Wellness 2.0: Rising to the Occasion

The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. There's an old saying attributed to Benjamin Franklin. Nothing is certain in life except for death and taxes. But death and taxes are not the only guarantees. If we live long enough, all of us will experience great setbacks, crises that seem insurmountable, challenges that seem far bigger than we are. When we see others go through natural disasters or terrible illnesses, or the emotional upheavals that come from child custody battles or losing a livelihood, we think, how terrible for them. I'm so glad this didn't happen to me. But what we fail to see in these moments is that all of us are going to experience our own versions of these emergencies and tragedies. Having to deal with crises is an occupational hazard of being alive. What do we do in such moments? How do our minds respond when faced with catastrophe? And can we better prepare ourselves for their inevitable arrival? Today on the show and in a companion piece on Hidden Brain+, we examine the psychology of battling a crisis. It's part of our series Wellness 2.0. What happens in our minds when we face danger and what we can learn from those who prove steadfast in such moments. Techniques and strategies for responding better when life throws us crises, curveballs and catastrophes, This week on Hidden Brain.

We are all called upon from time to time to do hard and sometimes seemingly impossible things. Do we rise to the occasion, or do we fall short? At Columbia University, psychologist Adam Galinsky has studied the science of decision making and leadership. What it takes to rise to the occasion, and what happens in our minds when we don't. Adam Galinsky, welcome to Hidden Brain.

ADAM GALINSKY: Thank you so much.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: Adam, in January 2012, an Italian cruise ship carrying over 3,000 passengers and 1,000 crew members was on a seven-day voyage in the Mediterranean when it began to veer close to shore. It was unclear why this was happening, but eventually the ship, which was named the Costa Concordia, hit a reef. How deep was the reef, and what happened to the ship, Adam?

ADAM GALINSKY: You know, it was almost 30 feet below the surface, so the captain Francesco Schettino couldn't see it, but it just tore a gigantic hole in the bottom of the ship, basically rendering the ship inoperable.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: I'm assuming that water must have, you know, flooded the generators and engines. The ship must have come to a standstill almost right away. Absolutely. It had a complete loss of power. There was a blackout that was involved. And basically, at that moment in time, this was essentially a shipwreck.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: So that's terrifying, Adam, but I'm guessing that when something like this happens, it's the job of the captain to take immediate action and begin rescuing passengers. Did that happen?

ADAM GALINSKY: That's not what happened at all. In fact, he did not alert the authorities immediately. In fact, he spent a considerable amount of time trying to go into crisis management mode, figure out how he was going to protect his own reputation, and come up with a story that wouldn't place the responsibility on himself. He tried to come up with a story to say that rather than the sudden blackout, which was caused obviously by the accident and the water rushing in, was the actually the result of the accident, rather than vice versa. And his primary concern was, how am I going to protect myself? And he didn't spend any energy thinking about how he was going to protect the passengers.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: So when rescue efforts finally started almost an hour or maybe more than an hour after the ship first hit the reef, did Captain Francesco Schettino supervise and help passengers get off the ship?

ADAM GALINSKY: He did not. At the time that the Coast Guard was communicating with Schettino about the rescue, he was already himself in a lifeboat. And he claimed that he did not intend to be in a lifeboat, that he fell and stumbled accidentally into the lifeboat. So while everyone else was on board and panicking, Captain Schettino was safely in a lifeboat off of the ship.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: So let me just try and catch up with what's happening here. The ship has hit this reef, there's a gigantic hole in the ship, water is flooding in, the passengers are fearing for their life, and the captain, instead of staying on board and helping the passengers, has himself gotten off the ship onto a lifeboat, but claims he did so accidentally?

ADAM GALINSKY: Absolutely. That's exactly what he claimed. He said that he stumbled and fell and actually slipped into the lifeboat. And now once he's in the lifeboat, there's no real reason to get off the lifeboat because he can quote organize the rescue from there.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: I understand that he had a conversation with a member of the Coast Guard while sitting in the lifeboat. How did that conversation unfold?

ADAM GALINSKY: Well, the Coast Guard was furious that he was in the lifeboat, and they were demanding that he climb back up. And they gave him very specific orders. Climb back up, tell me how many people are on board, tell me how many women are on board, how many children are on board. Gave him very clear instructions. And Schettino kept giving sort of mumbled answers about why he couldn't possibly go back on board. And eventually just stopped responding to the Coast Guard member. And you could see, you could hear in the Coast Guard member's voice, his fury and infuriation just consuming him. And at one point, he was so furious at Schettino that he yelled, I will get you for this.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: Is it true that Schettino somehow, in the middle of all of this catastrophe, had managed to change out of his uniform and was wearing something different when he got into the lifeboat?

ADAM GALINSKY: That is actually true. So if you were in the lifeboat and you were there with Schettino, you would not know that he was the captain of the ship, because somehow, in the course of this panic state where everyone is running around trying to save their lives, he managed to change out of his captain's uniform into his civilian clothing before he, of course, stumbled and accidentally fell into the lifeboat.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: So, the cruise ship hits a reef, it's wrecked, it starts to sink, the captain essentially abandons ship. What happens to the passengers on board that day, Adam?

ADAM GALINSKY: It was a disaster. I mean, 32 members of the passengers passed away, perished, lost their lives because of this. And when we look back at it, it's very clear that as soon as the damage was done, as soon as the Costa Concordia had hit this reef, if Francesco Schettino had immediately called the Coast Guard, had immediately come clean, had immediately set up a process of rescue, it's very likely that every single passenger would have survived and with no injuries.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: The captain was brought to trial. He was asked why he steered his ship so close to shore in the first place.

ADAM GALINSKY: Captain Francesco Schettino claims that he went closer to shore in order to salute mariners on the shore. The prosecutors on the hand claim that he had a more nefarious motive or a more lascivious motive, which is his mistress, a dancer, was also on board, and they suggest he was trying to impress her with his captainship.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: Was Francesco Schettino held to account after the tragedy?

ADAM GALINSKY: He was, so, you know, I mentioned the Coast Guard said, you know, I will make you pay for this, and he was made to pay for it. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison for a variety of different counts, including abandoning his ship, but also manslaughter. But I think what's most interesting about the court case is that at no point would he take any responsibility. And he said, essentially, it's not my responsibility what happened.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: The story of Captain Francesco Schettino is an unsettling one. Not only because of the tragedy that resulted from one man's poor judgment, cowardice and selfishness, but also because of the uncomfortable questions it raises. Would you have responded differently in this scenario? After the ship started to sink, would you have done the brave thing? All of us would like to believe that we would act courageously in the face of danger. But in reality, we also know we are human. We too are prone to cowardice and selfishness. When we come back, why we crack in times of crisis, and what we can learn from those who rise to the occasion. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. In 2012, a cruise ship carrying thousands of passengers sank off the western coast of Italy, claiming the lives of 32 people on board. It wasn't just a tragedy, but a preventable tragedy. Captain Francesco Schettino had no business steering the ship over a shallow reef, and his delay and inaction after the disaster cost many lives. Psychologist Adam Galinsky studies the science of leadership. He says the world is full of infuriating leaders like Francesco Schettino, but there are also great ones. These inspiring leaders, as he calls them, can teach us a lot about how to endure in times of crisis. Adam, let's talk a moment about some of the things that Francesco Schettino did wrong that day. Yes, he should not have steered his ship so close to shore, but can you lay out some of the psychological mistakes he made after the ship hit the reef?

ADAM GALINSKY: I mean, I think the first thing he was focused on the wrong details, right? So he was focused on the story that he could tell about how this event happened, why there was this electrical blackout, et cetera, in order to, in some ways, save his own reputation. He missed the larger picture, the bigger picture, which was now this boat was flooding water. Eventually, it was going to capsize, and that was going to lead to potentially passenger's loss of life, which it did. And if he had immediately understood, okay, the boat's been injured, or it doesn't matter how it got injured at this point, the only thing that matters is, how do we get everyone off board as quickly as possible? And so he, I mean, the first mistake he made, right, was he was focused on the wrong thing.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: But besides not taking responsibility for what happened, I understand he even tried to pass the buck.

ADAM GALINSKY: Absolutely, yeah. I mean, he tried to blame it on the helmsman, for example, and blame other people. And so it was a classic example of deny responsibility. It's not my fault. But the basic fundamental error he made was he was in leadership role. He was a protector and steward of a group of people, but he was only focused on himself and what he could do to protect himself. And in doing so, he essentially abandoned his duty as a leader, right? And he was no longer a leader, but a single, selfish actor working tirelessly on behalf of himself.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: Adam, let's take a look at a very different kind of leadership. In June 2018, 12 teenage boys on a soccer team in Thailand were on a hike with their coach. The coach was a 25-year-old man named Ekapol Chanthawong, commonly called Coach Ek. The team was exploring a cave, and at one point, they decided to turn back, but what they didn't know was that weather conditions outside the cave had changed dramatically. Can you paint me a picture of what happened, Adam?

ADAM GALINSKY: Yeah, they had been exploring this cave. They had walked about an hour into the cave. And what's remarkable about the story is when they went in, the sky was sunny. Like, they had no thought that a storm might be brewing, or they had to worry about that. It was the beginning of monsoon season, or some might say monsoon season came early, and a sudden and torrential downpour came down that was so extreme that it just flooded the cave. And so when they turned back, they had probably been walking a little distance back when all of a sudden they got to a certain juncture where they were supposed to essentially go right, and right was now filled with water, just completely filled with water. And so what Coach Ek did right then is he said, okay, we're going to try to find a way out. And so he decided to dive in. He tied a rope around his waist, and he told the members of the soccer team, you know, when I pull on the rope, pull me back out. But after about two minutes, he hadn't pulled on the rope, and they were panicking, so they pulled him back out. And it's a good thing they did, because he had gotten a little stuck, a little disorientated. He had not found a way out. He was starting to struggle, and they essentially saved his life.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: So as even more water surged into the cave, the boys were forced to go deeper into the cave to get shelter. Were they able to find it, Adam?

ADAM GALINSKY: At this point, the water had filled up, kind of up to this juncture, so they kind of went in deeper. They knew they weren't going to be getting out any time in the next few minutes, and they decided to, we're going to be spending the night here. They lie down, they got together for warmth, and they slept through the night, and they woke up. And the first thing they noticed is that the water was creeping on them. They thought they had gone deep enough, but they hadn't. There's even more water coming into the cave.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: I'm assuming they must have then retreated even deeper into the cave now as they tried to escape the water.

ADAM GALINSKY: They did. They, you know, at various points, they kept retreating deeper and deeper into the cave. And then at some point, they heard a sound. And they actually thought it was a helicopter. And they thought they were about to be saved. And they turned around, and that sound wasn't a helicopter, but it was almost like a tidal wave coming towards them. The water was now surging, it wasn't just creeping on them, it was about to surround them and consume them. And they went as deep into the cave as they could, essentially in some ways to the highest point they could within the cave, almost on a ledge, if you will. And now they were surrounded by water on all sides. And this was about day five, and now they were stuck with essentially nowhere to go.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: So, this is completely terrifying, Adam. I can only imagine how scared the boys must have been. What did Coach Ek have the boys do as they were perched on this ledge?

ADAM GALINSKY: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, there's a couple of things that I think are really important to know about what Coach Ek did in this situation. And the first and most important thing he did is that he convinced them that he had a plan to get them out. And the plan was, we're gonna dig our way out. We're gonna go up through the roof, and we're gonna keep digging, and eventually we're gonna dig all the way to safety. And that's what they did from morning to night. They dug. In shifts, Coach Ek dug harder than anyone else, to the point his hands were bleeding. And they would ask him questions like, you know, how much longer? And he would say, just a little longer. And they all believed that they were working together to find this way out.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: I understand that to lift their mood, he would have them sing together. To actually feel like they were a team doing something together?

ADAM GALINSKY: Yeah, absolutely. You know, and he understood that. And one of the reasons why he gave them this task of digging, I think he gave it for two reasons. One is to fill the day, right? To give them something to focus on so their minds wouldn't fracture under the pressure and the panic. But also to give them a sense of working together as a team. They were a team. They were a soccer team. So they knew how to work together. And so he created the sense of comradery, the sense of working together. And that prevented two things from happening, right? Like mental breakdown, but also interpersonal breakdown. It really prevented conflicts of emerging within the team because they were working together as a team.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: He had the boy set an alarm for 6 o'clock every morning. And I'm wondering why he did this. Day and night must have made no difference in the darkness of the cave.

ADAM GALINSKY: Yeah, I mean, I think it's something that he instinctively knew and understood that we all need structure for our days. This is something that NASA astronauts have known for a long time, that when you're in space, they have them on an incredibly strict schedule. And so he understood, like, we're going to have a structure to the day. We're going to get up at 6 every day. We're going to dig until we're exhausted. And then we're going to sleep, and then we're going to get up, and we're going to dig again. Now, there's something really important to remember, is they went into this cave with no food. They didn't have a single morsel of food on them when they went in. They went in this cave with no water. They didn't have any water. Now, they did actually end up having some water. And that's also something really remarkable about Coach Ek, is that he understood they couldn't drink the muddy water that was surging around them. But there was water dripping through the roof. And he understood that because it was going through the mountain stones, it was essentially being cleaned. And so they were able to get water and give them that little bit of at least that type of nourishment that they needed.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: I understand that he had some of the stronger members of the team look out for weaker members of the team. So he was paying attention to people who might have needed a little extra help.

ADAM GALINSKY: Absolutely. He was in some ways an incredible mentor, understanding the individual needs. The smallest member of the group, he constantly encouraged him saying, I know you can do it. You're strong. I believe in you. He would sing with them to help lift their mood. But he would also meditate with them to help keep them calm. And I think the meditation is a particularly interesting one for two reasons. First, at some point in this time, the oxygen levels in the cave were getting dangerously low. In fact, they fell probably below life-affirming levels at certain points, and they still survived. And part of it was, by doing this meditation, he was helping them conserve energy, but also use the oxygen more efficiently.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: So, on the 10th day, the batteries of the boys' flashlights began to run out, and Coach Ek told the boys to turn off the flashlights and be with one another in the dark. It was then that they heard something, Adam. What did they hear?

ADAM GALINSKY: They weren't sure, but they thought they heard almost like a bubble come out of the water and the word hello. And they were up on this ledge. The water had receded a little bit, and so they immediately kind of went down off the ledge towards where the water was. And they turned on their flashlights, and there miraculously were two British divers who had spent 10 days trying to get in there. They had been there alone without food, without water, without a way to call for help, without warmth for 10 days, and they had been miraculously found.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: So, when the divers found the boys, they had been searching for them for over a week, and everyone had been expecting the worst. The parents of the boys were already grieving. But Adam, you say the divers were shocked when they saw the boys' demeanor. How so?

ADAM GALINSKY: Well, the divers say they were horrified at how they looked, right? They looked so emaciated, right? You could see the effect of 10 days of no food, combined with all the effort they'd put into digging. But they were even more amazed by the demeanor of the soccer players. There wasn't a single trembling lip, right? They smiled, they seemed happy to see them, and they just were shocked that here was a group of people who suffered, in some ways, the most horrific deprivation possible. But that deprivation did not show on their facial expressions.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: So an army of people soon begins to extract the boys from the cave, and divers are relaying messages from each team member to their parents. What did Coach Ek tell the parents to make sure the parents were doing okay as well during this time?

ADAM GALINSKY: He, you know, he reassured them that the boys were going to be okay, that they were okay, that he was looking out for them. He also apologized for what happened. But, you know, he basically said, you know, I'm with the boys, I'm taking care of them, they're going to be okay, you're going to see them soon. I'm very sorry for what you've gone through.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: So this is a remarkable story, Adam, and of course the story could easily have ended in tragedy. If the storm were a little worse, maybe they weren't able to climb to safety. So lots of factors could have turned this into a complete disaster. But you say there are several things that Coach Egg did right during that time that helped the situation, and I want you to walk me through some of the choices he made and what we can learn from them. First of all, you say he was very careful about the words he used as he was talking to the boys. How so?

ADAM GALINSKY: Yeah, I mean, I think he understood that everything that he said was going to have a huge impact, right, on the boys. And so he was very, very careful in a number of different ways. First, he never used words like trapped, right? He never used words like stuck, right? He never emphasized that they were in a perilous state. He always, another thing that he did is that he understood that his strength was their strength. And sometimes he got overwhelmed, and he needed to cry, he needed to let those motions. But he understood that it was really critical for him to do that privately, where they couldn't see it when they were sleeping, for example. Because they knew if they saw him cry, it would break them and they would lose essentially all hope. So he understood that he had to focus. He understood that they needed a shared goal, and that they really, truly believed that they were working towards a real possibility. So he said, we're going to dig our way out, and we're going to work towards that. And they would say, you know, how much longer? He would say, just a little longer, right? It was always, we're making progress, we're getting there. Another thing he did was that he helped them craft a whole story about what was on the other side of their digging. So he created a story about an orange field, that they would come out and there would be oranges right there that they could eat. And they had that at the end of the orange field, there is a little store and they would go in and they would get as much food and drink as they could possibly do. And then they would go back and they would get their bikes and they would ride home as if no one was looking them for the last 10 days. And so these three things, like very careful with his language, right? Never talking about being trapped or stuck. Very careful about what he expressed emotionally, so that he portrayed calmness and strength and optimism and hope. And then even not only giving them shared goal of digging their way out, but giving them what that shared goal was going to lead to. The Elysian Fields and the other side of the cave that they were working towards.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: So you've done some research looking at how hope can be a powerful motivator in times of crisis. You did some work with Thomas Mussweiler of the London Business School. Tell me about this research and what you found, Adam.

ADAM GALINSKY: Yeah, we've found, for example, that in negotiations, we can think about what we're trying to avoid or prevent in the negotiation, or we can think about what is their hope, their ideal outcome is in the negotiation. If you get them really focused on that, it has this transformative effect on how they approach the negotiation. They become more optimistic. They become more assertive, but in a positive way, not in a sort of aggressive way, and they become more persistent. And because of that, they end up getting better outcomes.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: So Coach Ek also helped the boys focus on a shared goal. So rather than passively wait to be rescued, he told the boys that they had to dig their way out. Now, it well may have been impossible to do this. We actually don't know how much they would have had to dig or how far they would have had to dig to break through the roof into this paradise of orange fields. But having a task to do in common and feeling like they were in it together, that in itself was psychologically very helpful.

ADAM GALINSKY: Absolutely. And I will say one thing. It actually would have been impossible for them to dig because once they were discovered and we knew their exact location, one of the original ideas for getting them out was to drill a hole into the cave. But the rock was too thick and it was impossible to get to them. So their digging would eventually come up against shore rock. But we've known for a century of research that having a shared goal is unbelievably critical for helping any group stay together. A shared goal is critical for reducing conflict and helping cohesion.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: Now, you can see, of course, that Coach Ek was just a remarkable human being. He happened to be someone with these superhuman capacities. But in interviews afterwards, he credits his own training as a Buddhist monk to what happened in the cave. Tell me a little bit about that training. What happened during his own childhood that prompted him to get trained as a monk?

ADAM GALINSKY: Yeah, he had a very tragic childhood, Coach Ek. His brother passed away, and his brother's loss literally broke the heart of his mom. And then she passed away, and then his dad passed away, and now he's an orphan. He was sent to a Buddhist monastery. And in this Buddhist monastery, he was trained to be a Buddhist. And for nine years, he ate one meal a day. That's all he did. And that became actually a critical story in the cave, because they would be like, I'm hungry. And he says, I know you're hungry, but your body can go much longer than you think it can without food. And so he could tell his own story from his own experience of like, I've survived with little food. I know that you can survive with little food. Now, it also being a Buddhist taught him the art of meditation, the art of remaining calm, the art of accepting the situations where we find ourselves. There's a phrase that I learned recently which I really, really like is, we can't control the wind, but we can control how we use our sails. And I think Kojic is a great example of that. It's a very Buddhist thing, right? Like we can't control the world around us, but we can control our reaction to the world and how we function within the constraints that we face.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: Now, of course, all of us are not monks, and all of us have not had practice for nine years going with one meal a day. But that's not really the point of the story. The point is, when we're going through challenging times, we can all draw from our past experiences to try and get through what we're going through. Talk about a study that you conducted with Joris Lammers. You had volunteers apply for a job interview, come into the lab, and then do a warm-up task. What was this warm-up task, Adam?

ADAM GALINSKY: Yeah, we asked them to think about a time when they had power, when they were in control of a situation, and we had them to reflect on what it was like to have that power, to be in control. And so after that, we told them they were actually going to write an application for a job. We gave them a real job ad that existed, and we said, write a cover letter for this job. And everyone did that. And I should tell you that we had two groups of students or two groups of participants, I should say, in this particular study. Half the people were asked to think of a time when they were in control, when they had power. But the other half were asked to think about a time when they weren't in control, when they didn't have power. They were a low-power person. They were dependent on others. And so what we're able to do is by manipulating or varying, whether they focused on a time when they were in control or not in control, we could see how reflecting on that positive type of experience would affect how they did in their job applications.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: So it's not just in some ways drawing from your experience that can make you more prepared. It's almost recalling those moments that actually give you the motivation we need to do difficult things.

ADAM GALINSKY: Absolutely. And you know, what's interesting about the study is every single person in the study had moments in their life when they had power and when they didn't have power. And so it's easy for them to reflect on those experiences with that. And because it's extraordinarily effective at changing people's psychological orientations.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: So what is it about recalling a time when we were powerful or recalling a time when we felt powerless? Why does that change what we do in the present, Adam?

ADAM GALINSKY: Yeah, I think what it does is it really puts us in this psychological mindset where we just look at the world in a different way. We approach the world in a different way. In the study with Joris, what we did is we did so many different analyses of these different job applications and try to understand how they differed. And they didn't differ in a ton of different dimensions. They didn't differ in how positive or negative they were, for example. But the one thing they differed in is that people could really feel a higher level of sort of confidence or self-efficacy that was coming from the people that thought about a time when they had power. And one of the things that we've shown in our research over and over again is that recalling those experiences of being in control, of having power, really does make people more optimistic, right? And we already talked about how important optimism was for Coach Ek in that example. We've shown in our research that it makes people feel more connected to their true self, makes them feel more authentic. And we've actually shown in research, not ourselves, but some colleagues in Europe did some research where they told people they're going to now be videotaped and have to give a speech, which is an incredibly stressful experience for people. And why they did this, they actually had them hooked up to electrical connectors to measure their physiological responses. And what they showed is that simply recalling a time when you had power, when you're in control, made people feel more in control, right? And their physiological arousal literally went down.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: Most of us will never be faced with the terrifying challenge of rescuing a group of children from a cave. But in our own lives, we all encounter challenges, sometimes big, sometimes small. A sense of hope and purpose can motivate us to keep going when times get tough, and recalling prior times when we were brave can help us to act more courageously. When we come back, what happens when we are called to address a crisis, and we have only seconds to act? You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. It's easy to believe that courageous leaders are born courageous. They seem to embody the natural traits of heroism. In a crisis, they are cool, calm, and collected. Adam Galinsky is the author of Inspire, The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others. He says that influential leaders have skills that can be learned and improved with practice. Adam, I want to talk about a woman named Tammie Jo Shults. She was a pilot for Southwest Airlines, and in April 2018, she was flying a plane from New York to Dallas when suddenly she felt an enormous jolt. How did Tammie Jo Schuls describe what happened that day?

ADAM GALINSKY: Well, she described it that she honestly thought that she'd had a mid-air collision. She felt like a Mack truck or another plane had just driven right into her. And she immediately knew, after she felt this jolt, that something was wrong because all of a sudden the cabin pressure was going thing. She realized they were losing oxygen very quickly. And she realized immediately this was going to be unlike any other flight she'd ever taken.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: What exactly had happened, Adam? What had happened to the plane?

ADAM GALINSKY: So what happened was their left engine had experienced catastrophic failure. It essentially exploded. And when it exploded, not only did they lose that engine, it's a double-engine plane. They could have flown with the other engine. But the explosion tore a hole in the side of the plane.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: Wow. So the debris had smashed through the cabin. I'm imagining it must have been chaos back in the cabin.

ADAM GALINSKY: It was absolute chaos. So first of all, very tragically, one of the passengers who was sitting next to that hole was sucked into that hole. She didn't get sucked all the way out, but her injuries were fatal. Everyone began to panic. People were frantically trying to get on Wi-Fi to write to their family and friends, saying, I may never see you again. I love you. The flight attendants were panicking. All of this was, it was just pure chaos.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: So from the passengers perspective in the cabin, the plane is free-falling, total chaos. People thought they were going to die. But I want to play you a clip of the conversation between Tammie Jo Shults and an air traffic controller.

CLIP: I understand your emergency. Let me know when you want to go in.

CLIP: Yeah, we have a part of the aircraft missing, so we're going to need to slow down a bit.

CLIP: Okay.

CLIP: And are you, is your airplane physically on fire?

CLIP: No, it's not on fire, but part of it's missing.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: So she seems remarkably calm, Adam. Meanwhile, back in the cabin, people are sending goodbye messages to their loved ones?

ADAM GALINSKY: Absolutely. One of the things that she realized immediately is they needed to descent, right? They need to send for lots of different reasons. One is the plane wanted to descent, so they wanted to do what the plane wanted to do, but also obviously oxygen was a big issue and the air pressure that was happening. And so they were actually doing what looked like a very fast descent, but was actually a controlled descent. And at a certain point, I think she realized the panic of the passengers, how they might be interpreting that descent. And I think maybe the most remarkable thing that she did that entire day is she went on the loudspeaker and announced to everyone ten words. People will talk about those tens words as being the ten most important words they heard in their life. And those ten words were, we are not going down, we are going to Philadelphia. And so that ten words let them know that there was a plan, that the going down was not chaos, you know, it was not a precipitous fall, it was an orchestrated descent. And people have said, you know, those ten words literally turn the plane from panic to possibility.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: So, as the plane heads to Philadelphia, Tammie Jo Shults takes control of the plane. What happens as they're coming in to land, Adam?

ADAM GALINSKY: The plane is not doing what it's supposed to be doing. She turns the plane, and it doesn't turn. And she's so be-flummoxed by this, she actually says out loud, and you can hear it in the recorder, Heavenly Father, she's looking for guidance. And she finally decides to take a slightly risky move, I think, with the rudder, and it turns at the last minute, just in time.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: I understand that she comes in to land, but even as she's landing, she has the presence of mind to park right next to the fire trucks that are on the tarmac?

ADAM GALINSKY: Yeah, every step that she did was remarkable. She lands, she gets it so that the fire trucks are on the left side where the exploded engine was, in case there's a fire. She also does something else, which is really amazing, is she recognizes some of these passengers might just try to get out of the plane as fast as they can. And so she actually churned the flaps of the wings down to give people a little bit of a slide if they were going to try to do that. And so she was taking their perspective of a panicked passenger and what they might try to do as soon as the plane lands.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: Hmm, I understand that after they got on the ground, she walked back into the cabin and actually tried to look each person in the eye.

ADAM GALINSKY: Yeah, so this was not an uncommon thing for Tammie Jo, that when they had delays, she would often go back into the cabin, talk to the passengers. But this time, she went row by row, deliberately talking to each and every passenger, making sure they were okay. She came to a little girl, and this little girl was pretty freaked out. And she said, you got to do something no one else has ever done before on any of my planes. And as her parents said, she made our daughter feel special. And what's so funny is Tammie Jo talks about her voyage down the cabin, and she says that she actually was shocked afterwards that more people, more reporters, more people talked about that, walked down the aisle and meeting and greeting each of the passengers to make sure they were okay, then talked about how she landed this crippled flight. You know, and it shows how, in some ways, how starved we are for leaders who are compassionate and really connect to the people that they're leading.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: We talked earlier about how Captain Francesco Schettino panicked when his cruise ship was sinking. By contrast, Tammie Jo Schults really kept her head during the crisis, Adam.

ADAM GALINSKY: Absolutely. I mean, and she was so incredible that when she was checked out by medical personnel afterwards, one of them asked her a question that totally confused her. He said, how did you get through security? And she's like, what are you talking about? He's like, how did you get through security with your nerves of steel? He says, I'm taking your vitals right now, and you're completely calm. Like your blood pressure is fine. Your arousal is fine. Your heart rate is normal. Like, how is that possible? And we heard that in her voice, the calmness in her voice, which is what was needed at that moment in time.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: You told me earlier in the story of Coach Ek that in some ways what leaders do is magnified. So when they are upset, it has an effect on the people who are watching and observing them. When they are cheerful and optimistic, that has an effect on the people who are observing them. Here, perhaps Tami Jo Schultz is always calm and always collected, but as a leader here, I think it was the case that her calmness and courage under pressure, those were traits or behaviors that became infectious.

ADAM GALINSKY: Yeah, absolutely. So in general, our psychological states are contagious to other people. But that gets, they become truly the word that you just use, infectious when we're leaders. And I've coined a phrase I call the leader amplification effect, and the idea that when we're leaders, all of our words, gestures, interactions, even our silences become amplified, and that leads to intensified reactions. And so what we do as a leader really, really matters so much. And there's a coda to the story about Tammie Jo Shults that really takes in the account this idea of like, the behavior of leaders matter. They told her she could take as much time that she wanted off, right? And she could come back whenever she wanted to. And she was back flying a few weeks later. And she said she partially did it for herself to return to sort of normalcy. But she also did it for other people to show that that she had confidence and faith in Southwest Airlines and that she had confidence in flight and to not let any conspiracy start to emerge, essentially what she said. So she understood that her actions were going to have an impact on other people. She was a leader on that plane, but now because of her own action, she was a leader more broadly in the world, and she really understood her role, which is exactly what Captain Chatino did not understand.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: So there's something very interesting here, Adam. When many of us think of power, we think of the iron fist of lacking emotion, being stern, being authoritarian. But in all the examples of powerful leaders who were successful that we've talked about today, there also seems to be a common thread of warmth and kindness. Can you talk about that? It seems that almost impossible, but in a moment of crisis, they were not just being competent, but they were genuinely caring about what was happening to the people around them.

ADAM GALINSKY: Yeah. And I think one of the reasons why these leaders are so remarkable is because they combine two elements that often don't go together in the powerful. One element is this sort of like courageous, agentic, self-assured, self-efficacious person, but the other is a person that looks out for others. It really elevates them into the realm of an inspiring leader.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: Adam calls leaders who have sharp elbows and confrontational styles wire mesh leaders. And he calls people like Tammie Jo Schults and Coach Ek terry cloth leaders. The terms come from a series of experiments in the 1950s, showing animals gravitate to objects that feel warm and inviting. As followers, he says, we can instantly tell when we are being led by a wire mesh leader or a terry cloth leader.

ADAM GALINSKY: Sometimes wire mesh leaders can be very effective when they're trying to get people to coordinate the behavior or to go towards a particular course of action. But most of us need some terry cloth guidance, right? And you think about a pilot, right? A pilot is someone who has a task to do, which is to take passengers safely from point A to point B. But they're not just an aviator, right? They're also a protector of those people, and they need to take in account their psychological states and what they need in order to be in a better place at any moment in time.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: So Adam, after doing this work, do you feel like you are more of a Terry cloth leader when it comes to your own life?

ADAM GALINSKY: A key theme, I think, of inspiring leaders is that they reflect on their experiences, and they think about the times when they did things well, and they try to build off those. I can tell you, just as one experience that I had, is I had a father who was prone to vicious bursts of rage. Like, you'd spill milk, and he just would, his whole body would tense up, and he would explode. And early on, when I was a parent with these two little kids, they would do something, and it really felt like my dad had taken over my body, and I would just explode, and I could immediately see the reaction in my child. I mean, he would go into a state of crying that was like just an abject state of fear. And I trained myself over time to never have that reaction again. I probably had it, you know, a dozen times, and I would just, I mean, he would go into a fugue state of crying as if like he was in an altered state, like I had shocked his system so bad. And I realized I could never do that again. And so I've trained myself. You know, the other day, my son was really upset that we were going out, and I just sat there with them, and I was like, I know it's so hard. I want to be with you too, you know, and I love you so much. You know, I didn't react to his anger, his tears, his frustration. I was able to be there. And, you know, every time I did it, it got easier the next time I did it. I was creating a habit, a practice of being empathic in there. And that's the key theme, I think, of Inspire that I think that I most want people to take away, which is that we can all learn to be more inspiring. We can all learn through reflection, through commitments, and through practice.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: Adam Galinsky is the author of Inspire, The Universal Path for Leading Yourself and Others. In my conversation with Adam, we discussed another powerful idea that is a core element of leadership in times of crisis. Leading is not about doing everything yourself, it's about enabling others. In our companion episode on Hidden Brain+, we explore how one specific superpower can transform the art of leadership. That episode, titled The Power of Perspective, is available right now to subscribers of Hidden Brain+. This is a particularly good time to give our podcast subscription a try. We're extending our standard 7-day trial period for listeners on Apple podcasts. Sign up in January, and you'll get 30 free days to try it out. You can sample Hidden Brain+, by going to apple.co. slash hiddenbrain and click Try Free. Again, go to apple.co. slash hiddenbrain and click Try Free. Adam Galinsky, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

ADAM GALINSKY: Oh, thank you so much, it was my pleasure.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: Do you have follow-up questions for Adam Galinsky about leading through a crisis? If you'd be comfortable sharing those questions with a Hidden Brain audience, please record a voice memo on your phone. Three minutes is plenty. Then, email the file to us at ideas at hiddenbrain.org. Use the subject line, leadership. That email address again is ideas at hiddenbrain.org. Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media, our audio production team includes Annie Murphy Paul, Kristin Wong, Laura Kwerel, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. Next week in our Wellness 2.0 series, how to figure out what you want from your life.

CLIP: We don't want to think that I chose the wrong thing.

CLIP: That creates dissonance, it's uncomfortable, and so we protect ourselves from that thought.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.