feed, a system of feedback, if you will, a system in order for for them to have self-accountability so they know that they're better. The hero exercise, imagine that pick someone out of history, alive or dead, that you admire and the qualities they admire. So I was asked to do this recently, and it was the Dalai Lama and Jane Goodall. And and I and I thought, wow, why is that? And that is their simple, quiet voices change the world. Right? The Dalai Lama towards peace and Jane Goodall towards respect for life, for all life. And then I was asked to, well, let's put that within the framework of someone who might be living, you know. And if I apply that to people who are living, I would say that Oprah Winfrey would be a hero of mine. And she has quietly applied her voice to really change the world for good. And so imagine that hero when you do that for yourself and write down their qualities and write down all of their qualities and then take out their name and put your name. That's why it's inspirational. It's aspirational, just like the title of the book. Become your hero as part of your, as part of your transformation, becoming the person you want to be. Part of becoming the person you want to be is that you need to you you want to know who you want to be. So if you have a question about who you want to be, do the heroes exercise. It's wonderfully revealing about the things that you value.

SPEAKER_00 35:44

And yes, it might feel at first uncomfortable. And for me, it would help me to be more comfortable with putting my name to the heroes' values or what they accomplish, is thinking about them as North star that I can move towards every day. And that that just made the direction of my effort of self-improvement so much more clear. It did.

SPEAKER_01 36:11

And you know, people might be embarrassed or self-effacing. It's truly you're you're truly doing it just for you, number one. Number two, at least you have a North Star, so that's really good, right? In terms of doing that. And again, it's aspirational. You're aspiring. You can become those qualities. There's a reason you admire them. Yeah. You admire them because, in some sense, you want to become them. You wouldn't be admiring them if that were, if, if that weren't the case. So write that down if you want to do that type of exercise. Do become the hero, at least have that around. And I often say, and this has to do with neuroscience as well, to think one thing, to think something is one level of, let's say, reality in your life. To speak it is another, right? We're speaking now, we're picking our thoughts and making them real. Other people can hear them. To actually do something about it, like writing it down, is a third level, really ingraining it. So when you do the heroes exercise, write it down and then read it out loud. And every now and then take it out, and it'll remain your North Star.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

Yeah. And maybe asking yourself, did I do my best to move closer towards my heroes or values? I'm not actually sure. I'm thinking how how now I'm thinking I'm gonna introduce it into my daily questions in some way.

SPEAKER_01 37:28

That's right, because what are those values? Are the values you admire?

SPEAKER_00 37:31

Yes. Yes, and then how can I leave them every day through different actions? Yeah, that that I love this exercise again. Uh, also highly recommend to all of our listeners to do that, perhaps even you know, in a team or in the whole organization in one of the retreats or offsites. And then uh the the last one I wanted to ask you about is wheel of change. Yes. I also believe that's such a powerful and simple framework for changing one's lives to for designing one's life as they are aspire to live it. Right.

SPEAKER_01 38:06

Well, the wheel of change, again, developed by Dr. Goldsmith, is a way of looking at your life in order to identify the behaviors you want to keep and the behaviors you want to get rid of. And it allows you to do that by creating a wheel. And the wheel has on one side the behaviors that you'd like to keep, and on the other side, the behaviors you really know you should get rid of. So, one behavior you might want to get rid of is if you're trying to lose weight, snacking late at night. Get rid of that behavior. Or maybe uh you gossip and you know that you do. Behaviors that you want to keep, you're a loyal friend, right? You are and you have a lot of friends. You make friends easily. You another behavior you want to keep is you believe in service and you volunteer for service organizations. So in the wheel, in this and around a wheel, you have these types of behaviors, the behaviors you want to keep and the behaviors you want to let go of, and then you reflect on them and you reflect on why. So there's the behaviors you want to keep, the behaviors you want to let go of, and you can let go of. But the really the most important one that Dr. Goldsmith talks about are the things that you cannot change. It's called acceptance. There may be things about your life that you cannot change. You may not and you may not like it. Moving into acceptance about things about your life, it may be where you live. It may be, it may be aspect, it may be something you've done in the past that that continues to remind you of maybe a different version of you. These things you cannot change. If you continue to fight against them, it will only ruin your motivation for change. It will only, it will only depress you in some sense. It is the it's the negative of dopamine. It is not it is not a positive hit. It's a negative hit. Sitting and reflecting on those things which you cannot change is enormously powerful. And then out of the things, out of the behaviors that you want to keep and those you want to let go of, you can also again use those for your daily questions.

SPEAKER_02 40:03

Yeah.

Feedforward: Future-Focused Guidance

SPEAKER_01 40:04

Because if there are behaviors you can let go of and it's something that you can change, you can use it as a daily question. Did I do my best to change or to accept or to exactly right? I had I hadn't thought of that. Did I do my best to accept this? What the circumstance is? And people have aspects of the life that they're you know that they need to accept. Coming to that acceptance is part of growth and maturity and healing. And that healing really is permanent. Once you heal from those, you're not going to go back to being to being unhealed or or damaged about that issue ever again.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

It's such a powerful tool. And like the whole book, it's it's uh not long, it's short, and it's written in such a uh simple but uh I don't know, profoundly uh insightful uh language. Really loved it and like all these tools, again, if you just put them all to use, it and I 100% know that uh your life and gonna be transformed. Well, we talked you know about questions and about tools. And usually when people listen to podcasts like that, they're like a little bit overwhelmed, excited, but overwhelmed. Where would you suggest people start to put this into practice, let's say personally?

SPEAKER_01 41:23

Well, if they were going to, first of all, you could buy the book and start right away. There's a journal in the back, number one, or the audiobook. And for the audio book, you can download a blank journal. Whatever you do, set your system up. Here's the system. Number one, pick a time of day when you know you can do this. It's not a time of day when you'll be doing something else. It might be 6:45 exactly. You take the train home and from work, because you live in a big city, and on the train home, you're going to do this, and it only takes two minutes. And that's the beauty of what Marshall and I talk about. This literally takes two minutes a day. So, number one, you have a system of doing your reflections, right? To write them down. You want to keep track. Number two, you want to have someone involved in your process. Now, it could be an app, and there are many apps out there. We do find that apps are less responsive for people because they're not listening to the fact that you didn't do your best. Remember why the leaders changed. They didn't want to suffer the embarrassment of telling me they hadn't done their best. So an app is unlikely to do that. I can't imagine ChatGPT saying that to you, but it might. And so pick a system, anything from an app, right, to a buddy. And a buddy could be someone who also wants to do this or who knows you well enough to do this. Or if you have the opportunity and you can work with a coach or you're working with a coach, this is a wonderful tool to work with a coach. So you can begin that way. If you're in a company and you have the ability to do a quick 360, and again, 360 technology has changed dramatically from decades ago where it was very, very arduous and a lot of questions and took a long time. Now it's literally an app that companies download and they send out a link to people to stakeholders and they have results instantaneously. So if you're able to do a 360, that's a wonderful way to find your questions. If you can't do that, then sitting quietly on the first day you decide to do this, pick three behaviors that you want to change. And you might do the heroes exercise in order to, in order to highlight the behaviors that you aspire to. You might do the wheel of change exercise, where you have done the exercise and you realize there are behaviors that you can and want to let go of, right? Or you can do feed forward with someone who cares about you or someone at work. And in their feed forward lies your daily questions. So get your question set. Don't do too many. Three, three, you know, get getting up. There are six basic daily questions that Marshall has come up with, which are in every app and are in the book. And again, did I do my best to be happy? Did I do my best to build positive relationships? Did I do my best to find meaning? These are wonderful questions to ask. If you add your own questions to that, don't really, don't really add more than six more. If you end up with 25 questions, I think it might be self-defeating. And I've seen people do it, it just becomes too much. And so, because you can always cycle through after about six months with your buddy or your coach or even with your app, sit down and reflect on your questions and change them. If you're getting all tens in a on a question, move on. You're good. You're good. And grow in a way that may be when you do the hero's exercise again. What are the additional qualities of the hero that you want to that you want to become in becoming the person you want to be? And make those your new daily questions. And then stick with it. And change is again two minutes a day, right? And you can change almost anything. That's what Marshall says about it. And research has proven that that is actually the case.

SPEAKER_00 44:53

Yes. And thank you so much for breaking down the process. I think from my side, I would also add maybe once in six months or once in three months, reflect on what changed in your life as well. Right? Not just the behaviors. Yeah. But uh life changes, nothing is static. Yes. Thank you so much, Lisa, for this beautiful interview. A few questions left, and then I'll let you go because you know I I know you have a lot of things to do. Question Is there a question that you wanted me to ask, but I never did?

The Hero Exercise: Choosing A North Star

SPEAKER_01 45:29

No, I think we covered it. Most people do not get into the neuroscience of it, and you do. You care about that. People want to know. I have in a very insightful moment. My mother, who was also an economist, I asked her, Mom, why do why do you think people buy self-help books? And she said, people want to know why things happen to them. Wow. That was really powerful. And so as an economist, I collect data so I know why things happen, right? To in in big groups of people in the economy or in, you know, in markets. But for you, you actually study the science of why things happen to them in the neuroscience. So it's one thing for me to say it doesn't work and it's not permanent, whatever. It's for uh it's another for you to have actually delved into the biology of it so that people can answer the question for themselves if they want to. Why do these things happen to me? Why do I quit my habits? Marshall and I, Marshall is a behaviorist, right? So an operational and organizational psychology. So it's a different set of data that we use. But for your work in biology, it's very important that people know that this is this is actually being proven in terms of how the brain works.

SPEAKER_00 46:41

Yes. Well, the neuroscience is one of the things I enjoy studying. But then another one is psychology, and I also study behavioral science. So I love to understand like this 360 view. Why do people do the things that we do, right? Because I also believe with understanding comes the beginning of change. And then with the right systems, you can hope that this change will last.

SPEAKER_01 47:03

And well, and in some sense, all behavior change is due to quote feedback. Yes. Touch the hot stove, you're taking your finger off the stove. If you say the wrong thing, you're unlikely to say that again. Right. And so that's feedback in the in the sort of just in the biology sense.

unknown 47:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:19

Right.

SPEAKER_01 47:20

That people are learning and growing based on the feedback they're getting from their environment. This is positive self-accountability feedback for you to change yourself.

SPEAKER_00 47:28

Yes. And also speaking more to this idea, professional athletes, for example, change the fastest when they have the fastest feedback, right? That's why they have coached. So they can get that feedback as fast as possible so they can adjust as fast as possible. And when we don't see that uh, you know, how we're doing and we don't have that feedback, it's very hard for us to change our behavior. So yeah, thank you so much for pointing to this idea of uh change on the biological level and a psychological and and and feedback for change. And then the last but not least, what are some maybe parting thoughts, advice to our listeners?

SPEAKER_01 48:08

If you have any wishes, I think I said I said earlier, change is not heroic. It's not something that other people do, right? We see people who seem to be so successful in their lives, right? But you can be that person too, through the tools that we talk about in the book. The heroes exercise, become that person, daily grounded self-reflection on the behaviors you want to change, right? Change is quiet, repetitive, and and by and in your biology to do.

SPEAKER_00 48:36

Yes, that have the systems to do it. I also, if you don't mind, would like to uh finish with a quote from the book uh on success. I really loved it. Sustainable success isn't about big breakthroughs or dramatic changes, it's about the small, steady actions that keep you moving in the right direction. And daily questions and self-reflection aren't just concept, they're the habits that build a life of purpose, growth, and accountability.

SPEAKER_01 49:04

I think that was the the that that sums that's that sums it up. That says it all. And anybody can do it.

unknown 49:12

Right?

SPEAKER_01 49:13

It's not the leaders you admire, they're wonderful people. They, you know, they're in my experience, those are leaders who grow and change all the time, the ones who do it the most. That's why they're successful and why they're notable. It's not just that they popped up sui generous one day and was were automatically that way. It might happen, but it's very rare. Mostly they've done this kind of work and you can too.

SPEAKER_00 49:34

Yes, it's a very empowering message that I fully sign up for. And the last question: where would you like listeners to go to? Uh, we're gonna link your website, the any other places people should go to connect with you, learn more about your work.

SPEAKER_01 49:49

There, uh we have a we have a there's a page about the book, which is permanencebook.com. We'd love you, we'd love you to join that. Uh, the book is out on February 10th. And so people are interested in the book. We're very excited about that for the new release, and and that people will begin to enjoy it. And Marshall and I have many programs around this. So we're giving programs just beginning on Monday, how to do daily questions. And so check with marshallgoldsmith.com for other programs that we'll be doing on permanence, or check with permanencebook.com.

SPEAKER_00 50:20

Yeah, and we're gonna link all of all of this in the show notes. So listeners uh check out the resources and follow up. And the most important thing, begin your journey with daily questions. Today, yeah, yes, the daily practice. No day like today. That is so true. The thing the changes today. So thank you so much, Lisa, for all these insights, for your work, for your dedication to creating positive change in people and in the world. Thank you so much. Oh, Angela, thank you. Have a beautiful evening. You too. Thank you.