Leadership and Learning

Posts Tagged ‘Brain Works’

Spring has sprung early this year. From the rescheduling of the Cherry Blossom Festival in DC, to the record setting pollen counts in Atlanta, no one can argue that Mother Nature decided to exit her Winter hibernation a bit sooner than usual this time around.

And with Spring comes a few rituals that we’ve come to embrace over the years: the Easter Egg hunt on the White House grounds, the Spring practices of college and pro football teams, longer days and shorter nights, and all the other outdoor activities that we associate with warmer temperatures.

My question for you, however, relates to the indoor activities of your workplace. We can certainly engage in physical Spring cleaning activities: throwing away outdated files, rearranging some of our furniture, and scouring our office surfaces with pine-scented cleaners. But what about the internal opportunity we have to start something new and fresh? What can we commit to doing differently to become even more effective in our work? How do we break from those habits, behaviors, and activities that are not serving us well?

Here are five simple steps you can use to begin the Spring Cleaning of your psyche.

1. Take an honest look at what you’re doing. This one is simple enough. For one week, track all of your activities. If you’re the person who says, “There aren’t enough hours in a day,” or you frequently tout your multi-tasking skills, ask yourself why. Why do some people get a lot more done, while not seeming to work as hard as you? The key here, as with all of these steps, is to be honest.
2. Take an honest look at what you’re not doing. Every time you choose to do something, you’re intentionally choosing not to do something else. This one can be difficult for people to understand. If you’re a leader with an “open door” policy, you’re also choosing not to give yourself some needed down time. If you’re constantly responding to email and other distractions, you’re also choosing not to give your brain time and space to focus on the other, perhaps more important, tasks at hand. Only you know what the true cost is of what you choose to do.
3. Engage in scenario planning with yourself. After you’ve taken some time to examine where you’re spending your time and energy, play a few what ifs. What if you closed your door from 8-9, and then 4-5 every day? You’ve taken time to focus, plan your day, or plan your tomorrow. What if you responded to emails less frequently? Again, only you know if a strategy like this will work for you and in your environment.
4. Choose one thing to do differently. The great thing about scenario planning is during the planning phase, all of the results are hypothetical. You don’t know how things are going to play out. Only once you begin doing something different (or differently) can you see the actual results on your workload.
5. Practice. You may have heard that it takes 21 days of doing something differently to become habit. While that’s a convenient rule of thumb, the actual time it takes for a new behavior to become internalized may take more or less time, depending on how long you’ve been doing it in the first place.

Spring is a great time to take stock, recalibrate, and try something new. If we’re not afraid to examine what we’re doing, we may be surprised at what we can do.

Many of you probably recognize the German word for “attention.” Did I just capture yours? How long did I keep it? What’s important to you about “attention?” Why do I keep asking you rhetorical questions? How many more questions will I ask? Hmmm…

I recently attended a webinar. The topic of the webinar had intrigued me, and I had never heard one from the organization presenting it before. So I dutifully registered and looked forward to seeing (and hearing) a new perspective on the topic at hand.

About five minutes into the webinar, the presenter posed a “yes/no” question to the audience; however, the answer(s) offered were in a multiple choice format. I sat and scratched my head, thinking that I must have missed something. I opted not to answer the question, thinking that the other 175 or so people on the webinar who had answered quickly had clearly heard (or saw) something that I had not.

Since they had (what I perceived) to be more or different information than me, I would defer to their thinking. I mean, after all, I was sitting in a virtual room with 175 of my newest colleagues, so I decided to go with the majority.

I then decided to pay a little more attention than I had been. As I listened and watched the webinar unfold, it became apparent (at least to me), that the information was a bit spotty. I perceived the presenter was navigating between key points in a way that was totally logical to her, but clearly was not logical to me. I wondered about the others on the webinar. Was I the only one witnessing this? Did it matter? Was I still missing something?

I had a choice to make. Do I continue on the webinar? Or do I bail?

At that precise moment, I recognized that I was doing something that I frequently coach my clients (who are leaders) not to do.

I was judging the webinar.

Because of my inability to connect the dots, I had begun to judge the entire experience. Surely I couldn’t be part of the problem. I had, in a nanosecond, begun to formulate beliefs about the presenter, the company she worked for, and the organization she was representing. My beliefs may or may not be accurate, but that wasn’t the point. The point, for me, was how I had begun to pay attention. And that was troubling.

I had begun to look and listen for reasons not to pay attention. I looked and listened only for the things to reinforce my ever-increasing intense belief that the presenter wasn’t prepared (she was), or that her information wasn’t relevant (it was).

I chuckled. Out loud. At myself.

No matter how much I learn, read, investigate, analyze, or “know,” the more I realize that the type of attention we pay to others is critical in informing our world view. When we observe the world from a place of curiosity, not judgment, the world becomes a different place.

I intentionally changed my frame of mind. I made my brain ask questions like, “I wonder what she’s going to cover next” rather than “I’m sure the next point isn’t going to follow.” I curiously anticipated what was coming next, rather than sitting and waiting to judge the next statement. The rest of the webinar was very informative, and the information was presented in a way that was not how I would do it, but was equally (if not more) effective.

As leaders, we get to make a choice. Moment by moment. What captures our attention may not be what keeps our attention. But in a world of competing demands for our attention, shouldn’t we be curious rather than judgmental? I’m curious to hear what you think…

Anaïs Nin: ‘We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.’

The little boy fidgeted in his bed. Surrounded by his stuffed animals and his achievement trophies, he eagerly anticipated the brightest spot in his day. In fact, it was the brightest spot in almost all of his days, though he probably didn’t realize it at the time. It was the moment when his grown up majestically entered his room, book in hand, and sat beside him, snuggled in among his stuffed animal friends, and began the adventure.

The adventure took them on different places every night. From tales of princes and princesses in faraway lands, to epic battles of good versus evil.  From action packed scenes of battle, to serene campfires in the Rocky Mountains.

And if he were able to hold his eye lids open, as they grew heavier and heavier, some how, some way, things almost always ended in a good place. The prince and princess were reunited at last; good, yet again, was able to conquer evil. The inevitable battle gave way to peace, and the fish were always biting at the mountain lakes.

For many of us, storytelling has been an integral part of our lives. Stories have given us hope when we had little; stories gave us strength when we were weak; and stories were able to send us off to dream with a sense that everything, eventually, would be all right.

Sometimes, our bedtime stories taught us life lessons (though we didn’t realize it). In many cases for me as a young child, I would keep fighting sleep because I couldn’t wait to get to the end. I had to know what was going to happen. I had to know things were going to be all right; of if things weren’t right, I needed to believe that life was fair-at least sometimes.

If you shared similar experiences, you probably didn’t realize that your grownups were really helping to train your brain. Our brains love to relate to others, and storytelling is one of the best ways for that to happen. But how do we tell good stories in the workplace? Stories that teach, motivate, empathize, or admonish?

As HR professionals, being able to tell good stories will frequently teach the people in the agency we support lessons, or provide them a way of processing information, that a “just the facts” approach will not.

We all have stories; it’s just how we choose to tell them, and the spirit in which we offer them, that will gauge their effectiveness. When telling a workplace story, here are three tips to keep in mind.

1. Make sure your story reinforces the message you’re trying to convey. If a situation is confusing or doesn’t align with the situation, you’ll do nothing more than muddy the waters for your colleagues.
2. Choose your words carefully. In the beginning of this blog, you were probably able to quickly generate a mental image as the story unfolded about our little boy waiting for a bedtime story. Making sure you choose words that are as exact and precise as possible will serve you well when telling your story. And, in telling a workplace story with a message, make sure you use your words, your language, and your style. One of the greatest things we can celebrate about ourselves is our differences.
3. Practice. If you know you’ve got a difficult message to convey, it’s important to practice conveying that message. If you’re telling a story, keep it simple yet descriptive; keep it concise yet meaningful; and keep it tailored to your audience.

Understanding the power of storytelling in the workplace is yet another tool to use in your ability to communicate. And although we may not always end up with a “happily ever after,” we certainly can walk away feeling that we shared, we connected, and we, perhaps, realized that we’re all a bit more alike than we are different.

The End.

The Heat is On

This week, I had the pleasure of participating in a video shoot Management Concepts organized as part of the Professional Government Supervisor Program. It was a lot of fun (apart from the mortifying aspect of seeing yourself on screen), but what I really noticed was how the director worked with people who had speaking roles.

Time after time, he would encourage the on-air “talent” through expressions such as “That’s great,” or “Yes!” or “That’s it!”

Let me tell you, it is no easy thing to stand in front of lights that look like they could be used to open a car dealership and coherently express thoughts. You are aware the camera is rolling, and that mistakes cost time and film.

In this context, I’m sure the Director has figured out over the years that the best way to help people perform at their best is to remove any sense of threat or criticism, and to encourage and praise progress.

Since it’s all about what it takes to achieve peak performance, we can contrast this approach with the fault-finding, nit-picking, micromanagement and looking for any weakness that sometimes characterize supervision, management and leadership.

A prime example of where this occurs is when something you write is edited by someone else. There is some kind of deep-seated need to find something to change. The dreaded red-ink (today, track changes) produces a lot of negative emotions in most writers. With a red page, they lose confidence, try to second guess the editor, and sometimes wind up hating the whole process of writing.

Contrast this with steady, honest praise for what is working well, along with questions or suggestions to change what could be better, but all couched in a posture of support.

The fact is, when we are criticized or micromanaged, our brain’s threat center (the amygdala) switches on. We can fight, freeze or flee really well, but we generally don’t get very creative, intelligent or resourceful. Cortisol (the stress hormone) floods our systems.

When we are praised, recognized positively or complimented, the dopamine and serotonin neurotransmitters kick in. We feel good, empowered and ready to roll.

So when the director said “Rolling,” he really knew what he was doing. In fact, I don’t know if he even knows about hormones, neurotransmitters or the amygdala. I think he knows a lot more about establishing shots, close-ups, over-the-shoulder shots, how to flare the camera and lot of other things. But he doesn’t need to understand exactly what happens between the ears. He’s operating very successful from his own intuitive understanding of what it takes to help people perform at their best.

Ed Frauenheim has written a tremendous blog on workforce.com that everyone who feels busy should read.

http://www.workforce.com/article/20120113/BLOGS05/120119976/when-agility-adopts-the-symptoms-of-a-d-d#

To be fair, he is actually summarizing work done by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, who wrote in the January issue of the McKinsey Quarterly. But he does a nice job, and here is what he (and they) are saying:

Organizational life, work, pace and culture have stumbled into a condition that they call Strategic Attention Deficit Disorder (yes, SADD). It is characterized by leaders careening from one priority to another, always jumping to the next thing. In the process, they demoralize the workforce and “kill meaning” at work.

This only matters if you care about motivation and people feeling that what they do makes sense. If you don’t mind low morale and employee perceptions that work is meaningless, then you can disregard the piece.

Here’s the kicker: What seems to be driving at least some of this is one of the latest, recycled buzzwords of “agility.”
Who can argue with being agile? We all have to be this way – at times.

The problem is that it has become code for constantly shifting priorities that confuse employees, and who learn to see the pattern of “here today, gone tomorrow,” as the organization grasps for the next new thing. Maybe it will be operational excellence. Or customer-centricity. Or core competency.

Seriously, we can go back in the literature and pull these things out at any time – although it is best to wait until most of the organizational memory is erased around the initiative. (The one that still has not been dead long enough to remove the memories is TQM, and its key word: “empowerment.” When you use those terms with a government group, there is usually a groan, and this dates back to the 1980s.)

The desire for the silver bullet – that one, key linking piece that will forever resolve all the problems, anxieties, confusion and pain – will never go away, I suspect. It’s why a bazillion books have been written on leadership and organizations. Everyone is looking for The Answer.

It also speaks to how our brains work. We are hard-wired to notice what is bright and shiny, something exciting and new. We want to be sure we don’t miss the boat, or incur a threat. So we give a lot of air time to whatever is new, even while not really following through on what is already in place. So agile becomes fragile.

My friend Katherine McGraw calls the age in which we live “global speed-up.” I believe a symptom of the age is SADD, and wise leaders will recognize the problem and perhaps slow the ever-accelerating merry-go-round to ask some new questions.

One of those might be how to get the workforce really behind and supporting whatever the new initiative is. The answer? Engage them in the process. This creates a commitment that makes change efforts more likely to succeed.

Change can be fantastic. Really.

Late summer tends to bring on a time of change in people’s lives, and this summer is no exception in my neck of the woods.

Some of my friends are about to send their kids off to school for the first time. They are studying bus schedules and working up the courage to ask their boss for a more flexible work day so they can be with their kids at the beginning and the end of the school day. It is a natural request, yet one that feels hard for some people to make if they work in an office with a culture that seems to value long hours and ‘face time.’ It is easy to feel like an outlier if it isn’t common behavior in your office to decline in-person meetings after 3pm for the sake of personal commitments.

Other friends are preparing to send their kids off to school too – college. These friends are busy helping their kids to pick out dorm supplies; they are double checking their insurance policies to make sure their kids will be covered when away from home; they are lovingly planning the last family meal at home before the composition of their household changes forever. They are learning how to care for their kids in a whole new way through all of these steps. The ones who are married are also learning how to relate to their spouse in a new way, particularly if their college-bound kid is the last one to leave home. No more track meets to schedule dinner around or dry cleaning reminders to work in between car pool runs or soccer practice. There is suddenly more time for ‘real’ conversation again. That can feel fantastic…or scary…or at the very least, unfamiliar. Quite possibly, all of the above at different times.

Times of change present us with an opportunity to demonstrate some curiosity and adaptability. This takes some intention and practice for most people, however. Our brains are wired to appreciate routine. A change to our routine – even a small one – can feel like a threat to the brain, making it hard to adopt a perspective that is open to possibilities. And yet, our brains have a remarkable capacity for continuous learning. When you help your brain to learn to see changes as opportunities you build the capacity to adapt to change more successfully.

There are a few simple questions that I often ask my coaching clients to consider when they are working on their capacity to adapt to change. One question is: “What is one thing about this change that I might like?” This question helps to shift the perspective from a sense of what is being lost to the possibility that the change presents something that would be positive. Another is: “What is one thing I will be relieved to let go of as a result of this change?” I have found that this question is sometimes harder for coaching clients to answer right away, especially if their answer is tied to something they feel a strong sense of responsibility about (like caring for their kids every day). It can be easy for that sense of responsibility to become a sense of identity, making it even harder to let go in the face of change.

Leaders need to be aware of this dynamic when they announce changes in the workplace, too. There are usually many thoughts and emotions that go unspoken during times of change unless leaders make it a point to demonstrate their openness to hearing about what is on people’s hearts and minds. Left unspoken, these thoughts and emotions can fester into unproductive behaviors that show up as lower productivity, increased absences, and sometimes, outright sabotage of the mission. Leaders can do a lot to diminish the fears people may have during times of change by making it safe to surface difficult topics. This is also another way of building individual and organizational capacity for adapting to change.

Change is a constant in life, whether it happens at work or at home. Whether you are experiencing a big change right now or you are leading a change initiative where you work, take a few minutes to ask yourself the questions I have offered and notice what comes up for you. If you have been feeling resistant to the change you may be surprised at how quickly you can shift your perspective and your energy around it by practicing this exercise. If you could see your brain as you do this you would see it creating new thought patterns that will build your capacity to shift to a different perspective. Then, offer the questions to those you lead, and practice some active listening as they share their responses with you. Demonstrate that it is safe for them to bring up whatever concerns or ideas they may have about the change. This will help to lower the sense of threat that the brain experiences during change. Your ability to role model adaptability and openness just may provide your team with the perfect setting for their own possibilities to unfold.

I don’t know if it’s running anymore, but there used to be a great ad campaign for Duracell batteries that featured the Energizer Bunny. This wind-up rabbit would parade through the scene, beating a drum and just kept going and going and going.

That was the point. The bunny, fueled by the batteries, kept going and going and going.

Starting to sound familiar? Maybe hit close to home?

Here’s a contrast to consider. Today I was on a conference call hearing about a particularly fascinating leadership development topic (the stages of adult development), while an email came in from a colleague attending a conference, where she was having a great time, learning lots and feeling good. She called it awesome.

Many leaders we work with report never having the chance, or to be more accurate, taking the opportunity to step back from going and going and going to restore, refresh, rejuvenate and re-engage themselves. And a week in Cancun once every 365 days doesn’t cut it or count – it has to be more regular than that.

Many leaders I’ve worked with report endless days, inhaling their lunches at their desks, multi-tasking during meetings (which means only partial attention and impaired focus – sorry to tell you), not taking vacation days, thinking about work while talking to their kids, checking email right before going to sleep and right when waking up.

They are clinically burned out. (It is amazing how much information you can glean within a fraction of a second when sitting down to coach someone. Always good to check out and validate, but people who are burned out usually look it, and are usually pretty immediate about admitting it. The body never lies, as Martha Graham said.)

This blog could go on for many pages describing the deleterious effects of all this — most notably, crowding out time for reflection — but I’d prefer to make the pitch. You decide if it works and is worth it.

I believe it is really important for leaders – and everyone else, actually – to intentionally set aside time to renew and restore. I don’t care if it’s learning about something that excites you, working the lathe in your basement woodshop, walking in a nature preserve, volunteering, gardening, cooking a really nice meal, singing, or anything else. The key is that your emotions will tell you if whatever you are doing is helping you to balance the work ship, which is dangerously close to capsizing for many people I know.

I’m also not going to go into the brain and body benefits this brings to work, let alone your life and relationships. Instead, I’m just going to ask you to give it a shot. What is something that fascinates you that you would love to be able to do? What really stands in the way? Could it be your priorities?

I once coached a client who decided to haul his bicycle out of deep storage, clean it up and ride. Somewhere along the way he rediscovered himself.

Readers of this blog know I like to play the electric guitar (I turn it up to 11), and I like Arlington Fretworks. http://arlingtonfretworks.com/home

Proprietor and craftsman Daniel Carbone repairs and builds guitars there. I have written previously about his standards of excellence being off the charts. (One client wrote that he would trust him to work on his kids’ teeth.) http://blogs.managementconcepts.com/lm/leadership/2010/09/a-thousandth-of-an-inch-or-%e2%80%9cgood-enough-for-government-work%e2%80%9d/

Daniel’s website notes that an interesting question has arisen in the music and physics world of whether a wood-based instrument improves the more you play it. http://arlingtonfretworks.com/articles

Sounds pretty virtuous if it’s true. According to a New York Times story, Dr. David G. Hunt of the School of Engineering Systems and Design at South Bank University in London believes it is. He says vibrations aimed at the instrument subtly alter the physics of the wood in a way that empirically increases sustain (the Holy Grail of guitar players), and more subjectively improves the sound.

So what leadership lesson can we apply from world of musical instruments and physics?

Every time you do something positive, constructive, helpful, engaging, uplifting, inspiring, motivating or other-centered (music), I believe you change yourself (wood).

By actually doing whatever you have learned and think might work better than whatever you were doing, you behaviorally rewrite some of your operating system source code; you rearrange the molecules in the wood.

There is actually a neuroscientific explanation for this, as you change behavior, you lay down new neural pathways in your malleable brain; it is about plasticity. It is how habits – good or bad – get formed. One phrase is, “what fires, wires.” Synaptic connections become the new reality.

You can also pick up good vibes by associating with people who operate at a high level. By observing, maybe by  osmosis, you are influenced in a positive way — but you still have to act on what you are noticing.

Keep in mind that overnight, radical development usually doesn’t last. It takes time.

I once worked with a woman in Atlanta in a leadership position in a federal agency. She said in workshop that one thing she does now is really listen to employees. She also said she could not do this several years ago. (Actually, she could have at any time; she just chose to start trying it at some point.) Her comment was that it still requires some effort, but it is much easier now than it used to be.

Her molecules got rearranged. Without belaboring the point about the very significant benefits of true listening, we can say she is somehow different as a result of all the times she was ready to jump in with The Expert Opinion, but chose to hold back and listen longer. I would lay a heavy bet her employees appreciated this.

The opposite way to think about this is the old phrase, “To know and not do is to not know.”

A final point: The author of the study mentioned above said in an interview that “People don’t understand entirely the structure of wood, even after using it and studying it for centuries.”

So there’s something a mystery in this (but not enough to prevent guitar players from keeping their axes by their speakers). Think about it: We have some real gaps in our knowledge of wood.

How about our knowledge of people and relationships?

I recently served on a grand jury, which is definitely some experiential learning. It allows one to discover many facets of the community that may not be encountered so regularly in the course of everyday life.

The way a grand jury works is that you hear many, many case summaries, each of which takes anywhere from less than a minute to just a few minutes. The grand jury only decides if there is sufficient evidence to warrant a trial, not guilt or innocence.

With dozens of cases to hear, the question came up: Should we work through lunch and get out early, or take a break and stay later?

In my experience, almost everybody today advocates for “let’s go faster and get done earlier” under the relentless pressure of the clock. “Hurry up, compress cycle time, be just in time” and “now” seem to be the words of the age.
There was an immediate — I would say almost unconscious — push toward “Let’s get it over with.” So I had to say something.

Having recently read the phenomenal book “The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working,” and knowing what would happen at least to my attention span, energy, blood sugar and focus on an empty stomach, I had to push back.

And so I said, “We could work through lunch, but I think we would feel it later this afternoon. And I don’t think we were brought here to be fast. We were brought here to decide whether many people would be indicted by a grand jury. I think we owe it to them to give our best thinking and decision making.”

The room was quiet for a second. I was ready for pushback, but somewhat surprisingly, they all agreed.

I had a steak and cheese sub. (I know. This was not the best choice, but it was a small sub.) We reconvened after an hour and I would like to think we gave our best effort. We asked lots of questions, had high-quality discussion and worked productively as a group.

It wasn’t our fastest effort. Just our best.

There’s a difference.

I’ve adopted a new practice I want to share with you, because it’s making a real difference in my own life, and maybe it could in yours, too.

You know the bumper sticker, “Practice random acts of kindness and senseless beauty?” The one some people sneer at? Well, the people who made and display that bumper sticker have something going on.

I’ve been doing this for a few weeks, and think I’ve hit it every day. (I was on the road and you know how blurry things get on the road.) I’ve been doing the acts of kindness part rather than senseless beauty; I’m still working on getting my arms around that latter part.

And I want to tell you, it changes things.

I was talking with a colleague about this practice and she asked what the impact was. I told her, after pausing to think about it for a minute, that it changes the space.

By this, I mean that it changes several things. This is ironically pretty selfish, but it changes me. At the best of times, I can be pretty demanding, critical, judgmental and negative. But doing something kind somehow pushes back on all that. It’s a kink in the armor.

It also may change others. You never know what the result will be when you pause to let someone in a hurry into the lane of traffic, or tell someone how much you enjoy working with him or her, or tell an employee that you really appreciate his or her help.

(I had to pay a traffic ticket last month, and used Virginia’s automated system to do so. I have to tell you, it’s a really great interface. When I talked to a human being to confirm everything had been received, I told her what a great system it was and that I had actually enjoyed using it. We had a laugh together, and I imagined what she must hear from other disgruntled traffic violators.)

And then, this is in the somewhat mystical department, it changes the space. Somehow, the air, the vibe, the climate is different. I can’t really explain it. The weather inside gets better. This may relate to mirror neurons, or limbic system resonance.

I was at a party last night talking to a friend who had been through some pretty bad team development experiences. Understandably, he seemed pretty skeptical about organization development efforts. I told him one premise I hold is that at the end of the day, people have to believe in and really own and behavior or change they want to make. You can’t really make anyone do anything – at least very well.

So in that vein, I offer this practice as a possibility for you to pursue. You decide if it makes sense. You decide what the results are. Give it a shot.