For example, as we expand our animation staff at Pixar, which has the positive impact of allowing us to do more quality work, there is also a negative impact that we must deal with: Meetings have become larger and less intimate, with each participant having a proportionally smaller ownership in the final film (which can mean feeling less valued). In response, we created smaller subgroups in which departments and individuals are encouraged to feel they have a voice. In order to make corrections like this - to reestablish balance - managers must be diligent about paying attention.

It turns out that these differences in certainty have an important impact on sustained attention. Looking across thousands of pieces of content, we found that uncertain emotions encouraged engagement…

Uncertainty led readers to stick around to resolve what they didn’t know.

• Highlight the hurdles. As long as we’re already seen as competent, revealing past shortcomings can make people like us more, not less.

• Build a roller coaster. The best stories blend highs and lows. So to increase engagement, know when to go negative. Talking about all the failures along the way makes the successes evermore sweet.

• Mix up moments. The same intuition applies to moments as well. Smooth rides are easy, but not the most engaging, so to hold people’s attention, mix it up a bit.

• Consider the context. When trying to persuade, it’s not just enough to say something positive. Emotional language can help in hedonic domains like movies and vacations, but backfire in more utilitarian domains like job applications or software.

• Connect, then solve. Solving problems requires understanding people. So rather than jumping into solutions, connect with the person first. Starting with warmer, more emotional language helps set things up for the more cognitive, problem-solving discussions that come later.

• Activate uncertainty. The right words can make any topic or presentation more captivating. Evoking uncertain emotions (e.g., surprise) will keep people engaged.

This tendency has a name: the pratfall effect. The pratfall effect is the tendency for someone’s appeal to increase or decrease after making a mistake, depending on his or her perceived ability to perform well in general. In one study conducted by Professor Lisa Rosh from Lehman College, a woman introduced herself, not by mentioning her credentials and education, but by talking about how she’d been awake the previous night caring for her sick baby. It took her months to reestablish her credibility. If this same woman was first presented as a Nobel Prize winner, the exact same words about being up all night with the baby would provoke reactions of warmth and connection from the audience.

When you combine the data with Reed’s advice, this is the takeaway: a leader who has demonstrated competence and is liked by her team will build trust and prompt risk-taking when she widely sunshines her own mistakes. Her company benefits. The one exception is for a leader considered unproven or untrusted. In these cases you’ll want to build trust in your competency before shouting your mistakes.

Getting into the habit of recoding the risk level in many of our activities, along with the stakes we incur in carrying them out, is a vital, life-enhancing capability. By cultivating this habit, we lighten the emotional load. We have more than enough situations in our lives where vigilance is essential; when it’s not, we can proceed in a more playful and lighthearted way—even when we’re doing things that are important to us (cooking, writing an essay, learning a new language). In consistent contexts with low stakes (folding the laundry, going for a run), a casual, business-as-usual approach is fine. Pausing to consider (or, more typically, reconsider) the stakes allows us to titrate vigilance, mitigating its emotional and cognitive tax.