Mastering Uncertainty: Unlocking the Superpower to Thrive in Chaos

What if uncertainty could become your greatest ally rather than your greatest fear? By learning to harness the energy of chaos, you can turn disruption into a catalyst for growth and creativity. This episode challenges you to stay calm in the storm, persist through life’s toughest moments, and seize opportunities others overlook. Mastering uncertainty isn’t just survival—it’s the superpower that allows you to thrive and lead boldly in turbulent times. Guest: Rich Diviney

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The topics and opinions express in the following show are
solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not
those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We
make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services,
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(00:21):
W FOURCY Radio.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the
answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose
at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their
lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization
that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their
highest potential. Business can be such a force for good
in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide

(00:51):
guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we
all want working on Purpose. Now here's your host, doctor
Elise Cortet.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
Welcome back to the Working and Purpose Program, which has
been brought to you with passion and pride since February
of twenty fifteen. Thanks for torning again this week. Great
to have you. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. If
we have not met before and you don't know me,
I'm a workforce advisor, organizational psychologist, management consultant, blog of therapist,
speaker and author. My team and I at Gusta Now
helped companies in life and fortify their operations by building

(01:25):
a dynamic high performance culture, inspirational leadership, and nurturing managers
activated by meaning and purpose. Did you know that inspired
employees in purpose led companies outperform their satisfied peers by
a factor of two point twenty five two one. In
other words, inspiration is good for the bottom line. You
can learn more about some how we can work together
at Gusto dashnow dot com and my personal site Eliscortes

(01:47):
dot com. Getting in today's program we had with us
Rich Davini. He is a retired Navy seal commander in
a career spanning more than twenty years. He completed more
than thirteen overseas deployments, eleven of which were to Iraq
and Afghanistan, and served as the Officer in charge of
Selection Assessment and training for a specialized Seal Command. Since
twenty seventeen, he has taught classes and delivered keynote speeches

(02:10):
about leadership, optimal performance, and high performing teams to thousands
of businesses, athletic military leaders, and to many well known organizations.
He is also the author of the attributes twenty five
Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance, and the latest we're focused
on today is called Masters of Uncertainty, the Navy Seal
way to turn stress into success for you and your team.

(02:32):
We'll be discussing in particular his Master Uncertainty method any
of us can use to elevate our performance, as well
as how it can be applied in teams. Rich Joint
is today from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Rich a very party.
Welcome to Working on Purpose.

Speaker 4 (02:46):
Well, thank you, Lis, it's great to be here. Thanks
for having me.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
I'm delighted to know you, sir. I'm kind of a
command here, but I really really admire and I'm inspired
by who you are and how you've navigated your life.
So let me just start with that.

Speaker 5 (02:59):
Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

Speaker 4 (03:00):
It's an honor to be here, and it's honored to
be able to share some of the experiences and lessons
I learned through that very kinetic career.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
That's a great word for it. I would say, yes, Well,
I want to first start by saying, wow, have you
written the timely book? I personally, you know, I've been
around for a few decades. I don't remember more uncertain
times than we are in today. So did you have
some kind of premonition here or just this just works
across all kinds of life? How does this happen?

Speaker 6 (03:29):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (03:30):
I have to say, well, I agree with you where
it seems like we're more rife with uncertainty than ever before.
I will say that it didn't matter to me when
the book came out. And if there's any certainty in life,
it's that uncertainty will strike, and to be prepared for
it and to be ready to move through it and

(03:51):
in some cases thrive in it is, in fact, I think,
the element of true confidence, and that's what I hope
to endow upon people, is the ability to be really
truly confident.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
I really appreciate the whole premise and promise of your
book that really that's what you're saying, is you're saying
what some of these things I like to be able
to put your actual words in this. But what you
said is Navy seals and other high achievers, anyone who
is adept at any circumstances, are fundamentally similar to everyone else.
Their edge is simply that they harness innate, yet often

(04:23):
overlooked capabilities that we all possess. That is so encouraging,
and I love the idea of that. It's just it's
a matter of finding it and then somehow unleashing it
and harnessing it.

Speaker 5 (04:34):
Well, you know, it's funny.

Speaker 4 (04:35):
I began thinking about this stuff even when I first
graduated seal training. I mean, in Navy seal training, it's
a very, very tough process. There's about an eighty five
to ninety percent attrition rate, so only about ten to
fifty percent of the guys who start make it through.
And I remember making it through and that graduation feeling
what I call kind of a healthy imposter syndrome because
I look around and say, how am I still here

(04:57):
with these guys around me? And kind of and I
say healthy because it really pushed me. It didn't it
didn't make me feel insecure. It just pushed me to
really do better, be better, and do right. By my teammates.
But ironically, what was interesting is as I got to
know my teammates, I realized that they had the same
imposter synerme going on. They were like, how am I

(05:18):
still here too? So it began to dawn on me
that these kind of innate things, or the things that
we took as being innate, were not exclusive to Navy Seals.
They were in fact human. And as I began to
dig into the elements and the neuroscience specifically, I recognized that, hey,
this is human stuff. It's not just Navy Seal stuff.
Once you realize that, you know, you can you can

(05:39):
talk about it, you can teach it, you can help others.

Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yeah, and what I want to also celebrate, which is
what we're going to really spend time in the third segments,
really focusing on how do we use this stuff in
the team seams, world and in organizations. But one thing
I did want to sell it what you just said
there is the power of associating with other people that
are also stretching themselves and going beyond what they think
they can do is so so powerful. Choosing that kind
of company.

Speaker 5 (06:02):
Yeah, I totally agree.

Speaker 4 (06:03):
Yeah, we we we really the the adage that we
are who we surround ourselves with is very, very true,
and I've found that and that goes for environments as well.
I mean, you know, environments matter and they will shape people.
And again, the analogy my good friend uses is if
you take the best cucumber in the world and put
it in a pickle jar, it will turn into a pickle, So.

Speaker 5 (06:26):
It might be bad.

Speaker 4 (06:26):
If the brine is bad, it'll be a bad pickle too.
So so environment matters, and the people you surround yourself
with matters.

Speaker 3 (06:32):
So I want to I want to give that directly
to our listeners and viewers. So listeners and viewers, ladies
and gentlemen, if you were in a place where you're
not really shining, I would check your teammates. I would
check who are you surrounded by. Is this the right
place for you? Maybe you need a place where you
can shine higher or better these Maybe these this isn't
the right group for you. I just would tell you
to listen very closely to what rich is saying about

(06:53):
opting into and being mindful of who you associate with.
So I want to just bake that in. It's so important. Yeah,
all right, well, let's talk about your mastering uncertainty method.
It's so it's so elegant, you know, six aspects to
it and so straightforward, but so powerful. So if you
can kind of give us the overview of how what
they are and how they hang together.

Speaker 4 (07:14):
Yeah, So so it's really it's kind of it's kind
of six main elements.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (07:19):
And the first three have to do with the neurology,
neuroscience and physiology of human beings. Uh. And the second
in other words, it's ubiquitous to everybody. Everybody, everybody can
do it. And the second three have to do with
what we uniquely bring into uncertainty. And so the first
three are you know, it's this concept of moving horizons,
which I know we'll get into. How do we how
do we actually apply and manage uncertainty in our environment?

(07:43):
The second involves how do we keep going? So how
do we keep doing it? And the third implies how
do we maintain a level of of not only calm,
but but focus and cognition during the process. One of
the things I know we'll get into is and we
when we start to feel uncertainty and anxiety and that fear,

(08:04):
you know, themalogically some very interesting things happen, and a
lot of times our frontal lobe, our decision making part
of our brain, starts to take a back seat. And
so the idea is keep that engaged so we can
in fact manage ourselves. And then the second three are
really about what we uniquely bring into uncertainty. One is
our objective, so what are the goals or the outcomes
that we hope to achieve that drives our performance. The

(08:25):
second is attributes, which again I wrote my first book
on is a huge topic. But what are those qualities
about us that are unique and the order of the
equalities are unique, and that that starts to speak to
our performance. And then identities, identities, what are those ims
that we bring into an environment, because those drive our behaviors,
both consciously and unconsciously.

Speaker 5 (08:44):
So those are some things we learn uniquely about ourselves.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
It's such a powerful, powerful model that you credit. And
of course you know that last bit, those last three.
I've been an identity and meaning you work with searcher
for years and so when you talk about identity driving behavior, like, yeah,
it's I really I understand that down to my last
tone out, Yeah, I do want to talk about each
of these areas and a little bit more in depth.
But I wanted to first let let our listeners and

(09:11):
viewers hear a little bit about how the model hangs together.
So let's talk first about moving horizons. I really thought
that this notion of you've situated and introduced stress in
a different way. You have told us that, you know,
the stress response is designed to by nature to get
us up and moving, and therefore it's an asset if
we use it as such, and sweet stress gets a

(09:32):
really really bad rap. So if you could say a
little bit more about moving horizons.

Speaker 4 (09:37):
Yeah, so moving horizons has to do with how we
in fact manage ourselves. So just just to rewind just
a bit, when we talk about uncertainty, we're talking about
actually a very specific type of uncertainty because we're really
talking about the uncertainty that elicits fear. Fear is really
the factor that holds us back in performance. That's what

(09:58):
that's what it does.

Speaker 5 (09:58):
Now, I know you.

Speaker 4 (10:00):
You and I talked briefly before we started about my
buddy Andrew Huberman, who wrote the Ford Andrew was well,
he still is a neuroscientist, is a great podcast. He
was studying fear in his lab at Stanford, and we
were doing a lot of this work together and one
of the things we hypothesized was that fear is in
fact a combination of two distinct factors, and those factors
are uncertainty plus anxiety. So in other words, if you

(10:20):
don't if you only have one but not the other,
you don't necessarily have fear. You can be anxious but
not uncertain. That's like maybe you have to give a
presentation next week at work. You know the presentation, you
know the people. There's no real uncertainty there, but there's
some anxiety. So there's fear just anxiety. You can be
uncertain without being anxious. Well, that's every kid on Christmas Eve,
and we know there's no fear there, right, So it's
when you combine the two that you get fear. And

(10:41):
this is the type of uncertainty we're looking at, is
that uncertainty plus anxiety. So moving horizons is part of
the process. The procedure for buying down fear. The way
you buy down fear is you buy down one or
both of those factors. You buy it down uncertainty and
or anxiety. Moving horizons helps you by uncertainty by allowing

(11:03):
you to focus on an element in your control in
the moment. And so one of the things we have
to understand about our brains is our brain just trying
to figure out an environment and create certainty around an
environment at all times, and it's doing so kind of
a long three major factors. Those factors are duration, how
long this is going to last, pathway, my route in
out or through, and then outcome, what's the end state.

(11:25):
If we are an absence of one or more of those,
we start to feel uncertainty in their fore anxiety and fear.
A real great example would be illness.

Speaker 5 (11:33):
You and I.

Speaker 4 (11:34):
We all know strep throats. Okay, it's an illness we
all know. Most people don't die from strep throat. There's
an antibiotic that can cure a strep throat. If we
get striped throat, we are an absence of only one
of the three. Because we know the pathway, antibiotic, we
know the outcome we're going to get better. What we
don't know is the duration. We don't know exactly how
long it's going to take. Anxiety uncertainty level is mild.
Now let's talk about the flu, which is also a
known illness. Most people don't die from the flu, but

(11:57):
there's no known cure for the flu. A lot of
people have the ideas, but there's no codified cure for
the flu. So if we have the flu, we are
in absence of now two pathway and duration. We know
the outcome will get better, we just don't know how long,
don't know how we're going to do it. Now, let's
imagine a disease shows up on the planet and we've
never seen it before, there's no known cure or a vaccine.

(12:17):
Some people are dying, some people are not dying, and
we don't know how long it's going to spread across
the globe. Well, twenty twenty is probably sounding familiar right now.
That's how we all felt. We were absence of all
three all moving horizons does is it allows you to
ground yourself in something you can control. You ask yourself,
what do I know? What can I control? And in essence,
by picking a horizon, you create your own DPO, duration,

(12:37):
pathway outcome. A real quick example is navy seal training,
where you run around all the time with these big
heavy boats in your head. And I remember we were
doing this, it was like three in the morning. We've
been running with these boats forever. We're on the beach.
We were all miserable, and we were next to a
sandburm as we're running, and I remember saying to myself,
I said, you know what, I'm just going to focus
on getting to the end of the sandburm. And what

(12:59):
I did in that moment was, inadvertently, unbeknownst to me,
picked a horizon and created a DPO duration from now
until end of sandburm, pathway from here to end of sandburm,
an outcome end of sandburm. And then created and manipulate
my own reward system dopamine system which we can get
into and to keep going section that allowed us to
allow me to create a reward. And then when I

(13:19):
hit that goal, I just did it again. I picked
another horizon. So all moving horizons is is asking yourself
constantly what do I know? What can I control? Picking
something to focus on, moving to it, coming back out,
picking the next thing to focus on, moving to that,
coming back out. And you can do this over and
over again until one of three things happens. Either you
make it through the challenge and stress, Two you achieved

(13:43):
the goal, you accomplished the goal, or three you generate
enough certainty in your environment that you no longer.

Speaker 5 (13:48):
Need to do it.

Speaker 4 (13:49):
But it works, and it's how Actually, every single human
being has a story of having done this. We just
probably didn't know what we were doing, but do this
all the time, and we can do it in any
time in uncertainty challenges.

Speaker 3 (14:01):
Two things in response to that. First, I love what
this whole process even. It's just that, you know, the
process of teaching, bringing this stuff to an awareness of
consciousness is what allows us to be able to activate
and do something with it. Now we're aware that we
can actually do this, that we have been doing it,
so that strengthens our capacity. Love that, And second, I
just got to celebrate. I knew before I even met you,

(14:23):
having read your book, heard about your past and you
know what you've done with your life, that you were
going to be able to You were going to be crisp,
You're going to be direct, You're going to speak fast,
and here it is. It's great, which is why I
crafted more questions than I normally do.

Speaker 6 (14:37):
From right, yes, yeah, okay, so now we have to
really geek out on this really fun phrase that you
put in and you put in the book that I
just could not resist.

Speaker 3 (14:47):
And it's the concept of actualizing neurology. Let's talk about that.

Speaker 4 (14:53):
Yeah, Well, actually actualizing neurology means we're going to use
our brains in a very proactive, positive way. And one
of the first ways we do that is to understand that,
like we said, when fear starts to enter our system,
our autonomic arousal goes up, our amig dealer gets tickled,
and our frontal lobe, the decision making part of our brain,

(15:14):
begins to recede the limbic part of our brain begins
to take over. Now, in the extreme cases, this is
autonomic overload or a Magdala hijack, where our frontal lobe
has taken a full back seat, our limbic brain is
now forward, we are acting without thinking. Now, this comes
in very handy when we're jumping out of a way
of a moving train or running from the bear, but

(15:34):
it doesn't come in handy about ninety nine percent of
other things that happen where we actually want to have
some agency in our decision making process. So actualizing neurology
means we're going to do things that bring that frontal
lobe back online and allow us to in fact use
decision making part of our brain. We can do this
through and we can talk about buying down anxiety. There's

(15:56):
some ways we can do that through visual tools or
breath work. One of the best ways to do this
is just asking the right types of questions. What we
have to understand is our brains are question answering machines
because again, like we said, our brains want certainty in
our environment. So we're constantly interrogating our environment our environment
through questions, a lot of times unconsciously. But what we

(16:16):
don't realize is are when we take conscious control of
this thing. If we place a question into our frontal
lobe deliberately, our brain has no choice but to begin
to come up with answers. Now, the problem is a
lot of times we do this without thinking, but we
do it.

Speaker 5 (16:29):
The wrong way.

Speaker 4 (16:30):
We say things like why am I so bad at this?
Or why does this always happen to me? Or why
are these people had to get me okay? Or why
am I pissed off? Okay? If you ask yourself why
you're pissed off, you will get some spectacular answers as
to why you're pissed off okay? Because your brain want
answer the question. What every high performing person, high performing
team does and everybody I've met is we take conscious

(16:53):
control of the questions we ask ourselves, and we ask
better ones. We say things like, who's out there can
help me? What am I good at in the moving
horizons case?

Speaker 5 (17:03):
What do I know?

Speaker 4 (17:04):
What kind of control? And you get better answers. This
is a literal way to focus our thoughts, focus our
brain positively because where our frame, where our focus goes,
where our focus is is where we go mose mentally
and physically. By the way, physically this works because I
did a bunch of driving schools when I was a cel.
We have to learn how to drive a bunch of
different vehicles, so we go to racing schools, and I

(17:25):
love everything about driving, so I volunteer for everyone. Every
time you go to a racing school, the first thing
they teach you is you get in the car and
they say, I'm going to teach you how to get
out of a spin if your car gets out of control.
First rule when you get into a spin is do
not look at the wall, because if you look at
the wall, you're going to crash in the wall. The
car might point to at the wall, but you have
to look to where you want to go, and your
body will start to follow. The mind does the same thing.

(17:47):
So actualizing your neurology and asking better questions is simply
a way to focus your brain on the better result
and get better answers.

Speaker 3 (17:57):
Such a sexy phrase, and it just sounds so incredible,
important and enlivening and elevating. Let's do more about this
actualizing neurology, but let's grow our first break, I'm your host,
doctor Relie Cortez. We've got on the air with rich
d Vinnie. He's the founder of the Attributes. We've been
talking a bit about where these ideas of his came from,
how he's uson in his own life going through his model.

(18:17):
After the break, we're going to continue the conversation about
his model and really get into how we can utilize
our body's own natural performance generator. We'll be right back.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
Doctor Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing in meaning
and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies
visioneer for a greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose
inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance
and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to
invite Elise to speak to your organization, please visit her

(19:03):
at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get
your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose
with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or
to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to
Alise A lisee at eliscortes dot com. Now back to

(19:27):
working on Purpose.

Speaker 3 (19:33):
Thanks for stating with us, and welcome back to working
on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elease Cortes, as I
am dedicated to help them create a world or organizations
thrive because they're people thrive and they're led by inspirational
leaders that help them find and contribute their greatness, and
we do business that betters the world. I keep researching
and writing my own books. So one of my latest
came out. It's called The Great Revitalization. How activating meaning
and purpose can radically and liven your business. And I

(19:55):
wrote that for leaders to help them understand today's very
discerning workforce. What do they want? Want to be able
to give their best to you and want to stick around?
And then I offer twenty two best practices to equip
your organization to provide that for them. You can find
my books on Amazon or my personal site at least
quartest dot com if you are just now joining us.
My guest is RICHD. Vinnie. He's the author of Masters

(20:17):
of Uncertainty, The Navy cl Way to Turn Stress into
Success for you and your team. So one of the
things that delights me many of you, I should say
a core throat what delights me about your book and
what you've done here is you've really taught us. You're
teaching us how to really get clear about how our
brain does work and then really intervening in that in
a way that we can sort of command it and

(20:38):
really get it working for us instead of against us.
And I just really want to celebrate that and all
the way down to this fun idea of how we
can manipulate dopamine in our favor. Let's talk a little
bit about how that relates to your body's performance generator.

Speaker 4 (20:54):
Yeah, well, dopamine is a it's an oft talked about
neurotransmitter and actually formally always known as a reward chemical,
but in fact we now know it's a motivation chemical.
They've done experiments with with dopamine in mice and they've
realized that if you know, with no dopamine, a mouse

(21:15):
won't even get up to get food if they if
they're hungry. So dopain is actually what gets us up
and moving in the morning. So we all have different
dopamine levels, and we all have different things that initiate
dopamine our system. One of the reasons why this is
important is because we and we execute the moving horizons process.
What we're doing is we're actually deliberately manipulating our dopamine system.

(21:38):
And the reason is because we're picking a goal that
actually is just outside our reach of comfort but not
too far, and it motivates us. We're giving us a
burst to get us there.

Speaker 5 (21:49):
Now.

Speaker 4 (21:49):
The reason why this process moving horizon process is very
subjective to the individual and to the intensity of environment
is because the dopamine register is going to work in
very individualistic So in other words, the more intense the environment,
the shorter that horizon often has to be. In seal training,
and they also they make you sit in the surf
zone and freeze for what seems like hours. The water

(22:10):
out there in southern California is really cold. Anybody who's
listening who knows southern California water will agree with me.
It's not tropical at all. Most people, in fact, quit
seal training because of the cold, not because of the
physical stuff. But anyway, they keep you in those surf
zone for hours, it seems. And I remember being in
the surf zone a couple of times freezing, and my
horizon was count five waves. It was that small. Sometimes
my horizon was, you know, make it to the next meal.

(22:32):
Sometimes it was make it to the end of the sandburn.
But what I was doing is I'm picking a horizon
that allows me to have the proper amount of dopamine
to get to that goal, and then you also get
a dopamine reward for hitting that goal. So it's kind
of a double whammy there in a positive way. The
good news is we can modulate these distances. If you

(22:53):
pick a horizon that's too far, too big, you will
run out of dopamine before you get there. All right,
anytime we quit anything, it's because we've run out of doping.
That's why we quit. If we pick a horizon that's
too short, then we're not going to register a dopamine
reward at all, it's not going to feel it's not
gonna feel anything. It's gonna be well, that was too short.
But the good news is we can manipulate that. We
can adjust along the way. So you can pick a

(23:14):
horizon and as you're going you feel like, oh wait,
that's too long, you can pull that horizon back in.

Speaker 5 (23:19):
You can even short it.

Speaker 4 (23:21):
If you pick one that's too short, you'll feel that
right away. You'll just pick some longer. But just know
that for every individuals it's subjective and it's really about
taking those small chunks. This is the neurological equivalent of
eating the elephant one bed at a time, and so
we have to experiment with this, in practice with this,
we can do it. The great news is we don't

(23:41):
have to be in an uncertain environment to do it.
A lot of us we go to the gym, do
this in the gym every day.

Speaker 5 (23:46):
Anyway.

Speaker 4 (23:46):
We don't go in the gym and focus on the
entire workout. We focus on the muscle we're looking at,
maybe the first set. Sometimes we'll do it in the
middle of a set. We'll say, you know, well, we'll
say I want to do twelve, We'll do six and
we'll say, and you know what, six more sticks again,
So all you're doing is you're you're manipulating these horizons
and you're you're managing your dopamine. So so understanding this

(24:08):
level of neurochemistry is really important in accomplishing these goals.

Speaker 3 (24:14):
So well explained and therefore accessible. Uh So, now I
want to move on to another element, and that's this
idea of staying cool. And it's just the language I know,
it's it's you're taking this from what do you call
what's the field that you're drawing from, uh oh, neurobiology, neurology,
So staying cool. But you're giving us tools to modulate

(24:35):
our autotomic arousal. And then and I certainly know because
I if I'm going to have anything I can, I
can freak myself out and be you know, my heart
rate goes through my through my roop, through my head
and I'm I'm rendered useless. So I definitely want to
have you talk with us about how we can modulate
this arousal.

Speaker 5 (24:52):
Well.

Speaker 4 (24:52):
So one of the things we so this is this
is the second part of the equations. So we've been
certainty plus anxiety equalsphere we've talked about buying down uncertainty.
The next question is how do we buy down anxiety?
All right, First of all, we have to reframe anxiety
to what it actually is. Okay, anxiety is in fact fiction, right,
It's always ahead of us. It's always about what hasn't happened,
but we're worried will happen. Whereas the past is history,

(25:13):
the future is fiction, anxiety is fiction. Now, the results
of anxiety, the stress that is induced by anxiety, is
quite present in our system. But one of the things
you'll never see Navy seals do is worry about stuff
they can't control in the moment. Okay, Now, that doesn't
preclude proper planning. We're always doing proper planning, but we're
not overplanning. We're not a suffering process through analysis planning

(25:33):
a couple things, and we're saying, hey, when we get there,
we get there and we'll hit it along the way,
but we don't worry about stuff we can't control in
the moment. So that's number one. Reframe anxiety to what
it actually is, and that's fiction.

Speaker 5 (25:45):
Now.

Speaker 4 (25:45):
The next piece is the stress induced from that is
quite real and quite present, and that autonomic arousal will
in fact tip us sometimes again in the extreme cases,
into autonomic overload, where we are just panicked. We don't
want that, and so we can in fact reverse this
physiological process. When we get stressed and we feel that
on amic prousal go up, certain things happen physiologically with

(26:07):
our vision and with our respiratory system. Vision, for example,
starts to tunnel we've heard of tunnel vision. We start
to focus in on the thread. This is by design,
so we focus on the threat. One of the ways
we can reverse or begin to reverse that process is
a tool called panoramic vision, which is basically open gaze.
It's a very simple tool. All of us know it.
If I had, if anybody listening has the opportunity, don't

(26:27):
do this if you're driving, but if you have the
opportunity to look out in front of you, and if
you're looking out in front of you and you're picking
a point, stop staring at that point and just kind
of soften your gaze so if you could kind of
notice your peripheries.

Speaker 5 (26:38):
This is called open gaze.

Speaker 4 (26:39):
Used in martial arts in other aspects, this has been
known to actually decrease our autonomic carausal because we're reversing
the process. Okay, I used to do this when I
first started public speaking. As you can imagine the Navy Seal,
you don't do a lot of public speaking, so it's
not something I really loved. I'd get on that, I'd
be a little nervous about it. I get on stage,
I immediately on stage, I just go into panoramic soft gaze.
I wouldn't focus on anything in the coming bound. So

(27:01):
that's one of the ways. And I can talk about
a couple of different visual tools that you can execute.
Respiratory wise. We know our breathing quickens, it gets rapid,
more shallow. One of the things we can do. Respiratory tools,
by the way, are the most powerful. They are more
powerful than visual tools. A lot of breath work out there.
I talk about a bunch of different breathing techniques. One
of the biggest, most I guess efficacious technique is called

(27:25):
the is called the physiological SiGe. Okay, physiological size. Really
just when one takes a deep breath in all the
way in, tops it off, and then a nice slow exhale.
You can do that five, six, seven times and you
will literally feel yourself calm down.

Speaker 5 (27:42):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (27:43):
Now, the cool thing about these breathing techniques if you're
really panicked, is you can actually combine picking horizons or
moving horizons with breathing, because your first horizon can be
I'm going to take five breaths, right. But like you've mentioned,
is that as soon as you're thinking that, as soon
as you're making that decision, you're automatically engaging your frontal
lobe and you're actually in a decision making position, whereas

(28:06):
if you're not, then your olympic position that you're acting
without thinking. So all of this can be combined in
a very unique way and cool way to in fact
engage that frontal lobe and begin moving more definitely and
confidently through any type of situation.

Speaker 3 (28:20):
I like that. Do you make that sound so accessible
and easy? So I'm going to I'm going to work
on that, rich, Thank you very much. Okay, we have
to talk a little bit about your attributes. As attributes,
I don't know why I have a hard time saying
that word. I was so I was like, I need
to read this book. So I was delighted that you
included some information in this book about them. So can
you introduce us to them?

Speaker 5 (28:40):
Absolutely?

Speaker 4 (28:41):
Attributes are the qualities that allow us to do what
we do.

Speaker 5 (28:47):
They're the quality.

Speaker 4 (28:48):
They're not they're not They're different from skills. Skills are
are kind of you're able to do the thing. Attributes
is do you do you have what it takes to
do the thing. Skills are very visible, they're very measurable.
Attributes are not. They're kind of innate, they're there, they're
they're kind of intangible. But attributes are things like patience, situation, awareness, adaptability, uh, humility.

(29:11):
These are all attributes. And these attributes actually speak to
how and why.

Speaker 5 (29:15):
We're perform the way we do.

Speaker 4 (29:16):
If we were kind of think about an iceberg, a
picture of an iceberg, and and and you can see
the entire iceberg, right, So it's one of these pictures
where you can see the stuff above the surface, you
can see below the surface. And we all know that
most of the icebergs sits below the surface. That stuff
above the surface is the performance is our performance, our behavior,
that's what everybody else sees. But being informed, that is
being informed by stuff beneath the service. Now, the very

(29:37):
first part that the you know before you get to
the surface is your personality. Okay, personality. Though personality is
made up of a bunch of things. It's made up
of values, beliefs, ideology, environment, a bunch of things go.

Speaker 5 (29:49):
Into a personality.

Speaker 4 (29:50):
But beneath even personality, at the very bottom of that iceberg,
are our attributes.

Speaker 5 (29:55):
And I know this.

Speaker 4 (29:56):
We all know this because experientially we've we've experienced it.
When the you know what, the fan personality goes out
the window, we are running at our most raw, and
so our attributes define how we run out our most raw. Now,
real quick, I talk about forty one attributes. All of
us have all forty one of the attributes. The unique
part of us is how much of each attribute we

(30:16):
have and other what order the attributes going. So we
take adaptability for example, I'm about a level six, which
are like scale is seven to one, right, so I'm
about six on the appability, which means when the environment
changes around the outside of my control, it's fairly easy
for me to go to flow. So when also might
be a level three, when the same thing happens to them,
it's difficult for them to go with the flow, they
can still do it. They're still adaptable, because all human

(30:38):
beings are. There's just more friction there. So if we're
going to line up these attributes on a wall like
dimmer switches, all of us would have different dimmer switch settings.
That starts to speak to our own unique performance. I
always kind of related to automobiles. Every human being, we're
all like automobiles. We all have the same components and parts. Okay, however,
some of us are jeeps, some of us are SUVs,
and some of us are Ferraris, And there's no judgment

(30:59):
there because the jeep can do things the Ferrari can't do,
and the Ferrari can do things the jeep can't do.
But at behooves kind of lift our hood to figure
out what kind of engine we're running with, because the
friction in our lives might be because we've been a
Cheep channel, run our Ferrari track or vice versa. So
attributes begin to describe for us individually how and why
we show up the way we do, and gives us
a real clear picture about who we are and how

(31:21):
we're going to perform at our most raw, which is
really what happens in uncertainty, challenges stress.

Speaker 3 (31:26):
Oh that is so alluring, all right, So what I
want to let me let's grab our last break. I
do want to cover off on identities and objectives, the
rest of the two elements of your model, but let's
do that after the break. I'm your host, doctorI Scortes
on the air with Rich Davinni. He's the founder of
the Attributes. We've been talking through his beautiful uncertainties model,

(31:47):
which is accessible to you. You can wrap your arms
around it and use it. After the Marik will continue
to get cover off on the other two elements, and
then we're going to talk about how we can use
this stuff to build class ACKed, high performance teams.

Speaker 4 (31:58):
We'll be right back.

Speaker 2 (32:14):
Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning
and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies
visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired
leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and
commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite
Elise to speak to your organization, please visit her at

(32:36):
Elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your
employees working on purpose. This is working on purpose with
doctor Elise Cortes to reach our program today, or to
open a conversation with Elise send an email to Elise
A Lisee at Elisecortes dot com. Now back to working

(33:00):
on Purpose.

Speaker 3 (33:06):
Thanks for saying with us, and welcome back to Working
on Purpose. I'm your host, Doctor Release Cortes. As you
know by now, this program is dedicated to empowering inspiring
you along your journey to realize more of your potential.
If you want to learn more about how we can
work together and what's involved with the Gusto Now Academy
for leaders and individuals on various journeys alike, make your
way to Gusto dash now dot com and then go

(33:27):
to the training tap and you can find the academy
there if you are just now joining us. My guest
is rich to Vinny. He's the author of Masters of Uncertainty.
The name me seal a way to turn stress and
success for you and your team. So we are going
to cover off in the last two elements of your
Mastering Uncertainty model. You've already touched a little bit on
identities when you did the brief, but I really love

(33:48):
if you could say a little bit more about that,
and I really want you to say more about why
the im statements work so well.

Speaker 4 (33:55):
Yeah, I think I am the two words I am
or I think the most powerful words in the human language,
because anything we put after that is what we what
we identify as, and it shapes our behavior. And what
we have to recognize is that we are, in fact
the collection of i ams that we collect over a lifetime.
And then it can be everything from you know, benign
to pretty pretty big and serious. I mean, I went
to this high school, I played this sport. I'm a husband,

(34:17):
I'm a father, I'm a Navy seal, I'm a Metallica fan.
I mean, whatever those are, they are what they are.
But every single one of our i ams comes with
some rules and conditions and behaviors that describe what it
means to be that identity. And what we have to
recognize is in uncertainty channels of stress we are going
to behave toward towards whichever identity we're prioritizing in that moment. Okay,

(34:39):
So when I was in combat and Iraq and Afghanistan,
of course my Navy seal identity was prioritized, Okay, but
sometimes the target would change and we have to take
care of civilians or women and children, and my husband
father identity.

Speaker 5 (34:51):
Would would prioritize.

Speaker 4 (34:54):
We can find ourselves behaving in ways that we actually
don't recognize or realize because we're bringing for an identity
that we have but don't recognize what it's doing. So
we've seen the negative consequences in these We've all seen
the story where the sports fan, the the ultra uber
sports fan beats the crap out of another sports fan, okay,
and they're in they're in the in front of the

(35:15):
judge and they're like, you know, the judges like, what
were you thinking? And the guys like, I don't know
what I was thinking, you know, because the guy was
in fact behaving towards an identity without recognizing it. Now,
if that person had invoked and had the wherewithal to
invoke some other identities maybe professional businessman or or family man,

(35:36):
that behavior would have would have subsided. But all this
to say is our identities are driving us at all times,
especially during uncertainy, challenge stress. We can again, with our
frontal lobe engaged, we can pick and choose which identities
should be prioritized in the moment and what's the.

Speaker 5 (35:51):
Most useful and what's not the most useful.

Speaker 4 (35:53):
So so really the act of understanding these identities, these
i ams and getting a list going of what however
many i ams you have, it starts to really illuminate
how and why you perform and behave the way you do.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
I think that what you just share there about this
the the maniacal sports fan is really really compelling. That's
that's so well explained and situated. Makes so much more
sense to me. Now, okay, so the last element of
the model, it speaks to objectives, and I really like, again,
your language is so crisp you talk about really that's
your objectives? Are your purpose made tangible?

Speaker 5 (36:29):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (36:29):
Yeah, it's it's probably the it's probably the quickest, most
simple one, that is, we can't, we can't. You know,
Masters of uncertainty don't kind of align themselves to vague purposes.
They anchor themselves to concrete objectives. When I was a
young young man, you know, in my teens in high school,
I wanted to be a I want to serve my country.

Speaker 5 (36:50):
I wanted to be a warrior. I wanted to do good.

Speaker 4 (36:52):
I wanted to be special, you know, and and and
be part of something special and unique. That was a purpose. Right,
it became anchored when I side to become a Navy seal.
And an anchored purpose, an anchored objective is something you
can begin to dpo and shift horizons inside of and
start moving towards. So all this to say is we
want to make sure we're anchoring ourselves to objectives because

(37:13):
these objectives are also driving us in uncertainty, challenges, stress.

Speaker 3 (37:18):
Fantastic, and that brings us to where I want to
get to with how we can use this stuff to
really develop productive, high performance teams. And I want to
first start by saying that one of the things you
say in the book is you say a key reason
that many teams remain stuck in mediocrity is they're fail
to account for uncertainty. So if we can just start
by situating, you know how we can step into the

(37:40):
world of building great teams using your framework, your model.

Speaker 4 (37:44):
Yeah, well, the reason is because we have teams, and
we have high performing teams. A team is simply defined
as any group of two or more people working together
towards a common goal or objective.

Speaker 5 (37:54):
That's a team.

Speaker 4 (37:55):
A high performing team is any group of two or
more people working towards a common goal or objective that
perform not only when things are going great, but also
when things are not going great. This is the biggest,
most distinguishing factor to a regular team team. And so
the way we perform when things aren't going great is
we have to task organize ourselves in a very specific way,
and we have to knowse things about each other and

(38:17):
build trust with each other so that we can effect
navigate these times and begin to perform. So the very
first and probably the most important model is this idea
of dynamic subordination. What dynamic subordination is, it's a way
if you were think of it as a visual thing.
It's not the pyramid, it's not the flat Line's not
even the upside down pyramid. It's kind of a blob.

(38:38):
And what dynamics subordination implies as a team understands that
challenges and issues can come from any angle, at any moment,
and when one does, the person who's closest to the
most capable immediately steps up and takes lead, and everybody
follows and supports, and the environment shifts and someone else
steps up, and you know, I was an officer of
the Seal Teams. I went on hundreds of combat missions.
I was in charge of every single one. It did

(38:59):
not mean was always being supported. In fact, most of
the time was the opposite. I was supporting other people,
whether it was my sniper's, my preachers, my assauliers. Sometimes
the environment shift and they'd be in support of me.
But all this tells us is something extremely important, and
is that our position on our job on a team
has nothing to do with our rank and hierarchy. It
has everything to do with what we are there to

(39:20):
contribute to a team. And if we are leaders or
want to be leaders of a team, it's our responsibility
to create that dynamic, the subordinating environment. One of the
ways we do that is we have to understand each
other's attributesse these attributes mesh together very well. The high
patience person and a low patience person mesh very well
on a team. My wife and I are like this.
We've been married twenty four years. She's low patients. I'm

(39:42):
a high patience. Now, when in an environment where patience
is required, I step up. An environment where impatients required,
she steps up. Her impatience has prevented me from sometimes
taking too long or procrastinating. My patience has sometimes prevented
her from making too quick of a decision or moving
too rapidly. So these attributes line up. Then we also
have to start building trust. We have to build trust

(40:03):
amongst each other, and we have to do that through
the way we behave with each other. So now we
can get into trust. But I'll stop there because I
know I've been ranting a little bit.

Speaker 3 (40:11):
So I know it's fantastic. I think that this idea
of dynamics subordination in teams energy is an incredible concept
and it's somebody who also has ought to elevate leaders.
I think it's just it's just really really exciting, powerful
and I see how it really changes the whole outcome
in terms of results, and I like how you talk

(40:32):
about it. This very fluid transition keeps the team agile,
always putting its best foot forward, that collective expertise comes together,
and who's the leader has orchestrated the environment for this
to happen, and I want to celebrate that that as
a possibility. In today's world, I see so much still
command and control stuff going on, a lot of bureaucracy

(40:53):
stuff that's holding organizations back and the people that are
in them that are starving to give their best. So
I think that this concept for me just really one
of the most powerful things that you have in your
book in relation to the world of business and teams
inside organizations.

Speaker 4 (41:07):
Yeah, and and it's funny it came from this idea.
Obviously the military was the background. But but in the
in the early days of military maneuvers, it was it
was very I say you do. You had you had
lines that stood across from each other in big, big
open fields, marching forward and shooting each other. And then
as the well, certainly the Revolutionary War, the the early
patriots began to to uh hide and run around and

(41:31):
began what what eventually would become asymmetric warfare where there
was no or no lines, and and and the the
the the battlefield is blurred in terms of who and
where the enemy and the other people were. In those environments,
a leader cannot expect to maintain a pyramid style of
I say you do, because you don't have visibility on

(41:53):
where in fact the primary problem is. And so dynamics
of ordination allows for an organization to.

Speaker 5 (42:01):
Put forth its best foot.

Speaker 4 (42:03):
As close to the problem as possible and where the
where the nodes are actually there and and then and
then report back. But but in uncertainty, what's happening is
that that that node, that's that's that's forward, that's serving
the that's that's being supported. That's that node is setting
the first horizon, and then everybody moves to that as
soon as as soon as that's that's done, then some

(42:24):
new data may present itself and another node may step forward.
But this is how we as teams can manipulate and
manage uncertainty in in a team environment. And we're just
making sure everybody is actualized to put their best foot forward.
I mean, it's so simple. I mean we don't if
we if we ask a human being to do everything

(42:44):
with your nose and leave every part of our body out,
we we it wouldn't work. I mean, we have every
part of our bodies is fulfilling a role in our hands,
are are are our feet or whatever, our nose, our eyes,
you know. But but we have to make sure that
we are putting forth the best node and allowing that

(43:04):
node to kind of prosper and be supported, and then
of course being willing to shift back and be in
support when the environment changes.

Speaker 3 (43:18):
This just came to me Obviously we're talking about many
minimal levels beyond this, but there's a strong undercurrent and
element that this dynamics subordination is very much just it's
like improv which does really still it also embodies the
four key areas that you have to focus on to

(43:38):
actually get the things started, which is in your book,
and you already mentioned that you have to build trust,
to establish communication, be vulnerable, and then create low risk
opportunities for practice. So I would love for you to
speak a little bit high level to those because so
there's two of the things I want to get out
of you before we get off air. But for us
to put dynamic subordination into movement, you need those more pieces.

Speaker 4 (44:00):
Yeah, well, I'll go through a real briefly. And trust
is such a huge topic. We could spend an hour
on trust alone. But obviously the one thing I want
people to understand about trust is trust is about behaviors.
In other words, we have to behave in us and
it's reciprocal. Okay, we behave in a certain way to
allow someone to trust us. You can't make anybody trust you.
All you can do is behave in a way that
allows them to form a belief a decision to trust you.

(44:23):
So it's all about us going first. This nonsense about
people coming in so I'll trust them when they prove
it to me. No, no, no, we have to go first,
and every high performing team we go first with our
trust behaviors. That allows for people to trust us and
it's reciprocated. So that's trust. Communication. I mean communication has
to be abundant and purposeful. And by the end, those
two words are very very specific, abundant and purposeful because

(44:45):
because for me, as a ground force commander, in other words,
I'm charge of the entire mission to spew every single
bit of information I'm getting to the operator who's kicking
the door right now is not purposeful. I need to
make sure that he has every piece of information he
needs in the moment and overwhelm him. So it's not
about giving everybody everything. It's about being purposeful with everything

(45:06):
that someone needs to need and needs to understand and
being abundant with it. And that's how you know the
information is never silent. Vulnerability is about wearing everything on
our sleeves. My strengths in my weekness is our all
my sleeps, so my teammates can know exactly when I'm
going to be stepping up to support them, and they
know exactly when they're going to be steping up.

Speaker 5 (45:23):
To support me. It's absolutely critical.

Speaker 4 (45:25):
And by the way, it also builds trust and then
low risk opportunities for practice just means as teams. First
of all, we all have levels of uncertainty every day
in our lives. With our teams. We can use those
what I call minor little tragedies to practice this stuff
as teams. So when the big stuff hits, we're actually
reversed in it. But if we focus on and start

(45:50):
to highlight some of these lower, lower risk things that
happen every day on a daily or weekly basis, we
can then think about how we're behaving as a team
and begin to actually you get better and better at it.

Speaker 3 (46:02):
Yeah, and then it sort of takes into account and
puts into motion at a previous topic we had on
this podcast, which is about now we've set momentum in place, right,
so you've really started to activate momentum. Okay, so we're
coming to a close here. I want to finish up
here with this idea that one of the things that
you've said is that in order for this to work
in order for us to be able to situate this

(46:22):
idea of dynamic subordination, we have to be able to
live in that space of vulnerability such that we know
the whole teams, that their strengths and their weaknesses, and
that you, as the leader especially, have to really model
vulnerability and go first. So if we could finish this
part of the conversation with sharing a bit about just
the power of vulnerability and why it's so important, well.

Speaker 5 (46:43):
Yes, and now we'll just start.

Speaker 4 (46:45):
First of all, let me just start by saying, leaders,
there's a difference between being a charge and being a leader. Okay,
one is a position, one is a behavior. Yeah, we
don't get to self designate. We don't get to call
ourselves leaders. That's like calling yourself good looking or funny. Okay,
other people whether or not you are someone they want
to follow based on the way you behave. I had
sometimes some cases in the military if there'd be someone

(47:06):
in a higher cryical position above me, and I'd look
at that person, I say, I wouldn't allow that person anywhere. Meanwhile,
there'd be someone over here to my right who had
no higher copal position whatsoever. I'd be like, I would
follow that person to helen back. And it's because of
the way we behave. So so if we want to
be leaders, we have to behave like leaders. And part
of the thing we have to do is we have
to first model the behavior we want to see more
of and then reward the behavior we want to see

(47:27):
more of. So we have to go first. That's being vulnerable.
We go first. If we want more empathy in our team,
we have to show empathy, and we have to reward
empathy if we want more whatever you name it.

Speaker 5 (47:37):
And so all of this has to.

Speaker 4 (47:38):
Do with modeling and rewarding and going and being vulnerable
that way, and that way we can set an example
of how to behave in a team. And that's the
if there's one message for any of us. And by
the way, in the dynamics of ordination environment, everybody has
a chance to be a leader, you know, depending on
the and and we as the as the people in charge,

(47:58):
as the leaders we want to be, have to say
set that stage. We have to make sure everybody is
empowered and feels ready to step up, because if we
don't do that, they're going to be looking back for decisions.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
And that's yeah, an excellent point well, it goes by
so fast, Rishie, We've got a delight to talk with.
I want to give you the chance to close the
conversation with how you like, what would you like leave
our listeners and viewers with around the world.

Speaker 4 (48:19):
All I will say is this. So the reason why
this stuff drives me is twofold. First, it will allow
people to deal with uncertainty when it happens inevitably and
we don't predict it that always happens. We're always going
to have uncertainly happens without warning. We want to be
able to step more confidently into it. But more important,
the more exciting thing for me is if you get
really good at this, you begin to deliberately step into uncertainty.

(48:41):
And that is where all of our growth, all of
our evolution, and all of our discovery lives. And so
we as human beings going to have a really wonderful, energetic,
rich life and we can explore our potential constantly if
we just understand how it can more effectively deliberately step
into uncertainty out of our comfort zone. That's where our
potential is.

Speaker 3 (49:01):
Fantastic way to finish rich. I am so grateful to
know you that you've stepped into my path. I got
to read your book to be educated by it, by it,
to be inspired by it. I'm here sharing with my
listeners around the globe. Thank you for being on the program.

Speaker 5 (49:13):
Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Speaker 3 (49:16):
Listeners and viewers. You are going to want to learn
more about rich to Vinni, the work he does at
the Attributes and is speaking in his latest book. Visit
the Attributes dot com. Let me spell that for you.
So the t h E Attributes is a T t
R I b E t E s the attributes dot Com.
Last week, if you missed the live show, you can
always catch it be a recorded podcast. We were on

(49:37):
air with Melissa Swift, the author of work Here Now,
Think like a Human and build a powerhouse workplace. She
really helped us give us language and thus capacity to
better understand the aspects of where work is not working
for people and what organizations can do to address the
issue of today's times. Next week, we'll be on air
with Mitchell Leevy talking about the work he's doing to

(49:57):
help leaders formulate how they first execute their purpose and
then execute abundance. See you then, and together let's lean
in and learn together how to make workplaces that work
for everyone and find ways to do business in a
way that betters the world. That's work on Purpose.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to
tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortes,
each week on W four CY. Together, we'll create a
world where business operates conscientiously. Leadership inspires and passion performance
and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning
and purpose they crave. See you there, Let's work on Purpose.