Leading In The Dark

by BrillianceInc | Adapting to Change, Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Newsletter Archives Comments | 0

Dialog in the Dark, a traveling exhibit, has much to teach us about leadership in difficult circumstances. This one-hour guided tour has a twist: your guide is blind and the entire experience is conducted in complete and utter darkness. Does this sound a little too like your work environment?

On the tour, anticipation of the dark unknown creates fear and anxiety in some. This angst can cause tourists to cling tightly to their canes with one hand, reaching out with the other hand until they find a wall.

Once there, they back up against the beloved wall or corner and try to get small. They listen for instruction, hoping that the tour is almost over. If not for the skillful, calm direction of the guide (the only one who actually seems comfortable and confident) peoples’ experience would be very limited.

Unless your idea of success involves cowering in a corner, business leaders may want to take a few cues from the tour guides. The following are some ideas that can help you lead more effectively when the way forward looks a bit dark. If you are not a business leader, substitute the word ‘team’ in the following tips with the relevant audience (e.g. self, colleagues, family, boss):

1. Admit it’s dark and uncomfortable and scary.

Putting on a brave face and pretending that it’s not hard or that you won’t stumble, will not win you any favors or followers. People need to hear that their fears are normal. If they see that leaders can acknowledge fear and still take action, it opens up possibilities for others. Admit there will be stumbles. Express your genuine confidence that you will all survive the experience and be better for it.

2. Describe the environment as you know it.

Share any information that you can legally share. Err on the side of over-communication. On the tour, people find it helpful to know the dimensions, purpose, contents, and layout of the room. Leaders, what are your revenues, losses, cash flow, business plans, and commitments? What does the future hold? Are lay-offs happening? When? If you don’t know, share that. For individuals, learn your options. When people don’t have facts, they invent their own.

3. Encourage people to use their strongest resources.

If business as usual isn’t working, look to your other strengths and use the resources that fit the situation. Trying to rely on a capability once it’s gone is nonsense. Yet, on the tour, sighted ones found that their useless eyes hurt from strain, when they could have just shut them and learned from the scents, sounds, and textures. Stop trying to lead with a service, skill, or product that’s no longer in demand. Successful teams and individuals recalibrate and rely on their available individual and collective strengths.

4. Encourage and permit people to explore and innovate.
Innovation–creating value for the customer–is the escape hatch out of dire business circumstances. Yet, in turbulent times, we are most likely to opt for safety instead of moving toward something unknown. Encourage people to leave their corner, get big, and join you in creating something.

5. Rely on others and practice gratitude

You are not alone and no points are awarded for martyrdom. So ask for help and accept it from others. If you have an internal “competitor” in another department, join forces, reminding yourself that you aim for the same vision, then leverage your collective strengths.

In uncertain times, there’s at least one thing you can count on: The sun will come out tomorrow. On this, we would bet our bottom dollar. May we all rise to the occasion.

Resources to Ignite You and Your Team

Free Webinar: Moving your Team from Concern to Confident Action. Click here to sign up.

Contact us to discuss how our new offerings may help your team:

58-Minute Workshop for Managers: Moving from Concern to Confident Action
Program for In-Tact Teams: Achieving Results in Turbulent Times (ARTT)

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Thriving In Turbulent Times

by BrillianceInc | Adapting to Change, Emotional Intelligence, Innovation, Newsletter Archives Comments | 0

Two Camps
In turbulent times, there are both victims and victors. Which camp you fall into depends less on your circumstances, and more on your attitude and actions. To some, accepting that we control our destiny is liberating.

To others, the idea that we have responsibility for our satisfaction and success is deeply, deeply annoying.

While we may not like to readily admit it, being a victim is fun stuff. For, as victims, we can wallow in anger and resentment, burying feelings in a heap of ice-cream, nicotine, exercise or (insert your favorite distracter here) _____. As victims, we are not at fault but at the mercy of the economy, a boss, an ailing company, a family member, or (insert favorite villain here) ____. As victims, we run little risk of improving our circumstances.

If you want your circumstances to improve, you must abandon victimhood.

Switching Camps
It takes more than a sunny disposition to climb from an abyss as deep as the one you may feel like you’ve fallen into. Here are some steps you can take to hike your way to victory. If you lead others, engage in this work as a team for best results.

1. Establish (or re-establish) a Vision:
What matters? Why do you do what you do? What brings meaning to the work that you do? Without a vision to anchor us, our actions tend to lack direction and focus.

2. Take Stock of Your Strengths:
What differentiates you? What opportunities can you find in the market?

3. Cut the Fluff:
What can/must you stop doing? Say no to those activities that don’t move you toward your vision and delight your customers.

4. Create Products and Services that Delight Your Customers:
Those who do so will thrive. The Leaders of the Big 3 carmakers said they were victims of the economy: they did their jobs and created the products people wanted. What they should have been doing was creating products we didn’t know we wanted.

Nintendo didn’t create the Wii because of the pent up demand for virtual bowling in our living rooms. Apple didn’t imagine and create the iPod or iPhone based on user satisfaction surveys or buying trends. Victors don’t sit around waiting for the public to create their new business plan. Rather, they empathize, anticipate, and deliver. Then they do it again. No excuses.

5. Create a Plan:
Create realistic, achievable, stretch goals. Then delegate assignments based on team members’ strengths and passion. Ensure plans and action steps align with your compelling vision and are leading toward a delightful outcome for clients.

6. Retool:
Take time to improve your skills, knowledge, processes, habits, and relationships.

Lead by Example
Barack Obama has been asked by various interviewers if he has regrets about taking over a lemon of an economy. He responds that, for those who aspire to public service, there is no better time than this. For, turbulent times offer the greatest opportunity to make a positive, lasting difference in people’s lives.

While it sure was fun, coasting along blithely on the economic bubble that burst under some quite villainous actions, it’s no fun wallowing in the aftermath. We invite you to set aside your tub of Ben and Jerry’s and join us on a path to victory. Ok, you can still bring the ice cream.

By the way, victors are not villains. They do not rise to success on the backs of others. When we prevail brilliantly in turbulent times, we bring others with us by demonstrating courageous leadership.

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Utter Brilliance

by BrillianceInc | Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Newsletter Archives, Relationship & Trust

The holiday season is upon us, which for many of us involves the opportunity to connect with family. While those connections can be loving and satisfying, family gatherings can also provide opportunities for misunderstandings, and some less-than jolly moments. Have you ever said something and moments later wished you could take your words back? Or had a conversation in which you swallowed your voice and really wished you had spoken up? Even when we generally feel we are pretty effective communicators, all of us have moments in which the words we uttered (or didn’t) are less brilliant than we hoped.

Unfortunately, innumerable examples of less than brilliant conversations exist in the workplace: The team conversation impersonating a rolling hairball, with no clear end in sight and all sorts of fluff and dust getting caught up in the mess; the feedback conversation that starts out tense and ends with us wondering if the relationship (and our stress level) would be better if we had kept out mouths shut; the career-limiting comment to the boss’ boss that leaves you wondering why you got out of bed; or the well-meaning co-worker across the globe who keeps misinterpreting what you say.

Sound familiar?

There’s hope. You can learn to consistently express yourself with aplomb and grace, eloquence and candor.

First, Begin With the Behavior: Identify Your Weak Spot

We invite you to observe yourself over one week and identify which of the following less-than-brilliant behaviors you notice in conversations that matter to you:
Monopolize the conversation (speak more than 50%)Speak before thinking (and regret what you say)
Make snarky or snide comments
Make comments that others seem to misinterpret
Raise issues/confront people in an unproductive way that leaves the relationship soured

  • Refrain from speaking your mind
  • Stumble over words
  • Be at a loss for words
  • Ignore the elephant (conflict/upset) in the room
  • Be wishy-washy (instead of making clear assertions, requests, or observations)
  • Others?

If you checked more than one, identify the one that feels most egregious and focus on improving that behavior first. If you checked none, hand the list to someone you trust to speak the truth with compassion (or at least a good sense of humor) and ask them to pick one for you.

Second, Investigate: When Does this Undesirable Behavior Pop Up?

Once you have identified the behavior reflect further:

  • What situations do I tend to be in when this happens? (with my boss, on a conference call, in a team meeting, in a one-on-one, when I am nervous or stressed, when I am overly confident, when I am unfamiliar or unsure of the content/topic, when I am feeling relaxed, when I am offended, when I have had too much coffee?)
  • Who are the people I am talking with when this happens? (Boss, peer, client, vendor, friends, family?)

Once you realize when you are most likely to be at your worst conversationally, you are better prepared to self-observe and self-correct. This self awareness is the first step toward being emotionally intelligent-recognizing your own actions and emotions and being able to moderate them to be effective with others.

Third, Practice a New Behavior

  • Pick an upgrade: What reaction would you rather have or what action would you rather take? (to pause before speaking, to ask others what they think, to interject, to share your opinion, to be genuinely more curious about what the other persons’ perspective is, to have more self compassion for how difficult it is to act to our full capacity in stressful situations).
  • Pick a venue: You may want to start practicing the new behavior in less triggering situations or with less provoking people. Think of it as putting training wheels on your bike before transitioning from a tricycle to a ten-speed, or (if it has been a long time since you have been on a bike) as lifting weights for lasting improvement: lots of repetitions with light weights.

Here are some common behaviors and suggested practices:

Allow others air time:

  • Count to three (or five if you can stand it!) after you ask a question. This allows others time to interject and often provides more information too.
  • Identify a team meeting you regularly participate in.
  • Notice who doesn’t speak up much. Draw them into the conversation, inviting them to share their valued thoughts.

Think before you speak:

  • Before you make a phone call, write an email, or speak up in a meeting, stop and consider: What is my purpose for this meeting and what is my intended outcome? Clarifying this can help you be more succinct and clear.
  • Then ask yourself if you still want to make the comment. Will what you are going to say help move the conversation forward?

Speak with empathy

  • Before a one-on-one meeting, pause for a moment and put yourself in the other person’s shoes.
  • What might they be concerned about, excited about? What matters to them? What might they be seeing from their perspective?

Express yourself clearly

  • Prepare your thoughts in advance. Note your opinions, requests, facts, ideas. Edit them to remove any non-essential words.
  • Practice speaking in phrases that do not rise in intonation (like a question).
  • Practice asking others to paraphrase their understanding of what you have said.
  • If you tend to think best talking out loud, find someone who will listen and help you clarify your thoughts before a meeting with others.

Apologize

  • Despite your best intentions, you are bound to err. When you do, apologize and communicate your intention to do better. Then do better.

Brainstorm some practices on your own, or work with a coach to help you identify what you want to do more of in your conversations. Identify the outcome you want (a productive conversation with your boss, to engage and motivate the team)and figure out what it will take to produce that.
Because we believe it is always good to keep our eye on what is working well, we encourage you to leverage your strengths, look at what you do well in conversation and practice that more too.

Conducting conversations skillfully can be challenging; with practice you can be utterly brilliant.

We hope you enjoy your holidays and wish you a Happy New Year!

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Taming The Goblins

by BrillianceInc | Adapting to Change, Emotional Intelligence, Employee Engagement, Newsletter Archives, Relationship & Trust Comments | 0

Anyone out there feeling a little spooked about the future? This season is supposed to be filled with harmless frights. Instead, gloom and doom of a most unpleasant form are threatening our peace of mind: What will come of our financial futures and all that entails? Who will lead our nation and what path will that leadership take?

The answers will come, but not before we have to face our fears. And since we at Brilliance Inc. are advocates for taking control of our own reactions (because any other control is an illusion), this edition is dedicated to taming the boogeyman within.

First, evaluate your contribution:
If you are reading this, you are a leader in some capacity, in your organization, team or family. As leaders, you have an important role to play as Chief Fear Tamer. It is not a role that everyone is up to. You may have noticed that our nation presently lacks leadership. Had we had strong leadership in the first few weeks after the Lehman Brothers, AIG, et. al. collapse, the stock market might not have looked like The Nightmare on Wall Street.

An MIT professor of Management described it aptly when he stated that we couldn’t ask for two more technically gifted individuals in the Treasury Secretary and Federal Bank Chairman. And yet neither was able to describe their plans and actions in a way that assured banks and the general public in a way that would prevent a good old-fashioned panic. In the absence of effective leadership, technical expertise didn’t do the trick. Fear reigned, rendering government’s plans impotent to the whims and fears of mortals.

Taming the fear goblin:
Before you can tame the fear goblin, it’s important to come clean with yourself. Maybe you did look at your 401K account 40 times in one week. Maybe you did absorb countless hours of toxic news reports. Maybe you did ensnare neighbors and family in frightening what-if scenarios. Maybe you read every political poll update you could get your hands on. Maybe you failed to reassure those who depend on you.

So be it. Now you have a choice. You can decide to face your fears and choose behaviors that build resilience. If you’d like to slay the goblin and be one of the leaders your organization, team and family need, read on for actions you can take starting now.

Reduce your Toxic Intake:

  • Go On a Toxic TV Diet
    • Stop Watching TV news. Many of you may think this impossible, even irresponsible, as a citizen of the world.
    • Our challenge: try it for 24 hours. See how well informed you remain. If you MUST watch TV news:
    • Stay away from the 24-hour channels, whose aim is to stoke fear and anguish so you stay glued to the tube, while possibly coming unglued from rational thinking.
  • Watch the most dry (aka real) news you can find
    • Jim Leher News Hour on PBS
    • BBC World News
  • Limit your news intake to less than 30 minutes online headline reviews, or less than one hour of (non inflammatory) news radio.
  • Stop watching gruesome television programs depicting violence, fear, and murder.
  • De-Tox Your Relationships
    • Avoid fear-mongering friends and family.
    • Tell others you wish to focus conversation topics on positive sentiments.

Get Inspired:

  • Talk to someone who has come out the other end of tragedy.
  • Read inspirational words.
  • Envision a positive future.
  • Ask whatever you believe in to help you co-create it.

Get Inspired:

  • Gratitude: What in your life are you grateful for? What else? Keep expanding your lists. Notice the little things.
  • Beauty: Notice it everywhere (the design of a car, the color of leaves, music, a child’s smile). Play soothing, upbeat, music.
  • Humor: If you do watch television, stick to comedies and light fare.
  • Perspective: Travel places. If you can’t go anywhere, travel virtually across time and space with great books.
  • Volunteer to help someone in need.
  • Exercise: Dance, walk, just move your body and pump endorphins into your brain to calm the panic.
  • Healthy food: Eat whole, natural foods. Minimize alcohol, caffeine, and processed foods.
  • Breath: Notice your breath.
  • Sleep: Turning off the TV should make it easier to get your zzzzs.
  • Relaxation: Notice the muscles in your face, jaw, neck, shoulders. Take breaks and let them relax.

Take Control Where You Can:

  • Get the facts before acting.
  • Acknowledge worst case scenarios without dwelling on them.
  • Calibrate a likely outcome between the worst and best cases (get professional advice if you need help making a reality check).
  • Know your options. Create a plan of action to be able to address the worst case scenario if need be.
  • Note where you have gaps in the plan and find an expert to help you complete it.
  • Acknowledge all that you have to be grateful for, even if your worst vision comes to pass

Embrace and Celebrate Reality:

On Nov. 2, citizens of Mexico will unite in celebration as they honor those loved ones who have passed from this life on earth. If there was ever an expression of true grace, it is Dia de Los Muertos, Day of the Dead. Mexicans will demonstrate that when one faces their deepest sorrow squarely, a space opens up that allows in an experience of true love and joy.

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Brilliant Health

by BrillianceInc | Building Teams, Developing Others, Newsletter Archives Comments | 0

Often times, people struggle with how to best improve the overall health of their team, company, career, or personal relationships. Leaders may wonder, “Which of our broken process do I fix first?” or “Which of the 10,000 training programs do I invest in?” An individual may be stumped about how to proceed with their career development: “I know I want something more from my job but I don’t know what. Where do I start?”

There are a number of remedies and tools out there: workshops, assessments, consultants, coaches, and for some, counselors or more alternative advisors. Deciding among remedies can cause you to want to sweep the problem under the rug – yet again.

We think it is helpful to take a step back, look at the situation more holistically, and see what needs to be attended to first.

We propose diagnosing your team, your personal effectiveness, your career, your marriage – whatever you are willing to take on – and selecting appropriate treatment just as you would with one of your most important assets: your health.

You start with triage – ensuring that the critical life giving elements are handled. Then move to manage pain and symptoms, with the aim of creating long term optimal health in the process. Let’s take a look.

1) Triage
It’s very difficult to achieve incredible (or even mediocre results) when you are bleeding or barely breathing. You must first attend to whatever it is that is squeezing the life out of your team, job, or relationship. It’s not the problem, per se, but the degree of severity that lands it in this category. Look for the gushing arteries. Is your attrition rate on your team through the roof? Are clients fleeing to the competition? Did you just launch your version of New Coke? Do your kids lock themselves in your room when you get home from work?

So, how do you figure out if you have a paper cut or a life-threatening injury? In some cases you may need to pay an outside firm or coach to run an analysis, or you could try asking some simple questions of yourself and your team such as:

What is it about working here that:

  • Has you running screaming from your team meetings?
  • Has you updating your resume or searching for a career coach?
  • Has your spouse rolling his/her eyes and wearing ear plugs when you talk about your team/job?
  • Has you moving your therapist to speed dial?

If you think we’re being too silly with some of these questions, think again. Research shows that you will often have more success breaching an ugly topic if you make light of it. But don’t expect real answers unless your team has high levels of trust. If that isn’t the case try:

  • Curiosity: Ask “What do you see as the most significant, underlying reason for the challenges we face?”
  • Silence: give them time to think. Then thank the first person who speaks and say “What else?”
  • Offer your own painfully honest answer: (as long as it’s not cruel to any person on the team). You might start by naming the thing that everyone knows but no one feels safe naming.
  • Start creating a safe environment: Apologize for your past poor behavior and commit to changing. Then, stop punishing people who express negativity. Instead, thank them for their courage, publicly if possible, and ask them what else they would like to share.

If you find out you have such an injury, take steps to fix it. Now. Recall the product. Confront the toxic boss. Apologize. Hire a new therapist. And if fixing it is not in your control, involve people in finding an interim solution until the problem is fixed. The goal here is to survive…in tact.

2) Managing Pain and Symptoms
Most teams and companies find they have problems in this level at some point. The goal should be to find the remedy that will relieve the most painful symptoms. Again, involving others in robust, real conversations in an atmosphere of trust will garner the best information.

  • What makes it difficult to get things done?
  • What frustrates you the most about working here?
  • What one thing could we change to improve our effectiveness?
  • What does our competition know that we don’t?
  • If you were in charge and had complete control, what would you change?
  • What is one thing I would change that would make my job less stressful?
  • What is the situation that triggers unproductive conversation most frequently and how do we shift that?

3) Creating Optimal Health
While managing your symptoms, you can work toward optimal health. In business, this means going from good to brilliant. The answers are within the system, it just takes drawing them out with good questions, listening skills, and an environment of trust.

  • • How could we be having more fun?
  • • What’s going well? How could we make better?
  • • If you were in charge, what improvement or change would you make?
  • • How could we delight our clients?
  • • How could we delight our employees?
  • • What change could we make that would cause you to take your resume off the job boards for good?
  • • What change could we make that would have you recommending this place to your best friend?
  • • What keeps us from being as effective as we could be?
  • • What looms in the future that threatens to knock us off balance?
  • • Where do I feel most satisfied in my job and how can I do more of that?
  • • What is going well in my career and what would excite me to take on next?

Just as in life, you can work on all these levels. You can take aspirin for the pain AND eat a healthy diet. Just remember to tie the tourniquet first.

Here are some of our favorite remedies:

Conduct conversations authentically, skillfully, and with care. Fierce Conversations, Susan Scott (workshop and book) can help you figure out how.

Recognize your need to grow as a leader (yes, even you!): What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. Marshall Goldsmith

Use tools for clarifying your path to health: The Grove (graphic facilitation that gives you a new way to clarify your vision, understand current conditions, and move forward productively)

Learn to optimize your strengths and flex your style-both as an individual and a team: MBTI, FIRO-B, Highlands, Strengthsfinder 2.0, Spherical Dynamics

Become a manager who evokes excellent performance and commitment in others: Coaching for Brilliance Workshop

Work with a partner to assess your situation, develop a targeted development plan, and achieve your goals: One-on-One Leadership Coaching

Here’s to your health.

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