Have you ever led a meeting where you felt that participants’ minds were somewhere else? Maybe another galaxy?

Of course not. I’m sure your meetings are scintillating.

Read this, just in case.

By investing just a few minutes at the beginning of any meeting, you can greatly improve the results AND enhance teamwork and relationships.

Step One: Find Their Mind

The best meetings I’ve observed, attended, or run, always begin with a simple check in, where the meeting leader asks, “What’s going on in your life that has the potential to distract you?”

In one recent meeting, the group learned that: one person was hungry; another was nervous about a new boss starting the following day; another had a toddler at home who was getting over the flu; and another had a family member who was in critical care after being hit by a car.

Having all this messy internal dialogue out in the open helps in several ways. First, just by sharing it aloud, people are more able to let go and focus. Second, people gain a greater appreciation and empathy for others as whole people, not just colleagues or competitors. Third, it helps you facilitate the meeting with confidence instead of making bad assumptions about why someone is looking at their phone or the clock.

As a bonus, it helps you quickly assess how much trust exists on the team.

Step Two: Bring Them Back to Earth

Once everyone has shared, it’s time to orient them to the present moment and task.

First, have them focus on something sensory: their feet on the floor or ambient noise like the sound of a clock or air conditioning. This important step can take as little as 30 seconds and gets people out of the clouds of thought.

Step Three: Orient to A New, Shared Destination

In this last step, you set them up mentally for the best possible outcomes.

1. Ask them to envision an ideal outcome for the meeting as if it already happened.

2. Ask them to think silently about what quality they need to bring to this conversation. Possibilities include: patience, empathy, listening with curiosity, brevity and humor. Have them write it down.

When to Use This Process?

Do this anytime you want to enhance focus and cooperation.

Worried that you won’t have time? Ask people to share their distraction in one sentence. Then model it yourself. While they may think you’re a little wacky the first time you do it, it only takes once for people to appreciate this process. So if you’re feeling awkward, add that to your share.

As the leader, you calibrate the level of authenticity and openness when you share first.

Summary

Allowing people to be human for a few minutes at the beginning of a meeting will make a huge difference in your results.

We hire people for their skills but the whole person shows up.

- Chester Bernard

One Final Tip. Offer food and caffeine.

More Resources:

Video: Grab this video on our Facebook Welcome Page about cutting you meeting time in 1/3 . Great tips from my awesome partner and Global Leadership Coach, Heather Andersen.

Your Turn

Have you tried this? How did it work? What would you add or change? Please share!

Just Say No to “Fruitcake Praise”

Great leaders know how to praise in ways that leave people feeling truly seen and appreciated.

Not-so-great leaders may praise people, yet leave them feeling misunderstood, and even demotivated.

Wondering how your praise habits stack up against the best?

Watch this short video and in roughly 5 minutes, you’ll have all the information you need to begin inspiring anyone you meet. Plus, you’ll find out what holiday fruitcake has to do with motivating others.

Download the tool Right click on the “Download the tool” then click on the “Save Link As” and save the tool

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

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

Ponder Your Leadership Capability

We’re revisiting a post we published last September, updating it with resources to  help you become a leader who inspires brilliance. We’ve combed thousands of pages from Goleman, Drucker, Neuroleadership, Monty Python (and more) and hope you enjoy.

7 Annoying Truths

1. Despite your past successes, vast experience, diplomas, and credentials, you possess a pathetically small sliver of the truth.

2. People fear you (by nature of your status) and withhold information that may challenge your pathetically small sliver of the truth.  This is a bad thing unless you like learning about your product’s failure from the Wall Street Journal.

3. To bring out the best in others, you must go out of your way to create a safe environment.  Fear is the brain’s default reaction to stress, uncertainty, status, and a million other things outside your control.

4. Leadership takes courage. Courage probably doesn’t look like what you think it looks like. The root of the word means “heart.” True courage does not swagger but is humble and authentically confident. A courageous leader:

- recognizes her own strengths and weaknesses

- surrounds herself with people who differ

- when confronted with evidence that challenges her truths, says “Say more about that” in a non-murderous tone

- is confident they will get there without knowing exactly how

- sets a compelling vision and let’s others figure out the best way to do it

- listens intently, openly

- describes reality neutrally, without accusation

- admits to self that leadership is lonely and finds people to provide support and a good sounding board

(to see how courageous–or swaggering–you are, check out this confidence assessment)

5. You are contagious: your mood, your work-life habits, your tone, your management style, your hygiene habits–all of it embeds itself in others and helps create a culture.

6. Leadership takes stamina and resilience. You cannot do your job optimally without a healthy body and mind. To that end, find support to help you:

- stay fit physically

- optimize your brain

- manage your emotions and physical reactions

- strengthen your immune system

- sleep well

7. There is a point in your rise as a leader (e.g. from Manager of individual contributors to Manager of Managers), where everything that has worked for you will now work against you. Recognize when you cross this threshold and get a coach to help you learn new tricks and embed new habits.

Bonus Annoying Truth

- IQ has taken you as far as it can. Your success now hinges on how well you inspire trust, engagement, and commitment.

(Get our complimentary resource about How Stuff Gets Done Well).

More Resources to help you…

• Build resilience:
  • The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working by Tony Schwartz (listen to the audio book while you commute or exercise)
  • The Four Hour Body, by Timothy Ferriss
    

• Break bad habits & build a better brain: 
  
  • What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, by Marshall Goldsmith
  • Your Brain at Work, by David Rock
  • Managing from the Heart
    

• Communicate authentically: Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott
  

Sufficiently Annoyed?

Watch for our next post where we provide a tool to help you cut through the annoying truths so you truly evoke brilliance. 

Can you recall a team off-site meeting where real conversations happened and real work got done? Where everyone felt that the time was well spent? If you are lucky enough to recall such an experience, you probably worked for (or are) a courageous leader.

Without leadership courage, department meetings are one-way talk-a-thons. Any inclusion is for appearances only. Silence or corporate nods stand in for meaningful conversation and buy-in. Disagreements are avoided or presumed non-existent. Agenda is king. Participants extract their souls from the meeting to cope with the tedium.

When you inject leadership courage, you increase the likelihood for meaningful exchanges of divergent opinions. You might even achieve real buy-in, make important decisions, and move forward confidently and aligned.

You CAN Handle The Truth

I recently had the opportunity to facilitate an amazing three-day conference for roughly 200 division leaders. The Senior Vice President was new to the job and to me: I had no real sense of his style or his tolerance for ambiguity and truth.

I wanted to create a venue worthy of the participants and the thousands of on-the-job hours sacrificed. Rather than talking heads preaching from the pulpit, I wanted real conversations that would deliver 199 views of reality to the leader.

I proposed a ludicrous idea: provide Audience Response Keypads to permit each participant to respond instantly and anonymously to provoking questions.

He courageously agreed without hesitation.

Not sure what we kind of feedback we would unleash, we publicly committed to asking the questions and revealing the answers instantly.

Imagine a new leader laying out a vision for change and then asking publicly,

“How clear was my vision?”

“How urgent do you believe this is?”

“To what extent is this rubbish?”

And not just asking for the sake of appearing inclusive, but asking and revealing each anonymous response.

After two days of inclusive conversations, he asked one last courageous question: “Do you believe that we should move the department in this strategic vision? Yes or No.

Keeping in mind that responses were anonymous, what percentage do you think responded “yes”?

87% said “Yes, we believe this is the direction we need to go.”

Imitation Courage

Too many new leaders mark their territory by making sweeping changes and overhauling organization charts rather than invest in the hard work of listening, learning, and leading.

A recent HBR study confirmed that while most new leaders prioritize organization overhaul, only a small fraction of those efforts improve performance, and most reorganizations actually harm performance and crush morale. You know; you’ve lived it.

True Courage

Authentic courage doesn’t swagger, but is humble. A courageous leader asks hard questions, listen to all inputs, learns, and adapts based on new information. The courageous leader doesn’t worry about looking all-knowing. Real courage apologizes when it makes mistakes. Real courage says something like: “I know that many of you want me to tell you exactly what we are going to do differently, but I won’t. I won’t because I don’t yet know. I can tell you that it will take all of us to figure this out together. I am committed to holding a vision, removing obstacles, gaining support, and helping you do what you do best. Someday, we might find it necessary to move some of the organizational boxes around, but that will be much further down the road and only when we are clear how it will facilitate decision-making and serve our vision.”

The root of the word courage is heart (from Latin cor, French coeur): The state or quality of mind or spirit that enables one to face danger, fear, or vicissitudes with self-possession, confidence, and resolution; bravery.

Before you summon your team to the next retreat, find your courage and create a venue worthy of your talent.

And hire a great facilitator.

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’re 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 to help others create rewarding insights:

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.

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:

Managing with the Brain in Mind by David Rock

Drive, by Daniel Pink

Ways to Tell You Work in a Fear-Ridden Environment

Check any that apply:

◊   “cya” by email is an evolved and widely practiced art.
◊   Managers are expected to know micro-details of every project on short notice.
◊   The word “accountable” is used often.
◊   The phrase “I messed up” and its cousin, “It’s my fault” are heard rarely.
◊   People initiate and respond to emails after 11:00 pm.
◊   Employees in different departments are considered competitors.

If more than 2 apply to your workplace, you probably work in a high fear zone. If you are the boss, we should talk…soon.

Don’t despair. The situation is reversible. Here’s a list of action you can take to lower fear and increase the IQ and overall effectiveness of your organization.

To-Do List for the Courageous Leader

How to create a blame-free work zone where problems are surfaced early and people do their best work.

1. -  Evaluate your beliefs and behaviors about risk, blame, leadership, and emotions (see the Confidence and Ego Assessments in our e-book, Conversations for Brilliance).
2. -  Apologize for acting like a jerk.
3. -  Strike the word “accountable” from your vocabulary. It’s been ruined and only creates a witch-hunt mentality where people scramble to avoid blame.
4. -  When you discover problems, quickly and publicly admit your contribution. Use active voice and speak in first person: e.g. “I messed up.”*
5. -  Calibrate your expectations and illusions of perfection: accept that if you are to have any chance of creating outstanding products and services, then mistakes must happen, and despite such imperfections, you and your customers will most likely survive. Share this belief with others.
6. -  Invite people to disagree with you. When they do, don’t debate. Instead, ask “What else?” or ‘How can you tell?” or “Say more about that.”
7. -  Thank the messenger.
8. -  Take a deep breath, and remind yourself of who you want to be and what you want to create.

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
- Philo of Alexandria

“I don’t recall…Mistakes were made.”
- U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez in testimony to the Judiciary Committee investigating the firings of eight US Attorneys.

“The person who can describe reality without laying blame will emerge the leader.”
- Susan Scott, best-selling author of, Fierce Conversations and Fierce Leadership

*This advice pertains specifically to American, and potentially other, high individualistic cultures.