Category leading

Entries 30 Total

One step at a time …

Aug 14, ’11 12:12 PM

A few days ago, I listed 10 big mistakes that people make in trying to change behavior.  Here’s #2: attempting big leaps instead of baby steps.

The antidote? Seek tiny wins, one after another, according to the folks at B. J. Fogg’s Persuasive Technology Lab.

They’re right, in more ways than one.

We’ve heard for years about the power of big audacious goals, sweeping visions, and ‘breakthrough’ leaps. But we live life in moments, one after another. Only in retrospect, when we string those moments and events together, do we see patterns and create narratives to explain what happened.

What if we could capture and study all those little moments? What might we learn that’s different?

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Does she or doesn’t she?

Jul 29, ’11 2:52 PM

Here’s a nifty little test of empathy, thanks to  Northwestern social psychologist Adam Galinsky and friends. Ask your boss [or anyone, for that matter] to draw the letter E on her forehead. Before you read more, do it yourself. [Index fingers work as well as pens.]

Now … which way did you draw the E: so it’s legible to you and backward to others, or legible to others and backward to you?

According to Galinsky and crew, people who draw the E so it’s legible to others

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And the list goes on …

Jul 26, ’11 4:09 PM

I’ve been researching a new public seminar on overcoming disabling thoughts. A lot of problems arise from our cognitive distortions and biases, so I typed “cognitive bias” into the search box on Wikipedia. Wow! I hit the jackpot: Wiki lists over 100+ forms of cognitive bias!! And that doesn’t include those perceptual brain teasers like the classic one here [which horizontal line is longer?].

Think about this: over one hundred ways that we skew and distort events in the world behind our eyes. Some involve our behavior and decision-making, like

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Learning to learn

Jul 23, ’11 3:07 PM

Several years ago, I read an article by learning and business theorist Chris Argyris. It stuck with me. He talked about how smart people typically succeed at whatever they try … and as a result, they never learn how to learn from failure. So when their usual problem-solving strategies don’t work, they can’t learn from the experience. They repel criticism and get defensive and blame others. Whoa! He was talking about me! So I reread it every few years. And every time, I discover something new.

If you want to learn about your own defensive reasoning process, give it a read.

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Ain’t misbehavin’ enough

Jul 23, ’11 2:53 PM

I remember thinking, when I was young, that I didn’t want to look back on my life with regrets about what I did NOT do. The thought made such an impression on me that I’ve lived much of my life under its shadow. I became a high achiever. But I rarely ran risks. I lacked courage.

So I really enjoyed a recent post by Marcia Reynolds on fearing regret more than failure. She offers 4 points for increasing our courage and comfort with risk. I’ve gotten pretty good at 3 of them. Now it’s time to misbehave.

On another note, look who flitted through the back yard this week and then leaped over the rooftop in a single bound.

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The answer to how …

Jun 4, ’11 1:44 PM

The work I do with leaders is not easy, nor is it for the faint of heart. One common question I hear, especially when leaders are struggling to hold others accountable or to change how they and their organizations work, is “How? How do I do this?”

It’s a seductive question and one I typically reframe within a larger context. I learned a lot from a master at doing this: author and consulting expert Peter Block. Check out his book The Answer to How Is Yes: Acting on What Matters.

Here’s a taste to whet your appetite.

There is something in the persistent question How? that expresses each person’s struggle between having confidence in their capacity to live a life of purpose and yielding to the daily demands of being practical. … My premise is that this culture, and we as members of it, have yielded too easily to what is doable and practical and popular. In the process we have sacrificed the pursuit of what is in our hearts.

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Disconfirming evidence

May 30, ’11 7:45 AM

 

 One of my clients recently attended a course urging him to listen for and be attentive to “disconfirming information.” He was struck by that phrase, probably because the head of his organization operates at the other end of the continuum: she only wants to hear evidence that supports her current point of view.

I first learned about disconfirming evidence from Meg Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science, who talks about how living systems grow and change as a result of disequilibrium, not equilibrium. Think about it. When are you more likely to grow: when everything you encounter is just mirroring what you already know, like the woman my client reports to, or when something new and different drops into your world?

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Rage, rage against the dying of the flight

Apr 13, ’11 6:34 AM

I was stuck in Chicago at O’Hare Airport one holiday season, along with thousands of other travelers.   We’d been delayed several hours by a fierce snowstorm blowing in from the plains, and then got word that several flights were cancelled.  People were up in arms.  The airline agents were stressed, passengers were starting to shout, and the whole mood of the place was turning black.  It was the closest I’d seen to mob mentality in years, and I was getting scared. In the midst of the shouting and fist shaking, a young gate agent walked from behind the counter, climbed onto a seat, and raised her arms in an outstretched Y.  She didn’t say a word.  She simply stood, motionless, with a relaxed look on her face.  It took two minutes, but the shouting began to subside.  One by one, people turned their attention to her.

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Drive by Daniel H. Pink

Mar 22, ’11 8:56 PM

I’ve reached the point that when someone asks, “What are you reading?” I sometimes have the good fortune to say, “Dan Pink.” Whatever this man writes, I want to read. He is a thinker who is at least 1.5 standard deviations beyond the bell curve. And he knows how to blend storytelling and research in ways that produce remarkably engaging and insightful writings.

In Drive, he “exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life.” He takes on some of our most sacred workplace cows: the “carrot-and-stick” mentality of getting others to do what we want, the blind reliance on external motivators, the whole premise of management.

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What if…?

Mar 22, ’11 7:31 PM

I coach executives.  The ones whose organizations are doing well are the ones who are leading, not the ones trying to hang on by managing.  The distinction is critical.

Managing focuses on organizing and controlling the complexity of work.  It involves planning and expanding what we want, and fixing or getting rid of what we don’t want.  Managers are experts at preserving the status quo.  Their work bounces from fix it to restore it to maintain it and back to fix it.

But organizing, fixing, and controlling are not sufficient for creating new direction and helping people discover strategies to get there.

That’s what leading is about: defining a new future. 

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