Don't go it Alone

If knowledge and insight were all it took to change our habits, we could just read a great self-help book or take a course and voilà: excellence!

No Magic Wand

Sadly (for those of us who like instant gratification), it takes effort and practice to shift patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting. You’ve developed your current state over years of accidental practice and attention: it’ll take some time and effort to develop new, stronger habits (aka, neural pathways). You’ll be tested a million times a day and have a million opportunities to return to your comfort zone.

Got Support to Thrive?

This is why even coaches have coaches. We all need someone who can listen without judgment and help us see things in a way that opens up better possibilities for action. Someone who can help us stay focused and support our efforts to change. Someone who can remind us why we’re putting ourselves through the discomfort and who can highlight the small positive changes that would otherwise fail to get noticed and appreciated.

“When you’re weary, find relief. When you’re strong, find delight.”

- Martha Beck, author, coach

Before You Get Support, Build Capacity

And sometimes, even that’s not enough. Knowing the tools exist, and being able to explain the tools intellectually isn’t enough. When we are in pain — depressed, sleep deprived, injured, etc. — we need triage support to build up our resources so we have the capacity to improve. Once we’ve alleviated the acute symptoms, we can pursue higher goals.

Don’t I know it.

After my daughter was born, I suffered many months of severe sleep-deprivation and anxiety before I finally sought medical advice. I was surviving, but certainly not thriving. My brain was in a negative loop. I recall thinking that I knew how to escape my negative thoughts, but I lacked the capacity to use the tools. It took two PTSD diagnoses for me to decide that I couldn’t self-coach myself out of my state.

My brain is now healed and I once again feel vibrant, thanks to some great practitioners.

You don’t have to settle for less than excellence. Get the support you deserve.

Resources

Get Support: Find a Coach

• New Ventures West: A global resource founded in the Bay Area (Note: Brilliance Inc. founders are graduates)
• Brilliance Inc: Work with Heather Andersen or Denise Green
• Ask someone you admire who they would recommend
  • Here’s a plug for my coach Judith Duhl, great for career transitions and life-coaching

Build Capacity: Get Your Brain and Body Back in Harmony

Dr.’s in The Bay Area (and my hero’s in health). These amazing people have EQ and crazy-good skills.

• Dr. Raj Patel (South Bay/Peninsula) – Holistic MD
• Dr. Morgan Camp (Mill Valley) – Holistic MD
• Dr. Robert Gamburd - Physiatrist (Sports Medicine)

Video: I love this short video where author Tony Schwartz offers unconventional and really useful advice to help us all thrive. Here’s a hint:

“If you don’t eat for 5 days, you’ll be hungry; if you don’t sleep well for 5 days, you’ll be psychotic.”

- Tony Schwartz

Article: Via author and neuroleadership guru David Rock, this article describes our brains under depression

Tool: When you’re ready to thrive, try our complimentary and powerful Thoughts Upgrade Tool to help shift your attention to create better results in any area of your life.

Our last post featured excerpts from the late David Foster Wallace, one of the most respected and revered writers of our time. He suffered from severe depression and when the treatments failed him after 20 years, he chose a final tragic escape. He left behind a treasure of work.

Please share any resources you recommend to help people survive and thrive.

You know the scene. Outnumbered and surrounded by bad guys, Bruce Lee composes himself, takes a stance, and then elegantly kicks ass until he’s the last one standing.

No, I’m not suggesting that we embrace violence to solve our problems. The message we can take from Lee and all great martial artists is this:

If you want to be more effective, do less.

The prevailing quality in the movement of gifted martial artists is efficiency.

And who couldn’t use some of that?

No Nun chucks Required.

You don’t have to enter a dojo to learn the lessons.

Be Your Own Sensei:

When you become an objective self-observer you’ll notice how you waste mental and physical energy on futile efforts like worry, resentment, and anger. Just sitting at your computer, you may notice a clenched jaw, shallow breathing, hunched back, and strained eyes.

Noticing the wasteful habits is challenging since they are so deeply ingrained in our bodies and thoughts. Unwinding the habits will take attention and practice.

Find a Sensei:

To shed the waste more efficiently, get a partner. Great teachers come in many forms including coaches, trainers, body workers, and cognitive therapists. A couple of years ago, I found the Feldenkrais method to help me relieve pain. Every week my practitioner Sonja Sutherland, also an Aikido black-belt, helps me re-educate my nervous system with what seem like simple, inconsequential, movement instructions. As I try to execute her instructions, the A-student inside me struggles to move as far as I can, putting lots of effort in. Her constant reminder is “do less.” The new movement only works if I do it without any struggle. When I insert struggle, I short-circuit the goal.

Do Less, Be More:

What if we went through our days without the wasted effort? If we moved between meetings, task, and errands without wasting energy on worry, resentment, tension, or comparison? What if we were more focused on the task or person in front of us, instead of lamenting about the past or worrying about the future? What could we achieve by bringing more being to our doing?

It seems a worthy quest.

Moshe Feldenkrais on his goal with the method

“To make the impossible possible, the possible easy, and the easy, elegant.”

“If struggling were the way to get there, we’d all be there by now.”

Victoria Castle The Trance of Scarcity

The Annoying Side of Mindfulness

When we become self-aware, able to see ourselves as a neutral third party, we notice certain deeply ingrained ways of thinking and being aren’t working.  Recently, an incredibly insightful client described his underlying story as “danger is everywhere.”

And I thought, Welcome to the club.

I dub the “danger is everywhere” condition (that plagues us all to some extent) the Jason Bourne Syndrome. If assassins are hunting you because you are a rogue government experiment, it comes in handy. For the rest of us, it’s a bit much. Call it a hold-over from our reptile brains. Once effective at keeping us alive, our fear sensors are too tightly wound for life in peaceful, developed countries where we have access to food, clean water, and healthcare.

So we learn to fear our boss, our colleague in marketing, operations, or sales, our clients, our future, the dentist. Some of our fears are grounded. Many are not.

Escape

1. Identify your fears: brainstorm. Try to bring a sense of lightness and capture them all: big and small.

2. Identify the big ones. Circle the 2 or 3 that really have a hold on you.

3. Notice what behaviors you take as a result of these fears.

4. Validate or invalidate the fears. Some you will immediately invalidate (e.g. I am not being chased by secret operatives). Others may be less obvious. For example, How likely is it that you could lose your job? How serious is the symptom you’ve been feeling? You may need investigate, seek data and opinions.

5. Replace the invalid fears with new stories. My client decided to replace, “My boss will think I’m nuts” to “My boss wants to help and can handle someone else being human with her.” So far, he has not been eaten.

Get Help

Sometimes, we discover that the fear was illogical yet we continue to feel it. In some cases, the fear is so deeply entrenched that no amount of mindfulness seems to help.

After my daughter was born in 2007, I developed a deep, terrifying anxiety that she would perish. It didn’t make any sense yet it was there. And I did not seek help for a very long time. Eventually, my body rewired itself around the anxiety and learned to stay on alert. Subsequently, I did not sleep deeply for over a year.

Finally, I sought help and found two practitioners who partnered with me to heal my very unbalanced neurochemical and endocrine systems so that I feel more like my old self. And I now sleep — much better than Jason Bourne I suspect.

“Fear is the expectation of pain, so its opposite is the expectation of pleasure. The world is what you think it is.”

- Serge Kahili King, quoted by Victoria Castle

Book: The Trance of Scarcity Victoria Castle

A few years ago, I gave up the practice of making New Year’s Resolutions, thus giving up the sense of failure and accompanying guilt that rolled around mid-March. Maybe you are one of those people that always keep your resolutions. If so, stop reading. If not, don’t despair: you are entirely normal (unlike those other freaks).

Blame it on the Brain

Here’s neuroscientist Jeffrey Schwartz’ explanation for why we so often fail to meet our goals:

“Change is pain.”

“Trying to change any hardwired habit requires a lot of effort in the form of attention…which leads to a feeling that many people find uncomfortable. So they do what they can to avoid change.”

So, it’s not entirely your fault. Your brain is set on protecting you from discomfort. The result: you further cement hard-wired habits.

The good news: you can become the boss of your brain.

First, you have to better understand your specific resistance to change. For this, we can look to the amazing work of two researchers, Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey. In their book, Immunity to Change, they describe how each of us has a sophisticated, often subconscious, system of practices, fears, and assumptions that keep us locked in place and thwart our attempts to change.

They write: “The most reliable route to ultimately disrupting the immune system begins by identifying the core assumptions that sustain it.” Examples of big assumptions include:

• People are less capable than I (so I won’t delegate or will force people to do things my way only)
• People are not to be trusted (so I withhold information)
• If I speak my mind, I will be eaten (so I keep my mouth shut and my contributions locked in my head)
• ______ is evil (so I lose all compassion and curiosity, diminishing any chance of having a rewarding relationship)

Once the assumptions are identified, you can begin to test their validity.

Dangerous Assumption

It Works

In 2010, I began using their simple Immune Identification process with private clients and workshop participants. In one team offsite, a VP stopped me at the break after about 45 minutes with the process and said “I’ve been to a lot of these meetings and I have never seen people learn so much about themselves and reveal so openly as I just witnessed.”

Whether you want to change yourself, an employee, or an organization, begin by discovering the change immune system, or risk wasting precious energy and resources for short-lived improvements.

A Gift

Given that I could not find a concise handout in their book or website, I developed a brief set of instructions (with sample) based on Kegan and Lahey’s work that I use with success with my clients. If you’d like a copy, send me an email to denise@brillianceinc.com with subject Change Immune Instructions and I’ll send it promptly. No strings attached, no need to trade anything. I welcome any success stories.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Fragmented Attention

Perhaps you’ve heard: we are the most distracted humans to have walked the earth. And apparently, being distracted— fragmenting yourself so that no one thing or person gets your full attention—has damaging effects on your relationships, results, and stress levels.

I’m not sure what’s more annoying, being distracted or being told that I need to stop being so distracted when at this exact moment, my phone is ringing, my email just binged, my kid needs to be fed, the laundry is in a mountainous pile, my proposal is jammed in the printer, the dentist keeps sending me escalating reminders that I am past due for a teeth cleaning, and the dog is looking at me forlornly.

So what’s a person to do? I know that yoga and/or mediation help increase calm and focus. Which sounds great assuming the yoga teacher does laundry, fixes printers, walks the dog, and cleans teeth.

Focus 101

Until then, here’s a primer for attention challenged ones comme moi:

1. Decide that you want to give this moment (person, task) your full attention for ____ minutes.

2. Turn off and reduce distractions: close your laptop, turn off your phone, put a do-not-disturb note on the door, put the papers on your desk to one side, write a list of things you need to remember/do (writing it down frees up valuable brain space).

3. Breathe deeply.

4. Practice being in one place, doing one thing.

5. When your attention drifts, recall your commitment, breathe deeply, and return your curious attention to the person/task.

6. Reflect. What was gained from this exercise? What’s in it for you to increase your ability to feel settled and focused?

7. Repeat 342 times per day.

The Upside of Focus

Despite our best attempts to multitask, we really can only do one thing well at a time.

By learning to give more of your full attention to the important work and people around you, you’ll find that conversations and tasks are more efficient, with fewer mistakes and misunderstandings, potentially leaving you time for things like yoga, family, or cleaner teeth.

“Be here, prepared to be nowhere else.” (Susan Scott: principle of a Fierce Conversation).

Indulge in the Moment this Holiday

I hope this primer serves you this season, when we have an opportunity to escape from some of the sources that pull on our attention. Even so, it’s not easy to let go the impulse to check email, voice mail, and fragment your attention.  If you are a leader in an organization, know that when you become more focused (or fragmented), those around you do as well. May you reap many awards from indulging fully in the moment.

“I’d had enough so I threw the blackberry out the car window.” An inventive client who shall go nameless.

H

If you’re falling a bit short of your lofty resolutions, read on and learn how to make self improvement really stick.

The Good News About Self-Improvement

Anyone can change their thoughts, behaviors, and habits. Despite past claims that adult brains were fixed, findings over the last decade reveal that brains constantly adjust to inputs. Neuroplasticity–the brain’s constant adaptation–means that you can teach any (willing) dog new tricks.

The Bad News About Self-Improvement

It’s not as fast or as easy as we might like. In an ideal world, you’d pick something about yourself to improve, do a little homework — read a book, attend a class, or watch a YouTube video — and voila, a new improved you! Unfortunately it’s not that easy.  When faced with challenges that conspire to take us off track, we may give in to inertia and settle for the latest version of ourselves. A little crack appears in our soul, patched with guilt and excuses (and wine).

HOW IT WORKS

Real Tools for Change
Deeply felt, lasting change happens over time. Below are some phases of change and corresponding tools to help you upgrade the software running on your grey-matter platform.  All these tools are instantly available simply by setting an intention to use them.

Five phases to making self-improvement stick:

1.       Discovery and Intake
2.       Design
3.       Launch Beta Version of You
4.       Test for Quality
5.       Launch Upgrade Version of You

1. Discovery and Intake Phase:

Purpose: Gather data to form an inclusive assessment of your current state including features, strengths, user-experience, and bugs.

Critical Tools Include:

• Observation and Questions: Bring curiosity and leave judgment behind as you ask open-ended questions of yourself and others over a period of several days or weeks. Here are some possible questions:

• • What is the trajectory of my relationships, career, health, happiness?
  • How do I spend my time?
  • What angst inducing thoughts do I notice?
  • What behaviors are inspired by the angst ridden thoughts?
  • What are my strengths?
  • What threatens to derail me?
  • What do you need most from me?
  • To what degree are you getting it on a scale of 1-5?
  • If I could improve one thing, what would it be and how would it look if I were doing it better?

2. Design Phase

Purpose: Create a realistic plan that makes the most of your resource investment.

Critical Tools Include:

• Intention: Decide what to change and commit to a plan.
• Network of Support: Identify resources that will help you along the way.
• Attention: Begin to catch your self in the act of living; be your own third party observer.
• Label: Learn to accurately and neutrally label emotions and thoughts that appear, increasing your opportunity to manage them rather than be led by them.

3. Launch Beta Version of You

Purpose: Prototype new thoughts and behaviors and gather input (from self and others) to fine-tune.

Critical Tools Include:

• Tell Others What You Are Working On: We urge reluctant clients to include this step as it may be the biggest predictor of success. Why? People are busy and they inhabit a different brain-world than yours. Despite feeling like you’re making obvious, earth-moving changes, such as interrupting less or speaking up more, your colleagues are unlikely to notice. Or, if they do sense something different, may attribute it to a new haircut, or something they ate for lunch. We see what we expect to see. When you draw their attention to your positive actions, two things happen: they actually notice and they feel a sense of ownership in your development.

• Practice new thoughts and behaviors relentlessly: Practice for (at least) 21 Days. If you feel awkward, it’s working. New behaviors — like driving on the opposite side of the road — feel funky until we lay down the neural pathways for them. Allow yourself to be clumsy for a while.

• Learn to Recast Your Thoughts: Continue to observe yourself, labeling thoughts and emotions. Studies show that we have about 2 seconds to reappraise an interpretation. Becoming skillful at observing yourself will help you catch that window. When you detect an old, unwanted thought, find a way to change your initial interpretation and release the perceived threat response in your brain. This frees up your thinking brain (prefrontal cortex) to intervene with a more desirable action. Note: this will require you to accept that your first impression is never THE ONE TRUTH.

Example of a recast thought:

Angst-inducing thought: “She’s giving me a look. I wonder what I did wrong. I better defend myself.”

Notice the thought and then choose one of a bajillion less angst-ridden and different ways of interpreting the action, like…

Recast thought: “I wonder what that look means. Maybe she hates me. Or, maybe she just had a really bad morning. I think I’ll just wait for more information before I jump to conclusions and regret my response.”

Inhale, exhale, wait, ask clarifying question in a neutral tone…

• Work on the Body: Labeling and recasting thoughts is not enough to make changes stick. Your current way of being is stored deep in your body. Doubt this? Next time you get triggered, notice what happens to your physical self. What happens to your breath, your jaw, your forehead, eyes, shoulders? For self-improvement to stick, body, thoughts, and behaviors must be attuned. There are many ways to release unwanted patterns in the body including: sitting-practice, yoga, dance, singing, breathing  exercises or practicing a new stance. When in doubt, get counsel from a certified coach with somatic knowledge to help you design a practice.

4. Test for Quality

Purpose: Ensure that the program is producing the planned results.  Make adjustments.

Critical Tools Include:

• Observation: What new behaviors are you noticing in yourself? What new behaviors and reactions are you noticing in others as they relate to you?

• Ask others how they perceive you: The least uncomfortable and most productive way to do this is to ask them in writing, on a scale of -5 to +5. Ask each person about only one topic and ask what it would be like if you were doing it better. Then thank them and make the changes.

5. Launch Upgraded Version of You

Purpose: Experience a new improved way of being in the world and watch what happens.

Critical Tools Include:

• Awareness: By now you have the ability to observe yourself objectively as the director of the play that is your life.  Continue to practice and develop this skill to improve your way of being.
• Gratitude: Savor your new way of being. Feel deep thanks for yourself and those who support you, and for the new pleasures, freedoms, and connections open to you.
• Patience: You will not behave perfectly. Bring humility and compassion to yourself and others.
• Sense of Humor: Try lightening up. Take yourself less seriously and others less personally.

We’re all in the Midst of Mastering Something
Our brains are constantly reacting to stimuli: every minute we gradually shape our brains, paving new roads or digging up old ones. Through repeated attention, thoughts, and actions, we create new neural pathways and the foundation for mastery. You can’t help but do it. So the question is,

What are you mastering? For those unsure, we offer a list of possibilities. Choose wisely.

Anger

Cheer

Dodging Conflict

Deep Connections with Others

Ease

Eating Poorly

Eating Well

Envy

Fear

Freedom

Good Health

Gratitude

Guilt

Integration

Love

Online Gaming

Pity

Regret

Resentment

Reverence

Sadness

Strength

Stress

Trust

Volatility

Wholeness

xxoo

Zzzzzzz

Useful blog posts you might love:

Tips to Make Things Happen (via Steve Roesler)

Breaking Bad Habits (via Denny Coates)

Relationship is the grease on the wheels of business. When you have it, all else flows more smoothly and efficiently. Without it, everything takes longer: communication is stilted and unclear; miscommunication leads to re-work; efforts to save face or deflect blame distract precious energy.  Yet, often we neglect true team-building, thinking that it will steal valuable time from “real” work.

Relationship Pyramid

At Brilliance Inc., we liken the work process to a pyramid, with relationship at the foundation. Sure, you can flip it and try minimizing relationship while you focus on results, but like a spinning top, it’s unsustainable. And the resulting poor outcomes will only further damage relationships, bringing about a need for major intervention and leadership acrobatics. Meaning you’ll have to allocate intense resources to rebuilding relationships that may or may not be salvageable.

Here’s an overview of the discreet steps that lead to outstanding results. We call it ROAAR™.

Foundation Level: Relationship
-    Trust and mutual respect exists.
-    People appreciate, recognize, and leverage each others’ differences.
-    People communicate with candor and clarity.

Level Two: Objectives
-    Goals cascade from a Corporate vision and objectives, down to each team and individual.
-    Team and individuals goals are derived inclusively in robust conversations
-    Outcomes are clearly defined and realistic.

Level Three: Agreements
-    Roles and workflow handoffs are clear.
-    Team members debate until real agreements are reached.
-    Team members decline requests that they are unable to meet, then negotiate, remove roadblocks, and prioritize.

Level Four: Actions
-    Task assignments are aligned with strengths and passions
-    Team members put a clear plan into action or recalibrate as new information is gathered.
-    Adjustments are made based on learning acquired from the first stages of the plan which allows members to act skillfully on a larger scale.
-    As roadblocks or problems occur, team members surface them to leadership.

Level Five: Results
-    Results meet or exceed expectations.
-    When results fail to meet expectations, a blame-free analysis seeks to understand causes.

Meanwhile, Back in the Real World
When we present this model in workshops and ask participants, “How far back does root-cause analysis go in your company?” without fail, they’ve told us that when things break, they and their leaders look to the “Act” level first: “Who did (and didn’t do) what?” This shallow analysis creates a witch-hunt mentality where people scramble to get their stories straight and avoid having the blame fall on them. The ensuing self-preservation efforts divert valuable resources away from developing products and services that create loyal customers.

Futility of Fear

And for those who still aren’t convinced—those who think that results happen because you hold people “accountable” and “hold their feet to the fire”—you might be surprised to learn that the environment of fear that you are creating is counter-productive. In short, when people are in fear mode, they become stupid.

It’s true. If your goal is to drop the average IQ of your company, then treat people in a manner that ignites their fight or flight instinct. If you still doubt, just Google “Amygdala Hijack” and learn all about how to lower your competitive advantage and create a hostile workplace.

Identifying and Fixing the Problems: No Witch-Hunt Required

For those courageous leaders who would like some help with effective blame-free analysis, we offer our this complimentary ROAAR™ Analysis Model. This root-cause analysis starts by looking to the foundation (Relationship), then moving up the pyramid, reviewing each factor until sources of breakage are identified and addressed. The primary goal is to learn and prevent future breakages, while increasing trust and capability.We’d love to hear how it is useful to you and welcome your feedback, ideas, and comments. Click here to download a copy.

Other Thoughts & Inspirations

Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long by David Rock

“If you don’t make failure acceptable, you can’t have original and unique.”
~ Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO Dreamworks

“Without relationship, you start at zero.”
~ Kofi Annan

“Clarity about whose head will roll when things go wrong.”
~ Accountability, as defined by Susan Scott in the new bestseller Fierce Leadership

Note: The metaphor of the relationship-based pyramid was inspired by our dear friend Peter Vultaggio, principal of the Lumi Company and brilliant trainer, coach, and business leader.

Think you could become fluent in Spanish in a one-day workshop?

Us neither.

How about proficient on piano in one day?

Nope.

Scientific research tell us, (what you already knew intuitively), that it takes at least 21 days of practice to instill a new habit. And, mastery is another thing altogether. If Malcolm Gladwell has it right in his latest book Outliers, it takes 10,000 hours of practice to be superlative in any field.

Yet, when it comes to developing the behaviors that characterize great leadership, many clients expect mastery in a day. We firmly believe that a leadership training workshop is just the beginning.

Practice makes…
If you are in a fabulous training program (like one of ours for example!) you can gain awareness about yourself and others, practice new skills, and plan to implement the behaviors.  While helpful, it’s probably not enough to keep the momentum going while everything in your life and workplace encourages business (and behavior) as usual. If you need any evidence that this is true, just glance at that shelf in your office where good training binders go to die, collecting dust.

Real, lasting improvement begins with epiphanies and takes hold with practice. That is why we became coaches. We saw too many great people fail to turn their insights into action after the (Incredible! Amazing!) workshop ended and reality happened.

Our goal:
Change the way corporations support leadership development so that the efforts create real, sustainable, brilliant results.

We have left the land of denial where we pretended that deep change could happen in a few hours, as long as the content was well designed, the leaders well-intentioned, and the facilitator was incredible.  We want you to join us!

You need support while you create new habits, gain proficiency and eventually, fluency. That is why we created the ebook Conversations for Brilliance: Tools to Help You Inspire Extraordinary Results from Yourself and Others.

Conversations for Brilliance:
With this ebook, you can become your own personal coach and refine (or overhaul) your practice to improve the quality of your conversations, your relationships, and your results. Learning how to consistently have more powerful conversations takes practice.

Leaders don’t have the luxury of practicing their trade off the field. Every day, in every conversation, and with every decision, you are developing yourself as a manager, colleague, influencer, collaborator, parent, trusted partner, etc. You’re practicing anyway…why not get the benefit of some pragmatic, experienced help so you develop the outcomes you need?

What’s in the book:
We’ve included ideas, information, assignments, assessments, and other tools that, when applied with regularity and gusto, will shape your results in all aspects of your life.

Our mission is to help you have more powerful conversations-all conversations, whether with yourself or with others, big or small, long or short, easy or uncomfortable-so that you evoke brilliance in yourself and others.

Are you ready to have more powerful conversations and improve your results? If yes, click here to order your copy.

Testimonials
Here’s what people are saying about the book:

“Conversations for Brilliance is a powerful tool for managers at all levels who want to challenge and inspire their employees, as well as themselves, toward achieving ever improving performance. ”
- JAY S. BENET, VICE CHAIRMAN AND CFO, The Travelers Companies, Inc.

“It’s been said that the quality of our lives is determined by the quality of the questions we ask ourselves and others who are central to our success and happiness and, of course, the quality of our answers to those questions. Those who thoughtfully answer the provocative questions posed in Brilliance will have insights galore, plus a wealth of recommendations from which to choose as they step onto a more effective and compelling path. What a great resource!”
- SUSAN SCOTT, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF Fierce Conversations, Achieving Success at Work & in Life – One Conversation at a Time and Fierce Leadership, A Bold Alternative to the Worst “Best” Practices of Business Today

“In Conversations for Brilliance, Denise and Heather succeed in communicating profound and complex leadership concepts in an accessible manner. I recommend this book for good, introspective managers looking for advice on how to grow people-advice that goes beyond the simple management or coaching how-to’s they can find elsewhere.”
- MARIA V. WAYNE, Ph.D. AND SENIOR DIRECTOR, GLOBAL LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT, Seagate Technology

“Reaching for our potential is in our DNA; we’re each born with an innate desire to discover all the brilliance that lies within us. In Conversations for Brilliance, Denise and Heather provide a guide, a wealth of tools, and practical advice to enrich the journey of discovery. This book is a resource you will find yourself going back to again and again as you navigate the most important relationships in your life.”
- KIRSTEN WOLBERG, CIO salesforce.com

Click here to learn more and order the ebook!

A leader’s job, rather, is to create the environment for innovation and help people discover the best possible answers that will result in the best possible outcomes. This is most likely to happen when you take the following 6 steps:

1. Seek out people completely unlike yourself in terms of experience, view of the business and client, and beliefs
2. Ask questions, listen deeply, and pay intense attention
3. Pause for reflection
4. Decide, and then act quickly on a small scale
5. Observe, learn from the results, and adjust accordingly
6. Act in a big, bold way that would have been impossible had you decided and acted alone

Seems fairly straight-forward, no? Then why do we often see this practice instead?

- Decide alone or with like minds, act, and fail to meet desired outcomes
- Repeat and talk about “holding people accountable” then
- Repeat, possibly firing people who aren’t “team players” then
- Fail on a grand scale…which leads to at least two options:

- Leave, blaming the failure on others, and repeat the process elsewhere,
or
- Try something new.

For examples of this leadership technique and its aftermath you can look to Wall Street, American auto-makers, or the Oakland Raiders since 2003, to name a few heart-wrenching examples (for a long-time Raiders fan, that is).

No leader wants to fail. So, why are so many smart, competitive, well-meaning leaders continuously trying to impose their ideas on others, wondering why people don’t always line up in compliance or why results aren’t up to expectations? Answer: years of conditioning and a millennia of programming.

Let’s briefly look at how we often get derailed on our way through the 6 steps in the high-performing process.

Step 1
First off, step 1 (seeking diverse views) is counterintuitive. Our brains are wired with a bias to surround ourselves with people like us. To engage with people unlike ourselves entails overcoming our primitive conditioning to fear or mistrust anyone “different.” It takes a very mindful and confident person to admit that he has this bias, and then act against it.

Step 2-3
Second, steps 2 through 3 (ask questions, listen, pay attention, pause) involve going slow to go fast. And Americans (among others) are generally conditioned to prefer fast. It takes incredible discipline to slow down amidst the competitive pressures and the habit of speed. The pressure to act quickly (and autonomously) is even more intense when leaders are new to a role or expectations and pressures are high.

Step 4-5
Steps 4 and 5 are all about course-correcting based on available evidence. The problem here lies in evaluating evidence objectively, instead of skewing the data (even subconsciously) to prove our assumptions and biases correct. A wise scientist once spoke: “I have trained myself to see what I observe.” One way to ensure that you “see” clearly is to consult people who see the world differently from you, then listen objectively to their feedback, ready to see flaws in your brilliant prototype. Or, you could just plow ahead with your “Flat Earth” campaign and see how that works for you.

Step 6
Finally, step 6 (acting boldly) requires leaders to take a leap of faith. Smart, analytical people can get caught up in scenario planning and fail to act. If you’ve ever been on a team that suffered from “analysis paralysis” you know how draining such inaction can be.

Though challenging and counterintuitive, it can be done: we can intentionally create the conditions for productive innovation. And recall that the first step requires us to seek out council from potentially unlikely sources.

What is possible in conversation
Otto Scharmer of the Presencing Institute describes ground-breaking work with African Leaders. They convened a forum where the most powerful leaders in Africa conversed with the least powerful people imaginable: child victims of AIDS. After one 90-minute conversation with an 11-year old girl, one ex-president changed his point of view and was ready to act differently and with passionate intent. All it took was a conversation.

Conversations with differing people are not that hard to set up, yet we tend to avoid things that slow us down in the short term. But at what cost?

The U.S. military conducts “ground truth” conversations, where the highest ranking officers seek input and listen to lower ranking troops. For, when Generals and politicians act without such insight, really bad stuff tends to happen.

How often are rich, lively, cross-functional conversations taking place in your organization? What would happen if they were commonplace?

Imagine what could be different about the conversations (and results) in your world.

Resources:

Questions for reflection and inspiration:

• How am I listening to people I disagree with?
• How readily do people bring me bad news or disagree with me?
• How am I at creating spaces of silence where reflection, thought, and inspiration can happen?
• Whom can I seek out to better understand the issue from another side?
• How do I feel about my results in all aspects of my life?

Video:

This three minute video features a leader (conductor) with his orchestra and guest star performer. Pay careful attention to the conductor at about 2:45 into the video. How is the conductor, not the vocal artist, the leader? How does the conductor let go? What arises when he lets go?

Books:
Presence, Human Purpose and the Field of the Future, by Peter M. Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers
The Art of Possibility, Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander
Blink, Malcolm Gladwell

Links:
Presencing Institute: http://www.presencing.com/
The World Café: http://www.theworldcafe.com/

Quotes:
No one can whistle a symphony. It takes an orchestra to play it.
- H.E. Luccock

We can’t solve problems using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
- Einstein

Poem/Song excerpt:

Feel the pain
Talk about it…
Open hearts
Feel about it
Open minds
Think about it …

Time to eat all your words
Swallow your pride
Open your eyes…

And anything is possible when you’re
Sowing the seeds of love
Anything is possible
Sowing the seeds of love

- Tears for Fears

Our doubts are traitors,
and make us lose
the good we oft might win
by fearing to attempt.
- Shakespeare

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

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

58-Minute Workshop for Managers: Moving from Concern to Confident Action
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