Why the Most Flexible Leader Controls the Outcome: Gina Mollicone-Long

Oct 29, 2013

5 min read

Updated: Oct 29

Gina Mollicone-Long's napkin is about leadership. "Flexibility of behavior is the mark of true leadership. The person with the most flexibility of behavior will control the outcome. It is much more effective to whisper in someone else's language than to shout in your own." Gina teaches a breakthrough program, and when she had to boil all of it down to one idea, this was it. Leaders who need circumstances to go a certain way are at their mercy. The leader with the most options can adapt and stay on the path to what they want. For founders and CEOs, that means two practical things. You need a way to stop stress from taking control in the moment. And you need to know exactly what done looks like, so your mind keeps driving toward it.

Inspired by Paper Napkin Wisdom Episode 2 with Gina Mollicone-Long.

Why rigid leaders end up at the mercy of circumstances

Gina's point is simple. Whoever adapts best to circumstances will reach the outcome. A person who needs things to be a certain way to get results has handed control to those things.

She learned this traveling the world with her family. You have no control over circumstances. So the person with the most tricks in her bag, the most options to choose from, can stay on the path to what she wants longer. That is why she gets it.

Flexibility comes with a second idea. The only thing that never changes is the process of change. If you want to be the most flexible person in a system, you have to keep changing, learning and growing. Master the process of change, and master it quickly, so you keep adding options to your bag.

How to handle pushback by asking how it is working

I asked Gina about the pushback she hears. Her answer was that she screens most of it out up front. She tells people not to believe a word she says. She is not trying to convince anyone. If you don't have everything you want, consider that you may not have learned everything there is to learn.

Her one question for anyone is how's it working for you? She has no attachment to the answer. If someone's life is working, she has nothing to offer.

She told the story of a man who had tried to quit smoking around 100 times. What they found was that the only time he took a deep breath all day was when he smoked. His body needed that breath. Until he replaced the need with something more productive, he could not change.

That applies well beyond smoking. A habit in your leadership may be meeting a real need. You change it when you find what it gives you and replace that, or when the cost is bigger than the benefit.

How to stop stress from taking control in under a minute

Gina calls it grandmother's wisdom. She has taught in many countries and cultures, and grandmothers everywhere tell an upset child the same thing. Stop, take a deep breath, and count to 10.

Do that for a whole minute, she says, and you halt your stress response. You can still use the energy of stress. It just stops being in charge of you. That is what creates resilience and the room to be flexible to your environment.

She added one step from the HeartMath institute. As you breathe, imagine breathing in and out through your heart. In for five, out for five, for a minute. Gina described this as creating heart-brain coherence, a state where you stop leaking energy and become more efficient. She said they train first responders, doctors and the army to reach coherence even at elevated heart rates, because coherent people stay level-headed.

The more faculties and flexibility you have in that moment, the more likely you are to control the outcome.

Why you need to define the very last step

Gina separates goal setting from goal getting. Setting a target is easy. Getting it depends on defining the very last thing that has to happen in reality for you to be 100% certain you have achieved it.

Her example is breaking a board. People think the aim is to break the board. If you focus on that, she says, you will never break it. The last step is that your hand touches the floor. When your hand is on the floor, the board is certainly broken, because it was in the way.

Then she asked me about a trip to Hawaii. What is the last thing that has to happen for you to cross it off? My answer was getting a lei around my neck. She points out that if you ask a large group, almost no two people give the same last step. Some will say booking the ticket, others stepping off the plane or putting their toes in the sand. People who think they share a target often do not.

Your mind drives toward that detail. If you never define it, you wander, unsure whether you have arrived.

How to apply this in your business this week

Take the outcome your team is chasing right now. Ask each person on the leadership team to write down the very last step that would prove it is done. Compare the answers. If they differ, agree on one before anyone does more work.

Before your next hard conversation or decision, stop, take a deep breath, and count to 10. Try it with Gina's heart-focused breathing for one minute.

Pick one situation where you are pushing for circumstances to change. Ask what other options you have. Think about how you could speak in the other person's language instead of shouting in your own.

And when you notice a pattern in yourself or your team that you want to change, use Gina's question first. How is it working for you? Then look for the need underneath it.