The Quiet and Strong Podcast, Especially for Introverts
The Quiet and Strong Podcast, Especially for Introverts
Ep 245 - Leadership and Positive Psychology with guest Sebastien Page
What does it really mean to be a leader in today’s world—and how can positive psychology shape your path to success and fulfillment? In this episode of The Quiet And Strong Podcast, host David Hall welcomes Sebastien Page, seasoned leadership expert and author of The Psychology of Leadership. Together, they explore fresh perspectives on setting meaningful goals, building effective teams, and understanding the critical role of personality psychology in leadership.
You’ll learn about practical strategies for balancing stress, leveraging the unique strengths within any team, and developing a mindset focused on self-improvement rather than just outcomes. Sebastien shares powerful real-life examples, including the story of how diverse personalities combined for success in his own career, and how shifting your approach to stress can fuel high performance—whether you’re managing a Fortune 500 portfolio or navigating daily challenges.
Tune in if you’re ready to rethink the fundamentals of leadership, discover why understanding personalities is a game-changing skill, and pick up actionable tips for becoming a stronger leader at work, in your community, or within your own family. Listen, learn, and be strong.
Episode Link: QuietandStrong.com/245
Sébastien Page has more than two decades of leadership experience and has extensively studied positive psychology. He is currently Head of Global Multi-Asset and Chief Investment Officer at T. Rowe Price. He oversees a team of investment professionals actively managing over $500 billion in assets under management. He is the author of “The Psychology of Leadership: Timeless principles to perfect your leadership of individuals, teams... and yourself!”
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Minding Your Time: Time Management, Productivity, and Success, Especially for Introverts
Sebastien Page [00:00:00]:
Goals are also a big part of leadership and self improvement and life. And there are different ways I hope in the book to help people think a little bit differently about their goals in a way that is positive and connected to positive psychology. It's a very optimistic book. It's about self improvement as much as leadership. And the last thing I'll say is, is everybody's a leader. Whether you manage people in an organization or not. You're a leader in your family, you're a leader in your community. You don't want to be a leader.
Sebastien Page [00:00:36]:
People are looking at you and following by example. And so this applies to everybody.
David Hall [00:00:51]:
Hello and welcome to Episode Episode 245 of the Quiet and Strong podcast, especially for introverts. I'm your host David hall and the creator of quietandstrong.com. this is a weekly podcast dedicated to understanding the strengths and needs of introverts along with strategies for success. Introversion is not something to fix, but to embrace. Normally we will air each episode on a Monday. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite platform, leave a review or rating. That would mean a lot to me and help others find the show. Tell a friend about the podcast and help get the word out there that introversion is a beautiful thing.
David Hall [00:01:26]:
Sebastian Page has more than two decades of leadership experience and has extensively studied positive psychology. He is currently head of Global Multi Asset and Chief Investment Officer at T Rowe Price. He oversees a team of investment professionals actively managing over 500 billion in assets under management. He is the author of the Psychology of Leadership, Timeless principles to perfect your leadership of individuals, teams and yourself. All right, well, welcome to the Quiet and Strong podcast. Sebastian. Sebastian, it's so good to have you on today.
Sebastien Page [00:02:03]:
David, I am psyched for this. I love the theme of your show about personality and introversion. Really excited.
David Hall [00:02:11]:
Awesome. And, and I've been enjoying your book. We're going to get into that and first just tell us a little bit more about yourself and your journey to the work that you're doing now.
Sebastien Page [00:02:20]:
I'm an executive in money management. I've been doing this for 25 years. I'm Chief Investment Officer at T Rowe Price Fortune 500 company. We manage over 1.6 trillion massive global money management firm. And I have about 25 years of leadership experience. As soon as I started in the business, I started managing teams. But at the same time I've become passionate about research in psychology and that has led me to publish the book the Psychology of Leadership, which I'm super excited to talk about.
David Hall [00:02:58]:
Yeah, absolutely. And so you're a fellow introvert. When did you figure that out, that you were an introvert?
Sebastien Page [00:03:06]:
I get that's an interesting question. I guess I always knew, I've never questioned it. But when you hear the definitions, it just clicks. You think, ah, that's me. And one of the most common definition is when you hear about how introverts, it demands, it requires them some energy to be in social situations, especially in surface discussions and small talk. Whereas extroverts, their energy level goes up from those situations. In those situations. When you hear that, right, when you start understanding the personality psychology, when you read about it, then you become more and more certain, hey, that's me.
David Hall [00:03:48]:
Yeah, right, right. And what would you say is the strength you have because you're an introvert?
Sebastien Page [00:03:54]:
One thing I've learned about leadership, especially over the last few years, is that it's not what you think it is most of the time. And I wrote a lot about that. In the psychology of leadership, you think of a leader as an outstanding communicator who's inspiring. But in reality, the higher up you go in an organization, the more your success as a leader depends on your listening skill. And this is a key skill that introverts have. The research actually shows that extroverts tend to get promoted faster for leadership positions. But when it comes to leadership effectiveness, there's new research that shows that introverts actually make fantastic leaders, in part, and I would say in big part, because they have great listening skills. And to me, the listening part is maybe the most important part of my own journey for the last, let's say, five or six years.
David Hall [00:05:00]:
Yeah. And I think we can be good listeners. You know, it's, it's definitely an active effort. And we also are, I think we share in common that we're keen observers. And so as we're listening, we're observing and reflecting, and we can come up with some great ideas, some innovative solutions, and, you know, be strategic and that, that is a great gift.
Sebastien Page [00:05:23]:
And the other thing, David, we were talking about before going on the air is preparation. You know, introverts tend to be more comfortable with solitary work. I'm not sure if solitary is the right word. I should probably just say individual work. And they'll be prepared often going into meetings just because they like to sit down on their own and think about the problems. Extroverts and, you know, you don't never want to generalize around personality psychology, but they tend to just shoot from the hip and they get energized and they Go to the meeting less prepared on average, I would think.
David Hall [00:06:03]:
Yeah. And a big thing for me in all of this was realizing I am going to think and then speak. And so I do better with preparation. You know, if there's a meeting coming up, you know, what do I need to know? And I do better if I think ahead of time. Extroverts tend to. And again, yeah, we're not, we're not saying good or bad on any of this. It's just different. Extroverts tend to think out loud and they thrive in that area and we thrive preparing.
David Hall [00:06:31]:
So that's, yeah, that's a great strength.
Sebastien Page [00:06:34]:
And, and David, on that. It's a challenge. In my leadership meetings, I have extroverts. Yeah, let's, let's, let's call. I won't use names. Let's call this person John.
David Hall [00:06:46]:
Okay.
Sebastien Page [00:06:46]:
It's not his real name. John is an extrovert. The way he processes, the way he thinks is verbally. So I have John talking in the meeting, often over others, often non stop. Not just to dominate or to show off, just because that's how John thinks. And you can follow him in his monologue and hear him refine his opinion and, and form his opinion as he's speaking. I don't know what a good analogy would be, but like you're building the plane as you're flying it. That's kind of how John in my committee communicates.
Sebastien Page [00:07:30]:
But then I have the introverts who will just sit and listen. And as a leader, my role is to call on them. I have this principle in the book the Psychology of Leadership. Call on the introverts. And I have a rule which is the one over N rule. This is a bit nerdy, David. I hope our audience will bear with us. N is the number of people in the meeting.
Sebastien Page [00:07:56]:
Right now we're having a discussion. There's two of us. It's N equals two. My one over N rule, which I'm probably going to violate because you're interviewing me today, but is that everybody should on Average Contribute 1 over n of the discussion. So in our case it would be one over two would be 50%. If it's 10 people, it's one over 10. It'd be 10% of the discussion. The way I present this with my leadership team is to say, look, if you tend to dominate the conversations and go over one over N, I'm not asking you to censor yourself, but try to get closer, back to normal, hold back sometimes, let others speak.
Sebastien Page [00:08:42]:
If you never speak Then I need you to speak up more. And you know what, I came up with this years ago. And in our leadership discussions, you still hear people say, oh, I'm violating my 1 over n. Sorry about that. So it's become part of how we talk about sharing the airtime in discussions. It doesn't have to be equal all the time. Sometimes there's an expert on one topic, we want her to speak more than others.
David Hall [00:09:11]:
Right, right.
Sebastien Page [00:09:12]:
But generally 1 over n is good principle.
David Hall [00:09:14]:
Yeah. And probably most teams are built of introverts and extroverts and understanding how we communicate and the dynamics of it all can. Can really change change the effectiveness of teams.
Sebastien Page [00:09:29]:
To me, understanding personality psychology is a game changing skill for leaders, and it's completely underrated. Understanding how the level of someone's agreeableness might influence how they respond to different situations. The other traits, neuroticism and openness to experiencing conscientiousness, and of course, extroversion. All these different traits to me matter. And the sum of the parts when you put people together to work together is greatly influenced by the diversity. Now, diversity can be like a, I don't know, a political word or. I'm just approaching this in terms of people bringing different personality traits to the table. Introverts and extroverts can work really well together.
Sebastien Page [00:10:23]:
I had someone tell me last week that I was moderating a book club on the psychology of leadership. And the person said, there's one part in the book that made them laugh out loud. And I guess I'm setting high expectations as I'm saying this. It's a story about the person in the sales team at my first company when I started my career, who took me by the hand and. And basically made me successful by selling my research to institutional clients. That person was an extreme extrovert. Like he would just spend his entire flight standing up in the aisle and talking to people, making people laugh. Salesperson dedicated to just connecting with people.
Sebastien Page [00:11:19]:
And he would get energized by it. And I was the opposite. And I was a quantitative analyst doing research on financial markets. But we ended up working so well together, it almost never happened because this extreme, extroverted person actually was a typical trading floor finance, money management person who swore a lot. And David, I promise I'm not about to swear on your show.
David Hall [00:11:48]:
Okay?
Sebastien Page [00:11:49]:
But he used a lot of swears. And it was just. First time I met him, we had to meet in Texas to go see some clients. And I went to the Hertz location and no one was there. It Was completely empty. I had my bag of presentations at the time, we carried PowerPoint presentations around. And I'm waiting there and it's a deserted Hertz station. It was on my itinerary.
Sebastien Page [00:12:14]:
And I'm waiting, and I'm waiting. I have my phone rings and it's. And it's the salesperson, this extreme extrovert who starts swearing at me. Where are you? Aren't you one of those geniuses from the research team? This is the wrong hurt station. We're running late. Sit there, I'm coming. And just the swearing and swearing. You can imagine a swearing, swearing, swearing, swearing.
Sebastien Page [00:12:40]:
And it was our first meeting. First time I met him, he took me to see his clients. And then it ended up working very, very well. You see this in business a lot. An extroverted salesperson works with an introverted expert. And the sum of the two is very powerful.
David Hall [00:12:58]:
How do you think you, you or him or both of you made that relationship work?
Sebastien Page [00:13:03]:
Look, that's a great question. Because we're so different, right. I just motivated by different things and just have a different way of approaching communication and relationships. But as in many things in life, differences are what make people tick. He had certain skills that I didn't have. Right. Oh, Start the conversation with the client and talk about the football game and how the, you know, what the. What's the best restaurant around and why Cheesecake Factories.
Sebastien Page [00:13:37]:
You had this shtick about why Cheesecake Factory is the best restaurant in the world. It was pretty funny. So handle that. Create the relationship. Remember everyone's name. But then we sit down and the client wants to know about how to manage their huge amount of money that they need to manage. And I, as the more introverted research person, would come prepared and I would deliver insights and research. So it's perfect.
Sebastien Page [00:14:06]:
Perfect one, two combination. That's how we made it work.
David Hall [00:14:09]:
Yeah. And so there's many factors in our personalities, as you know and as you've written about in your book, I focus on introversion because there's definitely some misunderstanding there, but that's part of this show too. It's like either introverts and extroverts or many other factors in our personality. If we can understand these, how we're different, we can also partner. And, you know, where, where you're strong, you know you can be strong, and where you don't have a particular gift, you can lean on somebody else. And so that's, that's a big part of all this. Whether it's introversion, extroversion, or whatever. The personality trait is.
Sebastien Page [00:14:50]:
Yeah, and there are myths around introversion. You tend to picture in your mind an introverted person as shy and agreeable. That's not necessarily the case. You know, agreeableness is a different trait from introversion and extroversion. You can be an introvert and be extremely disagreeable or not shy at all, but you're still an introverted personality. So this is one of the myths. But studying in depth personality psychology, and I hope this doesn't go against the grain of your show and your premise, David, but there is a lot of research also we have to remember that personality can be situational. So some people can act extroverted or feel extroverted, or be extroverted while in certain situation with good friends, for example, after a glass of wine.
Sebastien Page [00:15:50]:
While generally they're more on the introversion scale. That's why when you take a personality Test, it's not one question, it's about 100 question. And it's not an on or off switch, introverted or extroverted. It's a scale. And so that scale also slides based on situations. The research that I've read, I don't know about you, David, but shows that maybe 30 to 40% of your personality is heritable. So from your sort of parents and grandparents. So some of it you develop over time.
Sebastien Page [00:16:26]:
And the interesting premise, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this is that to a certain extent, not 100%, but to a certain extent, you can hack your personality, you can change your personality. Would you agree with that, David?
David Hall [00:16:43]:
So for me, speaking of introversion, it's that we tune in deeply. We, we spend a lot of time naturally in our heads, our worlds of imagination. So that part isn't going to change for me. So I came that way. And you know, I've had a lot of experiences where, you know, my wife is a fellow introvert. She's always been confident in that. I have two extroverted children and one introverted child. And I, I and many other experiences and you know, reading and things like that.
David Hall [00:17:17]:
You know, I believe that these things come to us naturally. I think that if we don't understand that part of the nurture, part of the nature versus nurture argument is that like when I was a kid, there was no talk about introversion. My parents had no idea, you know, how to nurture that gift. And so it was something I had to develop. So I mean, in a nutshell, I believe that our personalities stay very similar over time. We can actually excel in our personalities. And we can change and improve, become more successful, but I think our underlying personalities stay relatively stable over time.
Sebastien Page [00:18:01]:
Yeah, I think that's right. I would agree with that. There's an underlying core that is there. It's like the sky is blue. It's always there. The weather changes, the clouds go in and out. But there's a fundamental quality to the blue sky. And so there's a fundamental quality to personality as well.
Sebastien Page [00:18:20]:
And that probably speaks to the 30 to 40% that's heritable. I just find the whole thing about personality absolutely fascinating. Much more useful for leadership than most people appreciate. And that's my goal here with the psychology of leadership. I want to bring personality psychology beyond. Susan Cain did a great job with her book about the power of introverts. Quiet. And I talk about it in my book.
Sebastien Page [00:18:51]:
But beyond that, beyond that, how do you actually learn to combine teams together, put the extroverts with the introverts? We what does it mean for collaboration in the workplace? And so I just found it super fascinating. I had so much fun writing about this. David, I know you've been reading the book. There's a part in the book where I have tables where I map celebrities to personality traits just for fun. Right. You don't really. Again, it's a scale. They might self report a certain personality trait.
Sebastien Page [00:19:29]:
But I tried to look at famous people and personalities and characters and put them on the scale from extrovert to introvert, for example. So, I mean, I don't know if you agree with my choices, but on introvert, and in a lot of those cases, those people reported that themselves. Right. But I'm kind of guessing here. On introverts, I had Michael Jackson, I had Bill Gates, J.K. rowling. I think a lot of writers are introverted. There's something connected there.
Sebastien Page [00:20:03]:
Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Abraham Lincoln, and the character Wolverine. So that was my mapping on the introversion side. On the extroverts, I had Beyonce, Steve Jobs, Oprah, Steve Ballmer. Steve Ballmer was the number two behind Gates. Totally extroverted. Mark Cuban, Winston Churchill. So I, I don't know. What, what do you think?
David Hall [00:20:31]:
Yeah, I mean, definitely all have accomplished much. All the people you named with, you know, their gifts. I think of J.K. rowling. My kids loved Harry Potter. They were, they were reading all the books and then we went with them to all the movies. And you don't create that world without some really deep thought and creativity, you know, and, and I could appreciate that. And again, there's.
David Hall [00:20:57]:
There's no right or wrong here. You know, back on the. Whether it's natural or not, I'm very analytical and I'm guessing that you are as well. Am I right?
Sebastien Page [00:21:08]:
Yep. Yep.
David Hall [00:21:09]:
And, and that is never going to change for me. I've been that way since I was a little kid. And I will always be analytical, but I can grow in using my analytical abilities. I can make the time to think and research and find some tools to help, so I can grow in that. But I'm never going to change from being analytical.
Sebastien Page [00:21:29]:
Yeah. And I see that. I work with a lot of analytical people. I've done a lot of work in my career related to David, how you use mathematics to try to understand how financial markets move around and the risks of investing your money in different places and predicting markets. That's extremely, extremely analytical. It's interesting. There's certain professions, I think, that attract introverts. I have to talk to the media for my day job in finance.
Sebastien Page [00:22:04]:
And when I walk into a major publication and I go to their offices to meet with a journalist and I look around and talk to a few people, all these writers, all these journalists, I can, I think I can read a little bit of their personality. It's, it's kind of an introverted thing. So I agree there are certain professions and I would venture to guess that they're less introverted salespeople. Although there might be. And you know, David, you're an introvert. Describe yourself as introvert. You're doing a podcast, right?
David Hall [00:22:41]:
Exactly.
Sebastien Page [00:22:42]:
You're talking to new people and as would be perceived as mostly an extroverted thing to do.
David Hall [00:22:50]:
Yeah. And I love it. I enjoy talking with people like yourself and, you know, having these great one on one conversations. I do prepare. I did send you some questions ahead of time as, you know, kind of like a framework. I do prepare, but at the same time I love it. But. And you know what? I don't have anything scheduled right after, you know, if I need a break after.
David Hall [00:23:11]:
And it's not that I didn't enjoy the conversation, because I am, but I might just need a break to recharge after. And so you learn those things about yourself.
Sebastien Page [00:23:20]:
Yeah. And I understand you're interviewing me, but I have one more question for you. Yeah. You know, one of the things in my work that's important is cocktail parties. You go to conferences, it's for networking. And there's a cocktail party and you grab an appetizer, you grab a drink and you walk around and talk to people. A lot of Them have a name tag. You've never met them.
Sebastien Page [00:23:42]:
Right, right. I dread those. Those are incredibly demanding for me. For you, David, on a scale of 1 to 10, one being, it's super easy, I love it. 10 being, I'd rather get a root canal.
David Hall [00:23:58]:
Yeah.
Sebastien Page [00:23:59]:
How would you, how would you rank the cocktail party?
David Hall [00:24:01]:
Yeah, I think we're probably similar there. Maybe maybe an eight or a nine.
Sebastien Page [00:24:07]:
Yeah, same here.
David Hall [00:24:09]:
And you know, I, I've learned that I want to have some great conversations. I don't, I'm not going to enjoy bouncing around from person to person as fast as I can. I'm not going to remember those conversations, you know, and it's just more about, okay, who do I want to talk to, who do I need to talk to? And have some good deep conversations would be my goal. But yeah, that kind of bouncing around, that's, that's not for me.
Sebastien Page [00:24:36]:
And you, I think, develop an ability to have deeper conversations and deeper friendships for me. In the book Somewhere, I talk about my friend Phil. We've been friends since high school and I say, I write, 30 years of unbroken friendship to me is more valuable than a hundred new acquaintances. I have friends that I've had for decades. And to me that's easier, more natural than constantly meeting new people. I think that's a good thing. And some of those friends are extroverted, right?
David Hall [00:25:19]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the thing. It's like we do like people. That's a myth I often bust on this show. We do need relationships. We do value family, friends, work, associates. We do value people. It's just we want to have those deeper conversations.
David Hall [00:25:37]:
And it's normal for introvert to have a smaller circle of friends, you know, and it really comes down to what you want. Are you getting what you want? And if not, how can you understand yourself to get what you want?
Sebastien Page [00:25:50]:
Yeah. And going back to my one to ten scale for you, David, I can tell you mine, but you're sitting on a plane. Okay, okay. It's a five hour flight. Someone next to you is starting the small talk saying, oh, hi, I'm John. Hey, what do you do? It's a typical question in the U.S. what do you do scale of one to ten? One being, oh, I'm glad to have a five hour conversation with this stranger. Ten being, you know, please let's put on my Bose headphones right now.
David Hall [00:26:26]:
Yeah, I always bring my headphones for sure. And you know, it's, we like conversation, but there, there are people that are happy to have small talk for Five hours. And that's not me, you know, and I used to struggle with small talk. I've learned how to do it. It can be enjoyable, but it's necessary. But I just don't want to stay there too long. Yeah.
Sebastien Page [00:26:49]:
You know what's interesting about all this too is that sometimes we get it wrong. We think someone's an extreme extrovert and then you get to know them and they'll reveal to you that it's very demanding for them to be that way.
David Hall [00:27:04]:
Yeah.
Sebastien Page [00:27:04]:
Social situations, you think someone's an extreme introvert. Have someone like this at work who would just, you would meet them and you would think, oh, he's, he's an introvert, you know, and there's nothing more that this person loves than get getting energy from walking around and talking to people, but in a quiet, understated way. But so it's, you know, I think my view is you don't want to stereotype around personality too much and you can't explain all the behaviors all the time based on personality. First of all, we have at least five big personality traits according to research. And if you look at other models, there's even more. And second, again, it can be situational and sometimes misleading. But again, that's my caveat. My main view is that everything about personality that I've learned is fascinating, informative, helps you understand people, and useful for leadership.
Sebastien Page [00:28:12]:
And that last part, useful for leadership, remains underrated in business.
David Hall [00:28:19]:
Yeah. So how did you get into psychology and personality?
Sebastien Page [00:28:25]:
So I, this all started when I was stressed out at work. And not only was I stressed out, but I was stressing about stressing. And so that wasn't really healthy. I don't have any sort of clinical anxiety, but I have a high level job that's demanding and I experience stress like most people, everybody in fact. But at that time my stress was unusually elevated. And I kept telling myself, been doing this for 25 years. Why am I so stressed? And so I decided to talk to a sports psychologist who lives in Maryland, where I am. His name is Dr.
Sebastien Page [00:29:05]:
Daniel Zimit is a fascinating person because not only is he a PhD sports psychologist who has a thriving practice coaching NFL players, Major League Baseball players, Olympic athletes, but also himself has 44, 0 national titles in the sport of handball. Now this is the sport that's kind of like squash, like there's four like walls and you hit the ball, but you hit the ball, smack the ball with your hands. So he has his mental game figured out. Clearly as an athlete, we sit down and he begins to tell me the story of his best match ever. The best match he's ever played. That match took place 10 years prior. But in a weird way, he remembers everything about it. The ball was where, on which wall, at what point.
Sebastien Page [00:30:05]:
He's walking me through the match with such passion. At some point is he's explaining he was on his knees and made an extreme shot and possible that he never thought he could do. The crowd was yelling, like screaming. The beer was flying in the stands. It got like a tear in his eye. But then something really interesting happened is a letdown because he goes almost nonchalant, sort of a small detail that he's adding. Oh, and then I lost the next two points. I go, wait, you lost the match? And he goes, yes.
Sebastien Page [00:30:44]:
But to him, in his mindset of a sports psychologist, winning or losing had nothing to do with what happened in that match. In that match, he realized he was playing now at a higher level. He was able to play at a higher level. So that was the sports psychologist mindset. I got fascinated by this. I thought about applications in business. We started talking about sports psychology. I dug into positive psychology.
Sebastien Page [00:31:15]:
That's two thirds of the book. The Psychology of Leadership and a Roundabout Way, David, if you bear with me and if our audience bears with me to say that I needed more. I needed more for this book and I needed more for my own development. And that's when with Dr. Daniel Zimit, who's a sports psychologist, we got into. He advised the book as a consultant. We got into personality psychology. And I can say now that the book is written and published, I can say that the most fun I had writing was by far on personality psychology.
Sebastien Page [00:32:00]:
And I can also say that, again, I keep repeating this, but that might be the most underrated part in terms of applications for leadership.
David Hall [00:32:11]:
So what was it? Because normally people aren't going to describe their best match for one that they lost. What was it about that. That was really a turning point for you.
Sebastien Page [00:32:24]:
In investing, which is my day job, we often lose. No one can predict the future, so we get decisions wrong. Often there's a parallel with sports psychology. But what really was the turning point for me was thinking about this mindset where outcomes don't matter as much as self improvement. And this speaks to intrinsic motivation and it speaks to process. Do you have the right process? The outcomes will be the outcomes. It's almost a philosophical approach to this mindset in sports psychology. But are you doing your best in your process? Are you applying your process? Are you intrinsically Motivated.
Sebastien Page [00:33:16]:
The best example is in this case, Zimit was intrinsically motivated and by becoming a better player, and he was playing a much stronger opponent in that moment. And so I wanted to kind of bring this mindset into my own development, into business. And there, David, you start discovering how much there is to psychology and research beyond the clinical side. Now, the clinical side is super important to treat anxiety and depression. But if you go on Google Scholar and you look at the research in psychology now, about half of it is on the positive side. And I put personality psychology on the positive side because it's extremely helpful for self improvement, for example. And so you get, how do people thrive? How do you achieve high performance or even ultra high performance? And with personality psychology, how do you develop empathy? How do you build better teams? How do you understand yourself better? This about half the research now in psychology has got nothing to do with the clinical side. Again, the clinical side is super important and it serves a function.
Sebastien Page [00:34:34]:
But we tend as society to not really think about the positive side enough. An example I like to give is Felix Baumgartner. Does that name ring a bell, David Felix Bogartner? Yeah, he's not that well known, but he did something amazing in 2012. Unfortunately, he passed away recently in an accident on a paraglider. But in 2012, Felix Baumgartner got into a small, basically capsule tied to a giant helium balloon, and he went up in space 24 miles basically to the edge of space. And then what he did was amazing. He walked, he had a special suit on, walked out of the capsule and skydived. So he skydived from 24 miles up basically in space at the edge of space, where he get a little bit gravity to make sure he was going down right.
Sebastien Page [00:35:39]:
And he fell for 10 minutes and 4 minutes of which were in free fall. He's the first human being to break the sound barrier without an aircraft. And so that's Felix Baumgartner. What most people don't know is Felix Baumgartner, through his training to do this, and even the day of, he had a sports psychologist counseling him, training him, prepping him, talking to him. And I love that example because it speaks to you. Think of psychology, okay? We treat anxiety and depression. I think of psychology at least as much as how do you achieve high performance? How do you do things like ultra high performance, like what baumgartner did in 2012, this sort of daredevil feat. So that's how I think about it.
David Hall [00:36:29]:
And then where did your passion for leadership come from?
Sebastien Page [00:36:35]:
That's been part of my professional life again for almost 25, about a year. I've been in business for 25. About a year after I started working, I started managing small teams, global teams, teams of increasing size. I think it comes somewhat naturally for me. And I think it's also something where we don't get a lot of formal training, right? You go to business school, you have mentors, but really leadership, something you learn on the job. It's something that's hard to understand. Sometimes you think as a leader you need to be decisive, but really, sometimes you actually need to be patient and let things play out. Very counterintuitive.
Sebastien Page [00:37:22]:
You think you need to be an extrovert who talks all the time and is inspiring to others, but really you kind of need to listen most of the time and be a better listener. You think you need to have zero stress, you know, be very cool. You have this image of the leader, right? She's unflappable and doesn't show emotion. And it's all controlled. The reality is, you know, stress is okay. It's part of life. It's actually part of high performance for athletes and in general for leaders. So it's such a broad field that can be so counterintuitive.
Sebastien Page [00:38:05]:
And bringing the positive side of psychology into it makes shines a light on a lot of things. We don't get formal training about leadership. They don't get formal training on.
David Hall [00:38:19]:
Yeah, you just brought up stress. And I know you write about that in your book Talk a little bit more like, how do we learn to. Because stress is going to happen. How do we learn to manage it effectively and develop the right mindset around it?
Sebastien Page [00:38:31]:
I had a conversation at one point with Daniel Zimmer, was talking about him a second ago, the sports psychologist. And I said something like, I'm pretty stressed. And he looked at me and he said, seb, you need this stress. And I go, why? What? Then we started talking about, there's about 80 years of research on this, something called the Yerkes Dodson's curve. Now, we're about to get nerdy, but it's fascinating. So the Yerke Dodson's curves I explain in the Psychology of Leadership started with research on Japanese dancing mice. I'll spare you all the details, but there's a lot of controversy around them. But it's a super helpful mental model, and it shows that for athletes in particular, optimal performance does not occur at a stress level of zero.
Sebastien Page [00:39:31]:
Which also means that when your stress increases, your performance will increase. Now, up to a point of optimal performance, after which stress is going to hurt your performance. And also, we all know that excess stress is actually really bad for your health. It'll impact your sleep, your sex drive, your ability to concentrate, your cognitive function, your blood pressure, your heart, health, like everything, right? So stress will kill you. But there's this curve. And in sports psychology, researchers like to talk about activation as opposed to stress. There's a certain amount of reframing that occurs. But if you're going to run 100 meter race, for example, you're going to perform better if you're nervous and call it activated if it makes you feel better.
Sebastien Page [00:40:26]:
But if you're nervous, if you have butterflies before the race, you're going to run faster. And so there's this fascinating thing where you begin to accept stress as fuel for performance and then it changes your attitude and you stop doing what I was doing when I started on this journey, which is stressing. About stressing, you say, okay, I'm activated. I go on live national TV to talk about my investment views. Often there's no way I'm not going to feel anxious before. No way. You know, I don't even know what they're gonna ask. Yeah, and it's gonna go back and forth.
Sebastien Page [00:41:01]:
I'm gonna have three minutes and I have like a gazillion numbers and ideas I'm trying to hit on the air. How am I not gonna get anxious or think about an athlete? Like how, how's it, like the basketball player needs to do the three point shot, Hit the three point shot at the buzzer, you think they don't, they don't have stress and activation. So it's there and you learn to accept it. And the curves are interesting because they're different for different tasks. So your optimal performance will occur at a lower stress level. If you're doing archery, which requires more concentration than if you're doing powerlifting. If you're doing powerlifting, I want your adrenaline way high, but not for archery. And then different people also have different stress curves.
Sebastien Page [00:41:50]:
And now the most interesting part, you can work on your stress curve and try to improve it. In the book in the Psychology of Leadership, I have an example of someone who had a remarkable stress curve, the remarkable ability to perform in high pressure situation. It's Neil Armstrong. David, the Story of the First Manned Moon Landing. It's a pretty well known story. By the way, I mentioned this in a podcast before and in the comments I saw some people were saying, well, does he really think this happened? So I Don't know. Apparently there's a debate as to whether it happened.
David Hall [00:42:32]:
Yeah, I've heard that too. Sounds kind of crazy to me. It was all faked.
Sebastien Page [00:42:38]:
Let's assume it happened. So, yeah, of course. Like the lunar module, first man moon landing. The lunar module was going off course. They lost connection, just communication with the Earth. The computer was not working. They ran out of fuel. He had to take manual control and land the thing in the wrong spot, but land it.
Sebastien Page [00:42:59]:
And the fascinating part, as an astronaut, he was tied to a heart rate monitor except for when they landed, like the 15 seconds around when they landed when his heart rate spiked. For most of the mission, when all of this was going down, Neil Armstrong's heart rate was 75. 75 for a lot of people is a resting heart rate. So he had a remarkable stress curve that enabled him to achieve very high performance at, with very low stress associated with it. So how do you get there? How do we all become a little bit more like Neil Armstrong? Neil Armstrong had a lot of repetition in practice, if you want to go to the clinical side, the most popular treatment forms now for anxiety involve exposure. Exposure in small doses, in small control doses, but exposure. Neil Armstrong was fighting in the war, flying fighter jets, so he had a lot of high pressure repetitions, if you will. Sports psychology also talks about mental repetitions.
Sebastien Page [00:44:07]:
So if you're about to do something difficult, rehearsing the situation in your mind helps. I'll do that before I go on national tv. And then it's trite. But breathing exercises are a very, very expedient way in the moment. So that's before I go in the air. 30 seconds of connecting to what you cannot control. Right? You can control your breathing, but you can't control your blood pressure, your heart rate, your stress response. But that connection point is your breathing.
Sebastien Page [00:44:39]:
So the Indo breathing exercises, there's different ways, different practices that can help improve your stress curve. Sorry, I went on a little bit long on stress, but it's such an important topic in business. We're all stressed, everybody's stressed.
David Hall [00:44:53]:
Yeah, yeah, no, that's so good to understand. Is there anything else from the psychology of leadership that you haven't talked about that you want to today?
Sebastien Page [00:45:01]:
Well, we didn't talk much about goals. And I think the job of a leader is to set goals. And whether you're an introvert or an extrovert, you need to be able to align others around long term goals and bring them along. And the reality is that most people in their lives and a lot of Businesses as well don't think long term enough. We have crisis of short termism and often we all have goals that are measurable and important in some ways, but not connected to positive psychology. What do I mean by that? If you ask millennials what they want to achieve in life, 80% will say they want to become rich. 50% said it'd become famous. There's nothing wrong with those goals by the way.
Sebastien Page [00:45:54]:
Go ahead, measure it and be ambitious and hope for the promotion. There's nothing wrong with them. But the research in positive psychology shows that in the long run, that's not how people thrive. In the long run, people thrive through engagement, positive relationships, meaning in our lives and long term accomplishment. So we didn't talk much about this today and I'm glad we focused on personality because I love it and introvert to introvert. I felt like we had a great discussion. I hope you guys liked it. But goals are also a big part of leadership and self improvement and life.
Sebastien Page [00:46:35]:
And there are different ways I hope in the book to help people think a little bit differently about their goals in a way that is positive and connected to positive psychology. It's a very optimistic book. It's about self improvement as much as leadership. And the last thing I'll say is everybody's a leader whether you manage people in an organization or not. You're a leader in your family, you're a leader in your community. You don't want to be a leader. People are looking at you and following by example. And so this applies to everybody.
David Hall [00:47:11]:
Yeah, absolutely. And as we've said, introverts can be amazing leaders.
Sebastien Page [00:47:15]:
Absolutely.
David Hall [00:47:17]:
This has been a great conversation. Sebastian. Where can people find out more about you and your book?
Sebastien Page [00:47:23]:
So the book's on sale everywhere. You can buy it on Amazon and you can find me on LinkedIn. As far as social media, that's probably the best way. I'm on the other platforms as well. You can find me easily.
David Hall [00:47:35]:
Okay, well, thanks again.
Sebastien Page [00:47:37]:
Thank you.
David Hall [00:47:38]:
Thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate you. I hope you take the time to explore other episodes and learn from other amazing guests. Remember, if you're interested in getting to know yourself better, there is now a free type finder personality assessment on the Quiet and Strong website. This free assessment will give you a brief report including the four letter Myers Briggs code. I'll add a link in the show notes and I'd love to connect with you. Reach out at davidquaiandstrong.com or check out the quietandstrong.com website which includes blog posts and links to social media for quiet and strong and much more. Send me topics or guests you would like to see on the show.
David Hall [00:48:18]:
So many great things about being an introvert and so we need those to be understood. Get to know your introverted strengths and needs and be strong.