Grandma Dori generously offered with a grin, “We’re happy to share ours, but are you sure you can handle a Chevy?” I presume the implication was that given my penchant for quick German cars, a Chevy might not pamper me suitably.  She had a point.

Not only did the Chevy get me there, in some ways, I enjoyed the drive more than I would have in my own ride. No matter what I wanted to change about the environment—radio station, temperature, cruise control—I was able to do so easily and nearly without thought. Upon my report, my Grandma beamed proudly, “Of course, everything is right where it should be and nothing more than you need.”

This is quite a change over my car, which employs the supposedly useful, over-engineered iDrive system—an output of too many technical wizards and not enough customer input. Or, as my husband like to say, “maximum amount of data obtained in the maximum amount of steps.”

Just because you can build it, doesn’t mean that you should. Products should enhance our lives, not frustrate, or cause us to drive off the road. A friend who owns a newer, more luxurious model than mine had difficulty setting up his universal voice command system. After spending 30 minutes trying to figure it out, he was justifiably perturbed and swearing. Now, whenever he wants to turn on his car, he has to assert, “Jackass!”

I’m not suggesting that I’d like to swap cars with grandma.  While the Chevy was intuitive, it lacked a sense of the sublime. What my car lacks in simplicity, it makes up for in handling.

For me, this was a greater lesson in product design.

Somewhere between a 2004 Chevy and a 2006 BMW, lies a brilliant mix of intuitive and sublime.

No matter the product, it should pass this brilliance test.

1.     Is it easy to use? With cars, if I have to read the manual before I can turn it on, it fails. If I have to pull over to figure out how to switch from FM to CD it fails. With training and coaching programs, if it contains too many acronyms or jargon, requires big binders of papers, lots of diagrams, charts, models (and a partridge in a pear tree), it will at best, be ignored and, at worst, waste someone’s precious time.

Yet, simplicity alone won’t cut it.

2.     It has to connect, provoke, inspire. In my field of human improvement, it has to shake someone awake and leave them yearning for a new way of being, willing to invest considerable time, effort, and discomfort until they develop new habits.

We are all designers.

What are you creating?

How would your customers rate you on the intuitive/sublime measures?

And for anyone in the auto business, you could do worse than hire my grandma for your next design panel.



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.

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.

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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