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Did You Mean to Kill that Idea?

January 10, 2013 By

 My partner, Karl, was telling me about how the new guy at work is finally settling in to his surroundings. He used to own a business, so he came into this arrangement asking a lot of questions. He wanted to know if they had ever considered doing things like their office procedures or equipment placement differently. Karl explained to me that everyone else had been working there a long time. What they did worked for them. It took a while but now, the new guy seemed to understand “the way of the world” according to everyone else.

This has been a common story in my 30+ years of business. No one likes the person who constantly talks about how things were done at their old place of employment. Obviously, it wasn’t that great if they were no longer there.

Even groups of consultants find a common path and then get irritated when an outsider or newcomer suggests they consider a different model or method of working.

Yet new people to any team can trigger creativity and innovation. Of course, you say, this is common sense. So why isn’t it common practice?

Humans by nature are tribal. They bond around an idea, a goal, or some other sort of kinship. Then they work hard to protect the behaviors and beliefs that define their tribe. They shield whatever they think they own, including their ways of doing daily business, from outside influence.

This can serve to make a team cohesive. It also serves to make the team blind to their bad practices and deaf to a good idea. Then if a person persists in telling the core tribal members about a better way to do things, that person becomes the village idiot where all his or her ideas are ignored or killed without any consideration.

Tribal behavior also creates

  • the fear of speaking up against the leadership
  • an avoidance of conflict
  • mediocrity as people quit thinking up new ideas or sharing a novel concept
  • fitting in is the highest value
  • less powerful members become rescuers as they attempt to buddy up and get the new person to accept the wisdom of the more experienced leaders

On the flip side, the new person can influence less powerful members to resist the leader’s decisions no matter what or they question the leader’s action enough to slow the process to an inefficient pace, making the leader look incompetent (this is called a Collusion of Rebels – sound familiar?).

If there is anything our country, business teams and each person needs right now it is creativity.

We need new ideas! Leaders should be inspiring the development of creative new products, processes and partnerships. Small business owners should be leaping out of the box. Teachers, writers, and speakers should be courageously sharing audacious notions.

So how do you stop the strangling of ideas?

Tell the Truth

Psychologist Erich Fromm said, “Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.” Get your partner or team to talk about how you will ask for and listen to new ideas. Create agreements to listen, accept and point out when idea-killers show up.

Be Curious

You can boost your creativity by seeking to know more about how other people act and make decisions, especially when you think you already know what is best. When someone makes a suggestion, ask at least two questions with the intention of learning more. Then keep learning if you can. When we listen with interest and “breathe in” what we hear, our brains can make new connections and discoveries. This is what “having an open mind” really means.

Surround Yourself with Open Minds

Be sure you have people around you who want to take risks and encourage you to see things differently. The people around you can either harden or broaden your creative capacity.

Ban Censorship

Don’t let your inner critic stop you from expressing new ideas. A new idea is only new and not yet accepted today. Quit worrying if no one will think your ideas are good. Your brain will try to protect you from rejection by making up lots of excuses to stay quiet. Thank your brain for doing its job, and then take the leap anyway.

You must go into any partnership or team with your eyes wide open. Everyone should feel safe enough and have a language for pointing out the possibility silencing ideas.

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

When you quit killing ideas and stop others from “ideacide” you create a more open, respectful and enjoyable experience.

 

 

Filed Under: Brain Tips, Emotional Intelligence, Organizational Culture, Self-Awareness, Team Building

Do You Have the Courage to Sabotage Your Success?

August 11, 2012 By

Which route to success is better for you?  1) exceeding goals and expectations or 2) challenging your goals and expectations to create something better.

The first option can lead to satisfaction, money, rewards, and recognition, even fame, for a while. The second option is harder and may lead  nowhere. Even those who choose the road less traveled often burn out and fall back onto the safer path. So why take it?

If you stay on the first path, success grows more vulnerable over time and becomes demotivating.

Organizationally, the process of cascading goals from the top frequently hurts innovation and efficiency. In privately held and non-profit organizations, there is often a charismatic leader, family head, or controlling director that runs the show, crushing dissent blatantly or subtly. Or the leader picks an impenetrable executive team.

In publicly held companies, leaders bow to the faceless power of shareholders, demanding people meet short term gains over the imagination, experimentation, and adaptability required for longevity. They may give lip-service to creativity, but most corporations are still top-down instead of community-ruled.

Even if you or your organization starts with an openness to all ideas, once a level of success is achieved, ears shut down. Some leaders boast their support of collaboration without seeing this as another form of generating hand-clasping over conflict.

Neuroscientist Dr. Robert Sapolsky has explored why successful people shut down to new ideas. He says when you look at highly accomplished people you find a level of eminence, at least in their own little world. So why should they do anything new? “It’s really difficult to recognize that something is going wrong and needs to be changed,” Sapolsky says. “…it’s 1000 times harder to recognize that something’s right but nevertheless, it’s time to make a change.”

When problems surface, most leaders just ask people to work faster or harder instead of seeking a different approach. I am sure this attitude plays into why the US has dropped to 10th place in the 2012 Global Innovation Index by Insead.

Some leaders act as if they are trying out new ideas when all they are doing is trying something out that worked for them years ago. This isn’t change; it’s regurgitation.

And then if you are given the rare chance to try something new and you make a mistake, the sharks eat you alive.

Some smart employees give up trying. Others take their ideas to competitors or start their own businesses. Unfortunately, once they win the revolution, they fall into the same trap of protecting their positions and making all decisions instead of opening channels to the new ideas of others.

From a neurological perspective, Sapolsky says the brain rules over innovation. People want to recreate what made them feel good and they silence threats to their credibility, control and admiration.

Margaret Heffernan explored this phenomenon in her brilliant Ted talk, Dare to Disagree. She says that our brain drives us to be with people mostly like ourselves. This makes life easier. Organizations strive to hire the best people and then fail to get the best out of them.

So what can you do personally and organizationally to challenge current thinking?

1. Seek creative confrontation. Heffernan suggests mustering the courage to work with people who seek to prove you wrong. Once you fill in the holes they discover, you will know you are right.” It’s a fantastic model of collaboration—thinking partners who aren’t echo chambers.”

Organizationally, build creative confrontation into team charters. Make sure ideas are questioned, not people. Ensure the challenges are intended to improve on ideas, not tear them down. Allow people to try out new ideas after they listen to challenges, bringing their improved suggestions to the table instead of giving up.

2. Practice emotional intelligence. Learn to recognize when you resist new ideas. This requires patience and present-moment awareness, two things busy people lack. You have to be willing to change your mind. Most people agree this is a sign of a real leader yet few leaders practice these skills.

3. Reward courageous thinking. Praise people who question the way things are done. Make “a passionate commitment to ongoing excellence” a requirement of leadership instead of “managing up to make the current leaders look good.”

Sapolsky says that leaders (and families) should provide a “benevolent setting” where failures are an acceptable part of the learning process and people are not punitively blamed for mistakes. Don’t insist on doing it right all the time. Sapolsky says, “You can encourage craziness 50% of the time because all we need is the other 50% to be phenomenal.”

When people can actively explore new possibilities, they work with inspiration and excitement.

4. Seek champions and partners instead of going it alone. One voice can easily be drowned out by a crowd of people trying to appease their leaders. Find one influential person who believes in and will champion your ideas to others. Then enroll others who will help you get the data you need to prove your ideas are right.

5. Travel! Seek people with different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. See the world through their eyes. Don’t rely on the Internet. In another TED talk, Eli Pariser explains that search engines keep us in a filter bubble, only linking us to what matches our personal tastes instead of to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview.

Long term success requires we cultivate the habit of being curious and accepting of other’s opinions and ideas. Do you have the courage to go beyond your own success?

Please share you comments and this post. We need to keep the conversation going and support each others great ideas!

Filed Under: Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Organizational Culture, Professional Development, Self-Awareness, Team Building, Women in Leadership 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: , ,

The ROI of Your Mother Relates to Results

June 9, 2011 By

ROI of your Mother? Blogger Chris Brogan saw the author of Crush It, Gary Vaynerchuk, grilled on the return on investment of social media. When he finally had enough, Gary responded, “What’s the ROI of your mother?”

I think the same answer applies to the question, “What is the ROI of soft skills leadership training?” When you think of what a good mother provides – someone who cares about what you want, who helps and encourages you to grow and who inspires your greatness – these are critical attributes for today’s effective leaders. Even when well developed, the direct effect of these abilities, though profound, is difficult to measure.

Lauren Klein shared some thoughts with me from Kenneth W. Thomas, author of Intrinsic Motivation at Work, when he presented to the Executive Networks Global Talent Leadership forum. Thomas says work engagement requires intrinsic rewards, the positive feelings that energize people to do good work. Leaders need to focus on what makes people want to do their best work and stay with an organization, from the inside out. Discretionary effort is fueled by the heart.

According to the Corporate Leadership Council, emotional engagement is four times more powerful than rational engagement from external rewards in inspiring employee effort. They surveyed over 50,000 employees at 59 global corporations. By increasing employees’ engagement levels, they found organizations see increase in performance of up to 20 percentile points and an 87% reduction in employees’ probability of departure. Their study demonstrates a clear ROI of soft skills.

Thomas calls actions that ignite internal motivation “firing up the talent engine.” Keeping the talent engine burning is critical to creating business success in today’s competitive and consistently changing marketplace. Daniel Pink in his book, Drive, says it is critical that a company’s mission and strategic objectives also fire up this energy. People need to feel that the work they are doing is important, even if it is helping other businesses be successful.

Yet all too often corporate executives still focus on using the hard skills of process improvement, increasing efficiency, and creating new business models to try to increase bottom line results. Focusing on old methodologies keeps them hitting their heads on the ceiling of short-term and marginal solutions.

The generations entering the workplace and moving into leadership positions today are used to instantly connecting, collaborating and voicing opinions on the Internet. They expect to have work environments that provide the same atmosphere. The good performers want to have fun, feel challenged and express their creativity. They want leaders who care about what they want, who help and encourage them to grow and who inspire their greatness. I repeat Gary Vaynerchuk’s questions, “What’s the ROI of your mother?”

On the flip side, the younger generations despise workplaces rife with fear and negative emotions. They won’t put up with this nonsense for long, especially when the economy stabilizes and jobs open up.

It’s time to quit giving lip service to the soft skills and truly make them important strategic directives. It’s time for leaders to truly support the development of skills such as coaching, collaborative visioning, emotional intelligence, and team motivation in their young leaders. It’s time to make the workplace a place where people look forward to going to.

Soft skills focused on enriching human interaction get solid, hard results. Do you value caring for, listening to, developing and inspiring others? Then translate this value into reality by putting time and money into ensuring your leaders excel at connecting with human beings.

Filed Under: Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Organizational Culture, Team Building Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

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

How to See Differences as a Contribution Instead of a Source of Competition

December 27, 2010 By

Last month I shared with you ways for people to listen for how they are similar. You can learn how your desires and struggles are similar through sharing stories and laughing together. This creates the sense of connection needed to work more smoothly in a relationship, team, or community.

Once a foundation of connection is built in your relationships, and you are clear on what you are trying to create together, you can then see your differences as contributions to the mission or goal instead of as sources of conflict.

In this context, you are able to look beyond the labels. You don’t judge someone by their gender, age or culture as if they had limitations or superior attributes the world must come to recognize. I cringe when I see classes on “Gen X, Y, Z” and even ones that promote the idea that women make better leaders than men. Instead of defining people as groups, seek to know them as individuals with something great to give. Curiosity is a great team builder.

Once way of discovering what each person has to contribute is to use a process called Appreciative Dialogue. When you have a common goal or future in place, use this technique to see people’s differences as contributions before you create expectations or judgments that lead to disappointment and competition.

Appreciative Dialogue is based on the popular approach to organizational change called Appreciative Inquiry that directs people to build on what’s working rather than trying to fix what’s not. Taking an appreciative approach, you see your issue through a new lens, not the normal critical lens assigned to problem solving. You jump outside of the problem-solving box that your logical brain likes to play in.

I applied this inquiry process to developing interpersonal relationships when I designed the Appreciative Dialogue technique to help women identify and show up as their “best self” in my book Wander Woman. Using Appreciative Dialogue goes beyond discovering and applying your strengths. Most people can easily identify what they are good at doing. Appreciative Dialogue helps people discover together their greatest, most powerful, and joyful contributions. When they hold appreciative dialogues, they can align their best energies to powerfully conquer roadblocks and create amazing results.

The process will help you be mindful of what you do when you create moments where you feel fully alive and excited. You explore everything that contributed to the creation of your peak experiences in the past and then consciously apply those contributions–your strengths, values, gifts, attitudes, emotions and actions–to a relationship and the challenges you are currently facing.

BRAIN TIP: How to Hold an Appreciative Dialogue

Step 1. Even though you may be facing a difficult issue with your partner or colleagues, set the issues aside. Instead, think of a time in your past when you felt energized, significant, and fulfilled. This moment could have happened yesterday or years ago. Can you recall a particular peak experience?

With this memory in mind, with one person speaking at a time, answer the following questions:

1. Describe a peak experience where you felt fully alive and fulfilled (this could have been a moment in time in an on-going situation or after an event was complete).

2. What five things did you contribute to creating this peak experience? (do not use broad characterizations such as being a good team player, leader or friend; define specific strengths, personality attributes, powerful emotions, work or life values, special actions)

Step 2. The listener or group should encourage the person speaking to find five distinct contributions. Listeners should not judge, analyze or suggest any ideas. They can ask questions to clarify what they person shares, such as, “When you accomplished the project, what emotions helped you to persevere? What did you value that helped you make the right choices and connections? What did you feel differently about this project or situation that led to great results? What did you do or feel that was special, that other times you have held back?”

Step 3. After everyone shares their personal contributions to a time when they felt fully alive and fulfilled, you can then look at the issue, project or goal you have to work on together.

1. Looking at the list of contributions, what can each person carry forward to the challenge we are now facing?

2. What is possible for us now as a partnership or team?

The intent of Appreciative Dialogue is to teach your brain how to make the shift from seeing how people are different when facing problems to seeing how people can best work together. New ideas will appear in the conversation as you connect your positive past with the present moment. The sudden, new, and amazing solution to a problem arises when you can look at your situation from a perspective of appreciative contribution.

Remember to have these conversations often so you can determine what activities, mindset, and energy patterns will best serve the problems that arise. The results will help you revitalize your daily activities.

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From Wander Woman: How High-Achieving Women Find Contentment and Direction Marcia is available to coach your high-achievers and work teams to achieve amazing results. Contact her at Marcia@outsmartyourbrain.com

 

 

Filed Under: Brain Tips, Organizational Culture, Team Building

Creating Genius Teams

December 17, 2010 By

In the last two months, we looked at how teams and partnerships can come together by recognizing the similarities in their desires and struggles. Then we looked at how to appreciate differences as contribution to the shared outcome.

These are good relationship-building exercises, but they will fail to sustain the productivity of a team or the health of a relationship without complete agreement on how they will achieve their goals together. There needs to be a process conversation. The intent is to bring people into alignment.

Just as you need to realign the tires on your car so the ride is smooth, teams and partnerships need regular adjustments to ensure alignment.

I was reading Peter Barr’s book, Born Genius, on a recent long trip home from China. As I did the exercises to discover if I was focusing on my unique contribution in life, I realized that the activities could be modified for groups. The questions take an appreciative approach to discover the strengths and focus of the group’s process.

Barr’s process is simple but more comprehensive than I will attempt to explore with you here. Yet the first part of the journey is to identify the potential of the team’s effort and what is blocking them from achieving their best work.

You can ask the following questions of the individual team members by interviewing them before the team meets. Then you would share a summary of their answers and facilitate a dialogue to agree on the themes and opportunities.

However, if there is open communication in the group, it is better to explore the questions together in a team meeting. When the members answer the questions together, the questions can awaken the spirit of the group. In this space, they can discover what will easily take them to the next level of performance.

To encourage the group to focus on their potential, ask the following questions. Facilitate full participation. Ask for explanations and examples for each answer. Record the answers on flipchart paper so they can review their responses later:

1. What are we good at doing?

2. What do we believe we can be great at?

3. What did we used to be good at before things changed? What can we revive?

Before asking the next question, ask the team to review their answers. What stands out for them? What hopes do the members now have for the team? Record these answers on paper and display them around the room.

Now help the team discover how they work together under stress by having them answer these questions:

1. In times of crisis or under pressure, what do we do well?

2. What seems to disappear?

When looking at your answers, what themes emerge that define, “who are we at our best?” First, ask the teams to further crystallize their strengths as a team. Then help the team to narrow their strengths into themes. Once they identify the themes, ask them to summarize the themes into a statement that defines their process in as few words as possible. This statement becomes their unifying slogan, the flag they carry with them when the work becomes intense.

In the future if the process begins to deteriorate, the identity statement they created is a quick reminder of what is possible for the team if they re-align with their combined strengths.

To finalize the session, ask the team what opportunities they see to do better work together. Discuss and agree to two or three actions or goals intended to improve how they work together. Make sure all participants state their commitment to the group as a final exercise.

You can have this conversation with one person or many. It is a great reminder how we express “our best self” when we are together.

Filed Under: Brain Tips, Effective Communication Skills, Team Building

Similarities: The Glue that Holds Us Together

October 14, 2010 By


A house divided against itself cannot stand.

Abraham Lincoln borrowed this quote from the New Testament when he was describing the division in the United States. It is a powerful quote to consider no matter what divisions you are struggling with in your life. Your “house” can apply to your government, your company or work group, your community and your family.

When we focus on our differences, we cannot come together.

Healthy relationships are critical to success. A team or partnership can eke out results whether the participants get along or not but the group cannot create amazing results without a solid connection among the members.

When people say, “We don’t have to like each other to get work done,” I question the quality of the work. I believe we have to know each other, trust each other, and hold a healthy respect for each other to achieve excellent results. If I respect you, I like you on some level. These feelings are the glue that holds us together.

In a recent article in The New York Times about Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, the relationship between her and the executives at Facebook is based on Sandberg’s keen ability to listen and connect. Although her background, her look and her focus for the company is very different from the people she works with at Facebook, she has a keen understanding of how they see the world and can slip into their “bandwidth” with ease. “She’s legit,” says Christopher Cox, the company’s vice president for product. “She’s not like a robot M.B.A.”

Most of us want people to know what special gift or talent we bring to the table. We want to be acknowledged for how we stand out. Although knowing the special strengths, gifts and talents that a person contributes is important later on, the foundation of the group must first be built on similarities. Focusing on differences even if they are strengths stresses the division more than the possibility of working together.

Therefore, relationships should first focus on similarities before you explore differences. Leaders need to create the space so that people who work together can—and are encouraged to—take the time to really see and learn from each other. The more you know someone as a human with needs, dreams and concerns, the more likely you are to care about the quality of your connection with them when you work together.

BRAIN TIP: We listen for similarities by sharing stories that reveal our wishes, needs, disappointments, hopes and dreams. When we first listen for how we are similar, we connect on points in common. This connection breeds collaboration.

I was writing a chapter for my book, Wander Woman: How High-Achieving Women Find Contentment and Direction on a plane to Dallas, Texas, while sitting next to a thirty-something woman who was traveling with her five young children dispersed in the three rows around me. In a rare moment when she wasn’t yelling at her children, she looked over my shoulder and asked me what I was writing. I reluctantly told her, assuming she was not my target audience. Shame on me for making this assumption. She launched into a diatribe about the struggles she is having with the business she owns and how no adult seems to understand her even though she knows the risks she takes are right. She said, “Oh, I’m a Wander Woman all right. And so is my sister. Do you really think this is a sort of tribe, or is it a sign of the future for women where we finally get to express who we are?”

When I heard her story, I saw myself. When we listen to each other’s stories, we often see the similarities in our experiences, our struggles and our desires.

When I coach teams, I often ask each person to describe their perfect day one year from now, from the time they wake up until the time they go to sleep. When they share their dreams for both work and their home lives, the members are always amazed at how similar they are. A special rapport develops which helps them come together when they shift to tackling their work problems and actions.

In addition to connecting through our dreams, we also connect through our shared struggles. When your partner(s) is describing a problem, ask:

  1. What is most important to you that you hope will happen or you worry will not happen?
  2. What led you to make a specific decision or what factors are you considering that are making it hard for you to make this decision?
  3. Why do you think this problem exists at this time, really?

Often, when we hear someone describe the story behind an issue we feel, “I am not alone, I am not crazy after all, other people have the same issues and fears as I do.” This familiarity brings us together.Knowing we are similar can give us the courage to move on. In the least, knowing we are going through similar pain can help us feel human and heal. When we connect through familiarity, we open the space to ask each other, “So what’s next?” Instead of feeling as if we are alone, we feel we are in the fight together, making it easier to explore what is in our control and what is possible for our future.

Brain Tip reader Elizabeth Conty reminded me that children are experts at instantly seeing similarities even when differences are obvious. As long as they sense that the other child is safe, their curiosity to learn something about the other child kicks in. Then once similarities emerge, the fun begins.

It’s time to bring the curiosity of children into our relationships. Wonder what brings each person into your life in this moment in time. What dreams are they holding? What are they worrying about that will stand in the way of their dreams? If we know each other’s stories, we can connect. From here, our work together will be amazing.

Next Up—How to Honor Differences without Losing our Connection. Can’t wait? Contact me to talk about how your organization can build collaboration today.

Filed Under: Brain Tips, Effective Communication Skills, Organizational Culture, Team Building

Are Diversity Programs Healthy? I Found A Better Way to Connect

August 29, 2010 By

I led a breakout session at a European coaching conference in Belgium in 2006 called, “Emotional Intelligence and Cultural Diversity.” After explaining how the brain quickly assesses and reacts to people, I broke the audience into groups to discover what stereotypes people typically hold about countries and cultures that weren’t really true.

I made a deadly cultural error.

I tried to lump together countries by regions so there weren’t any people left out of a group in the room. There were a lot of people from the United States and western European countries. I tried to even out the groups by assembling people into regional areas, or at least countries somewhat close to each other.

The Canadian refused to be clumped with the Americans and acted insulted when I suggested he join those from the U.K. The Ukrainian did not want to be with the Russians not even for a ten minute exercise. Those from Latin American countries said they would rather work by themselves, even in groups of one.

When we focus on our differences, we cannot come together.

In the end, people from countries close to each other named similar negative stereotypes that others held about them. Had they put aside their emotional reactions to being seen as one, they would have found this out.

Even when we focus on strengths by culture, gender or age, we are promoting stereotypes and separation. When we say one group does something better than another, we stress the division more than the possibility of working together.

I do stand for recognizing the strengths, gifts and talents of the person or group that I am in relationship with in the moment. I believe this is one of the great powers of using a coaching perspective. We are trained to see the positive attributes–the brilliance–in people, even more than they might acknowledge and claim for themselves…yet. By seeing the best of an individual in the moment, we see both their contribution and their potential for growth.

My suggestion is to take the time to really see and learn from the person you are talking to. If we instead define people by a gender, age or culture, we see them in a frame of reference that is hard to change and often out-of-date in our evolving world.

Therefore, I question the value of Diversity programs that teach the strengths or limitations of one group over another, as if a gender, age or culture had superior attributes the world must come to recognize. I cringe when I see classes on “Gen X, Y, Z” and even ones that promote the idea that women make better leaders than men. Even more appalling, I’ve found some developmental programs that try to make the minorities more like the majority…how crazy is that? Shouldn’t we be teaching how to connect and value each other in the moment?

The first time I taught in Taiwan, a man reprimanded me for not reading up on the culture before I went. I told him I had learned a few things but planned on being curious, listening and learning when I got there. He proceeded to tell me what I needed to know as a woman and a teacher in Asia. Of course, he was dead wrong. I was valued as a senior manager regardless of being a woman. The people in my class were very participative and responsive without much prodding. They taught me how to be with them. I was open to learn. It turned out the man with the advice had only been to Japan and had no idea what I would experience in Taiwan.

Instead of Diversity programs, what if companies had Group Inclusions Programs where first we discover our similarities and create a context of connection before identifying what strengths each person can contribute to the team or community? We might find new ways of being together without using our gender, age or culture as an excuse for keeping the lines drawn in the sand.

The quality of our relationships equates to “social capital.” Just as you own a computer or college degree, your relationships add value to all your social constructs. Your business depends on your personal networks; your company’s productivity and innovation is dependent on robust relationships; communities need supportive relationships to thrive. Social capital is as necessary as financial capital.

To build social capital, we need to listen at three levels:

  1. Listen for similarities
  2. Listen for strengths in the context of our similarities
  3. Listen for a sense of purpose

I will focus on each of these listening perspectives in following newsletters plus give you tips for hearing from these vantage points. Here I’ll summarize how each adds to your social capital.

We listen for similarities by sharing stories that reveal our wishes, needs, disappointments, hopes and dreams. When we first listen for how we are similar, we build connection.

In the context of similarities and connection, we can then listen for the strengths, gifts, talents, skills, and attitudes a person can contribute. There are a number of tools that can be used to help people to claim and articulate what they bring to the table. When we acknowledge our differences as contributions to a group or project, we accept them as gifts that add to the group instead of aspects that separate.

Finally, we listen for purpose. When we align passionate energy with what everyone is trying to achieve, the force creates magic beyond expectation. Sense of purpose stirs action and creativity. Teams, organizations and cultures require people to band together in communal involvement and spirit to survive and thrive. Our collective survival depends on our need to feel that we belong and can contribute to what ties us together. When we listen for what inspires people’s passion and then align these energies into a common goal, we create social capital strong enough to build empires.

Meg Wheatley said, “We can change the world when we start listening to one another again.” When we bring people together focusing first on similarities instead of on differences, then listen for everyone’s unique contributions to the group and goal, and finally listen for what stirs each person’s sense of purpose and passion, we are fostering inclusion of the highest order.

Next Up—How to Coach People to Acknowledge Similarities. Can’t wait? Contact me to talk about how your organization can create passionate inclusion today.

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

3 Ways to Change Channels in Your Brain

May 4, 2009 By

In the past, I have shared many studies that prove happy people are more productive. Not only does their brain chemistry promote creativity, they are better able to focus on their work. Worrying about a situation competes for the same mental resources as problem-solving and brainstorming. When you quit worrying, you free up your working memory to apply to the task at hand.

So how do you quit worrying in the midst of an economic crisis? Remembering what you are grateful for and sharing stories that make you laugh can help. Yet new studies offer some additional techniques for altering your mood without drugs.

Brain Tip #1: Think faster about more things. Researchers at Princeton and Harvard found that when people whipped through an easy crossword puzzle, participated in a fast-paced brainstorming session, read short articles quickly or watched clips of I Love Lucy in fast-forward they felt more elated, creative, energetic and powerful. To achieve this effect, the activities have to encourage fast and varied thinking. If the thinking is repetitive or focused on a specific, evaluated goal, fast thinking could trigger anxiety. Instead, fast free-form thinking causes a dopamine release, which relieves stress and making us feel good.

If you spend at least 20 minutes each day quickly coming up with new ideas, reading or watching short clips on topics, or doing activities that make you think about a number of different things on a regular basis, the effects add up. Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky at UC California, Riverside said that if you regularly think fast to heighten your mood, your happiness and increased productivity will spiral upwards.

Brain Tip #2:  Free-form playing is even better than just thinking. Studies show that unstructured, imaginative play is critical for children to grow into happy adults. Marc Bekoff, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Colorado, found that play is important for adults too. Free play increases happiness, renews energy and revives creativity—the break is well worth the time spent not working. This is different from the usual “team-building” games that are structured, have obvious learning objectives and clear goals. Possibilities include

  • Active movement that has no time pressures or expected outcomes, such as walking with friends or dancing by yourself with no one watching.
  • Using your hands to create something, such as coloring a picture or playing with clay or LEGO® blocks with no specific goal.
  • Talking about a favorite television show, teasing or bantering with people if it is playful and fun for both, creating a skit together based on a theme, not a goal.

What did you do when you were a kid that you lost all sense of time to your enjoyment? If you can’t remember, go play with some children. They may spark your memory. Whether you play alone or with others, the choice should be stress-free and make you smile. Besides decreasing stress, if you don’t exercise your creativity, imagination and curiosity, they will wither away like unused muscles. Psychologist David Elkind says we need to reframe play to be seen as a complement to work, not as an opposite.

Brain Tip #3: Write about your most deeply held values. Psychologists Jennifer Whitson and Adam Galinsky found that in times of crisis and chaos, the brain seeks a way to feel some sense of control. It is one of the reasons we stay glued to the news channels, hoping to find a pattern we can hang on to that will provide some kind of predictability even though we know news programs lean on the negative side of crisis.

I remember vacationing at a beach house that ended up in the path of a tornado. Even though we had a few hours of glorious beach time before we had to buckle up, our eyes were glued to the weather channel at least until it was absolutely clear what we were supposed to do. This happens to employees who feel paralyzed when they feel a tornado is about to hit their company or department. Even bad news is better than none to push the restart button.

One way to break this pattern according to Whitson and Galinsky is to journal about your values—what is most important to you. This will increase your sense of security and quell feelings of helplessness. The reflection on what you most treasure also restores your faith in what is good. When you lift your head from the exercise, what you see will look different from moments before when your brain was in panic mode.

You can be the master of your brain. Change the channels to change your moods.

Filed Under: Brain Tips, Emotional Intelligence, Happiness and Wellness, Team Building
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