Simon Brown (00:06.363)
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Curious Advantage podcast. My name is Simon Brown. I'm one of the co-authors of the book, The Curious Advantage. And today I'm joined by my co-author, Garrick Jones.

GAJ (00:19.629)
Hello.

Simon Brown (00:21.621)
Unfortunately, Paul isn't able to join us today, but we are thrilled today to be joined by Rich Deviney. Rich is a former US Navy SEAL officer. He's a bestselling author and he's a leadership expert. And he spent over 20 years in the SEAL teams, including time leading elite selection and training, where he became deeply interested in the human attributes that drive performance under pressure.

He's the author of The Attributes and his latest book, Masters of Uncertainty, where he blends neuroscience and real world experience to help individuals and organizations thrive in chaos. And we see a lot of that today. So since retiring from the military, has worked with organizations from Google through to elite sports teams. And he also helps leaders to perform when it matters the most. So we're thrilled to have you with us, Rich.

Rich Diviney (01:11.511)
Well thank you, it's good to be here.

Simon Brown (01:14.469)
So maybe to kick us off, for our listeners who are discovering your work for the first time, can you maybe take us through your journey from a Navy SEAL through to a human performance expert and maybe where and how curiosity led you down that path.

Rich Diviney (01:31.381)
Yeah, well, think curiosity leads us down every path. So that's probably the beginning stage of it. However, I would say the... I'm not sure if there's a distinct...

A to B from Navy SEAL to performance, human performance expert or at least enthusiast, think it kind of goes hand in hand. I think when you go to and do something like the Navy SEALs, you recognize very quickly that you're put into environments and situations where you have to perform in very, very diverse chaotic environments. so I became very fascinated and curious about how it is we do that and what are the things we do. And so while I was still in the

You know, I was obviously a part of it and in being a part of it was observing and trying to take notes and thoughts on what was going on. And then when it got out of the Navy I was able to kind of look a little bit more analytically at it and put a little bit more science and research into that as well. So I'm just fascinated with how and why people perform the way they do. And for me when it comes to human performance it's really about who we are and how we show up at our most raw.

you know what is hitting the fan, who's that person that shows up? Because I think understanding that is somewhat of a superpower.

Simon Brown (02:45.104)
Yep.

Simon Brown (02:51.217)
We'll dive into that, but yeah, I'd be really keen to hear some of your research around that. Maybe starting us off, how did you end up as a Navy SEAL? So what was the journey there?

Rich Diviney (03:00.359)
Well, it's interesting when I, know, back in, you know, I was in, I went through high school in the late eighties, early nineties. I graduated high school in the early nineties. And so, and back then, no one really knew what Navy SEALs were. I always wanted to join the Navy. originally my brother and I wanted to be Navy pilots. And, and he actually ended up being a, a pilot. He flew for the Marine Corps and flew the Harrier jump jet for 20 years. uh,

Simon Brown (03:21.03)
Yes.

Rich Diviney (03:21.783)
But I learned about the seals. read some books and I learned about these guys. I was like, this is very interesting. And the fact that they kind of, they were special operations, but they also, they kind of centered their activity around the water. loved the ocean. I loved the water. And so that was kind of cool to me. The fact they were unknown was cool to me, which of course changed as I went through. But yeah, I decided to, I ended up at Purdue University in the States there. I did a Navy ROTC program. And so when I graduated, I got commissioned immediately into the Navy.

and then went to SEAL training. And yeah, and that started a 21-year career. And obviously, was a bit boring at first. Then 2001 happened, and things got very exciting very quickly. So I was able to kind of live that piece of it as well.

Simon Brown (04:10.07)
I struggle to see Navy Seal being boring somehow. Maybe that's different levels of boring.

Rich Diviney (04:12.957)
Thank

Well, you know, one of the myths one of the misconceptions is that seals and spec operators are doing things all the time and that's not the case we When there's no when there's no nothing going on really It's a lot of training most most of the time is spent training and preparing for The just in case you need to go do something and so that was really what what was going on prior to 20 2001 and then of course then there was real-world stuff that to have to do so

Simon Brown (04:45.936)
And how did you go from there? guess things got lively in 2021. From there to then sort of focusing around attributes and what makes high performance, what was your journey through that part of your career?

Rich Diviney (04:57.239)
you

Well, I, in, 2005, I went to a very specialized SEAL command, uh, called SEAL Team 6 and SEAL Team 6 is a command that requires a very specialized selection process. Um, and, um, and, and it's, uh, it, about, only about half of the guys, have, first of all, you have to, you have to be an experienced Navy SEAL to even apply. So there's a bunch of stuff you have to go through to even get there. Once you get there, you go through a selection process and only about 50 % make it through. And so I went through that in 05, made it through. then in

2010 I was put in charge of that process that training process and and but and in 2010 when I took over one of the questions we were struggling with was why Certain guys were not making it through because these are these are some top guys not making it through the training and we'd say something like well the guy couldn't shoot very well and You you tell a seal of that caliber. He can't shoot very well It's pretty disingenuous to him and the leadership starts to ask some tough questions And so they said rich we need you to take a look at this and so as I looked at this I started

to say, okay, what is it in fact?

what are we in fact looking at when we're this selection? Because it's not the shooting and it's not the diving and it's not the skydiving. So it's not these visible, tangible skills. It's really we're looking for these qualities, these attributes. And these intangible things are a little less hard to see, but things like patience and situational awareness and adaptability. And really as I dug into it, I realized that that's really the crux of special operations selection anyway. You know, there's a story,

Rich Diviney (06:31.223)
that was told to me by an older seal. said, know, Rich, there's a story about a kid who showed up one day at seal training years and years ago. And he walked into the instructor's office and said, I want to be a Navy seal. And the instructor said, okay, but you have to do a swim test. And the kid said, okay. So they took him out to the pool. It's an easy test. It's 50 meters. So 25 meters to one end, 25 meters back to the other end. Anyway, the kid gets all ready to go. He proceeds to jump into the pool and then he proceeds to sink to the bottom of the pool. And at the bottom of the pool, he starts to walk across the bottom of the pool to one end. He touches the one and he turns.

around he walks across the bottom and pull back together and he comes up he's gasping for air nearly drowning and the instructor looks at him says what the hell are you doing and the kid is still trying to catch his breath says looks at the instructor and says I'm sorry instructor I don't know how to swim and at that point the instructor looks at him

pauses and he says, that's okay, we can teach you how to swim. Right. And the idea is why did he say that? He said that because he knew if this kid had the qualities, the attributes to show up to Navy SEAL training without knowing how to swim, he had everything inside of him. need to turn him to be a Navy SEAL teaching him the skill of swimming was going to be easy. so, so this is when I really began to understand there's a bifurcation between these two terms skills and attributes are two different things. And, and these attributes drive our performance, not only every day, but at very elemental levels. this

is what starts to define our performance in especially uncertainty, challenge, and stress.

Simon Brown (07:52.987)
Wow. And was this a new piece for the Navy SEALs to identify that it wasn't just the physical piece, the pure skills? So you were leading the research and the changing of the thinking around that?

Rich Diviney (08:07.243)
Well, I wouldn't even say it was a new piece because even when I go with businesses, even though I work with businesses now and nothing's new about this, think what's distinction about this is we all know it, but we don't know how to describe it. We all know there's something we're looking for. There's something we see in somebody.

And there's these qualities, we hear soft skills, we hear character traits, we hear qualities. And what I realized is that there was no real language around it that could be definable. And so what I began to do is put language around. Now I did it to a very elemental kind of basic degree while I was still in the Navy. But certainly when I got out of the Navy and I began working with businesses and teams, that's when I realized, wait a second, this actually needs to be articulated in a better way. And that's when I decided to write the book.

And really, was really more about, it was less about discovering something new and more about just articulating something that already existed. And that's really, I think, what resonates with many people when they are introduced to the content. They're like, oh, wait a second. We've been seeing this and knowing this all along. We just didn't know how to describe it. And now this is a way to describe it.

Simon Brown (09:10.682)
And in the book, you go into skills and attributes. Oops, sorry, on, on, Garrick.

Rich Diviney (09:26.805)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rich Diviney (09:36.757)
Yeah, 100%.

GAJ (09:55.211)
It reminds me of that thing we say.

GAJ (10:03.436)
It reminds me, Rich, when we say hire for attitude, train for skill. That idea that it's the attitudes that you're looking for first and then the skills come secondly. The skills can be trained and can be learned. you...

Rich Diviney (10:06.037)
Yeah, it's a great question. so, so real quick distinction between skills and attributes. Okay. Skills.

Skills are not inherent to our nature. In other words, none of us are born with the ability to ride a bike or throw a ball or ski. Okay, we're trained to do those things. We're taught to do those things. Skills direct our behavior in known and specific environments. So here's how and when to throw a ball, ride a bike or ski. And then because skills are very visible, they're very easy to assess, measure and test. You can see how well anybody does any one of those things. You could put scores around skills. You could put statistics around skills. You can put skills on resumes, which is why we often get seduced by skills when we're hiring or selecting people.

GAJ (10:25.931)
I was also struck by, you talked about three things, patience, situation awareness, adaptability. And these seem to be like attitudes as well, which are kind of great. are they things we learn as, are they character? Are they things we learn before we get into situations? Can they be learned?

Rich Diviney (10:43.097)
But what skills don't tell us is how we show up in stress challenge uncertainty because in an unknown environment, it's very difficult if not impossible to apply a known skill. So this is when we lean on attributes. Attributes on the other hand are elemental. In other words, all of us are born with levels of patience, situation, awareness and adaptability. Now you can certainly develop attributes over time and experience and I'll get to that in a moment, but you can see levels of this stuff in very small children. Any of us who have kids or have experienced kids will agree with me when I say there are

one and a half year olds who are patient and there are one and a half year olds who are impatient. So there's a nature nurture element attributes. Attributes don't direct our behavior, they inform our behavior. They tell us how we're gonna show up to an environment. So my son's levels of resilience and perseverance informed the way he showed up when he was learning the skill of riding a bike and he was falling off a dozen times doing so. And then finally, they're difficult to see, so they're difficult to measure, test and assess. They show up the most visibly and viscerally during stress challenge and uncertainty.

Rich Diviney (11:42.909)
So that's the first way to distinguish them. Now to get to the second part of your question, can we develop attributes? Yes, we can. You just can't do it the same way as a skill. In other words, if you want a quick determination.

as to whether or not you're dealing with an attribute or a skill, just ask yourself a simple question. That is, can I teach it or can it be taught? If the answer is yes, it's probably a skill. If the answer is no, it's probably an attribute. So if you say, Rich, I'd like to learn how to shoot a pistol and hit a bullseye, right? I could take you to the range and teach you how to do that within a couple hours. That's a skill, all right?

Or you say, Rich, I wanna learn to be more patient. I can't teach you to do that, okay? So attributes must be self-developed. And to develop an attribute, there must be three things present. First of all, you must know you want to develop it, okay? So you know you're low on it. Second one is there has to be a need or desire to develop it. What do I mean by that? And that is when we...

If you were to do our assessment, for example, it's really important that we understand just because you're low on an attribute does not mean you need to develop it. In other words, your success as a human being is as much because of your low attributes as your high attributes. Your low patience serves you in many ways. So there's blind spots and advantages to all of your attributes wherever they fall. That said though, if you find an attribute and say, actually this is something that if I actually worked on developing it would help me, then you have to do the third thing, which is the most important.

seek out environments that test and tease that attribute. So if you want to develop your patience, you have to go find environments that test and tease your patience. Whatever that might look like for you. It could be, I'm going to deliberately drive in traffic, or I'm going to pick the longest line in the grocery store to stand in. I always say, I have kids. Having kids will develop patience. But wherever that is, you have to find that. You can do that with any of those attributes if there is a requirement to do that, right? So the idea is, yes, you can develop attributes, but we have to understand and be very clear, we don't necessarily need to. We want to make sure we see

Rich Diviney (13:36.599)
our attributes for what they are, how they rank out, that starts to speak to our own unique performance profile and then ask ourselves, okay, will tweaking these in any way actually help my performance?

GAJ (14:35.465)
That's fascinating and really helpful, that distinction between attributes and skills and also what's needed to develop attributes. I find that very, very, very helpful. I wanted to ask you to focus and deep dive on one of them, the situation awareness. We talk about context in our book. Context and an understanding of context is really important for curiosity. When you enter a new subject, when you open a door and go through it,

Rich Diviney (14:35.701)
Yeah, I think it can. And obviously curiosity is an attribute that we talk about, which I know we're gonna get into, but I think situation awareness can be linked to context in the sense that, so there's a couple of attributes that I think actually can be linked to context. One is situational awareness and the other is emotional awareness. Now those are two different things. Situation awareness has to do with our ability to understand and observe the environment.

external to us really more of an environmental thing whereas emotional awareness has to do with people and can I read the room and I think that I think that both attributes lean towards

GAJ (15:04.925)
you start learning context and you start immersing yourself in new context. And so I was wondering if situation awareness could be linked to context or what's your, how do you see situation awareness?

Rich Diviney (15:12.681)
context because in both cases you're developing context about your environment, whether it be your environment that is not necessarily human-based, your external environment, or the human-based environment that you're in. But again, it's really important to understand these attributes can live independently of each other. So someone can be high on situational awareness and lower on emotional awareness, which means that's someone who who really can walk into an area and they actually notice a lot of things about their environment, but they're not very good at reading the room or controlling their own emotions, right?

opposite, someone could be very good at emotional awareness, but not as good at situation awareness. In other words, they're really good at managing their own emotions and reading the room, but they're not as good at kind of understanding the big context of the big picture. So I think context falls into, or can be of, be bins or described by both of those attributes.

Simon Brown (16:05.157)
And you have curiosity as one of your 36 attributes that you describe in there. think when we researched it for our book, we felt it was a sort of attribute and a trait, but we also felt it could fall into the skill piece because it is something that you can develop as well. So we would agree, absolutely, it's an inherent attribute you're born with. Some people are more curious than others, but with a process and with hard work, you can sort of develop it as a skill. That was how we perceived it.

But I'd love to get your thoughts on curiosity as you looked at it through the 36 and your work. How did you see it and how important was it as against the other ones?

Rich Diviney (16:44.235)
Yeah, it's very important. And I do agree. it is, curiosity can be developed. Again, it can't be, I would say it's not a skill because it can't be taught. You can't teach someone curiosity, but it certainly is an attribute that can be developed. And I think you both talk about in your book how to do that.

I explored two different attributes in the 36 that I thought were very interesting. I explored open-mindedness and curiosity, both attributes. And there's a reason why I made a distinction between both of them because a lot of times, and you'll notice that we could talk about several of these attributes. They are what I call metonyms. In other words, they're words that people sometimes think are synonymous, but they are in fact not, okay? So the difference is open-mindedness is this kind of ability to kind of be

passively open to new ideas, perspectives, and experiences. Okay. But the key word there is passive. Curiosity adds a proactivity to that whole endeavor. Right. So, so the difference is if, if say the three of us go to a foreign country we've never been before and we meet up with our local friends and our local friend says, Hey, I'm going to take you to the most authentic restaurant. And we're like, cool, let's do it. That's open-mindedness. Right. Or we go meet up with our local friend. say, take us to the most authentic restaurant. That's curiosity. Right. So, so the reason why

Simon Brown (17:58.234)
Yes.

Rich Diviney (17:59.399)
This is important because these again these attributes can live independently of each other You can have someone who's high open-minded Low curious and that means that someone who's gonna be generally amicable to new ideas perspectives and experiences You're just not gonna find them seeking them out. Okay, you can have someone who's high curiosity low open-mindedness I always joke that the extreme case of this is your conspiracy theorist, right? This is someone who knows exactly what they believe and is curious to prove themselves right and closed-minded to any other opportunities or any other ideas, right? So so now most

of us don't live in extremes, but these can fall in places that start to explain our behavior in much more precise ways, which is really what gets me excited about all the attributes content when I do that.

Simon Brown (18:40.856)
of it because yeah we talk about curiosity as an attitude of wonder with a spirit of exploration so it has the wonder but you have to put it into action there's that proactive element so yeah we definitely share that that thinking around it. And I guess bringing that to the the seals so what were the most important traits that you'll work with SEAL Team 6 or more broadly with the seals what were the

the most critical things when you were training people, when you were selecting people, when you working with people to be developing in terms of those attributes, or was it all 36 attributes that they needed?

Rich Diviney (19:12.735)
No, no, no, it's never all 36. But I'll answer the question because I get it a lot and I think it's an interesting one. Before I answer it though, I want to just make sure everybody understands that.

In the, in the context of any team or group, okay, every team or group is going to have its own unique set of attributes that defines top performance in that, in that genre, right? So, so in other words, the, the, attributes that define a great Navy seal, that list is going to look different than the list of a great teacher or a great

athlete or a great writer or whatever you name the genre. So we have to be very cognizant of the fact that part of what we help organizations do is understand what attributes they're actually looking for in the context of their own teams. Because it's not necessarily going to look like, and even inside of an organization, the attributes that are required for an engineering team look different than a marketing team, look different than a C-suite and all that stuff. So we have to help them understand what that list looks like.

So as I don't dodge the question, when it came to Field Team Six, I think the most important attributes in that genre were our neural agility ones, which have to do with compartmentalization, task switching, and situation awareness and adaptability, those things. And the reason is because you are one of the premier missions of that unit is a very, very high speed close quarter combat, basically a hostage rescue, which means you're running into buildings at a very, very rapid rate and finding

addressing bad guys and trying to save good guys, right? And so that requires a mental agility that is extraordinarily fast and rapid. And so the compartmentalization allows you, well, we'll start with situation where actually you run into a room, you're immediately situationally aware of everything in that room, you notice everything, you immediately are able to compartmentalize on a threat, okay?

Rich Diviney (21:06.199)
you take care of that threat, you immediately then come back out and you task switch to another threat. And it's very rapid. So our training, now again, our training drew that out. We could see that in real time to see if guys could actually do it. And a lot of our deselections, the guys who couldn't do it, didn't make it are the guys who could not do that effectively. They just couldn't move that fast. So I think in that genre, those were the most important, but it's really important to think, you know, that's a very specific genre.

And the task for all of us is to figure out what the attributes are required for our unique genre.

Rich Diviney (22:15.051)
Well, it's interesting, think, one of reasons why I love both of your work is that I curiosity is one of the foundational elements. And the reason is, so when we get stressed, and when we, when say stress, when we start to encounter uncertainty, and I'm talking about the uncertainty that actually induces fear. And so, so real quick to just break down.

GAJ (22:29.51)
I'm thinking about your book, Masters of Uncertainty. You explore the neuroscience of how humans operate under stress and you alluded to it now in the kind of these high attribute skills and neural agility. And so how humans operate under stress, what's your understanding of what's happening in our brains and our bodies under the pressure? And how does curiosity influence or how is curiosity involved in that response?

Rich Diviney (22:35.443)
What fear is I I work with a friend of mine. He was a while. He's a he's still a professor at Stanford He has a great he has a very popular podcast. His name is Andrew Huberman He wrote the forward for my book and he and I we we began to work with fear together back in 2017 when I first got out the Navy and one of the things we hypothesized was that Fear is a combination of uncertainty plus anxiety. Okay uncertainty plus anxiety equal fear In other words, you can have one or the other you don't necessarily have fear. You can be anxious, but not uncertain Okay, that's like I have to give a presentation next week. I know the

I know the presentation, so I'm not uncertain about it, but I'm a little anxious. You can be uncertain without being anxious. Well, that's every kid on Christmas Eve, okay? We know there's no fear there. It's when you combine the two that you get fear. So we're really talking about how we step through fear. When we begin to feel fear, our autonomic arousal goes up, our autonomic nervous system starts to get aroused, our amygdala begins to get tickled.

Okay. Now in, that, as that process happens, what's very, what's very interesting is our frontal lobe, the conscious decision making part of our brain begins to recede. All right. And retreat and our limbic brain, our emotional center starts to take, take precedent. Okay. In the most extreme cases, we've heard of a amygdala hijack or autonomic overload, right? This is where your frontal lobe has actually retreated completely. You are now limbic biased. You're basically, your limbic brain is making your decisions and you're acting without thinking. Okay. Now.

GAJ (23:45.252)
Yeah.

Rich Diviney (23:59.243)
How do we stem that retreat? Well, one of the ways we stem that retreat is to understand the neuroscience behind what we're looking for in the world. When we are in any environment, our brains, to figure out what's going on.

Our brains are interrogating our environment and looking for several things, but the primary things that our brain is looking for have to do with duration. How long is this going to last? Pathway, what's my route in, out or through? And then outcome, what's the end state? If we are in absence of one or more of those, we begin to feel that fear and anxiety and uncertainty bubble up. So here's a quick example. We'll use illness. All right, we all know strep throat. Some of us have had strep throat, okay? If any of us get strep throat, we don't have a lot of uncertainty.

uncertainty and fear going on because we are only in absence of one of the three. In other words, there's a cure, there's an antibiotic you can take for strep throat. So there's a pathway and there's an outcome. We know we're gonna get better. What we don't necessarily know is duration because one person might respond to antibiotics a little bit different than the other. So our anxiety, our uncertainty level is mild. Now let's say we get the flu, okay? Flu also, at least in the first world, very few people die from the flu. So in the case of the flu, we know the outcome, okay?

but we don't necessarily know the pathway because there's no real cure for the flu. Everybody will give you ideas on what they think cure the flu, but there's no real thing you can take. And we don't know the duration. We don't know how long it's gonna last. So when we have the flu, our anxiety uncertainty level is now moderate, all right?

Now let's imagine a disease shows up on the planet. No one's seen it before, okay? There's no vaccine. Some people are dying, some people are not dying and it's spreading around the planet. We don't know how long it's gonna spread, okay? So welcome 2020. This is what happened to all of us. We were in absence of all three and suddenly we have a lot of uncertainty and stress. So one of the most important...

Rich Diviney (25:45.873)
One of the most important effective techniques for moving through uncertainty is what I call moving horizons. Moving horizons, all that is, is it's using curiosity to in fact, pick something to focus on and create your own duration pathway outcome. Okay. So here's an example. In Navy SEAL training, you spend hundreds of hours running around the big, heavy boats on your head. You're running around with these things all the time, even in hell week. And I remember it was three in the morning. We were running on the beach with these boats. We were all miserable.

We were running next to this sand berm and I was as miserable as anybody. And I remember saying to myself, you know what? I'm miserable right now, but you know what? I'm just gonna focus on getting to the end of this sand berm. Now what I did...

GAJ (26:25.539)
Absolutely.

Rich Diviney (26:27.905)
that I didn't know inadvertently is like I picked a horizon and in essence created my own duration pathway outcome, my own DPO. Duration from now until end of sand berm, pathway from here to end of sand berm, and then outcome end of sand berm. And what I did there is I managed my dopamine system, which we'll talk about here in a second, but I also gave myself a reward so that when I hit that goal, I actually was able to come back out, ask the question again, what do I know, what can I control? Curiosity, right?

pick something and pick it again. And that's a cycle you can go over and over and over again. So moving horizons is the secret to moving through uncertainty and fear. That's the secret. And it starts with this curiosity, but we have to understand that by doing this, by using the curiosity to say, what do I know? What kind of control? And picking something, we are re-engaging our frontal lobe. We're stemming the retreat and actually able to execute conscious thought inside of these environments that typically would get us overloaded.

Simon Brown (27:23.888)
Out that I do quite a bit of longer distance cycling and yeah when I'm going up a Swiss mountain that can take control of your horizons rather than the fear of I'm just not going to make it into okay it's the next corner or it's the next tree or it's the next whatever and I can control it to then and then we'll figure it out after that so.

Rich Diviney (27:42.039)
Well, let me add on to that because that's important you said that because one of the things that has to be addressed here is what's the size of your horizons, right? The horizon you pick is very subjective to both the individual and the intensity of the environment. In other words, you're going up the hill, a steep hill, your horizon is going to be really close, right? Well, if I'm freezing the surf stone, my horizon might be I'm going to just count five waves or it might be I'm going to wait till the next meal, okay? What we have to understand is when we pick horizons, we're literally manipulating

our own dopamine system. And dopamine as we know, often as historically been described as a reward chemical, it's in fact a motivation chemical. But dopamine actually gets us up and moving in the morning. They actually did an experiment with rats. They had a rat in a cage and next to the rat was a lever that the rat would just push down and a tasty pellet would appear, right? And so of course the rat just stand next to that lever and just push it and get pellet after pellet. And even when they moved the rat to the other side of the cage, the rat would run over and push that thing, okay?

But then what they did is they removed the dopamine from the rat. Okay, you can do that chemically and they moved the rat just a rat's length away from that lever. The rat never moved.

The rat would have actually sat there and starved if they let it. They didn't let us starve, right? But they would have sat there and starved. So what they recognize is that dopamine is actually what gets us up and moving in the conduct of a goal. And when we pick a horizon, what we're doing is we're actually setting a dopamine set point that allows us to get there. Why does this matter? It's because if we pick a horizon that's too far,

too long, we are going to run out of dopamine before we get there and we will quit. Okay, every time we quit, it's because we've run out of dopamine. All if we pick a horizon that's too short, we won't register enough of a reward that will motivate us to pick another one. It won't feel as good, okay? So we have to constantly modulate these horizons. And now the good news is you can do this real time. And I'm sure you've done this on the bike, okay? Just like anybody who's lifted weights in the gym. You say to yourself on the bike, I'm aiming for that tree. And then halfway there, you're like, shoot.

Rich Diviney (29:44.106)
Okay, I better aim for that rock. You've just pulled in your horizon. Same thing with someone lifting weights. I'm gonna do 12 reps and at eight, you're like, okay, just four more. You've just moved your horizon. So you're constantly manipulating your dopamine reward system. obviously if you pick something too short, you're gonna be like, well, I didn't feel anything. I gotta pick something longer. So this is a great example and I'm glad you brought that up. This technique of moving horizons, first of all, all humans do it. And second of all, it's something we can practice in everyday life. I you don't have to be an uncertainty challenge

I mean, in the bike, there's not a lot of uncertainty there, but you're certainly in challenge and stress, okay? You can do it in the office though. You can say, know what? I'm gonna just focus on this email right now. I'm gonna spend five minutes and that's all I'm gonna do. You can practice this stuff in real life so that when the environment becomes chaotic, you actually begin to do it automatically. And that's the real secret.

Simon Brown (30:34.528)
That was going to be my follow-up question. You work with lot of leaders now, so uncertainty, chaos is probably becoming more and more commonplace as a leader to try and navigate through, whether that's geopolitics, whether that's what's happening with AI. There's all of these things where there's a lot of unknowns there. How can a leader apply that sort of horizon setting? Is it exactly the same? You sort of work through the three pieces of

figure out duration, come up with your pathway, figure out the outcome and use that. How do you advise leaders to work?

Rich Diviney (31:09.707)
Well, what we do is we'll train leaders to do it for themselves. We have to do it for ourselves first, okay? Because as leaders, it's our job to model the behavior that we wanna see more of and then reward the behavior we wanna see more of. So as leaders, we have to do it ourselves and we can model that behavior. And then what we need to do also as leaders is set up our teams that our team is actually doing it in these crisis moments. so what happens is you can have, and so I'll just introduce you to a concept that I talk about with leaders and teams.

the highest performing teams, actually, you were to put a, if you were to draw what they look like on a chart, it wouldn't be a pyramid, it wouldn't be a flat line, it wouldn't even be an upside down pyramid. It'd be a blob, an amoeba. And when asked where the leader sits in that amoeba, the answer is anywhere the leader, everywhere the leader needs to be, right, in the moment, okay? And what we call this is dynamic subordination. Dynamic subordination means that a team understands that challenges and issues and problems can come from any angle at any moment. And when one does, the person who's

closest to that problem, the most capable immediately steps up and takes lead and everybody follows. And then something else happens, someone steps up and takes lead, everybody follows. It's a dynamic swap between leader and follower relationship. I also call it alpha hopping, that alpha position just hops, okay? So I was an officer in the SEAL teams, I did hundreds of combat missions, I was in charge of every single one. It did not mean I was always being supported. In fact, most of the time it was the opposite, I was supporting other people, my snipers, my breachers, my assaulters. Sometimes the environment would shift and be in support of me, but it's all based on environment.

So two things there. First of all, as a leader, have to understand that our job on a team has nothing to do with our rank or hierarchy. It has everything to do with what we are there to contribute to the team. And it's our job to set up that dynamically subordinating environment. Dynamic subordination is in fact how we DPO through crisis as teams because whoever's closest to that problem will set the horizon.

And then we move to that and then guess what? Now you have new information and a new horizon may emerge and someone else has to set a new horizon. So, so the leaders who set up a dynamically subordination dynamically subordinated environment will in fact set up a, a situation where the person who's closest to the problem will set the horizon. Everybody will support that. And then once complete, we'll pick a new horizon. But in addition to that, this is where the real speed happens. There's also situation awareness that's happening because in the conduct of a horizon,

Rich Diviney (33:33.803)
priorities might shift, which means, guess what? A new horizon is, the horizon's changed and a new horizon is picked, okay? That's where you get real speed and you get the real elite performance in teams.

GAJ (34:31.474)
This is fantastic. This is so fascinating for me, honestly. When you talk about alpha hopping, we talk a little bit about the failure of the pyramid or the pyramid has flattened in the massively hyper-connected world that we now exist in organizations. And the old style, as you said, hierarchy within organizations no longer applies, no longer works. And you can find there's so much information that...

People from anywhere in the organization know more about what needs to happen than the leader. It's impossible these days. So these concepts of alpha-hopping and situational awareness and the person who is closest to the problem being the one who takes charge and then the idea of a dynamic insubordination which is part of how leadership is evolving continuously and back to alpha-hopping really and

Rich Diviney (35:14.229)
Yeah, well, it's a great question. And I think we could talk about trust, which is a foundational element. that we could, I mean, we could spend a whole three hours on trust itself. So trust is certainly a foundational element. But I would say just to keep it simple, it's our job as leaders is to empower our team members to actually step up and step back. And we do that in training. We do that in real world. What it is for leaders is it's a constant risk assessments going on.

GAJ (35:29.469)
The of the year being to set the new horizon as the situation changes, as so dynamic, is very useful. It's absolutely powerful, these concepts, I think. How do you train, how would you train teams to be able to achieve this level of trust and this level of support and being able to cope with this level of change in a situation?

Rich Diviney (35:41.144)
Okay, and so what we as leaders have to do is we have to look at every single situation and ask ourselves, okay, can I allow someone on the team to now step up and take the, and give them the rope so that they may try and maybe fail, but at least if they do, they learn, okay? And that's where you can do it in training or less risky.

environments, but even as a commanding officer of a SEAL team, I had situations where a parachute operation, my SEAL who's in charge of the parachute operation, it was his first time doing that evolution. And as we were doing it, I could see that something was gonna be off. It was a water drop, so we were landing in the water. So I could see something was gonna be off, but I did a risk assessment. I said to okay, wait a second, it's summertime, it's middle of the day, we're landing in the water.

Okay, if we're off, it's not that big of a deal. I'm just gonna let this play out. Okay. And I let it play out and he was way off. I mean, he made, was a huge mistake, right? But we all got back, we all debriefed it and that environment and that learning happens.

immediately so that he could then say, okay, I'm gonna apply that. And one of the things we have to, again, neuroscientifically, one of the things we have to understand about learning is that when we learn anything, two neural connections are made, right? Or a neural connection is made and then it's myelinated. In other words, this substance myelin wraps this connection. So as we get better and better, we can do that thing without thinking.

They've proven that that process of neural connecting and myelination can be increased up to a hundred times if three things are present in the environment. Those three things are intensity, novelty, and focus. Intensity, novelty, and focus. This is exactly why we learn faster from touching a hot stove versus being told a stove is hot. Because when you touch a hot stove, have intensity, novelty, focus immediately. It's also exactly why we learn more from our mistakes

GAJ (37:32.775)
Mm.

Rich Diviney (37:39.432)
do our successes. Because when we make a mistake, intensity, novelty, and focus is very, very rich in our environment. And that neural connection, that myelination is searing. I mean, it's accelerated. So in this case, my jump master got it wrong. But I swear, the very next jump.

we did was a real world jump that he was in charge of and it was perfect. It was perfect. All those lessons that seared in. So all this to say, it's our responsibility as leaders to find those every time we can allow our team members to step up and take the realm. We give them the rope to do that. We are allowing them to build that confidence so that when the real stuff happens, they know they can do it and they have that ability to do it.

GAJ (38:18.0)
Yep.

GAJ (38:47.772)
Hmm.

Rich Diviney (38:51.453)
gosh, well, what am I curious about? I love, so I'm gonna get my pilot's license with my son. My son and I are gonna get our pilot's license this summer. I've always wanted to fly, so I wanna do that.

You know, my younger son and I wanna do some deep deep sea diving, dive some wrecks. And so I'm curious about that. Again, my kids are what I'm curious about the most. My eldest is studying biology and neuroscience. So I'm curious to see where he goes with that. And then my youngest one wants to do astrophysics. everything about space. so I think my curiosity lies in what are those things that are.

GAJ (39:08.956)
What's so fascinating talking with you, Rich, is you have this deep understanding of neuroscience, but it's also applicable in the real world. And that kind of application in a high intensity scenario is just impressive, I have to say. I have a question. Beyond your current work now, what's something you in your own life you're genuinely curious about?

Rich Diviney (39:27.137)
that are undiscovered. I am fascinated with that stuff that we haven't explored yet. And I think the only thing that keeps me up at night is are those things that we may not know before I leave this earth, right? That bothers me. But until that time, I'm curious to discover and find out as much as I possibly can about our universe and about our world.

Simon Brown (39:51.389)
We have studying for our private pilot licenses in common. I'm going through that myself, but I didn't manage to rope my son into it, although I'm sure he would have loved that to be doing it together. So in a moment, I'll come back to you, Rich, for sort of one thing to leave our listeners with, but maybe by way of a wrap up. So let me go back through some of the things that we covered. So we heard about your journey from being a Navy SEAL through to being a human performance expert.

Rich Diviney (39:56.834)
good, yeah.

Simon Brown (40:20.08)
how the seals needed to perform in chaotic environments and how curiosity plays a key role in doing that. We heard about your research for attributes and how you got into looking at when 50 % of people don't make it through into SEAL Team 6, what are the things that actually are the reasons that that was and...

settled on some of the attributes around things like patience and adaptability and situational awareness, et cetera, as being some of the things that define success there. And then you gave us very helpful definitions around what's a skill and what's an attribute, around how skills aren't inherent, that they're actually a direct behavior and something that we can assess, we can measure, we can test.

Whereas attributes being something that's much more elemental that we can actually develop over time and from our own experience and how those attributes often show up in stress or challenge or uncertainty. How we can develop attributes, but there's three things that we need to think about. We need to know that we want to develop them. We need to have the desire to develop it. And then we need to find and seek those environments where we can test and tease them out.

And if we're not sure of which one is which, then ask the question of, can I teach it or can it be taught? We heard how curiosity is an attribute and how it's one of the two that you dive deeply into in your work around open-mindedness and curiosity and how the difference between those is the proactiveness that curiosity has. We heard that top performance is different by context and by different teams. So what works for an AVC may not work in the boardroom and probably won't in many cases.

but we need to find what are those attributes of high performance in those different situations. We learned about fear, so fear being a mixture of uncertainty and anxiety, and that the way that we can manage that is through moving horizons and looking at duration pathways and outcomes. And by changing the size of horizon, we can do some sort of dopamine hacking to actually help us to overcome that fear.

Simon Brown (42:26.488)
Applying that in for leaders in the office, we heard around how leaders need to model those behaviors and then set up the team to be able to do that too. We heard about dynamic subordination, that blob team and how the closest to the problem needs to lead and they need to then set the horizons and our role as leaders to be able to manage that.

And then we finished hearing around how do we create those pathways around how the neural connections get wrapped in the myelination process and that can be increased 100x if we look at the intensity, the novelty and the focus. A rich conversation. So Rich, what would be from all of that the one thing that you would leave our listeners with?

Rich Diviney (43:11.305)
I would say that I would love everybody to be curious about their own potential. And human potential, our potential lies outside of our comfort zone. And so these techniques and these tools, yes, you can use them if uncertainty hits without warning, which it always will. But if you really get good at them, you can begin to deliberately step.

outside of your comfort zone and you can be curious as to where you can go and what you can achieve. And so I think curiosity is what keeps us alive. If we're not growing, we're dying and the only way we grow is we step outside our comfort zone. So do that.

Simon Brown (43:44.8)
Thanks. That's great. Thank you for a great conversation, Rich. So you've been listening to a Curious Advantage podcast, exploring how curiosity helps people and organizations thrive through the digital world. If you found this curiosity valuable, then please do leave a review, share it with someone who might enjoy it. And you can now watch the full episodes on YouTube. And if you describe there, you'll get the latest conversations and highlights.

Learn more at CuriousAdvantage.com and follow us on LinkedIn for updates and insights. And the Curious Advantage book is available on Amazon worldwide. Finally, don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. Keep exploring Curiously and we will see you next time. Thanks very much. Thanks, Rich.