Making Changes

As a consultant, performance coach and trainer, I am frequently asked if what I am doing with an organisation, an individual or a team will result in any real change. The answer is ... it depends!

And this is not just a flippant response.

Obviously organisations and individuals want the reassurance that the service they are paying for will result in a positive - and preferably measurable - outcome. That's great. I want the same thing too. There's nothing more frustrating for most of us than to feel as if nothing has changed when we complete a project.

So why does the answer depend, and what does it depend on?

Well let's remind ourselves that organisations and teams are comprised of people. Yep, I know this sounds obvious, but a lot of change management talk seems to ignore this inescapable fact.

So applying a people lense to change means that we can look at it from the perspective of some of the recent neurological research that has been conducted over the past 20 years or so. Now clearly I am no great expert in this field, but there has been plenty written about it over recent years. Indeed a lot of Daniel Goleman's work (our Emotional Intelligence guru) is based on the neurological research conducted by Joseph LeDoux.

Now we all know that making changes in our own lives is tough, and making changes in organisations can be even tougher. Some of you might even remember that piece of popular advice that it takes three weeks to break an old habit and three weeks to build a new one?

But what the neurological research has done, is provide us with a scientific basis for understanding why making change is so difficult.

Apparently our brains are constructed to quickly detect changes in our environment and unusual or different occurrences. The orbital cortex (sort of behind our eyes) generates these signals in our brain, and the orbital cortex is closely linked with the brain's fear circuitry - the amygdala.

These two sections of the brain (the amygdala and the orbital cortex) compete with the prefrontal cortex of our brain for attention (processing time and speed).

So what? Well it's the prefrontal cortex where our higher and more conscious cognitive processes occur.

When we are learning something new, we need our prefrontal cortex to be working hard.

Think about learning a new language, learning to drive, concentrating on developing your listening skills or whatever.

We need to consciously make the effort to master, think about and practise these skills. It's tiring too. Why?

Again the research has shown that using the prefrontal cortex uses more energy than using the part of the brain where our learned skills reside and can be enacted unconsciously (the basal ganglia).

So, what does this neurological research tell us about making changes?

It's going to take a conscious effort.
It's going to take more energy.
It's going to take some time before we can use the skills unsconsciously.
We will encounter some resistance within ourselves.

So, how do we begin to address these challenges?

The first point to note is that an individual, organisation or team will have to want to change. The coach, consultant or trainer cannot make the conscious effort or conduct all the practice that mastering the change will require. What we can do is provide the background knowledge, some scenarios for practice, and we can provide encouragement and positive feedback.

But probably the most important point to note is that an individual, organisation or team will need to arrive at their own solution. In other words, it has to be their plan. If they do that, then that desire to change is their own.

Questions

Asking lots of questions - and of course, coming up with the right answers is a real characteristic of problem solving and decision making. Coming up with the right questions to ask is often more difficult than finding the right answers. After all, there's no correct answer to the wrong question.

A guy I really admire for lots of reasons is my old high school friend Michael Stanier. It's not just that he's a mate of mine (although that is certainly part of it), it's much more about how he approaches his life and his work.

Michael's a business coach based out of Canada but working internationally. He's just released a web-based animated film called The 5 3/4 Questions You've Been Avoiding. Check it out and have a go at answering these questions for yourself.

My Birthday

I've just celebrated my fortieth birthday with some of my family and best friends at a pub in Melbourne. It was a terrific party as the photo will attest, but what really struck me was a billboard that I read early this week that said:

How old would you act if you didn't know how old you were?

So this got me to thinking. At first blush, it seemed to be saying something similar to the expression that was sometimes hurled at me as a child to ... act my age. But there's something else going on as well, isn't there? And it's also more complicated than the cliched expression that says ... you're only as old as you feel.

I don't know if it was just that I had turned 40 and was feeling perhaps a little more introspective, but the more I thought about this billboard, the more inspirational I found it.

Of course our upbringing, our educational opportunities, our luck, the friends we make, the jobs we have, they all impact on our lives to greater or lesser degrees. This conditioning goes a big way in shaping how we think about ourselves, and how others think about us. Age is but one component. But think about it, if you didn't know how old you were, how old would you act?

But it's more, so much more ...

If you didn't know how smart you were, how smart could you be? If you didn't know that you had failed before, how brave would you be that next time? If you didn't know how happy you were, how happy could you be? If you didn't know what your job was, what job would you do?

All of these questions have been important questions for me to answer at some point in my life. As I was thinking about this advertising billboard, it also provided a springboard for what I wanted to say to my friends and family who could come along to my birthday party.

The billboard reminded me of another quote that I had read somewhere that basically said that if we celebrated the anniversary of our death instead of the anniversary of our birth, how differently would we look at our lives?

Now, I've always been a big fan of wakes - it must be that Irish heritage that lurks a couple of generations ago. And it seems to me that wakes often provide the forum for everyone to remember someone's life, often the funny moments, over a few drinks. So I thought that a wake - turned on its head - would provide me with a wonderful opportunity to tell some stories about the people most close to me.

As I celebrated my birthday, I told a range of stories about funny moments in the lives of my friends and family and how what these friends and family members meant to me. We may not always get the chance to say those sorts of things to the people close to us, and I'm old enough now to realise that.

What would you say?

Happy Customers and Valentine's Day

My cousin, Belinda, owns and runs a small suburban florist shop in Melbourne, Australia. For the past couple of years I have helped out on the two busiest days of her business year - Valentine's Day and Mothers' Day.



Okay, I have no artistic ability at all in flower arrangement (Belinda has a fine arts degree), so I help out with the deliveries.

And, do you know what, it's one of the most enjoyable jobs I have ever had.

Imagine this ... Everyone you deal with during your workday is happy to see you. They smile. They blush. They thank you.

And do you know something else, it gets even better.

Because it's not that they're happy to see Belinda's (very) part time delivery driver.

And it's not just that they're happy with the product they get - but that is part of it.

It's because they are happy about the thought behind someone sending them some flowers.

Is all this happiness over-rated?

No way.

There's been a fair amount of research conducted on happiness (sounds like another terrific part-time job for me), and some of the benefits of being happy include:

* Living longer.
* Making more friends.
* Making more money.
* Feeling better.
* Being more creative.

My old school friend, Michael Stanier, a former Rhodes Scholar and Canadian Coach of the Year has more to say about the benefits of happiness and positive psychology here.

But every day isn't Valentine's Day with a van full of red roses, cuddly bears and balloons ... or is it?

Imagine how good it would be, if all of your interactions with your workmates, your clients and customers, your friends and loved ones were happy and positive ones.

Imagine also if we each gave something of ourselves to each of these interactions. I'm not talking about flowers. How about a smile? A word of praise? A hello? A joke?

Try it. Go on. I'll be trying to beat you to it!

Victim Mentality

Last night I attended a professional development session for executive coaches run by the Institute of Executive Coaching (Australia) , and one of the subjects that came up was working with counterparts or clients with a victim mentality.

I'm sure you've met someone like this. You might even do it yourself sometimes. When we see ourselves as the victims we are thinking and perhaps saying things like:

* It's not my fault.

* No one else gets it. They're all too stupid.

* Can you believe what she did to me?

* I'm sick and tired of...

* I'm always so busy I never have time for myself.

* Why does this always happen to me?

* That's the way it's always been around here.

* It's the system.

One of the interesting things that I see in my work, is that this sort of attitude also manifests itself in teams as well as individuals.

So, just what is a victim mentality?

It's often described as when someone is always blaming someone (or something else) for the bad things that happen to them. As it develops, it can become so extreme that the person begins to think that bad things always happen to them. They rarely, if ever, take responsibility for their own actions.

Seeing this sort of mentality in an individual or a team is a massive danger sign.

So, what can we do about it?

I always like to use an adaptation of Stephen Covey's Circles of Influence and Concern.

Sure, there are lots of things we are concerned about, but over which we have little control. But there are many things that we can influence, where we do have direct control.

Covey illustrated this by drawing two concentric circles - the larger circle he labelled the circle of concern, and the smaller circle inside this larger one, he labelled the circle of influence.

For example, I have a mortgage and I am always concerned about the speculation that the Reserve Bank will raise official interest rates, and that my bank will pass these on to me, increasing my monthly payments. I have no direct control over what the Reserve Bank or what my bank will do. So the official interest rates would be one issue that I could pencil into my large circle of concern.

But what do I control over my mortgage? Not the official interest rate certainly, but I can choose a fixed or variable rate. I can increase or decrease my monthly payments (within reason). I can increase the frequency of my payments. I have a number of choices about the actions I can take. So I could pencil these issues into my smaller circle of influence.

The point is, that I CHOOSE to do something. I can be proactive, or I can be reactive. It's my CHOICE. It's not the circumstances or the Reserve Bank that control that choice.

And this blog is not just about Ric's mortgage. We all have direct control over such critical things as our behaviour, our attitudes and our decisions. When we realise this, we can gradually begin to expand our circle of influence so that we begin to assert more control over those other things that concern us.

While we cannot always control the circumstance, we can control our response to it. We are responsible and accountable for that response. We have no one else to blame for it. It's not pop psychology. It works.

So, do you or your team choose to stay as victims, or do you choose a different response?

Corporate Pyschopath - or just a very naughty boss?

I frequently hear stories about bosses and managers yelling at their team, their advisers and probably at their loved ones too.

This stuns me.

It’s not just that this kind of behaviour is inappropriate in so many situations, it’s that it is downright ineffective. It’s dumb because it’s only in a tiny fraction of circumstances that team members or associates will respond to an invective filled diatribe.

In extreme cases, these people are often termed corporate psychopaths. But it's likely that the first seed of their extreme management behaviour was watered and even fertilised by the types of organisations in which we now find them.

There's been a lot written in recent years about corporate psychopaths. (See anything by Professor Emeritus Robert Hare from the University of British Columbia). These sociopaths are often manipulative, arrogant, callous, impatient, impulsive, unreliable and prone to fly into rages. They break promises, and take credit for the work of others and blame everyone else when things go wrong.

Does this sound like anyone you know? Someone you work with?

For organisations, this is dangerously infantile behaviour, so why are these corporate psychos drawn to the business world?

Well, perhaps not surprisingly but certainly a little perversely, business does value some of the traits that the corporate psycho brings. Some businesses want that mercenary attitude, the domineering approach, the ambition and the drive.

But what's the real cost?

The leadership style of these corporate psychopaths is really undeveloped and immature. In terms of emotional intelligence, they are neither self or socially aware. And this means that they are really constrained in their modes of operation. They switch rapidly from being overtly charming - even seductive, to bullying, ranting and threatening.

How do we deal with these people?

Here’s a useful measure of maturity. The Australian author, literary critic and social commentator Clive James suggests that “reality is the conquest of the self, not of the world”.

I think that this is a useful place to start. Sure, the emotions of certain situations are enough to push all of us over the edge ... occasionally. But if this is a standard way of leading or managing a team, something is drastically wrong. The manager has clearly lost control - certainly of themselves, probably of their team, and most likely the situation as well.

Self-control is a characteristic that is marked out as one of the key attributes of leaders with strong emotional intelligence. Flying into a rage when things don’t go your way, demeaning those around you or withdrawing into a near catatonic uncommunicative state are behaviours that we probably expect from small children - not our business and organisational leaders.

The corporate psycho or boss may get results for the firm in the short term, but it won't last. For the really intractable cases only professional psychological counselling will help, but perhaps the bigger issue is how all of us in our organisations respond to these sort of people. If we choose to do nothing, or just avoid or tolerate them, what kind of message does that send to the rest of our team? It's likely that we will get more of the same ...

Directive Leadership

A couple of weeks ago I was speaking to a PhD researcher doing some work comparing the leadership styles of Australians and Americans. She asked me if I had ever given a direct order while I was in the military.

I had to think pretty hard about that question. I had certainly given a number of direct orders on the parade ground, and in contexts similar to that - ie when controlling large groups of people in synchronised activities. But otherwise I have never had to use that phrase so beloved in the movies " ... that's a direct order".

The researcher told me that my recollections were pretty similar to many other Australian military leaders, but very different to those from an American military leader background. Why was this the case?

At the risk of over-simplification, let me try and explain it through the use of situational leadership.

Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard popularised the model of situational leadership in the 1960s. Even if you don't like the One Minute Manager series of books, you have to admire the skill of Blanchard and others in distilling some pretty complex skills down into readily understood - and therefore used - models.

One of the four basic leadership styles defined in situational leadership is the "Directive" style. This type of leadership style sees the leader providing specific instructions and then closely supervising the accomplishment of any task. It is the classic case of providing a direct order.

Of course this kind of leadership style is entirely appropriate ... in some situations, and with some teams. Unfortunately, in my experience, it is also frequently over-used. If your team are highly competent professionals, then constantly directing them is likely to get right up their noses pretty quickly. Similarly if they are highly committed and enthusiastic about their tasks, then the directive style is likely to quickly diminish that commitment.

Situational Leadership suggests that the leadership style must be relevant to the specific circumstance in which the leader is working. In other words, your leadership style must relate directly to the level of competence and commitment your team members exhibit. Directive leadership is only appropriate when the team has both low competence and low commitment, otherwise the coaching, supporting or delegating leadership styles will be much more effective.

From my experience, most of the teams in Australia that I have worked with are both competent and committed. Some of the military teams I have worked with have been exceptional in both areas. In these instances it's been much more important to engage the team members to take advantage of their experience, their professional skills, their initiative and their drive so that we could develop a collaborative plan. This quickly became "our" plan, not "my" plan, one where success and responsibility were shared.

That's part of the reason I have never had to emphasise a task by stating ... that's a direct order.