When what Works stops Working - Adapting to Change
Everything was going fine, in fact it was easy, and I decided it was time to take it to the next level. I was confident and ready to move. But as soon as I decided, the level I was standing on collapsed. After eight years of coaching, all I had to do was show up at a couple of professional organizations to speak each quarter, stay in touch with my clients and business network, and clients showed up. But suddenly, they slowed down – big time.
So, I figured, well hey – with the economy as it is, maybe I need to just “up the pace” a bit. I made three times as many presentations, talked to what seemed like fifty potential clients, and I wasn’t getting hired. Not as quickly anyway. I lowered my rates; I raised my rates. It didn’t make a difference. People were “thinking about it” but not buying. Or they’d buy much less than in the past – just a few sessions or a few months or a lower level program. I qualified harder. I started following up more. Still people hesitated. I listened to what people needed, and came up with new and different programs. To some extent people responded. But it was still too early to tell. Bottom line, I was working three times as hard to bring in half as much business.
I began to get frustrated, questioning myself, resenting the extra work that was taking me away from family, yet not bringing them any financial benefits to make up for it all. I began to feel drained, wanting to take time off, yet not being able to enjoy the breaks, from worry that I was wasting time. One minute I’d be excited about a new direction I was taking, the next minute I’d feel like a complete idiot for things not being easy anymore, but there were no answers. I couldn’t go back, and I couldn’t see the way forward.
One morning I woke up with a pit of anxiety in my stomach, and suddenly I had a flash of recognition. I’m in stage one of decisive change! I wrote about this – something like six years ago. What are the symptoms?
1. Every action takes more energy than you think it should
2. It feels like you are on an emotional roller coaster
3. The people who supported you as your old self don’t really believe in your “new self”
4. Your progress feels like it’s being sabotaged at every turn, both from without and from within.
As soon as I remembered the article, I felt relief, and also like maybe I was moving into “stage two”. When you understand how transition works, and know what to expect, it suddenly seems like you are going in a straight line instead of spinning in circles and you can begin to make sense of things. Here is a link to the article on the stages of change if you want to read the whole thing: Stages of Decisive Change
What does it mean, spinning in change, whether you’ve found yourself here, or been thrust here? The bottom line is that it’s not comfortable and it’s not going to get comfortable for awhile. The worst thing about change is the unknown. You can’t know how things will turn out. You can’t know if your “solution” to the problem will work. You can’t rely on things like focus, because it might blind you to the different opportunities that exist now that things have changed. You can’t rely on things like flexibility, because it might prevent you from working long enough on an idea to see it bear fruit. You simply can’t approach the unknown knowing what will work. And that makes it nearly impossible to plan and allocate resources.
So what can you rely on?
1. Action. Even if you take action towards a goal that ultimately changes, 80% of your work is transferrable, meaning if ultimately you decide to go in a completely different direction than you are moving now you only lose 20% of it.
2. Rest. Most people spin their wheels to the point of exhaustion when they are under the stress of transition, and it does nothing but make them less effective. Each day make sure to stop, and rest, run, veg out, hang out – whatever rejuvenates you. Getting your needs met gives you the energy you need to be confident next round.
3. Detach from the Results. I’m not sure why we fail so much more when we are in transition, but that seems to be the way things happen. This is a time to get used to failing and not take it personally. The sooner as you get used to it, the easier it will be to act, and the more quickly you’ll get to the succeeding part.
4. Get Support. Trying to handle transition alone is like going off to war without an army. The hard thing about getting support is that we are such a self-sufficient society and it feels weak to let others know we need help. There are many ways to get support from joining networking or church groups, to enrolling in transition programs. It doesn’t matter how you get support, but if you pretend you don’t need it – chances are you are slowing yourself way down. (I’m currently running several transition support programs and also have a “transition with me” blog series designed to walk you through the transition process – step by step)
5. Do Something that is Hard for you. The number one thing that will get you through a transition is confidence. A few weeks ago, my son’s martial arts teacher told the kids, “the way to get confidence is to do something that is hard for you”. If you do ONE thing that is hard for you every day, how much more confident would you be? And, as a result what would change about your transition?
So this is what I have been doing – something hard for me each day. I can’t tell you how my story will turn out, because I haven’t made it all the way through this transition tunnel. But today I committed to sharing my transition with clients and readers in a blog series called “transition with me”. I figure we can connect and work through this transition together in an e-community just as easily as any other support system. I hope you check it out and enjoy your process more for going through it with me.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Why I’m Passionate About Coaching Groups
The majority of people who change jobs, start companies, quit smoking, go on a diet, or start any big initiative, tend to go it alone. I tend to do this as well, falling into the mental trap of dismissing support, almost as if it were an admission of failure. But one thing I’ve learned in the past few years is that leveraging the positive energy of others is like swimming with the current. The struggle disappears, and it feels like “riding the wave” of success.
Consider this:
1. According to Richard Bolles (http://www.jobsletter.org.nz/jbl14010.htm), sending out resumes randomly has about a 7% success rate, which you can increase to 69% by using a more proactive method. Being proactive with a group of other job hunters increases the success rate even more… to 84%.
2. Estimates for small business survival range from the standard “90% of all new businesses fail” to “3 out of 5 survive the first four years”. But a study from the University of Munich found that entrepreneurs who receive support from a network are more successful than those who are isolated. (Josef Brüderl and Peter Preisendörfer)
3. In his famous book, "Think And Grow Rich," Napolean Hill asserts that a key difference that made people successful was being involved in Mastermind Groups that bring people together with different experiences and ideas to collaborate, brainstorm, and provide support to help the participants achieve their goals. For business owners Masterminding can help you model other successful entrepreneurs, and provide you with your own board of directors.
4. Studies have shown that meeting regularly with a support group increases success in just about everything, from tripling your success rate if you want to quit smoking, to doubling your life expectancy when you have cancer.
The bottom line is, if you are serious about achieving any goal, personally or professionally, getting a support system is one of the most important things you can do to ensure your success. With that in mind, the most important question is how to find the right support system for you. Here are some important tips:
1. Although this may seem counterintuitive, it’s best to join a group of acquaintances who do not have an emotional investment in the decisions you make. Family members, good friends, and work associates will be influenced by the relationship they already have with you.
2. It’s good to have a diverse group with one to three key themes in common. For example, you may share a desire to succeed professionally, but your individual goals and areas of expertise vary widely. This provides you with an innovative environment where you can take advantage of completely different perspectives, and also enables you to build strong relationships based on shared values.
3. The most successful groups normally have a professional facilitator managing time and group dynamics, and this allows the group members to immerse themselves in the conversation without worrying about “playing host”. If you choose not to use a trained facilitator, it’s still important to set clear guidelines that create a safe and mutually respectful environment for all participants.
I’m passionate about groups, not only because they make sense, but because being a part of the right group can change your life. If you’ve ever been part of a project team that pulled something amazing off against all odds, or had that feeling of being a valuable part of something important that was much bigger than yourself, you might get a sense of what I’m talking about. It’s a feeling that can’t be described in writing, but it makes you feel powerful, confident, and capable of doing much more than you would have ever imagined on your own, and what’s more – those feelings are translated into real action and results.
If you have been wondering about getting involved with a group to accelerate your success, please feel free to send me a personal e-mail at nahid@aspyrre.com or give me a call at (949) 495-1021. I would love to talk with you more about your situation, and would be happy to share information on groups I am starting or provide you with additional guidelines if you’d like to start your own.
The majority of people who change jobs, start companies, quit smoking, go on a diet, or start any big initiative, tend to go it alone. I tend to do this as well, falling into the mental trap of dismissing support, almost as if it were an admission of failure. But one thing I’ve learned in the past few years is that leveraging the positive energy of others is like swimming with the current. The struggle disappears, and it feels like “riding the wave” of success.
Consider this:
1. According to Richard Bolles (http://www.jobsletter.org.nz/jbl14010.htm), sending out resumes randomly has about a 7% success rate, which you can increase to 69% by using a more proactive method. Being proactive with a group of other job hunters increases the success rate even more… to 84%.
2. Estimates for small business survival range from the standard “90% of all new businesses fail” to “3 out of 5 survive the first four years”. But a study from the University of Munich found that entrepreneurs who receive support from a network are more successful than those who are isolated. (Josef Brüderl and Peter Preisendörfer)
3. In his famous book, "Think And Grow Rich," Napolean Hill asserts that a key difference that made people successful was being involved in Mastermind Groups that bring people together with different experiences and ideas to collaborate, brainstorm, and provide support to help the participants achieve their goals. For business owners Masterminding can help you model other successful entrepreneurs, and provide you with your own board of directors.
4. Studies have shown that meeting regularly with a support group increases success in just about everything, from tripling your success rate if you want to quit smoking, to doubling your life expectancy when you have cancer.
The bottom line is, if you are serious about achieving any goal, personally or professionally, getting a support system is one of the most important things you can do to ensure your success. With that in mind, the most important question is how to find the right support system for you. Here are some important tips:
1. Although this may seem counterintuitive, it’s best to join a group of acquaintances who do not have an emotional investment in the decisions you make. Family members, good friends, and work associates will be influenced by the relationship they already have with you.
2. It’s good to have a diverse group with one to three key themes in common. For example, you may share a desire to succeed professionally, but your individual goals and areas of expertise vary widely. This provides you with an innovative environment where you can take advantage of completely different perspectives, and also enables you to build strong relationships based on shared values.
3. The most successful groups normally have a professional facilitator managing time and group dynamics, and this allows the group members to immerse themselves in the conversation without worrying about “playing host”. If you choose not to use a trained facilitator, it’s still important to set clear guidelines that create a safe and mutually respectful environment for all participants.
I’m passionate about groups, not only because they make sense, but because being a part of the right group can change your life. If you’ve ever been part of a project team that pulled something amazing off against all odds, or had that feeling of being a valuable part of something important that was much bigger than yourself, you might get a sense of what I’m talking about. It’s a feeling that can’t be described in writing, but it makes you feel powerful, confident, and capable of doing much more than you would have ever imagined on your own, and what’s more – those feelings are translated into real action and results.
If you have been wondering about getting involved with a group to accelerate your success, please feel free to send me a personal e-mail at nahid@aspyrre.com or give me a call at (949) 495-1021. I would love to talk with you more about your situation, and would be happy to share information on groups I am starting or provide you with additional guidelines if you’d like to start your own.
Sunday, November 09, 2008
How your Identity Impacts your Success
You may have noticed that it’s been a long time since I’ve written a blog entry. There is a good reason for this: in July, I made the decision to pull my children out of daycare. I took the month of August off work, and drove around the United States with them, through 25 states, visiting family, friends, museums, and historical sites. We got home in time for school to start, and I did not re-enroll them in after school daycare, choosing instead to compress my business into the hours they are at school, and devoting the afternoons to being a parent. My business motto has been “twice the revenue in half the time”. We’ll see how that actually pans out over the next year or so, but meanwhile, it has been an interesting lesson in productivity, efficiency, and surprisingly, personal identity.
On the surface, it’s been fairly clear how to prioritize my tasks, schedule my days, and make the changes required to navigate this transition. The real struggle completely caught me off guard – it was this internal sense of vague confusion over what makes me a success. I’ve had spurts of frustration and irritation that seem to come out of nowhere, and after several bouts of thinking things through it hit me that my business transition has knocked me into a mini-identity crisis.
I don’t know if we realize how tied we are to our identity until it changes. In retrospect, I know that when I started my business, the personal identity I globbed onto was “successful entrepreneur”. Statistics or not, I was not willing to fail at building a viable business that I could be proud of. All my feelings of self-worth were wrapped up in the business. Once it gathered enough momentum and I crossed that “survival” line, new questions started nagging at me, and the main one was “how am I doing in my role as parent”? I don’t think I was quite satisfied with the answer, and this began the drive to change into what I wanted my new identity to be: both a successful business owner and a successful parent.
When I work with professionals in transition, I find that loss of identity is one of the biggest contributors to the stress and emotional struggle they experience while they are out of work. I also notice that the clients I coach are going to naturally behave in ways that are in line with their personal identity, and if they don’t strongly identify with the role they are moving toward, it’s almost impossible for them to succeed.
When you think about your own success, it’s important to know what roles you have defined for yourself, and what they mean to you. For example, I when I watch other parents, I see a wide variety of ways each individual defines success in that role. Some parents define their success through the success of their children, some define their success by the amount of time they spend with their children, some by the kind of relationships they have with their children. At work, some define success by how much money they bring in, some by what they are building and the impact they are having on the world, some by the level of power in their organization, some by how much they are learning – we are all different.
If you are struggling at work or in any area of your life, you may want to write down the roles you see yourself playing, and how you define success in each of those roles. Just taking a moment to ask yourself who you are and who you want to be brings assumptions to the surface, and may reveal the source of any frustration or confusion you feel in your current role.
The bottom line is that we really aren’t any of the roles we play, and the roles we play in life change many times. Our identity is what we make up in our mind about the roles we are playing currently, and how we define success in that role. If you are feeling successful in life, you probably fit well into how you define success. If you are feeling frustrated or unsuccessful, there is a good chance that you feel “out of synch” with your definition of who you “should” be and what success in that role means.
How to get back “in synch”? Well, you can change your behavior, or you can change your definition of success, or you can look deeper for something that means more to you than the current role you are playing. If you’d like to talk about this, or anything else related to your success, don’t hesitate to write or call. These are the big questions that take time to think about, but make the difference in your success, personal fulfillment, and overall life satisfaction.
You may have noticed that it’s been a long time since I’ve written a blog entry. There is a good reason for this: in July, I made the decision to pull my children out of daycare. I took the month of August off work, and drove around the United States with them, through 25 states, visiting family, friends, museums, and historical sites. We got home in time for school to start, and I did not re-enroll them in after school daycare, choosing instead to compress my business into the hours they are at school, and devoting the afternoons to being a parent. My business motto has been “twice the revenue in half the time”. We’ll see how that actually pans out over the next year or so, but meanwhile, it has been an interesting lesson in productivity, efficiency, and surprisingly, personal identity.
On the surface, it’s been fairly clear how to prioritize my tasks, schedule my days, and make the changes required to navigate this transition. The real struggle completely caught me off guard – it was this internal sense of vague confusion over what makes me a success. I’ve had spurts of frustration and irritation that seem to come out of nowhere, and after several bouts of thinking things through it hit me that my business transition has knocked me into a mini-identity crisis.
I don’t know if we realize how tied we are to our identity until it changes. In retrospect, I know that when I started my business, the personal identity I globbed onto was “successful entrepreneur”. Statistics or not, I was not willing to fail at building a viable business that I could be proud of. All my feelings of self-worth were wrapped up in the business. Once it gathered enough momentum and I crossed that “survival” line, new questions started nagging at me, and the main one was “how am I doing in my role as parent”? I don’t think I was quite satisfied with the answer, and this began the drive to change into what I wanted my new identity to be: both a successful business owner and a successful parent.
When I work with professionals in transition, I find that loss of identity is one of the biggest contributors to the stress and emotional struggle they experience while they are out of work. I also notice that the clients I coach are going to naturally behave in ways that are in line with their personal identity, and if they don’t strongly identify with the role they are moving toward, it’s almost impossible for them to succeed.
When you think about your own success, it’s important to know what roles you have defined for yourself, and what they mean to you. For example, I when I watch other parents, I see a wide variety of ways each individual defines success in that role. Some parents define their success through the success of their children, some define their success by the amount of time they spend with their children, some by the kind of relationships they have with their children. At work, some define success by how much money they bring in, some by what they are building and the impact they are having on the world, some by the level of power in their organization, some by how much they are learning – we are all different.
If you are struggling at work or in any area of your life, you may want to write down the roles you see yourself playing, and how you define success in each of those roles. Just taking a moment to ask yourself who you are and who you want to be brings assumptions to the surface, and may reveal the source of any frustration or confusion you feel in your current role.
The bottom line is that we really aren’t any of the roles we play, and the roles we play in life change many times. Our identity is what we make up in our mind about the roles we are playing currently, and how we define success in that role. If you are feeling successful in life, you probably fit well into how you define success. If you are feeling frustrated or unsuccessful, there is a good chance that you feel “out of synch” with your definition of who you “should” be and what success in that role means.
How to get back “in synch”? Well, you can change your behavior, or you can change your definition of success, or you can look deeper for something that means more to you than the current role you are playing. If you’d like to talk about this, or anything else related to your success, don’t hesitate to write or call. These are the big questions that take time to think about, but make the difference in your success, personal fulfillment, and overall life satisfaction.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
How to Deal with a Micromanaging Boss
Bosses are tough to deal with in general. They represent authority, and they often bring back memories of what we hated most in our relationships with our parents and teachers growing up. The micro-managing boss is especially hard to handle if you are creative, innovative, and want to make a contribution of your own in an organization. But since quite a few people in management positions fit this profile, chances are you will end up with one at some point in your career. Here are some tips to help you get the space you need to thrive:
1. Understand that micromanaging behavior is driven by the positive characteristics of conscientiousness, diligence, and responsibility; it’s just that they have been taken to an extreme. People often confuse themselves with the quality of the work they produce. As long as they can control the quality of their work, they are ok, but as soon as they have to depend on others for results, they are faced with the fear of representing sloppy or substandard output. Since putting out less than excellent work is SO personally humiliating, they need constant reassurance that the team is performing. Keep in mind that behavior such as constant checking on your progress or reviewing your work has NOTHING to do with how well you perform. It is about your boss, who has gotten so caught up in his or her fears and needs for reassurance that he or she is not aware of how this behavior may be impacting you.
2. You can give yourself space by playing to their standards for excellence and needs for reassurance. Initiate a conversation about expectations and standards of work output, and make sure your boss is clear about where your standards are. If you have a difference of opinion, get it talked out and come to an agreement about what standards you are both comfortable with. Then COMMUNICATE. It’s natural to react to micro-management by doing everything possible to avoid communication. But that just plays into the vicious circle of mutual mistrust and escalates the problem. If you develop a habit of sending a short e-mail on a daily or weekly basis that gives your status on a project and how you are handling situations, the boss gets a stream of continuous reassurance, and wont feel a strong need to check in.
3. Once you have developed a certain degree of trust with your boss, you may want to take it to the next step, and that is providing feedback on the impact of the micromanaging behavior. For example, “I notice that you have redone my last three powerpoint presentations. I understand your desire to have us represented in a positive light, but you may not realize that you are sending a subtle message, that I can’t do powerpoint presentations, and that makes me feel less excited about doing them well in the first place. Is there something specific you are noticing about the way I do my presentations that does not meet the standards we agreed on related to our work?”
Unfortunately, the micro-managing boss ends up fulfilling his own fears. As he takes more responsibility for the work of the team, the team feels completely disempowered and loses the motivation to produce their best work. Soon they are complaining and doing very little, and he is fretting about how they don’t care and he has the weight of more than one job on his shoulders. It may take several attempts to help him turn around, because he needs to let go and allow himself to look bad in order to re-empower the team, build trust, and get to the point where he gets results that are better than he ever dreamed.
If you are a micro-manager, or you work for one, anything you can do to facilitate the change will be a positive learning experience. Giving your boss feedback that enables him to become a better leader is a gift he will be forever grateful for. And if you are that boss, imagine getting rid of the experience of being overworked and not being able to trust anyone, and moving to a place where you get to work with people who consistently go well beyond the call of duty, and you are so honored to be their leader that you would never consider taking ownership for the phenomenal work they put forth.
Bosses are tough to deal with in general. They represent authority, and they often bring back memories of what we hated most in our relationships with our parents and teachers growing up. The micro-managing boss is especially hard to handle if you are creative, innovative, and want to make a contribution of your own in an organization. But since quite a few people in management positions fit this profile, chances are you will end up with one at some point in your career. Here are some tips to help you get the space you need to thrive:
1. Understand that micromanaging behavior is driven by the positive characteristics of conscientiousness, diligence, and responsibility; it’s just that they have been taken to an extreme. People often confuse themselves with the quality of the work they produce. As long as they can control the quality of their work, they are ok, but as soon as they have to depend on others for results, they are faced with the fear of representing sloppy or substandard output. Since putting out less than excellent work is SO personally humiliating, they need constant reassurance that the team is performing. Keep in mind that behavior such as constant checking on your progress or reviewing your work has NOTHING to do with how well you perform. It is about your boss, who has gotten so caught up in his or her fears and needs for reassurance that he or she is not aware of how this behavior may be impacting you.
2. You can give yourself space by playing to their standards for excellence and needs for reassurance. Initiate a conversation about expectations and standards of work output, and make sure your boss is clear about where your standards are. If you have a difference of opinion, get it talked out and come to an agreement about what standards you are both comfortable with. Then COMMUNICATE. It’s natural to react to micro-management by doing everything possible to avoid communication. But that just plays into the vicious circle of mutual mistrust and escalates the problem. If you develop a habit of sending a short e-mail on a daily or weekly basis that gives your status on a project and how you are handling situations, the boss gets a stream of continuous reassurance, and wont feel a strong need to check in.
3. Once you have developed a certain degree of trust with your boss, you may want to take it to the next step, and that is providing feedback on the impact of the micromanaging behavior. For example, “I notice that you have redone my last three powerpoint presentations. I understand your desire to have us represented in a positive light, but you may not realize that you are sending a subtle message, that I can’t do powerpoint presentations, and that makes me feel less excited about doing them well in the first place. Is there something specific you are noticing about the way I do my presentations that does not meet the standards we agreed on related to our work?”
Unfortunately, the micro-managing boss ends up fulfilling his own fears. As he takes more responsibility for the work of the team, the team feels completely disempowered and loses the motivation to produce their best work. Soon they are complaining and doing very little, and he is fretting about how they don’t care and he has the weight of more than one job on his shoulders. It may take several attempts to help him turn around, because he needs to let go and allow himself to look bad in order to re-empower the team, build trust, and get to the point where he gets results that are better than he ever dreamed.
If you are a micro-manager, or you work for one, anything you can do to facilitate the change will be a positive learning experience. Giving your boss feedback that enables him to become a better leader is a gift he will be forever grateful for. And if you are that boss, imagine getting rid of the experience of being overworked and not being able to trust anyone, and moving to a place where you get to work with people who consistently go well beyond the call of duty, and you are so honored to be their leader that you would never consider taking ownership for the phenomenal work they put forth.
Friday, June 06, 2008
Conflict at Work – Productive or Destructive?
Several months ago, I was reading the book “Five Dysfunctions of a Team”, and learned about the concept of “artificial harmony”. This is when everyone is super nice to each other on the surface, but underneath they have different feelings, opinions, and perspectives that they aren’t sharing. It’s a great concept, because it helps us begin to see what’s going wrong in organizations where people seem to be getting along just fine, but the team is not achieving stellar results. What you learn from reading that book is the importance of what I call “productive conflict”.
Productive conflict is when people openly talk about their disagreements, and they may even get frustrated with each other at times, but they all stay with the conversation and work through it, and as a result you create a solution that is better than any one person could have created on their own.
Destructive conflict is when people go beyond disagreements to personal attacks, and this creates a stressful environment that drains most people and begets marginal performance at best.
If you aren’t clear on how to prevent productive conflict from deteriorating into destructive conflict, the “safer” road is to create an environment of artificial harmony. In this environment there isn’t as much stress, but you wont be getting as much out of your team as you could be, which could be a HUGE opportunity cost.
So how do you create an environment that supports productive conflict, but insures that it does NOT deteriorate into destructive conflict?
The key to this is creating a safe environment, where people have a solid level of trust and respect for each other, which means that when something starts going wrong, they’ll have a tendency to extend the benefit of the doubt to their co-workers, instead of quickly reacting and making character judgments. If they hold on to their character judgments of each other, then whether they express them (destructive conflict) or repress them (artificial harmony), the team cannot work effectively together.
Creating this environment takes time, because people are people and we all have personal baggage. The baggage usually shows up in our automatic reactions to things – especially the reactions that seem to be stronger than a given situation would warrant. Since we all react sometimes it helps to acknowledge this, and then set clear ground rules on how to handle our reactions:
Ground Rule # 1 – NOTICE THAT YOU ARE REACTING
If you notice that you are reacting, you can separate yourself from the reaction and that gives it less power over you. Remind yourself that most reactions come in the form of anger or hurt over how someone treated us in the past. So, although the extreme emotion you are experiencing has been triggered by a current event, it is really about something entirely different. You can’t handle a situation effectively while you are in a reaction, so knowing you are reacting enables you to hold off on firing off that angry e-mail or marching into someone’s office with a dramatic ultimatum.
Ground Rule # 2 – NO CHARACTER JUDGMENTS ALLOWED
Most reactions include a negative character judgment towards the person deemed responsible for the negative situation. But character judgments aren’t the truth. They simply allow you to feel self-righteous and superior when you are feeling threatened. When you feel completely safe, it’s easy to have compassion for people, even when they are behaving in a negative manner. So no matter how rude, inconsiderate, dishonest, power-hungry, manipulative, lazy, or unethical your mind is telling you a person is, you need to understand that your mind is making that up from the perspective of your reaction, and no matter how true it FEELS, it’s not the truth.
Ground Rule # 3 – WORK THROUGH YOUR EMOTIONS AWAY FROM WORK
Find a way to separate from your reaction, and take the time you need, away from the work environment. This where it’s great to have a coach, because you can call your coach, vent, get some perspective, and calm down without jeopardizing your reputation at work by venting there.
Ground Rule # 4 – COMMUNICATE AND FIND OUT THE WHOLE STORY
Once you are calm enough to refrain from saying something you’ll regret later, it’s time to ask questions, find out what perspectives others have related to the same situation, and especially to have a conversation with the very person you were reacting to. Find out what lead to their behavior. In most cases, you’ll find out their intention was completely different from what you originally thought it was.
Most professionals can manage steps one through three, but then go back to work and decide not to “dredge it up” again. That’s artificial harmony. When you don’t have the conversations that uncover real intentions, character judgments and mistrust persist.
It’s only when people have the courage to follow ground rule # 4 that you can create an environment of trust, productive conflict, and as a result, innovation.
For leaders, the key is to keep pushing the ground rules, and moving your team into conversations about issues even when they insist that they are ok. Once they’ve gone through the process a few times, and find out that their initial reactions weren’t based in reality, they begin to trust the process more than their reactions. Little by little, trust builds in the environment, and conversations happen more freely.
And then, hold on for a great ride – because your team will begin to feel a magical synergy amongst them, and they’ll take you places you’ve never imagined!
Several months ago, I was reading the book “Five Dysfunctions of a Team”, and learned about the concept of “artificial harmony”. This is when everyone is super nice to each other on the surface, but underneath they have different feelings, opinions, and perspectives that they aren’t sharing. It’s a great concept, because it helps us begin to see what’s going wrong in organizations where people seem to be getting along just fine, but the team is not achieving stellar results. What you learn from reading that book is the importance of what I call “productive conflict”.
Productive conflict is when people openly talk about their disagreements, and they may even get frustrated with each other at times, but they all stay with the conversation and work through it, and as a result you create a solution that is better than any one person could have created on their own.
Destructive conflict is when people go beyond disagreements to personal attacks, and this creates a stressful environment that drains most people and begets marginal performance at best.
If you aren’t clear on how to prevent productive conflict from deteriorating into destructive conflict, the “safer” road is to create an environment of artificial harmony. In this environment there isn’t as much stress, but you wont be getting as much out of your team as you could be, which could be a HUGE opportunity cost.
So how do you create an environment that supports productive conflict, but insures that it does NOT deteriorate into destructive conflict?
The key to this is creating a safe environment, where people have a solid level of trust and respect for each other, which means that when something starts going wrong, they’ll have a tendency to extend the benefit of the doubt to their co-workers, instead of quickly reacting and making character judgments. If they hold on to their character judgments of each other, then whether they express them (destructive conflict) or repress them (artificial harmony), the team cannot work effectively together.
Creating this environment takes time, because people are people and we all have personal baggage. The baggage usually shows up in our automatic reactions to things – especially the reactions that seem to be stronger than a given situation would warrant. Since we all react sometimes it helps to acknowledge this, and then set clear ground rules on how to handle our reactions:
Ground Rule # 1 – NOTICE THAT YOU ARE REACTING
If you notice that you are reacting, you can separate yourself from the reaction and that gives it less power over you. Remind yourself that most reactions come in the form of anger or hurt over how someone treated us in the past. So, although the extreme emotion you are experiencing has been triggered by a current event, it is really about something entirely different. You can’t handle a situation effectively while you are in a reaction, so knowing you are reacting enables you to hold off on firing off that angry e-mail or marching into someone’s office with a dramatic ultimatum.
Ground Rule # 2 – NO CHARACTER JUDGMENTS ALLOWED
Most reactions include a negative character judgment towards the person deemed responsible for the negative situation. But character judgments aren’t the truth. They simply allow you to feel self-righteous and superior when you are feeling threatened. When you feel completely safe, it’s easy to have compassion for people, even when they are behaving in a negative manner. So no matter how rude, inconsiderate, dishonest, power-hungry, manipulative, lazy, or unethical your mind is telling you a person is, you need to understand that your mind is making that up from the perspective of your reaction, and no matter how true it FEELS, it’s not the truth.
Ground Rule # 3 – WORK THROUGH YOUR EMOTIONS AWAY FROM WORK
Find a way to separate from your reaction, and take the time you need, away from the work environment. This where it’s great to have a coach, because you can call your coach, vent, get some perspective, and calm down without jeopardizing your reputation at work by venting there.
Ground Rule # 4 – COMMUNICATE AND FIND OUT THE WHOLE STORY
Once you are calm enough to refrain from saying something you’ll regret later, it’s time to ask questions, find out what perspectives others have related to the same situation, and especially to have a conversation with the very person you were reacting to. Find out what lead to their behavior. In most cases, you’ll find out their intention was completely different from what you originally thought it was.
Most professionals can manage steps one through three, but then go back to work and decide not to “dredge it up” again. That’s artificial harmony. When you don’t have the conversations that uncover real intentions, character judgments and mistrust persist.
It’s only when people have the courage to follow ground rule # 4 that you can create an environment of trust, productive conflict, and as a result, innovation.
For leaders, the key is to keep pushing the ground rules, and moving your team into conversations about issues even when they insist that they are ok. Once they’ve gone through the process a few times, and find out that their initial reactions weren’t based in reality, they begin to trust the process more than their reactions. Little by little, trust builds in the environment, and conversations happen more freely.
And then, hold on for a great ride – because your team will begin to feel a magical synergy amongst them, and they’ll take you places you’ve never imagined!
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Dealing with Frustrating People at Work
Do you ever wonder how much more work you’d get done without the people? And to prove it, do you sometimes go in on a weekend and notice that you got an entire week’s worth of work done in just two hours? Dealing with other people at work is one of the most time-consuming things you have to do. And dealing with frustrating people can downright stop productivity in its tracks.
One of the most common types of frustrating people are the ones who seem to be “blocking” your ability to move forward without any logical basis for their behavior. They might throw up additional hoops for you to jump through that seem completely insignificant. They might get distracted running in so many directions that the team can’t focus on one thing long enough to move forward. They may be polite and cooperative and seem to understand what needs to be done, but then never follow through. Or they may simply be “too busy” to help you and look completely offended and put out at the expectation that you would expect anything more out of them since they are already overworked.
We all have different work styles, and this tends to exacerbate the situation. Sometimes it can be really enlightening to learn about your work style and compare it to those on your team. Although there are many different “work style” assessments, almost all of them group people loosely into four categories:
The Visionaries: These are the leaders who see possibilities, get excited about them, and can get everyone else excited and moving in one direction, but they don’t like to bother with the details, and sometimes they get so many new ideas that they are off and running in a new direction before you have a chance to act on the first plan. If you are a visionary, process oriented people will bore you, and drive you nuts, because it will feel like they are slowing everything down to a snail’s pace while the window of opportunity closes. A good coping mechanism is to realize you need process oriented people to bring your ideas to life and build in the quality they need to stay alive.
The Systemizers: These are the process oriented people who care about the details and get things done thoroughly. They are behind high quality and reliability. Their diligence can make the difference between a brand you can trust and a “rinky dink” outfit. But they take a long time to think things through, and sometimes they are still working out the details of a project when everyone else has lost interest and moved on. If you are a systemizer, visionaries will seem like unstable lunatics, and it will be hard to see the method in their madness. One thing that can increase your appreciation for the visionaries is that they are usually the ones out there bringing customers in to appreciate what YOU have worked so hard to produce.
The Task Masters: Task masters are focused and they don’t mind pushing the team to get things done. Once their eyes are set on a goal, they drive everyone involved towards that goal and have no patience for dragging feet. Of all the work styles, task masters have the least patience for all the “people issues” that get in the way of progress. They aren’t interested in whether or not people feel fulfilled by the functions they perform, or whether people on the team actually like each other, or if things are “fair”. They just want to get to the goal as quickly as possible. If you are a task master, you may be puzzled because it seems like you are offending people left and right when all you want is to get the job done. One thing that may open your perspective to having a people pleaser on you team, is that when people are getting along emotionally, it’s amazing how much more productive they are.
The People Pleasers: People pleasers want everyone to get along, feel fulfilled, and enjoy working together. They care most about creating the kind of work environment that allows people to be their best and perform accordingly. What frustrates them the most is watching members of the team disengage because they aren’t feeling respected or valued, and they often build up a lot of resentment towards the culprits, labeling them as rude, political, or otherwise “unworthy” of respect because of their lack of consideration for their fellow human beings. If you are a people pleaser, one tool that helps is proactively looking for a positive intention behind the behaviors that offend, and taking the initiative to build stronger relationships with ALL personalities in the workplace. This enables you to use your natural strengths to help create the positive environment you cherish, and see people thrive as a result.
Understanding your work style and those of others you work closely with is a first step towards getting more done as a team. You can’t always get away from working with people, but the more you learn about how people work, the more work YOU can get done!
Do you ever wonder how much more work you’d get done without the people? And to prove it, do you sometimes go in on a weekend and notice that you got an entire week’s worth of work done in just two hours? Dealing with other people at work is one of the most time-consuming things you have to do. And dealing with frustrating people can downright stop productivity in its tracks.
One of the most common types of frustrating people are the ones who seem to be “blocking” your ability to move forward without any logical basis for their behavior. They might throw up additional hoops for you to jump through that seem completely insignificant. They might get distracted running in so many directions that the team can’t focus on one thing long enough to move forward. They may be polite and cooperative and seem to understand what needs to be done, but then never follow through. Or they may simply be “too busy” to help you and look completely offended and put out at the expectation that you would expect anything more out of them since they are already overworked.
We all have different work styles, and this tends to exacerbate the situation. Sometimes it can be really enlightening to learn about your work style and compare it to those on your team. Although there are many different “work style” assessments, almost all of them group people loosely into four categories:
The Visionaries: These are the leaders who see possibilities, get excited about them, and can get everyone else excited and moving in one direction, but they don’t like to bother with the details, and sometimes they get so many new ideas that they are off and running in a new direction before you have a chance to act on the first plan. If you are a visionary, process oriented people will bore you, and drive you nuts, because it will feel like they are slowing everything down to a snail’s pace while the window of opportunity closes. A good coping mechanism is to realize you need process oriented people to bring your ideas to life and build in the quality they need to stay alive.
The Systemizers: These are the process oriented people who care about the details and get things done thoroughly. They are behind high quality and reliability. Their diligence can make the difference between a brand you can trust and a “rinky dink” outfit. But they take a long time to think things through, and sometimes they are still working out the details of a project when everyone else has lost interest and moved on. If you are a systemizer, visionaries will seem like unstable lunatics, and it will be hard to see the method in their madness. One thing that can increase your appreciation for the visionaries is that they are usually the ones out there bringing customers in to appreciate what YOU have worked so hard to produce.
The Task Masters: Task masters are focused and they don’t mind pushing the team to get things done. Once their eyes are set on a goal, they drive everyone involved towards that goal and have no patience for dragging feet. Of all the work styles, task masters have the least patience for all the “people issues” that get in the way of progress. They aren’t interested in whether or not people feel fulfilled by the functions they perform, or whether people on the team actually like each other, or if things are “fair”. They just want to get to the goal as quickly as possible. If you are a task master, you may be puzzled because it seems like you are offending people left and right when all you want is to get the job done. One thing that may open your perspective to having a people pleaser on you team, is that when people are getting along emotionally, it’s amazing how much more productive they are.
The People Pleasers: People pleasers want everyone to get along, feel fulfilled, and enjoy working together. They care most about creating the kind of work environment that allows people to be their best and perform accordingly. What frustrates them the most is watching members of the team disengage because they aren’t feeling respected or valued, and they often build up a lot of resentment towards the culprits, labeling them as rude, political, or otherwise “unworthy” of respect because of their lack of consideration for their fellow human beings. If you are a people pleaser, one tool that helps is proactively looking for a positive intention behind the behaviors that offend, and taking the initiative to build stronger relationships with ALL personalities in the workplace. This enables you to use your natural strengths to help create the positive environment you cherish, and see people thrive as a result.
Understanding your work style and those of others you work closely with is a first step towards getting more done as a team. You can’t always get away from working with people, but the more you learn about how people work, the more work YOU can get done!
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Taking "Win-Win" to a Whole New Level
I don’t know about you, but even though I really want to be a good and giving person, sometimes I get tired of being asked to donate to so many different causes. High school students knock on my door wanting me to order newspapers so they can go on school trips. I get endless calls from alumni associations and cancer societies. And my children always have something they “should” be selling to raise additional funds for their schools.
It’s not that I don’t believe in these causes, but I don’t like to feel manipulated into buying things I don’t really want, and I don’t like to feel guilty when I say no. I know we all have a choice, and I’ve learned to maintain my boundaries.
This solution doesn't feel quite right though. It still involves inner conflict. In order for one party to get what they need, others must give up at least some of what they value. What if it were possible for everyone to easily get what they need?
Last night my daughter showed me one example of what I call a “self-serving winners circle”. It’s an innovative way to give that feels much more like receiving than giving.
It’s a website called www.freerice.com. The organization’s mission is to end world hunger, and the way they do it is brilliant. They’ve created a fun vocabulary game that is easy to play and automatically adjusts to your level as you go, whether you are a second grade student or an English scholar. The site also has a place for banner ads. The companies who advertise pay and get visibility just like they would on any other site. A self-serving winners circle has been created with three winners and NO losers:
1. Winner # 1 – Anyone who likes to play on the computer and learn something incredibly useful at the same time. Go play the vocabulary game, improve your mastery of the English language, and every time you get a word right, you earn 20 grains of rice for the hungry. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but my daughter and I played for about an hour and got up to 7,000 grains pretty quickly. We were trying to figure out how much that was, and we decided it probably fed at least one person one meal. So not only did we both learn a few new words, we got to feel GOOD about making a contribution to something in the world, and she gets to take a print out of our results back to her teacher and get bonus points in school. To me, this is the essence of the joy of receiving and giving at the same time – freely.
2. Winner # 2 – The advertisers. Last I checked, the google rating for this site was a 6/10 which is pretty high, and my guess is that it will be even higher as the word continues to spread. I’m not exactly sure what the payment arrangement is for the advertiser, but whether it is based on “grains of rice earned while your banner is up” or some other formula, it’s probably similar to what they would pay for putting up a banner on any site. But in this case, they get the added benefit of being well-regarded and actually looked at with curiosity instead of annoyance. Site users wonder.. “hmm.. who are the cool companies advertising on this site – maybe I’ll take a more serious look at what they have to offer”. Imagine using the same marketing dollars to get visibility, increase good will, AND do good in the world!
3. Winner # 3 – The starving people who get to eat the rice that the vocabulary game players earn and the advertisers pay for. The site explains how they work with the UN food bank to make this happen.
To me, this is the essence of “win-win”. It’s about creating a system where everyone who participates truly wins in a tangible way, and no one in the system is giving just for the sake of giving. This is not a new concept. I remember learning about it in economics. Yet, it interests me that people don’t use it more.
It’s like we have a social paradigm that says giving has to hurt a little to be real. So we keep appealing to people’s sense of duty and morality to get important things done. But if there’s a more practical way to get the same thing done with less effort and fewer resources, why not?
My question is, where else might self-serving winners circles be useful? In business, could a self-serving winners circle make it almost effortless to attract new customers? At home, could a self-serving winners circle make discipline effortless? In a school, could a self-serving winners circle make teaching effortless? Besides feeding the hungry, are there positive, synergistic ways to tackle some of the other big problems in the world, like healthcare, crime, or even terrorism?
I think www.freerice.com has created a self-serving winners circle to make feeding the world a good deal easier, if not completely effortless, and I think they give a good example of how to create a system where people will naturally and enthusiastically work together towards a purpose, not just because they believe in the purpose, but because doing so serves them as well.
Self-serving systems are self-feeding, so they are endless. Resources are not depleted, and in fact, every participant in the system is receiving something they need. Because participants are naturally winning, they stay engaged, and the system continues to grow, generating and receiving more positive energy along the way.
Think about the things you want to accomplish for yourself, at work, and in the world. What is getting in the way? Do you need more cooperation from other people to succeed? If so, is it possible to create a self-serving winners circle? I’d love to hear!
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