Vedere Consulting

Use “The World’s Simplest Idea” to Inspire

2012-02-22T08:39:00.000-08:00

Simon Sinek has discovered what he claims is “the world’s simplest idea” to explain the common quality that is shared by the world’s greatest leaders and organizations. Almost four million people have viewed his TED talk, http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html , so obviously his idea is resonating with a lot of people. He calls it “The Golden Circle” and it looks like this:

Golden Circle

View more PowerPoint from plumcluverius

What represents what we do—tangible things that we all know and can easily articulate, like products and services. How is the way we do it--what makes our product or service special. Why is the purpose—it’s what makes us get out of bed in the morning, it’s what inspires us. Why is not about making money. Money, according to Sinek, is a by-product of what you do. Why is about something deeper and closer to the heart.

Most organizations and people move from the outside in, focusing on the outer two rings—the how and the what. These are more tangible, clear and easy to describe. Great leaders and organizations do exactly the opposite, they communicate and work from the inside out—they start with why.

This golden circle, this working from the inside out, is working from the fuzzy to the tangible, from the difficult to communicate to the easiest to communicate. But it is the most effective. The Wright brothers' story, one of Sinek's examples, demonstrates why. The Wright brothers were in a race with many others to be the first to fly. A serious competitor for the honor was Samuel Pierpont Langley. Langley was well capitalized, with a $50,000 grant from the US Army. He was connected to Harvard and the Smithsonian, so he had access to the best minds, and he was well known—the New York Times was chronicling his every move. Contrast that with the Wright brothers. Their only funding came from the profits of their bicycle shop. No one working on their team had a college education and no one had ever heard of them. The key difference between the two was that Langley was working for fame and money—to be the first. The Wright brothers had a vision of how flight would change the world and they gave that vision everything they had.

Sinek says, “If you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.” The same is true for organizations like Apple or leaders like Martin Luther King. They are successful because they can articulate what they believe, the why of their existence, and others who share that why want to be part of it.

This idea isn’t new, but it is simple and powerful. I’ve experienced myself how people are moved almost mysteriously to action, to give everything they’ve got, because someone was able to articulate something deep that resonated with them. The same is true for selling. People will buy what you sell because they believe what you believe. But recognizing and articulating the why isn’t easy. That’s why so few companies or leaders do it.

Sinek explains that the neocortex, the part of the brain that controls rational thought and language is focused on what and how. The limbic system, the seat of our emotional response and motivation, answers why. It does not have a language component. It only feels. So we get a feeling about something but find it hard to describe what it is we are feeling. I believe too, as Marshall Rosenberg described in his book Non-Violent Communication: A Language of Life, that we have not been taught to focus on what we feel or what we need—and therefore we often are blind to this important information and don’t know how to talk about it.

To me, the skills of turning inward, of paying attention to feelings, needs and wants and describing them to others are the building blocks we need to develop our capacity to identify the why—the why of our work, the why of our organization, the why of our lives. If we can learn to identify that why, then we can inspire others to connect with us, to share our vision, and give their all.

Can We Be Compassionate in an Election Year?

2012-02-14T11:40:00.000-08:00

I was re-reading the beginning of one of my favorite books, Marshall Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication: A Language of Life, and was struck by his assertion that his method of communicating, which he calls Non-Violent Communication or NVC, is based on “language and communication skills that strengthen our ability to remain human even under trying conditions” (italics mine). Wow! This year’s political atmosphere is certainly trying. Just reading the newspaper or listening to the radio usually leaves me feeling angry, frustrated or depressed. I don’t think I’m alone. I would love to remain human and compassionate (or even dispassionate) in the midst of the political debate.

It’s often difficult to even bring up political subjects unless one is sure one’s listeners are fairly like-minded politically—yet I believe we need political discourse and cross pollination now more than ever. No one really has all the answers. Yet the discourse is often so heated, vitriolic even, that understanding all perspectives seems impossible.

Rosenberg was fascinated from an early age with understanding what disconnects us from our compassionate nature and how people have been able to remain compassionate even in situations as difficult as a concentration camp. He believes that compassion is our natural state and, like Ghandi, that it returns to us “when violence has subsided from the heart.”

He found several types of communication that separate us from our compassionate nature. The first is making moralistic judgments. These are judgments that imply wrongness or badness when someone acts counter to our values. Blaming, insults, criticism, labels, comparisons and diagnoses are all examples of moralistic judgments. Comparing yourself to others is also a form “life-alienating communication” as Rosenberg terms it and so is using language that denies our responsibility for our own thoughts, feelings and actions.

This list of life-alienating communications pretty much sums up the way we all communicate—often. Who hasn’t compared themselves favorably or unfavorably to others? Who hasn’t said “you made me do it” or criticized someone for getting it wrong or labeled someone as “lazy” or “incompetent”? Rosenberg says that this type of communication takes away our compassion and often doesn’t get us what we want or need.

Why is that? Rosenberg believes that what lies at the bottom of our judgments or blame is an unmet need. We need something, often unconsciously, and because we’re not getting it, we blame something or someone else. He said a different way to communicate—one that not only allows our compassionate nature to flourish but helps us get our needs met more effectively—is to focus on our own experience and try to discover what we really need and how others can help us get it.

The four components of our experience are:

Separating our observations (what actually happened) from our judgments. Doing so allows us to use neutral, non-blaming language to describe what we don’t like.
Identifying our feelings and separating judgments from feelings. The act of honing in on our emotions and naming them rather than acting them out gives us greater objectivity and clarity.
Identifying what we need and want that we are currently not getting in this situation. This is probably the hardest thing to do because we are so used to judging or blaming behavior (that politician is an idiot!) and often are completely out of touch with the need behind it (I want to know that my perspective will be heard—that I can influence the process). Identifying our underlying need gets to the heart of why we are angry or upset and can help us think creatively about how to move forward.
Identifying what specific and positive action another person could take to meet that need and framing that action as a request rather than a demand. Trying to force someone to change usually backfires. Requests open rather than close the dialogue.

I love this idea of draining violence from our hearts and opening ourselves to our natural compassion. Our business relationships, our personal lives, and our political conversations can all benefit. And really, in all of the above, aren’t the stakes too high not to try?

For more information, see http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_3_14?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=marshall+rosenberg+nonviolent+communication&sprefix=Marshall+rosen%2Caps%2C217

One Simple Way to Be More Productive

2012-02-06T08:43:00.000-08:00

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about a time management video (yes, video) I saw back in the mid-1980’s. In that video, there is a beautiful scene where a man is fly fishing in a sun-dappled stream surrounded by green woods and a golden meadow. He is casting his line slowly and carefully to a rhythm that is obviously his own. He is lost in that world and time has, for that moment, become irrelevant to him.

Contrast that scene with a typical workday, when from the moment you wake up to a ringing alarm until you go to bed, time is a constant. You get up at a certain time, you leave for work and arrive at a certain time, you have scheduled meetings, phone calls, lunch appointments. In the evening, if you’re watching TV, your shows come on at a certain time. You may have another scheduled meeting or dinner engagement. We are ruled by the clock.

One of the main points of the video I mentioned is that this reliance on scheduled, structured time is antithetical to the way our bodies work. Just as there are rhythms and cycles in nature (day and night, the change of the seasons), our bodies have rhythms of their own that are not dictated by the hours in the day. We have our own circadian rhythms (cycles of sleep and wakefulness) and ultradian rhythms (a cycle of rest and activity that occurs every 90 – 120 minutes during our waking hours). Nature and our genetic makeup play a part in shaping our unique rhythms.

In our non-stop culture, it’s easy to ignore our bodies’ rhythms. We have caffeine to keep us awake and sleep aids to help us sleep. But ignoring these rhythms puts our health at risk and surprisingly it also puts our productivity and effectiveness at risk. We need unstructured time to be able to perform at our best. That unstructured time rests us, restores us and gives us the ability to go on. If we don’t give it to ourselves, our bodies end up taking it in one form or another. It could be getting to the point where our concentration falters and it starts taking us longer and longer to get something done. It might take the form of an exhausted evening where we are too tired to connect or create. It might take the form of a greater susceptibility to everyday illnesses or, more seriously, a long-term health issue.

Of course vacations can be a fantastic way to rest. I love vacations where the entire weekend or week is unstructured. I get up, eat, exercise, engage when my body wants to. But we don’t have to go on a long vacation to get the restorative power of unstructured time. In our waking hours, we are able to keep our full attention on a task for a 90 – 120 minute interval. After that, our minds start to wander and we have more difficulty concentrating. If we pay attention to that natural cycle of activity and rest, we can give ourselves very short breaks during the day where time can stand still. An absorbing book at lunch, a two minute breathing exercise or meditation, a brisk walk outside, giving our full attention to a song we love—all these take away the clock, even if it’s only for a moment. With that break, we can engage again at a high productivity level until our body says it’s time for another break.

In what ways can you lose yourself today? Isn’t ironic that by stopping for just a minute you can actually accomplish more?

How to Win (or Lose) Customer Trust

2012-01-30T11:49:00.000-08:00

A recent shopping experience reminded me how important it is to earn the trust of your customers and how easy it is to lose it when you don’t pay attention to all three aspects of trust building. Here’s what happened. On Sunday, I was ecstatic. After a frustrating day shopping at virtually every appliance store in my hometown, hours of online research and surprising levels of ignorance about the product from sales staffs, I found the perfect dishwasher—energy efficient, attractive, reliable, functional and affordable—and a sales rep with surprising levels of knowledge who helped me compare a variety of products before I settled on my purchase. My trust in the company where I bought my appliance (a big box retailer who shall remain nameless) was sky high—this is where I would buy any appliance or electronic equipment I ever needed! Surely this was a place where customer service still lived!

On Wednesday, the dream turned into a nightmare when I found the delivery crew sitting on the floor staring blankly at the place where my new dishwasher should go. “We can’t install this,” they told me, “you need a plumber.” “Interesting,” I thought. “If you need a plumber, why not send one.” In fact, another store I visited said they only sent plumbers on dishwasher installations. But this company didn’t even have access to a plumber so back the dishwasher went and another store got my business. I doubt I’ll ever shop at said big box retailer again—at least not until this memory has faded and never for something I can’t install myself.

The answer to why that store won and lost my trust so quickly is very simple. According to Julio Olalla, master coach (www.newfieldnetwork.com) and author of From Knowledge to Wisdom, trust has three corners, like the points on a triangle. The first corner is competence, which means I believe you can do what you say you can do, the second is commitment—I believe you will do what you say you can do, and the third is intent—I believe your intention is to support me or at least to do me no harm. All three of these points must be present before trust can exist.

Lately, many companies have seemed to realize how important it is to build relationships with customers—to be polite and respectful no matter what. The two installers on my floor couldn’t have been more courteous. However, like my big box retailer, organizations who don’t deliver on all of the three points--competence, commitment and intent, risk losing the trust of customers, of employees, of investors.

How to Get Where You Want to Go

2012-01-17T12:48:00.000-08:00

Like many of us, my son John is a busy man. He’s in graduate school and has big dreams about where he wants to go and what he wants to do. Achieving those goals means a lot of sacrifice and discipline now—hard courses, much research, publishing and presenting papers. There’s a lot riding on how he does now and that means he’s under considerable pressure.

I asked him recently if he ever felt overwhelmed or anxious. His answer taught me a valuable lesson--one I’ve heard before but it was somehow more memorable coming from him. He said that you can’t think about the whole road at once. If you think about everything you have to get done, all the obstacles you have to overcome, it’s easy to get discouraged. But if you focus on the step in front of you right now, complete that step and then move on to the next a big dream becomes much more doable.

Equally important, each day you have to concentrate on the one or two most important things you need to get done that day. Not the easy ones or the urgent ones (think e-mail!) but the important ones. What tasks move the ball down the field toward your ultimate goal?

It’s simple advice, really. But for those of us who have been afraid to dream big or who go through each day stressed out and exhausted, that simple advice is profound. I often encourage my clients to challenge themselves to set a powerful and challenging goal for themselves and then to identify only the first step toward that goal. Complete that first step and then decide the next one. Your progress is organic and takes advantage of the opportunities that show themselves unexpectedly. You stay on track and can end each day with a sense of accomplishment.

So thank you, John, for that great insight. Think big, take it one day at a time and each day do the most important thing.

Withstanding Life’s Challenges

2011-12-15T08:42:00.000-08:00

In the white paper on resilience I co-authored with J. Stephen Lindsey, http://www.box.net/s/oakto94omx3xumvv7aqm, Steve and I talk about specific thing you can do to build your resilience. Resilience is your ability to withstand life’s challenges, to “perform in the storm” as performance researcher Jim Loehr says. In today’s world, we face constant challenge, constant change, greater demands and more time pressures. It’s so easy to get knocked off center, to feel stressed and pressured all the time.

Building our resilience builds our ability to withstand this pressure, to thrive in a challenging environment. The secret to resilience is the stress-recovery cycle—challenging ourselves and then providing a period of time to recover. Jim Loehr goes into this in more detail in this youtube video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybfPNevrF00.

There are a number of ways to build from thinking positively to breaking projects into small chunks, to getting in touch with your deepest values. Many more hints and resources are listed in our white paper, “Resilience: The Key to Peak Performance. I invite you to take a look and let me know what you think.

Motivation: What Does Work?

2010-04-29T09:01:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I discussed the dangers of relying on rewards and punishment to motivate people. As Dan Pink (danpink.com) writes in his book, Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us, rewards and punishments often produce lower performance in work that demands creativity, innovation, and independent initiative.

One of the studies Pink cites provides a clue about why. In 1949, psychology professor Harry F. Harlow crafted an experiment to study learning in primates (in this case rhesus monkeys). He created a simple puzzle which the monkeys could solve by pulling a pin out of a block of wood, undoing a hook and then pulling up a hinge. The puzzles were placed in the monkeys’ cages before the test to see what the monkeys would do. Surprisingly, they began playing with the puzzle with what looked like enjoyment until they found the solution. By the time the researchers tested them, the monkeys solved the puzzle easily and repeatedly.

Up to that time, psychologists believed there were only two forms of motivation, our biological drive and extrinsic motivators like rewards and punishments. What shocked Harlow and his associates was that when they gave the monkeys raisins as a reward for solving the puzzles they make more errors and solved the puzzle less frequently. Harlow postulated that a third motivational drive existed, which he called intrinsic motivation. In addition he noted that the introduction of the extrinsic reward, food, “served to disrupt performance.”

Fast forward to 1995 when Microsoft launched its well researched and funded electronic encyclopedia, Encarta. Who could have predicted that by 2010 it would be defunct and Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia written by amateurs who are never paid a dime, would be the largest and most popular encyclopedia in the world? Obviously the volunteers who developed and maintain Wikipedia don’t do it for the money!

Why work on a project for free? As Harlow showed, the reward is the activity itself—in its capacity to satisfy us. Pink identifies three types of intrinsic motivation that create that sense of satisfaction: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy is about choice. It is about doing something we enjoy, when we want to do it, choosing who we do it with and how we do it. Watch small children at play and it’s clear we’re born self directed.

Pink describes mastery as “getting better at something that matters.” We are engaged and motivated when the tasks we are given allow us to stretch (if it’s too easy we get bored), but they aren’t so tough that we give up. Just as monkeys played with the puzzle until they mastered it, we humans want to be good at something, to master something.

Purpose is “a cause greater and more enduring” than ourselves. It is the part of us that is transcendent, which feels best when we are doing something to make the world a better place.
Pink describes a number of ways to harness intrinsic motivators to boost performance. An Australian software company initiated a practice called “Fed Ex Days” for their engineers. Once a quarter employees have 24 hours to work on any project they choose. It could be a fix to an existing system or try out an entirely new idea. At the end of the 24 hours, employees gather to show what they’ve developed. Many successful new initiatives have come from this practice.

Distributing tasks among employees based on what they do well and enjoy doing taps into mastery. Another method is to give yourself (and perhaps your employees) a “flow test.” Set a timer to remind you to stop what you are doing and write down what you are doing, how you feel at that moment, and whether you are completely absorbed in your work. Do this about 40 times at random intervals for one week. Then analyze the data to determine how you could increase the number of optimal experiences (when you are absorbed in work that engages you) in your work day.

One way to find your purpose is to ask yourself a big question. Pink describes how Claire Booth Luce once told President Kennedy, “ ‘A great man is one sentence.’ Abraham Lincoln’s sentence was: ‘He preserved the union and freed the slaves.” Franklin Roosevelt’s was: ‘He lifted us out of a great depression and helped us win a world war.’” Luce challenged Kennedy to find his one sentence. Our challenge is to find ours.

See Pink’s book for more ways to build intrinsic motivation in yourself, in your organization and in your children.

Plum Cluverius, PCC is an executive coach with over 30 years experience in leadership development. She lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.

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2010-04-12T07:29:00.001-07:00

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The Perils of Pay for Performance

2010-04-05T09:34:00.000-07:00

In the early 1960’s, a psychologist named Sam Glucksberg conducted an experiment testing the effects of extrinsic rewards on creativity. He divided his subjects into two groups and gave them a puzzle to solve that required identifying a new function for a common object (in this case a box with tacks in it). Half the group was told that they were being timed to determine a benchmark for how long it took to solve the puzzle. The other half was told that they would receive a cash award if they finished in the top 25% of the group and a higher cash award if they finished first. Which group do you think finished the puzzle faster?

If you guessed the group with the cash incentive, you guessed wrong. It took them an average of 3 ½ minutes longer to get the puzzle. Yes, that’s right. 3 ½ minutes longer. Why? Because extrinsic rewards tend to narrow our focus. We look toward the goal, which makes it more difficult to see the wider implications. Solving the problem in the experiment required a wide focus, an openness to new solutions.

Other psychologists have done similar studies that have tested this effect on creativity. What they have found is radically changing our idea of what motivates exceptional performance. It is not, according to Daniel Pink in his new book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, (http://www.danpink.com/) the cash bonuses, the commissions, the high salaries, the pay for performance many companies use to incent employees. He says these types of rewards work fine if the task follows a set of guidelines or rules and is repetitive. But for creative work, for solving problems that haven’t been solved before, for dealing with complex issues where guidelines don’t work, science is showing us that rewards and punishments not only don’t work, they sometimes actually do harm by lowering performance or incenting unethical behavior.

In a second experiment cited by Pink, economists Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini studied the effects of punishment on parents whose children attended 20 day care centers in Haifa, Israel. The closing time for the centers was 4:00 p.m. If parents were late, a teacher would have to stay with the child until the parents arrived. Gneezy and Rustichini began the study by recording the number of times parents were late picking up their children. At the end of four weeks, the researchers were allowed to charge a fine for late parents. Because a punishment had been imposed, the researchers expected the number of late parents to decrease, but to their astonishment, the opposite happened. After the fine was imposed, the number of late parents actually increased, eventually climbing to a level twice as high as the pre-fine level. What Pink concluded is that the threat of punishment crowded out the motivation parents once had to treat their children’s teacher fairly. “The fine,” he says, “shifted the parents’ decision from a partly moral obligation (be fair to my kids’ teacher), to a pure transaction (I can buy extra time). There wasn’t room for both. The punishment didn’t promote good behavior; it crowded it out.”

Pink says our organizations, for the most part, still operate under the assumption that the way to increase desirable behavior is to reward it and the way to decrease undesirable behavior is to punish it. Our pay systems are built on this foundation. But science is telling us that there’s a cost, and the cost is diminished performance, less creativity, lowered intrinsic reward, more short-term thinking, and organizations where good behavior can get crowded out and shortcuts, even cheating, are encouraged. This doesn't mean that equitable pay is unimportant. Unequal or unfair pay creates a distraction. But for creative work, extrinsic rewards often backfire.

Plum Cluverius, PCC is an executive coach with over 30 years experience in leadership development. She lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.

Getting Through a Job Transition Successfully

2010-03-20T04:08:00.000-07:00

“I can’t seem to focus—it’s taking me three times as long to get anything done.” “One day I feel fine, the next I’m in a panic.” “It’s strange, the day just seems to go by and at the end of it I haven’t accomplished anything I set out to do.” “No one will hire me, I’m too old.”

A number of my clients are going through a career transition. Sometimes they are the ones making the decision, other times someone made the decision for them. What all of them have needed is a clear understanding of what happens to them emotionally when they make this kind of significant change.

Why is that important? Emotions are the drivers of our behavior. We move and act based on how we feel. Any kind of change produces all kinds of emotions, and some of those emotions make it difficult to do anything. When we enter the unknown, as we must when changing a job or a career, most people don’t know what to expect emotionally. They don’t know that there are predictable patterns of emotional states that are a natural part of the transition process. They believe they are alone, that no one else is experiencing what they are going through. Worse still, they may believe that something is wrong with them.

William Bridges (http://www.wmbridges.com/ )has written several books about the emotional stages of transition and his work has helped my clients and many others make sense of the myriad of emotions they experience as they move from the old to the new. He first distinguished the transition process (the emotional response to change) from the change process (the actual change that is triggering the emotional response) and divided the transition process into three phases: ending, chaos or the neutral zone, and new beginning.

In the ending stage of transition, one has to come to grips with the fact that with change something has to go away. People experience a sense of loss and all the emotions that go with it—denial, anger, bargaining, sadness and resignation, acceptance. In the chaos stage (Bridges now calls it the neutral zone) people have accepted that something has ended but they don’t know what the new job or career will look like. This middle period is full of ups and downs—at times it seems like there is nothing to hold onto. People are upbeat one day and depressed the next. It becomes difficult to focus as familiar markers go away. It’s sometimes hard to get up in the morning or to get motivated.

It sounds pretty miserable, doesn’t it? But there’s an upside to the chaos. It’s an incredibly creative period. The old blinders are off and people can see their situation in new ways and develop solutions that were unthinkable before. I have watched clients come up with innovative ideas for networking and marketing themselves or their businesses—things that would never have been on their radar screens under normal circumstances.

The third period is called the new beginning. This is the stage where the future starts to take shape and people can see where they are headed. It has some challenges too, as people struggle with developing the confidence that they can take on this new role. But the path is much clearer and in general the emotional roller coaster has smoothed out.

I have found four things to be of tremendous help in moving through the stages of transition. The first is to recognize that the ups and downs of the transition period are normal and usually temporary. You are not alone—and you aren’t crazy! The second is to question your negative assumptions. If you think your age is an issue, consider this. Research has shown that energy and vigor are more important than age to employers. Pay attention to what you accept about yourself and your situation as true. Is it really? Experiment with alternative, more hopeful, assumptions. Third, focus on what you do well rather than your shortcomings. Creativity is expanded in a positive frame of mind. Fourth, create a schedule or routine to replace the old one you had while working. Include satisfying and fun activities as part of the mix. Bring some things into your life you couldn’t fit in while you were working.

Understanding and working with the emotional side of change helps make positive change possible. It makes it easier to navigate the unknown.

Plum Cluverius, PCC is an executive coach with over 30 years experience in leadership development. She lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.

How to Build Your Emotional Intelligence

2010-03-06T07:39:00.000-08:00

“Emotions . . . are at the root of everything we do, the unquenchable origin of every act more complicated that a reflex. . . In all cases, emotions are humanity’s motivator and its omnipresent guide.”

--Thomas Lewis,MD, Fari Amini, MD and Richard Lannon, MD, A General Theory of Love

If you want to motivate people to give you their best every day and inspire them to keep moving forward despite the inevitable obstacles that get in the way of achieving a goal, you have to know how to touch them on an emotional level. That requires emotional intelligence, the capacity to identify and understand one’s own and others emotions, and to manage oneself in relationships. There is a plethora of information on emotional intelligence, but when it comes to developing emotional intelligence, the material that appeals most to me comes from Learning in Action Technologies, www.learninginaction.com, a Seattle-based company specializing in EQ related assessments, workshops, teleclasses, and coaching.

Learning in Action focuses on the basic building blocks of emotional intelligence. The competencies and skills Daniel Goleman and others use to predict leadership performance flow from these capacities. If you want to improve your ability to use your emotions intelligently, it makes sense to work on these foundational capacities first. These are:

Self Reflection is the ability to recognize your own experience—your thoughts, feelings, wants, bodily sensations and actions. Self reflection is the capacity to observe yourself in the moment and to use your internal experience to inform what you do. Much of our internal experience is so automatic that we remain unconscious of it. As we build our capacity to observe our own reactions to a situation, we can consciously choose how to act instead of responding automatically (and often ineffectively).

Self Regulation and Self Soothing is the capacity to calm ourselves when we experience tension and to soothe ourselves when we experience emotional pain. By calming ourselves in healthy ways, we clear our brains so we can assess the situation more accurately, identify more possibilities for action, and choose more wisely. With this capacity, we are able to regain a sense of balance on our own, without requiring others to change.

Empathy is the ability to recognize what someone else is experiencing, to see something from their perspective, and to accept that perspective even if you don’t agree with it. It is being able to put yourself in someone’s shoes. Empathy is both the ability to accurately assess what someone else is feeling and to feel for them—to care about their experience.

Learning in Action has developed an assessment to measure these capacities, the EQ in Action Profile, and a handbook of practices for strengthening each area. The EQ in Action Profile uses videotaped scenarios to measure how you respond to stressful situations rather than self report or a 360 assessment. The handbook offers 150 suggestions for strengthening your EQ fitness, and is available to individuals who have taken the assessment.

Plum Cluverius, PCC is an executive coach with over 30 years experience in leadership development. She lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.

What Every Leader Should Know About How Teams Work

2010-02-16T07:38:00.000-08:00

In the mid-1990’s, researcher and business consultant Marcial Losada built a board room where corporate teams met to conduct typical meetings—planning and strategy sessions, etc. But there was a twist. The room was equipped with one-way mirrors where Losada and his assistants tracked every behavior that occurred in those meetings. As a result, Losada was able to build a mathematical model that delineates the factors that create a high performing vs. a low performing team with unusual precision.

Losada used three criteria to determine the performance level of the teams he was studying: profitability, customer satisfaction and evaluations by peers, superiors and subordinates. Using these indicators, Losada found that 25% of the teams he studied were high performing, 30% were low performing and the remainder had mixed success.

Losada plotted the moment by moment data he had collected on all the teams, and when he compared the high performing and low performing teams, there were striking differences. First, the high performing teams had a much higher percentage of positive statements to negative statements—or positivity ratio—than the low performing teams. High performing teams had a positivity ratio of 6:1, compared to below 1:1 for low performing teams. Mixed performance teams had a positivity ratio of around 2:1. In addition, high performing team members connected to each other more frequently, they were attuned to each others’ mood and thoughts, than the other two teams. High performing teams balanced advocacy (defending your point of view) and inquiry (asking questions) and the number of statements that were self focused or other focused. The low performing teams asked almost no questions and showed very little outward focus and had much lower levels of connectivity.

What was even more telling is that teams that maintained a positivity ratio of at least 3:1 (three positive statements for every one negative statement) were able to sustain the characteristics of high performance and top level results over long periods of time. They continued to flourish even in difficult times. They remained open to new ideas, they were flexible and creative, and they were resilient in tough times. The results were very different for the other types of teams. They floundered under pressure. The mixed success teams were able to be creative and open, but when faced with difficult challenges they tended to regress to a lower level of functioning—they became inflexible and stuck in a rut. Team members stopped asking questions and focused on defending their positions. The low performing teams spiraled downward to a stalemate, where nothing got done.

What every team leader needs to know is that there is a tipping point, a precise point where teams head in different directions—either toward openness, flexibility, creativity, resilience and success, or toward closed, internal thinking, stalemate and failure. A tipping point is the point at which an entity changes dramatically, like ice changing to water at precisely 32 0F. Losada calculated that the tipping point for teams is a positivity ratio of 3:1. Any positivity ratio between 3:1 and 11:1 will produce the characteristics of a high performing, self correcting team. Below that ratio and teams will flounder, especially in tough times.

There is more about Losada’s research in Positivity by Barbara Fredrickson, www.positivityratio.com .

Plum Cluverius is an executive coach with over 30 years experience in leadership development. She lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.

The Leader's Toolkit: Situational Leadership

2010-02-03T08:33:00.000-08:00

One of the questions my clients ask most frequently is how to develop their people more effectively. Often they ask it because they are stuck solving problems for employees for the better part of the work day—and then are forced to work extra hours to get their own work done. I always recommend the Situational Leadership Model, a tool I have shared with leaders for over 30 years. Clients tell me it is the most practical model they ever learned.

Developed by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard in the late 1960’s, Situational Leadership provides a roadmap for effective employee development, delegation and performance management. It identifies two key leadership behaviors, giving direction and providing emotional support, which followers need in varying amounts if they are to successfully learn or complete a task. It then demonstrates how the two leader behaviors are combined to create a variety of leadership styles. What makes the model so practical is that it shows leaders when to use the different styles for maximum impact. If, for example, you have an employee who turns in sloppy work that you have to review and correct before it goes out, the model will help you diagnose the leader behaviors you are currently using that aren’t working and identify the leader behaviors that will probably be more effective.

The key to successful diagnosis is to identify what leader behaviors the follower needs in order to be productive. This is determined by identifying the follower’s development or readiness level—that is, how competent (do they have the requisite knowledge and skills) and committed (are they confident they can be successful and do they think the task is important) the follower is. Blanchard labeled four development or readiness levels: the eager beginner (little knowledge and skills but some level of commitment), the disillusioned learner (some knowledge and skills but somewhat discouraged or uninterested), the capable, but cautious performer (significant knowledge and skills but lacks confidence or commitment) and the self reliant achiever (high levels of competence and commitment). Click here for images of the model.

Each of these four development levels requires different leader behavior. The eager beginner needs a lot of clear direction, the disillusioned learner needs direction and emotional support. The capable, but cautious performer (often an underachiever) frequently gets, but does not need, a lot of direction. Instead, they require supportive leader behavior to determine what will help them recognize the importance of the task or develop more confidence in themselves. The self reliant achiever needs little direction or support from the leader.

Strong leaders match their leadership styles to the needs of the follower they are trying to influence. Dysfunctional leadership occurs when leaders use more directive or supportive behavior than needed (overleading) or less directive or supportive behavior than needed (underleading).

Going back to our employee who turns in the sloppy work, the leader should first assess—either alone or by talking with the employee—if the problem is a lack of skill, a lack of confidence or commitment, or both. If the problem is a lack of skill, the leader needs to give clearer direction, guidance and feedback. If the problem is a lack of confidence or commitment, the leader needs to give more emotional support by asking questions, giving praise and encouragement, and explaining how the task fits into the big picture.

To learn more about how this works and for a free diagnostic tool, contact Plum at www.vedereconsulting.com or go to the source: Paul Hersey at or Ken Blanchard.

What Is Your Positivity Ratio

2010-01-19T07:49:00.000-08:00

Have you ever gotten up in the morning and things just seemed to go wrong from the time you woke up until you went to bed? It’s almost like one thing cascades into another making you more and more frustrated and irritable. You’re drowning in a sea of negativity.

You don’t have to live this way, says psychologist and researcher Barbara Fredrickson, PhD. You can change your mood, and when you do, you change your life. She’s done the research to prove it. For years, Fredrickson has investigated the value of positive emotions—joy, serenity, gratitude, curiosity, amusement, etc. in both controlled laboratory experiments and in field studies. She’s measured the effects of positive emotions on the way people think and catalogued their impact on people’s skills, traits and well being. What she’s found is that positive emotions have a purpose beyond just feeling good for a moment. Positive emotions expand our ability to respond to daily crises and problems with creativity and resilience. Basically she says that fear closes down our minds and hearts, it makes us dumber and less able to respond to a crisis. Positive emotions open them, so that we see our problems more clearly, and are able to make more creative and nourishing choices about what to do next.

In addition, the more we experience positive emotions, the more we change and grow, becoming better people and developing the tools we need to make a better life. That is, over the long term, we become more satisfied and fulfilled.

A fascinating part of Fredrickson’s work is the positivity ratio, the number of positive emotions compared to the number of negative emotions we experience each day. If our positivity ratio is 3:1 (3 positive emotions to one negative emotion), we reach a tipping point where we receive all the nourishing benefits of positive thinking. Below that ratio, we tend to descend into negativity. Most of us have a positivity ratio of 2:1 or worse. (If you want to find yours, you can take a free quiz at www.positivityratio.com).

We can improve the ratio by experimenting with ways to inject positivity into our days. And this isn’t something you can fake. In fact, you can pressure yourself to be positive and that just adds to the negativity! Instead, look for sources of beauty and pleasure. Look for small opportunities to engage in nourishing activities. Notice your negative interpretations of events and find a more positive perspective. There are a number of tools on Fredrickson’s website. Take advantage, and let yourself flourish.

Develop a Healthy Relationship with Your Money

2010-01-10T09:11:00.000-08:00

We all have a relationship with money. We either care for it, nurture it or we abuse it. Many of us are anxious about our finances. It’s a relationship we can’t escape—and it’s complicated, if not sometimes dysfunctional.

So what constitutes a healthy relationship with money? Interestingly, it’s not about having a lot. Research indicates that more money increases happiness when people move from poverty to the middle class, but falls off after that. Real satisfaction with money comes when we spend, save and acquire money in a way that is consistent with our deepest, most fundamental desires and values. It happens when we are able to be grateful for what we have, when we learn to be satisfied now rather than believing happiness will come when we move to a bigger house or buy the latest gadget. It comes from taking control of our finances instead of letting them control us.

This kind of satisfaction and gratitude is hard to sustain because our relationship with money is influenced by attitudes about money, our money “scripts,” that we have developed over many years. Money scripts are patterns of thought about money that are so habitual we are usually completely unaware of them. We develop our scripts from the way our parents dealt with money, cultural messages, and our own interpretations of events in our lives. One woman who always wore hand-me-downs is now determined to have “the best of everything.” A colleague whose parents taught him that being successful meant earning lots of money measures his success by how much money he makes. A woman learned from her parents that “the money will come when you need it,” used a credit card when she couldn’t afford something until she was in deep financial trouble. And all of us are bombarded by a culture that tells us every day that what we have and who we are is not enough.

The first step in developing a healthy relationship to money is to do some soul searching, to reflect deeply on what is most important to you. The second step is to identify the unconscious money scripts that create dysfunction in your relationship with money. The third step is to create healthier beliefs that will enable you to do the financial research and take grounded action that will move you toward a relationship with money that serves your deepest self. These three steps are vital because without them, your unconscious patterns will repeat themselves no matter how much planning you do.

When It’s Important, Put Yourself First

2009-08-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

When I was growing up, my mother was the only woman in our neighborhood who worked. And I resented it. I wanted her to be like all the other mothers who stayed home. She didn’t have to work, my father made enough money to support us. She did it because she wanted to. In 1950’s suburbia, that was almost unheard of.

My mother did what many people fail to do. When it was important, she put herself first. I have worked with hundreds of people over the years as an executive coach and workshop facilitator, and many of those people find it very difficult to put themselves first even when they need to. It may be the unreasonable demands of a difficult boss, it may be failing to find time to renew oneself when faced with the multiple responsibilities of work and family, it may be limiting oneself to a job that is unsatisfying and boring, it may be avoiding an employee whose personal problems have affected their work performance. I see this behavior in successful executives as well as first line supervisors. I see it in men as well as women.

In our culture, despite the “me” generation labels, there is still a strong undercurrent of belief that it is selfish and egotistical to consider our own needs, to be clear about what we want and to make requests of others that would enrich our lives. And so we don’t. But when we consistently fail to put ourselves first, the unmet need manifests itself in dysfunctional ways. We may become resentful or angry, we may put unreasonable expectations on others that we’ve sacrificed for, we may become depressed or unproductive, or we may become sick.

So how do we buck this current? And how do we balance our needs with the legitimate needs of others? There are a number of books that have tackled this subject. I highly recommend Marshall Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication: a Language of Life, Patterson, Grenny, McMillan and Switzler’s Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When the Stakes Are High, William Ury’s The Power of a Positive No, and Ron Short’s Learning in Relationships.

Each of these books tells us that a primary task is to become observers of ourselves. To pay attention to our feelings, to name them without explaining why or judging whether they are right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable. And then to identify what we want and need. To accept that want or need as legitimate. This is easily said, but very hard to do. I met with a group of trainers and coaches recently and we acknowledged we still struggle with naming needs and accepting them as legitimate. It requires conscious effort and acceptance.

It also means that our needs are as important as other’s needs. Not more important. Not less important. Equally important. That means that we may have to negotiate with someone else to get a need met. We may have to help them identify what their need is. We may have to resist their demands. And we have to resist making demands on others.

We can put ourselves first. We need to.

Plum Cluverius is an executive and leadership coaching practicing in Richmond, Virginia.

What to Do When You Can’t Solve the Problem

2009-07-02T14:00:00.000-07:00

Many of the executives I work with are terrific problem solvers. They are inventive, determined, intelligent. It’s one of the main reasons they got to where they are today. But what happens when the problem isn’t one that can be solved—like death or a terminal illness? Or someone doesn’t want you to solve the problem for them? Or you don’t have the experience or skills or resources and don’t know where to turn? How can an inveterate problem solver be effective?

The answer is simple, really. Stop talking. Give the person your full attention. Listen with all your heart. Tell the truth about your experience. Trust that resolution will come without you and that your caring and presence is enough. Lao Tsu called this experience “non-doing.” Non-doing doesn’t mean doing nothing, it means paying attention to your experience and to what another person is experiencing without doing anything to “fix” it. It is also recognizing that paying attention is often enough.

All of us have heard the jokes about married couples experiencing the frustration of problem solving gone wrong when one of them (often the woman) discusses a problem she’s having. Her husband, with a sincere desire to help, gets out the proverbial toolkit and starts troubleshooting. “Did you try x,” he’ll say. She, a little frustrated because of course she tried x, will continue on but with an edge to her voice. “How about y,” her husband says. Now his wife is getting really frustrated and maybe a bit insulted. Because she doesn’t want his advice. She just wants him to listen. If he listens she can figure out the problem herself. Or she just needs to know someone cares and understands.

The same thing happens between parents and children or bosses and subordinates. It happens sometimes in really difficult situations when we want to help someone we love through all illness or the death of a loved one. We give advice, or we try to problem solve. And sometimes that’s the worst thing we can do.

Experts, as well as people who have experienced great tragedy, tell us that the people who were most helpful were the people who gave support through being there to listen when the sufferer wanted to talk. It is non-doing. It is not interfering with the flow of life but supporting it.

This is a tough stance for a chronic doer. I recommend acquiring the gift of non-doing in small steps. First, simply pay attention to your reactions to problems. What does your body do? Does your heart rate increase? Do you feel tension or release anywhere in your body? What are your thoughts? What emotions are you experiencing? By observing yourself, you delay doing. You have some time to think. Second, ask yourself if the person wants—or needs-- your help. Is non-doing going to be more productive than doing? Third, breathe deeply and into your belly. It will relax you and help you respond more slowly. Fourth, lean back and down (you are probably leaning forward and up—that’s a common problem solving stance). Allow yourself to relax into the conversation. Notice when your mind starts to wander and repeat the steps.

When you practice non-doing you are giving the other person a tremendous gift. And perhaps you’ll find that you’re giving one to yourself as well.

Plum Cluverius is a leadership and executive coach practicing in Richmond, Virginia.

Focus on the Opening, Not the Wall

2009-06-26T15:32:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered how NASCAR drivers manage to squeeze between two cars at 200 mph? or keep from hitting the wall through all those turns? They focus on where they want to go, not on what they don’t want to do. As one NASCAR driver in an interview said, if you drive thinking you don’t want to run into the wall, then you’re going to run into the wall. When you’re passing cars or weaving between them, you don’t focus on the cars, you drive for the opening you want to go through.

It’s the opposite of what we often do when we’re faced with a tough situation—whether the danger is physical or it’s a difficult conversation or decision. We focus our attention on what could go wrong—the boss will get angry, the employee will file a complaint. We become more tense, and our ability to think clearly diminishes. Because we’re obsessing about not running into the wall, we make it more likely that’s exactly what will happen. But focusing on what we want to happen, on where we want to go frees up our minds to think creatively and to act wisely. We see the opening between the cars and we go for it.

Because this behavior is unnatural to most of us, we have to practice it. We have to be aware of ourselves and our tendency to focus on the danger. And when we notice that our attention is turned to what we don’t want, we have to shift our attention to what we do want. For example, one of my executive clients had an employee who wanted a plum assignment. In other projects, however, this employee had alienated other members of the team by taking on most of the responsibility and then complaining about the team’s lack of participation. My client was concerned that the employee would become de-motivated if he didn’t get the assignment and she wasn’t sure how to approach him. But when she turned her attention to what she did want, which was to help her employee learn how to delegate effectively, she quickly decided to give him a portion of the assignment on the condition that he work with a mentor who was good at delegating. Once my client had her eye on the prize she was able to create viable solutions—and to communicate them more effectively.

It was another client of mine who discovered the information about the NASCAR driver. He uses a computer wallpaper featuring a race car to remind him that he’s much more effective when he looks for the open space instead of focusing on the cars. It’s a reminder most of us could use.

Plum Cluverius is an executive and leadership coach located in Richmond, Virginia.

To Be Truly Respectful, Start With Yourself

2009-05-23T13:08:00.000-07:00

“You are a complete idiot.” “How could you make such a stupid mistake.” “You’re always messing up!” You probably wouldn’t say any of these things—at least out loud—to someone else, but how many times have you said them to yourself? This type of language is violent and damaging, yet when we do something that causes us to feel guilty, ashamed or embarrassed, this is often the language we turn to. We don’t even think about it, it’s automatic.

Why do we do it? Because we’ve been conditioned to believe that guilt and shame provide the impetus for learning and positive behavior. Parents often use this tactic as a learning tool. I know I did. But shame and guilt often produce the opposite result. Instead of prompting action, they prompt resistance. How many people have you heard say, “I really should start working out” or “I really should lose weight” or “I really should control my temper better,” and then nothing ever happens.

I agree with Marshall Rosenberg, who in his book Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life (Puddledancer Press, 2003) says that when we use the word “should” with ourselves, we resist learning because “should” implies we don’t have a choice. He goes on to say that human beings have a strong need to control their own destiny, to freely choose, so we resist attempts, even internal ones, to force us to change against our wills.

What can we do differently? Rosenberg says that a more productive response is to ask ourselves what unmet need is behind our punishing language. For example, I often get angry with myself when I wait until the last minute to get something done. I’m feeling a lot of pressure and I keep asking myself, “when will you ever learn to plan ahead!” In this instance, my unmet need is for calm and composure.

After identifying the unmet need, the next step is to examine the needs we were trying to address with the actions that produced our guilt or self-punishment. If we also identify our unmet needs there, we can see that there was a positive intent for those actions. Then it’s easier for us to truly forgive ourselves for that mistake and to examine how we can better meet our needs the next time.

When I’m doing something at the last minute, I’m usually doing it because I’ve made too many commitments and I’m running behind. I made those commitments because I wanted to help someone or get something done that was important to me or I wanted to be seen as a competent professional or I wanted to continue building my practice. All those things are important to me. When I remember why I made those commitments, I understand how I got into such a bind and I lose my anger.

Interestingly, forgiving myself this way frees up energy for rebalancing priorities or using the time management techniques I know so well. Perhaps I think of someone to delegate to or I decide something can wait or I renegotiate with a client. Punishing myself just makes me feel guilty. Nothing changes.

I firmly believe that if we are ever to build organizations that are truly respectful and affirming, we must begin with ourselves. By learning to change the way we talk to ourselves, by turning violent language into the language of learning, we can see ourselves and consequently everything else in new and more productive ways.

Plum Cluverius is an executive and leadership coach in Richmond, Virginia. Contact her at plum@vedereconsulting.com for a free half hour consultation.

Carpe Diem

2009-05-12T11:54:00.000-07:00

You’ve probably been inundated with advice about how to weather economic turmoil. My friend and mentor, John Scherer (www.scherercenter.com), gave some of the best I’ve heard. He said that in tough times, we need to carpe diem, seize the day. That is, use the uncertainty to re-examine and re-invent. To think differently about old problems. John calls it breakthrough thinking. In his March 19 newsletter, The Scherer Report, he gave a great example of what this means. I’m going to let him tell you about it.

Recently a client company’s ‘Help Desk’ was falling far behind, taking 15 to 20 minutes to even answer the phone. The Breakthrough Action Team working on the problem was trying to figure out how to justify the cost of doubling the number of people answering the phones. They had tables of research and estimates of how many calls a person could handle in an hour, multiplied by the number of calls coming in each day, etc. I was consulting with the team and I suggested they were working very hard at ‘First Order Change’—that is change within the existing paradigm that doesn’t fundamentally change anything.

‘The way you SEE the problem is the problem,’ I said, quoting the ancient Yogic tradition.

What would happen, I challenged them, if they shifted to a breakthrough mindset? I asked them, ‘What would be the ideal number of calls coming into the Help Desk?’ They again started calculating the number of calls that could be handled by six people, then 12 people. I stopped them and asked again, ‘What would be the ideal number of calls coming into the Help Desk?’ Some team members started getting irritated with me. ‘We’re working on it, John!”

Finally one person said, ‘Well, the ideal number would be zero! But that could never happen.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘For one thing the sales team would have to do a much better job of selling, letting people know certain things they are reluctant to tell clients.’

‘OK,’ I said, ‘someone write this stuff down.’

Another person chimed in, ‘Then the installation team that goes in to build the system would need to do a much better job of listening to the client and their needs. Oh, and the training team would need to take the time to make sure the participants actually understand the system. They just come in, do their program and leave.’

‘Ok,’ I said, ‘there’s your focus, not on the number of people you have in the Call Center Help Desk.

They went to work, invited people from sales, installation and training to be part of a special cross-functional breakthrough thinking team and came up with a set of innovative action recommendations for consideration by the key decision makers.

The result? Three months later I was there for a follow up meeting and I wandered downstairs to the Help Desk to see how many people they had hired. There sat a lone telephone operator at her desk, reading a book! I said, ‘How’s it going?’ She replied, ‘It’s a little boring sometimes . . . but I can’t say I miss those days when six of us were here, frantic and overstressed. I get about ten calls a day now, and they’re usually pretty easy problems to solve. I don’t know what you did, but it worked!’

Now, that’s finding the opportunity in a crisis. Whether you’re a CEO, a small business owner or someone who’s lost a job, this kind of thinking makes lemonade out of whatever lemon you were handed.

John has just published a great new book, Five Questions That Change Everything: Life Lessons at Work. Click here to learn about it (http://www.amazon.com/Five-Questions-That-Change-Everything/dp/0979531527/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242068594&sr=8-1 ). I’ll be reviewing it in a later post.

Plum Cluverius is an executive and leadership coach located in Richmond, Virginia.

Don't Spread the Suffering

2009-03-27T07:38:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite clients is Celes Glover. As an administrative assistant to a vice president, Celes is in a unique position, as she puts it, to “spread something.” She literally sits in the middle of the department. People come to her all day long, usually because they want her help. She has to stop what she’s doing and take care of them. One of her insights, she told me, is that she can choose what she spreads. If she’s having a bad day, she can choose the spread the suffering by being short with people or ignoring them. Or she can decide to spread good will. She can listen, she can respond respectfully--even when she’s feeling irritated at an unreasonable request.

Celes has learned something every boss needs to know. Each person who supervises someone else is in a position to “spread something.” Their responses to the people around them are contagious. If they choose to spread the suffering by being short-fused, critical or ignoring others, their behavior will set the tone for the whole office. Their people will shut down, will be less creative. If they choose to spread good will, the office mood is more relaxed and supportive and creativity can flourish.

Let me hasten to add that supportive doesn’t mean soft. There are still too many bosses out there who confuse the two. Soft means you don’t rock the boat. You don’t confront when you need to. You sweep problems under the rug. Reacting with good will means you control your temper, you respond respectfully, you wait until you calm down to act. When President Obama said he wouldn’t “govern out of anger” he was paying attention to what he was spreading.

Right now, there’s plenty of suffering going around. There’s no need to add to it if you can help it. Calm yourself, then act. Say you’re sorry if you make a mistake. Listen. Managing your emotions is good for business.

Plum Cluverius is an executive and leadership coach located in Richmond, Virginia.

One Bad Apple

2009-03-15T05:00:00.000-07:00

Got a bad apple on your team? Read on to find out what you can do about it.

In one of my first jobs out of college, I had a co-worker who was the classic drama queen. She complained—about management, about clients, about her co-workers. She was chronically late and often absent so that others were stuck doing her work. She gossiped and was usually mad at someone or taking up their time with her tales of woe.

Three things make her interesting. First, she did all this in such a way that she was able to skate right below the surface of actionable offense. She drove management crazy, but it took them forever to address her issues because her excuses were good enough or she managed to do enough to get by. Second, she had a huge effect on morale. She managed to keep the office stirred up—when she was around someone was always upset about something or people weren’t speaking to each other. We all started complaining and gossiping. Third, there are far too many people like her in offices around the country. Maybe there’s one in yours.

The American Public Radio program, This American Life (www.thisamericanlife.org ) chronicled an experiment that offers hope to any office stuck with a dysfunctional drama queen. In the show, host Ira Glass interviewed Will Phelps, currently an assistant professor of management at the Rotterdam School of Management. Dr. Phelps wanted to know if one person could destroy the productivity of a group. He set up a series of experiments where he paid an actor to engage in one of three “bad apple” behaviors in a group. The “bad apple” behaviors were attacking or insulting others, doing less than they could, or acting depressed and pessimistic.

The results. Every group—but one—where the actor was present performed 30-40% worse than the control groups. Even more surprising, people in the group—initially enthusiastic and engaged—started taking on the actor’s behaviors. If he was insulting and attacking, they began attacking each other. If he slacked off, they did too. All this took place within the 45 minute time allotment for each group.

That’s powerful stuff, isn’t it? But if you’ve ever been in an office with a drama queen or a bad apple, the results of this study aren’t surprising. Bad apples can spoil the whole bunch.

But wait. One group managed to resist. What happened there? Dr. Phelps said that in this group, one person, a natural leader, turned the whole thing around. During the group exercise, he asked questions, listened, engaged others. He was able to diffuse the conflicts that arose. That group performed well, despite the bad apple behavior.

So what could this mean? It means that listening to each other, making sure everyone is heard, soliciting opinions, trying to understand each other is powerful too. It means that it’s as possible to reach our better selves as it is to appeal to our baser instincts. And it takes leadership. Someone willing to step up to the plate to help the group perform.

Plum Cluverius is an executive and leadership coach in Richmond, Virginia. Contact her at plum@vedereconsulting.com for a free half hour consultation.

How to Change a Habit

2009-02-25T13:46:00.000-08:00

This is the ninth and final post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

Did you know that up to 95% of what we do during the day is done automatically? Our brains work hard to create habits because it takes a lot less energy to function that way. As we know intuitively, exercising self control is much more draining! Since so much of our behavior is habitual, the more our habits serve our deepest values and our life’s purpose, the more satisfied and fulfilled we’ll be.

I wrote earlier about the importance of creating new habits if you want to manage your energy more effectively. Today, I’d like to expand on that a bit. Creating a new habit is hard, but the sooner the new behavior becomes automatic and effortless, the more likely it will become permanent.

Many of us have negative energy habits, automatic behaviors that drain us of the energy we need to perform at our best. Here are some examples of common ones:
• Skipping lunch or other meals
• Checking e-mail throughout the day
• Working long hours without a break
• Staying up late and then relying on caffeinated beverages to get us going

You will be most successful in changing your negative energy habits if you create a positive habit to replace it. And you will be more successful in creating and maintaining a positive habit if you:

• Make sure the new habit is precise and specific—that is, you decide on a specific time of day and a very clear behavior. For example, when I wanted to change my eating habits to maintain my energy, my dietitian recommended I eat small meals or snacks at 6:00 a.m., 8:00 am, 10:00 a.m., noon, 3:00 p.m. 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. Eating at those specific times (or close to them) kept me from getting hungry and kept me on track. A couple trying to find time to talk about their deepest thoughts to each other were unsuccessful until they agreed to start at 8:00 a.m. on Saturday morning.

• Make the sure the new habit you create is about something you want to do rather than about something you don’t want to do. One of my clients found that checking e-mail all day long was interfering with her concentration. She made her day much more productive by scheduling 3 times a day when she responded to e-mail. Because she created a new habit for checking e-mail, she was able to let go of checking it constantly.

• Revisit the reason you’re creating the new habit regularly and occasionally change it up so it doesn’t get boring.

• Make your changes incremental. You can overwhelm yourself with too many changes at once. Try one or two, gain some success, and then try something else. One of my clients felt she was unproductive because she didn’t get enough sleep. She was a night owl and sometimes stayed up until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning and then got up at 7:00 a.m. She first created a bedtime ritual that would end at midnight and then gradually moved it backwards until she was able to go to sleep regularly at 11:00.

• Monitor your progress. It’s important that you know how well you’re doing. Many people find using a simple tick sheet or a brief journal entry at night is enough to track progress. After all, although it’s great to know what you want to do, it’s much better if you’re actually doing it! Monitoring yourself is not about beating yourself up if you’re falling short of your goal. It’s about looking for hidden barriers to your success. Perhaps your goal was too ambitious and you need to scale back. Perhaps the new behavior isn’t tied to what’s truly important to you. Or perhaps the old behavior has benefits you don’t want to let go of. In any case, recording your progress is intended to be instructive.

The goal of creating a new habit is the embodiment of what you hold most dear. Cultivating the habits you want is key to a satisfying life.

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your performance:
contact Plum for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.
or
read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:
Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .
Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

Change Happens When You Face the Truth

2009-02-09T12:37:00.001-08:00

This is the eighth post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

As noted in my last post, change is driven by a purpose so powerful it overcomes our inertia. Yet purpose alone isn’t enough. You also have to recognize the truth of the present. You have to take a hard look at your current behavior and how it falls short of your values. You have to recognize it’s you who are creating the gap. You have to acknowledge the consequences of your actions. When you do that, the gap between reality and the ideal creates the impetus to act.

This happened to me recently. Although my family, my friends and my colleagues are very important to me, I am chronically late—to everything. Family gatherings. Meetings. Movies. I have driven my husband crazy with my lateness for the 33 years we’ve been married. One day, I asked a friend who is always on time how she did it. She said it was hard, but she believed keeping people waiting is disrespectful so she made a conscious effort to be on time. She also said, in a very gentle way, that she had learned to expect that I’d be late when we were getting together.

Well, that got my attention. I had to acknowledge how my behavior communicated a lack of respect to the people who matter most to me. I felt ashamed. The gap between my values and my behavior couldn’t have been clearer. And I decided right then that I would be on time from now on. And so far—at least six weeks into it, I’ve been fairly successful although not perfect. To achieve this, I had to take a hard look at my behavior. I learned that I tried to squeeze in one more task when it was time to go. I learned that I hated to wait so I would leave at the last possible minute and get caught in traffic. I learned that I would let what was in front of me take priority over my commitment to a friend. This scrutiny helped me clarify what I had to do differently to change my behavior.

Loehr and Schwartz identified typical executive dysfunctional behaviors and their consequences (as well as the short term benefits that reinforce the behavior). I’ve listed three of them here. To see the whole list, look on pps. 154-155 of The Power of Full Engagement.

Expedient Adaptation	Benefit Now	Cost	Long Term Consequences
Poor Work/Life Balance	Accomplish more at work, less emotional risk, avoid responsibilities outside work	Lack of time for intimate connection, resentment of family and friends	Unfulfilling relationships; tendency to impatience and anger; burnout; regret; guilt; and loss of passion
Multi-tasking	Get more tasks accomplished; feel productive; high excitement	Divided attention; less fully engaged with people; lower quality of work	Shallowness of connection to others; less capacity for absorbed attention; lower quality of work
No Exercise	More time for work and other obligations	Less energy, strength, general well-being; lost source of recovdery from mental activities; more susceptibility to sickness	Undermines health; lowers concentration and access to high positive energy; increases chance of early death

Are any of these behaviors familiar to you? Finding your gaps pays off. Ask people for feedback. Pay attention to yourself. Where do you fall short of your ideal? What are the consequences? What actions are contributing?

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your performance:

contact Plum for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.

read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:

Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .

Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

Change is Driven by Purpose

2008-12-16T04:12:00.000-08:00

“He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.”
--Friedrich Nietzsche

This is the seventh post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

In my November 12 post, I discussed how difficult it is to change a habit—even one that no longer serves us. Our brains are wired to resist change. Without sufficient energy and focus to move in a new direction, we remain inert. What gives us the strength to change—to exercise more, become more organized, to listen to others more carefully, to run more efficient meetings—is the power of purpose. Purpose is connecting deeply to the values that are driving us to change, recognizing what we are doing now that is disconnected from that value and creating a clear picture of where we want to go.

Purpose creates resolve and gives us the motivation and energy we need overcome inertia. Loehr and Schwartz write about an overworked executive who was overweight, flabby and irritable because of the long hours and weekends he put in at the office. It was only when he was able to reconnect to the deep love he had for his wife and children and recognized how he was failing them by his constant absences that he was able to change his ingrained work habits. In essence, he found something important to say yes to that enabled him to say no to his old habit.

According to Schwartz and Loehr, purpose becomes a more powerful and enduring source of energy when it is positive rather than negative—it moves toward something you want rather than something you fear, it is internal rather than external, and it is focused on others rather than on yourself. In another example from Schwartz and Loehr, a lifelong smoker was only able to quit when she recognized the harm she was doing to her children by smoking and she became clear about how she wanted to be there for them as they matured. It was her love for her children that was strong enough to overcome her addiction. No external motivation, not even her own health, was as powerful.

Purpose is more motivating when we see for ourselves how the old habit or behavior is no longer serving us. No habit is created in a vacuum. The behavior served a purpose and that’s why we did it often enough to create a habit. Once we recognize the original purpose and decide it’s less important than our new goal, or that we can achieve the original purpose in a different, more nourishing way, we can make a more conscious choice about our behavior in the future. Sometimes this takes a while, and it requires honest introspection and evaluation, but it makes a permanent behavior change possible.

Finally, purpose is more powerful when we have a clear picture of where we want to go. A question I often ask my clients is “what will be different when you make this change.” The more specific and clear that picture is, the more motivating it becomes. Visualizing success over and over, as elite athletes do in competition, actually anchors that picture in our brains. We rehearse the new behavior in our minds, we can see, hear and feel the results, and it actually becomes easier to do in reality.

So yes, we can change even ingrained habits when we recognize them for what they are and decide the purpose they serve is not worth the cost. We can change when we create a powerful new purpose that gives us the energy, focus and resolve to stick with it, even when we temporarily revert back to our old ways. We can change when we focus on that purpose, visualize our success and practice the new behavior one day at a time.

Good luck!

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your performance:
contact Plum for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.
or
read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:
Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .
Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .