When we ask program participants and clients about times when they felt in the zone, nearly all can name one. Barely anyone claims to there now. And survey research supports this observation. According to a Gallup poll, more than 70 percent of people are disengaged from their job.

There are several key ingredients to peak performance. Knowing them can make it easier to diagnose what’s missing.

Recipe at-a-Glance: One part S (Strengths) to four parts P (Passion, Purpose, Preferences, Progress).

One Part ‘S’

1. Strengths:
In every peak moment, you will find that you are doing what you do best. Strengths may be learned skills or innate abilities. Either way, they are things that you excel at. Sometimes it’s hard to notice your own strength because it comes easily to you. What comes easily to you – public speaking, playing music, interpersonal skills, listening, remembering and using data – is terrifyingly difficult for others. Where you exhibit grace, others stumble or exert more effort for the same or less outcomes.

Ways to determine strengths:

• Take an inventory assessment: Gallup’s StrengthsFinder or Highlands Ability Battery are good options
• Recall what tasks at work you do most effortlessly

Four Parts P

1. Passion:
Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you like doing it.

Ways to determine passion:

• What tasks do you rarely procrastinate?
• When you do procrastinate, what do you tend to work on instead?
• What projects, work, tasks, do you volunteer or readily take on?
• If you could go back to school now, what would you major in?
• If money were no concern, how would you fill your days?

2. Purpose:
Whether you’re making a difference within a home, a company, or more broadly in the world, you feel like your contribution matters.

Ways to get clear about your purpose:

• What would I do if money were no object?
• What am I here to do?
• How can I add value to others and the world at large?
• How would I like to be remembered?
• What are the three most important lessons I would like to pass on to my children?

3. Preferences:
If your work doesn’t fit your personal preferences, you won’t feel motivated.

Preferences may include working:

• Alone or on a team
• In an office or at home
• At a fast or slow pace
• With a flexible or predictable schedule
• In a quiet or sound-filled environment

Of all the ingredients, this is the one that most fluctuates over time. What matters one day may change the next. Perhaps you were fine with working 60 hours a week when you just graduated college. But not now. Or, maybe a consulting job with lots of travel worked well until you had a child. Now, not so much. Or maybe now that you’re a parent you’d like to travel more!

4. Progress

In August, 2011, Harvard’s Teresa Amabile and Psychologist Steven Kramer published their book The Progress Principle, where they share their findings from a data-rich study of over 200 people in 7 countries. Dan Pink, author of Drive, calls it the best business book he’s read in years. The authors amassed 12,000 days worth of data from study participants and reported fascinating conclusions about what really motivates people at work, and conversely, what chokes creativity and engagement. They found that what motivates people most is making progress on meaningful work. And sadly, they also found that these valued “small wins” are too rare. What can you do? Amabile suggests:

• “Religiously protect at least 20 minutes – and, ideally, much more – every day, to tackle something in the work that matters most to you. Hide in an empty conference room, if you have to, or sneak out in disguise to a nearby coffee shop.
• Make note of any progress you made (even if it was a small win), and decide where to pick up again the next day.”

We also suggest that you

• Allow yourself to really savor the accomplishment, by pausing and letting a sense of satisfaction penetrate you…before you jump back on the hamster wheel. (like savoring clicking the “Publish” button on a blog).

Managers!

• Ask your employees how easy it is to make progress on meaningful work (on a scale of 0-10)
• Ask what gets in the way
• Ask what ideas they have for removing obstacles
• Support them in removing obstacles and check back often to recalibrate

Living Brilliantly

When life feels a little bitter or salty, take a look at the recipe for brilliance. Compare it to your life. Figure out what’s missing and take steps to get it more in balance.

We don’t mean to oversimplify. Taking steps to add a dash of anything may take incredible efforts. This is where it may make sense to find a coaching partner to help you bring some brilliance back to your life. An effective coach knows that living brilliantly involves more than creating quality work. To really feel “in the zone” you need to build a strong foundation of support in all aspects of your life, for example, good health, quality rest, fulfilling relationships, and fun. Every individual has a unique recipe that leads to ultimate fulfillment.

Note, if life feels sweet, just relax and savor.

Managers: this is the key to career development coaching. Many of your staff could use help figuring out how to get in the zone. They may feel awkward admitting to you that their job situation isn’t optimal. You can help by actively helping people develop more of a balance in their recipe.

Recommended Reading

The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz (2004)

Don’t Waste Your Talent: The 8 Critical Steps To Discovering What You Do Best by Bob McDonald, Don E. Hutcheson, Lazar Emanuel, and Thomas N. Tavantzis (2005)

Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance by Marcus Buckingham (2007)

Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton (2001)

The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work by Amabile and Steven Kramer

Note: This is an updated version of the original, first published in our ebook, Conversations for Brilliance. This version was amended to include the very important fourth P, progress on meaningful work.

Instant Improvement?

This week I accompanied my husband to his Lasik (vision correction) surgery. It took me back 13 years to my own Lasik experience. Back then, I entered the Laser Eye Center building dependent on thick glasses. Less than 24 hours later, I  had 20/15 vision. In less than a day, I went from being unable to read a giant digital clock since age 7, to reading the ingredients on a shampoo bottle.

It got me thinking, if only all development was so quick and noticeable. But that kind of drastic improvement is rare (not to mention expensive and risky).

In the absence of sudden conversions, we’re often blind to our own progress until someone comments, “Hey, have you lost a few pounds?” or “You seem happier.” or “You’re listening better.” One group-coaching participant recently said to a peer, “You seem calmer in meetings.” She didn’t fully appreciate this new way of being until he named it. At the program’s end, she said that his comment was one of the most memorable and affirming moments. When others notice, our improvement becomes more real.

Reflecting Brilliance

Over the course of a few months with a coach, participants re-invent themselves gradually but certainly. One of the most important things a coach does is hold up the mirror and acknowledge real changes.

One of the greatest gifts we can give others–colleagues, friends, family– is to notice progress aloud. And one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves is to notice and celebrate our own incremental improvement.

For most of us, this takes a new way of looking.

Instead of looking for fault, we have to practice noticing the good. One client shared an ingenious practice. When getting a haircut, he closes his eyes until the stylist is finished so he can better appreciate the difference. In this way, he trains his brain to perceive and appreciate improvement.

Reflection Exercise

• Think about something you’ve been cultivating (for the past few weeks, months, or years). How are you different today than when you began?

Can’t think of  anything? Start with your 13-year old self and compare it to you today. Notice the improvements that you would struggle to give up.

Look for small things: like eating more greens; taking the stairs; delegating 1 thing that you were holding on to; spending 15 more minutes a day with your kids; going to bed earlier; complimenting your partner; turning off your phone in the evenings;  losing your 80s hairstyle, and so on.

• Find one that you feel most proud of, that you would like to continue or deepen. Focus your attention on this improvement & feel gratitude for the change. Take a few breaths and let the feeling of gratitude grow.

Keep Cultivating

For yourself: What improvements do you want to deepen? What do you want to add? How do you want to be in three months? Six months?

For others: Practice noticing positive change in others. When you find something, tell them.

Pay Attention to Your Attention

Neuroscience findings show us that the brain is in constant flux and that we shape our brain with attention.

That is, what we pay attention to grows.

Will you pay attention to your faults or your growth? Which would you like to cultivate?

I’d love to hear what improvements you notice in yourself and others.

Resources:

Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life by Winifred Gallagher

Blog: The Power of Incremental Change Over Time by Michael Hyatt

Now, imagine yourself about to have a conversation with them about this thing that’s been bugging you.

I bet you feel warm and fuzzy, brimming with anticipation to have this conversation.

No?

Many of us hate the thought of giving feedback so much that we go to great lengths to avoid having the conversation. We may try other strategies to change their behavior that don’t involve actually directly talking to them about it: avoid them; hint about what bothers us; talk to other people about them; or–my personal favorite–resent them for the thing they don’t even realize they’re doing.

Perhaps, if you’re a manager, you just store up all the examples until annual performance review, where you do a surprise macabre unveiling.

That always works out well.

Why do we do this?

Are we cowards? Cruel? I don’t think that’s really it.

I think we fear that someone will get hurt. And most of us don’t relish the thought of causing pain.

There’s lots of advice about do’s and dont’s of feedback. We have a Brilliance Inc feedback delivery model: 5 steps in 30 seconds.*

But I want to talk about something more important than technique.

Intention.

You can follow all the steps you learned in Management 101 training, but if you don’t have the right mindset, you’ll fail to inspire new behaviors and you may cause more harm than good to your relationship and their engagement.

If you enter the conversation worried about causing injury, how might that affect your delivery?

You’re likely to be unclear, uncomfortable, and defensive. Plus, you’ll unconsciously deliver the message through your body language and energy that there’s something to fear. No wonder people want to hide under the desk when they hear the dreaded phrase, “Can I give you some feedback?” Bombs away!!!!!!!!!!!

A New Context About Feedback

What would happen–to you, to your message, to them–if you shifted your intention? If you entered the conversation as though you were about to unveil a gift? A gift that will help this person grow and improve how other perceive him. A gift that others were not confident or generous enough to give.

You’d likely be more at ease and they wouldn’t detect any wonky nervousness that signals a subconscious warning to raise defenses.

A Graceless Gift

I will never forget a bit of feedback I received early in my career. I was 23, a month on the job in Corporate Finance at Oracle, when the Controller stopped about a 2 feet in front of me, pointed at my mouth and said, “We have a dental plan, you know.”

I had gotten so used to my front tooth, broken when I was 8, now discolored and misshapen, that I failed to notice it. Yet, it was one of the first things people saw when I spoke or smiled. And I was so used to living on a student budget, fixing it wasn’t even on my radar.

Was his delivery graceful? No. But it was authentic and carried no ill will. Plus, his very direct approach showed that he thought enough of me to give it and enough of my confidence to say it bluntly.

Was I mortified? Perhaps. I don’t remember. I do remember that within a month, I had a new, gorgeous, tooth. And that was a true gift.

I’m not suggesting you go around directly pointing out flaws. Just stop agonizing about getting the words perfect. You’re likely to stress yourself out unnecessarily and delay (possibly permanently) delivering the helpful feedback. Instead, talk with them today, bringing an intention that you care, and that you come bearing a gift.

Good intention trumps technique every time. Technique with good intention is brilliance.

Let us know how it goes.

*Stay tuned for our free video training on delivering feedback! 5 Steps in 30 Seconds

Related Posts: Feedback that Sticks

Have you ever given someone feedback that they then ignored?

Just because you offer feedback doesn’t mean that it’s accepted. Feedback done poorly can produce undesirable results: demotivating an employee and potentially damaging the relationship. Perhaps this is why so many managers fail to give feedback at all.

As you’ve probably experienced from being on the receiving side of the conversation, there is more to giving feedback then simply getting the words out. Yet, most feedback models focus more on delivering a message according to a set of rules, instead of delivering it in a way that ensures it is actually received.

Common Wisdom About Feedback

Here’s a summary of existing advice about structuring and delivering feedback:

• Be specific: offer details for clarity
• Be timely: don’t wait until a regularly scheduled formal review conversation
• Give often: so it’s part of normal conversation
• Be objective: deliver with facts and without color commentary. I.e., “In the meeting, you raised your voice, slammed your notebook shut, and walked out.” Instead of “You were very rude in the meeting.”
• Describe the impact: What did or could result from the behavior?
• Suggest an alternative way of approaching the situation next time

All of these suggestions are fine and helpful. But they won’t guarantee that the feedback will have the desired outcome.

Upgrading Your Feedback Delivery

We care less about the structure of feedback and more about the intent and content. Some tips on delivering feedback that sticks:

• Give it with the intent of genuinely helping.
• Make sure you have a trusting relationship already.
• Maintain curiosity and ask for their point of view.
• Frame the feedback around their brilliance and what they care about.

Let’s talk about that last item. If you do nothing else from either list, try giving feedback that honors a person’s brilliance. That is, give feedback in the context of what’s important to them, not you. For example, an employee in Corporate Finance may pride herself on submitting error-free reports. A colleague in sales may care about being factually correct as well, but what really matters most to him could be understanding and connecting with the client. The feedback you give is more likely to stick if, in these examples, you frame the feedback you give to the Finance employee around how it can forward error-free work, while talking with the Sales employee about the actions he could take to help him understand the client even more. In the same way, praise that acknowledges the areas they care about will have a much greater impact.

People rarely tell you directly what motivates them. Here are some suggestions for determining what matters most to a someone:

• What subjects is he most passionate about?
• Where does he seem to spend the largest percentage of his time?
• When does he get most defensive?
• When does he most appreciated?
• When he describes his work, what does he focus on?
• What assignments does he volunteer for or do most efficiently?

And, you can always ask:

• How do you like to be known?
• What feedback or praise has meant the most to you?
• What part of your work is most meaningful/rewarding?
• What feedback or praise falls flat (has the least impact)?

Connect, Calm, Caring

Instead of trying to remember a model or follow a script precisely, try connecting the feedback message to something the recipient actually cares about. That, plus a calm, caring demeanor on your part, is likely to ensure that the feedback has your desired effect.

Make sure you’re signed up for this blog so you’ll get notified about our upcoming free video training about feedback!

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.

As if we parents needed more reason to worry about how we might be ruining our children, Amy Chua comes along and writes Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (Why Chinese Mothers are Superior). Her very restrictive parenting methods got her mixed results: one daughter on stage at Carnegie Hall, another so resentful she would have divorced her mother if she could.

Dr. Mac Hicks. offers a great analysis that helped assuage my angst (a bit). According to Hicks, one of the key problems with this approach: “The Tiger Mother philosophy is blind to the concept of individual differences.”

In a recent client conversation, it struck me that management theory shares much in common with the Tiger Mother approach to motivation.

After receiving an onslaught of criticism, Chua admits that she was not attuned to her daughters’ uniqueness. In subsequent interviews, Chua explains that A-grades are not what Chinese parenting is about; rather, they help children be the best they can be. Surely a noble goal.

Tiger Management

Tiger Managers are not bad people. They just aren’t very effective motivators. While they may want to bring out the best in their employees, their methods leave employees discouraged and potentially resentful.

You already know what the worst Tiger Managers look like. They enforce strict policies, treat people uniformly with little regard for individual preferences or strengths, micromanage, and are quick to find fault.

Yet, some Tiger Management behaviors are less obvious.

Here are just a few ways that well-meaning companies and managers crush souls:

• Misused rewards and consequences
• Comparing (via performance rankings)
• Giving advice
• Poorly phrased questions
• Focus on short-term behavior
• Saying the words “Can I give you some feedback?”

True Motivation

So what can you do instead?  We know from scientific studies that people do their best work when they feel respected and safe. Where they can do challenging work that gives them some sense of meaning. For starters, you can:

• Respect differences: one approach does not fit all
• Help people find work that puts them in “Flow”: where they feel as though they are developing mastery
• Learn to create safe environments where people feel they can take risks and speak their mind
• Help people find meaning in their work
• Help people find their own insights
• Offer meaningful thanks after the work is done

Resources to Help You Become a Maul-Free Motivator

Books

Dan Pink gave us the following two great books (just click on the titles for transport to Amazon.com):

• A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future: This book contains information and practices to help you become more effective in what Pink calls the Conceptual Age. Even more relevant is his latest book:
• DRIVE: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
  

Articles

• Managing With the Brain in Mind: This article from David Rock should be required reading for all managers. He offers a compelling, succinct summary of neuroscience findings that show the five ways managers frequently put people on the defensive and squelch innovative thinking or collaboration. Rock offers the article free on his site. Or, you can grab a PDF right now. Just click on the article title.
• Why the Brain Hates Advice: For a condensed version of Rock’s findings take a look at this article we wrote last year.
• Chill Out Tiger Mother: On the Psychology Today blog by Dr. Hicks, this wonderfully titled article is a partial antidote to Chua’s teachings.
  

A Gift

• Use our one-page Flow Assessment based on the work of positive psychology researcher and author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to help you begin a conversation about how to reduce anxiety and increase fulfillment at work.

What’s Your Legacy?

As we’ve noted in prior posts, managers are contagious.

All managers (and parents) leave behind a residue: toxic sludge, gold dust, or something in-between.

What are you leaving in your wake?

People may forget what you said and people may forget what you did but they will never forget how you made them feel.

-Maya Angelou

In our last post, The TAO of Leadership (Annoying Truths: Ignore at Your Peril) we presented 7 truths (and one bonus truth) that, if internalized, will help you become a leader others want to follow.

Accept that you will forget all these truths at times – perhaps several times a day. That’s the bad news. The good news is that you have access to…

Conversation Training Wheels

You don’t have to be perfect to create a safe, inspiring environment that evokes brilliant commitment and performance. You just have to ask good questions.

Ask these questions to anyone you want to inspire or build relationship with: (Note, these are not in a sequential flow: insert as relevant into your conversation).

- “What support do you need from me?”

- “What ideas do you have?”

- “How did you come to that conclusion?”

- “How’s it working?”

- “How can you tell?”

- “What could I do better?”

- “What else?”

Note: 2 rules apply when asking these questions.

Rule #1. Phrasing matters. All these questions begin with the words What or How for a reason. Do not begin with Do, Did, Does, Could or Why unless you want to put someone on the defensive, and thus, lessen their ability to think rationally. You might as well just tell people what to do. It’s more honest.

Rule #2. Tone & expression matter. Ask with a curious, non-threatening tone that signals you will not eat, maim, fire, ridicule, or otherwise injure the person no matter their response. Practice assuming a non-threatening posture and facial expression. Don’t even think about rolling your eyes.

Use the Wheels

As smart and clever as you are, you’ll be tempted to come up with your own way of asking the questions. DON’T DO IT. Not at least until you are very practiced at asking these questions and making these statements as written. Write them on a note, put them in your ipad or phone and just ask. Then be quiet while you let the person think. If it helps, count to five (silently, so they don’t think you’ve lost your mind). Once they get over the shock, they may offer a complete response. Or, more likely, they may test the waters and give you only what they think you want to hear. Don’t fall for this. Just ask another open question until you feel you have an open, complete response. If in doubt, ask “What else?”

Most leaders tell too much and ask too little. So try to ask more 3 times more often than you typically would.

Brilliance-Evoking Statements

When you do make statements, try these.

- “I’m still a little unclear. Please say more about that.”

- “Take a break. Come back to it when you’re fresh.”

- “We’re in this together. Let’s figure it out.”

- “I have an opinion, but I only have a sliver of the truth. I’d like to hear what you think.”

- “I appreciate ____ ” (fill in the blank with a quality about them that they care about and that you believe).

- “I don’t know.”

- “I screwed up. I’m truly sorry.”

- “Thank you.”

Until mastery, practice clumsily and often until one day, you notice yourself surrounded by a voluntary army of inspired followers.

Brilliant.

We’d love to hear how it goes.

Related Articles:

The Tao of Leadership

from Kate Nasser: Killer Questions that Don’t Ask

In the Pixar movie Ratatouille, a novice (and mostly talentless) cook gets an experienced mentor who gives him explicit cooking advice that he heartily heeds. Eventually, after much instruction, intense attention, and lots of practice, he can cook well enough to survive in a top restaurant. The apprentice tells his mentor “Thank you for the cooking advice” and she responds, “Thank you for taking it.”

Is there anything sweeter than someone digesting your brilliant advice?  And, like so many of the most prized delicacies, it’s rare.

We wrote about the limits of advice in our prior issue Advice: Proceed with Caution. Now we have scientific data to explain why ADVICE SO SELDOM WORKS.

Advice as Threat

Dr. Evian Gordon, founder of the Brain Resource Company, explains that the brain’s overarching principle is to classify the world around you into things that either hurt you or help you stay alive. “Minimize danger, maximize reward” is the organizing principle of the brain. Your limbic system is charged with categorizing the world into friend or foe, safe or dangerous. And just to be safe, your limbic system errs on the side of dangerous.  Long ago, when a rustle in the bush could have meant imminent death, this was useful.  Now, our sensitive brain doesn’t always serve us so well.

And sadly for those of us who love giving advice (and particularly sad for parents of teenagers), advice lights up all our brain’s danger signals, sapping resources from our higher brain rendering us less efficient and less able to accept the advice. David Rock, CEO and author of Your Brain at Work, offers an incredibly useful acronym, SCARF, to explain why the brain’s threat system gets activated and how we can leverage knowledge of the brain to minimize threat and increase our capacity.

What the Brain Craves: SCARF

Status: We constantly assess how social encounters either enhance or diminish our status. In our personal lives, our neighbors’ new car, their kids’ college acceptance, their groomed yard and much more, are material for comparison. In the work place, even a casual conversation with a boss can trigger a status threat response. And when a superior offers advice, our limbic system focuses on their perceived superior knowledge and experience–not on how we can benefit from the advice.

Certainty: All humans crave a degree of certainty. When unsure how to resolve a problem, our memory decreases and we disengage from the present moment, focusing instead on what could go wrong in the future. In this mode, we are less likely to hear and neutrally appraise advice.

Autonomy: People need to feel some control over their lives and an ability to choose. When offered advice, the limbic system can trigger an emotional threat response at having our options narrowed.

Relatedness: Our brains are constantly assessing people as friend or, more often, foe. So before offering someone advice, build relationship.

Fairness: The cognitive drive to seek fairness is evidenced by people fighting and dying for causes they believe are just. If employees perceive a leader playing favorites, they will withhold trust and true collaboration won’t happen. On the flip side, employees will stay loyal longer to leaders and companies they perceive as fair. When a leader dishes out advice, an employee’s inner dialogue may sound like: “What, you don’t trust me to figure it out?  I bet you wouldn’t tell Suzie what to do.”

Good Advice for You but…

And just because your advice seems optimal to your brain, doesn’t mean it’s right for the brain you’re trying to influence. According to David Rock, “Human brains are so complex and individual that there is little point in trying to work out how another person ought to recognize his or her thinking.  It is far more useful to help others come to their own insights. “

What Works

When we come up with our own insights and solutions, our brain is deluged with rewards.Our sense of status goes up, along with a sense of increased autonomy and certainty. We even get a little lift from the dopamine burst that encourages us to take action and move us toward forming new neural pathways. Here are two approaches:

1.       Help others narrow the problem to one clear statement by asking:

• What’s the core issue?
• How would you describe the problem in one sentence?
• What will it look like if resolved successfully?

2.       Help them focus on their own internal thought process by asking:

• What solution are you leaning toward?
• What have you tried already?
• How did it work?
• If you had to guess what to do, what would it be?

And you may help motivate them to act by asking:

• If nothing changes a year from now, where will you be?
• What’s the first step you can take?
• What support can you gather?

For real change to happen, inspiration has to come from within. Sure, you might motivate someone in the short term with carrots and sticks, but it will be fleeting change at best.

Become an Inspiration Catalyst

Withholding advice can be draining. It takes great energy, patience, and self-control to help others find their own insights when you have a golden nugget that you’d love to share. To regularly evoke brilliance from others, you’ll need practice. In time, it will become more habitual and take less effort.

You can start by working on your own SCARF. That is, build a brain that trusts more and fears less, and gain capacity to perceive and evaluate options more clearly. While not easy to rewire a brain, with focused effort it will happen. Leaders who invest the time will reap huge rewards as they become more trusting to others and create low-fear-zones where people can let down their guard and do their best work. They also gain the ability to hear and act on good advice swiftly.

“[t]his need to demonstrate how smart we are rarely hits its intended target.”

~ Marshall Goldsmith

Other Resources:

Your Brain at Work by David Rock

Managing with the Brain in Mind by David Rock

Drive, by Daniel Pink

Little did I know that the content would become so personal to the Brilliance Inc. team. Since our founding 2008, we’ve had the luxury of proximity. We could brainstorm around the same pad of paper or flip chart, share challenges and successes across the table, strategize and debrief meetings in the car pool lane.

And that luxury is about to become history as life takes us in different geographic directions.

So here are some reminders that I offer to myself, my team, and any of you who are charged with achieving great things with others at a distance.

Working remotely can feel like you are isolated on an island. Not entirely a bad thing at times, but posing real challenges. In order to truly feel like a cohesive team and exceed your goals, you need to build sturdy, reliable bridges. In our program, Communicating Across Networks, we focus on three of the most important links.

Bridge #1: Connection

Relationships and trust are critical to any high-performing team. And if you’ve ever been new to a team, or worked on a team with low trust, you know how much extra effort it takes to get stuff done. When teams have trust, benefit of the doubt, a sense of humor, and true connections, mistakes and misunderstandings are merely speed bumps. Without trust, mistakes become mountains, where people play a version of corporate musical chairs to avoid sitting in the blame seat. Strong relationships can be forged and maintained regardless of geographic location. But it takes intention, skill, and constant awareness and effort to do it over phone and email.

Bridge #2: Clarity

Misunderstanding is common. And when communicating across networks, misunderstanding seems to be the NORM. Communications via email and text, even in the same language, can require translation. I can relate to George Bernard Shaw’s quote that “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place”.

In the age of texting and shorthand communication, it can be tempting to assume we understand and move on. Clarifying your statements, assumptions, expectations, requests and intentions becomes even more important when you can’t infer from someone’s body language or tone.

Bridge #3: Commitment

Ever wrongly assumed that silence meant agreement? Tasks fail to get done when we presume commitment that isn’t real or when we don’t clearly grasp someone’s full workload. Clarifying who’s doing what by when and with what support, will help strengthen the other two bridges (connection and clarity). It takes courage to admit that one is not committed to a task.

Best Bridge-Building Behaviors

Key behaviors help create effective, engaged, dispersed teams. Perhaps the most essential are these:

• - Assume positive intent in others
  - Be curious and seek to understand
  - Display authentic, appropriate humanness (e.g. admitting fear or fault)
  - Adjust to the audience (tone, content, speed, medium, approach)
  - Offer clear, requests, statements, declines, opinions, praise, and feedback.
  - Recognize and appreciate differences

Here’s to the team (mine and yours)!

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!