To Motivate, Spend More Time Framing Your Vision Instead of Prescribing It

It can be frustrating for bosses who have yet to come to terms with the changing managerial landscape.  Change isn't easy, and it's impossible to accomplish if you aren't looking for it (or don't want to see it).  For many, the old school guard still stands always at the ready to bark out orders, expecting the work to be done as prescribed.  They give lip service to valuing collaboration and an iterative process, but are quick to show frustration and an unwillingness to relinquish control when tasks progress in a manner different from their own expectations.  The struggle is real for the boss and his team, but one simple change can make a big difference.

Good leaders recognize the need to change how they communicate, or rather why they communicate.  They spend more of their time during their interactions explaining why a task is important to the big picture and less time describing how a task should be completed.  By moving the focus from how to why, the leader spotlights that it's the end result that is most important.  This shift signals to the employee that alternative ideas are valued and reinforces the role of a good leader to inspire and motivate.

Doing this will get you from good to great.

Think of any successful person that you know or have read about.  Now, think about what made them successful to the point that you remember their story?  You can likely think of lots of successful people, but why this person and not someone else?  What makes their story memorable?

Your first thought is probably about their achievements, but then you realize that there has to be more to their story than just what they produced...something bigger than even the sum of their accomplishments.  

Think about a main character in your favorite book or movie.  While their actions and personality may come to mind first, it's what they had to give up that makes them worthy of your attention (and money).  Sacrifice.  Every great story involves a great sacrifice.  You can't achieve the impossible without risk.

Playing it safe doesn't make an interesting story, and while it's comfortable for you, it won't get you to great.

"Life's like a movie, write your own ending." Kermit the Frog, The Muppet Movie

Want to learn more about making your life a better story?  Check out Donald Miller's book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

No is not a four letter word.

Self-described people pleasers find it hard, if not impossible, to say no.  Their anxiety often centers around the potential for losing out on a future opportunity.

"If we don't solve this problem for the customer, they won't buy other services from us later."

"I really should take on the new project because I won't get an opportunity like this again."

Whether we are "shoulding" on ourselves or letting others "should" on us, why is the reason to say yes based only on the future positive outcome (future new business or future project offers)?  There are an infinite number of outcome possibilities, but it's the worry of marginalization, the fear of insignificance, that drives the decision.

Don't be bullied.  Be decisive.

Grass roots.

Everyone's yard or garden requires tending.  Got a bare spot in need of new grass?  You can't just throw down some seed and wait for it to take root.  You start by preparing the area to make it habitable for the new seed, but you have to keep the seeds moist and create the right environment to coax them into growing into a lush, green turf.  Maybe missing a day of watering doesn't matter, but what happens if you miss two days...or three? Positive change is hard and doesn't happen without effort.  The effort itself doesn't need to be hard, but it does need to be accompanied by consistency to give the roots a chance.

The answer isn't right under your nose.

Seth Godin wrote a blog, "You don't know Lefsetz?", about knowing published works in your field of expertise.   How can we be experts if we don't study what others are doing?  We put all of our efforts into our own work and miss the importance of knowing the work of our peers.  He calls this "too much doing, not enough knowing."  This applies not only to your field of knowledge, but to seemingly unrelated fields as well.  By limiting your view to only those doing similar work, you just might be missing a break through.

Roboticists have been turning to entomology because nature already has the answer to locomotion and solving complex problems through swarm behavior.  These seemingly unrelated fields have together produced brilliant solutions that would have been missed had people not ventured out from their doing.

We can apply this to our own lives as well.  Tackling a complex problem at work that doesn't seem to have a perfect solution?  Before settling on "good enough", look around to see how others have solved problems.  Look beyond the superficial similarities and scratch the surface to find broader connections.  Search out analogies in areas that would otherwise seem to have little in common with yours.  Stop doing for a few minutes and start getting to know.

Link to Seth Godin's "You don't know Lefsetz?": http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451b31569e201b7c78b2ec0970b

Positive Reinforcement

Remember that you are reinforcing a behavior, not a person.  It's easy to confuse encouragment and positive reinforcement.  We feel the need to encourage people, thinking that encouragment will help them achieve their goal.  "You can do it," we hear the spectators shout as the runners push towards the finish line.  "Good job.  You played your best," says the coach to the young player.  Encouragment feels good to both the giver and the receiver, so it's understandable that it's viewed as a critical element of success.

No one succeeds without a little encouragement, but understanding that behaviors and not people are what should be reinforced will help you achieve your goals faster and with greater success.  This applies especially when we are trying to reinforce our own behaviors.  You must move beyond simple self-encouragement to clearly define the target behavior, create a simple reinforcing action, and consistently pair the two.  Of course, positive self-talk is still motivational, but it will ultimately be positve reinforcement that will ensure increased frequency of your identified behavior and get you closer to achieving your goal.

The lesser of two evils.

The procrastinator's creed:  why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?  Even the most successful people can find it difficult to start particular tasks on their to-do list, but the secret to getting things done lies in the lesser of two evils.  When faced with a task that you have been putting off for one reason or another, quickly imagine an alternate task you that you find even more daunting or have an even greater aversion to starting.  Suddenly you will find the motivation that you were lacking, and you will be on your way to crossing off another item on the to-do list!

You will.

AT&T once ran a series of commercials voiced by Tom Selleck that described the fantastical things we would be able to do thanks to future advancements in technology.  These spots opened by asking, "Have you ever..." and ended with two simple, but powerful words:  you will.  Many, if not most, of these predictions came true, but before anything great can be accomplished someone has to ask the question of "what is to be?"

Success isn't something that just happens.  Successful people envision the future they want and will it to happen.  They don't think about how bleak the future looks, but how bright it will be because of their ideas and actions.  Where most see failure, they see a multitude of possibilities.  This works on grand scales ("How can we build a self-driving car" or "Where do I want to be in 5 years with my professional life?") and on smaller accomplishments ("What will happen if I take on that new project at work?").  

To put this idea into practice for our own life, let's look at a common anxiety inducing fear such as flying to see how our thoughts can affect outcomes.  For people with anxiety disorder, the anxiety often begins way before even boarding the plane, and it's triggered by negative thoughts.  Sufferers tend to think about any number of bad outcomes and become fearful about their own lack of control and inability to manage their anxiety.  The key to overcoming this trigger is to replace the negative thoughts with their positive counterparts.  Instead of thinking about what you will do if you become panicked on the flight, think about all the flights in which you have successfully managed a panic attack.  The power of suggestion is strong.  Just as you can talk yourself into anxiety, you can use your inner voice to help you be successful, too!

You may not be fearful of flying, but you can probably find many examples in your life where negative thoughts about your own abilities filled you with doubt and affected how you managed a situation.  Thomas Edison didn't think about how many failed attempts it was going to take him before finding a successful solution.  He envisioned a future of houses filled with electric light and relentlessly pursued that vision.  Visualize your own successes...see them playing out to wonderful outcomes...and tell yourself, "You will!"

Your attitude towards these two words will save or destroy your relationships

You've probably said "I'm sorry" a lot in your personal and professional lifetime, but were you saying it for your own benefit or because you felt it was owed? The former attitude comes in two types.  In the first "I'm sorry" type, it has become a way of avoiding confrontation.  It's a knee jerk reaction formed from a habitual need to control every situation and diffuse perceived threats to your dominance.  You tell yourself that it's just the kind of self-effacing trait that makes you a great leader.  It doesn't.

The second "I'm sorry" type is the most detrimental to your relationships because it is actually an anti-apology.  Have you ever told someone that you are sorry they feel that way?  Is that an apology?  No, it is instead a way of placing blame.  While you may consciously perceive this as an apology and pat yourself on the back for recognizing someone's feelings, the reality is that you just caused more damage to that relationship than through the initial offense.  To you it feels like an effective way to maintain your own dominance in the conversation, but to the recipient it's a clear indicator that you have not been an empathic listener.

Understanding when to apologize is a skill to be learned.  The art of the apology will create trust and grow deeper and more meaningful relationships at home and at work.  Learning how not to apologize is easy if you just remember the power in those two little words.

"What time is the 3 o'clock parade?": Building Deeper Connections the Disney Way

It's a reasonable response to answer the question you are asked, but in doing just that you are missing a chance to make a deeper connection.  Tom Connellan, in his book Inside the Magic Kingdom: Seven Key's to Disney's Success, tells a story about a Walt Disney World cast member's answer when approached and asked what time the 3 o'clock parade begins.  Without missing a beat, the cast member sincerely responded, "Well, the parade does start on time, and you should get there around 2:30 to get a real good place."  Connellan calls this the "unasked question--what they really wanted to know", and it's a skill that's easy to master with the right, or a "good", attitude.

Connellan recommends adopting a mindset of "believing people are smarter than they sometimes seem, knowing that people sometimes have trouble saying things clearly."  Your first reaction to these guests asking about the parade was probably one of surprise, setting your System 1 thinking in motion and at the ready with a logical and fast response of, "Why 3 o'clock, of course."  Recognizing this bias towards action will help you implement Connellan's prescribed attititude change for the better.  With only a little practice to slow down and engage your brain's System 2, you are ready for the final piece of the puzzle: seeking to give value.

Putting System 1 in check only represents the first step in moving your connections beyond shallow and robotic responses.  Taking another look at Connellan's example, the Disney cast member (this is how Disney refers to its employees) first acknowledges the question and turns it into a positive statement:  "the parade does start on time".  This serves two purposes.  First, the cast member shows good listening skills by restating the question; and second, it sets an expectation that events at the park are mindful to start as promised.  

Having now created a positive experience in this initial interaction with the guest, the cast member uses his "good attitude" bias to springboard, paired with experience and insight, and move past merely answering the question.  This leaves the guest with not only the information that was most valuable to them (i.e., getting to the parade on time), but with a sense that the Disney cast member truly understands their needs, even when they are not explicitly articulated.  Walt Disney often referred to "plussing" when pushing Imagineers towards further improvement of their ideas.  That attitude delights Walt Disney World guests still today and is one that will help you improve your own relationships as you plus your approach towards interactions.

Never.

"The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it."  -J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

There is no shortage of doubters and naysayers.  They are an abundant and often outspoken lot, whose words have the ability to completely zap the energy from you.

"That's never going to work."

"That's not the way we do it here."

"You'll never finish before the deadline."

"Someone else is already doing it, so don't bother."

Negativity isn't always this easy to see and is sometimes wrapped and packaged as a nugget of wisdom.  Ever heard someone say that "the idea is worth nothing without execution"?  This expression is pseudo-motivational and attempts to elevate the importance of execution, but it does this at the expense of undervaluing the creation of a great idea.  It's impossible to execute on no idea, and I'm sure you can think of several well executed failed ideas.  Of course, even failed ideas have merit if you take the time to look.

The world has met its quota on negativity, so don't let self-doubt keep your ideas from execution.  There is fuel in failure and other's negativity.  These are abundant resources for powering new ideas.

These 3 e-mail tips will increase your productivity and save your sanity

In our always on and always connected world, e-mail represents one of our largest time sinks.  Having a plan to consistently deal with e-mail efficiently and effectively will give you some time back to focus on only what's important.  Here are 3 tips for dealing with your Inbox.

Create an @Action folder for your Inbox.  You are going to need a quick place to put e-mails requiring deliberate attention, and David Allen's GTD organize method will give you that place.  In Microsoft Outlook, creating a folder with the name "@Action" puts it at the top of your folder list.  Having it here gives you a prime landing space for dropping of e-mails that need your attention.  E-mails that go into this folder become part of your to-do list, so having it front and center when you are at a place to work through e-mail saves you from hunting for it.

Think before sending.  Is a response actually required?  You don't need to respond to every e-mail, especially if there is a cast of thousands on the To: line.  Only respond to e-mails where your input is critical.  Will sending a reply or starting a new e-mail  thread complete the communication circle, or rather will it begin the spiral to many more follow-ups?  With the power of e-mail comes great responsibility.  Your choice to send or not to send greatly impacts the size of your own Inbox and signals to others how you value time.  Don't send e-mails to others just as a way to delay having to deal with a problem.  

Finally, once you've decided a response is absolutely needed, borrow another productivity tip from David Allen's GTD:  if a task takes two minutes, then just do it instead of adding it to your to-do list.  You are already in the right frame of mind and have invested mental energy in reading and deciding.  Put that investment to work for you and close the loop.  Any task longer than two minutes goes to your @Action folder and becomes part of your future task list.

Be a good role model, set expectations for responses, and choose the right tool for communication (hint:  it isn't always e-mail).  There is one last question you should ask before hitting the send button.  Are you sending just to vent?  If your e-mail is multiple paragraphs of an explanation or you find yourself feeling you must respond to set the record straight, then go ahead and write that e-mail...just don't send it.  Get the problem off your chest and then just let it go.  Delete.

Action: Take Your Cues from Your Audience to Build Rapport

"All things being equal, people want to do business with their friends.  And when all things are not equal, people still want to do business with their friends."  Building rapport and creating an environment that puts people at ease will help you close more deals and win you business, and you can do it by making a few changes in how you interact with customers.  In fact, there are two techniques, "playing actions" and mirroring, that can be helpful when you are meeting someone for the first time in any social setting.

Executive coach, and author of How to Act in Business, Corey Hansen writes about using the same techniques as professional actors to captivate your business audiences.  In a recent blog,  "Your Action? To Assure, of course!", Hansen explains how "playing actions", like projecting confidence through changes in thinking and body language, can positively impact customer interactions.  The key here is to "think about what you do to people, and how you treat them."  In Hansen's example, he helps his client find the ability "to assure" as the action.  Knowing the action, "to assure", enabled his client to make changes in her presentation that moved her and her audience in that direction.  The idea of playing actions is a powerful and proven tool, and you can use this acting technique to move your scene in the direction that you want to go.

In addition to understanding the action-behavior, you can also borrow an empathic listening technique to help you build rapport with someone.  Researchers at New York University published work investigating what they called the "chameleon effect", The Chameleon Effect: The Perception-Behavior Link and Social Interaction.  Tanya L. Chartrand and John A. Bargh were interested in the social interaction effects that individuals who matched postures, mannerisms, or facial expressions had on their interacting partners.  Their research and experiments not only found that "dispositionally empathic individuals exhibit the chameleon effect to a greater extent than do other people", but also that "mimicry facilitates the smoothness of interactions and increases liking between interaction partners"(Chartrand & Bargh, 1999).  In other words, if you want to get someone to like you, mirror their movements and gestures.  You can also mirror their speech patterns, such as their volume, verbal cadence, and sentence structure.  If they're talking slowly and quietly, then match their volume and speed to help you build rapport.

Pairing playing of actions and mirroring with Annette Grant's three step formula for conquering small talk is sure to have positive effects on your personal and business interactions.

Meetings Are Killing You and Your Creativity

We know that a sedentary lifestyle and sitting all day at work leads to major health risks, even to an extent that Dr. James Levine, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, has said that "excessive sitting is a lethal activity" (Vlahos, 2011).  What you didn't know was that sitting in meetings is not only hazardous to your health, but is negatively impacting your cognitive and group performance, too.

Andrew P. Knight and Markus Baer of Washington University in St. Louis, MO, studied 54 groups to simulate a typical meeting environment where meeting attendees work together on a group-based creativity task.  While their control group worked in a typical meeting room with a conference table and chairs (sedentary workspace), the test group environment had the chairs removed from the room.  Knight and Baer found that "physical space shapes performance indirectly by affecting group members' arousal and territorial behavior, which together influence information elaboration" (Knight & Baer, 2014).  In other words, the chairs in the room affected group members physiologically (increased activity, moving around more) and behaviorally (using a physical object like a chair to create boundaries or "territories" of ownership to protect their individual ideas), ultimately altering group dynamics by changing the way they exchanged information and perspectives with each other.

Removing chairs from the conference room isn't going to automatically make you and your teams more creative, but could create an environment where teams collaborate and share perspectives in a way that leads them to better and more innovative solutions.

Check out these links to learn more about non-sedentary work habits:

"Is Sitting a Lethal Activity?" by James Vlahos
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17sitting-t.html

"Get Up, Stand Up: The Effects of a Non-sedentary Workspace on Information Elaboration and Group Performance" by Andrew P. Knight and Markus Baer

http://spp.sagepub.com/content/5/8/910

Inspiration from Walt Disney's Mary Poppins

Feeling like your approach to problem solving or attitude towards taking on new projects isn't quite where it used to be?  Take some inspiration from Walt Disney's Mary Poppins and get back on the path to supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Be unconventional. 

Don't complicate things that are simple.

Volunteer for the impossible.

Believe in something all the way.

Be uncomfortable.

Have fun (Laugh).

Be mindful.

Go out of bounds.

With some practice you will be on your way to being "practically perfect in every way"!

Careerfication

Feeling stuck in a rut at work and wondering if it's time for change?  Getting to your next job or finding greater job fulfillment can happen with a little work and planning.  Careers are not finite with clearly discrete steps smoothly transitioned to from job to job, but are more often experienced as fits and starts.  It's time to take your career back and employ careerification, a technique that will let you explore new career opportunities while giving your company the benefit of a newly growing you! 

Careerification starts by finding projects and tasks in your current job that either align with the job you want to move to one day or carves out a niche for you in your current job.  The key is to find work that rekindles that same feeling you had when you first started in your current position.  Like gamification, careerification makes the work seem less like something you have to do and more like something you enjoy doing.

Once you open your thinking to a bit of careerification, you will not only be working toward your next job, but you just may find renewed passion in your current job.

Measure Twice, Cut Once

Many times measuring the wrong thing can be more harmful than not measuring at all.  Whether it is personal health goals or goals to grow your business, be sure that what you are measuring actually drives you to make behavioral changes towards your desired outcome, and not away from it.  The wrong measurement could skew your course and lead you to a dead end full of metrics, but with no clear action for correction.

Think through what-if scenarios when setting your metrics.  What's your reaction when your page views are flat?  Do you change direction for future content immediately and declare your strategy a failure?  What do you think constant strategy changes will do to your motivation?  How will the measurement help you understand what changes to make?  Are the outcomes cause and effect or poorly correlated?

Yes, you can over think this, but don't let your brain's System 1 desire to solve your problem be the sole arbiter of what to measure.  Often we chose measurements based on what we think is a typical metric and fail to consider the impact and next step reaction to it.  How many times have you heard to not judge your health by the numbers on a scale?  When you began that exercise program you could not walk a flight of stairs without getting winded, but now your covering three miles a day!

Your metrics should influence your behavior, but plan your reactions.  Understand your bias towards action and use this to drive to success.

Two Introverts Walk into a Bar

Are you uncomfortable in situations where you are meeting someone for the first time and feel at a loss for how to keep the flow of conversation moving?  You may intuitively be good at small-talk, but when asked to share your secret you might be at a loss to explain your superpower to marveling friends.  Anett Grant, president and founder of Executive Speaking, Inc., to the rescue.  She offers a simple 3 step formula for conquering small-talk: match, shift, and pass back.

Grant demonstrates her match, shift, and pass back formula through a conversation between two people discussing their weekend plans.  In Grant's technique, the first step is to match your response to something the other person says.  A typical opening question might be,  "Do you have any fun weekend plans?" In Grant's example, the person's response is, "Yes, actually I'm going skiing with some friends", and your match response might be, "Oh, cool! I've thought about giving skiing a try a few times, but I've never gone through with it."  Of course, if you're an avid snow bunny then you have a perfect jumping off point to trade tales from the slopes.  In the match step, you don't have to share a common interest, but you do need to show interest.  Just like good listening skills, demonstrating you heard the speaker by paraphrasing or restating their comment builds a rapport and sets you up for the next of Grant's steps.

Step two in the formula is to shift the topic, either in an attempt to find a new topic of common interest or to shift to a specific event or particular aspect of the topic.  In Grant's skiing example, you might try to shift to an activity of interest that shares a relationship to the first, like another outdoor, physical activity such as hiking.  She suggests you might say, "I'm generally not much of a cold weather person, but I do like doing outdoor activities in the summertime--especially hiking.”

Of course, people like to talk about themselves, and asking a follow-up question becomes the pass back that allows the other person to respond by disclosing more information.  Grant's example uses the pass back question of "Do you like to hike?", but you could also use the opportunity to get the other person talking more about themselves by asking an open-ended question.  For example, you might seek to understand if skiing is an avid hobby or if this is the person's first time out.  An open-ended question not only passes back conversational control to the other person, but can lead to deeper engagement with surprising results.

Grant's match, shift, and pass back formula is simple in its design, but powerful in its execution.  It's worth repeating two key elements that can add dynamite to your dialog.  First, try using non-leading, open-ended questions.  Instead of questions with simple, one word answers or questions in which the answer comes almost without thinking, try questions that elicit thoughtful and unprepared responses.  It's a conversational trick used by psychologists and therapists in counseling sessions to get their clients more fully engaged in conversation without making it feel like an interrogation.  Second, and the single most important thing to remember, is to approach your interactions with a sincere desire to get to know the other person.  Rather than focusing on yourself, invoke your natural sense of curiosity to learn something new.  In the end, that something new might even be something about yourself.


"3 Steps Anyone Can Take to Master Small Talk" by Anett Grant
http://www.fastcompany.com/3043228/work-smart/3-steps-anyone-can-take-to-master-small-talk

Elephant, It's What's for Dinner

You've probably heard the saying that you "don't need to eat the elephant all in one bite" in the context of breaking down larger tasks into smaller ones, but there are a couple of techniques that you can use to improve your productivity no matter what the task.  Start by focusing on what's important.  You want to be sure that the work you are choosing to do has meaning, and you understand why it's important to you.  The importance doesn't always have to be life changing, but knowing that you are choosing to do this task instead of any other saves your brain having to fight the cognitive dissonance battle.

This next part is critical.  Stop multitasking and turn off all of the external multitasking enablers, like Outlook toast (those pop-up messages that appear every time you get a new email) and calendar reminders.  Put your phone and IM status on Do Not Disturb.  You need to create as much of a distraction free environment as possible.  The key here is to prepare your mind and put it at ease.  With notifications muted, your brain can move from a multitasking, high-alert status to one of flow.

Once you've settled on the importance of the task and removed distractions, it's time to implement a planned working duration.  In a typical Pomodoro Technique, the duration is usually 25 minutes with a 5 minute break, but it can vary.  Time Management Ninja, Craig Jarrow, recommends breaking up large tasks into 10 minute sessions.  In fact, 10 minutes is probably a perfect place for you to start even in Pomodoro.  Be sure to set an alarm and make it the only reminder that will disturb your work.  After just a couple of days of working in these ten minute sessions, you will find that you can purposely extend intervals by 5 minutes more until you can comfortably and successfully work for 45-60 minutes.

Throughout your intervals, you absolutely must take breaks in between sessions.  Again, the Pomodoro Technique recommends 5 minute breaks.  However, you are going to be working to stretch from 25 minutes to 60 minutes, so taking a 15 minute break between sessions will ultimately prove the most beneficial.  It sounds counter-intuitive to only work for 10 minutes and then to take a 15 minute break, but over time this investment will pay its dividends in higher productivity and greater concentration.  Alternatively, Scott Tousley, in his post, "The Unusual Concentration Technique That Transformed How I Worked", recommends working in 90 minute sessions, with 30 minutes breaks between intervals.

One more thing...do something physical during your breaks.  If you aren't using a standing desk (and why aren't you?), get up, walk around, and stretch your legs.  Studies have shown the benefits of exercise and its positive effects on cognition, including actually increasing size of the brain's hippocampus, so turn your work breaks into life-long brain enhancements!


Further Reading:

"The Unusual Concentration Technique That Transformed How I Worked" by Scott Tousley

http://www.getsidekick.com/blog/ultradian-rhythm-pomodoro-technique

Wikipedia:  Pomodoro Technique
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

"How to Eat an Elephant in 10 Minutes" by Craig Jarrow
http://timemanagementninja.com/2011/01/how-to-eat-an-elephant-in-10-minutes/

"The Positive Psychology of Flow" by Patty O'Grady
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/positive-psychology-in-the-classroom/201310/the-positive-psychology-flow

"Taking a Walk Can Make Your Brain Grow"
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2561708/Taking-walk-makes-brain-grow-Energetic-stroll-three-times-week-increase-size-organs-memory-hub.html

The Road Less Traveled

Seth Godin recently wrote about variance versus deviance, and the mental choice we make to distinguish the two in any given instance.  It's a perspective you choose to take to define what's expected or normal.  Are songs that don't hit the top twenty deviants or rather simply not a reflection of the masses' taste in music?  Is Henry Ford's quip that you can have a car any color you want as long as it's black still the norm or has customization proven variation offers opportunity?

The long-tail exists outside of products, too, and you can choose to embrace variation or suffer frustration as entropy unfolds in the actions of employees (or bosses), colleagues, and customers.  What's more, as Seth Godin puts it, "when you expect (or demand) that people don't deviate, you're robbing them of their dignity and setting yourself up to be disappointed."  It turns out that there are indeed more roads less travelled and each can lead to success.

Seth Godin's Blogs

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2015/02/variance-or-deviance.html

#mondaymover

You're Still a Terrible Listener and It's Written All Over Your Face

In an earlier post I talked about the importance of listening and how a few changes in your behaviors can make you a more empathic listener.  Although it may seem counterintuitive, looking inward and being more self-aware during your interactions will actually help you become a better listener.  In his book, "Thinking, Fast and Slow", Daniel Kahneman describes two brain types, System 1 (fast, automatic) and System 2 (slow, controlled) thinking.  System 1 is responsible for quick, action thinking, while System 2 is much more deliberate.  

This seems similar to the research that Art Markman cites from social psychologist Arie Kruglanski.  Markman, in his recent FastCo post, "How One Simple Change Can Make You a Better Listener", talks about a "doing mindset" and a "thinking mindset".  Our challenge in becoming a more empathic listener is to resist our "doing mindset" or System 1 thinking and instead focus more on System 2 or "thinking mindset".  Ever have the uncontrollable urge to interrupt someone mid-sentence?  That is your System 1 doing what it does best, taking action.  Learn to recognize this trigger, hold back your interruption, and redouble your efforts to make sure that you can successfully sum up the other person's main points before jumping into action.  Dr. Markman offers this analogy, "Taking the thinking perspective is the conversational equivalent of the carpenter’s saying, "Measure twice, cut once.”  Slowing down will likely help you avoid missing the other person's intent.  Additionally, your thoughtful listening and measured response will provide a good foundation for listening reciprocation during delivery of your message.

But how can you recognize these habits and curtail them?  One technique involves facial and body gestures.  Generally, these involuntary facial and body expressions are used by observers to distinguish our true feelings from our words, but if you can be in-tune with your own nonverbal cues you have another tool to use towards epathic listening.  According to Joe Navarro, a 25 year veteran of the FBI and author of "What Every Body is Saying", facial gestures like rolling of the eyes, eyelid flutter, pursed lips, or squinting of the eyes is a likely indication of dislike or disagreement.  Another good indicator is tension in your body or hunching of your shoulders.  If you are engaged in a conversation and begin noticing any of these behaviors, then this is a good cue that your System 1 is already making a decision and plotting your automatic response.

You Are a Terrible Listener
http://mondaymover.blogspot.com/2015/02/you-are-terrible-listener.html

How One Simple Change Can Make You a Better Listener
http://www.fastcompany.com/3042330/how-to-be-a-success-at-everything/how-one-simple-change-can-make-you-a-better-listener

Body Language vs. Micro-Expressions
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/spycatcher/201112/body-language-vs-micro-expressions/

Biases, I've Got a Few
http://mondaymover.blogspot.com/2015/01/biases-i-got-few-wysiati-and-action-bias.html

You Are a Terrible Listener

If you are a leader, just knowing the most common active listening tactics is not enough to positively impact how your message is received and later carried out by others.  Of course, some leaders may not be using these methods today, which is likely cause of even greater negative outcomes.  If you want people to better understand you and desire to make stronger interpersonal connections, then there are a few more steps to take to becoming an empathic listener.

Let's first review some simple behaviors for active listening and then build from that foundation to profoundly change your next personal or work conversation.  These are the 3 mostly widely taught active listening behaviors and are good place to start: 

     1.  Watch or listen for nonverbal and verbal cues, like changes in facial expressions and speech intonation patterns.

     2.  Process what others are saying and verbally summarize their points in your own words to show you are listening.

     3.  Use responding behaviors, like head nodding and asking clarifying questions, to help continue the conversation or move it to a deeper level of understanding.

These are only the start.  There are additional concepts you will want to be aware of to move beyond simply being an active listener.  The first two involve introspection (don't forget our previous discussion on introspection and taking a balcony view).  In reading this far, you have already taken the first step:  acknowledging the importance of listening and realizing that you want to change.  Next, you need to understand your personality.  Are you someone who likes to control the conversation and feels like they always have the answer?  Do you like to be the smartest person in the room, always offering that last insight to prove your superiority?  Your challenge in this step is to recognize why you rely and constantly fallback on this behavior.  To grow you will need to work to challenge this habit.

In addition to looking inward, there are a few actions to avoid if you want to improve your empathic listening behaviors.  Amy Jen Su, co-owner of Paravis Partners, an executive training and coaching firm, suggests removing distractions, like e-mail and phones, during conversations, as these barriers send a clear message that what is being said is not important.  According to Su, “We assume being on our iPhone or tablet isn’t a big deal, but when you speak to the people who work for those leaders, it has a really negative impact"  (Stibitz).  Your multi-tasking is not only disrespectful to the speaker, but you run the risk of behavioral reciprocation.  As your actions are mirrored by your receiver, the delivery of your message becomes much less effective.

One final action to avoid is feeling the need to react immediately or emotionally at the first sign of disagreement.  You may also feel like your message is more important than anything the speaker has to say.  These feelings should be your cue that you are not actually listening, but instead are anticipating confrontation.  Interrupting, like multi-tasking, is counterproductive to achieving results.  Instead, resist the urge and practice sitting quietly and patiently.

Putting these ideas about empathic listening into practice will enrich your interactions and transform your leadership and personal relationships.

"Slowing down, engaging with others rather than endlessly debating, taking the time to hear and learn from others, and asking brilliant questions are ultimately the keys to success."  Christine M. Riordan https://hbr.org/2014/01/three-ways-leaders-can-listen-with-more-empathy/

How to Really Listen to Your Employees, Sara Stibitz:

https://hbr.org/2015/01/how-to-really-listen-to-your-employees

Make Your Interactions a Spectator Sport

As we all work through our own self-improvements, we recognize the value of introspection, but have you ever stepped off the field and into the stands to analyze your interactions with others?  It's easy to observe other people's behavior and feel like you have a good understanding why they responded as they did in a given situation.  "Bob must be having a bad day.  He's a real bear this morning." The fact is that the play on the field looks a whole lot different when you look at it from an external perspective.

Sometimes this technique is called "taking a balcony view", and it is used to help you look not through your own eyes as a participant in the situation, but as an external observer who can see their own as well as other's behaviors.  Think about going to the theatre to see a play.  You observe not only the actors, but their costumes, set, and placement on the stage.  It is all of these layers that make up the overall experience and perceptions.

Your challenge this week is to take a balcony view in your next meeting or interaction.  You should pay particular attention to looking not just at others, but try to see yourself on the overall stage.  The key takeaway is to notice how your observations change from your new perspective in the balcony as a patron of the show!

#mondaymover 

You're Excluding Half of Your Team and Probably Don't Even Know It

Make this one change to the way you brainstorm in your next meeting, and you will see greater engagement, more efficient use of time and double the number of good ideas.  Typical brainstorming techniques require participants to quickly generate ideas that get captured on either a whiteboard or by a meeting scribe.  Often the ideas come fast and furious, but usually from the same one or two people.  How do these dynamos do it, meeting after meeting generating lists of ideas while others seem to sit idly by?

The answer can be found in the science of personality typing: extroverts versus introverts.  Someone with extrovert tendencies has their dopamine reward system wired to novel and fast-paced situations, while introverts tend more towards observation and internal debate before speaking.  It isn't hard to see why extroverts thrive and introverts languish in brainstorming sessions, and why you could be unknowingly silencing some of the best ideas, all in the name of better collaboration.

The fix is easy.  The next time you schedule a meeting, ask participants to generate a few ideas ahead of time.  Appoint someone to collect everyone's ideas and then list them for discussion during the meeting.  Bonus:  If you want to not only positively impact your brainstorming, but also buy yourself some insurance against group think, try employing a technique on independent judgement.  Prior to discussing an issue of importance, ask participants to jot down a short summary of their own position.

Cast Off the Work Life Balance Chains

There is no such thing as a work life balance. When we think in terms of either or, we create a stressful imbalance that cannot find equilibrium. When you are working you realize that you are mindfully choosing to ignore other life issues, while when you are not working you feel overwhelmed when you think about all the tasks piling up and requiring attention. What we need is mindfulness and perspective to help our brains cope. 

Regardless of the task, whether work or life related, stop for a moment to appreciate it and consider the positive impact it is making.  Remind yourself that this is the most important thing you could be doing right now.  Once you learn to be mindful the weight of cognitive dissonance will no longer ballast your thinking.

"For there is nothing either good or

bad, but thinking makes it so." Hamlet, Act 2, Sc. 2

Biases, I've Got a Few: WYSIATI and Action Bias

Use the fact that you have an automatic bias thinking system hard wired into your brain to make better decisions.  Whether you call it gut instinct or confirmation bias, there is an important part of your decision making process that is necessary to your continued existence: jumping to conclusions based on what you see (WYS) immediately in front of you.  Do you really need to debate with yourself about jumping out of the way of the oncoming car as you cross the street?

You can't help yourself.  The brain considers all before it as if that is all there is (IATI).  Knowing this bias, you have a huge advantage to countermand your brain's What You See Is All There Is thinking.  In "Thinking, Fast and Slow", Daniel Kahneman demonstrates WYSIATI thinking with a practical example.  If someone asks you what type of leader your boss is, good or bad leader, you can probably give a quick response.  You likely did this without first considering what traits make a good boss, didn't you?

When you take on a new project, it's common to start getting things done right away, before you consider what a good outcome really looks like.  The progress you make initially soon wanes as you quickly move from autopilot to more detailed tasks, and now the end goal somehow feels farther away than when you started.  Similarly to WYSIATI, our bias to action is perfect for simple tasks and helpful in creating a sense of urgency, but impedes us in long term, quality decision making.

What can you do about your biases?  Absolutely nothing.  Instead, work to recognize these forces in your brain are at work and take the next step to actively consider if the task requires longer reflection or not.  After all, jumping out of the way of an oncoming car is usually the right decision.

The Economics of Attitude

It's the first Monday of 2015, so let's start the new year off with a clean slate. Social psychologists talk of an emotional bank account that we build with each other. Perhaps someone you know has overdrawn with you. Rather than stamping insufficient funds, consider them paid in full and wipe their debt away today. Don't just do this with debtors. Take today to start fresh with everyone, including yourself. #mondaymover