Get Smart – Christine Comaford (Leadership & Culture Coach, Former Presidential Adivsor)

Christine Comaford is a renegade entrepreneur, a neuroscience-based leadership and culture coach, a bestselling author, and former presidential advisor to both the Clinton and Bush administrations. She’s an energetic, determined, engaging woman and in her Paper Napkin Wisdom she shares with us her pyramid of Smart Tribe accelerators.
The Smart Tribe accelerators are tools to get people to a “Smart State”. Christine says that leaders often unintentionally send their teams into a ‘critter’ state where they operate from the mammalian/reptilian brain and are caught in fight or flight freeze. What we need to do, she says, is find out how we’re sending people into this state of mind and ask ourselves how can we help them use all three parts of their brain (mammalian, reptilian, and neocortex) to get them into their “Smart State”.
In our “Smart State”, says Christine, we are 35-50% more productive and 67-100% more emotionally engaged. When we’re in this state, we’re more likely to be thankful and happy and less likely to be easily worked up. It’s a state in which dopamine and oxytocin are released and a group feeling is created.
The Smart Tribe accelerators, says Christine, are to get us to that place where we feel balanced and centered and our people feel safe with us and loyal. The pyramid consists of five levels, each building upon the last, and leads us to a sustainable result. As she describes the different levels of the pyramid, it becomes clear that there are key points to this system and they all revolve around focus and understanding. Christine advocates focus and clarity but she also emphasizes the importance of curiosity.
Curiosity and asking questions is a reoccurring aspect in the pyramid. “Always be curious,” says Christine. She believes that by being curious and asking questions, we not only foster better relationships with our team members, we get better results.
It’s important to always be curious, not just to see where it will lead us but to save us from making mistakes as well. Christine says that this is particularly important when dealing with accountability issues. You have to be curious and not accusatory the first time someone breaks accountability because you don’t know why it’s happened.
Christine’s Smart Tribe pyramid is one that works on a holistic level because it works with who we are and how we’re wired.
“One of our jobs as leaders” she says “is to be that sprinkler of dopamine. These are my people, this is my tribe.” We want to create good feelings throughout our teams and we want to forge them with the company…and when it’s so very simple, there’s no reason not to.
Listen to the conversation with Christine here:

Get Christine’s Books:
Smart Tribes: How Teams Become Brilliant TogetherRules for Renegades: How to Make More Money, Rock Your Career, and Revel in Your Individuality