Harnessing Passion

I was finishing a coaching engagement with a very accomplished woman this week and we were reflecting on all of her challenges and successes. We were talking about emotional control, particularly in management conversations.  

As we were talking, it occurred to me how often I find myself having this same conversation.  I hear from people who have a hard time not losing their cool and those who feel demoralized when they are on the receiving end.  Passion is powerful driver of engagement and results but when we are so emotionally involved in our work we run the risk of emotional volatility. When it comes to management competence, Emotional Control is a critical success factor.  Unfortunately, it’s also a tough one to master.  I am not the only one who thinks so.

In a recent article by Travis Bradberry, author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0, cited a survey conducted by Positive Psychologist Martin Seligman. He writes “ Self-control is so fleeting for most that when Martin Seligman and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania surveyed 2 million people and asked them to rank their strengths in 24 different skills, self-control ended up at the very bottom.”

Dr. Casey Mulqueen, a psychologist and the Director of Research and Product Development at leadership training company Tracom Group, says: “executives can leverage psychology to be better leaders and get more out of their employees.” The concept is based on Emotional Intelligence (EQ), the ability to recognize, understand, and control your own and others' emotions.

Here’s a simplified explanation of what happens when you lose emotional control: “The human brain automatically reacts to physical or psychological threats by releasing hormones. It's a fight-or-flight response that's a remnant of our evolution from primates”, Mulqueen says, “When the hormones are released, it's hard to control your actions". But Mulqueen says that you can "effectively fight your own evolution" and "rewire your brain" to act appropriately by "recognizing your automatic responses, labeling them, and figuring what you have control over in the situation."

Engage your prefrontal cortex.

Mulqueen says that the amygdala, the part of your brain that releases stress hormones, activates whenever our grey matter registers a physical or psychological threat. This can happen if a colleague puts down your idea during a company meeting, if someone yells at you, or if you're doing a presentation and are afraid of public speaking. To battle this automatic response you need to engage your prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for logical reasoning and problem solving, while you're in the situation and before you respond.

Here are some suggestions I offer of ways to do just that:                                                      

Take a deep breath.  Deep breathing can slow your pulse and focusing on the process of breathing will distract you from the mental hijacking that the stress hormones are causing.

Write something down.  The process of writing is a reasoning process.  Whether you are taking notes or capturing the conversation on a flip chart, your thinking will shift to a more rational process once you start writing.

Ask a question.  The mental process of formulating a question will help you to focus on what the other person is trying to say even if the way they are saying it is less than constructive.

If you can’t rein it in, ask for a break.  Take a walk or schedule the conversation for a time when "cooler heads can prevail” and it’s likely to go better.  You might both benefit.

If you are in an email conversation, Begin your email by acknowledging what the other person has said, paraphrase their concerns. This doesn’t mean you agree, it simply means you are listening. Reread your responses three times and neutralize argumentative phrases or words before you send, or better yet have someone else take a look.

It’s really about harnessing your emotions and passions so that they enrich your life and serve your purpose.  Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence guru once said:   

"When I say manage emotions, I only mean the really distressing, incapacitating emotions. Feeling emotions is what makes life rich. You need your passions"~ Daniel Goleman

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At the Expense of Good...

I was recently watching an episode of Shark Tank. Shark Tank is a television show where billionaire entrepreneurs (“sharks”) allow inventors and small business owners pitch their products.  The successful entrepreneurs grill the show’s contestants and if they are interested enough they offer financial backing in return for a stake in their ventures. On a recent episode, I heard Mark Cuban, (self-made billionaire and owner of the NBA Dallas Mavericks) say something that struck me as particularly profound. A married couple was presenting their product to the sharks. It was clear that after years of pursuit, their very innovative product had never gotten off the ground.  As the sharks grilled the entrepreneurs, as they usually do, the couple lamented all the various limitations associated with every possible distribution option they had explored. Finally, losing his patience, Mark Cuban said “It seems to me you are chasing perfection at the expense of good.”  I liked the way he put that. It spoke to my current personal agenda. 

As I get older, I have become keenly focused on spending my time wisely and deliberately on things that matter most.  This “return on investment” mindset keeps me thinking about priorities, urgency and a commitment to focusing my effort on my personal strengths and my longer-term goals.

Daniel Goleman, emotional intelligence guru describes this focus in a recent Harvard Business Review Article titled the Focused Leader.  He refers to this focused mode of thinking as “cognitive control”. “Cognitive control” is the scientific term for putting one’s attention where one wants it and keeping it there in the face of the temptation to wander. This focus is one aspect of the brain’s executive function, which is located in the prefrontal cortex. A colloquial term for it is “willpower.”

When it comes to business leaders, according to Goleman, cognitive control enables executives to pursue a goal despite distractions and setbacks. The same neural circuitry that allows such a single-minded pursuit of goals also manages unruly emotions. Good cognitive control can be seen in people who stay calm in a crisis, tame their own agitation, and recover from a debacle or defeat.

Here are some questions you can use to keep your focus where it needs to be…

What is the payoff for this time I am spending?

When details slow me down... How important is this particular detail to my end result?  If I move forward and settle for this current level of “perfection” what are the risks or consequences?

When my curiosity pulls me down a rabbit hole…Is there something else I should be doing right now?

When I choose easy feel good tasks for motivation... Should I be doing this right now? Is there another time that might be better for this? Can I limit the amount of time I am devoting to this task?.

Is there someone else who could or should be doing this, with me or for me? Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should be doing it.

Who benefits from this time I am spending?  This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be generous. I am usually blessed to have enough flexibility in my schedule that I can afford to be generous with my time. I like to decide when and how much I can give and it’s a really great reward when time spent wisely frees me up to support the needs of others.

This is really about efficiency, productivity, and achievement.  Meaningful achievement! After all, we are all granted the same 24 hours in a day.  No matter how industrious, creative or sleep-deprived we choose to be, we still only get 24! How we fill those hours is completely up to us.

I used to like to say that my favorite word was “Perfect”.  Recently, I am favoring the word "Progress"!

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10 Commandments of Giving Feedback

As you move through this month of February, and if you are a manager, you will likely be asked to provide some feedback to your direct reports.  Even if your organization doesn’t require an annual performance appraisal it’s a great idea to touch base.  Setting direction, providing feedback and sharing your expectations is important if you want your employees to stay on course. So here are the ten commandments of giving feedback.  Psst.... These work in your personal life too!

1.  Honor Contributions.

Before you even begin the feedback, value the individual. Discuss their role on the team.  Be sincere and thorough, discuss how the team member contributes.  Take your time, this will set the tone for the rest of the conversation.

2.  Give Positive Recognition and Make It Count.

Think about the strengths this person brings to the table. Be specific by giving examples that are illustrative of their strengths and encourage repeat shining performances.  Allow the positive feedback to stand alone, don't always use it as a "lead in" to more difficult topics.

3.  Be Specific.

Give examples.  Make sure your examples are recent and specific. Find a time to discuss the examples in private and allow enough time to have a good quality conversation.

4.  Describe Behavior.

Stay factual and neutral in your description.  Don’t describe why you think they are doing this or not doing that. Leave the intention to them, stay on your side of the conversation equation. Just stay with describing the observable behavior. Stay away from adjectives. Any words evoke a response and our reaction to adjectives can be very individual.  For example, words like "careless" or "not-engaged", may seem fairly innocuous to you but could be seem overly critical to another. It is safer to describe only what you can observe in specific terms.

5.  Careful with “Never”/”Always”.

Avoid words that are too extreme like “never” and “always”.  Whenever I hear these I want to challenge, Really? Always? What about the last time? Or the time before? Don’t let the conversation be sidetracked by this moot point. If the problem behavior happened it is a problem. If it is repeated share several recent examples.

6.  Ask and Listen.

Ask for their experience of the behavior to get an accurate picture of their motivations. "What happened there?" This is important to reduce defensiveness, but also to gain an accurate picture of how they might improve. Is it: Training? Poor decision-making? Time management? Organization?  Stay with their side of the story until you have a clear picture. Your communication here should be patient and open-minded. Understanding their thought process doesn’t mean you are endorsing it, just seeking clarity.

7.  Discuss "Natural" Consequences.

Discuss why the suggested change matters, what are the consequences if they don’t improve. I don’t mean disciplinary consequences although you might end up there. Why do you care?  For example, if someone misses meetings the consequence might be that they will not have access to information shared in that meeting, decisions taken there will not include their perspective may not serve their needs or those whose voice they are representing. They may even suffer a reputation hit if others see them as unreliable or disrespectful.  All of these consequences occur whenever the meeting is missed.  These are “natural” consequences, not disciplinary consequences. This makes it less personal.  You are not punishing, only holding up the mirror for them.

8.  Keep Emotional Control.

Thou shalt not lose emotional control. This seems like an obvious one but if you are angry you’d better wait a bit.  We want the emotion to match the urgency and importance of the issue, so this isn't about “sugar- coating”.  But you always want to be in control of your emotional expression in order to avoid personal attacks.

9.  Participate.

Offer support and ask for suggestions on how you might support their improvement.  You will want to be clear about how you can and cannot help.  This clarity will support your efforts to follow-up.  Now is the time to discuss the responsibility of change and what they can expect from you.  If the situation continues or gets worse you don’t want to hear later about all the things you could have or should have done to help.

10.  Be Optimistic.

Create a vision of new and improved outcomes, express your optimism about getting there and schedule some specific time to follow-up. Change is not easy and will require a level of deliberate effort.  You will want your communication to be selling and encouraging here.

Sounds easy, but of course it isn’t.   Frequency on this will increase trust so try not to let issues build-up.  February the perfect time to get things moving in the right direction for 2015!  

Practice

We were all brought up to believe that practice would make us perfect. It’s what carried us through those piano lessons on sunny afternoons; it’s the sage advice that helped us get over the lost game on the baseball diamond or soccer field. But the true benefits of “practice” may be greater than you ever imagined.

Mastery and Practice

The idea that 10,000 hours (about 1 year and 51 day’s total) of practice is what you need to gain expertise in performance-based fields was initially popularized in Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller, Outliers.

There has been much debate around Gladwell’s theory of 10,000 hours which was loosely based on the work of professor of psychology, K. Anders Ericsson. In Ericsson’s 1993 article The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance, he and his co-authors first presented the idea of a required amount of preparation time or the 10-year, 10,000-hours, rule, as a magic number in acquiring a level of mastery. But more of their work focuses on how world-class individuals are spending their 10,000 hours. Specifically, it isn’t just about 10,000 hours of doing the activity; it’s 10,000 hours of what Ericsson calls “deliberate practice.” According to the paper, “deliberate practice is a highly structured activity, the explicit goal of which is to improve performance.”

Focused Mental Practice

Ericcson speaks directly about the nature of deliberate practice another of his articles, The Making of an
Expert.

“To people who have never reached a national or international level of competition, it may appear that excellence is simply the result of practicing daily for years or even decades.

However, living in a cave does not make you a geologist. Not all practice makes perfect. You need a particular kind of practice—deliberate practice—to develop expertise. When most people practice, they focus on the things they already know how to do. Deliberate practice is different. It entails considerable, specific, and sustained efforts to do something you can’t do well—or even at all. Research across domains shows that it is only by working at what you can’t do that you turn into the expert you want to become.

Deliberate practice involves two kinds of learning: improving the skills you already have and extending the reach and range of your skills.

Practice and Strengths

Although deliberate effort will certainly allow us to improve any capability, when the deliberate effort is applied specifically to our natural abilities the rewards are even more significant. In Tom Rath’s best seller Strengthsfinder 2.0, he describes the science of building strengths. Based on the work of Donald O. Clifton, Rath provides and formula for optimizing strengths. “Building raw talents into strengths requires practice and hard work, much like it does to build physical strengths.”

In the growing field of Positive Psychology, this “identify and use” approach to strengths psychology has continued to grow in clinical circles as scientific research supports the exponential payoffs in personal motivation, engagement and overall satisfaction. Translating raw talents into strengths takes deliberate and focused repetition.

Making Your Practice More Deliberate

• Make time for practicing new skills every day
• Plan how you will approach your practice
• Add experimentation to your practice in order to improve your range of skill
• Set milestones and longer-term goals 
• Reflect and measure your progress

So, whether you are attempting to extend you range of skills or advancing a natural ability, the answer is the same. Be focused and deliberate in your practice! Remember, as Vince Lombardi once said, “Practice does not make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.”

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Reality: What a Concept!

While preparing a coaching program for a client organization, I came across a blog by Peri Shawn, of Salesforce.com titled, Are Your Coaching Questions as Effective As They Could Be?  

One of the keen insights she shares is the idea that, as leaders, we often spend too much time coaching to our ideal or to our theoretical vision of good rather than “Coaching to our team’s reality”. I found this to be particularly profound.  I think we do this all the time in all aspects of our life.

As we set our goals and aspirations for this New Year, it seems appropriate that we remember to focus on our current circumstances without the rose-colored glasses.

Go To Where They Are

We can benefit from Peri Shawn’s wisdom, when we are coaching others, whether in a business context or as a parent or even as a friend. Spending time selling a desired state or vision of improvement will do little to produce results if the other person’s current state is too distant from your vision. Taking time to understand the current circumstances and charting a methodical course of improvement in incremental steps is far more likely to produce results.

A coach named Jason Jordan says:  “Coaching should not be an exercise of re-iterating the destination – to win the game or to achieve a quota. And it shouldn’t be an exercise of ramping up the urgency – to run faster on a soccer field or to panic more in a sales territory. Coaching should be about improving a person’s ability to do their job.  Increasing their skills... Improving their decision-making… Changing their behaviors. In other words, making them more capable. Most people understand what they need to accomplish, and most people are motivated to do it.  What they need is help getting there.”

Keep it Real

Jack Welsh, renowned CEO of GE was once quoted as saying, “Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.”

Even in our assessment of our own personal circumstances we need to be realistic.  Whether you are embarking on improved health goals, addressing financial challenges, or advancing your career, taking a good honest look your current situation will prepare you to develop achievable steps toward reaching your improvement objectives. Small, consistent steps starting with accurate self-awareness can bring a lot more progress than you might imagine.   

Darren Hardy is a motivational speaker and writer who says: “You are only one or two habits away from a massive transformation in any area of your life.”

Keep Moving

My son, who has always been an enterprising young man, is now taking an entrepreneurial-thinking class in his final semester of college. It is exciting to see the enthusiasm and energy this class is inspiring.  Each day he seems to have a wealth of new schemes and dreams. Having seen his resourcefulness, I know he will accomplish some of these great things.  My best advice to him is... "keep your head in the clouds, but keep your feet on the ground-- always marching forward". It is the same advice I have for myself, more often than I would like to admit.   So be where you ARE! Take off the rose-colored glasses! And keep marching forward!

Famed English businessman Harold Geneen once said “Words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises but only performance is reality.” 

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Ostriches Can't Fly

Technically, ostriches can’t fly because they are not graced with a working pair of wings.  But I love the metaphor, because few things will facilitate your professional demise more certainly than keeping your head buried in the proverbial sand.

As a professional leadership coach, I have had the experience of helping countless professionals navigate and recover from what can only be described as professional upheavals. These misfortunes are often described as complete “blindsides”, coming unexpectedly “out of left field”. And yet, upon reflection, most people look back on the period of time immediately prior to the misfortune and say things like, “I should have seen it coming” or I can see now that “this was going on for a while”.

The challenge for all of us is to stay present enough to focus on the changing political tides that are shifting all the time in our professional lives, without becoming too distracted, preoccupied, or downright paranoid in the process. When I speak to professionals about participating in office politics the reaction is always the same: utter disdain, closely followed by an indignant proclamation that “I don’t engage in all that”.  As if the suggestion of exercising their professional influence deliberately is something smarmy, akin to a selling of thier soul. Whether you work in large company, a small family business or even as an independent professional serving customers, your ability to read the proverbial “writing on the wall” may be the difference between work-related success and failure. 

So what exactly can you do to prevent yourself from falling victim to the lost customer, the missed promotion, the organizational restructure that leaves you with a lousy outcome?  The best answer: stay engaged and present.

For most of us, the first reaction when things get uncertain in our work life is to “hunker down”. We stay “under the radar”, trusting that our good work will speak for itself and that things will ultimately work out for the best. This approach is risky. Whether you are serving a customer, satisfying a new boss, or trying to change a reputation issue, actively influencing your outcomes is much wiser. Here's how:

Pay Attention

Observe the relationships of others. Who seems to be in the know? What leaders seem to be losing traction, involved in less announcements, less visible in decisions, presentations? This could give you a sense of where the organization is headed. If it’s a customer you are working with, who is the true decision maker?  Make sure you are getting in front of the right people.

Trust Your Gut

We are all blessed with an instinctive “brain” that lives in our belly. It allows us to sense when things may not be quite right. Allowing your gut instinct to ruminate into worry and fear will not do you any good. If you can, instead, practice staying tuned-in to those instincts and moving that “feeling” to the rational brain for further analysis, you can capitalize on the natural foreshadowing tool that it is.  

Stay Connected

Be visible. Make sure others are always aware of what you “do all day”. This doesn’t have to be an 8-hour commercial for your personal brand. But copying others on important emails (selectively), and mentioning your daily activities in casual conversation, will allow others to stay aware of your contributions. Ask to be involved in key meetings. Ask questions and demonstrate interest, informally and often.

Listen to Influencers

Within every organization there are those whose power and influence extends far beyond the hierarchal position or pay grade. Stay familiar with those folks. Pay attention to where they are focusing their energies. Don’t ever mistake the office gossip for an influencer. If you do, you will be doing nothing but wasting your time. And when the conversation turns to conspiracy theories, it’s time to get back to work.

Embrace Change

Stay open and be on the flexible side. Changes may not be favorable but if they are already set in stone, resisting them will only alienate you. If you have legitimate concerns, make your best attempt to share them constructively and then follow orders. Time has a way of exposing flawed decision- making. You don’t have to be the one to do that if there is a resistance to rethinking an established direction. 

Volunteer

Stay positive and involved. Look for ways to make yourself indispensable. This will keep you “in the know” when new directions materialize. Helpful people simply do better when it comes to forming strong professional connections.

Address Tension

When you feel that a bridge may be burning, approach the tension with an open mind and seek to understand the source of the friction. Remember perceptions are never “wrong”. They represent the other person’s “real and accurate” experience of a situation. Share information and educate, rather than becoming defensive. Stay away from blame; it will never change the past anyway. Always bring a future mindset and a goal of having things go more smoothly in the future.

There is no single strategy that will keep your career moving in a positive direction and no advice that will protect you from the suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune from time to time. But at least for me, there is nothing worse than being caught unprepared. "Predict-ability" is the one skill that will give you an advantage no matter what your future holds. 

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It's All About the Face

I had a friend who used to refer to certain conversations as “eyeball to eyeball” conversations.  It made perfect sense to me then, and still does, that the most intimate, self-disclosing, or contentious of our day to day conversations would be best handled “in person”.  But there is a growing body of psychological research that suggests that more frequent face-to-face communication is also extremely important to our personal relationships, satisfaction and quality of life.

In a recent article on FastCompany.com, free-lance writer, Lisa Evans, summarizes some of the most interesting findings about face-to-face communication.  Evans quotes psychologist Susan Pinker, author of The Village Effect, who warns of the pitfalls of electronic communications when she writes “our growing lack of social contact is hindering our ability to build strong business relationships, and may also have a negative impact on our health and happiness.”

Real conversations actually cause us to release “feel good” hormones!

Susan Pinker discusses the role that face-to-face communication plays in the release of oxytocin, also called the cuddle chemical, as it’s the same hormone released in women breastfeeding to bond with their babies.

“While experts formerly viewed oxytocin as a female hormone, it’s now raising interest in the business community for its ability to facilitate trust. When people connect physically—through a handshake, a pat on the back or a high five—oxytocin is released, promoting feelings of attachment and trust, facilitating greater collaboration among team members.

Oxytocin plays a number of other important roles, such as boosting mood and improving our ability to learn and remember. Increased social contact has also been shown to dampen cortisol—the chemical that is released when we’re under stress.

These chemical reactions do not occur through email or even a Skype chat, but through real-life human-to-human contact. ‘The real-life connections that we all crave—that we’ve evolved to benefit from through many millennia of evolution—can’t be replaced by texting or email,’ says Pinker. Yet, rather than getting up to walk to a colleague’s desk, most of us will simply shoot off an email.”

There is no doubt that our electronic capabilities enhance our real time communication effectiveness, but the many benefits of face-to-face interactions are lost when we rely too heavily on our digital alternatives.

Real social contact boosts productivity!

In her book, Pinker cites various studies that show increased social contact can not only give our mood a boost, but our productivity as well. One such study of 25,000 call center agents demonstrates this clearly. In the experiment, employees were divided into two groups—one who took staggered breaks alone, and another who took breaks with their coworkers. Those who had an opportunity for 15 minutes to chat and socialize with coworkers showed a 20% increase in performance.

Social interaction makes us healthier!

Physical connectivity also delivers important health benefits. Numerous studies have shown that individuals who live active social lives recover from illness faster than those who are more isolated. A 2006 University of California, San Francisco study of 3,000 women with breast cancer found those with a large network of friends were four times as likely to survive the disease than women with fewer social connections. These connections involved face-to-face contact, not Facebook friends or Twitter followers.

Incorporating more face time in the workplace requires a rethink of communications. "We’ve been presented with a dilemma right now," says Pinker. "In business, digital connection with social media is considered to be the Holy Grail. It’s cheaper; it’s more convenient. But when it comes to worker productivity, happiness, and satisfaction, those companies that are focusing on face-to-face interaction are taking the lead in their industries."

Remote workers need real social contact too!

A census bureau report found that 13.4 million people worked from home at least one day per week in 2010 and the remote workforce grew 80 % between 2005 and 2012.  So, how can we bring these real social contact benefits to our remote working relationships.  I suggest the following:

• Connect daily with remote workers. Be sure to add pleasantries to your correspondence. 

• Make time to chat.  Don’t stay so focused on business that you forget that there is real person on the other end of the phone or keyboard. Ask questions and share personal information.

• Pick up the phone to share good news or to recognize efforts. Acknowledge personal milestones like birthdays and work anniversaries as well as business accomplishments.

• Embrace the “virtual team”. Facilitate team time for remote workers with team calls that allow for casual conversation.  Schedule a remote worker coffee break.

Relationships matter and the best ones are built on genuine, good old-fashioned eyeball-to-eyeball connections. So get up and walk around or at least pick up the phone and connect!

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