Life is a series of transitions!
During our day we transition between different environments and different roles. Each environment and role requires a very different and specific mindset. For example work has a very different mindset to home, an internal meeting has a very different mindset to a meeting with a client. If you are a manager doing tasks at your desk requires a very different mindset to leading and interacting with your team.
When we can align our mind set with that of the environment or role we are more engaged and get greater performance.
If we don’t, the fall out can be detrimental!
I first got interested in this concept of transitions when I was doing work with some special forces soldiers. Their biggest challenge they face was not to stay alive their biggest challenge was to stay married. Some of their units have huge divorce rates. The reason is that their day job (if you can call it that) and their home life are incredibly different and they struggle moving from one environment to the next. In my conversations they all said, “I don’t find it hard to be away from home doing the job, the hard part is when I come home. For the first couple of weeks I really struggle reconnecting with the family, because I have to think, feel and act very differently to when I am away doing my job”.
During the day if we don’t manage our transitions right it makes it very hard to be engaged in the environment we are moving into.
Karen Matthews (the CEO of Elle bache) once said to me I used to show up at work with the mindset that I was a bad mother because I was not at home with my kids and then when I went home I had the mindset that I was a bad CEO because I was not at work. I was miserable!
Do you ever feel like you are reacting to each environment rather than controlling them?
Do you feel like you have so many different roles and not pleasing anyone in any of them?
I said to Karen “how did you fix it?” She said “I realised that I’m only human and I will no longer apologise for my life. Now when I am at work I am at work, and when I am home I am at home.
In the last 14 years I have had the honour of working with people in many different fields and many different levels. What I noticed is that some people seemed to make like look easy while others seemed to make it look all so hard.
I started to research what was the difference between the two groups.
What I found is that the people that make it look easy show up with the right mindset! Specifically they show up with the right:
Thoughts Emotions Physiology
Busy people who achieved work life balance did so not because of the time they spent in each part of their life. They got it because they showed up with the right mindset. When they were at home they were engaged, present, compassionate, tolerant and attentive. When they turned up at work they were focused, had clarity of vision, positive mindset, positive emotion and energized physiology.
Our thoughts, emotions and physiology determine our performance we need to manage these three things when we transition.
For example most people fear Public Speaking. If you fear public speaking how what thoughts are going through your head as you walk up to present? “Don’t stuff up”, “Whats my first line?”, “They are looking at me”
What emotions do you feel? Fear, Anxiety, Terror.
How is your physiology? Tense, stressed, stiff!
I ask you how do those thoughts, emotions and physiology set you up for your presentation. Well they set you up to fail!
Contemplate this how do you show up at work?
Hewitt’s survey’s have shown that 55% of the work force have no enthusiasm for their job, NONE! Not a shred! Moreover, 18% are so disengaged that the company would be better off if they stayed at home.
Now if you are in that 55% or heaven forbid that 18%, what thoughts do you have as you show up at work.
“Here we go again, I cant believe I am stuck in this crappy job!” “When is Friday coming?”
What emotions do you have? Sadness, disengagement, frustration, guilt, anger.
How is your physiology? Low energy and slumped.
How do you show up when you get into work? What thoughts, emotions and physiology do you bring into the work place. How do you affect your environment?
Many people believe that culture in an organization comes from the top down. I believe that it also comes from the bottom up. Our thoughts, emotions and physiology have an impact on our environment and the culture of our organization. You have to ask yourself how do I affect the culture of my organisation?
Even just our emotions affect our environment. Scientists have discovered mirror cells in our brain which pick up on the emotion of those people around us. Following the identification of the emotion they then replicate that emotion within us.
When you have an internal meeting how do you affect the culture of your team? Are you the pain in the bum that brings everyone down or do you lift them up by focusing on solutions, and being engaged.
The only thing you have control of is how you show up. You cant control the fact that your manager has been taking pain in the arse pills for the last couple of years you cant control that the board you report to is very intrusive and set unrealistic expectations. You can only control how you show up. We need to park the victim mentality of my life is so hard. It may be but regardless of circumstances we can control how we show up.
So what is the solution? Start to manage our transitions!
The question is what do we do in the transitional space between environments. This transitional space is called the 3rd Space. Do we use the 3rd Space where we regulate our Emotions, Thoughts and Physiology to help us in the next environment. Managing this space takes us away from having a victim mentality to an empowered mentality.
Lets look at one transition in detail. The transition from work to home.
As a workplace performance consultant working with thousands of people each year, the number one complaint I hear is that people don’t get enough time to spend with their family. Yet when most people get home what are they thinking about? ……. WORK!!!! Due to the rising levels of stress and pressure fewer and fewer people are truly engaged and present with their family members at the end of the day. Most people arrive home and even though they have physically left the office, mentally they are still there.
In affect we are taking the work mind set home with us.
For example the mindset during most peoples working day is one of fast pace, time scarcity, competition, high expectations, and decisive decisions. Compare that to the mindset of our home, which is slower paced, nurturing, supportive, and far less focused on outcomes and performance. Obviously these two environments are very different and making the mistake of entering one environment with the mindset of the other is a recipe for disaster. The research I have done into this issue revealed that most people are carrying the mindset of the work environment home with them and they are expecting their home to run like their office. One executive from a large financial institution articulated this problem perfectly. “Because I work such long hours I rush home at the end of the day, the problem is that my mind is still in work mode and I try to run my home like my office. I walk in the door and I finish my wife’s sentences because she doesn’t talk fast enough, I yell at the kids because they are not time efficient. I drive my family crazy!”
The result of this inability to switch into the home channel, leads to family tension, disengagement and a serious decline in personal relationships. The key to switching from work to home is managing your “Third Space”. Your third space is where you alter your mind set to suit that of the environment you are going into; it is a formal time where you consciously switch over. A coaching client of mine who works in a high-pressure environment has his third place down to a tee, the result is that despite the stress of his job he manages to be incredibly patient, supportive and attuned to his home environment.
When he enters the house at the end of the day, he goes straight to his room without talking to the family, takes off his suit, has a shower, does 5 minutes of meditation and then writes down all the things that were bothering him. Then he goes out to greet the family. This ritual allows him to release the stress of the day and switch onto the home channel by altering his mindset to suit his environment.
Other people I have worked with have their own variation of the third space. Some people use the train trip home, while others uses the gym. One female executive parks her car three streets away from her house and sits in her car for 5 minutes practicing meditation to calm down before she walks in the door. That is her third space.
One thing that the third space does is that it helps you to be more “present” when you are with your family. “Being Present” is a term to describe living in the here and now. It’s about focusing on the current task so much so that you lose yourself in what ever you are doing. If you are writing a report, focus entirely on that report without thinking of the other things you need to do later in the day. Likewise if you are having a conversation with someone totally immerse yourself in that conversation, don’t let your mind drift. So often we have conversations and we are not really present, we might be talking to that person but we are thinking about other things. Business is built on relationships, the greatest complement you can give another person is your undivided attention. We all have a highly tuned BS detector, and we know when people are not truly engaged or listening to us. Some people believe that being present is the key to team building.
In addition some psychologist are now talking about the concept that people are creating fewer and fewer memories. The reason for this is that memories are created in the present and the fact that most people are either obsessing about the past or worrying about the future means that they are not laying down current memories.
The third space facilitates the chance of choose how you show up and what thoughts, emotions and physiology do I bring to my new environment or role.
Are you managing the Third Space?
Dr Adam's Blog
Watch this space for Dr Adams latest research findings and presentation topics
Find Your Third Space – to show up with the right Thoughts, Emotions and Physiology
Adam Fraser - Wednesday, April 06, 2011
Is my computer making me dumb?
Adam Fraser - Tuesday, April 05, 2011
An article from the Guardian Newspaper on the 24 of Feb 09 quoted Susan Greenfield professor of synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln college, Oxford, as saying that Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Bebo are “Rotting our Brains”.
In a presentation to the House of Lords she was quoted as saying, “social networking sites are devoid of cohesive narrative and long-term significance. As a consequence, the mid-21st century mind might almost be infantilised, characterised by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathise and a shaky sense of identity".
Before we go any further there is no hard science behind any of her claims as social networking sites have not been around long enough to measure their impact. However it is important to have the debate.
In particular the Prof was concerned about their impact on children. She says "If the young brain is exposed from the outset to a world of fast action and reaction, of instant new screen images flashing up with the press of a key, such rapid interchange might accustom the brain to operate over such timescales. Perhaps when in the real world such responses are not immediately forthcoming, we will see such behaviours and call them attention-deficit disorder. It might be helpful to investigate whether the near total submersion of our culture in screen technologies over the last decade might in some way be linked to the threefold increase over this period in prescriptions for methylphenidate, the drug prescribed for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Greenfield also warned there was a risk of loss of empathy as children read novels less. "Unlike the game to rescue the princess, where the goal is to feel rewarded, the aim of reading a book is, after all, to find out more about the princess herself."
Before we climb on her band wagon we have to make sure that we are not just falling into the “kids of today”, style view of generational decline. When the clock was developed, society predicted that people would no longer enjoy the moment, the printing press was touted as making us all intellectually lazy, and finally the telephone was going to make us all anti-social. With any social change we often predict that everything is going to hell in a hand basket.
Having saying that networking sites don’t get off the hook that easily and we need to be aware of some of their dangers.
Common concerns are:
1. Online experiences are superficial and do not lead to cognitive development.
2. Instant response and high accessibility will lead to poor attention spans and difficulty interacting with people face to face. Also they feed a preference for immediacy.
3. Reduced social intelligence through poor awareness of social cues, inability to read facial expressions and a lack of empathy for other people.
4. Long screen time is directly correlated with obesity and metabolic disease in both adults and children.
Even though these concerns seem to make logical sense it is only point 4 that has some hard research behind it. Having said that previous research has proven that days of constant interruption and distractions leads to poor attention control and focus. Therefore the big question is, am I using these sites as a tool or are they running my life.
So what is the verdict? Well if we want hard facts the only thing is we can say is watch this space, to see what new research comes up with.
However intuitively we need to be discerning about how much time we spend on these. Social networking sites can be great to develop relationships and they can even be used as a business tool. But they can also take over and reduce our productivity.
Are you a Twit?
Another player in the market is Twitter (Twitter.com). Twitters tag line is “What are you doing?”. In a nut shell you update your profile (under 140 characters) so that people can find out what you are doing at any moment, from “Mowing the lawn” to “Having coffee”. The number of people using Twitter is growing at 1,382 percent.
The question is do people really need that information?
Milwaukee Bucks (basketball) forward Charlie Villanueva got a severe talking-to from his coach when he learned that Villanueva posted a message to his Twitter feed — a “tweet” — from his mobile phone during halftime while he was playing Boston.
Some celebrities are using it too, you can find out what Brittany Spears is doing with her time, mmmm maybe not the best choice, as well as Hiliary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Is Twitter keeping us connected or is it unnecessarily distracting us?
With any tool we have to be discerning about the impact it has on our lives and whether it is adding to our quality of life or diminishing it.
In a presentation to the House of Lords she was quoted as saying, “social networking sites are devoid of cohesive narrative and long-term significance. As a consequence, the mid-21st century mind might almost be infantilised, characterised by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathise and a shaky sense of identity".
Before we go any further there is no hard science behind any of her claims as social networking sites have not been around long enough to measure their impact. However it is important to have the debate.
In particular the Prof was concerned about their impact on children. She says "If the young brain is exposed from the outset to a world of fast action and reaction, of instant new screen images flashing up with the press of a key, such rapid interchange might accustom the brain to operate over such timescales. Perhaps when in the real world such responses are not immediately forthcoming, we will see such behaviours and call them attention-deficit disorder. It might be helpful to investigate whether the near total submersion of our culture in screen technologies over the last decade might in some way be linked to the threefold increase over this period in prescriptions for methylphenidate, the drug prescribed for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Greenfield also warned there was a risk of loss of empathy as children read novels less. "Unlike the game to rescue the princess, where the goal is to feel rewarded, the aim of reading a book is, after all, to find out more about the princess herself."
Before we climb on her band wagon we have to make sure that we are not just falling into the “kids of today”, style view of generational decline. When the clock was developed, society predicted that people would no longer enjoy the moment, the printing press was touted as making us all intellectually lazy, and finally the telephone was going to make us all anti-social. With any social change we often predict that everything is going to hell in a hand basket.
Having saying that networking sites don’t get off the hook that easily and we need to be aware of some of their dangers.
Common concerns are:
1. Online experiences are superficial and do not lead to cognitive development.
2. Instant response and high accessibility will lead to poor attention spans and difficulty interacting with people face to face. Also they feed a preference for immediacy.
3. Reduced social intelligence through poor awareness of social cues, inability to read facial expressions and a lack of empathy for other people.
4. Long screen time is directly correlated with obesity and metabolic disease in both adults and children.
Even though these concerns seem to make logical sense it is only point 4 that has some hard research behind it. Having said that previous research has proven that days of constant interruption and distractions leads to poor attention control and focus. Therefore the big question is, am I using these sites as a tool or are they running my life.
So what is the verdict? Well if we want hard facts the only thing is we can say is watch this space, to see what new research comes up with.
However intuitively we need to be discerning about how much time we spend on these. Social networking sites can be great to develop relationships and they can even be used as a business tool. But they can also take over and reduce our productivity.
Are you a Twit?
Another player in the market is Twitter (Twitter.com). Twitters tag line is “What are you doing?”. In a nut shell you update your profile (under 140 characters) so that people can find out what you are doing at any moment, from “Mowing the lawn” to “Having coffee”. The number of people using Twitter is growing at 1,382 percent.
The question is do people really need that information?
Milwaukee Bucks (basketball) forward Charlie Villanueva got a severe talking-to from his coach when he learned that Villanueva posted a message to his Twitter feed — a “tweet” — from his mobile phone during halftime while he was playing Boston.
Some celebrities are using it too, you can find out what Brittany Spears is doing with her time, mmmm maybe not the best choice, as well as Hiliary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Is Twitter keeping us connected or is it unnecessarily distracting us?
With any tool we have to be discerning about the impact it has on our lives and whether it is adding to our quality of life or diminishing it.
Intention vs. Behaviour
Adam Fraser - Thursday, March 31, 2011
Why do I offend people with my behaviour when my intention is good?
I have never met a CEO whose intention was to drive down share prices, create a bad culture, or lose market shares. However, I have met many who have done this unintentionally!
I have never met a manager who wanted to disengage their staff, destroy team cohesion, and ‘drop the ball’ on projects. However, I have met many who have done this by consequence.
I have never met an employee whose intention was to create trouble in their team, undermine their manager, and bitch about their co-workers. However I have met many who have fallen into this trap.
I recently spoke at a conference for a large organisation that was implementing a new strategy whilst moving into a very bold and exciting new area of business. In fact, I was very excited to talk to the employees of this organisation because what the company was trying to achieve was ground breaking. Before I presented, the GM of that area got up and spoke to the team about this new venture.
It was a disaster! He came off bullish, gruff, and his sentiment was, “We are going in this direction and you better get on-board or else”. After he finished I asked him (very carefully) what his intention was for that presentation. He replied, “I wanted to show them how important this move is for the company and how I am 100% on-board, as they should be. They are such a great bunch of people, and I wanted to motivate them and show them how passionate I am about this”. I was amazed that his intention was so pure, yet his behaviour conveyed anything but.
From this, I realised that intention is very different to behaviour. This is a problem because we judge our own behaviour on our intent, yet we judge others on their behaviour. We find that if we say something with good intentions to someone and they get offended, our internal response is, “Why did that person become offended? I was just trying to help!”
Perhaps someone in our team is curt with us and we think, “Why are they being so horrible to me?” when really they just have a lot on their minds and their intention is only to be efficient in their response. Why does this mismatch happen? Because we know our intent, yet all others see is our behaviour.
I brought this up during a workshop I was running with a leadership team. It had a profound impact on the mood of the room and you could see them take a collective sigh of relief. Following this people were far more open to talk about some of the behaviours they were displaying that may have a detrimental impact on the team. In addition, the atmosphere lightened and they didn’t take offense when other people mentioned some of their personal behaviours that were challenging for the team. It was one of the most non-judgemental interactions I have ever seen.
There are two things to learn from this:
1. We need to be more self aware about our behaviour because it may not be aligned to our intent. How do we do this?
a. Have greater consciousness about your behaviour and its possible impact – think about how you ‘show up’.
b. Ask for feedback from people about your behaviour.
c. When they give you feedback on your behaviour, put your ego to the side and don’t take offense. Remember that behaviour is different to intent.
d. Set up a culture around yourself where others find it ok to give you feedback on your behaviour. Don’t create an internal ‘black book’ whenever someone feeds back anything that you don’t like.
2. That we shouldn’t be so quick to judge peoples’ behaviour because their intent may be pure.
a. Be honest and ask people what their intent was.
b. Tell them what the impact of their behaviour was on you and ask yourself if matched their intent.
c. Cut the people around you some slack and realise their intent may be good.
I have never met a CEO whose intention was to drive down share prices, create a bad culture, or lose market shares. However, I have met many who have done this unintentionally!
I have never met a manager who wanted to disengage their staff, destroy team cohesion, and ‘drop the ball’ on projects. However, I have met many who have done this by consequence.
I have never met an employee whose intention was to create trouble in their team, undermine their manager, and bitch about their co-workers. However I have met many who have fallen into this trap.
I recently spoke at a conference for a large organisation that was implementing a new strategy whilst moving into a very bold and exciting new area of business. In fact, I was very excited to talk to the employees of this organisation because what the company was trying to achieve was ground breaking. Before I presented, the GM of that area got up and spoke to the team about this new venture.
It was a disaster! He came off bullish, gruff, and his sentiment was, “We are going in this direction and you better get on-board or else”. After he finished I asked him (very carefully) what his intention was for that presentation. He replied, “I wanted to show them how important this move is for the company and how I am 100% on-board, as they should be. They are such a great bunch of people, and I wanted to motivate them and show them how passionate I am about this”. I was amazed that his intention was so pure, yet his behaviour conveyed anything but.
From this, I realised that intention is very different to behaviour. This is a problem because we judge our own behaviour on our intent, yet we judge others on their behaviour. We find that if we say something with good intentions to someone and they get offended, our internal response is, “Why did that person become offended? I was just trying to help!”
Perhaps someone in our team is curt with us and we think, “Why are they being so horrible to me?” when really they just have a lot on their minds and their intention is only to be efficient in their response. Why does this mismatch happen? Because we know our intent, yet all others see is our behaviour.
I brought this up during a workshop I was running with a leadership team. It had a profound impact on the mood of the room and you could see them take a collective sigh of relief. Following this people were far more open to talk about some of the behaviours they were displaying that may have a detrimental impact on the team. In addition, the atmosphere lightened and they didn’t take offense when other people mentioned some of their personal behaviours that were challenging for the team. It was one of the most non-judgemental interactions I have ever seen.
There are two things to learn from this:
1. We need to be more self aware about our behaviour because it may not be aligned to our intent. How do we do this?
a. Have greater consciousness about your behaviour and its possible impact – think about how you ‘show up’.
b. Ask for feedback from people about your behaviour.
c. When they give you feedback on your behaviour, put your ego to the side and don’t take offense. Remember that behaviour is different to intent.
d. Set up a culture around yourself where others find it ok to give you feedback on your behaviour. Don’t create an internal ‘black book’ whenever someone feeds back anything that you don’t like.
2. That we shouldn’t be so quick to judge peoples’ behaviour because their intent may be pure.
a. Be honest and ask people what their intent was.
b. Tell them what the impact of their behaviour was on you and ask yourself if matched their intent.
c. Cut the people around you some slack and realise their intent may be good.
Embrace Your Dysfunction
Adam Fraser - Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Recently I was talking to an executive about their leadership strategies. They rated themselves very highly, saying things like, “I am really empathetic and I create an environment where people can express things to me without retribution. Also I see myself as a coach who fosters my team’s development and have a strong relationship with each and every one of them”. Then I spoke to the team to get feedback their leadership style. I heard things like, “they are an ego maniac who’s only focus is to better their career; they are a tyrant who uses fear to get people to engage.” I was gobsmacked at this leader’s lack of self-awareness. Then that night I came across the following quote:
“If you’re pretty crazy then you’re in good company because the human race as a whole is out of it's goddam head. Now all of you, of course, know this about others – about your mother and father and sister and brothers and friends and wives and husbands. You know how nutty they are. Now the problem is to admit this about yourself, and then do something about it.”
Who made such a confronting and hard-hitting statement? It was none other than Albert Ellis, one of the most well respected clinical psychologists to draw breath and pioneer of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. Then it dawned on me that he is right!
The most common thing I hear when people come up to me after I finish a presentation is, “If only my partner were here, they need this stuff” or “If only my team were here, they are so negative and dysfunctional”. No one has ever said “Wow I just realised that I am the dysfunctional pain in the ass in my team. I have been stirring up trouble and undermining my manager for years, I need to fix this.”
We seem to chronically lack self-awareness. Being self-aware is an immense skill that is needed by all of us whether we are a leader or a team member.
I recently conducted a workshop called “It’s not me, it’s you!” which talked about the dysfunctions of teams. One of the greatest dysfunctions we can have in a team is that its members have a low level of self-awareness and a high level of judgement. We often think that our behaviour is reasonable and are quick to judge the people who lead/manage us; our team members; and the people we lead. The question is why? Well that is the $64,000 dollar question! It comes down to a number of reasons:
1. It is easier to blame others than look at our own behaviour.
2. It feels good to judge others, because we feel so right.
3. When we publically blame/judge/persecute others we elevate ourselves in the social hierarchy.
4. We are simply ignorant to our behaviour at times.
5. We simply can’t entertain the thought that we are not perfect.
Halfway through the workshop we talked about how it is ok to admit that we get things wrong and we are never going to act perfectly all the time. Also we looked at how we can exhibit some dysfunctional behaviour and still be a good person. Following this there seemed to be a collective sigh of relief, people started to open up and they talked about how they thought that getting negative feedback on their behaviour was a personal attack. It started a conversation that we rarely have yet so desperately need to. It opened up dialogue and made it ok to have these often challenging conversations.
Then someone in the group said that they had a great leader in their organisation. She said that what made them great was that they asked for feedback on their behaviour and took it on board without taking offence and making the team pay for it later. “One day I told my manager that when things are very busy and we have tight deadlines, they become aggressive and curt. This really unsettles the team and reduces our productivity and shoots up our stress levels. The great thing was his response to this. He said he had no idea he acted like this, then apologised and said “I will really work on this and when we have our monthly catch ups can you let me know how I am going?”
My challenge to you is make a concerted effort to improve your self-awareness.
Step 1: Start to objectively observe your behaviour. Is it reasonable? Do you get involved in office gossip? Are you overly sensitive? Do you persecute people in the organisation without talking to them about issues?
Step 2: Start to examine how your behaviour impacts on other people around you. In my seminars I talk about a concept called “Showing Up”, it looks at how we show up for each part of our life. In a sense it is about taking personal responsibility for the state we “show up in”. Can we show up more enthusiastic, more empathetic, more engaged?
Step 3: Allow people to give you honest feedback on your behaviour. When was the last time you allowed someone to tell us how it is?
Step 4: Can you park your ego and take the feedback on board, rather than take offense and keep it in your black book to use against them later on? To do this we have to be comfortable and secure in who we are. The best leaders/team members are the ones that don’t have to prove anything and aren’t driven by their ego.
Go forth and embrace your dysfunction!
“If you’re pretty crazy then you’re in good company because the human race as a whole is out of it's goddam head. Now all of you, of course, know this about others – about your mother and father and sister and brothers and friends and wives and husbands. You know how nutty they are. Now the problem is to admit this about yourself, and then do something about it.”
Who made such a confronting and hard-hitting statement? It was none other than Albert Ellis, one of the most well respected clinical psychologists to draw breath and pioneer of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. Then it dawned on me that he is right!
The most common thing I hear when people come up to me after I finish a presentation is, “If only my partner were here, they need this stuff” or “If only my team were here, they are so negative and dysfunctional”. No one has ever said “Wow I just realised that I am the dysfunctional pain in the ass in my team. I have been stirring up trouble and undermining my manager for years, I need to fix this.”
We seem to chronically lack self-awareness. Being self-aware is an immense skill that is needed by all of us whether we are a leader or a team member.
I recently conducted a workshop called “It’s not me, it’s you!” which talked about the dysfunctions of teams. One of the greatest dysfunctions we can have in a team is that its members have a low level of self-awareness and a high level of judgement. We often think that our behaviour is reasonable and are quick to judge the people who lead/manage us; our team members; and the people we lead. The question is why? Well that is the $64,000 dollar question! It comes down to a number of reasons:
1. It is easier to blame others than look at our own behaviour.
2. It feels good to judge others, because we feel so right.
3. When we publically blame/judge/persecute others we elevate ourselves in the social hierarchy.
4. We are simply ignorant to our behaviour at times.
5. We simply can’t entertain the thought that we are not perfect.
Halfway through the workshop we talked about how it is ok to admit that we get things wrong and we are never going to act perfectly all the time. Also we looked at how we can exhibit some dysfunctional behaviour and still be a good person. Following this there seemed to be a collective sigh of relief, people started to open up and they talked about how they thought that getting negative feedback on their behaviour was a personal attack. It started a conversation that we rarely have yet so desperately need to. It opened up dialogue and made it ok to have these often challenging conversations.
Then someone in the group said that they had a great leader in their organisation. She said that what made them great was that they asked for feedback on their behaviour and took it on board without taking offence and making the team pay for it later. “One day I told my manager that when things are very busy and we have tight deadlines, they become aggressive and curt. This really unsettles the team and reduces our productivity and shoots up our stress levels. The great thing was his response to this. He said he had no idea he acted like this, then apologised and said “I will really work on this and when we have our monthly catch ups can you let me know how I am going?”
My challenge to you is make a concerted effort to improve your self-awareness.
Step 1: Start to objectively observe your behaviour. Is it reasonable? Do you get involved in office gossip? Are you overly sensitive? Do you persecute people in the organisation without talking to them about issues?
Step 2: Start to examine how your behaviour impacts on other people around you. In my seminars I talk about a concept called “Showing Up”, it looks at how we show up for each part of our life. In a sense it is about taking personal responsibility for the state we “show up in”. Can we show up more enthusiastic, more empathetic, more engaged?
Step 3: Allow people to give you honest feedback on your behaviour. When was the last time you allowed someone to tell us how it is?
Step 4: Can you park your ego and take the feedback on board, rather than take offense and keep it in your black book to use against them later on? To do this we have to be comfortable and secure in who we are. The best leaders/team members are the ones that don’t have to prove anything and aren’t driven by their ego.
Go forth and embrace your dysfunction!
Celebrating in relationships
Adam Fraser - Wednesday, March 23, 2011
What is the key to a great relationship?
You only have to look at the climbing divorce rates to realise that our romantic relationships are suffering. Recently I had the pleasure of spending the day with Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology and the author of “Learned Optimism” and “Authentic Happiness” (basically this guy is a serious legend and one of the most respected psychologists on the planet). His view of marriage counselling was that it simply taught people how to argue better. In other words, the psychologist just shows them how to argue their point more effectively. Seligman’s view is that we should not focus on the pathology (the problem) in relationships and start working on the positive side of the relationship. His theory is that if you work on the positives the pathology seems to disappear. Rather than working on what is broken, build on what is already working.
His research shows that the key to successful relationships is celebrating. Specifically, the key to a good relationship is not how you respond when they come home with a complaint, rather, how do you respond to them when they come home with a victory? We can respond to someone on two levels.
1. The energy you bring – which can be either active or passive.
2. The impact you have – constructive or destructive.
For example your partner comes home and announces that they got a promotion at work.
Passive/destructive – “That’s good, did you manage to pick up my dry cleaning on the way home?” Obviously not good, you are not involved (passive) and that is a destructive statement.
Active/destructive - “What tax bracket will that put us in?” Once again not good, this time you are involved, meaning you are engaging in the event (active) but that is a destructive statement.
Passive/constructive – “That’s great Hun, you really deserve it, well done.” Even though this is a constructive thing to say, it is passive you are just praising not getting involved in what they have done. Seligman’s research shows us that this statement does nothing to deepen the relationship.
What you want to aim for is active/constructive – this means getting involved in the experience, helping them relive it and analyse it and learn from it. For example “Wow that is amazing! Tell me about what happened? How did that make you feel? What does that mean for your role now? Why did you think you got the promotion? What did you do well that enabled you to get it? How can you use those skills to other parts of your life”.
In effect you are helping them relive the experience and think about it deeply, taking that positivity and applying it to other parts of their life. People often make the mistake of thinking that we only bond over tragedy; we think we build relationships only when we counsel someone in bad times. However, a stronger bond is built when we help people celebrate a victory. I see this first hand in my workshops when I get people to reflect on a time when they have had FLOW (being in the zone where they are completely immersed in a task and do it successfully), the other person coaches them to describe how it felt, the emotion they experienced, why they think they achieved FLOW, how they felt afterwards. When this occurs you feel the energy in the room change, people bond and people are almost friends by the end of it.
You have to ask yourself do I help people in my personal life celebrate victory? What about at work? If you are a leader or manager do you just point out what people need to do better or do you reflect and focus on what they have done well. Do you get them to analyse it and relive it with them? With your team can you introduce WWW into your team? WWW stands for What Went Well? The cynics hear this and think it is far too fluffy and wet. However if you look at any piece of research on this and it will tell you that reflecting on success gives you optimistic thoughts and puts you in a state of positive emotion.
Conclusively we know that positive emotion and optimistic thoughts, accelerate learning, broadens attention and increases creativity. Also over our lifetime if we consistently feel positive emotion and optimistic thoughts we have better health, earn more money, have better relationships, live longer, and have a better quality of life. The best thing about WWW is that it is an addictive habit. So many of the new habits we try to install in our life are not self-perpetuating (don’t build on themselves), for example cutting out junk food. This is not difficult to make routine – the more you do WWW the more you want to do it. The more you do this with your team the more they will want to do it.
Personally my wife and I started this habit at the end of the day and we are definitely noticing the benefits. Furthermore, the more we do it the more it builds on itself. Do you “show up” ready to celebrate or criticise?
You only have to look at the climbing divorce rates to realise that our romantic relationships are suffering. Recently I had the pleasure of spending the day with Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology and the author of “Learned Optimism” and “Authentic Happiness” (basically this guy is a serious legend and one of the most respected psychologists on the planet). His view of marriage counselling was that it simply taught people how to argue better. In other words, the psychologist just shows them how to argue their point more effectively. Seligman’s view is that we should not focus on the pathology (the problem) in relationships and start working on the positive side of the relationship. His theory is that if you work on the positives the pathology seems to disappear. Rather than working on what is broken, build on what is already working.
His research shows that the key to successful relationships is celebrating. Specifically, the key to a good relationship is not how you respond when they come home with a complaint, rather, how do you respond to them when they come home with a victory? We can respond to someone on two levels.
1. The energy you bring – which can be either active or passive.
2. The impact you have – constructive or destructive.
For example your partner comes home and announces that they got a promotion at work.
Passive/destructive – “That’s good, did you manage to pick up my dry cleaning on the way home?” Obviously not good, you are not involved (passive) and that is a destructive statement.
Active/destructive - “What tax bracket will that put us in?” Once again not good, this time you are involved, meaning you are engaging in the event (active) but that is a destructive statement.
Passive/constructive – “That’s great Hun, you really deserve it, well done.” Even though this is a constructive thing to say, it is passive you are just praising not getting involved in what they have done. Seligman’s research shows us that this statement does nothing to deepen the relationship.
What you want to aim for is active/constructive – this means getting involved in the experience, helping them relive it and analyse it and learn from it. For example “Wow that is amazing! Tell me about what happened? How did that make you feel? What does that mean for your role now? Why did you think you got the promotion? What did you do well that enabled you to get it? How can you use those skills to other parts of your life”.
In effect you are helping them relive the experience and think about it deeply, taking that positivity and applying it to other parts of their life. People often make the mistake of thinking that we only bond over tragedy; we think we build relationships only when we counsel someone in bad times. However, a stronger bond is built when we help people celebrate a victory. I see this first hand in my workshops when I get people to reflect on a time when they have had FLOW (being in the zone where they are completely immersed in a task and do it successfully), the other person coaches them to describe how it felt, the emotion they experienced, why they think they achieved FLOW, how they felt afterwards. When this occurs you feel the energy in the room change, people bond and people are almost friends by the end of it.
You have to ask yourself do I help people in my personal life celebrate victory? What about at work? If you are a leader or manager do you just point out what people need to do better or do you reflect and focus on what they have done well. Do you get them to analyse it and relive it with them? With your team can you introduce WWW into your team? WWW stands for What Went Well? The cynics hear this and think it is far too fluffy and wet. However if you look at any piece of research on this and it will tell you that reflecting on success gives you optimistic thoughts and puts you in a state of positive emotion.
Conclusively we know that positive emotion and optimistic thoughts, accelerate learning, broadens attention and increases creativity. Also over our lifetime if we consistently feel positive emotion and optimistic thoughts we have better health, earn more money, have better relationships, live longer, and have a better quality of life. The best thing about WWW is that it is an addictive habit. So many of the new habits we try to install in our life are not self-perpetuating (don’t build on themselves), for example cutting out junk food. This is not difficult to make routine – the more you do WWW the more you want to do it. The more you do this with your team the more they will want to do it.
Personally my wife and I started this habit at the end of the day and we are definitely noticing the benefits. Furthermore, the more we do it the more it builds on itself. Do you “show up” ready to celebrate or criticise?
Being bullied by your environment? Get control back!
Adam Fraser - Wednesday, March 16, 2011
You’re writing a proposal to a client, the email alert goes off and you think “I will just check it”.
Someone wants you to move a meeting. Damn!
You spend the next 10 minutes sorting and co-ordinating calenders.
Back to the proposal! “Where was I? What did I want to say next ……..?
A few minutes later the phone rings. It’s a co-worker ringing to vent about a meeting they just had with a difficult client 13 minutes go by.
Back to the proposal. Geez. “Bugger I had a great idea for a value add while I was on the phone what was it, I hate it when I cant remember Arghhhhh!!
Knock at the door! Its HR wanting to discuss the behaviour of a member of your team. 35 minutes later they leave.
“I HAVE TO GET THIS PROPOSAL DONE!!!!!!”
An outlook alert goes off. Meeting in 15 minutes! Damn forgot that one, need to go over the figures they want me to report on.
“Where has the day gone? I will have to finish the proposal at home”
Does this sound familiar?
Click here to download the full white paper.
Someone wants you to move a meeting. Damn!
You spend the next 10 minutes sorting and co-ordinating calenders.
Back to the proposal! “Where was I? What did I want to say next ……..?
A few minutes later the phone rings. It’s a co-worker ringing to vent about a meeting they just had with a difficult client 13 minutes go by.
Back to the proposal. Geez. “Bugger I had a great idea for a value add while I was on the phone what was it, I hate it when I cant remember Arghhhhh!!
Knock at the door! Its HR wanting to discuss the behaviour of a member of your team. 35 minutes later they leave.
“I HAVE TO GET THIS PROPOSAL DONE!!!!!!”
An outlook alert goes off. Meeting in 15 minutes! Damn forgot that one, need to go over the figures they want me to report on.
“Where has the day gone? I will have to finish the proposal at home”
Does this sound familiar?
Click here to download the full white paper.
Are you killing your co-workers?
Adam Fraser - Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Latest psychological research tells us that our emotions drive and guide our behaviour, develop or ruin relationships, guide attention and help us store memories. Put simply our emotions control our performance and quality of life. They even have a dramatic impact on our health as negative emotions lead to the release of toxic chemicals that damage our body. Intensive care units have shown that patients who are comforted by others have lower levels of stress hormones, lower blood pressure and even have lower secretion of artery clogging fatty acids.
Obviously emotions have a big impact on you, but do your emotions affect your environment?
The reality is that emotions are carried through your organisation like electricity through a cable.
Put another way your emotions are contagious. The question is are your emotions worth catching?
A closed loop system is one that regulates its self and is not influenced by the outside world. Your emotions/mood is an open loop system meaning that the environment affects them. This open loop system allows a mother to console her distraught child, or a manager to rev up their sales team.
This means that our mood affects the mood of our team. In 2000 Caroline Bartel at New York University and Richard Saavedra at the University of Michigan found that people in meetings adopted the same mood (good and bad) within 2 hours. They also found that teams of nurses and accountants tracked the same emotions over the week, even though they varied in terms of external stress and challenges.
Depending on what sort of emotions you bring to work you could be quite literally killing your co-workers. Pause for a moment and consider how do you affect the mood of your team? We so often only focus on the role of the leader, however we all affect the mood of our team.
Having said that the greatest influence on a team is the mood of the leader. It is so potent that many leaders should consider their primary task as the emotional leadership of their team. This is not to say that leaders cant have bad days, however research tells us that teams perform best and solid culture is built when the leader regularly has an optimistic, authentic and high energy mood.
Can we change our mood? In a word YES!. A person’s emotional state and attitude are not genetically hard wired, they can be changed. However we all have a bias towards a certain style and emotional set point.
The more we act in a certain way be it happy, cranky or sad, the more we reinforce that pattern in our brain and the more we act that way.
This is where emotional intelligence matters. An emotionally intelligent person can be self aware of their mood/emotions, change them for the better through self management, understand their impact through empathy and act so that they improve the emotional state of those around them.
Steps to improve you emotional state:
1. Picture it up!
What emotional state do you want to be in? Picture how you want to act, be perceived, what is the mood of your team like. Get a clear understanding of how you want things to be.
2. Take Stock!
Find out your starting point. Many leaders do not know how they affect their team and environment. I have spoken to many leaders to have them inform me of the great “vibe” in their team and how their team loves their leadership style. Only to be informed by the team that they see them as a “tyrant” and unapproachable. Park the ego and ask your team for feedback. The best way to do this in anonymously, you might also consider getting formal 360-degree feedback. In addition make it ok for your team to give you feedback on your emotional leadership. Relax we are not as perfect as we think we are.
3. Bridging the Gap!
How do you start to develop your leadership? First step is to up-skill yourself. Here are some things I have seen other leaders do in the past.
a. Simply start to research and educate yourself on this area through books and courses.
b. Take time to reflect, some of the best leaders I have worked with spend 30 mins a day reflecting on their emotional leadership. They analyse different situations during that day and examine how they reacted and how they could have responded in a better way.
c. Some look outside of work, they develop empathy and emotional regulation by coaching their children’s soccer team or devoting time to a local charity.
4. Practice Makes Perfect!
Choose one emotion to work on. For example you may choose to practice more patience with your co-workers, more empathy, greater optimism or simply look at removing anger and judgement from your leadership style. The way we change our behaviour, is to do and redo the new behaviour, over and over again. This breaks old neural patterns. An added bonus is that we can fast track this with visualisation. Imagining something in vivid detail fires the same brain cells and neural pathways that are actually involved in the real life task. Before a meeting or on the way to work start to run through your head and picture how you want to lead and manage your team.
5. Get some Help!
Find a coach or a colleague who you can debrief you activity with. I have encouraged many leaders in large corporates to form coaching groups where they discuss their challenges and how they handled them. The feedback has been that they are exceptionally beneficial.
Find a copy of this article here
Obviously emotions have a big impact on you, but do your emotions affect your environment?
The reality is that emotions are carried through your organisation like electricity through a cable.
Put another way your emotions are contagious. The question is are your emotions worth catching?
A closed loop system is one that regulates its self and is not influenced by the outside world. Your emotions/mood is an open loop system meaning that the environment affects them. This open loop system allows a mother to console her distraught child, or a manager to rev up their sales team.
This means that our mood affects the mood of our team. In 2000 Caroline Bartel at New York University and Richard Saavedra at the University of Michigan found that people in meetings adopted the same mood (good and bad) within 2 hours. They also found that teams of nurses and accountants tracked the same emotions over the week, even though they varied in terms of external stress and challenges.
Depending on what sort of emotions you bring to work you could be quite literally killing your co-workers. Pause for a moment and consider how do you affect the mood of your team? We so often only focus on the role of the leader, however we all affect the mood of our team.
Having said that the greatest influence on a team is the mood of the leader. It is so potent that many leaders should consider their primary task as the emotional leadership of their team. This is not to say that leaders cant have bad days, however research tells us that teams perform best and solid culture is built when the leader regularly has an optimistic, authentic and high energy mood.
Can we change our mood? In a word YES!. A person’s emotional state and attitude are not genetically hard wired, they can be changed. However we all have a bias towards a certain style and emotional set point.
The more we act in a certain way be it happy, cranky or sad, the more we reinforce that pattern in our brain and the more we act that way.
This is where emotional intelligence matters. An emotionally intelligent person can be self aware of their mood/emotions, change them for the better through self management, understand their impact through empathy and act so that they improve the emotional state of those around them.
Steps to improve you emotional state:
1. Picture it up!
What emotional state do you want to be in? Picture how you want to act, be perceived, what is the mood of your team like. Get a clear understanding of how you want things to be.
2. Take Stock!
Find out your starting point. Many leaders do not know how they affect their team and environment. I have spoken to many leaders to have them inform me of the great “vibe” in their team and how their team loves their leadership style. Only to be informed by the team that they see them as a “tyrant” and unapproachable. Park the ego and ask your team for feedback. The best way to do this in anonymously, you might also consider getting formal 360-degree feedback. In addition make it ok for your team to give you feedback on your emotional leadership. Relax we are not as perfect as we think we are.
3. Bridging the Gap!
How do you start to develop your leadership? First step is to up-skill yourself. Here are some things I have seen other leaders do in the past.
a. Simply start to research and educate yourself on this area through books and courses.
b. Take time to reflect, some of the best leaders I have worked with spend 30 mins a day reflecting on their emotional leadership. They analyse different situations during that day and examine how they reacted and how they could have responded in a better way.
c. Some look outside of work, they develop empathy and emotional regulation by coaching their children’s soccer team or devoting time to a local charity.
4. Practice Makes Perfect!
Choose one emotion to work on. For example you may choose to practice more patience with your co-workers, more empathy, greater optimism or simply look at removing anger and judgement from your leadership style. The way we change our behaviour, is to do and redo the new behaviour, over and over again. This breaks old neural patterns. An added bonus is that we can fast track this with visualisation. Imagining something in vivid detail fires the same brain cells and neural pathways that are actually involved in the real life task. Before a meeting or on the way to work start to run through your head and picture how you want to lead and manage your team.
5. Get some Help!
Find a coach or a colleague who you can debrief you activity with. I have encouraged many leaders in large corporates to form coaching groups where they discuss their challenges and how they handled them. The feedback has been that they are exceptionally beneficial.
Find a copy of this article here
How good are you at forgiveness?
Adam Fraser - Thursday, March 03, 2011
I recently presented at a conference for a group of school business managers. At the end of the conference a woman came up to me and said, “You know that 3rd Space concept? I love that idea!” I said, “Thank you”. She then went on to say “Yes, I attended a workshop the other day where the presenter showed us that concept.” “What!?” I replied. “What presenter?” “At this workshop they presented that concept and told the exact same stories you told today. They even used the exact same model that you did.”
To say I was ropable was an understatement. I don’t mind if people borrow a stat, or a line. But to take an entire concept, repeat it word for word, and pass it off as your own, is a bit over the top. It really hit me hard emotionally – I thought of all the time and effort I put into developing the concept, only to have someone use it without even acknowledging me.
It was interesting to view my response, which was to sulk all the way to the airport (made even worse by the fact that I found out who it was and they were not answering their phone). After allowing myself a good 2 hours to be a self-indulgent victim (a complete pratt was probably a more accurate description!). I decided I needed to get over myself. I thought: What are the positives out of this?
1. If people are stealing the idea, I must be onto something so it validates the quality of the idea.
2. I got into this business to provide value to people and help improve their quality of life. The 3rd Space is a great idea that helps people, and the more people who hear it the better.
3. Can I improve how I recognise other peoples’ content that I reference in my presentations?
4. Being angry with someone else doesn’t help me at all; it’s just a waste of my mental time and energy.
5. When you present ideas in an open forum you are delusional to think people won’t use them.
6. You just have to focus on constantly coming up with new and innovative ideas.
I once saw Amanda Gore present (one of the greatest keynote speakers I have ever seen). She said a brilliant line around anger and resentment: “Holding on to anger and resentment for someone is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” How true!
What we know is that when we feel negative emotions like anger, hate and resentment we release chemicals in our brain that:
• Shut down the creative parts of our brain
• Destroy brain cells
• Make us put on body fat around our organs, putting us at risk of diabetes, heart disease and syndrome X
• Lead to dysfunctional behaviour
How good are you at forgiveness? Are you holding onto things that don’t help you?
Like this article? Find a copy of it here!
To say I was ropable was an understatement. I don’t mind if people borrow a stat, or a line. But to take an entire concept, repeat it word for word, and pass it off as your own, is a bit over the top. It really hit me hard emotionally – I thought of all the time and effort I put into developing the concept, only to have someone use it without even acknowledging me.
It was interesting to view my response, which was to sulk all the way to the airport (made even worse by the fact that I found out who it was and they were not answering their phone). After allowing myself a good 2 hours to be a self-indulgent victim (a complete pratt was probably a more accurate description!). I decided I needed to get over myself. I thought: What are the positives out of this?
1. If people are stealing the idea, I must be onto something so it validates the quality of the idea.
2. I got into this business to provide value to people and help improve their quality of life. The 3rd Space is a great idea that helps people, and the more people who hear it the better.
3. Can I improve how I recognise other peoples’ content that I reference in my presentations?
4. Being angry with someone else doesn’t help me at all; it’s just a waste of my mental time and energy.
5. When you present ideas in an open forum you are delusional to think people won’t use them.
6. You just have to focus on constantly coming up with new and innovative ideas.
I once saw Amanda Gore present (one of the greatest keynote speakers I have ever seen). She said a brilliant line around anger and resentment: “Holding on to anger and resentment for someone is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” How true!
What we know is that when we feel negative emotions like anger, hate and resentment we release chemicals in our brain that:
• Shut down the creative parts of our brain
• Destroy brain cells
• Make us put on body fat around our organs, putting us at risk of diabetes, heart disease and syndrome X
• Lead to dysfunctional behaviour
How good are you at forgiveness? Are you holding onto things that don’t help you?
Like this article? Find a copy of it here!
Why Change is so hard to do!
Adam Fraser - Thursday, February 17, 2011
When I was an academic (in a previous life) I noticed that people in this environment were drawn to complexity. They would always find the most complicated way to explain something and always gravitated towards the most complex solution to a problem. My take on the driver for this behaviour was two things:
1. It formed an intellectual barrier that did not allow the average person to access that world. Intellectual snobbery at its highest level
2. They saw simplicity as a sign of intellectual laziness and this work was of poorer quality.
The problem was that this attitude made the material mind numbingly boring. I must have sat through over 300 academic presentations and never stayed awake in any of them. However most importantly it hampered their ability to teach and pass on concepts. I never had a lecturer help me learn and understand concepts - they just threw information at me.
However when I moved into the business world as an educator, I discovered the amazing power simplicity has. In a meeting with Ralph Norris the CEO of the Commonwealth Bank, I asked him what the biggest mistake we make in business was? His reply was - “We overcomplicate it. I run this bank on five simple principals. Simple principals allow people to learn them fast, remember them and have clarity about what behaviours they have to exhibit”.
My obsession with understanding how people change recently led to a psychologist from the University of Virginia, Jonathan Haidt. He has a change model that I think is one of the best that I have ever come across, because of its simplicity. The model consists of three parts, a rider on an elephant walking along a path. Sounds weird? Let me explain.
The rider is our logic, our rational side.
The elephant is our emotional side.
The path is the environment in which we are changing.
Within this model you can see that the logical side has very little control. The rider can pull on the reins as hard as they like, but if the elephant wants to go in another direction the rider can do little to stop it. An example is that you know you shouldn’t text your ex at 3am but you still do. The elephant has the most power in this model.
According to Jonathan, to facilitate change you have to do 3 things:
1. You must give the rider clear instructions about what change needs to occur. What are the exact behaviours you need them to exhibit? If the rider does not know exactly what they need to do they can wander off all over the place.
2. You must appeal to the elephant. You have to make it so that the elephant has a desire to go in that direction.
3. Lastly you have to clear the path. You need to make it easy for the elephant to go there. Ensure that there are no roadblocks.
I have been using this model in my work with companies with amazing results.
Guide the rider
I was with a department of a bank. As a group they came up with a goal to become number one in customer service. While that is a great goal what I pointed out is that there is no clear behaviours attached to that goal. How will people change their behaviour to achieve that goal? Upon reflection they then came up with a clear behaviour. ‘Never pass a customer on, do not transfer them to another department and you must solve their problem on the spot’. Since the introduction of this clear behaviour they have seen a sharp rise in their client satisfaction.
Motivate the elephant
I was working with a manufacturing group who were having problems getting people to stick to safety policy. The problem was that the employees saw safety as unnecessary because they thought they were bullet proof and would never get hurt. In my research on the company I found out that the major accidents people had in the company were due to another person cutting corners. In other words when an individual did not stick to the safety policy they put their co-workers at risk. Then I presented to them and talked about how they would feel if their actions lead to a mate being injured or even killed. How would they feel if they took away their livelihood and left their family struggling to survive. I then had a guy in the group talk about when he did not follow policy, which led to a co-worker being seriously injured.
They went from thinking that not paying attention to safety was a cool/brave thing to do. To my actions could hurt my mates. Their elephant was seriously motivated.
Clear the path
A number of years ago I was engaged by a law firm to put in place a work life balance strategy for the senior associates and lawyers. I presented the strategy to the partners and they were on board. Six months later when we reviewed the project it had had little impact. Why? Well the strategy was simple and they knew the exact behaviours they had to do, so it wasn’t that. The elephant was engaged because they all wanted to see their families more and to reduce their stress. The reason it failed was that the partners penalised them when they exhibited those behaviours. The problem was that the partners put barriers on the path.
From now on when you are trying to change anything in your life or leading others through a change process ensure that you:
1. Guide the rider with crystal clear behaviours.
2. Appeal to their elephant.
3. Clear the path.
For a copy of this article, go to Why change is so hard to do
1. It formed an intellectual barrier that did not allow the average person to access that world. Intellectual snobbery at its highest level
2. They saw simplicity as a sign of intellectual laziness and this work was of poorer quality.
The problem was that this attitude made the material mind numbingly boring. I must have sat through over 300 academic presentations and never stayed awake in any of them. However most importantly it hampered their ability to teach and pass on concepts. I never had a lecturer help me learn and understand concepts - they just threw information at me.
However when I moved into the business world as an educator, I discovered the amazing power simplicity has. In a meeting with Ralph Norris the CEO of the Commonwealth Bank, I asked him what the biggest mistake we make in business was? His reply was - “We overcomplicate it. I run this bank on five simple principals. Simple principals allow people to learn them fast, remember them and have clarity about what behaviours they have to exhibit”.
My obsession with understanding how people change recently led to a psychologist from the University of Virginia, Jonathan Haidt. He has a change model that I think is one of the best that I have ever come across, because of its simplicity. The model consists of three parts, a rider on an elephant walking along a path. Sounds weird? Let me explain.
The rider is our logic, our rational side.
The elephant is our emotional side.
The path is the environment in which we are changing.
Within this model you can see that the logical side has very little control. The rider can pull on the reins as hard as they like, but if the elephant wants to go in another direction the rider can do little to stop it. An example is that you know you shouldn’t text your ex at 3am but you still do. The elephant has the most power in this model.
According to Jonathan, to facilitate change you have to do 3 things:
1. You must give the rider clear instructions about what change needs to occur. What are the exact behaviours you need them to exhibit? If the rider does not know exactly what they need to do they can wander off all over the place.
2. You must appeal to the elephant. You have to make it so that the elephant has a desire to go in that direction.
3. Lastly you have to clear the path. You need to make it easy for the elephant to go there. Ensure that there are no roadblocks.
I have been using this model in my work with companies with amazing results.
Guide the rider
I was with a department of a bank. As a group they came up with a goal to become number one in customer service. While that is a great goal what I pointed out is that there is no clear behaviours attached to that goal. How will people change their behaviour to achieve that goal? Upon reflection they then came up with a clear behaviour. ‘Never pass a customer on, do not transfer them to another department and you must solve their problem on the spot’. Since the introduction of this clear behaviour they have seen a sharp rise in their client satisfaction.
Motivate the elephant
I was working with a manufacturing group who were having problems getting people to stick to safety policy. The problem was that the employees saw safety as unnecessary because they thought they were bullet proof and would never get hurt. In my research on the company I found out that the major accidents people had in the company were due to another person cutting corners. In other words when an individual did not stick to the safety policy they put their co-workers at risk. Then I presented to them and talked about how they would feel if their actions lead to a mate being injured or even killed. How would they feel if they took away their livelihood and left their family struggling to survive. I then had a guy in the group talk about when he did not follow policy, which led to a co-worker being seriously injured.
They went from thinking that not paying attention to safety was a cool/brave thing to do. To my actions could hurt my mates. Their elephant was seriously motivated.
Clear the path
A number of years ago I was engaged by a law firm to put in place a work life balance strategy for the senior associates and lawyers. I presented the strategy to the partners and they were on board. Six months later when we reviewed the project it had had little impact. Why? Well the strategy was simple and they knew the exact behaviours they had to do, so it wasn’t that. The elephant was engaged because they all wanted to see their families more and to reduce their stress. The reason it failed was that the partners penalised them when they exhibited those behaviours. The problem was that the partners put barriers on the path.
From now on when you are trying to change anything in your life or leading others through a change process ensure that you:
1. Guide the rider with crystal clear behaviours.
2. Appeal to their elephant.
3. Clear the path.
For a copy of this article, go to Why change is so hard to do
Taking back your lunch
Adam Fraser - Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Take Back Your Lunch and Transform Your Day
Several weeks ago, I sat down for a coaching session with a very senior executive at a Fortune 50 company. Let's call him Richard. He'd invited my company in to help his team better manage the overwhelming demand he believed was taking a toll on their productivity and their satisfaction.
I began by asking Richard to describe his own workday. He told me that he arrived at the office about 7:30 a.m. and worked virtually straight through until 9 p.m. He consumed his lunch in less than 5 minutes at his desk. If he went out to dinner, it was for a business meeting.
"That's pretty typical of people at my level, isn't it?" he asked me.
Sadly, it just may be.
What set this executive apart from most I meet is that he recognized
this way of working wasn't serving him well. In recent years, he'd
stopped exercising and put on considerable weight. He loved his work,
and felt energized by it, but he worried that pushing himself so hard
was taking a long term toll.
I suggested he begin with a couple of very simple changes. The first was to schedule a time at least three times a week to work out. He did that almost immediately, and successfully — at 6 pm, as a break before returning to work.
The second change I suggested was to get outside for lunch at midday, for at least 30 minutes. He agreed, and we actually scheduled the time in his calendar, with his assistant, but I could tell he wasn't confident he'd make it happen.
I wasn't entirely surprised. The Energy Project, the organization I run, recently conducted a poll on the Huffington Post about people's experience in the workplace. Sixty per cent of 1200 respondents told us they took less than 20 minutes a day for lunch. Twenty per cent took less than 10 minutes. One quarter said they never left their desks at all.
That's consistent with a study by the American Dietetic Association, which found that 75 per cent of office workers eat lunch at their desk at least two to three days a week.
Those poll findings were the inspiration for a movement The Energy Project is about to launch. The concept couldn't be more straightforward. We're calling it Take Back Your Lunch. It begins this Wednesday, between noon and 2 p.m., in locations around the country, and continues every Wednesday this summer. Find out where people will be gathering — or organize a Take Back Your Lunch Meetup in your city or town.
Far too many of us — managers and employees alike — have bought into the belief that the best way to keep up with demand is to be working all the time.
What if you set an example for the people you manage by taking back your own lunch - and by encouraging them to do the same?
At the most practical level, leaving the office for lunch is an opportunity to relax, let go of whatever stresses you've accumulated during the morning, and return to work feeling more energized, more focused and more engaged in the afternoon.
Taking back your lunch is the first step in taking back your life.
It's been three weeks since Richard made his own commitment to take back his lunch. Last week he got out twice. Can you commit to at least once? Invite your whole office starting Wednesday.
Tony Schwartz is president and CEO of The Energy Project. Tony is the author of the June, 2010 HBR article, "The Productivity Paradox: How Sony Pictures Gets More Out of People by Demanding Less," and coauthor, with Catherine McCarthy, of the 2007 HBR article, "Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time." His new book is"The Way We're Working Isn't Working: The Four Forgotten Needs that Energize Great Performance" (Free Press, 2010).
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