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4 Ways to Find More Time

May 5, 2012 By 1 Comment

There is never enough time. However, it is possible to find extra time if you are conscious about your judgment of time.

The following four thoughts about time may steal your time. A change in perception can give you a better sense of time.

1. Time is money. According to researchers Sanford Devoe and Julian House, thinking of time in terms of money shapes how we view time well spent. Devoe and House asked participants to take a period of time to enjoy music or putter around the Internet for pleasure.

Before one group started, they were asked to share their hourly wage at work. Devoe and House did not ask this question of the second group. Those that were asked to think about their paycheck first grew impatient with “doing nothing.” Based on their post-test comments, those who were asked about money had thoughts about the time not spent earning cash.

Those who didn’t think about money enjoyed their time. They found value in the exercise.

Do you need to account for every minute of you time or are there “non-productive” moments that are priceless?

Creativity demands we have periods of time where we don’t think about work or problems. The more complex a situation, the more there is a chance to overload your cognitive resources. When you instead sleep on it or distract yourself with something mindless or a physical activity, you give your unconscious a chance to sort through possible solutions which is more effective than consciously trying to sift through pros and cons. This is called the “deliberation-without-attention effect.”

There is a reason why you come up with great ideas in your sleep. Creativity peaks at times of mental fuzziness, when you are sleepy and non-focused. On the other hand, the need to work more, work harder and work faster doesn’t lead to more productivity and actually kills creativity.

2. There is not enough time. If you are conscious about how you are spending your time, you might be able to speed up time. How much evidence do you need before you make a decision? How deeply do you need to analyze each step in your plan? According to researcher Roger Ratcliff, decisions and tasks often take a long time because of a conscious choice to emphasize accuracy over speed.Trusting yourself to work faster can give you the gift of time.

Additionally, making a plan and sticking to it can narrow your focus so you can’t see alternatives and time-savers right in front of you.

Psychologist E.J Masicampo gave subjects a task of finding Bill Murray’s birthdate after completing another task. They were told they could find it on a particular movie site. About two-thirds of the participants overlooked the Wikipedia website on their screen, thinking they had to go to the movie site as planned. Finding the date on Wikipedia would have been easier than trying to discover it on the movie site.

Blindly adhering to a premeditated path can lead to expending more time, energy and resources on a problem than is necessary. How can you remind yourself to sit back, take a breath, and look around you for other possibilities even when you have many things to finish in a day? The Jesuits have a nearly 500-year old spiritual tradition that emphasizes a twice-daily practice of conscience. Do you have time for this?

3. I don’t have time now but I will later. Psychologically healthy adults tend to be optimistic about the future. This isn’t bad, but it could paint the present as worse than it is. When you are having a good time, you don’t worry about time. When you are not, time is either a drudge or stress producer.

Try to see what makes the present moment the best of times. Positive emotions improve the brain’s executive function and encourage creative, quick and strategic thinking. Gain time by actively thinking about things that make you happy, and then look for good reasons for completing the task in front of you. There may never be a better time than now.

4. Time is fleeting. All the “productivity tools” we have actually make us less productive. Constantly checking for emails, texts, the latest news, social media streams, relevant blog posts, and irrelevant but interesting articles keep our brains scattered and overworked.

When you are working to complete a task, ban the distractions. Be aware of what steals your attention. If you get interrupted or need a break, make a conscious choice to return to the task at hand with your full attention. Letting yourself wander for too long may lead you to having to repeat some of your work just to remember where you left off.

Also, when you leave one task to go to another, be sure you leave the last task behind. Before starting something new, go for a walk, climb stairs, or do some deep breathing to clear your head. Even if you think you are a good multi-tasker, the brain has only 100% of attention to dole out. Giving a task even 80% of your attention can lead to mistakes you will have to fix later, taking up precious time.

Now, I go make up the time that you have taken to read this article.

Filed Under: Brain Tips, Self-Awareness, Time Management Tagged With: , , , ,

How to Make a Decision

March 3, 2012 By

Your brain is a control freak!

In its effort to protect you, to keep you alive and safe, your brain can keep you from getting what you want if you don’t take the steps to stop it.

I am not just talking about big goals. Generally, people are more deliberate when making major life and business decisions unless they are running from a terrible situation and think there is only one choice to make. Yet it is easier to identify the anger and fear that are driving these decisions. The questions below will help you with these choices as well.

The greater dilemma surrounds your everyday decisions—whether to make the phone call, confront someone you THOUGHT was a friend, or join, maybe speak to a group of people—when it comes to these decisions, your brain often steers you wrong subversively.

Because your brain’s primary job is to protect you, when you face an uncomfortable decision, it will in a flash give you a fabulously credible rationalization for avoiding embarrassment, humiliation, or just plain nervousness. As humans, we are master rationalizers.

Most of my clients come to me with decisions that presume only two possibilities exist. Either they opt for one way or the other. They rarely see the middle ground or the out of the box solution. The greatest danger in seeing only two options is to choose the one you think will be most comfortable in the end without really knowing what will happen in the future.

Giving yourself the benefit of choices means you first lay out all the options you have, including hybrids where you do one thing while trying out the other. Your decision-making becomes a creative process. You should feel more hope as possibilities unfold. Instead of saying, “Should I or shouldn’t I?” you say, “What else is possible for me in this situation?”

Whether you are deciding on a career move, the next step in a project or a relationship issue, or what clothing to pack for your conference, ask yourself these questions:

  • Am I making a black and white decision or have I explored all of my options around this choice I have to make?
  • Which option will I regret more if I don’t decide on it?
  • What is the worst that can happen if the option I take doesn’t work out, really? How likely is the worst to happen? How painful will a failure be? Will I be able to pick myself up and move on, rich from the experience?
  • What sacrifices must I make or discomfort will I endure to realize my goal? Is it worth it? Is the possible gain greater than the expected pain?
  • Why am I making this decision now?

The moment your brain says yes or no to something, even with good reason why, you should ask yourself, is my reason really a convenient rationalization? Is this my fear or my logic speaking? Then explore the impact of each option and discover other solutions before you make your choice.

Your gut feeling can be based on fear, not good sense.

Most people can’t predict the future. It is hard to know, really, if the action you take is going to have a horrific outcome or if something great could come out of an awkward situation.

Remember, there will be less to regret if YOU make the decision instead of letting your protective, control freak brain do it for you.

You can outsmart your brain. The possibilities you create will make achieving success much easier.

Filed Under: Brain Tips, Emotional Intelligence, Problem-solving, Self-Awareness Tagged With: , ,

When Collaboration Kills Innovation: 5 Time Bombs to Surface and Defuse

December 31, 2011 By

Your efforts to promote collaboration could be killing innovation.

Collaboration is the hot word today, which means leaders and teams are expected to know how to do this. So we train people on how to honor everyone’s strengths, how to include different perspectives in decision-making and how to celebrate team milestones. We push people to say “we” instead of “me.”

Knowing how to collaborate is also handy for families, volunteer groups and team sports.

Yet the “rah-rah” of teams may mask the shortfalls of teamwork.

In a brilliant article recently published in the Harvard Business Review, Nolifer Merchant brought to light Eight Dangers of Collaboration. Subtle and sometimes invisible blocks to team productivity include

  • the fear of speaking up against the majority
  • subtle tribal behaviors of inclusion and exclusion
  • slow reaction times as problems are talked to death
  • team assignments create more busy-work for already overworked people
  • conflict avoidance so as not to rock the boat
  • watered-down solutions
  • lack of accountability

I am often told to keep my training positive. Negative views bring down the energy. Regardless of how it makes my participant feel, I think it is important for teams to answer the question, “What will stop you from succeeding?”

In my doctoral studies, one of my professors shared some additional time bombs that can kill collaborative efforts:

  1. Handclasping – When one or two strong members agree with the leader no matter what, forcing others to align with their decisions.
  2. Majority voting – When the majority silences the minority without fully hearing their points of view.
  3. Collusion of rebels – When a number of members resist the leader’s decisions no matter what or they question the leader’s action enough to slow down the process to an inefficient pace demonstrating that the team is as useless as they predicted.
  4. Near Consensus – When some members don’t have all the details but the solution sounds good enough for them to go along with the others. This could lead to groupthink and possible serious errors.
  5. Village Idiot – One person’s ideas are continually ignored or killed without any consideration.

In the 1980’s, I worked for a computer company that was sold to a group of four Harvard MBA graduates. The company was having difficulties shifting to the new smart computer technologies. The new owners thought they would fix our problems by creating cross-functional teams to make decisions. In a culture where departments didn’t get along and there was no corporate training, this grand experiment failed due to the collusion of rebels. The company went bankrupt a few years later.

My next job was to help take a floundering semi-conductor company out of near- bankruptcy. We re-organized into cross-functional teams based on business units. Based on what lessons I learned from the Harvard leadership team, I created a team training program that taught both the light and dark sides of collaboration. This allowed the team to surface and resolve resistance, poor decision-making, and unproductive practices. The team training was recognized as one of the key contributions when the company went public and became the top IPO in the United States in 1993.

Collaboration can increase creativity and innovation as people build on each others ideas. Collaboration can increase team spirit and motivation when people succeed together. The younger generation of workers tends to thrive in collaborative environments.

To make collaboration work, people need to be trained on both how to do it and what to watch out for.

A great program that addresses all sides of collaboration is The Team Advantage by the Pyramid Resource Group.

You must go into any partnership or team with your eyes wide open. All participants should have the “language of dangers” and feel safe enough to point out the possibility of these hazards occurring.

Highly productive teams know where they are vulnerable so they can bring problems to light and commit to moving on to create a more open, respectful and enjoyable experience.

Filed Under: Brain Tips, Emotional Intelligence, Team Building Tagged With: , ,

Make Life Easier by Knowing Your Brand

October 1, 2011 By

You should never be told to quiet your voice, limit your creativity or suppress your spirit because, “The Company says you have to do it this way.” The company or corporation does not have a mouth. Yet the company was built on values and a brand. To be successful, there has to be a match between your personal brand and the one that represents the team, alliance or organization you work with.

First, let me clear up what a company or corporation is. Underneath this explanation are clues to why you will either flourish or fade under your frustration at work. This definition can be applied to how you work with any group of people, including teams, communities and families.

In spite of what some politicians would like you to believe, a corporation is not a person. It is a piece of paper. It’s a series of agreements made by people. It does not have a thinking brain and beating heart. Although we can use metaphors to make the corporation appear to be a living being, a corporation survives on money, not food and affection. And when a corporation dies, there is nothing to bury or burn but the original paper that created it.

However, any work you do with someone else, whether it’s a partnership, alliance, small business or multi-national corporation, is regulated by specific beliefs that the partners or founders—the people—infused into the agreement when it was conceived. This gives the company the sense that it is alive in the form of its values, culture and living brand.

In other words, the team, company or corporation does not have a face but it has a soul, mirroring what is important to the people who came together to create something they couldn’t do alone.

To succeed and even to stand out at work, what you stand for has to align with what the company stands for in the form of the values and the brand that it lives every day. In Built to Last, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras explains that these values guide behavior in daily life across all levels of the organization. Whereas a person’s work values may shift based on their position of leadership, company values and what the organization stands for—the brand—are stable over time.

The core values stay stable even if someone changes the posters and business cards. The values and brand are present in how meetings are run, how people feel when they are at work and what someone tells you when you ask them how they like their job.

Therefore, no matter how good your work is, your success depends on how well you align with the values and brand—the soul—of the company.

I have left companies where it was clear my brand did not align with theirs. If I would have known this before I started the work, I would have moved on in spite of the money offered. Now that I work for myself, I have to be conscious of this alignment when I chose to work with partners and clients. If there is no match, I can’t do my best work.

However, when I was a company employee, my greatest success came when I realized how my best contribution—creating a workplace that is both fun and inspiring for all—aligned with the company’s core values of innovation, experimentation and team spirit. There were other values that didn’t match up to mine very well such as the value for crushing the competition, but when I focused on the match, I was a star.

This process of discovering how you can align what you stand for to what the organization stands for at its core is defined in Suzanne Bates’ new book, Discover Your CEO Brand: Secrets to Embracing and Maximizing Your Unique Value as a Leader (McGraw Hill).

The book is not just for CEOs. It’s for anyone who wants to institute change in a company that benefits both the bottom line and the people who achieve this. It’s about discovering your own values, brand and leadership style, and then determining how this will align with what your organization stands for so you can harness the two to work in concert. Or you can discover when your path needs to start somewhere else where the alignment is clear.

Suzanne says, “The brand begins with the story of you—the experiences that defined you, the lessons you learned, and the ways those lessons shaped your values and beliefs. Once you understand the essence of your brand, you will be able to communicate it to the world. It will become a powerful force, creating positive results. You will be able to leverage that brand of yours to drive tremendous value into your company.”

Personal branding isn’t just about marketing. It’s about your happiness. Know your values and brand and then have the courage to only align with people where you can stand by your brand. If you do this, you will flourish. Otherwise, you will flounder under the conflict with your partners, leaders and your own heart.

Filed Under: Brain Tips, Happiness and Wellness, Leadership, Professional Development, Self-Awareness Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The Best Kept Secret of Leadership: Do Less, Focus More

August 13, 2011 By

As you wade through the stress of a turbulent and uncertain world, do you find yourself demanding more from yourself and your employees? This often happens when your brain is trapped in protection mode. According to a blog post published by the Harvard Business Review, “...research has shown that the more executives have to do, the less their company earns.”

Add technology to the equation and stressed-out leaders and employees are spending more time at home checking emails as well as working on and thinking about work. According to a survey by Right Management, one out of three employees in North America said they often get emails they must reply to from their bosses during weekends.  “It’s now taken for granted that everyone has to check their work email during the weekend,” says Douglas J. Matthews, Right Management’s president.

As a result, our “work brain” never stops whirring. These intrusions cut out down time unless you go on a real vacation, something few Americans take these days.

Has all this extra work paid off? No. In fact, the never-ending work cycle is detrimental to productivity.

I was teaching a class for a group of managers who worked for a French bank in Moscow. One woman told me that she started her career working for an American bank. She had great aspirations of success. As her manager demanded more and more of her time, insisting she work harder and faster on so many “priorities” that she had to take work home, she found herself overwhelmed, exhausted, and always on the brink of tears. She knew her work suffered as well.

The story has a happy ending. She quit and went to work for a French bank. Her managers helped her discern top priorities from less-important tasks and encouraged her to maintain a healthy lifestyle. She followed the “do less and focus more” rule. She is not only happier, she is more productive. Her good work has earned her two promotions in three years. The French-based bank is currently more successful than the American bank she worked for.

Leaders who chase every opportunity and feel their teams must excel at every objective on their list are running resources too thin. Focus is then scattered, killing any chance that the leader and the organization will stand out as superior in one particular area which is critical to be a competitive success.

The question is, “What is your mission as a Leader?”

Are you supposed to focus on getting many results or getting an extraordinary result or two?

To get extraordinary results, you have to be aware of the impact your requests have both on yourself and on your employees. As my colleague, executive coach Val Williams says,

“When leaders follow this ‘more, better and faster’ strategy they’re often surprised that instead of achieving confidence in their success, they feel ore burned out and insecure. When you employ this strategy of ‘do more, faster’ over the long-term, then you actually become more reactive, less strategic and frankly, more replaceable.”

If instead you focus on your highest priorities and inspire others to do their best on the tasks that give them both good results and a feeling of pride, then you are giving everyone a chance to apply their best selves to their jobs. This includes making sure people have time to rest their bodies and brains so they can create and produce top quality work.

The more complex a situation, the more there is a chance to overload your cognitive resources. When you instead sleep on it, or distract yourself with something mindless, you give your unconscious a chance to sort through possible solutions which is more effective than consciously trying to sift through pros and cons.

TIP #1: Taking a nap or letting your mind wander gives your brain a chance to process complex decisions. Set an alarm for 20 or 30 minutes. Close your eyes and breathe deeply. Even if you don’t fall asleep, this relaxation will ensure you rest. If you can’t sit still, play a computer game or read a mindless magazine to keep from thinking about work. This enables your brain mind to relax and open up, leading to both higher concentration as well as productivity when you return your focus to your work.

TIP #2: Lindsey Paho, writing on behalf of Colorado Technical University suggests you determine your own sense of balance. What can you accomplish without feeling stressed and overwhelmed? What tips you over the edge? When you are aware of your own limits, you can design a schedule that keeps you sane.

TIP #3: Lindsey also suggests you get over yourself and ask for help when you need it. As a leader, you don’t have to be the superstar lone ranger. Modeling rationality for your employees is better than demonstrating stressed-out self-reliance.

Do you want your organization to win? Re-evaluate your mission. Are you pushing for expected results or are you creating the space for extraordinary results? The latter requires you do less with more focus.

In the end, you and your employees will have better ideas, make more sales, complete more projects, better answer critical emails and collaborate in a way that is needed for amazing results.

Filed Under: Brain Tips, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Organizational Culture

The Difference Between An Inspiring and Boring Goal

July 16, 2011 By

Words make the difference between an inspiring goal and one that loses steam quickly. Whether you are trying to make a change in an organization or in your daily habits, you probably have been told to make your goals SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time Bound (or some variation of words to fit the acronym).

The problem with this guideline is too much emphasis is put on making goals specific and measurable with a deadline whether you are writing a goal for yourself or your team. Not only does this make goals boring, the other two factors – attainability and relevancy - are often assumed and discounted. Why would you set a goal that wasn’t important or one that couldn’t be achieved? Because the goal sounds good.

But goals that sound good are often not met if they don’t also feel good.

Goals must generate positive emotion to truly be smart.

Yes, you don’t want your goals to be ambiguous. Nonspecific goals such as deciding to be a better leader or a healthy eater can mean anything and leave you feeling more guilt than satisfaction. General productivity goals can stifle the creativity needed to make work more efficient.

So a good goal should be specific, but it should also inspire action, not mandate it. The inspiration is best driven by a deep desire for the end result. You need to feel how important the goal is to you and that you have a real chance at succeeding before you will whole-heartedly commit to making it happen.

BRAIN TIP: If you want a permanent shift in behavior, make sure the goal gives you a sense of excitement, hope, pride, or fun. Goals focused on making more sales or losing weight will lose steam if you aren’t emotionally engaged in the vision of what the increase in revenue or loss of pounds will give you. What will people be doing and feeling differently once success is achieved? What deep desires will you fulfill once you meet your personal goals? If your visions conjure more fear than excitement, you might spend more time finding the reasons for failing than you do on reaching your milestones.

Descartes got it wrong when he said, “I think, therefore I am.” When it comes to changing behavior and achieving goals, the truth is, “I feel, therefore I am.”

In my last job as a corporate training manager, I was busy rolling out organizational change programs when my boss asked me to change my priorities. He wanted me to focus on leading the team in charge of rewriting the corporate HR policies. He gave me the goal, the resources and the deadline. I argued about priorities. He won the debate.

The first team meeting was minimally productive and full of conflict. Afterwards, I again argued with my boss, this time saying, “Why me? I am not an HR policy person. I don’t see this as the best use of my time.”

He said,”You are my only staff member who has successfully run a project team before. These changes are critical for the turnaround of this company. You are the only one I can count on to make this happen.”

If he would have made this point first, I would have felt the relevancy of the task and accepted the attainability with confidence. I was now proud to accept the assignment.

If the goal inspires a desired emotion, you are more likely to do what it takes to achieve it and possibly, go beyond expectations.

And it must be a desired emotion. Please do not use fear or shame as a basis for your goal, at work or at home. Although the fear of consequences may motivate action, the results are often short-lived. And most life-style choices or big organizational changes require flexibility and creativity, both squelched in the presence of fear.

Define the Relevancy first, then ensure the Attainability. These two factors drive the psychological commitment to any goal whether it is a personal goal or one you set for your team. Without an emphasis on these two factors, SMART goals feel dumb.

Filed Under: Brain Tips, Problem-solving, Professional Development

So You Want Someone to Change…

May 14, 2011 By

People don’t change because you want them to. They might not even change if they want to.  Three conditions must be present for a person to whole-heartedly commit to changing their behavior.

  • Willingness
  • Desire
  • Courage

If …

  1. The person is willing to take the first step,
  2. The change provides a payoff they desire, and
  3. They have the courage to let go of old habits, to make mistakes and feel awkward or fearful while trying, and to admit to others that they needed to change,

…they may make the changes you request.

 

WILLINGNESS

Unfortunately, it often takes a crisis or a bad situation before people willingly accept they need to change.  Instead, they spend their energy rationalizing and justifying their current behavior.

If you ask someone to change their behavior, you need to be equipped with the “why.” You need to precisely identify the negative impact their current behavior is creating. This is not the consequence, the “if you don’t stop, you will be sorry” declaration. This is the description of how the person’s behavior is affecting the feelings of others and hurting the end result. If the impact is evident, the person might be willing to try on new ideas and actions. This is step one.

 

DESIRE

A person may be willing to work on new solutions, take a risk, or listen to a different point of view. Unless there is a payoff based on something they want, their willingness will not last long.

Real changes occur only if the person has a strong personal desire to make them happen. People say things like, “I’ll try to quit smoking,” “I’ll try to stay calm and listen,” “I’ll try to do read the instructions” knowing they don’t really want to. Desire is based on a payoff.

Most long-term changes don’t happen because it is the right thing to do or it will please someone else. Logic may initiate change but it cannot sustain it without the emotional support of desire. Too many failures happen because, “my heart wasn’t in it.”

Therefore, when asking someone to change, you need to find the emotional payoff that will fuel the commitment to practicing the change until it sticks.

Payoffs that inspire change are usually related to something the person values such as being seen as a leader, being respected by their peers, developing skills that will help them meet their goals, earning the chance to be given challenging projects and adventures, more time with their family, more fun at work or peace of mind.

Be careful about promising money because the joy from a bonus or raise is short-lived. Tying the change to someone’s personal values and career dreams is more likely to result in long-term results.

Always ask the person what they want. Do not assume that what you value will match those of your colleagues or even your spouse.

Additionally, desire can change over time. Life circumstances and wisdom often change our perspective on what we hold dear. Never assume you know someone too well to ask them what they want.

 

COURAGE

Iyanla Vanzant, wrote in One Day My Soul Just Opened Up, “I was not willing to make people angry or hurt their feelings…I was not willing to sound weird or stupid or like a know-it-all. I was not willing to run the risk of being wrong. I was not willing to defend myself if I were challenged…I knew what needed to be done, but I was not willing to do it.”

Courage is a word rarely used at work but keeps people frustrated and stuck in old behaviors. Once faced with a conflict or the possibility of looking stupid, good intentions fly out the window.

They might be willing to try and they desire better results. As soon as negative emotions rush in, they lose the gumption to sustain the change.

The good news is that helping people to acknowledge what they fear can break down these blocks. Fear of disapproval can be vanquished when we admit someone might not be happy with what we do or say. Fear of making a mistake is surmountable when we admit we are less than perfect.

Declaring a fear out loud takes the air out of the emotion. When a person says they worry about what others will think, they are taking the first step toward doing it anyway.

Helping someone muster the courage to say, “Yes!” in the face of possible embarrassment or loss is one of the greatest gifts you can give them.

You must create a safe space for people to reveal their fears. If you sense the source of their fear, you might share a story where you felt the same thing, making it okay for the fear to exist. Then remind the person that courage is not the absence of fear, but acting in the face of the urge to flee. This is the stuff of heroes.

BRAIN TIPS:

1. When working with someone who you think needs to make a change but doesn’t seem to be moving in the right direction, determine if they:

  • Have expressed a willingness to change.
  • See a payoff for getting the better result.
  • Have the courage to sustain the pain of change or to act differently in front of their co-workers and friends.

2. What support does the person need from you? Do they need advice? Do they need encouragement? Do they need to know they aren’t weak or incompetent, but merely human?

Hold people to their commitments and adjust your expectations if the change is slower than you hoped for. Changing behavior isn’t a decision; it’s a process that needs support.

Adapted from Outsmart Your Brain: How to Make Decisions Feel Easy by Marcia Reynolds

Filed Under: Brain Tips, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership

Fear Regret More Than Failure

April 16, 2011 By

Your ability to do things well could keep you from taking risks.

High-achievers may appear bold but they are not necessarily courageous. While they love success and recognition, they have little experience with failure. What looks like bold moves to others are in truth, calculated steps to avoid making mistakes to achievers. This fear of falling off the ladder creates a psychological barrier where they may talk themselves out of taking risks and use their intelligence to rationalize their limiting choices.

The truth is that the barriers you create for yourself are the obstacles you have the most control over. Rarely is a decision or risk an “all or nothing” venture. More likely, the move you are contemplating is just a step that can be adjusted or fixed. Or it is the step that leads to the next, probably better step in your career or project.

Risk-avoidance behavior affects more than career choices. If you are a leader, you are promoting mediocrity when you don’t support making mistakes in the pursuit of innovation and improvement. You silence ideas. You kill imagination. You restrain passion as you force people into a narrow band of behavior.

Selena Rezvani, author of The Next Generation of Women Leaders, suggests we “Fear regret more than failure.” She interviewed 30 female executives across industries to discover what habits and behaviors took them to the top. A consistent message she heard was, “I regret the things I did not do more than the things I did.”

Fear that you will be sorry for not making the choice your gut said was the right thing to do, for not jumping on the opportunity, or for letting someone else take the position that should have been yours.  Fear these regrets before you make them real.

To increase your courage and comfort with risk:

Trust yourself more. Identify your talents and recount your lists of achievements to date. Then when faced with an opportunity that could be risky, review your list. Give yourself the evidence you need to prove to yourself you will succeed even if mistakes are made.

Identify your resources. Determine how you can access the resources you will need to facilitate your success. Can you find a coach or mentor to help you work through new problems and decisions you might face? Can you research best practices or case studies that will provide you with fresh ideas? With the Internet, real time learning is eminently accessible.

Choose to misbehave. Most thought leaders are not well-behaved men and women. If you are courageous enough to speak up and move forward without knowing if you will succeed, you have the chance to experience the extreme joy of success. And yes, you might experience disappointment, embarrassment and frustration if you stumble, but you can bounce back with the wisdom and perspective that will take you further in your career. Commit to bringing your whole self to work which includes experiencing all your emotions in pursuit of ultimate success.

Develop an optimistic viewpoint. Don’t focus on the worst that can happen. Stay focused on what is possible. Rezvani quotes Mei Xu, CEO of Chesapeake Bay Candle, “Optimism isn’t about blind faith. It’s about overcoming obstacles.” Instead of asking, “How can I be successful?” ask, “How can I move mountains so I can see beyond what is known now?” This is how you both increase your tolerance for risk and cultivate a competitive advantage.

The world is changing anyway, why not step out and take risks? Why not encourage, even celebrate, when the people who work for you excitedly share new ideas? Go beyond bold to being courageous. Even if you lose this round, you win in the long run.

Filed Under: Brain Tips, Leadership, Problem-solving, Self-Awareness

Dancing with the Stars? Four Ways to Give Your Team Some Groove

March 18, 2011 By

Hiring good people is only a starting point.  Then culture takes over. Put good people in a toxic environment and their qualities seem to fade.

Culture isn’t created by values posters and mission statements. Culture can be seen by observing how people interact in meetings and sensing what moods are driving their behavior. Are they openly sharing their thoughts, building on each others ideas and able to laugh with each other? OR are they cautious, orderly and emotionally disconnected? Behavior defines the culture.

For decades, researchers have been looking at how moods affect the dynamics of a work area. Where employees talk openly and informally with each other and laugh a lot, they take fewer sick days, quarrel less and stay longer with the company. On the flip side, negative group moods correlated with more stress causing more days off and decreased productivity, more conflicts and higher turnover.

What emotions define your culture?

Here are clues that the people in your group, team or organization are dancing to the same tune by choice (happily aligned):

Open, tolerant, flexible, imaginative, curious, expressive, creative, innovative, enthusiastic, open-minded, open to new experiences, honors diversity in the group.

Dominant emotions: excitement, passion, hope, and enjoyment.

Here are clues that they are nonaligned, each moving to a beat of a different drummer (disjointed):

Stubborn, close-minded, rebellious, rigid, intolerant, annoyed, calculating, decisive, aggressive or restrained depending on their view of who holds the power in the moment.

Dominant emotions: worried, belligerent, angry, suspicious, protective, wary, restless, and resolute.

Here are clues that they are dancing to someone else’s tune other than their own (conforming):

Indifferent, reliable, orderly, faithful, consistent, conventional, obedient, organized, careful, practical, methodical, reserved, concerned about the rules.

Dominant emotions: fear, confusion, apathy, cautious, and numb.

The good news is that you can change the way people dance together if you are the leader of the team. There are skills you can master such as coaching and collaborative decision-making, yet applying new skills can be a hit or miss proposition with a group that has been together for a while. It is better to first focus on changing the mood of the group instead of trying to fix them with new skills.

To build organizational coherence:

Brain Tip #1: Remember that as the leader, you set the emotional tone. Even if you are a bit stressed over thoughts of the future or a change being made, you must model the emotions you want from others.

Brain Tip #2: Weed out toxic people who bring the group down. Even if they are top performers, their effect on others hurts the overall outcome. Their good work isn’t worth the loss.

Brain Tip #3:Find out from the group what it will take to uplift their spirit. Ask them what they  need to feel good about their work and the organization. Ask them to recall situations in the past that stirred positive emotions. Discover what led to them feeling:

  • Enthusiastic about the future
  • Delight in discovering something new with others
  • Triumph when overcoming a setback
  • Pride for the group and the mission
  • Gratitude for their situation
  • Care about the people they work with
  • Excited about getting up and going to work

Can you use this information to create successful, productive environment?

Brain Tip #4: Create new music and use many channels to deliver it. Robert Jones wrote about how Laura Miller of Coca-Cola made sure this happened during a recent corporate merger. She helped to orchestrate a strategy that would inspire optimism and promote happiness internally during the massive change process. First, the senior leaders committed to sharing their vision locally and broadly with road shows, daily huddles, leadership blogs that included comments, employee portals for interaction, mobile messaging and digital signage from every plant. Second, they ramped up training and development to show they still cared no matter what was going on. Third, they increased rewards and recognition, including widespread “sharing happiness” celebrations. Fourth, they maintained their corporate citizenship programs to sustain community pride in the workforce. Six months after the merger, the quarterly earnings reflected a huge success.

John F. Kennedy said, “I’m certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we too will be remembered not by our victories and defeats, but by our contribution to the human spirit.” How are you uplifting the spirit of your organization? Play the right music and the dance will be joyful as well as harmonious.

Contact Marcia to help get your team dancing to the same upbeat music as soon as possible.

Filed Under: Brain Tips, Leadership, Organizational Culture, Team Building

“Fixing” Women Hurts More Than Helps

March 10, 2011 By

Many people eagerly sent me the Wall Street Journal article, Coaching Urged for Women. The article heralded the McKinsey April, 2011 report claiming “inadequate career development holds back female executives.” As a result of their research, they surmised that the lack of women in top management positions is due to insufficient coaching, leadership training and rotation through various management roles.

Although it is probable that companies provide more development opportunities for men than women and the report does include a suggestion for leaders to work on the limiting mindsets that create the barriers for women, the recommendations focus primarily on “fixing the women” instead of on fixing the system that created the problem.

I love that I have a cadre of amazing female leaders that I coach. Yet it would make their lives easier if the male leaders they had to deal with were coached as well.

In January, the head of North American HR of one of the largest software companies in the world told me they were doing well with developing their women even though the top management team was still made up of men. He said, “I coach many of the women myself. I help them see how they can best work in this male-dominated company.”

I asked him, “Are you also developing programs for the men so they can best work with women in your company?” He quickly said that would not be possible with their German management team.

Pattie Sellers, Editor at Large for Fortune magazine, made a sobering statement at this year’s ICAN Women’s Leadership conference, “There will not be parity for women.” She said that parity will not happen in our lifetime. Parity will not happen with the power structures in place today. She claimed that there is a narrow band of acceptable female behaviors making it extremely hard for women to authentically lead. These limitations and stereotypes will keep the imbalance in place.

Selena Rezvani, author of The Next Generation of Women Leaders, says, “Women are often not seen as intellectually or emotionally equipped as their male counterparts. Stereotypes of women as too passive, too emotional or too ambitious to lead are simply not based in reality.” She describes how our social conditioning has entrenched the nuanced barriers that women face. You might think discrimination is fading, but Rezvani sites countless studies and examples that demonstrate this ongoing force in the workplace.

In addition to the negative judgments around female emotions and behaviors, the determination that they lack skills is also not based in reality. Rezvani cites a study done by Lawrence A. Pfaff in 2001 that included 2, 482 managers from 400 companies across 19 states that found female managers scored higher than their male counterparts on 20 different leadership skills. The measurements extended beyond “soft skills” like communication and empowerment to include skills typically attributed to men such as decisiveness, planning, and setting standards.

A study published in 2008 compared the scores on standardized math tests of 7 million boys and girls across 10 states found no difference in their math proficiency. Many of these girls are entering fields of engineering, accounting, and finance. The fact that few make it into leadership positions can’t be blamed on a lack of skills or knowledge.

On the bright side, Sellers also said that more and more women are starting businesses to create the companies they want to work for. I suggest we support these companies by buying their goods and services and suggesting others do the same. This may be the only way of decreasing the female leadership gap.

In spite of these bleak reports, I am optimistic that some of our leaders, especially the younger ones, will “get it.” There will be enlightened leaders who see that the answer is not to fix women but to change the mindsets of both men and women that keep women in an inferior light.

Dr. Rachel Remen, author of Kitchen Table Wisdom, writes, “When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life whole.” When leaders stop trying to fix the female problem and instead promote women being valued in the workplace for who they are, then we might start seeing the numbers of female leaders rise.

Women don’t give up their ambition as the McKinsey report suggests. The system gives up on them when they paint women as inadequate.

Yes, there should be equal opportunities for development for women and men. In addition, all leadership training should have a day focused on men and women dialoguing about their needs, desires and challenges so they can all move forward together.

I once heard a story about an African village that sees every problem as a result of their “system.” When a child commits a crime, the elders are gathered. They do not ask, “What is wrong with the child?” They ask, “What have we done that this act has occurred?”

Can we turn this conversation from being a “they should” declaration to a “we should” conversation? I urge coaching for BOTH men and women to maximize the full potential of all people seeking to be leaders.

Marcia Reynolds, Psy.D., is president of Covisioning, a leadership coaching and training organization working with a variety of people and organizations around the world to increase emotional intelligence and collaboration. Can she help you and your organization move forward?

Filed Under: Brain Tips, Leadership, Organizational Culture, Women in Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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