Stop Being Afraid of Getting Fired

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Yes, you could lose your job for being inept, incompetent, missing deadlines and milestones, or simply failing to do the work. But you will not be fired for taking chances, and embracing risk and then accepting the responsibility that goes along with it. And if you are fired for taking an honest chance, with positive intention, and then owning the outcome, your boss is a coward, and your company is on the brink of irrelevance.

So most of us don’t take chances at work. Instead we take crap from management, accept workplace bullying, go along with idiotic ideas, follow unethical orders, hide our opinions, and mask our true identities. We even accept lower salaries. All because we fear losing our job, or because we are trying desperately to fit in.

Fifty years ago only experts worried about cigarettes, drunk driving, and wearing seat belts. The rest of the general public was more alarmed about nuclear attacks, Russian invasions, and asteroid impacts.

Today you are more likely to be struck by lightning (1 in 960,000) than you are of being killed in a terrorist attack (1 in 20 million). You are far more likely to be killed by your own furniture, or drown in your bathtub, than from a terrorist attack. And you are 200 times more likely to die in a car accident than a plane crash. We fear the wrong things.

Risk equals probability multiplied by consequence. In other words, smoking cigarettes or driving while texting is waaay more risky than worrying that you are going to be kidnapped and held for ransom. But risk is different than fear. Risk is quantifiable, it’s something you can calculate, while fear is perception.

The difference between risk and fear is, of course, control. When you are smoking or driving a car you are in control. When you imagine being attacked by a bear on vacation in Yellowstone Park (1 in 2.1 million), you have no control whatsoever. It’s a terrifying thought. It could stop you from taking a nice walk in the woods.

After September 11, 2001, 1.4 million people changed their travel plans to avoid flying, choosing to drive instead. Driving is far more dangerous. The decision to drive, instead of fly, caused an estimated 1,000 additional auto fatalities.

There’s a number of other criteria that also affect our perception of risk. Timing is a big one. When we believe that the risk is imminent, we perceive it as more dangerous, and longer term risks are viewed as more moderate. This explains why we postpone exercising and order another glass of wine. There’s no immediate risk, right? But habits build, and pretty soon the couch potato routine turns into very real health disabilities.

Familiarity is also one of our biggest barriers to attempting anything challenging and difficult. When we are familiar with the challenge, we view it as less risky. Yet statistically safe activities, which we have never done before, are viewed as terrifying.

Just last night our family watched a show about big, scary waterslides around the world. Waterslides are among the safest, and most controlled recreational environments, complete with professionals who are monitoring the entire experience. But as we saw in the TV show, time after time, people would balk at the last minute and refuse to participate in the waterslide.

Another consideration that halts our ability to accept risk is considering how reversible the consequences are. Losing your job is an irreversible experience, therefore we view the risk as higher.

All of these factors – familiarity, control, reversibility, and timing – contribute to our sense of risk and fear. However, here is one thing we know to be true. Great leadership, remarkable innovations, and outstanding service, begin with initiative, and embracing risk and the accountability that comes with it.

Initiative and conscientious risk-taking are the hallmarks of great team members and great companies. Yet, this learned behavior only happens when people feel psychologically safe at work. If you work in the kind of company that respects the psychological safety of teams, you are more likely to speak up, share ideas, ask for help, and take initiatives.

If you are a leader responsible for a team, you likely have deadlines and objectives for your team to accomplish. The best way to get team members to step up is to make them feel psychologically safe to take chances.

To learn more about adopting a learning mindset and driving innovation see:

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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 is a Washington Post #5 Bestseller. You can order a copy now. Have a meeting coming up? Let’s talk.

Twitter: @gshunter
Web: www.shawnhunter.com

Speed up to Slow Down. And Other Secrets of Great Coaches.

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“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
– John Wooden

In 1974 Ronald Gallimore and Roland Tharp were psychology students on the campus of UCLA. On the other side of Westwood Boulevard, across from the academic side of campus is Pauley Pavilion, where John Wooden coached his UCLA Bruins basketball team. Gallimore and Tharp spent every afternoon of the 1974-1975 season on the other side of the street studying the habits of one of the greatest coaches of all time.

At the beginning of the 1974-1975 basketball season, John Wooden’s teams had won an astonishing 9 NCAA championships, including 7 in a row. During the season Gallimore and Tharp studied him, coach Wooden’s team won their 10th NCAA championship.

Over the course of the season, researchers Gallimore and Tharp recorded every word John Wooden said, and observed everything he did. These small acts of leadership apply to all aspects of building a successful career and life. Here’s what they found.

Use Every Minute
Afternoon practices were held from 3:29pm – 5:29pm every weekday afternoon, except holidays. The times were exact and unvarying. Each practice consisted of precisely timed exercises and drills, each drill with its own specific purpose. Wooden prepared practice plans for each session, which he wrote down on index cards and distributed to assistant coaches so everyone understood what was expected. A practice plan might read, for example, “3:30-3:40 Easy running floor length, change of pace and direction, one on one (cutter), one on one (dribbler). 3:40 – 3:45 five man rebounding and passing”

“I kept notes with the specifics of every minute of every hour of every practice we ever had at UCLA. When I planned a day’s practice, I looked back to see what we had done on the corresponding day the previous year and the year before that.” – John Wooden interview, 1997

Love him or not, Gary Vaynerchuk is one of the most successful and prolific writers, and business people alive. And he plans the first three hours of his day down to the minute. Actually, he claims “down to the second.” Yes, he takes time out to reflect, to exercise, to check out mentally and emotionally. You should too. But when he’s on, he maximizes every moment. Which also means single-tasking. Do one thing at a time.

Speed Up to Slow Down
One of Wooden’s signature drills was known as a “hustle.” The point of a hustle was to accelerate the drill and practice such that the players were right at the edge of their capability, just a split second from dropping the ball, or missing a pass.

The goal of a “hustle” is to speed up a practice drill incrementally to maintain accuracy, yet increase speed of play, through constant repetition. By preparing this way, when they played the actual game everything seemed in slow motion because everything they did in practice was so much faster. The players had much more time to react because the play felt much slower than what they were accustomed to.

Be Specific. Be Brief.
Over 65% of everything John Wooden uttered in practice was specifically what to do, and how to do it. Only 1.6% of his actions were to demonstrate how not to perform. Instead he almost exclusively focused on the proper way to execute each action. John Wooden had such a unique and specific pattern of correcting behavior, the researchers named it a “Wooden.”

A “Wooden” was a specific expression combination of scolding, correcting, and then instructing. For example, during play he would blow the whistle and say “I have been telling you for three years not to wind up when you pass the ball. Not like this. Like this! Pass from the chest!”

John Wooden also never, ever, gave grand lectures or locker room speeches. In fact, he rarely spoke for more than a few seconds at once. Typically he would speak for only about 4 seconds at a time.

Practices at UCLA were nonstop, electric, supercharged, intense, demanding . . . with Coach pacing the sidelines like a caged tiger, barking instructions, positive reinforcement, and maxims: “Be quick, but don’t hurry.”
– Bill Walton, former player for John Wooden and NCAA Player of the Year

Provide Solutions, Not Simply Evaluations.
Once I was coaching our U14 soccer team at a tournament against bigger, stronger opponents. We had the skill to compete, but our boys were intimidated by the size of the opposing team. At one point during the match I shouted from the sidelines, “Believe boys. Believe!” My intent was to inspire them to summon the strength of belief that they could win. Later my son came off the field and said, “Dad, it’s not helpful when you yell ‘Believe’. You need to tell us what to do.

My son was right. As Coach Wooden described in an interview, if his corrective strategies had been merely positive (“Good job”) or simply negative, (“That’s not the way”), then the player would be left with an evaluation of their performance, but not a solution going forward of how to correct their behavior, and improve their skill.

Elevate Individual Quality
Although formal practices started at 3:29pm, individual practice started at 3:00pm. At 3:00pm individual players were expected to arrive and work on specific things they were working on. Sometimes shooting, sometimes quickness and speed, sometimes dribbling, but each player had their own personal work-out tailored for them before the team practice.

“Every time I’m stumped with a business problem, it doesn’t matter what it is, the answer is always ‘increase the quality.’ Always. And that’s not very common in business.
– Yvon Chounaird, founder of Patagonia

This is an important message for aspiring leaders. Although only the strength of the entire team can execute on a vision, it’s the quality of effort of each and every individual, and the precision of their work, when combined with the collaboration with the entire team, which can help to achieve what one person alone can not.

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

A Small Shift to Ask More Powerful Questions

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Typewriters with ribbons, developed in the 1950s, were excellent at speeding up typists, but not so good at erasing their mistakes. Bette Nesmith Graham was a typist by day, and a painter by night. She wondered, “What if I could cover up my typing mistakes the same way I cover up my painting mistakes?”

She mixed up a batch of quick-drying white paint, and used it to wipe out her typing mistakes. Almost immediately, she was handing it out to everyone in the typist pool. That product later became Liquid Paper, which she sold for almost $50 million.

In 1965, Dwayne Douglas, a football coach at the University of Florida, watched his players run and sweat and drink gallons of water for hours in the hot Florida sunshine. Squinting into the sun, he wondered, “Why aren’t the players peeing more after the games?” He asked a kidney researcher at the university that question, who then developed a drink to replenish electrolytes. The result became Gatorade, named after the Florida Gaters.

In 1943, while on vacation in New Mexico, Edwin Land took a family portrait with his camera. His daughter asked immediately, “You took the picture. Can I see it now?” Which led Land to ask himself the question, “What if you could somehow have a darkroom inside a camera?” The answer to that question became the Polaroid Camera.

When you think about it, everything starts with a question. I have been collaborating for the past year with Marilee Adams, Ph.D., author of Change Your Questions, Change Your Life. She has poignant stories of how simple questions, when reframed, can change the course of history.

Consider the subtle question shift, from “How do we get ourselves to water?” to “How do we get water to us?” That question shift is the difference between nomadic cultures moving themselves to reach water, to civilizations using technology to bring water to the people. Roman aqueducts, irrigation and indoor plumbing are the cornerstones of modern infrastructure, and all an answer to the question, “How do we bring the water to us?”.

“A paradigm shift occurs when a question is asked inside the current paradigm that can only be answered outside it.” – Marliee Adams, Ph.D.

Here is an idea from the work of Eric Vogt and this colleagues, start by reframing questions from Either/Or to What If.

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A powerful question will generate curiosity, stimulate reflection, invite possibility, and focus attention. A more powerful question will also stay with you much longer, and touch something deeper inside. Powerful questions such as, “What would you do if you were not afraid?” and “If you were dying, would you worry about this?” make us rethink our priorities, and give us courage and purpose.

In Germany there is often a professional called Director Grundsatzfragen, which translates to Director of Fundamental Questions. It’s their job to be asking questions that have the power to drive systemic innovation and change. To the most experienced, shaping better questions becomes a true art.

Einstein said much of his breakthrough thinking in Relativity came from wondering, “What would the universe look like if I were riding on the end of a light beam at the speed of light?” That might sound like a crazy question, but it’s also the kind of crazy question that brought about breakthrough thinking.

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

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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, our 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.

What You *Have* to Do or What You *Get* to Do

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What are you thinking about when you are thinking about the things you have to do? What are you thinking about when you are thinking about obligation?

Now, what are you thinking about when you are thinking about the things you get to do? What are you thinking about when you are thinking about opportunity?

The difference between these two things is the difference between indifference on the one hand, and energy, power, creativity and excellence on the other. And it’s all in our mind, in how we see the world.

Obligation can creep into our work. If you are in sales, your boss wants to know how many meetings you booked, how many proposals you sent out, how many phone calls you made. If you are a developer, your boss wants to know how many bugs you fixed, how many lines of code you wrote. Whatever role you might be in, the nagging question is about how many deliverables did you ship, how many points did you put on the board, what you have to do.

That constant demand of obligation affects our outlook and our behavior. In your workplace, do you feel like people are judging and evaluating your behavior and actions? Or do you feel like they are honestly curious about your work, giving useful ideas, lifting you up?

Are your ideas encouraged or dismissed? And most of all, do people in the organization talk about who is the smartest, with the most power and budget, or do they talk about who is passionate, and doing really exciting work?

The difference between these two conflicting attitudes is our mindset. People have mindsets, and ways they see circumstances and opportunities. So do entire teams, and whole organizations. The habits of individuals will eventually make up the culture of the whole.

Turning a culture from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset can be done by changing the language we use and the habits we encourage.

We can learn everywhere, nearly all of the time, if we are open to it, and prepared. Books, movies, conversations, situations, schools, and focused research on the internet can all be valuable learning sources, but only if we are open and prepared for the unexpected, the surprising. Because when we recognize surprising events, or changes in circumstances, we develop new mental connections which incite active learning.

The way to build a company and culture that is alive with innovation, collaboration and energy, is by first creating a culture that encourages constant growth and learning.

Cultures of learning have three driving principles:

  1. We can reach high learning standards when the culture provides rich and readily available experiences and resources
  2. We are most successful when we are held responsible for our own learning and have autonomy to pursue our interests
  3. Social interactions, and active practice, are fundamental to learning

While cultures of learning can transform the speed and agility of your business, it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes deliberate practice.

Most managers and leaders talk about deliverables and milestones and outputs. If you are a manager or leader in your organization, consider using language which creates an expectation that people take time and mental space for learning on a regular basis. That’s right, create an expectation that everyone learn a little something every day and then share what they learned.

If you encourage constant learning, you will have a much higher performing team in the long run, not just a stream of undifferentiated deliverables. Here’s a framework that will help guide people develop more intentional learning habits.

Schedule the time
For the most consistently creative and diligent people in the world, learning is a sacred time of day. Maybe it’s first thing in the morning. Maybe after exercise, maybe before breakfast, maybe after. People argue it lots of ways. The time of day isn’t necessarily that important when starting out. What’s important is the starting. Later, when the habit gets more ingrained, you can find out which particular times of day work best for you.

Make it easy
Minimize the amount of energy it takes to get started, remove all the hurdles to taking action that we can. If we want to start jogging more, we should lay our gear and our shoes by the bed before we go to sleep. That way, it will be right there staring at us in the morning. If we want to be better guitar players, start by taking the guitar out of the closet and tuning it up, and having it nearby. That way, it’s easier to put up and start playing when the mood strikes.

Prime your mind
Most of the writers, creators and constant learners I know keep a scratch pad handy. I use Evernote, but you can use anything to capture ideas throughout the day. Usually I write short fragments or expressions that mean only something to me. I’ll be in the grocery store, have a little insight, and then write a few words to recollect that moment later. Otherwise it’ll be gone.

Make teaching the goal
Aristotle once said, “Teaching is the highest form of learning.” In order to teach something thoughtfully, deliberately, and effectively, you have to understand it yourself. To have a deeper understanding of something, there is no substitute for research, writing, immersion, and practice of that idea. The very act of trying to write about something you don’t understand is itself an act of learning. Dan Pink is a celebrated public speaker, but I heard him once say that first and foremost, he considers himself a writer, because before he can speak coherently about anything he has to first understand it.

Become a fan
If you want to become better at anything, start as a fan. Follow, study, and friend anyone in that domain that you want to get better at. The first step to getting better is to be a fan of those who are better. And when you find someone who does what you want to do, what you aspire to? Stare at them, study their every move, their every brush stroke, their every breathe, because that’s how to break it down. Once you break down what you love, you can rebuild using those tools, but in your own voice.

Don’t try to make it perfect

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.”
– Anne Lamott, writer

Building a culture with a growth mindset is building success for the long term. After all, our work should be a journey to love and enjoy, not an obligation.

To learn about how a learning mindset can change your life and your work 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, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab your own copy now. Have a meeting coming up? Let’s talk.

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

Your New Idea Is Not Where You Think It Is

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In the 1950s, in rural Oklahoma, at a place called Robbers Cave, several researchers performed an experiment we would find unethical today. They invited twenty-two eleven-year-old boys to participate in a three week camp. The researchers advertised a wholesome summer camp experience. The experience they delivered was very different.

What the researchers actually did was to privately divide the boys into two groups of eleven each, and separate them for the first week so they had no contact, or knowledge, of the other group at all. Isolated, each group developed their own habits, expressions, favorite songs, and even their own group names, the Rattlers and the Eagles, which they painted on flags and T-shirts.

Then, after one week, the counselors informed each group of the existence of the other group. Their immediate reaction was to challenge the other group to sporting contests. The counselors arranged for Tug-of-War, baseball, a treasure hunt, and other sporting contests, and arranged for prizes to be rewarded to the winners.

The Rattlers spent the days leading up the baseball game joyous and confident that they would win. They carefully raked and managed the baseball field in preparation for the game, ultimately placing a “Keep Off” sign next to the field and placing a Rattlers sign near home base.

At the end of the first day, the Eagles had lost the Tug-of-War contest. On their way back to the cabins they noticed the Rattlers sign on the baseball field. They tore it down, stomped on it, and then burned it.

Well, the flag-burning incident started a whole ‘nuther level of battle as the camps took turns raiding the other groups’ cabins at night, stealing and vandalizing. They had food fights, and actual fights. Their animosity toward each other was real and vicious.

At breakfast on the last day of the tournament, the Rattlers sang “The enemy’s coming….” They described the Eagles as a “bunch of cussers,” “poor losers” and “bums.”

The boys who took part in this study back in the 1950s are in their 70s now, but in interviews they all have vivid recollections of the strong group cohesion of their own tribe, and the fierce animosity they held for the other group.

And it was all contrived by researchers. The dynamic of creating in-groups and out-groups was artificially constructed as a demonstration of intergroup conflict and in-group cooperation.

The interesting thing about in-group cohesion is that we almost always see our own in-group as more creative, intelligent, and diverse. And we see out-groups as more homogeneous, and less varied. This perception is amplified when opposing teams are in competitive situations.

When two opposing athletic teams, or product development teams, or sales teams, or companies in similar industries face off, we almost always think of our own in-group as more diverse, varied, flexible, and creative, and we think of the opposing team as all the same.

In one study, 90 sorority members all described their own sorority as having more dissimilar and unique members in their own group, than the other sororities. Basically, they believed that each of their own members were more special than members of other groups. It’s why we love our people. Our group is special.

So when your son does something stupid, and then rationalizes it by saying Joey did it first, you should not say, “So if Joey jumped off a cliff I suppose you would to?” Because he probably would.

Understand that other people in the world are not so different. We all have the same aspirations for health, safety, engaging and interesting work, a sense of purpose, and a sense of community. We may just have our own opinions on how to get there, and then align ourselves with others who think the same way.

Your best source for new ideas, inspiration and innovation is not going to come from asking the same people, from your same in-group, the same questions. Take a chance. Have lunch with someone new. Ask them about their work, their life. Just listen.

To learn more about building new relationships, and adopting a growth mindset 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

Vulnerability Is Courage, Is Impact

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Here’s an idea that might be slowing you down. Do you ever think to yourself, “I can’t try that, it’s already been done before! I need to find something new to show, something that’s never been done before, something that has never been seen before.”

This is the inner voice trying to please others, trying to fit in, get invited to the party. The truth is that authenticity creates stronger human and emotional bonds. And while being authentically yourself is closer and easier to access, it is also sometimes more difficult to reveal. Authenticity is scary, but it’s ultimately the most honest and sincere way to connect with people in the world.

The myth about vulnerability and honesty is that it’s a sign of weakness. Quite the opposite.

Recently the elder, transgender, comedian Julia Scotti brought down the house on America’s Got Talent and received a standing ovation. Judge Howie Mandel gushed, “You’re funny, you’re talented, and you’re brave, and I am so glad we got to see you.” She was amazing by being unapologetically herself.

Contrast that with the America’s Got Talent routine of Gary Sladek and “Broadway” Jim. Their first appearance featured an astonishing feat of scaling a towering stack of carefully balanced chairs. The act was daring and human. They were invited back on the show.

Their follow up appearance was an absurb and chaotic skit which involved them tumbling around a trampoline in goofy clown outfits. It was so bad, when they finished the audience sat quietly dumbfounded at their ridiculous antics. It was clear they were reaching for originality, and it fell flat because they were so obviously trying to be something they were not, trying to be someone else for the judges. In that instance, Gary and Jim were performing not for themselves, not to advance their act or their skill but instead performing simply for approval.

Here’s a secret: the greatest performers, writers, musicians, and artists create the work that they love, not the work that they think others will love.

I can honestly say that nothing is as uncomfortable, dangerous, and hurtful as believing that I’m standing on the outside of my life looking in and wondering what it would be like if I had the courage to show up and let myself be seen.
– Brené Brown

Our culture is shifting quietly away from identifying people as representative of a particular demographic, and instead respecting and appreciating the unique and varied experiences they may have had, shifting away from tolerance and acceptance and instead toward a culture of connection, shifting away from a sense of fair opportunity, and moving toward recognizing contribution to business impact.

And the best way to connect, and make an impact, is to share who you authentically are with the world.

To learn more about finding your authentic self, and adopting a growth mindset 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.

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

How to Recognize the Mindset of Your Company

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Think of a time in your life when you were doing something new, and exciting, and fun. Maybe you were learning a musical instrument, trying a new sport, learning to paint, or even solving a sodoku puzzle. And then, after the thrill was gone, it got hard. It got difficult, and not easy, and not fun. What did you do? Did you quit? Did you press on?

Individuals adopt different types of mindset – sometimes a fixed mindset, and sometimes a growth mindset, which you can identify by their language and behavior. Those with a fixed mindset believe their skills and talents are locked in, immutable and unchanging. Those with a growth mindset believe that, with work and effort, they can grow and learn and develop.

I say sometimes, because both of these mindsets exist within us, at odds with one another all the time. The fixed mindset inside us whispers, “There’s still time to get out of here before someone notices I’m a failure,” or “I can always blame that guy if things go wrong,” or “See, I knew I couldn’t do it.”

The growth mindset within us replies, “True, but I think I can figure this out, or find someone who can help me.”

Here’s an extreme example of a growth mindset. On April 5, 2010, Dan McLaughlin quit his day job as a commercial photographer, and started a journey to become a professional golfer. He had never played golf in his life. Intrigued by the suggestion that 10,000 hours of deliberate and intentional practice could transform him into an elite player, he has set off on a quest to go pro. He’s at 4,000 hours now, has a trainer, a swing doctor, a chiropractor, and his handicap is down to 4. In his photo on twitter, he has “Persistence” written on his forearm.

Growth mindset people tend to work harder on identifying, and correcting, their mistakes. Fixed mindset people often cover, and hide, their mistakes. After all, if they can’t learn and get any better, why not hide their weaknesses?

“I think it’s really important for people to know that almost all of the great people that they admire, fabulously successful people, have had major, even monumental, setbacks that they’ve had to overcome. And that that is part of the human condition, it’s not part of being incompetent.”
– Carol Dweck, Ph.D., author of Mindset

Companies have mindsets too, and you can identify the mindset of an organization, or team, if you know what to look for.

People talk about how smart they are
When team members inside an organization start to talk about how smart someone is, or how talented someone is, look out. That language builds up heroic personalities – people who need to be called in to save the day. Have you ever been in a meeting, and the meeting can’t start because a certain someone hasn’t shown up yet? It’s that palpable feeling that nothing can happen until the hero arrives.

People get defensive about feedback
When you start to see people get defensive about hearing feedback, hiding their mistakes, or assigning blame, you may be in the midst of a bozo explosion. When you hear people object immediately with, “But that’s not true…” or “That’s going to be too much work”, you’re in a place where people believe in protecting their reputation, not growing their capabilities.

People dwell on failures instead of celebrating experiments
A sign of a growth mindset culture is a constant, urgent discussion about conducting, and studying, efforts like small experiments. Up until recently Facebook had a mantra of “move fast and break things,” which was an invitation to their engineers to rapidly prototype, ship, and then study the results. When you see a culture reciting folklore about taboo activities because of some past experience, you know you’re walking in an innovation wasteland.

Most of all, listen for language that describes people as passionate and enthusiastic, instead of brilliant, or gifted and talented.

To learn about how a learning mindset can change your life and your work 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.

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

Why Successful People Don’t Believe in Comparisons

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“Comparison is the death of joy.”
– Mark Twain

I don’t mean to say successful people don’t believe in comparison, as in they don’t believe it exists. Rather, the most successful people reframe comparison as learning opportunities instead of competition.

Named the “next Pelé” and going pro at the age of 14, Freddy Adu, was hailed by Major League Soccer as the savior of the game. Within a few short years, Adu became the definition of unrealized potential. After being drafted by DC United, and having a lackluster season, Adu knocked about in leagues from Portugal to Monaco to Greece to Turkey, then back again to the MLS. He currently plays for the Las Vegas Lights Football Club, and is still searching for his footing on the field.

“I’m not going to lie, that stuff bothers me. It hurts.” Adu told Goal USA in an exclusive interview. “In the end, I can’t control what people say. It wasn’t my choice or decision to be compared to Pelé when I came into the league.”

“What has happened is I’ve gotten to the point where I’m basically scared of failure right now. That’s the honest truth.”
– Freddy Adu, soccer player

Alissa Quart learned to read at 3 years old. At 7 she had written a novel. By 17 she was winning creative writing competitions. As she writes in her book Hothouse Kids, her father cultivated a strong sense of academic expectation, and as a result she writes that she developed a feeling of failure when she didn’t live up to the demands. She was constantly compared to, and expected to, outperform her peers.

“Designating children as gifted, especially extremely gifted, and cultivating that giftedness may be not only a waste of money, but positively harmful.”
– Alissa Quart, author Hothouse Kids

Believing we are gifted, or special, is comparing ourselves to others. When we tell ourselves that we are somehow endowed with special gifts or skills, we are comparing our skills to our peers, and it only serves to denigrate either ourselves or someone else. It’s the very nature of comparisons.

When we compare ourselves to others, we create a sense of superiority and pride within ourselves, and contempt for another. Even worse, we can develop schadenfreude, a sense of pleasure and joy at the misfortune of others.

These thoughts are the domain of the fixed mindset – the belief that our skills, our intelligence, our capacity for invention or creativity is limited and fixed. When we believe that our skills are fixed we lock ourselves into a comparative hierarchy that only serves to further limit or potential.

Inversely when we adopt a learner mindset, we see those as more talented as opportunities to learn. The “genius effect” is when we see another as having greater skill and are inspired by it. When inspired, with an open mind, we study that talent, we are fascinated by that skill. We become transfixed by the talent we see and work to break it down into chunks we can recreate ourselves.

“If you were to visit a dozen talent hotbeds tomorrow, you would be struck by how much time the learners spend observing top performers. When I say ‘observing,’ I’m not talking about passively watching. I’m talking about staring — the kind of raw, unblinking, intensely absorbed gazes you see in hungry cats or newborn babies.”
– Daniel Coyle, author The Talent Code

When you see an amazing presentation, an incredible athletic performance, an astonishing work of art, don’t compare yourself, instead study it, be inspired by it. Break it down, deconstruct it, figure it out, and then make it your own. That’s the art of the learning mindset.

To learn about how a learning mindset can change your life and your work see:

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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) is a Washington Post bestseller! You can order a copy for yourself.

Twitter: @gshunter
Say hello: shawn@mindscaling.com
Web: www.shawnhunter.com

Better Decisions Begin with More Beautiful Questions

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Recently our family traveled to the Virgin Islands for a vacation. Our daily choices were pretty much reading, swimming, hiking, and sunsets. And snorkeling in beautiful warm water with beautiful, strange creatures.

Almost every day we would pick a beach, pack a lunch, towels and swimming gear, and head off on a small adventure. And each time our daughter Annie (10) went in the water, her eyes got wide, and she got excited about the fish, and coral, and turtles. She would come up gasping for breath, and ask questions. So many questions. Mostly questions I couldn’t answer.

Four year olds will ask roughly 300 questions a day. Yet we know from research that constant questioning likely drops off as kids gets older. Parents can get exasperated by the questions, and then kids grow up and take a job, and then their bosses get annoyed by the questions. Instead of listening, the boss will say “That’s not how we do things around here.”

It turns out that the creativity of American kids has been slowly declining over the past few decades. Researchers have been tracking it since the late 1950s.

Back in the 1950s Ellis Paul Torrance developed something he called a “Torrance Test” which is a series of creativity tests in which participants are asked to think of different ways to use objects (“How many ways can you use this paper clip?”), or compose different solutions to situations (“If your school closed, how would you complete your education?”) or hypothesize circumstances (“What happened when the cow jumped over the moon?”)

Questions are the basis of innovation, the basis of personal change. More beautiful questions drive quality, and excellence, and demand more beautiful answers.

“Without a good question, a good answer has no place to go.”
– Clayton Christensen

Try this three-part process, developed by Warren Berger, to move from stuck to unstuck, from stagnant to inventive.

First ask Why?
Second only to Thomas Edison for naming patents, Edwin Land was the Steve Jobs of the 1940s. Brilliant, inventive, and constantly curious, the two-time Harvard dropout was on vacation with his family in New Mexico when he decided to gather his family for a photograph using a contemporary film camera. Land took the picture, and then his daughter asked to see it. He explained about dark rooms, and processing film, and so forth.

His daughter asked, “Why do we have to wait? You already took the picture.”

Next ask What If?
Land once described to Steve Jobs how he envisioned the Polaroid completely, before he ever embarked on the process, “I could see what the Polaroid camera should be. It was just as real to me as if it was sitting in front of me before I had ever built one.” The exercise here is to see the potential, the possibility, in your mind. Don’t ask How, that comes next. In this phase, ask only “If it were possible, what would it look like?”

The question Land asked was, “What if you could somehow have a darkroom inside a camera?”

Now ask How?
To answer “What if you could have a darkroom inside a camera?” Land had to draw upon everything he knew in chemistry, engineering, optics, and mechanics. He sought out his colleagues, friends and researchers to mine their knowledge. He reached deep into his network, described his vision, and enlisted anyone with expertise willing to contribute.

The How part has many many questions, such as “How do we do this in color?” and “How do we make it lighter?” and “How do we keep the chemicals from evaporating?”

Why is about seeking to understand. What if is about envisioning possibilities. How is about doing, executing, and creating. Too often we start with How or What. Don’t start with How, start with Why.

And if you can take a few F-bombs, and colorful language, here is Louis CK on kids and questions. Amusing. Here is the Louis CK video. Enjoy.

To learn about how questions can drive Innovation and Transform Mindsets see:

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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.

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

Snap Out of the Trance of Unworthiness

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The 13-year old boys walked off the field kicking dirt and shaking their heads. Aiden anguished, “If Ben’s shot had gone in, it would have been a totally different game.”

In the first few seconds of the game, immediately after kick-off, the boys had a fast break down the right side, and suddenly Ben was in control of the ball sprinting alone at the goalie. His shot missed, barely, and there was a collective “Oooooh” from the stands as the ball went wide.

After that, the game slowed down, and eventually they lost 0-2.

According to Dr. Daniel Amen, we have thousands of little negative thoughts each day. Thousands. It’s because in any given situation, negative events and emotions have a greater impact on us than positive ones. It’s unfortunate, but true. It’s why negative political campaigns have a greater influence on the emotions and decisions of voters than positive campaigns.

This negativity bias can be triggered by small interactions and sometimes hold fast in our minds for a long time. A colleague recently mentioned to me that she can’t stand someone else we both know. I was surprised, and asked why, since he seemed like such a nice person. She explained that once, years ago, he ignored her ideas at an important meeting.

According to Jonathan Haidt, psychologist at NYU, “Over and over the mind reacts to bad things more quickly, strongly and persistently than to equivalent good things.”

When we are in a negative mental state we also close down intellectually and creatively. We lose our attention span, and our ability to think holistically and systemically.

According to positive psychology researcher Barbara Fredrickson, positive emotions have the inverse effect. Positive emotions deepen our attention, and widen our intellectual and social connections. In other words, choosing positive emotions in the face of distressing events will lead us to becoming more generous, thoughtful, and intellectually curious.

“Positivity transforms us for the better. This is the second core truth about positive emotions. By opening our hearts and minds, positive emotions allow us to discover and build new skills, new ties, new knowledge, and new ways of being.”
– Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D.

Here’s an idea from Dr. Daniel Amen, on how to switch your thinking. When an automatic negative thought pops into your head (I suck, my work sucks, he never listens to my ideas, etc..) do this: Write it down, ask yourself if it’s true, then challenge and discard that idea. It’s an effective tool used in counseling and can help shift your thinking.

      ____________________________________________________

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.

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