nptech.info

The concept of boundaries comes up regularly in my work with clients and students, and in my own life as well. A client resents feeling obligated to respond to emails after a certain hour in the evening. A student wants to insure that family activities don't overwhelm her plans for graduation. And I often need to decompress quietly for 20 minutes after getting home before engaging in conversation. At the heart of all of these issues is a boundary, in one form or another.

As I've written before, my former colleague Michael Gilbert has had a big influence on how I view the concept of boundaries, and here's a passage from his 2008 post Good Fences that I refer to often:

In regard to this exploration of "work-life balance," what's clear in our discussion is that we have been using the word "balance" when what we really seem to mean is "boundaries." Boundaries keep things in their place. Balance suggests the same amount of two things on either side of a scale. Boundaries keep one of those things from oozing past the edge of its platter and taking over the other side...

Boundaries and integration go together. Maybe it's just the biologist in me, but it seems that good boundaries are what make integration work. Just as functional membranes (letting the right things through and keeping the wrong things out) facilitate the healthy interaction of the cells of our bodies, so do functional personal boundaries facilitate the healthy interaction of the various parts of our lives. Bad boundaries lead to either being overwhelmed or withdrawal. Good boundaries lead to wholeness and synergy.

But it's essential to realize that boundaries don't simply spring into existence fully formed. They emerge, they evolve, they erode--they're dynamic features of our lives that we build up and maintain piece by piece, through countless small steps and interactions. In my work with clients and students over the years and in my own efforts to create boundaries that support fulfillment and effectiveness, I've come to see 4 key steps in this process:

1) Identify

The very first step is identifying the need for a boundary (or a better boundary) in the first place, and this can be a lot harder than it sounds. The very act of identifying the need for a boundary can raise all sorts of anxieties, self-judgments and other complex feelings: What does it say about me that I want a boundary here? What will it cost me? How will it affect the other people involved? But as difficult as this step might be, nothing else can happen until we take it.

2) Accept

Once we've identified the need for a boundary at a conceptual level, we have to truly accept it at a deeper emotional level. We have to acknowledge and deal with all those feelings that are generated by the idea of the boundary; we have to answer the questions above (and any others that arise along similar lines) and come to terms with our responses. More often than not, this involves challenging the mental models and assumptions that cause us to question or resist our desire for a boundary.

3) Establish

Having fully accepted the boundary, we need to take action and establish it effectively by communicating it to others in a manner that will A) maximize the likelihood of winning their support and B) overcome resistance when that support isn't forthcoming. This step probably feels the riskiest--it's certainly the point at which we can derail the process both by holding back and by coming on too strong. Here's where good communication skills are critical (and I've also found Susan Scott's "Mineral Rights" framework extremely helpful.)

4) Maintain

Finally, note that all boundaries are subject to erosion over time and must be actively maintained. We don't establish them once; we re-establish them over and over, in ways that adjust to our changing needs and circumstances. This may involve having similar conversations with multiple people--or it may involve having the same conversation several times with one person to insure that it truly sinks in and sticks. The key is recognizing that boundaries aren't static features of a landscape, but dynamic aspects of our relationships, our personal lives and our organizations.

Photo by Ryan McDonald. Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

In the spirit of those kindred souls Voltaire and George S. Patton, here's one way to measure the infinite:

An infinite distance lies between nothing--the unsaid comment, the unwritten letter, the undone act--and something, no matter how much room for improvement remains.  In comparison, the distance between that something and perfection is barely noticeable at all.

Photo by Ben Husmann. Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Seize the day. We all support the sentiment, of course, but the complete line from Horace makes it much more compelling:

Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.

Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the future.

I'm certainly more motivated to do something today when I admit that tomorrow might not come. And the message of this post is: Don't wait. Do it today. You might not have another chance.

If that's sufficient motivation for you, great--you may not need to read any further. What follows is a discursive, even self-indulgent piece of writing intended to preserve some beautiful memories that will serve to remind me why it's so important not to wait when an opportunity presents itself.

In February 1946, George Orwell published an essay in the Evening Standard titled "The Moon Under Water":

My favourite public-house, the Moon Under Water, is only two minutes from a bus stop, but it is on a side-street, and drunks and rowdies never seem to find their way there, even on Saturday nights...

If you are asked why you favour a particular public-house, it would seem natural to put the beer first, but the thing that most appeals to me about the Moon Under Water is what people call its "atmosphere."

Orwell goes on to describe his pub in great detail, down to the color of the crockery and the terms of endearment used by the barmaids. What matters most to him, though, is the way these characteristics add up to a warm, welcoming environment. I'm so enchanted by Orwell's vision of this "great, good place" that my heart always sinks at his sudden revelation, even though it comes as no surprise:

But now is the time to reveal something which the discerning and disillusioned reader will probably have guessed already. There is no such place as the Moon Under Water.

That is to say, there may well be a pub of that name, but I don't know of it, nor do I know any pub with just that combination of qualities...

But, to be fair, I do know of a few pubs that almost come up to the Moon Under Water. I have mentioned above ten qualities that the perfect pub should have and I know one pub that has eight of them. Even there, however, there is no draught stout, and no china mugs.

For the past two years Amy and I have enjoyed our own Moon Under Water--not in idealized form, but an actual place, a restaurant called the Moss Room. It opened in the basement of the newly revamped California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park in 2008, but we only discovered it in 2010 after Amy went there for lunch with colleagues.

A unique combination of factors made the Moss Room so special to us: It was within walking distance of our apartment in the Richmond, and even on a cold, rainy night walking up to Golden Gate Park is a lovely experience. The physical space was enchanting, starting with the after-hours entrance at the side of the museum that made the place feel like a speakeasy, a feeling that grew as you took the stairs below-ground. And the food was routinely outstanding--I can honestly say that I loved every single dish I ever had there, and we ate there a lot.

But the primary reason we loved the Moss Room was the people--manager and sommelier Kristen Capella, bartender Robert Baker, servers Tuni and Ashley and host Katherine (whose last names we never learned), and "new" manager Rafael Jimenez Rivera, who took Kristen's place late last year after she was asked to help open AQ downtown. They were all spectacularly great at their jobs. Kristen was such a master of her wine list that after our first visit we never ordered a bottle again--we just asked her to pick for us, and she inevitably found the most fascinating wines that perfectly complemented our meal. Robert was, bar none (heh), the best bartender I've ever had the pleasure of patronizing, and his passion for the history and art of his craft informed every drink. Tuni, Ashley and Katherine made us feel truly appreciated and cared for. We usually sat at a table of Tuni's--#50, at the far right in the picture above--and she was always candid (and right) about the menu's strengths and weaknesses on a given night, and uncanny in her ability to both predict and remember our likes and dislikes. And all of them were simply engaging, interesting people who made a really good restaurant a great one.

To be clear, Amy and I love eating out, and eating and drinking at the Moss Room was a very pleasurable experience. But we also discovered the Moss Room at a particularly important time in our lives. Amy's dad and a student of mine passed away in 2009, and we spent the next year in a state of grief and shock, compounded by a number of additional personal struggles. We were emerging from that period when Amy first visited the Moss Room, and it was an incredible gift to find this little community--one that also happened to serve amazing food and cocktails--just a short walk from our home. It was a respite, a place to let go of our cares and learn to relax and have fun again.

You'll notice that I've been using the past tense--last month, just after Christmas, we learned that the Moss Room was going to close, immediately, and that New Year's Eve was going to be its final night of operation. From a business perspective, I wasn't entirely surprised--it's an offbeat, out-of-the-way location, and many nights it was well under capacity--but from a personal perspective I was stunned. I actually cried.

But as much as I'll miss the Moss Room, I've made peace with its abrupt disappearance from my life because Amy and I seized an opportunity not only to have one last meal there but also to thank the people we knew. As Christmas approached, we felt so grateful for everything they had done for us that we decided to get them presents. Nothing big--just something to express our appreciation and let them know that they had made a small but meaningful difference in our lives. We stopped in to drop off the gifts and to have a quick cocktail--I don't remember why, but we weren't planning to stay, and almost left. But at the last minute we said, what the hell, we won't get a chance to come back until after New Year's, let's stay. So we did.

It was an amazing meal, as expected. Robert's cocktails were perfect, and Tuni was incredibly indulgent and extra dishes turned up in between courses, and we just couldn't have been any happier. I'd be upset if we'd missed that last meal, that last chance to say goodbye to the Moss Room, even though we didn't know that was what we were doing at the time. But I'd be much more upset if we'd missed that chance to say "Thank you" to the people who made that experience--and so many like it--possible for us.

I know we'll continue to see Kristin at AQ, and we'll surely see Robert at his next bar, and hopefully we'll cross paths with Tuni and Ashley and Katherine again. But we'll never have the Moss Room again--that little community will never be re-assembled. So the simple lesson I've learned is: Stay for dinner; there may not be another meal--and thank someone who deserves it; you may not get another chance to let them know how you feel. 

Lately I've been paying closer attention to the steady, low-level urge I often feel to check my phone for emails, texts, tweets and other notifications. I can justify this urge with any number of "good" reasons: I keep my phone on silent so it won't interrupt a coaching session, and I might have missed something important. A client or student may need to reach me, and I want to be responsive to them. Amy may have texted me about something pressing, and... Etc.

Those reasons are all true, and yet they don't fully explain my behavior. I've realized that this urge--and my almost automatic response to obey it--has a more emotional, less cognitive explanation: When I feel a little anxious or bored, I can check my phone, and if something new is there, my anxiety is eased and my boredom is relieved. It's a form of adult thumb-sucking.

There are times when this urge disappears, such as when I'm in a coaching session with a client or student, or when I'm in a meaningful conversation with Amy or a friend.  And there are times when this urge is almost overpowering, such as when I'm in a dull meeting or making awkward small talk, or when I'm struggling with a difficult piece of writing.

All behavior is adaptive, so it's unhelpful to simply characterize this urge as "bad" and strive to quash it without understanding 1) what I'm adapting to, 2) how that adaptation serves me (and how it leads me off course), and 3) when I should follow it (and when I should resist it).

I'm clearly adapting to a set of inner drives that are important parts of my makeup. I'm usually highly attuned to my social environment, particularly signals that suggest another person's need for support or engagement, and this allows me to be an effective coach (and husband and friend) but can also generate anxiety when I want to connect but am unable to.  I'm also typically a quick thinker who needs a lot of stimulation to avoid boredom--which is one reason why I find it difficult to meditate and yet keep trying.

Checking my phone obviously helps me adapt to these drives, and this adaptation serves me in many ways. Clients and students often express appreciation for my responsiveness, and note that they feel respected and cared for as a result. At times I can get a lot of work done on multiple fronts simultaneously. And I stay connected with a number of people who are important to me as a result.

But compulsively checking my phone leads me off course in a number of ways as well. In the moment, it tells the people in my physical presence that I'm less interested in them than I am in my virtual network, which can undermine my relationships. It contributes to unrealistic expectations regarding my availability and responsiveness. It  disrupts my concentration when I'm struggling to think through difficult work, requiring me to switch contexts and rapidly adjust from one mode of working to another. And perhaps most importantly, I suspect that there's a neurological impact, resulting in diminished impulse control in general.

As noted above, when I'm fully engaged in a coaching session or conversation I don't feel this urge at all and have no need to resist it. But I believe there are a number of situations in which I'd be well served to do so, both interpersonally and in my writing and other reflective work. It's not difficult to manage this urge when I'm coaching--my dedication to my craft helps me focus on the people in front of me and keep any conceptual distractions at bay. The real challenge is when I'm writing, reading or doing other work alone--it's always tempting to set aside any conceptual challenges I face in order to deal with the "real" issues posed by a client or friend (or Twitter follower.)

Photo by syauqee. Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

It's essential for me as a coach--and, I'd argue, for all of us when we're in any position of influence, particularly a leadership role--to distinguish between investment and attachment. It's a distinction that has a significant impact on our relationships in those roles, our mutual feelings of autonomy and independence, and our ability to support and lead others effectively.

We invest in people, and being invested in someone means we care about them and want them to succeed. We convey our investment in ways large and small, from being available to being vulnerable, from providing support and consolation to stepping into challenges and pushing back when necessary.

But if we invest in people, we're attached to outcomes. We want something specific to happen, and the successful accomplishment of that goal can be an important source of meaning and fulfillment to us, so we'll expend a lot of energy and exert a lot of pressure to insure that it's achieved.

As a coach, I need to be invested in my clients' or students' success without becoming attached to any particular definition of success. As they progress toward (or away from) certain outcomes, I pay careful attention to how I respond. If a client or student is succeeding in accomplishing a given goal, do I feel good because I'm invested in them as a person, or do I feel good because I'm attached to their accomplishment of that goal for some reason, perhaps because it would make me feel more effective as a coach? Whatever the cause, when my investment turns to attachment, it's a clear sign of bad coaching, and an invitation to explore 1) why I'm attached to that particular outcome, 2) how I might relinquish my attachment, and 3) how I might increase my investment in the person.

The calculus for a leader is different, of course. In almost all leadership roles, we have to balance our investment in people and our attachment to outcomes. If we care only about the people and are indifferent to the goals, it's either a very unusual leadership situation...or we're coaching and not actually leading. But if we don't sufficiently invest in our people while remaining deeply attached to achieving our goals, that unbalanced emphasis inevitably has a pernicious effect on engagement, commitment and retention. People sense that they're valued solely as means to an end, and if they can find equivalent compensation elsewhere while feeling valued as individuals, they'll pursue those options.

So while coaches have to be careful to avoid becoming unduly attached to outcomes, leaders must as well. We all draw the line in different places depending on our role, the context, the urgency of our goals and the relationships we have with our people, but we all have to find the right balance.

Postscript

A vivid example of this dynamic is an aspect of my role as a Leadership Coach at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB). I work with 11 Leadership Fellows, second-year students who've been accepted into a competitive program in which they each work with a total of 9 first-year students in small groups and one-on-one to help the first-years develop their leadership and interpersonal skills.

I'm intensely attached to the goal of insuring that the 99 first-years who are being served by my 11 Fellows have a meaningful learning experience. That's an outcome that matters a great deal to me, and not only because it's a function of my role, but also because I believe deeply in the value of this curriculum, and as a GSB alumnus I want the school to do the best job possible of developing better leaders and managers.

But at the same time I work very closely with those 11 Leadership Fellows, in small groups and one-on-one, a process that involves not only (or even primarily) my managing their work with their first-year students, but also coaching them on a wide range of professional and personal issues during the course of the 8 months we spend together. It's impossible for me not to become deeply invested in my Fellows as individuals because of this level of engagement.

Admittedly, it's an unusual situation because 1) every year the Fellows I'm privileged to work with are an incredibly dedicated group of people, 2) my goals as a Leadership Coach are tightly aligned with my Fellows' goals, and 3) the Fellows' primary relationship to their students is as a coach, so even when I'm coaching them on issues unrelated to their work, they have an opportunity to learn work-related skills.

But even in this context I have to bear in mind the balance between investment and attachment. I do have to insure that we collectively deliver on our commitment to support those 99 first-years, and I'm firmly attached to that outcome. At the same time it's essential that my 11 Fellows know how deeply invested I am in them as individuals and how committed I am to their own growth and development. If I were to view my Fellows as means to an end, it would compromise my values and undermine my ability to work with them effectively. And yet if we were to lose sight of that end, it would essentially turn our 99 first-years into lab rats--highly complex rats, to be sure, but the subjects of an experiment all the same.

Photo by nosha. Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Much of my work as a coach involves helping people wrestle with an important decision. Some of these decisions feel particularly big because they involve selecting one option to the exclusion of all others when the cost of being "wrong" can be substantial: If I'm at a crossroads in my career, which path should I follow? If I'm considering job offers, which one should I accept? If I'm being asked to relocate, should I move to a new city or stay put?

And while I've written before on the conditions that support good decision-making and firmly believe that we can improve the quality of our decisions by following those guidelines, I'm also reminded of a comment made by Scott McNealy--a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and its CEO for 22 years--during a lecture I attended while I was in business school at Stanford: He was asked how he made decisions and responded by saying (I'm paraphrasing, but his point was crystal clear):

It's important to make good decisions. But I spend much less time and energy worrying about "making the right decision" and much more time and energy insuring that any decision I make turns out right.

That comment has stuck with me for over a decade and continues to influence me today. Before we make any decision--particularly one that will be difficult to undo--we're understandably anxious and focused on identifying the "best" option because of the risk of being "wrong." But a by-product of that mindset is that we overemphasize the importance of the moment of choice itself and lose sight of the importance of everything that follows. Merely selecting the "best" option doesn't guarantee that things will turn out well in the long run, just as making a sub-optimal choice doesn't doom us to failure or unhappiness. It's what happens next (and in the days, months and years that follow) that ultimately determines whether a given decision was "right."

Another aspect of this dynamic is that our focus on making the "right" decision can easily lead to paralysis, because the options we're choosing among are so difficult to rank in the first place. How can we possibly determine in advance what career path will be "best," or what job offer we should accept, or whether we should move across the country or stay put? Obviously, we can't--there are far too many variables and little or no data to work with. But the more we yearn for an objective algorithm to rank our options and make the decision for us, the more we distance ourselves from the subjective factors--our intuition, our emotions, our gut--that will ultimately pull us in one direction or another. And so we get stuck, waiting for a sign--something--to point the way.

I believe the path to getting unstuck when faced with a daunting, possibly paralyzing decision is embedded in McNealy's comment, and it involves a fundamental re-orientation of our mindset: Focusing on the choice minimizes the effort that will inevitably be required to make any option succeed and diminishes our sense of agency and ownership. In contrast, focusing on the effort that will be required not only helps us see the means by which any choice might succeed, it also restores our sense of agency and reminds us that while randomness plays a role in every outcome, our locus of control resides in our day-to-day activities more than in our one-time decisions.

So while I certainly support using any available data to rank our options in some rough sense, ultimately we're best served by avoiding paralysis-by-analysis and moving foward by 1) paying close attention to the feelings and emotions that accompany the decision we're facing, 2) assessing how motivated we are to work toward the success of any given option, and 3) recognizing that no matter what option we choose, our efforts to support its success will be more important than the initial guesswork that led to our choice.

Addendum: My thinking on this topic has been heavily influence by GSB professor Baba Shiv, an expert in the neuroscience of decision-making:

A good decision is one in which the decision maker is happy with the decision and will stay committed to the decision, Shiv says. [My emphasis] And that’s where emotions come in: They’re mental shortcuts that help us resolve trade-off conflicts and...happily commit to a decision. "When you feel a trade-off conflict, it just behooves you to focus on your gut."

And furthermore: Rick Lane's comment prompted some further thinking on the process of getting "unstuck," which I'll quote from my response to him: I'm all too aware that when we're deeply stuck and paralyzed by a decision, we need something more than a conceptual understanding of decision-making to get us moving again. I return to the power of emotion, and I think that the combined hope for a better future and the pain of our present "stuckness" must overcome the combined fear that we'll make the wrong choice and the pain that often accompanies tough choices, particularly when a choice will hurt or disappoint someone.

Photo by Conor Ogle. Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Yesterday Tom Peters tweeted this mantra from former NFL coach Bill Parcells:

Blame no one. Expect nothing. Do something.

It struck me as an concise, powerful expression of an attitude I try to bring to my work as a coach and maintain in my own life (although I fail all the time.) It's a mindset that I find very motivating.

But it occurred to me that this message can also be interpreted and delivered in a powerfully DEmotivating way. At times when we're encouraged to hold ourselves accountable and take action, the underlying message is "Stop whining. Don't be such a wuss. Suck it up."

And while on occasion there's value in such a confrontational approach, in my experience it always extracts a huge cost in the form of loss of trust and disconnection, and the damage to the relationship in the long run isn't worth it.

So why does Parcell's mantra work for me? Because when I hear it, the underlying message isn't "Suck it up" but "Make it better." And I know that if I want others to find it as motivating as I do, I need to insure that I'm communicating that same underlying message to them.

Thanks again to Tom Peters for the inspiration and the encouragement.

Photo by Eric Schmuttenmaer. Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

I don't use that many sports metaphors, but there's something about "blocking and tackling" that perfectly describes my approach to change, whether it's with a coaching client or student, or in my own life.

The phrase reflects the fact that flashy, dramatic plays in American football--like Steve Young's game-winning 49-yard scramble for the 49ers against the Vikings in 1988--are the result of a series of profoundly un-flashy, un-dramatic efforts that make big gains possible. And this is exactly how I think about any desired change--no matter how lofty or ambitious the goal, the path to its achievement will be paved with countless small, humble steps.

So what does blocking and tackling look like in this context?  I see the 5 strategies below as the fundamental tools at our disposal when when we're seeking to make a change--there are plenty of others, to be sure, but in my experience these 5 tend to provide significant leverage:

1) Break down large goals into smaller components.

By definition, people seeking help accomplishing a goal, whether in a 1:1 coaching engagement or as part of a larger organizational transition, are grappling with a challenge that's too big or complex to address all at once. If that were possible, they'd simply do it and move on.

This is understandable: We slap labels on a huge array of related activities in order to give us a conceptual handle on the overarching goal. But once we move beyond the conceptual realm into action, the labels start getting in our way. They obscure the distinctions between separate-but-related activities, they fail to acknowledge inter-relationships and dependencies, and they're useless at helping us prioritize.

For example, in early 2008 I decided that I wanted to "be healthier," which was certainly a laudable goal, and even a motivational one in theory. But what the hell did that actually mean in practice? "Being healthy" was way too abstract for me to translate into action, and (after a number of experiments), I ultimately broke it down into five smaller, daily goals: 1) exercise, 2) meditate, 3) get enough sleep, 4) eat and drink moderately, 5) work on my intellectual/professional development.

This framework allows me not only to get a clearer picture of my "health" by assessing each of these smaller goals individually, but also to see the inter-dependencies among them and to prioritize accordingly. I've noticed that sleep and my intellectual/professional development can be inversely correlated--which usually means I'm doing a lot of late-night study. Sometimes this is OK--but at other times it's not, and then I need to re-balance, prioritize sleep and trust that the work will get done. 

2) Build enthusiasm and momentum by celebrating small victories.

Success feeds on itself, and a benefit of breaking large goals down into smaller components is that it gives us many more opportunities to feel successful and reap the rewards. The smaller goals I outline above are all daily activities--so every single day I have an opportunity to succeed on each dimension. In this case, I track each of the goals mentioned above using Don't Break the Chain, a lightweight productivity tool that's so powerful because it's so simple: Set up a daily calendar, and every day you accomplish your goal just click on the date to add a "link" to the "chain." (My exercise calendar for this month--as of January 18th--is above.)

A significant consequence of this approach is that I experience a small (but noticeable) thrill each time I get to click on a date and "add a link"--classic reward-driven behavior that's undoubtedly related to a tiny surge of dopamine in my brain each time I click: Press the lever, get the cookie! Equally significant is the small (but noticeable) feeling of absence that occurs when I fail to fulfill a daily goal and as a result am denied the reward.

I can also celebrate milestones by looking at stretches of time on my calendars, from 4 weeks to 4 months to an entire year, and feel a sense of accomplishment and agency. Each of my daily successes over the course of a month, a quarter, a year add up to something bigger than I realized in the moment. (Conversely, when I consistently fail to accomplish a goal, the growing stretch of white space on the calendar can motivate me to get back on track, and in retrospect I can correlate that data with whatever was going on in my life at that time to better understand what happened and why.)

3) Identify assumptions and mental models; then create experiments to generate new data.

We often embark upon an effort to change with a commitment to re-assess our goals, values and strategies and judge them by their results. But a limitation of this approach is that so many of those very same goals, values and strategies are rooted in underlying assumptions and mental models that go untested because we view them as universal truths or because we're not even fully aware of their existence.

We need to step back and expand our analytical frame to identify the assumptions and mental models that underlie the goals, values and strategies we're testing in the first place. This process is best described as double-loop learning, a term first coined by Harvard Business School professor Chris Argyris:

The key tasks here are A) identifying our closely-held beliefs as assumptions and mental models rather than "truths," B) developing experiments that will generate data allowing us to test the veracity and utility of those assumptions and models, and C) being willing to revise and update our assumptions and models on the basis of that new data.

In my case, a mental model deriving from my athletic training as a kid was the idea that exercising meant grueling, full-on workouts.  Anything less was insufficient and "didn't count."  But as a result of this belief, if I didn't have time to "do it right," then I wouldn't do it at all--I let the perfect be the enemy of the good.  Even worse, I failed to take into account the fact that as I entered middle age, it was no longer possible for me to do everything that I did when I was in high school and college--I'm no slouch, but I'm also not 18 anymore (thankfully.)  I had to let go of the model of a "training regimen" designed for a young, competitive athlete and embrace the alternative concept of an "active life" designed for an old(er) guy who just wanted to feel better.

At first, this new approach didn't feel right at all--my mental model told me I was slacking.  But eventually I realized that being easier on myself (both physically and mentally) made it possible to be more active more consistently--which was actually my ultimate goal.  New mental model, different strategy, better results.

4) Avoid obstacles by taking alternative or parallel paths.

This approach to change relies upon a sense of dynamism and fluidity.  Breaking down large goals into smaller steps means more opportunities to celebrate little victories as well as more opportunities to test assumptions and mental models.

But when we hit an obstacle--often in the form of our own resistance--everything grinds to a halt.  So it's important to keep moving forward, in one way or another.  And rather than overcome the obstacle or fight the resistance, it's often more effective to simply find another path toward the goal.

This can take many forms--in my case breaking down the large goal of "being healthy" into five components gave me five paths to follow simultaneously.  And while my intention is to pursue them all every day, that's not necessarily feasible--as shown in the occasional inverse correlation between sleep and work.  But having multiple paths at my disposal allows me to continue to make progress on at least one of them every day.  (It's pretty rare that I go "5 for 5" on a given day, but I don't think I've ever gone "0 for 5" either.)

Another version of this strategy involves looking for experiences that parallel the goal we're pursuing in other aspects of life.  My practice as a coach focuses on helping people be more effective and fulfilled in their professional lives, but in many cases my clients and students find the work-related issues they're addressing a little too daunting to tackle head-on.  In that case, an option is to look for parallels in their personal lives, where there's often more support for change and where the risks of change can seem lower.

5) Start small and scale up as needed. 

Implicit in all of the strategies above is the idea that it becomes easier to make big changes when we're already experiencing success at a smaller scale.  (Just note how many times I use the word "small" above.)

Tackling smaller changes not only allows us to feel the reward and sense of efficacy that comes with accomplishment, but also helps us learn some important things about ourselves, such as our assumptions and mental models, other sources of resistance, how we respond to setbacks and what support we find most helpful.  We learn best when we're slightly stressed but not overwhelmed, and changing at a smaller scale first allows us to have as much information as possible as our disposal when the stakes are higher.

Successful small changes may also reduce the need for large-scale change.  Change is often driven by a desire to be happier, but research shows that we exercise control over our sense of happiness and fulfillment most effectively through small-scale, consistent intentional activities, not through large-scale changes in our life circumstances.

Finally, changing successfully at a smaller scale allows us to shift our mindset.  We may think of ourselves as people who don't--or can't--change, and we may think of change as something alien or frightening.  A running joke of mine with my wife is "I hate change"--and at one level that simply means that I enjoy ritual and routine; for example, I love returning to familiar restaurants, because I like re-connecting with the people we come to know through repeated visits.  But at another level, I'm also saying that "Change is scary," and it's the successful efforts to change at a smaller scale that allow me to feel calmer and more courageous when the scale increases.  I'm not sure what changes are in store for me at the moment, but the shift in mindset I've experienced by changing in small ways over the last 4 years will undoubtedly serve me well when I decide to take on something bigger.

Photo courtesy of the United States Sports Academy.

Velcro

The generic name for Velcro is "hook-and-loop fastener," a term that I find useful when thinking about John Gottman's concept of "the bid," which is what he calls "the fundamental unit of emotional communication." As Gottman writes in The Relationship Cure:

A bid can be a question, a gesture, a look, a touch--any single expression that says, "I want to feel connected to you."  A response to a bid is just that--a positive or negative answer to somebody's request for emotional connection.

My work as a coach--and particularly my work with groups, like my new T-group at Stanford that I just joined today--makes it eminently clear that we seek to connect with other people in all the ways that Gottman describes and countless others.  I've come to see all interpersonal behavior, including my own, as a series of more or less effective bids, because no matter what other goals we have in a given interaction, at some level we're simply looking to connect with the other person and to have that feeling reciprocated.

Some of us connect readily with others, and some of us are easy to connect to. The former put out highly effective bids--if they were velcro, they'd have plenty of hooks--while the latter respond effectively to bids--if they were velcro, they'd have endless loops.

As silly as it sounds, I find the idea of "human velcro" a useful metaphor because it makes me stop and ask: What hooks am I putting out there?  How effectively am I bidding to connect with this particular person?  Just as important, what loops am I putting out there?  How effectively am I perceiving and responding to their bids?

(If you'd like to explore Gottman's work on this concept further, his Bid for Connection quiz is a thought-provoking place to start.)

Velcro image courtesy of The Analytics Ecology and sound effect courtesy of SFX Source.

My last post on Why I (Keep Trying To) Meditate included the following passage:

I know that my resistance to meditation is an indicator that it's a healthy practice for me, and the fact that it's difficult for me to do it daily is one of the primary reasons I keep at it.  I'm not saying I should force myself to do all the things I resist doing.  Helping people deconstruct a rule like that--a powerful mental model, by the way--is something I do in my coaching practice, and I strive to do the same in my own life.

Rather, I'm saying that there are some specific steps that occur in the meditation process that are valuable for me to experience precisely because of my resistance to the practice.

Which prompted Richard Winters to note that it reminded him of Steven Pressfield's War of Art.  I wasn't familar with Pressfield, so I looked him up.  He's an accomplished writer of historical fiction probably best known for golfing tale The Legend of Bagger Vance, but he also served as a Marine in the 1960s and has worked "as an advertising copywriter, schoolteacher, tractor-trailer driver, bartender, oilfield roustabout and attendant in a mental hospital."  What a life!

And I was deeply struck by the power of this quote on his About page:

My writing philosophy is a kind of warrior code—internal rather than external—in which the enemy is identified as those forms of self-sabotage that I call "Resistance" with a capital R (in The War of Art). The technique for combating these foes can be described as "turning pro."

I don't know what Pressfield means by "turning pro," but I completely resonate with the idea that our greatest enemy lies within and that we hold ourselves back primarily through self-sabotage.  I'm reminded that in my work as a coach it's essential to meet any form of resistance--especially my own--with curiosity.  Just digging in and pushing back harder generates a lot of heat but rarely results in actual motion.

 Photo by Bailey Weaver.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Photo by Holly Ford Brown.

I'm not a very good meditator--in fact, I'm terrible at it.  I say that tongue-in-cheek, knowing full well that striving to be a "good" meditator is an exercise in absurdity--but what I mean is that I find meditation difficult, I regularly avoid doing it, and yet I persist in the practice.  Why?

Two of my standing goals are to exercise and mediate daily.  I track goals like this using a simple tool called Don't Break the Chain, and looking back at the last six months of 2011, I can see that I exercised exactly 75% of the time--138 days of out of 184.  But during that same span I meditated just 45% of the time--83 days.  See what I mean?  Not very good :-)

But in truth I know that my resistance to meditation is an indicator that it's a healthy practice for me, and the fact that it's difficult for me to do it daily is one of the primary reasons I keep at it.  I'm not saying I should force myself to do all the things I resist doing.  Helping people deconstruct a rule like that--a powerful mental model, by the way--is something I do in my coaching practice, and I strive to do the same in my own life.

Rather, I'm saying that there are some specific steps that occur in the meditation process that are valuable for me to experience precisely because of my resistance to the practice.  So what are those steps?  What happens for me in the meditation process?

I see it as a four-stage cycle:

1. Stillness
2. Awareness
3. Choice
4. Discipline

(Here's a 2-slide PowerPoint [60 KB] of the graphics below.) 

It starts with Stillness, which sounds easy and yet can be quite hard for me.  My mind is always in motion, and I'm constantly thinking and planning ahead.  I'm tracking an endless list of ideas and to-dos, and while I find this stimulating, it also creates a lot of noise.  (The last time I re-committed myself to regular meditation, in early 2011, I described the experience as feeling "mentally itchy.")  Meditation allows (and compels) me to just be still.

The next step is Awareness.  In the stillness I can see where my attention goes and sense what I'm feeling (both emotionally and physically) much more clearly.)  Note that I'm not saying that I "clear my mind" or "think of nothing" or anything like that.  My mind's still working away, and thoughts and emotions continue to rush through me, but I'm much more aware of them. 

The next step is Choice.  The awareness of my thoughts and emotions that comes with the stillness allows me to be more intentional, and to focus my attention and make use of my emotions in ways that better support my goals.  This isn't to say that I'm always seeking to consciously influence my cognitive and emotional processing; that's neither possible nor desirable.  But even the ability to simply notice what I'm thinking about and feeling allows me to choose to filter out the noise and focus on more meaningful cognitive and emotional signals.

The final stage of the process is Discipline.  And while I use that word deliberately, I want to be careful to avoid the negative connotation that can often accompany it.  Jon Kabat Zinn notes that our minds will constantly wander during meditation, just like a puppy wandering away while being paper-trained, and we need to treat ourselves just as would treat the puppy--not harshly, but compassionately, with firmness and with care.  Because the cycle described here repeats not just from day to day but many, many times in the course of a single meditation session, and the act of noticing that my mind has wandered and is speeding up again, slowing it down and returning to a sense of stillness is itself a useful form of disciplined practice.

I'm not off to a great start in 2012--I've meditated just 6 times in 15 days.  But writing this post has helped clarify the value I derive from the practice and inspires me to do it even more.  Many thanks to Bill George, whose discussion of his own meditation practice has been highly motivating.

Two concluding thoughts: First, there's an extensive and growing body of research demonstrating the psychological, physiological and performance benefits of meditation.  That's a post for another day, but for now I'll express my continued thanks to David Rock for pointing me in that direction.

And finally, I'm reminded of the master's dictum: If you don't have time to meditate once a day, then meditate twice.  I'm all too aware that as I get busier and have less time to meditate, I tend to cycle faster and need to put on the brakes all the more.  I'm not saying I live by that credo, but it's an aspiration.

I'm doing a workshop on High-Performance Communication with the executive committee of the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab, a great organization that supports entrepreneurs and startups.  To help the committee members prepare for our session, I've compiled the following series of extracts from my writing over the past few years.  Many thanks to the social psychologists, neuroscientists, business thinkers and fellow coaches cited below whose work has informed my own.  And thanks to VLAB--I'm looking forward to working with you!

Photo by Alexander Lyubavin.

Printer-Friendly Version (PDF, 274 KB), requires Adobe Reader

Contents

1) Excellence

2) Safety, Trust, Intimacy

3) Happiness

4) The SCARF Model

5) Soft Startups

6) Talking About Feelings

7) Powerful Questions

8) The Problem with Positive Feedback

9) Taking Risks

1) Excellence

Most of my clients and students are seeking to be more effective and fulfilled as professionals, and a resource to which I've referred people for years is Peter Drucker's Managing Oneself, primarily because of his perspective on excellence:

One should waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence.  It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.  And yet most people--especially most teachers and most organizations--concentrate on making incompetent performers into mediocre ones.  Energy, resources, and time should go instead into making a competent person into a star performer.

So we need to ask ourselves: What are my strengths?  Where can I improve from first-rate performance to excellence?  Where should I be focusing my energy, resources and time?  Just as important, where am I wasting effort trying to improve from incompetence to mediocrity?

2) Safety, Trust, Intimacy

Every group serves as an implicit learning laboratory in which we come to come to understand how our interactions with others support (or undermine) our efforts to achieve our goals.But some groups are more effective than others at helping the members learn, increase their awareness and adapt their behavior as needed, and the group’s levels of safety, trust and intimacy are key factors in determining its effectiveness in this regard.

Every group's experience is rooted in a set of initial conditions: How and why were we assembled?  What will our first meeting be like?  What will we discuss there?  These initial conditions form the foundation for all subsequent layers of the group dynamic.

The foundational qualities that define a group are the levels of safety, trust and intimacy: Safety =  A belief that we won't get hurt.  Trust = We mean what we say and we say what we mean.  Intimacy = A willingness to make the private public.

When safety, trust and intimacy are established, they support the actions that lead to greater success as a group: experimentation, risk-taking and a willingness to be vulnerable.

When we feel able to experiment, take risks and make ourselves vulnerable, our ability to learn, to increase our self-awareness (and our awareness of others) and to change our behavior in order to achieve our goals more effectively increases dramatically.

The process of building one layer upon another occurs in a unique context—so in addition to asking whether learning and change are taking place, we also need to assess how the group's context supports (or inhibits) the development of the underlying layers in the group experience.

So we need to ask...

• How will the group's initial conditions support or inhibit the establishment of safety, trust and intimacy?
• At each step of the group's subsequent development, are we increasing or decreasing the levels of these qualities?
• What factors in the group experience support the development of these qualities?  And what factors inhibit these qualities?

 A final point regarding feedback: While excessive delicacy and indirectness inhibit learning, the degree of candor in a group must be calibrated to the group’s current levels of safety, trust and intimacy.  Feedback attuned to these qualities can increase their presence in the group by stretching the group’s capacity for direct discussion.  But feedback that fails to take these qualities into account can actually lead to less safety, trust and intimacy than before and undermine the group’s ability to learn and change.

3) Happiness

A fundamental premise of mine is that organizational success starts with leaders who feel a personal sense of happiness and fulfillment.  Not all successful organizations are led by happy people, and not all unsuccessful organizations are led by unhappy people (although I suspect the correlation is higher in the latter case), but I believe that, all else being equal, happy people make better leaders, and happy leaders build better organizations.  Research shows that we have a substantial degree of control over our levels of happiness and fulfillment, and we exercise that control most effectively through small-scale, consistent intentional activities, not through large-scale changes in our life circumstances.

Sonja Lyubomirsky is a social psychologist whose research on happiness resulted in this graph.  The image conveys three of the most important (and surprising) findings from recent work in this field:

1) Half of our happiness is attributable to a "genetic set point" inherited from our parents and similar to other genetically influenced predispositions, such as weight.  So those of us with low happiness set points will have to work harder to achieve and maintain happiness, while those of us with high set points will find it easier to be happy under similar conditions.

2) A surprisingly small amount of our happiness—just 10 percent—is determined by our life circumstances.  Lyubomirsky writes:

[O]nly about 10 percent of the variance in our happiness levels is explained by differences in life circumstances or situations--that is, whether we are rich or poor, healthy or unhealthy, beautiful or plain, married or divorced, etc. If with a magic wand we could put [a group of people] into the same set of circumstances (same house, same spouse, same place of birth, same face, same aches and pains), the differences in their happiness levels would be reduced by a measly 10 percent... An impressive body of research now shows that trying to be happy by changing our life situations ultimately will not work.

3) Finally, the remaining 40 percent of our happiness is determined by our behavior--intentional activities that we might call "happiness strategies."  This is the core of Lyubomirsky's research: We can't alter our genetic set points, and changes in life circumstances don't have a lasting impact on our happiness, but we can increase and sustain our happiness through intentional activities.  Lyubomirsky describes twelve "evidence-based happiness-increasing strategies whose practice is supported by scientific research," which include several that involve interpersonal communication:

• Expressing Gratitude: Counting your blessings for what you have (either to a close other or privately, through contemplation or a journal) or conveying your gratitude and appreciation to one or more individuals whom you've never properly thanked.
• Practicing Acts of Kindness: Doing good things for others, whether friends or strangers, either directly or anonymously, either spontaneously or planned.
• Nurturing Social Relationships: Picking a relationship in need of strengthening and investing time and energy in healing, cultivating, affirming and enjoying it.
• Learning to Forgive: Keeping a journal or writing a letter in which you work on letting go of anger and resentment toward one or more individuals who have hurt or wronged you.

4) The SCARF Model

David Rock is an executive coach who for many years has been exploring the field of neuroscience and its implications for management, coaching, and organizational life, and his SCARF Model provides a framework for understanding how our brains respond to perceived threats and rewards.  Rock writes:

[T]wo themes are emerging from social neuroscience. Firstly, that much of our motivation driving social behavior is governed by an overarching organizing principle of minimizing threat and maximizing reward (Gordon, 2000). Secondly, that several domains of social experience draw upon the same brain networks to maximize reward and minimize threat as the brain networks used for primary survival needs (Lieberman and Eisenberger, 2008). In other words, social needs are treated in much the same way in the brain as the need for food and water...

The SCARF model involves five domains of human social experience: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness.

Status is about relative importance to others. Certainty concerns being able to predict the future. Autonomy provides a sense of control over events. Relatedness is a sense of safety with others, of friend rather than foe. And fairness is a perception of fair exchanges between people.

These five domains activate either the 'primary reward' or 'primary threat' circuitry (and associated networks) of the brain. For example, a perceived threat to one's status activates similar brain networks to a threat to one's life. In the same way, a perceived increase in fairness activates the same reward circuitry as receiving a monetary reward.

As this graphic illustrates, threat responses are usually much more powerful than reward responses, and thus we move away from threats more quickly and more vigorously than we move toward rewards.  So it's not enough to give equal emphasis to rewards in our leadership, management and communication practices--our brains' disproportionate response to perceived social threats implies that we need to put a much greater weight on efforts intended to generate a reward response, and take great pains to avoid triggering a threat response.

5) Soft Startups

How do you initiate a difficult conversation?  Going in with guns blazing rarely results in a successful outcome.  Social psychologist John Gottman coined the term "soft startup" to describe the process of initiating a tough discussion gently and compassionately:

1) Start with something positive that conveys your intent to reach a successful resolution--but note that this doesn't mean inventing something nice to say.  If you're struggling for words, simply saying that you want to have this conversation because you care about the other person and your shared goals can be helpful.

2) Use statements beginning with "I" that express your perspective and feelings, rather than statements beginning with "you" that focus on the other person.  (And don't assume that your perspective is the only possible truth.)

3) Don't make assumptions about the other person's perspective.  They may not even be aware that there's a problem, or it may not be their fault--and they may be happy to help solve it if they're approached in the right way.

4) Be direct.  State your request clearly, firmly and politely--while being sure to also acknowledge any concessions that are granted.

This is just the beginning of the process, of course, and you'll need a number of additional skills in your communication repertoire to succeed.  But Gottman's research shows that a soft startup is a crucial step in resolving disagreements successfully.

6) Talking About Feelings

Photo by malias.

We know that talking about our feelings--a process neuroscientists call affect labeling--has a powerful impact on our ability to manage difficult emotions and, in turn, on our relationships...but why?  What happens when we do?

Stephanie West Allen has written about "the neuroscience research showing that labeling your feelings can quiet your brain and increase impulse control," most notably a groundbreaking article by Matthew Lieberman, Naomi Eisenberger et al, Putting Feelings into Words (PDF):

Putting feelings into words has long been thought to be one of the best ways to manage negative emotional experiences. Talk therapies have been formally practiced for more than a century and, although varying in structure and content, are commonly based on the assumption that talking about one's feelings and problems is an effective method for minimizing the impact of negative emotional events on current experience...

Recent neuroimaging research has begun to offer insight into a possible neurocognitive mechanism by which putting feelings into words may alleviate negative emotional responses...  [T]hese results suggest that putting feelings into words may activate [brain regions associated with emotional processing], which in turn may dampen the response of the amygdala [a brain region associated with negative emotion], thus helping to alleviate emotional distress...

In summary, this study provides the first unambiguous evidence that affect labeling...produces diminished responses to negative emotional images in the amygdala and other limbic regions...

These findings begin to shed light on how putting negative feelings into words can help regulate negative experience, a process that may ultimately contribute to better mental and physical health.

7) Powerful Questions

Photo by Erik Charlton.

What kinds of questions do you usually ask?  We're often drawn to yes/no questions--they're simple and direct.  But when simplicity and directness aren't our only goals, yes/no questions can be problematic.  They surface a minimum of new information because they don't invite the other person into a dialogue and they constrain the boundaries of the conversation.

When we do move beyond yes/no questions, we tend ask why? questions, such as "Why did you do that?" or "Why did you do it that way?"  But why? questions can be heard as "What the hell were you thinking?" and provoke defensiveness.

Scott Ginsberg has developed a list of 62 useful questions, along with a one-line explanation of why they work, and and here are the 20 I find most powerful:

1) How are you creating…?
Proves that someone has a choice.

2) How could you have…?
Focused on past performance improvement.

3) How do you feel…?
Feelings are good.

4) How do you plan to…?
Future oriented, process oriented, action oriented.

5) How do you want…?
Visualizes ideal conditions.

6) How does this relate to…?
Keeps someone on point, uncovers connections between things.

7) How else could this be…?
Encourages open, option-oriented and leverage-based thinking.

8) How might you…?
All about potential and possibility.

9) How much time…?
Identifies patterns of energy investment.

10) How often do you…?
Gets an idea of someone’s frequency.

11) How well do you…?
Uncovers abilities.

12) How will you know when/if…?
Predicts outcomes of ideal situations.

13) If you could change…?
Visualizes improvement.

14) If you stopped…?
Cause-effect question.

15) Is anybody going to…?
Deciding if something even matters.

16) What are you doing that…?
Assesses present actions.

17) What are you willing to…?
Explores limits.

18) What can you do right now…?
Focuses on immediate action being taken.

19) What did you learn…?
Because people don’t care what you know; only what you learned.

20) What else can you…?
Because there’s always options.

Notice the structure of these questions. They're almost all how? or what? questions, which encourage the other person to take a moment and look inside before answering.  They can certainly be challenging--"What can you do right now?" is hardly a softball--but they're also non-judgmental, which minimizes any defensiveness.  Just as important, they're not leading--they don't suggest that there's a "right" answer--which encourages the other person to answer thoughtfully and honestly, rather than framing an answer to please you.

8) The Problem with Positive Feedback

Photo by Aaron Matthews.

Positive feedback frequently fails to have the desired impact and can even make many of us feel uncomfortable.  But isn't praise supposed to make us feel good?  What's going on, and what can we do about it?

When we have bad news to deliver, we often try to soften the blow by beginning and ending with something positive, a practice that I distinguish from the "soft startup" principle discussed above.  Soft startups begin with a positive statement that conveys our intent to reach a successful resolution and helps avoid triggering a threat response in the other person.  In contrast, "sandwiching" critical feedback between superficial praise eventually causes people to hear anything positive as a hollow preamble to the real message.  Rather than feeling genuinely appreciated, they're waiting for the other shoe to drop.  So while I do advise beginning difficult conversations with a soft startup, those comments must be authentic and relevant to the issue at hand.

Like any currency, positive feedback can become devalued or can be perceived as counterfeit.  Richard Farson and Ralph Keyes have noted that praise can be a "'dissatisfier.' Like a salary, it is less likely to motivate when it's given out than demotivate when it's expected but withheld."  So the solution isn't to withhold praise--when it's expected (or even just hoped for), it's absence can be a powerful corrosive.  Rather, we need to insure that the positive feedback we do deliver is consistently perceived as meaningful, authentic and heartfelt.

Finally, we need to take some responsibility as feedback recipients.  We often resist the validation that comes with positive feedback precisely because we want it so badly.  The depth of that desire makes us incredibly vulnerable--so much so that we're willing to avoid any validation in order to insure that we're never embarrassed by our hunger for it or--even worse--by falling prey to inauthentic validation from manipulators or phonies.  When we say we want candid feedback, we typically expect that it's going to be hard to hear criticism--and it can be--but it can be even harder to hear (and truly acknowledge) real praise.  If we blindly react to praise with (in Peter Vajda's words) "skepticism, dis-belief, arm's-length appreciation,and/or embarrassment," that's going to make the giver feel awkward, if not resentful, and it's going to keep us from developing a stronger relationship.  As always in interpersonal communication, it's a two-way street. 

9) Taking Risks

Phil Stutz is a psychiatrist based in Hollywood who has mentored and collaborated with therapist Barry Michels, and in a recent interview Stutz discussed the pair's innovative approach to helping their clients overcome obstacles by embracing risk:

The risk you take has a feedback effect on the unconscious.  The unconscious will give you ideas and it wants you to act on them.  The more courage you have when you act, the more ideas it will give you.

In my own experience, when I've quelled my fears and pushed myself to take meaningful risks, the reward has been a renewed sense of passion, a clearer sense of purpose, and a deeper connection with life.  This concept evokes for me the feeling of standing at a cliff's edge, anticipating the thrill to come if I take the leap, but held back by fear--of a crash landing, of unanticipated difficulties, of the shame that would accompany failure.  But Stutz's framing encourages me to see that my fear--and my courage--can be self-reinforcing through their influence on my unconscious, and that taking a bold leap can be a powerful way of breaking fear's grip and unleashing my courage.

Photo by Justin Ornellas.

I recently bought these smiley-face stickers, which are produced by a company called Teacher Created Resources, and this message on the back of the package caught my attention:

Imagine the great things you can do with these fantastic stickers!

Reward Success!

Encourage Progress!

Notice Accomplishment!

Restore Confidence!

Compliment Effort!

Decorate Completion!

Recognize Good Conduct!

Observe Exellence!

Honor Attempt!

Comfort Struggle!

While it's slightly exhausting to read--so many! exclamation points!--I also find it inspiring.  I'm reminded of the many wonderful teachers I've had, and I recall with gratitude the many ways in which they expressed not only their commitment to my learning but also their investment in me as a person.  I hope I have a similar impact on my own clients and students, and while I trust in my abilities as a coach, I'm also prompted to wonder how I could do an even better job.  It's important to me to go the extra mile, just like a teacher who might pay for these stickers out of their own pocket to augment their limited classroom supplies.

Finally, I see a clear parallel between the impact of a smiley face sticker on a child and the many small ways in which we can convey our support and caring to each other as adults.  Research shows that activities such as expressing gratitude or practicing acts of kindness have a surprisingly large impact on our happiness.  This research reinforces what I see in my work as a coach every day--the little things really do matter, and it's important to look for and step into opportunities to encourage progress, restore confidence, comfort struggle.

Yesterday's post on setbacks and mindset (as well as last month's post on mental models) resulted in some further thoughts on just what we mean by "mindset," and I've provisionally arrived at the four definitions below.  By no means are they mutually exclusive, and the overlap is intentional; each definition simply provides another way of looking at and making effective use of the central concept.

1) As I mentioned yesterday, mindset refers to the overarching idea that what we think--and particularly what we think about ourselves--influences how we perceive the world around us and how we experience that world.  Our thoughts, perceptions, and emotions shape our reality.  A perfect example of this is the placebo effect; quoting again from yesterday's post, recent research has shown that "A particular mind-set or belief about one's body or health may lead to improvements in disease symptoms as well as changes in appetite, brain chemicals and even vision..." 

2) A second definition of mindset is the process of understanding cognitive biases and principles of neuroscience in order to leverage them and turn them to our advantage, rather than be buffeted about by them.  Yesterday I wrote about a cognitive bias called the "fundamental attribution error"--ascribing causality to personal characteristics when causality actually lies with the situation--and how awareness of this bias and its impact on our mindset can allow us to cope more effectively with setbacks.  I've also written about other heuristics that can lead us astray, such as availability bias--"the tendency to judge the likelihood of an event by the ease with which relevant examples come to mind"--and affective errors--"the tendency to make decisions based on what we wish were true."  Recent research on neuroscience and brain function provides additional insights into why we act the way we do, and one of the best examples is David Rock's SCARF model, which "captures the common factors that can activate a reward or threat response in social situations."

3) On a more personal level, a third definition of mindset is an awareness of our existing mental models, beliefs and assumptions, many of which are the result of past learning experiences and which may not have been re-examined or updated in the interim.  Such awareness allows us to see how these concepts influence our actions and, if we choose, to update them to reflect our current circumstances and subsequent learning.  In turn, this process allows us to make different choices based on more recent information and better suited to current circumstances.  Last month I discussed the impact of my self-image as a public speaker: "I had trapped myself in my own mental model: believing I was a poor speaker led me to avoid speaking opportunities, which prevented me from ever improving.  Today I still get nervous before a speech or presentation, but I view that response simply as a manifestation of my desire to do well, not as damning evidence of my ineffectiveness."

4) Finally, a very specific and highly useful definition of mindset is the idea at the heart of the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, who sees a pivotal distinction between a "growth" mindset and a "fixed" mindset.  As I noted yesterday in a citation from Dweck's website:

In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort. They're wrong.

In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.

As I noted above, these definitions are intentionally overlapping; I'm not seeking to distinguish them as entirely separate concepts but rather trying to get sufficient clarity on the threads and themes woven into the concept of "mindset" in order to make use of all of them more effectively.

Photo by Alex Valli.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Thinking about some recent personal and professional setbacks--both mine and others'--has led me to reflect on the intersection of two topics that often come up in my coaching practice: mindset and the fundamental attribution error.

By "mindset" I'm referring to the tremendous power exerted by our beliefs, assumptions and mental models.  What we think--and particularly what we think about ourselves--exerts tremendous influence over how we perceive the world around us and how we experience that world.  To take just one example, recent research on the placebo effect has shown that "A particular mind-set or belief about one's body or health may lead to improvements in disease symptoms as well as changes in appetite, brain chemicals and even vision..."  (Of particular importance is the ability of positive expectations and conditioning to create an openness to change.)

The concept of a "fixed mindset" vs. a "growth mindset" is at the heart of the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck:

In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort. They're wrong.

In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.

Having a fixed mindset rather than a growth mindset can have a profound impact on how we cope with setbacks and mistakes.  In a recent post on Learning from Mistakes I cited a reference by science writer Jonah Lehrer to Dweck's research:

[P]eople with a fixed mindset see mistakes as a dismal failure--a sign that we aren't talented enough for the task in question--[while] those with a growth mindset see mistakes as an essential precursor of knowledge, the engine of education...

But while I believe firmly in this research and can attest to the power of mindset both in my own life and in the lives of my clients and students, I'm not suggesting that the biggest challenges we face can be resolved merely by adopting a "positive attitude," or that our mindsets are at fault when we struggle.

And this is where the second concept I've been reflecting on comes in--the "fundamental attribution error" is a common cognitive bias originally named by Stanford psychologist Lee Ross.  It was taught to me in business school (by the outstanding Roberto Fernandez) as:

Ascribing causality to personal characteristics when causality actually lies with the situation.

As I've written before, "We see it at work most clearly with high-profile, archetypal leaders--presidents, CEOs, coaches, quarterbacks--who are hailed as geniuses when their organizations accomplish their goals and derided as bums when their organizations stumble."  But it's at play in our own daily lives as well.  While we surely bear some responsibility for our failure in almost all cases, it's inaccurate to put the blame solely on our shoulders while ignoring the context (interpersonal, organizational, cultural) in which it occurred.

I think the intersection of mindset and the fundamental attribution error is critical when it comes to how we deal with setbacks.  The same cognitive bias that leads us to ignore our good fortune and take more credit than we should when we succeed also leads us to ignore those situational factors that contribute to our failures.  Our ignorance of the fundamental attribution error (or our reluctance to apply it to our own lives) can cause us to see setbacks as solely our responsibility, feeding into a negative mindset and making it more difficult to recover.

I realize there's a slippery slope here that could easily be abused by the unscrupulous and irresponsible.  By no means am I suggesting that we avoid holding ourselves accountable.  But it's significant to me that the research by Michigan State's Jason Moser on learning from mistakes cited by Lehrer suggests that those who learn best from mistakes spend a substantially higher amount of time and energy focusing on and reviewing what they did wrong in order to learn from it.  They don't shirk responsibility or fail to hold themselves accountable--just the opposite.

I believe that the judicious application of the fundamental attribution error can give us a fuller, more accurate perspective on our setbacks, which can have a meaningful impact on our mindset.  If we're able to clearly distinguish between those factors that are truly our responsibility and within our control to change, and any situational factors--or even just bad luck--that we have no control over, we'll be able to focus our energies where they'll be most useful and to maintain a mindset that will support recovery, learning and growth.

Photo by dfinnecy.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Recent reflections on bad coaching have prompted some further thoughts on good coaching, and I find myself returning to the metaphor of coaching as a journey at sea, a concept I first discussed last year after the loss of Roanak Desai, one of my students at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.  Although I'm a confirmed landlubber and don't enjoy the literal experience of being out on a small craft, it's a compelling metaphor for several reasons:

It's Not My Boat

Coaching inevitably involves helping a client reach a destination, and as a coach it can be easy to fall prey to the illusion that it's my boat, I've invited the client on board, and after we've reached our destination they'll step ashore.  But that gets things exactly backwards: it's the client's boat, they've invited me on board, and after our work is done I'll go ashore while they continue on to the next leg of the voyage.

This framing helps me view both the coaching relationship and my role in it from the most useful perspective.  I'm no mere passenger along for the ride, but I'm not the captain or even the navigator.  I don't choose the destination or chart the course--that's up to the client.  I do ask a lot of questions on those topics and occasionally offer advice and feedback, but responsibility for decision-making rests firmly in the client's hands.

Tradewinds and Currents

The tradewinds and currents that surround us make it easier to follow certain courses, and knowing where they lead allows us to make informed decisions about whether to follow or resist them.  This is particularly important at sea, where there are no predetermined routes and we must ultimately select a course to make progress--unless we decide to drift along, which is also a valid option.

This dynamic exists both within a single coaching conversation and over the arc of the coaching relationship.  The client and I both bring to the process a set of experiences and preferences that will influence our choices.  In addition, our work is taking place within the context of our respective professional and personal lives, which will further influence our shared experience.  Everything in a coaching relationship is affected by these factors, from the issues a client seeks to address to our responses in any given moment.  The more we know about these factors, the better we'll be able to understand their effect on the coaching process and harness them to further our progress rather than be driven off course.

Deeper Waters

All journeys begin in the shallow confines of a safe harbor, and some are destined to skirt the coast, staying within sight of the shore and never going too far out to sea.  This is fine if we don't have far to go, or if we're content to take a long time to get there.  But in some cases we need to venture out over deeper waters, which ultimately requires taking some risks.

Like all relationships, coaching relationships are built on a foundation of safety and trust.  A client can feel vulnerable simply sitting down with me, particularly if they haven't worked with a coach before, and this can be true even with my students at Stanford, where coaching is commonplace.  As a coach I have to attune myself to the client's perspective and earn their trust, and this is a highly variable process.  A certain level of trust is established within minutes, but it may take days, weeks or even months to progress to deeper levels.

While safety and trust are being established, coaching conversations will proceed in ways that involve less risk for both the client and myself, and this is both natural and desirable--we're just starting our journey together.  Only after we feel a sufficient sense of safety and trust can we venture into discussions that are more emotionally intimate or touch on more challenging topics.  As a coach it's important to avoid steering for these deeper waters to prove my effectiveness--that's a form of bad coaching--but it's equally important to help the client feel safe enough to travel them with me and to let them know that we can go there when and if they choose.

Photo by Jule Berlin.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

A friend sent me a link to the 2006 short film Validation, a 16-minute parable that wraps a conventional boy-meets-girl story around a novel idea: A parking lot attendant re-interprets his job description and rather than just stamp customers' tickets he truly validates them with heartfelt positive feedback.  People respond so avidly that the line for validation stretches out of the parking lot.  The attendant embarks on a global effort to spread the love, and widespread happiness ensues...except in his own life, because he can't win over the (improbably beautiful) driver's license photographer at the local DMV.  He tries, fails, eventually succeeds.  The End.

"Validation" did make me smile, as expected, and it also made me think.  Validation is central to my work as a coach, and what the film gets right is how hungry we all are for it.  But what the film gets wrong is that, despite this hunger, validation makes most of us feel very uncomfortable.  We don't stand in line to get it--we run away from it.  These two responses are interrelated, of course: We resist validation so much precisely because we want it so badly.  The depth of that desire makes us incredibly vulnerable--so much so that we're willing to avoid any validation in order to insure that we're never embarrassed by our hunger for it or--even worse--by falling prey to inauthentic validation from manipulators or phonies.  When we say we want candid feedback, we typically expect that it's going to be hard to hear criticism--and it can be--but it can be even harder to hear (and truly acknowledge) real praise.

I belong to a group of 12 people that meets for an evening once each month.  We're all current or former facilitators in Stanford's Interpersonal Dynamics class (aka "Touchy Feely"), and most of us are professionally involved in helping people grow and develop in one way or another.  We began last month's session with an exercise that involved one person volunteering, and then the rest of the group speaking up and sharing affirmative words or phrases that came to mind as we reflected on that person.  In the abstract it sounds so simple and easy as to be meaningless--but in person it was surprisingly difficult.

I found the idea stimulating, and I volunteered to go second.  And it was rewarding, at first.  People said things like "direct," "genuine," "savvy," "loving," and "loyal," and that felt great to hear.  But I soon grew so uncomfortable my palms began to sweat, and I actually felt embarrassed.  Bear in mind that I was sitting comfortably with a handful of people I know well and trust implicitly.  I honestly appreciated everything they said, and the whole process probably took less than 2 minutes.  But even in those circumstances, I almost couldn't bear to be validated; it's no wonder that we usually find the experience practically traumatic.

I don't have a pat answer to this dilemma--it's been nearly 5 years since I first wrote about The Problem with Positive Feedback, and it's still an issue I wrestle with, both personally and in my work with clients and students.  But I have learned that our refusal to accept validation, like all resistance, should invite our curiosity, not our collusion.

It's also noteworthy to me that had I asked the group to stop when I began to feel uncomfortable, I would have missed out on the most meaningful piece of feedback I got: One of the very last things someone said to describe me was "walks the talk."  I can't think of any higher praise than that, and I feel a little surge of pride just remembering it.  I also feel myself pulling back from sharing it here, as though I were boasting--but I'm not going to collude with that feeling.  I do try to walk my talk, and while I certainly don't always succeed, it means a lot to know that I succeed often enough that people take notice.

Postscript: My friend and colleague Inbal Demri-Shaham, who led the exercise described above, was thoughtful enough to write down the list of words and phrases the group shared with each person.  I brought my list home and put it up on the fridge, like a kid's report card.  And, like a kid, I felt both proud and sheepish showing it to my wife the next morning.  She enjoyed reading it, until she came to "savvy," which she mis-read as "sexy."  "Sexy?  What the hell???"

If good coaching feels like a trip in a tandem kayak, or a belay on a tough climb or even a trapeze catch--all meaningful experiences shared with a trusted partner--then bad coaching feels like hammering screws--a solo effort on the part of the coach that can make a lot of noise but accomplishes very little.

As a coach it's been my privilege to take plenty of kayak rides with my clients and students, but over the years I've done my share of hammering screws as well, and I've realized that bad coaching typically results from underlying needs of my own, particularly a need for the client to experience progress or to achieve some sense of closure.  This may sound paradoxical.  Don't coaches want our clients to experience progress?  Isn't closure a desirable outcome of the coaching process?  Generally, yes...but there are some important caveats.

My interest in my clients' progress is usually aligned with my desire to an effective coach.  And my interest in achieving closure--whether that means resolving a particular issue or ultimately concluding the coaching relationship--usually supports both my clients' progress and, more importantly, their independence and self-sufficiency.  To be clear, while these interests primarily serve my clients' needs, they also allow me to feel a sense of fulfillment and efficacy, and I believe that having this personal stake in the coaching process actually makes me a better coach because I'm not a disinterested bystander--I care deeply about my clients, and I'm invested in their success.

But it's important for me to monitor these interests and to gauge their intensity; if I'm feeling a sense of urgency around them, it may be that my need to be seen as effective or another personal motive has kicked into overdrive, and it's masquerading as support for my client.  The telltale evidence that this dynamic is at play is my client sensing that I'm pushing a solution on them, relying on a single framework or strategy in my approach, or simply rushing toward closure before they're ready to move on.

It's worth noting that bad coaching can happen within the context of a good coaching relationship--or even in the middle of an otherwise good coaching conversation.  I've been privileged to work with people who trust me enough to tell me when we've gotten off-track, when our coaching relationship no longer feels like a true partnership.  This feedback has been essential in allowing me to understand these dynamics and to see how my legitimate needs as a person usually support my effectiveness as a coach--and occasionally get in the way of my client's needs and the coaching process.  I haven't mastered any of this (and don't expect to anytime soon), but I'm grateful for the many opportunities I've had to keep working on it.

Thanks to Cathy Carmody and Coert Visser, whose thoughtful response and thought-provoking question prompted me to dig deeper and mine a couple of tweets for some more meaningful learning.

Photo by Justin Baeder.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

A few weeks ago a family became lost in a corn maze in Massachusetts and called 911 in a panic.  Police rushed to the scene and found them, unharmed, just 25 feet from the entrance to the maze.  A brief flurry of media coverage resulted, in which the family were generally portrayed as dimwits lacking common sense.  But mocking these people obscures the fact that we've all had similar experiences; their predicament was just an unusually literal example of being trapped by a mental model.

Many commenters wondered why the family didn't simply walk through the corn to escape the maze.  They could have easily pushed aside the cornstalks, headed for the exterior and rescued themselves.  But they didn't think they were in a cornfield; they thought they were in a maze, and while their failure to recognize the difference says something about their crisis management skills, it also says something about the power of mental models.  They couldn't simply walk through the corn, because that would involve walking through walls, and that's impossible.

We habitually view the world through a series of mental models that shape our understanding of our circumstances, our relationships and ourselves.  And while these mental models are essential tools in allowing us to navigate through life, they can easily lead us astray.  Philosopher Alford Korzybski said "A map is not the territory it represents," and a mental model is not the reality it seeks to depict.  But we can easily mistake our mental models for reality and apply them inappropriately.

We construct our mental models out of the meaning we extract from experience, and there's inevitably a loss of fidelity as we focus on certain aspects of an experience (while ignoring others), interpret that data, and then conceptualize it as a general principle.  And the gap that exists between our mental models and reality will continually increase over time unless we compel ourselves to test our assumptions, gather new data and update our models--which requires consistent effort.

A mental model I held about myself for years was that I was a poor public speaker.  I'd get nervous before a presentation or speech, I interpreted my sweaty palms and the pit in my stomach as evidence of my ineffectiveness, and my expectation that I would perform poorly became a self-fulfilling prophecy which, of course, reinforced my mental model.

But while I was getting my MBA I took a public speaking course at Stanford's School of Engineering.  The rationale for the course was that engineers are often brilliant technical thinkers whose poor communication skills prevents them from promoting their ideas more effectively, and the methodology was utterly simple: Prepare a short speech or presentation and deliver it to the class each week for ten weeks.

I quickly came to realize that it's easy to improve as a public speaker if you do it often enough, and that I had trapped myself in my own mental model: believing I was a poor speaker led me to avoid speaking opportunities, which prevented me from ever improving.  Today I still get nervous before a speech or presentation, but I view that response simply as a manifestation of my desire to do well, not as damning evidence of my ineffectiveness.  And I still make plenty of missteps as a speaker, but I view them as correctible mistakes, not as character flaws.

I don't mean to suggest that all our limitations derive from our mental models; we're surrounded by any number of real constraints that can't be altered merely by viewing them from a different perspective.  But even in those cases our mental models often amplify those constraints and make them seem more daunting and more powerful than they truly are.  And in many other aspects of life the limits we place on ourselves derive from outdated or inappropriately applied mental models.  We see solid walls instead of flimsy cornstalks, and we allow ourselves to feel trapped instead of simply walking through the corn.

Photo by Carmelo Speltino.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

One of the more challenging--and interesting--aspects of any leadership role is sensing the group's emotional state and responding accordingly.  This can involve conveying enthusiasm to address discouragement, or expressing empathy to acknowledge sadness, or simply not snapping back in the face of anger.

But we tend to focus on negative emotions as the key signs that merit our close attention and care.  Neuroscience research confirms what we know from direct experience: we have a keen sense for others' negative emotions, which activate a whole host of physiological and mental responses that allow us to manage both ourselves and the group dynamic more effectively.  In tense or fraught situations, our focus sharpens and our reflexes quicken, allowing us to act with clarity and decisiveness.  (Of course, when a situation becomes too stressful we may experience a threat response that will undermine our effectiveness; this is one reason why our leadership development curriculum at Stanford emphasizes experiential learning in settings that can evoke meaningful but manageable levels of stress, from role-plays to T-groups.  Experimenting in these relatively low-risk environments prepares us for situations when the stakes may be higher.)

However, a potential blind spot we can experience as leaders is forgetting about this responsibility when the group's emotions are positive.  We've just had a big win, hit a major milestone, or achieved our ultimate goal; people are happy, even giddy, and everyone feels great.  What's the problem?

When things are going particularly well and people are feeling particularly good, group norms and display rules can change dramatically.  And usually this is a wonderful experience.  Groups need this relaxation of everyday constraints in the wake of a big success or at the end of a meaningful experience; it provides an outlet for the wave of positive emotions people are feeling and creates a sense of release and closure.

But it can also lead to a sense of disinhibition that's important for leaders to be aware of and, if necessary, respond to.  The modified norms and suspended display rules that can play such an important role in heartfelt, enthusiastic celebration can also result in wide range of unintended consequences.  I think of them as "high signs"--indicators that the group is going so well or has achieved such a successful outcome that people are feeling a surfeit of positive emotions, which are both essential to the meaningful celebrations we crave at such moments and yet which can also result in misunderstandings, inadvertent insults and, well, lawsuits.

Heifetz and Linsky's metaphor of the balcony and the dance floor is helpful here: if we can't join our team on the dance floor and celebrate, we'll miss out on vital opportunities to connect.  (We'll also live much duller lives.)  But if we can't simultaneously step back and see the bigger picture from the balcony, we'll miss important patterns in the group dynamic--those modified norms and suspended display rules that usually signify good times, and on rare (but memorable) occasions are hallmarks of trouble.

Photo by EAWB.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.