Bernadette teaches her son to drive in a cemetery parking lot and discovers his rough braking has nothing to do with the car, and everything to do with muscle memory from racing video games. It sparks a bigger question about the habits we all bring into new roles, teams, and pressure moments without realizing it. Using the ARC Method, Bernadette breaks down how to spot the "jarring stops" your old playbook is causing, and what to do instead.
Bernadette teaches her son to drive in a cemetery parking lot and discovers his rough braking has nothing to do with the car, and everything to do with muscle memory from racing video games. It sparks a bigger question about the habits we all bring into new roles, teams, and pressure moments without realizing it. Using the ARC Method®, Bernadette breaks down how to spot the "jarring stops" your old playbook is causing, and what to do instead.
Takeaways:
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PREROLL
I taught my son to drive this summer, and it turns out his biggest problem wasn't the car. It was actually a video game.
(Recorded intro with music plays)
OPEN
Hey, folks. Welcome back to Good Vibes Leadership. I'm Bernadette Smith. I'm CEO of Equality Institute, and I'm your guide to playful, inclusive leadership.
THE IMAGE/METAPHOR
So over the summer, I taught my son to drive, and I taught him just like I was taught — in a cemetery. The stakes are pretty low at about 10 miles an hour, and there's plenty of places to practice.
My son's biggest challenge was his left foot. He kept using it to brake. I was like, why is he doing this? And when I asked him, he said, well, that's the way I brake when I play video games. So when he's playing video games and he's driving stick, he uses his left foot for the clutch and his right foot for the brake. But in an automatic car, you use the right foot for both. So his body had this whole other set of instructions already loaded in, like a muscle memory from a video game.
So here's the thing. I could always tell when he braked with that left foot instead of his right foot, because the stop was so much more jarring. I jolted forward every time he braked with his left.
THE COLLISION/PROBLEM
And after the driving lesson was over, I couldn't stop thinking about that. Because what I realized is it's not just a problem with teenagers who play video games learning to drive. Defaulting to old habits is actually a problem that we all have.
We all default to old habits when we're under pressure, when we need to brake. Habits that may have worked elsewhere. Maybe they worked in a different car, in a different job, in a different team. And then we bring those old habits or those old behaviors into a new moment without even realizing it. And when we do that, it can be very jarring for the people around us. Not just for us ourselves, but for everyone else in the car, on the team, in the office.
And so this sense of jarring can be disruptive.
THE LEADERSHIP PIECE
I've watched this happen with leaders for years. Someone might get promoted or someone might change jobs, but they're still acting as if they were in that old environment. They're still practicing that old muscle memory. And that may have worked if they were an individual contributor. Maybe it worked if they were at a company with a totally different culture. But it's not like it was wrong. It may have worked once, but no one may have told them that the culture has changed, or the car is different.
So it's something that your team might feel, the people around you might feel, before you even notice. That's typically how it goes. Everyone else notices the jarring first, until we start to develop that sense of self awareness, or until people bring it up to us.
THE TOOL
This comes back to something I teach a lot in our work here at Equality Institute — the ARC Method.
So if you are in an environment and you have an experience where something is jarring, where someone's behavior might be jarring, whether it's in a meeting or in a conversation, or maybe even in feedback, or as a result of how a decision was made — whatever it happens to be — don't get too critical of that habit or behavior right away. Instead, get curious.
So the ARC Method stands for Ask, Respect, Connect. Ask that person, or get curious about what's driving that habit or that behavior that could be jarring. That's the ask. Figure out how you can be more curious about it, how you can unpack that.
Then respect that that behavior or that attitude may have worked somewhere. Maybe it actually was a protective behavior from your family, that person's family. Respect that it could be — not necessarily a character flaw — but just old muscle memory. That's the R, respect.
And then the C is connect. So connect this to what the moment actually needs, which might be something completely different from the energy or the behavior that was jarring.
So you can actually use the ARC Method with someone to be curious about this jarring behavior. I asked my son, where did you learn to brake with your left foot? Something as simple as that. Where did you learn to brake with your left foot? And then I respected that he said, oh, when I play video games. Okay. And then I connected it to, well, actually, that's unsafe in this scenario, so we are going to be braking with our right, and I explained why. So I used the ARC Method in that context.
But anytime you're in a situation that feels jarring, you can do the same. And if you find out that you have been jarring to others, then maybe you can use the ARC Method as an internal reflection tool. Ask yourself, what actually drove that behavior from me? Where did that come from? Now respect whatever that happens to be, whatever answer you come up with. Respect that it may have been a self preservation tool at some point. Respect that it may have worked in a different context. And then C is connect to, again, what that moment, what this current moment actually needs instead from me, which could be something different.
So you can either use the ARC Method as you're trying to learn more about someone else's behavior or energy, or about your own. You can use it as a self reflection tool.
THE APPLICATION
So here's what I'd like you to try this week. Notice one jarring moment — a stop that felt too sharp, or some sort of comment that really surprised you or caught you off guard, or a reaction that didn't quite fit. And instead of brushing past that, use the ARC Method to figure out what actually was going on, and how you can do things differently. So use it either as a self reflection tool or as a way to unpack someone else's energy.
My son is going to figure this out. So will the rest of us, even though there might be some jarring stops along the way.
Let's move into this week's Good Vibe to Go.
Rest in peace, sweet Dolly Parton. You are a gift to all of us. So in her honor, listen to the song Nine to Five, watch the movie Nine to Five, and dig through some of her other archives. There's some really great stuff in there. Dolly was an angel. She really was. So let's pay her some love.
And if you want some more good vibes like this every Saturday morning, that's what the 5 Things newsletter is for. This week I have North Carolina finally leveling paid parental leave, a boat tycoon giving away $400,000,000, and more. Subscribe at 5ThingsDEI.com.
CLOSE
Alright, folks, that's it. I'm Bernadette Smith. I'm cheering you on. Have a great week.