Did Barack Obama visit “the dark night of his soul” in the aftermath of the Newtown Connecticut mass killing of innocent children? That the time is now to do something?
Crises can bring out the best in a leader aided by circumstances opening the way. “Moments of greatness” as Robert E. Quinn from the University of Michigan asserts come infrequently to leaders. Most of the time, leaders operate in a normal state staying within their comfort zones, allowing external forces to direct their behaviours and experiences. But, “the fundamental state of leadership (greatness) shows up when leaders don’t copy anyone”. They “draw on their own fundamental values and capabilities, operating in a frame of mind that is true to them”.
President Obama has a rare opportunity to change the destructive gun culture that sets America significantly apart from other developed nations.
Will he take up the mantle of greatness? Not for its sake but for the innocent lives that will be saved. What a legacy if he does.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Personal kanban for getting a grip on overwhelm
I love post-it notes because they allow me maximum flexibility to move my “to-dos” around without the confines of linearity. I can stick them in my pocket. Paste them around my desk or on my door as constant reminders of what I have to do or should remember. They reduce my mind overload and give me the illusion that I am organized and progressing.
However, they too can become oppressive once the post-its reach epic proportions and are scattered everywhere. Most discouraging are aged post-its that never seem to go away.
I tried giving up on the post-its by using a single focus booklet entitled “To-Dos” organized by level of priority and life/work category. I also experimented with using post-its and notes on Outlook. But my organizational framework wasn’t workable – still not enough sense of progress and that which was realistic to accomplish.
So, when I came across Jim Benson’s “personal kanban” idea for work flow which included post-its and relative simplicity, I was intrigued. Taking a page out of Japanese manufacturing, Kanban, meaning “sign card”, tells me what is doable within a given time-frame.
Here’s how it works:
Ready (my options): the tasks, each on a post-it, of what I want to do
Doing (my limit): the tasks I believe I can accomplish in a day
Done (my progress): a dynamic list of work completed
There are more rewards for my brain with this work flow process because I physically move post-its along the continuum. I certainly derive some satisfaction the other ways too – throwing or crossing out!
Scaled up, it’s a great tool for teams grappling with those projects that never give enough satisfaction while the journey unfolds.
Check out the “I Love Lucy” clip in the article by David Zax on Benson’s method. It is hilarious!
http://www.fastcompany.com/3002383/why-managers-should-study-i-love-lucy-kill-their-do-lists-and-get-zen
However, they too can become oppressive once the post-its reach epic proportions and are scattered everywhere. Most discouraging are aged post-its that never seem to go away.
I tried giving up on the post-its by using a single focus booklet entitled “To-Dos” organized by level of priority and life/work category. I also experimented with using post-its and notes on Outlook. But my organizational framework wasn’t workable – still not enough sense of progress and that which was realistic to accomplish.
So, when I came across Jim Benson’s “personal kanban” idea for work flow which included post-its and relative simplicity, I was intrigued. Taking a page out of Japanese manufacturing, Kanban, meaning “sign card”, tells me what is doable within a given time-frame.
Here’s how it works:
Ready (my options): the tasks, each on a post-it, of what I want to do
Doing (my limit): the tasks I believe I can accomplish in a day
Done (my progress): a dynamic list of work completed
There are more rewards for my brain with this work flow process because I physically move post-its along the continuum. I certainly derive some satisfaction the other ways too – throwing or crossing out!
Scaled up, it’s a great tool for teams grappling with those projects that never give enough satisfaction while the journey unfolds.
Check out the “I Love Lucy” clip in the article by David Zax on Benson’s method. It is hilarious!
http://www.fastcompany.com/3002383/why-managers-should-study-i-love-lucy-kill-their-do-lists-and-get-zen
Sunday, September 23, 2012
What does squeezing a ball in your left hand have to do with “getting out of your head?”
“Pressure” is not a welcome activity always. We can go one of two ways: choke or rise to the occasion. It’s a delicate balance which can be toppled even among seasoned veterans if we become discombobulated for some reason. That is, if our minds get the better of us.
So enters the term “getting out of our heads” as an antidote to crashing or freezing or whatever behaviour is manifested when we are unsure of ourselves. But how do you do it? Nice in theory; however, hard to implement when faced with a situation that evokes panic or distraction or uncertainty.
The sustainable path to building a “cool head” is well-known: meditation, yoga, saying daily gratitudes, deep breathing, exercise of any kind and deliberate practice in your domain of expertise (becoming a chess master, so to speak). These all grow strong and automated neural connections in your brain so you don’t have to think for long if at all when faced with uncertainty or an over the top schedule fraught with soft issues. The trick is “to get out of your head” and just do it! Squeezing a ball in your left hand, horse-whispering and acting lessons can help.
Squeezing a ball:
According to David McGinn in a September 21, 2012 article in the Globe and Mail, German researchers discovered that Olympic athletes in complex, accuracy sports could improve choking under pressure by squeezing a ball in or clenching their left fist before competing. They theorize that the motor activity activates automated behaviours in the right side of the athletes’ brains which control movement, enabling the brain to ignore thought. Put another way, the squeezing action dampens down conscious rumination.
The proviso though is that this does not likely apply to lefties.
Horse-Whispering:
Horses are very intuitive. Imagine then trying to tune into them to obtain their cooperation. Leaders taking “training” at Lisa Arie’s 3-day boot camp learn how to get off their pedestal, walk in the shoes of another and let their instincts have a chance. A bonus is becoming entirely relaxed once they learn “to get out of their heads”, to become CEO horse-whisperers. As tapping into intuition enables better decision-making, the practical benefits are obvious.
Acting Lessons:
Jacqueline McClintock, who passed away recently, was renowned for her coaching of actors, such a Naomi Watts, Alex Baldwin, Gregory Peck, and Diane Keaton to name a few. She learned her techniques from an equally famous acting coach, Sanford Meisner who encouraged actors “to get out of their heads” in order to do the job well. He wanted them to stop thinking about what they were doing, become more “in the moment, “spontaneous” much like comedians must do to succeed.
McClintock reinforced this by not listening to what actors were saying but instead listening to whether they were genuine – whether they meant what they were saying.
Albert Einstein once lamented that we had sacrificed our sacred gift of intuitiveness in service to our conscious thoughts. Many decades later, his words still resonate - the workplace reinforces conscious rumination to a fault. We have some work to do and in the process we might all relax a little more and gain more trust in each other.
So enters the term “getting out of our heads” as an antidote to crashing or freezing or whatever behaviour is manifested when we are unsure of ourselves. But how do you do it? Nice in theory; however, hard to implement when faced with a situation that evokes panic or distraction or uncertainty.
The sustainable path to building a “cool head” is well-known: meditation, yoga, saying daily gratitudes, deep breathing, exercise of any kind and deliberate practice in your domain of expertise (becoming a chess master, so to speak). These all grow strong and automated neural connections in your brain so you don’t have to think for long if at all when faced with uncertainty or an over the top schedule fraught with soft issues. The trick is “to get out of your head” and just do it! Squeezing a ball in your left hand, horse-whispering and acting lessons can help.
Squeezing a ball:
According to David McGinn in a September 21, 2012 article in the Globe and Mail, German researchers discovered that Olympic athletes in complex, accuracy sports could improve choking under pressure by squeezing a ball in or clenching their left fist before competing. They theorize that the motor activity activates automated behaviours in the right side of the athletes’ brains which control movement, enabling the brain to ignore thought. Put another way, the squeezing action dampens down conscious rumination.
The proviso though is that this does not likely apply to lefties.
Horse-Whispering:
Horses are very intuitive. Imagine then trying to tune into them to obtain their cooperation. Leaders taking “training” at Lisa Arie’s 3-day boot camp learn how to get off their pedestal, walk in the shoes of another and let their instincts have a chance. A bonus is becoming entirely relaxed once they learn “to get out of their heads”, to become CEO horse-whisperers. As tapping into intuition enables better decision-making, the practical benefits are obvious.
Acting Lessons:
Jacqueline McClintock, who passed away recently, was renowned for her coaching of actors, such a Naomi Watts, Alex Baldwin, Gregory Peck, and Diane Keaton to name a few. She learned her techniques from an equally famous acting coach, Sanford Meisner who encouraged actors “to get out of their heads” in order to do the job well. He wanted them to stop thinking about what they were doing, become more “in the moment, “spontaneous” much like comedians must do to succeed.
McClintock reinforced this by not listening to what actors were saying but instead listening to whether they were genuine – whether they meant what they were saying.
Albert Einstein once lamented that we had sacrificed our sacred gift of intuitiveness in service to our conscious thoughts. Many decades later, his words still resonate - the workplace reinforces conscious rumination to a fault. We have some work to do and in the process we might all relax a little more and gain more trust in each other.
Monday, August 20, 2012
Take a read break
I’ve been an avid reader forever probably because my mother is. As a young child, I couldn’t help notice she perpetually had her nose in books. To this day she is the same. For comfort and a break from the stresses of life, books were and are her escape. Is there something in this for any of us whether leaders, managers or members of the vital teams that power all organizations?
Various research sources indicate that vast and deep reading helps us to connect disparate ideas thereby adding to the creative journey. For example, I’ve been told that when I am in front of groups as a facilitator-teacher, I seem to effortlessly pull out stories and all manner of peripheral and supporting information on the fly, depending on the direction of the class discussion. I don't even know what I know until a trigger comment from someone. Then, I have to watch that I don't lose my audience by deviating too long from where we were on the agenda! At the least reading broadens my thinking and helps me “entertain”.
But there is a real benefit to reading that it often overlooked – its stress-reducing power. According to John Coleman’s August 15, 2012 HBR blog, “For those who want to lead, read”, six minutes of reading can reduce stress by 68%.
Now that’s an attractor in today’s far too fast-paced work environments! But it all depends on what one is reading, doesn’t it? Heavy duty reports don’t qualify.
So all you managers out there, take out your novel and set an example that reading breaks - fiction or non-fiction - contribute to productivity not the other way around. Water cooler gatherings have finally gained respectability as they help social cohesion, innovation, employee engagement and well-being. Now it's time to put read breaks of any kind in that same category.
Various research sources indicate that vast and deep reading helps us to connect disparate ideas thereby adding to the creative journey. For example, I’ve been told that when I am in front of groups as a facilitator-teacher, I seem to effortlessly pull out stories and all manner of peripheral and supporting information on the fly, depending on the direction of the class discussion. I don't even know what I know until a trigger comment from someone. Then, I have to watch that I don't lose my audience by deviating too long from where we were on the agenda! At the least reading broadens my thinking and helps me “entertain”.
But there is a real benefit to reading that it often overlooked – its stress-reducing power. According to John Coleman’s August 15, 2012 HBR blog, “For those who want to lead, read”, six minutes of reading can reduce stress by 68%.
Now that’s an attractor in today’s far too fast-paced work environments! But it all depends on what one is reading, doesn’t it? Heavy duty reports don’t qualify.
So all you managers out there, take out your novel and set an example that reading breaks - fiction or non-fiction - contribute to productivity not the other way around. Water cooler gatherings have finally gained respectability as they help social cohesion, innovation, employee engagement and well-being. Now it's time to put read breaks of any kind in that same category.
Sunday, August 05, 2012
Want to motivate your team? Build high performance? Don't skip one important detail.
Every time I read the latest statistics from Gallup and McKinsey or whomever on employee engagement my eyes glaze over. I used to write the information down for reference when doing talks or teaching. I don’t anymore because it’s the same old, same old. Lots of people in most organizations are not engaged. The further down the organization, the worse it gets. I always get an earful when working with front line employees (yes, I know, there is always another side to their stories). The beat goes on.
But, here and there, employees are inspired to do their best. Take the paramedics that attended to my husband this month when he had a dizzy spell, fell off a stool. In the moment, they did what they had to do and eventually took my husband to hospital emergency for further checking. In the end, it was a case of low blood pressure from his meds.
What I found most unusual was the extent to which the senior paramedic checked in with me between other ambulance trips on my husband’s status. It was then that we talked about his job. This was a motivated guy who had recently finished a year of advanced training. I still shake my head at his degree of interaction with our family. I’m not used to this caring customer service in general!
Annual surveys of the best organizations to work for show that there are many great companies young and old. Southwest Airlines is a perennial winner. Newer tech companies due to their start-up mentality often get the nod. Small is helpful as a rule because of the family-like atmosphere. The more complicated and big the tougher it is for leaders to keep the culture engaging and exciting.
If you are in a big, complex organization and want to motivate your team what can you do? Certainly “leading by values” is a good way. Herb Kelleher, Southwest’s founder, makes a point of mentioning values such as “leaning toward the customer” (his insistence) as a must. Founders do set the tone. But when the organization is older with thousands of employees and the newness of a company’s reason for existence has long receded in memory, how do you keep the founder’s spirit going?
One factor always pops up by various authors on the subject – purpose (why am I here to do what?). That’s the first one mentioned by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner in their new book “The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations”. People are motivated by what is rewarding not what is rewarded. Knowing why they come to work every day – purpose – speaks to the rewarding part.
The best place to re-engage is at the team level. That’s where the real work gets done. The paramedics know they want to save lives whenever possible. Every leader/manager has more control over a team than the whole organization. Motivate a team and the infectiousness begins to rub off elsewhere as peers talk. Southwest’s fundamental success is due to teamwork.
Yes, there is much more to great teamwork than being pumped up by its purpose. Every day, every hour relating matters as the journey unfolds. Infrastructure to support team success matters. However, without a clear team purpose, the tasks at hand have no context for action.
Don’t skip purpose – having the team openly determine the why of being together.
But, here and there, employees are inspired to do their best. Take the paramedics that attended to my husband this month when he had a dizzy spell, fell off a stool. In the moment, they did what they had to do and eventually took my husband to hospital emergency for further checking. In the end, it was a case of low blood pressure from his meds.
What I found most unusual was the extent to which the senior paramedic checked in with me between other ambulance trips on my husband’s status. It was then that we talked about his job. This was a motivated guy who had recently finished a year of advanced training. I still shake my head at his degree of interaction with our family. I’m not used to this caring customer service in general!
Annual surveys of the best organizations to work for show that there are many great companies young and old. Southwest Airlines is a perennial winner. Newer tech companies due to their start-up mentality often get the nod. Small is helpful as a rule because of the family-like atmosphere. The more complicated and big the tougher it is for leaders to keep the culture engaging and exciting.
If you are in a big, complex organization and want to motivate your team what can you do? Certainly “leading by values” is a good way. Herb Kelleher, Southwest’s founder, makes a point of mentioning values such as “leaning toward the customer” (his insistence) as a must. Founders do set the tone. But when the organization is older with thousands of employees and the newness of a company’s reason for existence has long receded in memory, how do you keep the founder’s spirit going?
One factor always pops up by various authors on the subject – purpose (why am I here to do what?). That’s the first one mentioned by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner in their new book “The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations”. People are motivated by what is rewarding not what is rewarded. Knowing why they come to work every day – purpose – speaks to the rewarding part.
The best place to re-engage is at the team level. That’s where the real work gets done. The paramedics know they want to save lives whenever possible. Every leader/manager has more control over a team than the whole organization. Motivate a team and the infectiousness begins to rub off elsewhere as peers talk. Southwest’s fundamental success is due to teamwork.
Yes, there is much more to great teamwork than being pumped up by its purpose. Every day, every hour relating matters as the journey unfolds. Infrastructure to support team success matters. However, without a clear team purpose, the tasks at hand have no context for action.
Don’t skip purpose – having the team openly determine the why of being together.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Subtle dynamics of teams make or break their greatness
As in a gentle Marine boot camp, I was madly climbing my way up to the top and over a “rope” mountain when the person behind me asked for help. My “boss”, who was much bigger than me, was having trouble. Naturally I reached out and provided a helping hand despite my angst toward him. Did this make any difference to our relationship in the long run? Not one iota.
We were attending one of those company retreats focused on making us a better team by putting us through a bunch of trust exercises (falling out of a tree to be caught/saved by my colleagues below, for example). Sound familiar? If only building a stronger team were so simple. But, at the least it was fun.
Back in those days, we had a bird’s eye view of teaming. Now, we have a better view from the ground. With the aid of technology and because of technology and more research, we are able to sharpen our understanding of the inner workings of teams – for better or worse. The subtle human drivers of team basics such as having a clear goal, mutual accountability for the work product, diverse thinking and domain skills, etc., are now becoming clearer. These drivers are like the glue that binds the team basics.
Three such drivers caught my attention recently:
When culture and conflict don’t mix and a subtler approach is better
As teams become less mono- and more multi-cultural, conflict becomes a more sensitive issue. Erin Meyer’s research at INSEAD in France revealed subtle undertones in teams with a mix of cultures. While people from a French background typically view openly arguing as a means to uncovering hidden contradictions and to stimulating thinking, people from Asian countries consider such confrontation to be rude. This can also apply to certain personality types – introverts as less likely to embrace “conflict” than extroverts.
What can a team do to go with the flow of different ways of “doing” conflict”?
-If you are the team leader, consult with “quiet” members before a meeting.
-Enable people to prepare their thinking in advance of a meeting (for example a series of three questions on the matter at hand).
-Refrain from saying “I disagree” and replace with “could you tell me more about that?”
When the “how” of team communication matters more than “substance”
Alex “Sandy” Pentland of MIT’s Human Dynamics Lab captures how people communicate in real time using electronic sensors in the form of sociometric badges. He has found that when building a great team smart people matter less than we have thought and non-verbals count much more. These include tone of voice, gesturing, how one faces others in a group and how much people talk and listen.
What do members of great teams do?
-Talk with each other many times during the day – a dozen or so exchanges per working hour. Call it ongoing consultation.
-Talk and listen to each other in equal measure, equally. Teams with dominant members, teams within teams, and those that either talk or listen but don’t do both are far less productive.
-Engage in frequent informal communication. Such “water cooler” conversations foster camaraderie and the exchange of valuable ideas. The best teams spend about half their time outside of formal meetings communicating.
-Go outside the team environment to explore for ideas and information. Like bees seeking pollen, outside sources do aid team results.
When work-life balance strategies “made by the team”pay off
In her book Sleeping with Your Smart Phone: How to Break the 24/7 Habit and Change the Way You Work, Leslie Perlow describes how a team at the Boston Consulting Company (BCG) confronted the dangers of burnout. The team set a simple, modest goal: each team member would get a planned night off each week (PTO or “predictable time off”).
That single intention fostered conversations that may never have happened and those led to greater team altruism and empathy, higher job satisfaction and team member retention and better client satisfaction ratings. Looking out for one another engendered trust, a vital electrical current in any team.
This “reimagining” of work yielded a continuous flow of benefits for the team. Better conversations and new connections grew out of a goal to include personal needs in getting the job done.
If my boss and I had known these simple yet powerful ways to build great teams, would we have added more value at the retreat and thereafter back at the office? Probably. In looking back, at the least, I can be more forgiving of myself and my boss for not connecting. We did not know what we did not know.
Monday, May 21, 2012
Keep calm and carry on: a drought of such messaging since 1939
When I was doing my Ph.D. research on how people successfully change their lifestyles for the better, I was struck by one key factor: the power of external messaging to influence eventually their decisions to change. At one level the information about the dire effects of smoking, poor eating habits, lack of exercise, etc. was simply intellectual - received as reasonable but not taken at an emotional level. However, in the long run, the outside-in reminders did help, setting a real reason context for change. Each person’s life journey provided an inside-out trigger for a committed change. Mission accomplished with the help of outside “coaching”.
Since coping with change is such a huge part of our fast-paced, volatile lives these days, we can always benefit from uplifting and simple leadership encouragement politically and within our own organizations. On a national level in Canada, I am still looking for something to bring us together, make us excited about who we are and where we are heading.
In the moment, I get more inspired by the Canadian-owned horse, “I’ll Have Another” who won the 137th Preakness Stakes on May 19 and prior to that the Kentucky Derby than anything I am hearing from our federal government. It shows how much we benefit from domestic heroes of any kind! All nations needs reason to celebrate and to stick with it. Certainly the sports world delivers at the least on a temporary basis.
But we value and find solace and inspiration in more substantive messaging in order for each of us to stay focused and hang in for the long run. That’s why I have taken to writing down every day, “Keep Calm and Carry On” a poster produced by the British Government in 1939 during the beginning of the Second World War. Winston Churchill added more to rally British citizens as the going got tough. We know his “coaching” helped win the day.
“Keep Calm and Carry On” and other outside-in “coaching” help us manage our emotions. The inspiration ignites our mindfulness, being in the moment to see our emotions but not be them. Maybe one day I will find a “made in Canada” message that I can add to my daily reminder on how to be in the world to face another day.
Since coping with change is such a huge part of our fast-paced, volatile lives these days, we can always benefit from uplifting and simple leadership encouragement politically and within our own organizations. On a national level in Canada, I am still looking for something to bring us together, make us excited about who we are and where we are heading.
In the moment, I get more inspired by the Canadian-owned horse, “I’ll Have Another” who won the 137th Preakness Stakes on May 19 and prior to that the Kentucky Derby than anything I am hearing from our federal government. It shows how much we benefit from domestic heroes of any kind! All nations needs reason to celebrate and to stick with it. Certainly the sports world delivers at the least on a temporary basis.
But we value and find solace and inspiration in more substantive messaging in order for each of us to stay focused and hang in for the long run. That’s why I have taken to writing down every day, “Keep Calm and Carry On” a poster produced by the British Government in 1939 during the beginning of the Second World War. Winston Churchill added more to rally British citizens as the going got tough. We know his “coaching” helped win the day.
“Keep Calm and Carry On” and other outside-in “coaching” help us manage our emotions. The inspiration ignites our mindfulness, being in the moment to see our emotions but not be them. Maybe one day I will find a “made in Canada” message that I can add to my daily reminder on how to be in the world to face another day.
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