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Are You Managing Like a Parent or an Adult?

Posted on July 18, 2011 by in Articles

Where does entitlement in our organizations come from? Are employees just naturally entitled, or is there something about our leadership that’s contributing to the problem?

In the late 1950s, there was a school of psychological thought called Transactional Analysis that identified three states (or “voices”) within which we interact with other people. And it provides a particularly good model for addressing entitlement in organizations.

Here are the three unique voices (or “ego states” as psychologists sometimes call them) that drive entitlement in the workplace:

Parent Voice

The “Parent” voice is a giver. (Which, as you’ll see in a moment, is often not a good thing in the workplace.) It could be giving criticism. It could be giving permission. It could be giving security. The giver says, “I’m going to tell you how things are, give you permission, give you criticism, give you security, and you will thus be dependent on me to give you all these things.”

Child Voice

The flip side of the giver is the taker or “Child” voice. This is the role where we take. We are dependent on the giver for our emotions, our reactions and for how we think. We’re in a reactive, taking role.

Adult Voice

Finally, the third voice is the “Adult” voice. The adult voice is our logical, independent, self-sufficient, rational (calm, cool, collected) voice. This is the person who says, “I will solicit my own feedback. I will go out into the world and figure out things for myself, and I’ll do it calmly, coolly, collectively, rationally and self-sufficiently.”

Now, the Parent-Child dynamic, and thus entitlement itself, has nothing to do with our chronology. In other words, it has nothing to do with our age or whether or not we are parents or children. Someone in their 80s can act in Child mode, and someone in their 20s can act in Parent mode. Instead, it’s all about how we interact with each other.

So to answer the question from above, “Where does entitlement come from?”, entitlement in an organization comes from the people in your organization inhabiting Parent and Child voices. It’s not just employees in the taking role, and it’s not just managers in the giving role, it’s both of these groups playing their respective roles that perpetuate a culture of entitlement.

In many organizations, managers, executives and human capital systems assume the Parent role, giving performance reviews, giving raises, giving information, and giving permission. Meanwhile, in those same organizations, the employees are squarely in the Child role, taking the reviews, raises, information and permission.

For example, it’s pretty typical for a manager conducting a performance appraisal to give praise or criticism while the employee takes feedback and reacts accordingly. But we don’t want managers conducting performance reviews by just giving praise or criticism while employees just passively take it; we want them to have an Adult conversation where they can share their various perspectives, take ownership, and become more self-sufficient. Wouldn’t you rather have your employees coming into these conversations armed with great self-awareness, understanding and owning their personal opportunities for improvement, and taking full control of their lives and careers?

To fix entitlement, the goal is to get everyone in the Adult voice. Managers have to leave the Parent role and move into the Adult role, and employees have to leave the Child role and move into the Adult role, and it’s a challenge for both.

For managers, it can be scary to leave the Parent role. After all, it means giving up control. The more employees become self-sufficient, the more they realize we don’t have all the answers; the more they realize we’re not always correct; the more they challenge our management decisions. By the same token, it can be scary for employees to leave the Child role. After all, it means they will have to exert more effort; they will have to go out into the world and procure information for themselves rather than having it handed to them; they will have to start making some of their own decisions and learning from their mistakes. No doubt these are challenges, but accepting a culture of entitlement is a much more dangerous alternative.

Even though giving up control is scary for leaders, and giving up passivity is scary for employees, ultimately, the only way to overcome entitlement is to get both groups into Adult roles. It is a delicate balance, but as you’ll learn in our upcoming webinar, transforming a culture of entitlement into a culture of accountability and proactivity pays off in profit, productivity, growth and more.

Leadership Skills for Managing Generation Y: Back In Spotlight

Posted on July 13, 2011 by in Articles

Unfortunately, I’m no stranger to bad timing.

About three seconds before the economy bottomed out, my book on the New Rules for Managing Generation Y launched.

Suddenly, there was a whole new take on Millennials. A writer for the New York Post wrote an op-ed titled “Slice of Humble Y,” which made the case that the recession was just what Gen Y needed to get put in their place. In other words, my book and the leadership training I had planned around it was toast. Or so I thought.

The economic waters are far from clear, but as the panic over imminent drowning continues to calm, some of the old flotsam and jetsam are rising back to the top. And Gen Y is once again making headlines.

About.com’s Susan Heathfield not only names Gen Y as a top 10 HR Trend of the Decade; she also presents the valid point that many Boomers who find themselves unexpectedly out of a retirement plan due to the recession are suddenly being asked to mentor Gen Yers, or even more problematic, finding themselves supervised by the younger generation.

Discover the secret to getting buy-in from Gen Y and Millennial staffers while lowering your frustration level. Read our new white paper, it’s free.

The challenges of managing Gen Y are alive and well. The recession was their first big blow, a clear message that life might not always deliver what they expect and demand. But while it may have made them a bit more workplace savvy, it didn’t undo 20 some odd years of training that said”You’re the best. You deserve it all”.

As for the “old timers”, you know, Boomer and Gen X folks like me, it’s time to take stock of what makes Gen Y tick and get busy creating a new set of rules to attract, retain, manage and motivate this unique generation of talent. Employee engagement for Gen Y requires a balance between what the younger generation wants and what organizations are willing and able to give, and making sure older generation employees are comfortable with it all.

And it’s not just Gen Y we need to worry about.

The boundaries that define a generation are getting narrower as the speed of the world increases. It used to be 30 years before a new generation jumped on to the work scene and shook up the status quo. These days it’s more like 10 years, and soon it will be five or fewer. Leaders who cling to the old rules and refuse to adapt to the inevitable are going to quickly find themselves out of the game.

Discover the secret to getting buy-in from Gen Y and Millennial staffers while lowering your frustration level. Read our new white paper, it’s free.

Outgrowing a Sense of Entitlement

Posted on July 11, 2011 by in Articles

Do you worry your employees are too passive? Do you get a sense that they sit around waiting for the world to be handed to them? Do they seem to expect too much without taking responsibility for making things happen? If so, your culture may suffer from a sense of entitlement.

Roots of Entitlement

Where does a sense of entitlement come from? The typical dynamic in most organizations today is one in which managers, executives or the organization as a whole play a “parent” role. They give criticism, permission and even security. Whether it’s a performance appraisal, compensation or work assignments, managers think they have to give assignments or give feedback. Meanwhile, employees play a “child” role. They are dependent on the parent for what they think and how they feel. While managers give assignments and feedback, employees are left to take. Rather than act, they react to what is given. A sense of entitlement is not just the fault of the employee or the manager; it is fostered by both of these groups playing their respective roles.

Fortunately, there is a third option: the “adult” role. The adult is logical, independent, self-sufficient and rational. The adult says, “I will solicit my own feedback. I will go out into the world and figure things out for myself, and I’ll do it calmly and rationally.”

In our new webinar, “Overcoming a Culture of Entitlement,” we’ll show you how to create a culture where employees are accountable, proactive and take responsibility for themselves and the organization. You’ll learn how to transform an entitlement culture from the inside-out, how to radically improve accountability and ownership, and do it so smoothly and subtly that employees actually welcome your efforts. Follow this link to learn more.

Growing up: Transitioning into the Adult Role

Eliminating a sense of entitlement requires both parties to mature into adult roles. However, it isn’t always easy. For managers, leaving the parent role means giving up control. This perceived loss of power can be terrifying. Because self-sufficient employees may be more challenging and freethinking, managers worry, “They might figure out that I don’t have all the answers.” By the same token, for employees, leaving the child role means they have to exert more effort. They have to go out and procure the information they need rather than have it handed to them.

Ease the transition with baby steps. A great way to begin the evolution into the adult role is to develop self-awareness. In order to grow out of the parent role, managers must become aware of how their behavior impacts a sense of entitlement in employees. Before each task, managers should ask the question: Is what I’m about to do going to help this person be more self-sufficient and accountable?

The next step to outgrowing a sense of entitlement is to develop skills. Becoming an adult takes practice. An action-based approach encourages employees to grow out of a sense of entitlement and into a sense of responsibility. A great program for transitioning both managers and employees into adult roles is the “manager for a day” program. Here’s how it works: The manager identifies a few (3-6) of their top performers and delegates parts of the managerial role to the person whose turn it is to be”manager.” For a few months, each person will (on their assigned day) shadow the manager instead of doing his or her normal job. The manager takes parts of the job that can be delegated and gives employees a sense of what the management role is really like.

This program does a number of things. As employees begin to see things from the manager’s role, they begin to appreciate the manager’s perspective and choices. They may also realize how difficult the manager’s job is because they experience it firsthand. Employees will also gain a greater sense of self-sufficiency. Instead of acting like an entitled child waiting to take what the parent gives, they have to grow up; they have to procure their own information and make decisions. Another benefit of the program is that it pulls the manager out of the parent role by forcing them to delegate and to share. Through this experience, managers learn how to create peers as opposed to employees. In addition to outgrowing a sense of entitlement, the organization will also be developing a managerial talent pool by fostering a group of employees who appreciate and have an understanding of the management role. It’s a ready-made succession plan.

A sense of entitlement is more than an irritation. Left unchecked, it can become a serious problem. So the message for managers is: Stop playing parent, and even though it’s scary, help employees mature into future leaders.

In our new webinar, “Overcoming a Culture of Entitlement,” we’ll show you how to create a culture where employees are accountable, proactive and take responsibility for themselves and the organization. You’ll learn how to transform an entitlement culture from the inside-out, how to radically improve accountability and ownership, and do it so smoothly and subtly that employees actually welcome your efforts. Follow this link to learn more.

Managing Generation “Why?”

Posted on July 6, 2011 by in Articles

Today thousands of managers are sitting at their desks both puzzled and annoyed at the three-letter word that keeps getting thrown at them by their young workers. Baby Boomer and Traditionalist leaders describe this word as sounding, as one manager told us, “like nails on a chalkboard.” What, you might ask, is this word? And, if you’re a Generation Y-er, you might ask, “Why is it driving you crazy?”

“Why.” It seems like such a small, innocent word. But it is actually a loaded term that has different meanings depending on which generation you belong to. In this article, we’ll spell out what “why” means to both the older, seasoned managers, and the young, new workers. And we’ll give you the tools to overcome your distaste for “why” and embrace it to your managerial advantage.

For those of us raised before the era of “free love” or even disco, we were taught not to question our elders. As children, we were to be seen and not heard. As school children we were taught to take what we were given and not complain. And as adults we were supposed to do our tasks solely because they needed to be done. We understood that we were cogs in a wheel, and if we just did our job, everything would work out fine. So, to us, the word “why?” denotes challenging authority, thumbing your nose at the rules and general disruptiveness. Even in its mildest interpretation, we see it as annoying. When we tell one of our young workers, “finished documents must be printed in triplicate on blue paper,” we want them to say, “Yes, of course! Consider it done!” Not, “Why?”

However, for Generation Y workers, “why” is not a dirty word. They were raised in different times. These adults grew up in a period where parents not only focused on their children, but set them on a pedestal, told them they were unique and important, and fought for them to be not just seen, but heard as well. Generation Y was taught that there is learning value in everything they do – that every job to be done has a reason, meaning or significance. They were taught to look at the “big picture” and how their contribution fits in with everything around them. So instead of just being content with knowing they are a cog in the wheel, they need to know, “Why am I this cog instead of that one? Why are we turning slowly? Why have we sped up? Why, why, why?”

Discover the secret to getting buy-in from Gen Y and Millennial staffers while lowering your frustration level. Read our new white paper, it’s free.

Overall, our research found that there are two big reasons Generation Y asks “Why?”

Reason #1: Big Picture “Why?”

Generation Y workers want to know how they, as well as their work, fit into the whole. They want to know how the tasks they do affect the department, organization, field or world as a whole. They’ve grown up wanting their lives and work to be meaningful, and they want to see how meaningful it will actually be. Generation Y workers have little patience for tasks that are rote and, as they see it, meaningless. So, as a manager, you need to make their work fit into the big picture. The clearer you make it, the more productive they will be. Pre-empting the “why?” question by assigning tasks AND giving the big picture up front is a trick that top managers have learned.

Darren Griffith, a top sales manager at an auto insurance agency tells it this way: “When I give my Gen-Y sales reps a task, I let them know how it affects everyone of us here. For instance, I asked two of my reps to read through about 200 surveys and pull out all the written comments. I knew they’d ask why because it is such a boring task. So I just said right away, I told them ‘we need to find out if any of our customers are unhappy with anything we’ve done in our sales process. We need to go through those surveys to get those negative comments so that later we can all sit down as a team and figure out what we need to do better.’ That was just what they needed, and they got right on with the task.”

Reason #2: Significance “Why?”

Employees from Generation Y are typically more than enthusiastic to do something when they know the reason behind why they need to do it. Their parents taught them that rules and instructions are important and good, but only if they make sense and fit the situation. They also taught them that every rule and instruction is an opportunity to learn more. For example, if one of their parents said to them, “Bedtime is at 9 p.m.” and the kid asked “Why?”, they would not typically get the response (as most of us non-Gen Y-ers would have), “Because I said so.” They would more likely get an explanation of how the parent came up with the rule and why it is important. Further, the parent would actually have a “good” reason much of the time (from reading all of those research studies and parenting books and magazines that were so popular at the time). For example, the parent might say, “Because kids your age need at least nine hours of sleep, and you have to get up at 6 a.m., so 9 p.m. is the latest you can go to bed and get the required amount of sleep.”

That’s the reason this particular “Why?” can be more of a challenge. It forces us, as managers, to question the reasoning and significance behind what we want our workers to do and how we want them to do it. It becomes tricky when there are procedures or policies in our companies that we have absolutely no idea why they are in place and they don’t make a lot of sense to us either.

For example, it might be easy to discuss company dress codes if they make sense. Ricki Archer, the director of a tutoring company, told us, “I discuss dress code with my tutors right away. I tell them that we have a strict white collared shirt, khaki pants and closed-toe shoe policy. I explain that the white collared shirt and khakis identify our tutors no matter what school we go into, and the closed-toe shoe means that we are teachers and not students. We have to look professional and separate ourselves from the kids that we teach. Our tutors are young, but they get it. After we talk about it, they understand that they need to look like grown-ups to get the respect of the parents, teachers and students. I’ve never had to discuss it further with any of them.”

Of course, it can be more difficult when the “Why?” makes less sense. But we found one manager who handled the “Why?” particularly well. David Kim, a department manager at a research firm, had many employees question their dress code. “We have a ‘no shorts, no sandals, no jeans, and no t-shirts’ rule at our company. And some of our new hires asked me about why that policy was in place because they all work at computers in cubicles all day and clients don’t see them. I told them that, in all honesty, I had no idea. Realistically, we are isolated from the rest of the company physically, we are in a different building. And, it is just me, my assistant, and 18 associates who crunch numbers and write reports all day. So, I told them that they had my blessing in trying to get the policy changed if that is what they wanted. They could research it, draft a new policy, and get a petition and signatures, whatever they needed. And I would take a representative with me and bring it up to corporate. But they couldn’t do it during work time. I had to stress that! I haven’t heard about it in a few weeks, but I know there are a bunch of them working on it.”

Unlike the Big Picture “Why?”, the Significance “Why?” can’t always be pre-empted. This is because this type of “Why?” often takes us by surprise. Things we wouldn’t naturally question get questioned. This type of questioning, as you may notice, is not always a bad thing. In fact, employees asking “Why?” can bring about worthwhile change and significant growth and help us to look beyond where we might normally look. In fact, where would Microsoft be without Bill Gates asking “Why?” Where would Nike, or Apple, or Starbucks be? These companies did not just allow “Why?”, they embraced “Why?”

Summing up the Techniques

In short, Generation Y asks “Why?” for two main reasons. And, as our top managers have shown, there are two good ways to turn the “Why?” to your advantage. First and foremost, anticipate that your Generation Y employees are going to want the big picture. By knowing this, you can pre-empt questions by providing details of how their work fits in with the work of others, the department, the organization, or the outside world. Make what they are doing meaningful and relevant. Creative managers have a knack for making every job important.

Second, understand that Generation Y workers want to know the significance of what they are doing. If you can anticipate their questions, then certainly pre-empt them by providing the reason. But, because these are often unanticipated questions, give yourself time to respond or put the work back on them. If you don’t know the answer, it is fine to say, “I don’t know, but I can find out.” It is also more than OK to give them permission to search for the answer themselves, or to try to change things (with you guiding the process, of course).

With this knowledge in hand, maybe we can reduce our annoyance at that little three-letter word. It is not there to usurp your authority. It is not there to make your life miserable. “Why?” is being thrown at you because you have curious, inquisitive and intelligent young workers who want to learn and grow through their work with you. You may not love it, but you can turn it to your advantage.

Discover the secret to getting buy-in from Gen Y and Millennial staffers while lowering your frustration level. Read our new white paper, it’s free.

The Worst Way to Start a Presentation

Posted on June 27, 2011 by in Articles

Imagine you’re out on a date (it could be date night with your spouse, a blind date with a total stranger or whatever). Now, let’s say you really want to win that date over, become the only person in the room he or she can see or hear. We’re talking full-blown smitten here. How do you think you should start that date: by talking about yourself or by talking about your date?

Now, mostly everybody gets the right answer in the date scenario: Of course, you talk about them. But here’s the shocker: In the world of business presentations, a place where you also want to quickly capture the positive attention of your audience, almost everybody gets it wrong. And it’s destroying a lot of potentially great presentations.

Let me prove it to you:

Over 90% of the presentations we’ve studied began with a slide that looks like this:

Unless you’re attending a narcissist’s convention, this slide is terrible. You don’t even have to read every bullet point to feel the automatic turn off. This slide is all about “you”: when you were founded, how many clients you have, how big you are, how many awards you’ve won, etc. In the blind-date equivalent of this slide, you’d be sitting alone at the bar before the first round of drinks arrived. It doesn’t matter if you are presenting to one person or a thousand, the only way to grab your audience’s attention is to spend the first 10 minutes talking about the issues that matter to your audience and whether or not you can meet their needs.

Neurologically, the first 10 minutes are the most important. It’s during these first precious moments that your audience forms their opinions about you, when their brains decide whether or not to allocate any more neurological energy to listening to you.

In our upcoming webinar, “The Secrets of Killer Presentations,” you’ll get a crash course on the neurology of your audience and learn how to use that knowledge to your advantage. Plus you’ll learn how to grab your audience’s attention right from the start using secrets from speakers like Steve Jobs and the founders of Google, Starbucks and more. The first 100 people to register get $50 off, so hurry to reserve your seat now.

Let’s jump back to the dating scene for a minute. Perhaps you’ve heard of a free online dating site called OkCupid. Now, I married my high school sweetheart, so I’m not there trolling for dates, but I am impressed with their statistical research. OkCupid has a very advanced statistics shop called OkTrends, where they study the hundreds of millions of OkCupid user interactions. In one study, they looked at the kinds of words men use in their opening messages to women in order to learn what does (and doesn’t) generate a reply. If you’re not familiar with how online dating works, basically, you check out people’s profiles on the website, and if you like what you read, you send that person a message and hope you get a response. (And then, maybe after that, you meet for an actual date, like we used to do in the old days).

You can just imagine the cheesy messages that the study revealed don’t work (i.e. women did not reply to the man’s message). But you know what phrases generated HUGELY POSITIVE responses? “You mention,” “noticed that,” and “curious what” all got fantastic responses. (Statistically, messages with those phrases get double the normal response rates).

Basically, if a guy appears to have read a woman’s profile, and shows knowledge and interest in the things she’s interested in, he’s got a much greater chance of hearing back from her. A good message would sound like this: “You mention that you like cooking and I noticed that you traveled to Italy. I’m curious what your favorite region was in terms of cuisine?” That’s the kind of guy we fathers might let our daughters date. (I also have a son, and when he hits dating age, he will be forced to read all of this research).

The lesson in all this is: Whether you’re dating or making million-dollar presentations, always start the interaction by talking about the other person and their interests. Let them know that you know what they want to hear about, that you are sensitive to what they want to gain from this interaction, that you care about the same things that they care about. And if you don’t know what your audience’s interests are, it’s your job as presenter to find out: sooner rather than later.

People want to hear about things that meet their needs and solve their problems. They don’t care how long you’ve been in business (unless that just happens to be the one big question they really need to get answered, but I wouldn’t bet on it). Your audience cares about whatever they care about, and that’s what you need to give them. Meet their needs, and you’ll hear nothing but applause.

In our upcoming webinar, “The Secrets of Killer Presentations”, we’ll show you the 4 personality types in your audience and the kinds of things they typically want to hear. Plus you’ll learn how to grab your audience’s attention right from the start using secrets from speakers like Steve Jobs and the founders of Google, Starbucks and more. The first 100 people to register get $50 off, so hurry to reserve your seat now.

Bad Listening Can Hurt Your Career

Posted on June 21, 2011 by in Articles

Almost every conversation involves 4 layers: Facts, Interpretations, Reactions and Ends. At Leadership IQ, we call this the FIRE model.

Each of these four elements of conversation feeds into the next. The process starts with the Facts, things that empirical evidence render objectively provable. And from the facts are born Interpretations, which bears emotional Reactions, which leads to a desired Ends. It’s an automatic process, and it’s the way the brain is wired to work. And in some situations, it’s not a bad system to have in place.

In workplace situations, however, it can damage your career and cause untold headaches. And here’s why:

Suppose you’re walking in a jungle where tigers are known to live, and suddenly you hear a rustling in the bushes. What do you do? Do you simply say, “Gee, I just heard a rustling in that bush over there,” as you continue blissfully skipping along? OR do you say something like, “Holy crap, there’s a tiger in the bushes; I’m outta here!” as you react without thinking and high-tail it out of the jungle?

If you’re like most people, you’d do the latter; you’d react without thinking and remove yourself from potential danger. And there’s a natural, evolutionary reason for that.

If you want to succeed in management, sales, customer service, patient interactions or anywhere that involves interacting with people, you need expert listening skills. In our new webinar, “The Psychological Secrets of Great Listening,” you will learn the groundbreaking science of truly effective listening techniques (including the kinds of listening techniques that clinical psychologists and behavioral investigators use). Click here to learn more.

You see, the center of your brain houses something called the limbic system, which controls your decision-making when high levels of fear or uncertainty are present. When you’re in high-pressure situations where you must make snap judgments, your limbic system acts as an interpretation machine that takes observable facts and instantly interprets them — often with very little knowledge or experience to go on — to dictate an appropriate reaction toward your desired end. (This is commonly called the “fight or flight” impulse. It has been observed in animals fleeing predators and even in investors selling stocks as markets crash.) But the jungle scenario is an example of the FIRE model working to the best of its design: You hear a rustle in the bushes; your brain interprets that it could be a tiger; so you react by running; and the end result is you make it home safe.

In the jungle, the limbic system part of your brain can save your life. In fact, our survival as a species has depended on this most irrational but necessary part of the primitive brain.

But in the day-to-day course of business, the “rustle in the bushes” — those observable, verifiable facts that grab the brain’s attention, thereby leading to interpretations, reactions and ends — typically aren’t life-threatening. Yet the primitive part of the brain (the limbic system that’s wired to produce IRE) doesn’t know that; it takes over the moment you hear trouble; it doesn’t bother to listen for more facts; it has all it needs to react. So what should you do to combat your natural fight-or-flight impulse when confronted with fear and uncertainty in the workplace?

To illustrate the answer, I’ll use a common office scenario. Let’s say one of your employees, Bob, shows up for work five minutes late. It’s an observable fact; you see Bob walk through the door just as the clock strikes 8:05 a.m. What you don’t know is why Bob was late (and we’ll get to that in a minute).

Next, let’s assume Bob has an important meeting to lead in just a few minutes at 8:15. On top of that, over the past few weeks, you’ve been dealing with several employees who are bending the rules a bit too far: long lunches, leaving early, that kind of stuff.

You’re normally a rational leader, but given the circumstances, Bob’s late arrival is the last straw; you immediately begin to interpret based on the little knowledge you have to go on (the same way your knowledge of tigers in the jungle made you instantly fear a tiger and not a squirrel). You might be thinking something like, “Look at Bob waltzing in here five minutes late on such an important day. I’m getting really tired of the lazy attitude around here. I bet Bob’s slacking off like the other folks, which certainly doesn’t say much about his commitment to the team.”

As goes the FIRE model, your interpretation leads to reaction; perhaps something along the lines of, “Bob sure has got a lot of nerve!” Now, with the emotional reaction out of the way, your next step is to crave a desired end; maybe something like, “From this point on, everybody must be here 10 minutes early.”

The problem with this scenario is that you didn’t have all the facts. Once your brain’s limbic system had taken over, facts became irrelevant; your brain had already launched into interpretation mode. Consequently, your interpretation was all wrong, and it led you to some reactions and ends that have no bearing on the actual situation and might actually make the situation worse.

But now, armed with the ability to recognize and thus self-correct the FIRE model, let’s take another look at this scenario: When you see Bob stroll in five minutes late, you instantly start to have negative interpretations. (Again, this is natural given your knowledge and recent experiences.) But just as your brain starts to leap from interpretation to reaction, you recognize you’re following the FIRE model, and you realize that the limbic system part of your brain (the irrational part) has taken over your decision-making. You take a step back to reassess the situation; it’s clear you need a few more facts before you interpret. So you ask Bob a few simple questions (for example: “Bob, why are you late?”). As a result, you learn that Bob was walking into the building at 7:50 a.m. when he ran into the Chairman of the Board. The Chairman pulled Bob aside for a little chat, and he was especially interested in hearing Bob’s feedback about you and the kind of job you’re doing. So Bob spent 15 minutes singing your praises and telling the Chairman about all the wonderful things you’ve been doing. Then Bob hurried into the building to make his important 8:15 meeting.

Once you can recognize the FIRE model, things sure look different, don’t they?

It’s true that your primitive brain is a valuable asset — when you’re walking in the jungle — but it’s almost always a detriment in the workplace. If you realize that the FIRE model has taken over, step back, take a deep breath, and listen for more facts before you proceed to interpret, react or determine a desired end. Instead of being the person who addresses problems with knee-jerk reactions (and usually gets poor results), you’ll be the leader people depend on when the stakes are high, because they know you will be calm under pressure and listen for all the facts before you react.

If you want to succeed in management, sales, customer service, patient interactions or anywhere that involves interacting with people, you need expert listening skills. In our new webinar, “The Psychological Secrets of Great Listening,” you will learn the groundbreaking science of truly effective listening techniques (including the kinds of listening techniques that clinical psychologists and behavioral investigators use). Click here to learn more.

The One Question That Instantly Improves Accountability

Posted on June 14, 2011 by in Articles

There’s one area that we all participate in where accountability raises its head, and that is meetings.

In a typical meeting, people share several ideas, goals and plans, but we’re all too familiar with what often happens next: nothing.

Days, even weeks go by, and no one brings their concepts to life. Virtually no progress is made toward achieving the meeting’s goals. Everyone gets frustrated, you, the project leader, most of all, and people begin to point fingers. When you follow up to ask everyone for an update, you start to hear an array of responses that noticeably fit into the 5 stages of accountability (denial, blame, excuses, anxiety, accountability). You hear statements of denial like, “Oh, I didn’t know this was a high priority.” And blame like, “I can’t do my analysis until I have the numbers from accounting; have you talked to them?” And excuses like, “I couldn’t get it done because IT was fixing my computer last week.” And anxiety like, “I thought this would be easy to finish, but turns out there’s a lot more to it than I thought. If you still need this, I’ll need a few more days to figure it out.”

If any of this sounds familiar to you, your organization could suffer from a problem with accountability.

One of the best ways to improve accountability is to increase the effectiveness of your constructive feedback, meaning stop giving advice and start delivering crystal-clear directives that elicit immediate action. Learn more about our FREE white paper, “Why Giving Advice Doesn’t Work.” Click here to download your copy now.

There are several ways to improve the accountability of your organization, and one of the quickest and easiest comes in the form of a simple two-part question that you should ask at the end of every meeting:

“What are you personally going to achieve and by when?”

This question seems simple enough, and you’re probably already familiar with its use in the workplace. But the key to this question comes not only from its wording, but also from when and where you ask it. (Everyone thinks they’re already asking this question, but unless it’s done just right, it won’t be effective).

To dramatically improve this question’s effectiveness, follow these tips:

  • Ask the question at the end of every meeting to summarize the actions required to move forward.
  • Make sure every attendee in the meeting answers the question in front of the group. It doesn’t work if all the other group members don’t hear the answers.
  • Make sure a specific date is given to the “by when?” part of your question (“Next week” and “next month” are unacceptable.)
  • As each person answers their question, make note of their goals and deadlines. Within an hour after the meeting ends, send an email to the group with a summary of everyone’s goals and deadlines. (For maximum effect, draw a three column grid on a white board. Along the vertical axis, write everyone’s names. Along the horizontal axis, write “Goals” and “Deadlines.” As people answer their questions, add their answers to the grid while everyone watches.)
  • Finally, after everyone has answered their questions, and you’ve taken note of each of their responses, end the meeting by saying, “Ok, everyone. I’ll be sending around the summary of what everyone has agreed to here (pointing at the white board). If anything comes up between now and your deadline that might push back the completion of your task, be certain to let me know, and I will update the entire group as needed.”

Here’s why each of these tips is important:

First, research shows that when people make promises not just to one person (even if that person is their boss) but to an entire group of people including their peers, they are more likely to keep that promise. This is easily applied to the workplace. In other words, if you can make your employees accountable not only to you, their boss, but also their peers, they are more likely to achieve their goals.

Second, if everyone shares their goals and deadlines in front of the group, the group achieves 100% transparency. When everyone is on the same page like this, not just conceptually but also with regard to specific actions and deadlines, you greatly reduce the chance that denial or blame will come into play in the future.

Third, when you can visualize accountability, like putting everything on the whiteboard, you’re accessing the powerful “pictorial superiority effect.” This is the neurological finding that concepts are much more likely to be remembered if presented to our eyes rather than our ears. To what extent do we remember more? Well, when we only hear information, our total recall is about 10% when tested 72 hours later. But, when we see visuals, that number shoots up to 65%. It’s a pretty substantial difference.

Finally, once everyone knows it’s their own responsibility to alert you if something comes up that might affect their deadline (such as an unforeseen circumstance around the office or a greater scope than originally thought), you will dramatically reduce the likelihood that excuses or anxieties will affect the completion of their tasks. Instead, if any excuses or anxieties do arise, you will learn about them in real time, which allows you to manage them individually so no single task will delay the larger goal.

If you follow these steps carefully, more often than not you will bypass the first four stages of accountability (denial, blame, excuses, anxiety), and your employees will be left with only one choice: complete accountability.

One of the best ways to improve accountability is to increase the effectiveness of your constructive feedback, meaning stop giving advice and start delivering crystal-clear directives that elicit immediate action. Learn more about our FREE white paper, “Why Giving Advice Doesn’t Work.” Click here to download your copy now.

How to Prepare Your Culture for Change

Posted on June 2, 2011 by in Articles

Change is hard. Whether you’re facing a big change like reinventing a business model or something simple like the day paychecks come out, change is difficult.

One Harvard Business School study found that 70% of change efforts fail. That’s not a typo, that’s seven-zero! Big or small, change efforts seem to run into the same brick walls over and over again. By understanding the basic phases of change and the psychological state of your employees, you can prepare your culture for change and avoid common pitfalls of failed change efforts.

There is a myth about change that has destroyed many leaders’ careers. When managing change, many leaders mistakenly believe expediency is the best approach. They think, “If we move quickly we’ll be better off during the change effort. We’re not going to waste time preparing our culture for change. We’re just going to jump in and make the change!” Unfortunately, about a week into the change effort, they realize they should have prepared their culture for change because they don’t have any support. There is a big difference between leading a parade and getting run out of town. If you don’t take the time to prepare your culture for change you won’t have the basic support needed to go through with a change effort. You may get a couple of people to buy into the change, but then there will be a tidal wave of support against you. Until you have confirmation that 70% of your culture is prepared for change, you are not ready to start taking action.

If you want to successfully lead change, you must understand the psychological stages through which people proceed, and how to reshape and reframe their perceptions to make change an attractive endeavor. In our new LIVE webinar, “The Psychology of Leading Successful Change,” we’ll show you the unique psychological process that accompanies any change effort as well as how to inspire employees to leave the status quo and embrace change. Learn more now.

The challenge in preparing any culture for change is that employees tend to cling to the present state (where they are now). One of the biggest obstacles in getting folks to move with the change into the future state (where you want them to be) is that the present state is usually fairly comfortable. Unfortunately, getting them to move is not as simple as asking nicely. In order to get folks to move from the present state to the future state you need to address the 3 phases of change we call the “Why, Where, and How” of change.

Why

The first method you can use to prepare your culture for change is to start a fire! In other words, make the present state significantly less comfortable. If the present state were less comfortable, folks would be a lot more likely to jump from the present state to the future state. As the present state gets hotter and a little uncomfortable, folks will begin to move away from the heat. They won’t necessarily be excited about it shouting, “I can’t wait to jump over to the future state! I bet it’s fantastic!” But, if you set a fire, folks will be much more likely to move from the present state to the future state.

Where

The second way to prepare your culture for change is to make the future state look a lot better than the present state. Notice the image of “Margaritaville” on the future state, this is what an appealing future state would look like to me. But, whatever you think will make the future state look more appealing to your culture will work. Just make sure the future state is more attractive than the present state.

How

The third way to prepare your culture for change is to give employees a sense of just how it is they will get from the present state to the future state. One of the roadblocks to change is the gap between the present state and the future state. To employees, that gap might seem insurmountable. Build a bridge – make it easy. You may even want to make it so easy that folks can simply roll over (figuratively speaking) to the future state without even getting up out of their chair.

Preparing your culture for change isn’t easy. You’ve got a pretty tough message to deliver. How do you go about delivering it? Ironically, the more emotional you make your message, the more likely people are to reject it. They’re attached to where they are. You might feel like yelling, “Why don’t you people just get it? Of course we can’t stay here! What is the matter with you?” But, the more emotional you are, the more employees will feel attacked and the worse they will react. Their guard will go up and they will tune out your message. The best way to prepare your culture for change is to stick to the facts, and tell them why the change is necessary, where the change will take them, and how the change will take place.

If you want to successfully lead change, you must understand the psychological stages through which people proceed, and how to reshape and reframe their perceptions to make change an attractive endeavor. In our new LIVE webinar, “The Psychology of Leading Successful Change,” we’ll show you the unique psychological process that accompanies any change effort as well as how to inspire employees to leave the status quo and embrace change. Learn more now.