The High Cost of Conformity

/in , , , , /by

Imagine you are in a room with seven other people, and the person running the meeting presents everyone with two cards. On the left-hand card is a line. On the right-hand card are three lines of differing lengths. You are asked to pick which line on the right card matches the length of the line on the left card.

The answer is obvious. Any fool can see the right answer. But each person, in turn, around the table picks the wrong line, the wrong answer. Now it’s your turn. What do you do? Do you speak your mind? Speak the truth? It’s baffling that these people can’t see what you see so obviously. What’s wrong with these people?

About a third of us would agree with the group. Against our opinion, against what is so clearly obvious, we would reluctantly agree with everyone else’s wrong choice. These are the results of a series of psychology experiments conducted in the 1950s by Solomon Asch. In fact, in control groups during the experiment, over 98% of the participants recognized the correct answer, and yet 32% voted incorrectly along with the rest of the group.

When we perform tasks or engage in activities because “we’ve always done it that way” or because the person with the greatest seniority in the room suggested it, we’re acting out of conformity. Don’t misunderstand, conformity can be a great thing – it can allow teams to soar, military groups to function seamlessly and efficiently, and allow decisions to be made faster. Conformity is acting in accordance with social standards and conventions. I’m certainly glad we have accepted communication and behavioral conventions over at Air Traffic Control, and the people over at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. (Here’s the audio feed from ATC at my home airport in Portland, Maine. I’m certainly glad they’re not just making it up as they go.)

In fact, Charles Efferson and his colleagues demonstrated that social conformity can present a higher rate of correct decisions, and higher performance in specific tasks. Conformity is how we deal with the complexity of life, the tsunami of data and information we are presented with, the unmitigated firehose of media we are bombarded with. We look at what other people are paying attention to. What they are looking at, what they are doing. And we do that.

But positive and creative deviance is what drives change. On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks, at age 42, refused to obey bus driver James Blake’s order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. In her own words, she was “tired of giving in.”

Know that we are all vulnerable to conformity. Think of these small awarenesses when participating in a group decision:

  • be aware of our vulnerability to conformity
  • cultivate healthy skepticism towards our own group
  • be willing to disappoint people

It’s the difference between belonging to a group, and simply fitting in. When we fit in, we conform. When we feel a strong sense of belonging, we feel enabled to be ourselves, wholly and authentically.

To learn about how build a culture of continuous learning see:

    ____________________________________________________

SmallActs-3DShawn Hunter is President and Founder of Mindscaling, a company building beautiful online learning courses based on the work of best-selling authors. My new book Small Acts of Leadership, (Bibliomotion) will be out in October, 2016. You can pre-order a copy now. Have a meeting coming up? Let’s talk.

Twitter: @gshunter
Say hello: email@gshunter.com
Web: www.shawnhunter.com

Have a goal? You can double your odds of success.

/in , , , , /by

Make_a_PromiseA colleague called me yesterday and said, “I want to talk about commitment.” We had just finished brainstorming an idea over a few days and we both agreed we had something good, quite good, excellent actually. She wanted to have that conversation about accountability, about follow through. Which got me thinking about how to improve the odds of completing anything we set our minds to.

A group of researchers in California did an interesting study in which they randomly assigned people to five different groups. All five groups had to think about and prioritize goals they wanted to accomplish over the next four weeks.

  • All Groups had to think about their goals
  • Group 2 through 5 had to write them down
  • Group 3 had to also write specific action items
  • Group 4 had to also share those action items with someone
  • Group 5 had to also share those action items and progress regularly

Group 1 had a 43% completion rate on the goals they thought about, which is a little better than the 29% who actually complete marathon training schedules and show up at the starting line. But those in Group 5 who had to not only write down their goals, but be specific, and share their progress regularly had a 76% completion rate.

It’s why every support group imaginable exists – from cooking classes to exercise bootcamps to beekeeping clubs. When we build a cohort of supportive peers and hold ourselves accountable to them on a regular basis, success happens.

One of the most simple and effective accountability tools I know goes like:

  1. Write down up to 20 things you want to improve on. It can be anything from making people laugh to doing more pushups to making dinner for your kids. Anything.
  2. Next turn those goals into simple yes/no questions such as, Did you make someone smile today? You can also frame the questions to require a number answer, such as “How many miles did you run today?” No questions requiring elaborate answers. Keep it simple.
  3. Now give those questions to someone who will call you up every day, or twice a week and ask you your own questions.

When you know you have to testify to someone you care about on the goals that you want to accomplish, you will show up, you will do the work, make the difference, and answer that call every day prepared to give answers you believe in.

Specificity + Accountability + Consistency = Results.

Why Do You Hide From Your Boss?

/in , , , /by

HidingatworkAccording to researcher Robert Hogan, 75% of working adults today say the most stressful, most dreaded interactions they have at work is with their immediate boss.

Stress-inducing bosses have even been linked to increases in heart desease related illnesses. Studies show that the correlation of bad bosses and heart trauma seem to occur together, just like death and taxes.

As a result these same professionals avoid dealing with their boss by hiding, often in plain sight. Hiding in their email, hiding in meetings, phone calls, commutes, and projects that “demand” their attention.

The quest toward greater transparency has spawned open workspaces, and naked communication practices which approach surveillance levels. Indeed, the 7th Principle of the Toyota Way is “use visual control so no problems are hidden.” All in the pursuit of “visibility.” Many bosses benignly believe that regular oversight will elevate performance, drive healthy competition, and allow them to tweak processes by watching workers from a higher vantage point. As if by studying worker activity they could gently guide the team activity in the right direction of higher efficiency, greater collaboration and productivity.

Yet Harvard Professor Ethan Bernstein discovered almost the opposite. In a series of studies he found that the greater the oversight, the lower the productivity and worker moral. He dubbed this phenomenon The Transparency Paradox. What he discovered is that even modest levels of privacy for small groups of workers significantly increased productivity and engagement in their work.

Organizational transparency can, of course, have very positive effects. It can allow increased awareness into the capabilities of other teams, and allow team members to more easily build cross-functional collaboration. That’s clearly a good thing. Transparency in surfacing product or service issues can certainly more quickly isolate problems for faster correction. Transparency can also help ensure that localized problems don’t linger. As Justice Louis Brandeis famously said “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

However in Professor Bernstein’s studies he found that transparency when applied as constant worker observation has a negative effect. Constant observation by bosses was not only a performance distraction, but also severely curtailed process experimentation or procedure deviance. In other words, when you are constantly monitored and scrutinized in your every action, you are far less likely to try something new, experiment, and come up with a new way of working.

So answer to “Why do you hide from your boss?” is you know that by building autonomy into your work life you will perform better, innovate faster, and be happier in your work.

And just for fun…

The Busier You Are, The More You Need a Break

/in , , , /by

woman-breathing-fresh-air1Recently over here at Skillsoft we did a survey in collaboration with Scott Eblin, leadership expert and author of the new book Overworked and Overwhelmed: The Mindfulness Alternative.

In this short study we asked many questions about how we, all busy professionals, spend our days – when we wake up, how long our commute is, how many texts and emails we receive each day, how many meetings we sit through, how much exercise we get, and even how many cups of coffee we drink.

And then we asked a few questions about our sense of happiness, contentment, productivity, and how much of the time we feel “at our best.” The objective of the study was to understand how our daily behaviors impact our sense of well-being, productivity, and happiness – in our work, in our communities, and with our families.

Some of what we discovered may not surprise you, but one insight might: The busier we are in our work, the more we need to both schedule, and take, regular breaks in our day in order to sustain high levels of happiness and productivity. The happiest, and most productive professionals, take regular mini-breaks throughout the day. And the more responsibility we have, the more important this becomes.

Here is some of what we discovered:

Individual Contributors, that is professionals who are not bosses, with no direct reports, suffer through the fewest number of meetings, receive the least number of emails and texts (although 24% stated they receive over 50 per day), have the shortest commute to work, and for the most part are good at leaving work at work. Only a third of this group spend more than 40 hours a week in the office. These individual contributors and team members also reported the least amount of hours working outside of work – at home, in coffee shops, etc.

The majority of Managers surveyed stated they had about two to six members on their team, received slightly higher volumes of email and text messages regarding work, and unsurprisingly had to sit through a few more meetings each day. Managers also described slightly higher commuting distances, presumably because they were willing to travel farther for their position. This group is getting about the same amount of sleep as their individual contributor counterparts, but dedicating a little more time each week to exercise.

Apparently gone are the days of Executives having martini lunches and golfing twice a week, because in our survey the Executive group overwhelmingly reported the highest volume of emails (31% say they receive over 100), nearly twice as many meetings (many up to 6 meetings per day!), and up to 80 hours of being connected to work each week, both at the office and elsewhere. This group also travels the farthest to work, and unsurprisingly spends the most amount of time on airplanes. However, the Executive group also reported the most hours dedicated to sleep and exercise.

Here’s the piece of data that surprised us:

Contributors and Managers reported comparable levels of happiness and productivity, and comparable number of mini-breaks in their work day to refresh and recharge. And those with the least work obligations suffered the least when they did not take regular breaks.

Meanwhile, we found that the greater the responsibility and obligations we have, in terms of meetings, direct reports, email correspondence, travel, etc… the more important the mental breaks become. Those with the highest volume of meetings, emails, obligations and distractions reported a much greater drop in productivity at work, and satisfaction in all aspects of their lives when they did not take mindful, and intentional breaks in their day.

Do yourself, your work, and your family a favor. Take a break.

Is Luck a Choice?

/in , , , , /by

Rabbit’s feet, four leaf clovers, and rain during sunshine are all signs of fortune and good luck. The good luck ritual of “knocking on wood” comes from pre-christian rituals in which it was considered important to invoke the powerful and benign influence of the tree gods.

Cats throughout history have been both powerful and good (ancient Egypt), and powerful and bad (medieval England). In the 1560’s in Lincolnshire England, the story goes that a father and son chased a black cat into an alley, and then threw stones at it before it escaped to the home of a nearby woman suspected of being a witch. The next day they returned to discover the woman limping with bruised legs, presumably from the stones the night prior. Thereafter it was believed witches could transform into black cats.

When a ladder is propped up against a wall a natural triangle is formed, symbolic of the holy Trinity. To walk under the ladder would break the Trinity, and therefore bring ill fortune. Yet numerous experiments demonstrate such superstitions have no real worldly effect. (Unless of course some higher power is influencing you – just watch BF Skinner get a pigeon to turn in circles in less than 60 seconds.)

In his book The Luck Factor, Richard Wiseman describes luck in terms of choice. In his research working with more than 400 individuals, he found several key attributes of those who describe themselves as “lucky”:

  • They create opportunities for uncertainty and embrace change. They are creative and curious. Wiseman has a fun game in which participants write down six activities or experiences they have not tried but would be willing to try, then roll a die and do the activity that corresponds to the outcome. This game reinforces our willingness to try something new.
  • They make good decisions without consciously knowing why or how they did. Those who describe themselves as lucky make better gut decisions. Intuition-driven decision making seems impossible to control, yet Wiseman discovered those lucky decision makers actually spent more time reflecting and meditating on the decision once considered, and spent more time envisioning hypothetical circumstances in which they may have to make decisions. So when the situation arose, those who were “lucky” were actually better prepared to make a decision in the moment.
  • They have dreams and ambitions that have a knack of coming true. Lucky people expect the best outcomes, despite any negative past experiences, whereas unlucky people allow past negative events to dictate future expectations. The lucky people also described their expectations of upcoming interactions with other people as generally positive. That is, they anticipate their own good fortune.
  • They turn their bad fortune into good luck or opportunity. Wiseman describes two primary ways people turn bad luck into good luck. Basically they interpret the bad as “could have been much worse.” And when they reflect on past events, they spend a greater amount of time visualizing and selectively remembering the positive. In other words, the bad wasn’t all that bad, and the good was pretty great.

You too can create your own luck. People who consider themselves lucky put themselves in the position of having chance encounters that lead to interesting new possibilities and opportunities, see the upside of the experience, and harness the power of curiosity to be creative. Good luck!
Start one small act at a time. Try our course Small Acts of Leadership to build action into your life every single day.

    ____________________________________________________

Our company Mindscaling, is busy building powerful human and digital learning experiences for companies of all sizes. My new book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy now. Have a meeting coming up? I love to work with groups large and small. Let’s talk.

Last summer, my son and I bicycled across America with two other dads and their teenagers. We published a new book about it called Chasing Dawn. I co-authored the book with my cycling companion, the artist, photographer, and wonderful human jon holloway. Buy a copy. I’ll sign it and send it to your doorstep.

Dreaded Conversations…And Avoiding Being One Yourself

/in , , , , , /by

two-women-talking_2Slydial is the app that lets you go straight to voicemail, safe from the possibility that someone might actually answer your call.

One reason Slydial exists is because of the energy vampires in the world. Those people you dread talking to because they leave you depleted, bummed out, frustrated, or annoyed with every conversation. However hopeful you remain, they will figure out how to suck the energy from the conversation. Sure, maybe you use Slydial because you just don’t have the time for a conversation and texting would get lost in translation. But I don’t think that’s the biggest reason it’s so popular.

One of the greatest predictors of your effectiveness, happiness, and success in your work is your capacity to be an energizer, instead of an energy vampire. According to Rob Cross at the University of Virginia, your ability to create energy in the workplace, and with your colleagues around you, is more powerful a predictor of your success over other criteria, including your function, title, department, expertise, seniority, knowledge, intelligence… These are all descriptors. Creating energy is a behavior, and it can be learned.

Think about that for a second, and then ask yourself, “When people leave an interaction with me, do they leave feeling more or less energized?”

Here are a few ways you can make sure you create and magnify energy, instead of draining those around you:

Energizers are present
Creating energy does not require you be an extrovert. It does not mean you need to jump up and down, or stand on a chair and cheer, or high-five your colleagues. It simply means you possess the ability to see opportunities as others describe them, and reiterate those ideas back in a way that conveys you truly understood them.

Energizers open possibilities
Energizers possess the ability to ask provocative questions that open up possibilities and encourage pursuit of action. It means being present and engaged in each conversation. It means building contagious enthusiasm in a constructive way, with emotional fluency. Opening possibilities is about giving those around you the creative latitude to explore ideas that perhaps fall outside of usual organizational boundaries.

Energizers follow through
When we get enthusiastic about something it can be infectious. But remember the difference between enthusiasm and action. There’s nothing more de-energizing than walking away from a meeting feeling fired-up, work diligently on a shared vision, then only to return and find your colleague hasn’t done anything. Energizers follow through on their promises, and consistently demonstrate do-ability of a project by actively contributing.

Energizers add value instead of topping others
I’m sure you have been in a meeting before in which an idea is tossed around. And each person in turn, is trying to outdo the others to look smarter. This is not adding value, this is called topping someone else. This behavior is when you try to sound smarter and more important than someone else and begin to compete, instead of contributing to the conversation. So when someone says, “We went to New York for our vacation.” And then you say, “Oh, we went to Spain.” That’s not building value, that’s trying to top someone else’s contribution.

Energizers use supportive questions
A supportive assertion is when you say, “That’s great!” or “So cool. Love it!” But a supportive question encourages and deepens the conversation. So the next time someone mentions they went to New York for a vacation trying asking, “Wow, that sounds wonderful. What was the most exciting part of the trip for your family?”

You are Successful. But Distracted. Possibly Bored. What Happened?

/in , , , , , /by

You are successful. You worked hard for years with laser focus developing unique and sought-after expertise that no one else could quite replicate at your company. It paid off. You are highly valued. People ask your opinion. They invite you to join projects. They buy you drinks.

But lately you are distracted, almost bored. It’s not that you don’t have lots of projects going on. You do. Actually a ton of interesting people and projects keep arriving at your feet. They are all fascinating and exciting, and brimming with opportunity. For five minutes.

The problem is they aren’t your projects. They are someone else’s. And while their enthusiasm is contagious and fun, in the end it’s their project, not yours. And for that reason the buzz doesn’t last. You became sought-after and valuable because of your unique and unparalleled expertise. And that success has brought opportunity. And those opportunities have created distractions which leave you unfocused, drifting, and wondering when you can get back to what you love. Which is hard to do since all of these enticing opportunities keep presenting themselves.

Only Do What Only You Can Do: You became passionate, and excellent, and sought-after, by focusing the bulk of your time on only doing what only you can do. In other words, taking on the kinds of projects and challenges that you are uniquely predisposed to do.

Let’s take a few tips from choice expert, Sheena Iyengar, on how to bring some discipline to your decisions.

Step 1: Write down all of the things that you do in a given work week. What is extraneous, redundant, or can be offloaded to someone more qualified? According to Sheena, it should be at least 50%, ideally 75%.

Step 2: Of what’s left on the list, ask yourself, “When I work on this task do I experience greater frustration or greater joy or reward to others upon accomplishing it?” Of those items high in frustration, you want to 1. do quickly 2. offload, or 3. just stop doing. Because remember that tasks you find frustrating, someone else finds easy or rewarding.

Step 3: What’s left should be tasks in which you create greater value than frustration, produce greater joy than pain, and build greater value than distraction. Categorize them by type of task. Ah, you just learned something about the types of things you do.

Step 4: Finally, of what’s left in the high impact, high value, high reward, low frustration category, ask yourself, “Am I the most qualified person available to be doing this?”

You have now arrived at Only Do What Only You Can Do. In this place you have found the intersection of skill, passion, and impact. In this place you love your work, learn quickly and deliver high value to the team around you. In this place you can recapture your mojo.

But this does not give you license to become a prima donna, or shirk shared obligations. There are always chores that need to be done by any team, and you likely have specific deliverables that make you yawn every week. Step up. Lean in. It’s what keeps the trains running.

My suggestion is to remember what made you valuable in the first place, and not lose sight of honing that expertise.

Start one small act at a time. Try our course Small Acts of Leadership to build action into your life every single day.

    ____________________________________________________

Our company Mindscaling, is busy building powerful human and digital learning experiences for companies of all sizes. My new book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy now. Have a meeting coming up? I love to work with groups large and small. Let’s talk.

Last summer, my son and I bicycled across America with two other dads and their teenagers. We published a new book about it called Chasing Dawn. I co-authored the book with my cycling companion, the artist, photographer, and wonderful human jon holloway. Buy a copy. I’ll sign it and send it to your doorstep.

You Don’t Have to Be Lonely at Work

/in , , , /by

On a scale of 1 to 10, answer these questions about yourself at work:

* “I feel out of tune with my co-workers”
* “I lack companionship at my work”
* “There is no one I can turn to in this organization”
* “I feel left out”
* “I don’t feel like I can talk honestly with anyone in this company”

These are some of the questions researchers asked of 786 professionals and their bosses, to help determine both their sense of loneliness in the organizational culture, and then correlate that result with their current job performance.

Recent studies reflect that a little over half of us, at one time or another, experience periods of intense loneliness in our professional lives. But loneliness is not depression or shyness or poor social skills, and it certainly isn’t introversion. It’s more a feeling of estrangement, of alienation – a sense of not belonging to a place, or a culture. And the implications of having lonely people at work are big. Our sense of belonging on a team has a direct impact on our commitment to task, sense of role clarity, and collaborative effectiveness.

The other big implication of feeling lonely at work is that we increase our level of surface acting or “covering.” That is, we intentionally conceal parts of our authentic identity. What happens when we feel lonely at work is we start to pretend to be someone else. And when we pretend to be someone other than who we are, we start to emotionally withdraw.

Not only that, loneliness is linked to personal health. Feeling socially isolated has a direct link to increased blood pressure and increased risk of heart disease. Loneliness also negatively affects sleep quality, which affects cognition, which… well, affects everything.

Empathetic Interventions:
Persistent loneliness often leads to an expectation of negative interactions and an increase in hostility. If we feel socially isolated at work, we begin to expect that isolation will persist. In other words, loneliness begets loneliness. You have to break the cycle. Try this: the next time you feel a lonely emotion (“No one understands me.” or “I don’t belong here.”), recognize the emotion as simply that – an emotional response to a circumstance, or an individual. And recognize that we can choose other responses.

And even if you can’t conjure a charitable thought, try instead to see the world from their lens, their point of view. When we work on our empathy, we gain greater emotional fluency, which in turn creates connection.

If you are a boss, understand that loneliness in the workplace isn’t a private and personal issue, this is an organizational culture issue. If people around you are emotionally withdrawing, it’s not their problem, it’s your problem, and it’s your company’s problem.

The 5:1 Rule:
Aside from direct and personal intervention, ensure that you are using a 5:1 rule. That is, create a team interaction dynamic that builds a 5 to 1 ratio in terms of positive to negative communication. And by positive I don’t simply mean saying “That’s great!” Research tells us that supportive questions are even more powerful than supportive assertions. So the next time someone on the team has an idea you feel is valuable, ask a deepening question like “How did you arrive at that?” or “Who do you think we should talk with next to make this a reality?”

Check out our new micro-learning series Small Acts of Leadership to begin making cultural shifts one small act at a time. Message me if you’re interested and we’ll send you a preview. Enjoy!

    ____________________________________________________

SmallActs-3DShawn Hunter is President and Founder of Mindscaling, a company building beautiful online learning courses based on the work of best-selling authors. My new book Small Acts of Leadership, (Routledge) just released. You can grab a copy now. Have a meeting coming up? Let’s talk.

Twitter: @gshunter
Say hello: email@gshunter.com
Web: www.shawnhunter.com

Three Tricks to Seeing The Bigger Picture

/in , , , /by

onsummit

“I can’t recall a period of time that was as volatile, complex, ambiguous and tumultuous. As one successful executive put it, ‘If you’re not confused, you don’t know what’s going on’.”
– Warren Bennis

In 1961, Edward Lorenz was a junior professor at MIT working on meteorology. He used a rudimentary computer called the Royal McBee to crunch algorithms which simulated weather patterns. Using the computer program, he could plug in different variables into the equation and then let the virtual weather unfold. So it was sort of a weather simulator in that each time he would run the program, there would be underlying trends and patterns but no two sequences would be identical. He was trying to recognize the patterns – to see the big picture.

One day, he decided to revisit a particular weather formula which intrigued him. He plugged in the original numbers, intending to let the program run for a longer period this time, and then went to get a cup of coffee. When he came back to the computer the virtual weather pattern unfolding was drastically different than the first time he ran the same numbers.

In fact, the result was so incredibly unlike the first result using the very same numbers that he assumed the computer must have malfunctioned. What he discovered instead was that he had accidentally abbreviated one of the input variables from .506127 to .506 – an abbreviation which he thought was so small, as to be inconsequential.

Lorenz’ revelation in the power of seemingly inconsequential small actions, led him to write a paper in 1972 called, “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?” This beguiling idea crept into pop culture and time travel movies and later became known as the Butterfly Effect.

But what if we could learn to see the big picture, to simplify the complex, to develop what the French call “coup d’oeil?” Coup d’oeil is an expression meaning literally “stroke of the eye” or “at a glance.” It’s the ability to glance at a complicated terrain or environment and immediately see opportunities and understand the situation more simply – to grasp possibilities and connections within complexity.

Your turn. Here are three ideas to hone your coup d’oeil:

Draw a picture: Instead of writing down your next big idea, draw it. Turn words into pictures on a whiteboard. Or draw a map with plenty of circles, dotted lines and arrows. Or draw emoticons associated with the different ideas. As we know from researchers, when we can visualize something, we can often make new mental connections to simplify the situation.

Say it out loud: According to Harvard medical researcher Jenny Rudolph, often the best advice is to say what you are thinking out loud, in the presence of those whom you trust and who will hold you accountable. By simply saying our understanding out loud, we force ourselves to consider our opinions and biases. We not only hold ourselves more accountable, but implicitly ask those around us to also check our judgment.

Let it rest: Ever work on a hard problem that feels impenetrable, and then wake up and it clicks easily? If you study music, that piano sequence was impossible, yet felt easy in the morning. As sleep expert Dr. Robert Stickgold from Harvard Medical School describes it, ““When we first form memories, they’re in a very raw and fragile form.” But when we sleep, “the brain goes back through recent memories and decides both what to keep and what not to keep.”

This was written in memory of Warren Bennis, who contributed so much to big thinking. We cherish his immense contributions to the world.