The Rage to Master. Do You Have It?

We inherit and we also become.

 

---David Shenk, The Genius in All of Us

 

As David Shenk so clearly points out, “talent is not a thing. It’s a process”. But it is so ingrained in our culture that geniuses are born, talent is scarce and there’s only so much you can change. Is this why we have to search far and wide for great managers and leaders? Is that why when we ask ourselves, “Who was the best boss you ever had?” we can usually come up with one but not two or more?

 

It turns out that we can all become more than we are IF we are intensely motivated to do so. Instead of the “nature: nurture” argument, “dynamic development” is the new paradigm for talent and well-being. Mediocrity need not be our destiny.

 

Since talent is a process, it can flower at any time in a person’s life. If you manage a team or larger you can become more effective at inspiring others to greater heights. If you are a parent, you can coach your children to reach beyond where they are now. The caveat is that you must work on developing yourself at the same time. We learn from those who are masters in their own right.

 

The only way is through “deliberate practice”, a term coined by Anders Ericcson and his colleagues to explain that talent is not the cause but the result of something. Read: lots of hard work and practice for hours on end interspersed with many failures on the road to greater success and mastery.

 

But how can you stoke your fires and those around you? How can you ramp up your “rage to master”, that “never-let-go willfulness and focus” to grow?

 

Here are some tips from the researchers on helping children develop. They resonate for adults too:

• Nurture and encourage: turn up the volume and the frequency of positive and genuine feedback to create an environment of possibility;
• Set high expectations as we develop to what the environment demands;
• Embrace failure as a time to learn rather than as a built in limitation;
• Encourage the growth mindset in each and every person. Open up their minds to the reality that their abilities are not fixed but are “malleable” and can develop with practice

"Broaden-and-Build": Positive Emotions are a Means to Many Useful Ends

Nothing is good or bad.
But thinking makes it so.

---Shakespeare

 

Shakespeare’s astute observations of the impact of how we think are as relevant today as four centuries ago. The “good” or “bad” show up as positive or negative emotions about an event. As thoughts determine our emotions and emotions drive motion, how we think matters. Good decisions depend on how we deal with the emotions associated with the issues at hand. Managers beware! You hold the emotional environment in your hands. Individuals beware! Your personal success depends on seeing the glass half full.

 

Environmentalists know this so well. Despite the proven reality of global warming and the detrimental impact of our throw-away society on the environment, our concerns far outstrip our actions to save the planet. The problem, according to branding experts, is that we don’t respond well to negative messages, especially those that seem beyond our reach. Futerra Sustainability Communications in its “Branding Biodiversity: The New Nature Message” offers these key messages to justify a positive approach to engaging people to act responsibly with respect to the environment:

• Loss is all about extinction.
• Love is all about awe and wonder at nature.
• Need is the economic benefit of nature.
• Action is messages that ask us to do something.

Futerra emphasizes that people have to be inspired and to see how they can act locally, within their own day-by-day realms.

 

Barbara Fredrickson’s broaden and build theory of positive emotions speaks to this. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researcher argues that “positive emotions… produce optimal functioning, not just within the present, pleasant moment, but over the long-term as well”. Positive emotions help people to engage and by association to produce more satisfactory, quality outcomes.

 

Harvard’s Teresa Amabile, who specializes in creativity (what it is, how it is squelched or nurtured), would agree. Her considerable research on how “affect” relates to creativity at work points over and over again to the same conclusions: “Creative activity appears to be an affectively charged event” influencing “task quality, productivity and efficiency”. Why? The positive feelings make us more open to exploring novelty.

 

While there is a role for negative emotions in our lives (for example, spurring us to quick action under sudden life-threatening situations), positive emotions build our personal resilience and resources. They literally widen our moment-by-moment array of thoughts-to-actions tool kit. Hence they increase the probability of achieving better results at whatever we are up to. Fredrickson calls this ability of positive emotions to open us up to more possibilities “the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions”.

 

What are the positive emotions that make up a “broaden-and-build” supply? Four primary ones stand out:

1. Joy spurs us on to play (unscripted), to reach beyond what we know and to look for creative options. It promotes skill acquisition.
2. Interest urges us to explore, be open to new experiences, possibilities and information. It spurs us on to investigate. Interest adds to our knowledge base.
3. Contentment is related to tranquility and serenity, savouring current life circumstances and recent successes. We feel more "together". The result is often a new sense of self and a new world view.
4. Love, which is a combination of many emotions sparked by safe, close relationships, generates the joy and interest precursors of action.

Fredrickson also mentions pride and gratitude as important catalysts of broadening and building enduring adaptability. The latter can be developed simply by writing down each day three to five reasons why we are grateful.

 

The impact of positive emotions are their greatest legacy: when life takes a turn for the worst, as it does on a regular basis, the personal resources accrued from practicing and creating positive emotions enable us to face any “threats” and “survive” well through the event.

 

Fredrickson sees this durability as evolutionary. When our ancestors faced threats to life and limb their greater individual resources improved their odds of survival and thus the opportunity to reproduce.

 

What is the key message for individuals? Work hard every day at seeing the silver lining in life’s encounters. The subsequent thought-to-emotion-to-motion chain reaction will build personal resilience and as a consequence a path of greater success and satisfaction than not.

 

Organizational survival is no different. Managers play a huge role in creating the context for positive emotions to take hold, multiply and feed innovation and well-being. One easy way is to support employees in making progress in their work every day. That feeling of progress produces “powerfully positive emotions”!

The Upside to Tiger's Legacy

Good judgment comes from experience.

Experience comes from bad judgment.

---Oscar Wilde

The rich and powerful have an extra burden to bear: resisting the temptations that easily come their way and in so doing demonstrating to others strength of character. If fame comes early in life, such as in the case of Tiger Woods, the test of character is even more difficult. It’s easy to get “messed up” if the normal process of growing up is interrupted. If parents and significant others around a young person get caught up in the “not normal” environment, checks and balances becomes endangered species. The same applies in an organization. If a boss’s “bad” behaviour is allowed to run amok wreaking emotional havoc among employees, “good” character takes a back seat to “anything goes”. The collateral damage is considerable.

In the early days of my career in the health field debate raged about who was responsible for personal health. The individual? The system? A combination? Stop “blaming the victim” loomed large among the proponents that it’s the system that does it. Other more hard-nosed pundits and researchers said flat out that when push comes to shove the individual is responsible. In the end, the consensus is that both matter. Which is more important depends on the situation.

With Tiger, something went awry in the development of his value-system. He joined a burgeoning group of sports celebrities, politicians and CEOs who have lost their way and been found out. The system of support that Tiger had, whatever it was, was insufficient to help him self-correct.

The upside to Tiger’s downfall is the lesson for the younger generation of golfers. Although his ex-wife Elin Nordegren professes to have been totally unaware of his infidelities, you can bet that within the golf community the guys knew but kept their counsel. That the most famous athlete in the world who happens to be a pro golfer can be caught and fall from grace leaves a strong message for all up and coming young pro golfers and athletes in general: watch your values and habits. They could come back to haunt you.

Thoughts and habits do define one’s character. We all have a choice and it helps to have a few stern friends along the way.

Three Ways to Improve Group Brainstorming

Brainstorming has come under heavy criticism by academics in recent years. Originally developed by Alex Osborn in 1953, his promise to turn groups into creative idea-producers has not lived up to the hype. Current research repeatedly shows that although people might feel more creative in a group, the raw number of ideas developed and the originality of those ideas are consistently inferior to individuals working alone.

Yet, groups are a necessary part of working life, to innovate, make decisions and get work done. What can be done then to improve the quantity and quality of the ideas within a group setting?


Build in Time for Individual Thinking

When our minds have time to wander, ideas bubble up. Common answers to the question, “Where and when do you get your best ideas?” are driving the car, the shower or bathtub, walking, reading or noticing something that triggers an idea for something completely unrelated.

How can we duplicate this in the workplace?

The key is to provide some structure for reflecting on a problem by allowing each person in the group time to ponder in advance of the meeting. A pre-group meeting worksheet of open-ended questions is one tool, to be filled out voluntarily. If provided well in advance, ideas will have time to percolate even when a person is not actually filling in the questionnaire The ideas generated will be more in number and novelty and can be drawn upon throughout the group discussion.


Be Open to and Encourage Dissent

We have a tendency to bend to the loudest voices in a group or the consensus too early without considering a variety of options. That undermines the eventual quality of the decisions.

But, if a group deliberately takes time to respect a minority view, premature adoption of an idea is offset. Some studies show that it takes only one “authentic” dissenter to reduce conformity by two-thirds. That doesn’t mean someone should be a “devil’s advocate” for the sake of it. The easy way to manufacture dissent is for someone in the group to encourage members to challenge assumptions, to take a “360 view” of the situation.


Try Speedstorming

Speedstorming is a structured social interaction something like speeddating. It has been used successfully by researchers at a conference or other such group meetings to find potential collaborators. Since two to three people often create more ideas mainly because they have more “air time” than in a larger group, speedstorming could be one way to structure an exploration for good ideas and solutions for any situation.

Imagine pairs of chairs in a line facing each other equating to the number of persons in the group. A person is seated in each chair. For five minutes each person-pair shares ideas about a particular dilemma or goal, preferably developed by each individual in advance of the initial pairing. Each person adds to her own list. “Aha’s” are noted. Then, one person moves while the other stays seated and the exercise is repeated.

After the exercise, reconvene the group or groups for a fresh look at the challenge with many more ideas at hand.


These three methods and variations thereof help to focus a search for new and useful ideas, lessen the tendency to “group think” and mute the growth of an “us and them” dynamic. They enhance what Alex Osborn and other creativity experts know is fundamental to “thinking outside the box”: generating ideas (diverging) and assessing them (converging). The updated twist is two-fold: provide conditions for individual thinking whenever possible (or at least in pairs or triads) and let in/weave in the “dissenting” notions as they arise. The hard and fast rule of not judging while creating actually reduces the quantity and quality of ideas.


Combining Individual and Group Thinking

Fighting group think

SpeedStorming

How to reduce government:scare away the young folks

It's walking the fine line of being a positive leader of the federal public service, but at the same time pushing them and not being captive to them.

---Stephen Harper, CBC Radio Interview

Watch what you wish for, as the saying goes. The fine leadership line has to be the right one and one of the styles clearly unworkable for Gen X and Y is not “my way or the highway” or something mushy called “positive leadership”. They want the right kind of leadership at the right time, often characterized by “What do you think?” or “What do you know?” or “How can we get to this exciting goal?”. Come to think of it, so do baby boomers. But, they are already captive and awaiting their pensions.

The latest skirmish between Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and federal civil servants on the Stats Canada long survey (now to be made voluntary which messes up the reliability of the data) illustrates to the younger generations that only the submissive should apply to the federal government for a job. It’s a brilliant strategy by a leader who wants to downsize without having to pay the costs of letting people go. Decide what you want in advance. Pretend that you have consulted. Pay no attention to any contrary evidence. Stare down the protesters, many of whom are experts in their fields about the matter in question. Do what you want anyway. The downsizing takes care of itself quite tidily. Speeds up the numbers who can retire but haven’t. Scares off any talented folks, especially the young, who want to make a difference.

Gen X and Gen Y want to be involved in decision-making, want to feel that their opinions count and most certainly to have fun. A dictatorial culture of fear is not on their checklist as a nice place to work. Further, as a highly educated bunch, they know a thing or two about “the truth”. The evidence from research does merit serious consideration in the decision making process. Debate, dissent and “brainstorming” help steer the path to solutions that have lasting value.

All generations and cultures value authoritative leadership: being visionary and passionate about a cause, valuing teamwork and getting the job done. Few like authoritarian leadership as it muffles wonderful talent and the potential for great innovation. Stephen Harper may only have meant that his opinion matters too and that he should be "authoritative" as a leader. But, in practice, his fine line seems to be bending toward "push" than "positive".

The Longer View on Change

How long change does take! With starry eyes way back when Canada and I were younger, I envisioned progress as a given. My mother, Margie, a fighter for all things unfair, had infused me with hope and possibilities. Surely the only way was up. But not so fast!

Well, on the whole, we are making progress: more democracies worldwide, more educated women in developed countries, many communicable diseases long gone, lower crimes rates, an acceptance that we have something to do with global warming, an African-American U.S. President and growing cross-cultural understanding everywhere. Much to celebrate.

But, wait. In developed countries, although women outnumber men in university, men still are the majority in leadership positions and hold most of the wealth, as Michael Adams, President of Environics reports. Many studies contend that women still do the majority of household tasks (that could be a key reason for women not being in many boardrooms!). In urban Canada, multiculturalism reigns but the sea of leadership faces is still largely white (my observations). Vaclav Smil, author of Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next 50 Years, estimates that a global pandemic is a 100% certainty in the not too distant future. He also says that it will take about 50 years to wean ourselves off fossil fuels on a large scale. Even David Suzuki, Canada’s foremost environmental evangelist is resigned to the slow pace of change!

So, I get it: change is non-linear and takes far more time than we expect. As with climate change, weather is erratic yet we can detect patterns in the climate over long periods of time and plan accordingly. Being adept at adapting and monitoring how to adapt and shape some events are the aces up our sleeves. As long as we have patience: this may take 100 years or more!

I now know what the book What We Believe But Cannot Prove means. Our day-to-day beliefs come from established theories but what about beliefs based on theories in progress?

The "Tender Beast" in Stephen Harper---His "Big Shaggy"---Isn't Being Felt Much

You can’t understand twenty-first- century politics with an eighteenth century brain.

---George Lakoff, The Political Mind

Descartes’ theory of humans wasn’t quite right. We use emotion to reason and we can’t always be reasonable. How we emote and reason---about 98 per cent--- happens unconsciously. Seasoned political and non-political leaders know this well. But, it can backfire.

As a presenter at the 20th World Conference on Disaster Management on the interplay of charisma, character and confidence in defining a leader’s impact, I conducted an informal survey of my audience. I asked participants to rate on a scale of ten the charisma of ten well-known political leaders, six men and four women, eight of whom are still alive.

Although I flashed a PPT slide of Harper smiling and holding a cuddly kitten, he came in dead last with an almost unanimous rating of zero. Well a couple of people gave him a 1. All others were rated four or better no matter their political persuasion. What’s going on?

George Lakoff in The Political Mind argues that “conservatives” generally operate in a strict parent mode: obedience, authority, discipline and punishment. They value order and don’t like ambiguity. On the other hand, “progressives” on the whole appeal to the nurturing parent model: empathy, responsibility for oneself and empowerment to carry out those responsibilities. They don’t mind chaos and see complexity a lot. Of course there are many who are in-between too. Prime Minister Harper comes across more “conservative” than “progressive”. This despite having implemented what some believe on both sides to be “progressive” policies in certain areas.

In this “Contextual Age” in which we now live, as coined by Daniel Pink where collaboration reigns supreme out of necessity, Stephen Harper’s mindset and subsequent style appear to be out of synch. Sometimes, striking the fear of reprisal into the hearts of people is necessary, especially in an emergency. But, as a daily default, “Big Shaggy” style---not effective.

The participants, from a variety of disciplines, were adamant: Harper is rigid, cold, inflexible, controlling and so on. If charisma is about being “inspiring”, “passionate”, “visionary” and “having a cause”, Stephen Harper simple does not rate.

I don’t think he’s worried either. But, maybe he should be. The management literature is replete with failed leaders who did not connect with people on a positive emotional level. Like damaging the environment, in the long run, it is unsustainable.

Related resources and Blog:

David Brooks (June 7, 2010). “History for Dollars”, New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/opinion/08brooks.html 

Daniel Pink (2005). A Whole New Mind.

Linda Pickard. (July 29, 2009). “The Jen Ratio: A More Nuanced View of Emotional Intelligence for Leaders”. http://nkleadership.blogspot.com/2009/07/jen-ratio-more-nuanced-view-of.html