Are you ready...for the UPturn?

A city broods in the dark...but the dawn will come again.

Greetings from Hong Kong, where, to be frank, things seem a bit grim. Here in the world's third-largest financial centre, banks are busily making cuts to staff and rolling back their recent expansion.

Speaking to one senior VP at a multinational bank here, the thing I noticed was that he seemed less concerned about the volatility of the markets than he was about the impending layoffs...and the rounds of political infighting and bloodletting that have intensified as a result.

A global economic shift is taking place, that is clear. There's nothing like large-scale uncertainty and financial instability to drive people straight into their limbic "lizard-brain" of emotional reactivity - a trend not discouraged by media outlets that seem to want to frighten, not inform. Even the business press is glutted with articles on "surviving the downturn" and "managing through a recession" and "leadership despite layoffs".

As people are driven into survival-based fight-flight-freeze responses, the practical results are: teams fall apart; bad behaviour becomes the norm; secrecy, infighting, politicking and point-scoring become the order of the day. Productivity - the very thing needed to pull a company through these times - plummets and it's every individual for him/herself.


Are you ready for the upturn?

At this point I want to suggest another point of view - being ready for the upturn.

To counter the divisive trends noted above and steer the ship toward calmer seas, it makes good business sense to get people out of their lizard-brain mode and find a way to get their rational minds back in the game.

To put it in a broader context, what's happening now in the economy was largely inevitable. Securitization, the separation of lender from risk, and other speculative and highly leveraged transactions had become unsustainable practices. We have lived through - and enjoyed - a long period financial success - and excess.

These financial practices have arguably been the logical outgrowth of a mentality and societal goals that are shaped by the ceaseless and senseless focus on profit at any cost. Not only are individuals and companies now paying the financial piper, the planet is suffering from our myopic mania for short-term gain.

On the long view, this correction of excesses may even be timely - otherwise as a species and a culture we'd have careened happily over the edge, setting in motion cascades of consequences that would doom the planet and ourselves.

As the pendulum swings back in the other direction, will it be a pleasant process? No - it has the potential to be a unpleasant as the other extreme was excessive. The process of creating balance and reintegrating a broader view, though difficult, is as necessary for society as it is helpful for individuals.

The long-term, rational policy suggests we get into the best possible position in our organizations and companies to be successful when the current period ends and things have shifted. The current climate (economic and environmental) won't last forever; we face an important turning-point.

At this stage there's great potential here for far-sighted companies to create the high-performance, humanistic and productive environments that will be needed to take us forward into the future.

These are not decisions you want to be making using your panicked limbic lizard-brain in knee-jerk mode, but rather your rational brain seeking signs of resilience and hope.

So although the night seems to be getting ever-darker, keep your eye on the brightest lights as they show a way through the darkness. The dawn will come again...
TM

Transformational Leadership Intensive - Cairns Jan/09

There's a great opportunity coming up in Australia that I want to let you know about.

The next Transformational Leadership Intensive training program will be held in Cairns, Queensland from 20-24 January 2009. In this intensive workshop you will explore the meaning, context and value of Transformational Leadership and gain skills in this practical application of the NeuroPower framework.

The program will be taught by the creator of the NeuroPower framework, the author and strategist Peter Burow. My role will be as co-facilitator for the program. I will also help participants to embed the knowledge gained in these workshops in their particular work settings with practical follow-on coaching sessions.

See the flyer here - for registration details contact me.

Overview

During five intensive days you will learn more about how to weave together the three key areas of Management, Leadership and Transformational Leadership (see diagram below) to ensure peak performance for your business or organization. Subsequent coaching ensures that you to retain this knowledge and are better able to apply it to your own real-life situations.

Management – learn the six needs that effective leaders must satisfy in order to build a stable, agile, focused, performance-oriented, informed and team-centred organization

Practical skills:

• identify why teams are not functioning effectively
• execute processes to increase trust, creativity, passion, connection, knowledge and hope within teams
• coach employees on their signature strength and help them to practically embed this knowledge in their daily work

Leadership – learn the concepts of character and integration as applied to Leadership and how life stages and psycho-emotional/spiritual development changes the individual’s motivation, focus on attention and worldview

Practical skills:

• create a coherent vision and sense of purpose that aligns people to that vision
• apply character as a leader to every management dilemma for increased business performance

Transformational Leadership – learn the role the brain’s limbic system plays in motivation, communication, attitude change, perception and decision making

Practical skills:

• communicate and negotiate with each of the limbic types
• transform the energy expressed as resistance to change into the motivation and commitment to carry out change processes

These skills will enable you as a Transformational Leader to:

• provide strategic advice regarding the specific actions required to contextualize the change and engage employees in rolling out your strategy for enhanced performance
• advise leaders on the actions, processes and sequence of messages to be employed to maximize positive employee engagement
• describe at all levels of the organization the key messages needed to dissolve resistance

COACHING increases retention of information by up to 400%

These workshops are an excellent way to learn how to apply the powerful and practical NeuroPower framework at a very reasonable time and cost investment. What’s more, the program includes post-workshop coaching to practically embed your new knowledge in your own setting and ensure that you gain maximum value for your investment.

You are probably familiar with the concept of the “learning curve” that refers to how fast we learn information. The same psychologist who described that concept also discovered the “forgetting curve” which states that we begin immediately to forget what we have learned unless we revisit the information and, ideally, apply it to embed the knowledge.

Memory experiments show that within hours most people will retain less than half of the overall material presented, and after 30 days only about 22% remains. With coaching, however, the information retention increases to as much as 88% - a four-fold increase. Clearly, coaching on practical application of knowledge has the potential to achieve tremendous results.

As a workshop participant, here's how coaching works for you:

• during the five days you will first learn the theories and skills
• before you leave on Day Five you set yourself a few practical tasks to do within a set period of time
• you then have a go at applying them with your own work and personal situation
• we have regularly-scheduled coaching conversations to close the loop on your learning, exploring what has worked well in your practice and what useful tweaks you will want to make for next time.

Overall the coaching follow-up process offers you the vital opportunity to:

review your efforts
reinforce your successes
revise your approach where things need improvement
rehearse new applications and practices in advance of doing them “for real”
reengage with the learning process and thereby
retain your knowledge as you strengthen the neural connections associated with that learning

Once again, if you are interested and wish to find out more, email me.

TM

Give the gift of change this year

The holiday season is fast approaching!

Depending on your global orientation that may mean snuggling up by the fire as the snow falls outside or, as here in Australia where it's Christmas in summertime, heading down to the beach.

Either way, odds are that you face that annual dilemma: "what presents should I get everyone...?!"

If you're reading this blog, you're doing pretty well. No, I don't mean you have impeccable taste in your consumption of online content (clearly that's a given). What I mean is you're literate in both words and technology, you've got yourself in front of a computer and chances are you may even be sipping a tasty beverage as you ponder my musings.


Give the gift of change

So really, most of us have it really good. But in this season of giving, rather than sending people more stuff they don't need, why not give a gift that'll make a change for the better? The fantastic Oxfam Unwrapped online giftshops make it easy to give gifts that make a difference. A regional online shop isavailable in each of over a dozen countries worldwide including Australia, Canada, the UK, Hong Kong and Germany.

A couple of other worthwhile causes are can be found at the Support UNICEF worldwide site and of course for our furry friends there's the RSPCA (or the local version in your country).

So what's the brain angle on all this? Two things: studies show that the more people participate in meaningful activities, the happier they are and the more purposeful their lives feel, while pure pleasure-seeking behaviours (like stuffing yourself with food at the Xmas dinner table) actually do not contribute to overall lasting happiness. And when Buddhist monks meditate with a focus on compassionate and postive feelings toward others, the same centres of the brain light up as do when people experience happiness.

Bottom line: you feel good, doing good.

This year do some good for the yourself and the world...and give Santa the day off - you know he'd love it down the beach!

Photo credit: Ken Duncan (visit his site)

Happy holidays, let's do something great and change the world for the better.
TM

A bit of brainey fun

Some people can understandably find all this "brain stuff" that I'm on about a bit serious and complicated, so...to lighten your mood and edify your brain as the week draws to a close, I present the following short video tutorial on the brain, presented by none other than those cartoon mice bent on world domination, Pinky and the Brain.

(Und, fast kaum zu glauben aber wahr...wenn Sie es auf Deutsch sehen moechten!)

Who says learning can't be fun?!
TM

What makes you stronger? Resilience & meaning-making

Traditional Western psychology suggests that the cause of people’s psychological problems lies in what happened to them in the past. According to this view, at some point early in each person’s childhood something “bad” happens (a trauma or an unfulfilled need). As a result, that person will spend the rest of his or her life repressing, compensating, avoiding or exhibiting any number of other problematic behaviour patterns based on reaction to that initial “bad” thing.

And so we get the simplistic and linear equation:

difficult childhood = problems as an adult

and the corollary:

adult with problems = adult must have had a difficult childhood.

Yet there are countless examples all over the world of people who have had terrible experiences as children – including those displaced by war, famine, poverty and other extreme situations – and yet they have managed to develop into well-adjusted and even happy people. Meanwhile, sadly, there are people who struggle with serious problems as adults who had relatively happy childhoods.

So the linear equation does not hold true – there seems to be something else at work here.


Resilience and meaning-making

Resilience describes the human being’s ability to survive, recover and persevere against various obstacles and threats.

Some people are made stronger rather than weaker by their past life experiences – how does this happen? Interestingly, much of it has to do with the story that you tell yourself about what happened.

Our brains are meaning-making machines. It’s a process that happens automatically and continually. What this means is that we constantly create narratives to make sense of our lives and the world.

The good news is that since we each write our own narrative or story about the world, it is entirely within our ability to change that narrative to create one that serves us better as we grow and develop through life.

You can create a narrative that promotes self-respect and hope without distorting the facts. This is a more comforting and optimistic view than the problem-focused approach most often used in traditional psychology – but is this just being a Pollyanna slapping a happy face on tragic situations?

No it’s not.


Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich staerker

“What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche


In his excellent book It’s Never too late to have a Happy Childhood, Ben Furman cites research on how people recover from catastrophe and crisis which suggests the key factor in recovery is how people choose to make meaning of what happened.

After a bank robbery, for example, it is important that the staff has a chance to talk about what happened immediately and that everyone present during the robbery receives positive feedback. Everyone should be able to think that their reactions were meaningful, or at least understanding and normal in the circumstances. They should realize that each of them acted the best they could in that situation. [p52]

Taking this example to the wider context of how people make sense of childhood traumas and past problems in life, Furman continues:

The past is a story we can tell ourselves in many different ways. By paying attention to the methods that have helped us survive, we can start respecting ourselves and reminiscing about our difficult past with feelings of pride rather than regret. [p56]

You’re not “broken”

Admittedly, “bad” things do happen to people. The view offered in traditional Western psychology is that people are somehow “broken” or “defective” as a result and their life’s task is therefore to overcome past traumas.

What if it’s the case that people are capable of all things, but circumstances and “bad” events cause them to play to certain of their talents and abilities more than others? This is quite a different view, which suggests: people are not broken, they’re just not accessing everything that they were born capable of doing. So faced with life’s challenges, people develop “strong suits,” their default, habitual mode of behaviour - but there is absolutely nothing to suggest that they cannot develop their full potential and diversify across the full range of human abilities.

Viewed in this way, our past difficulties become a rich source of evidence for our own coping abilities and resilience in the face of adversity. We can rewrite our narrative to describe how the things that did not destroy us have in fact made us stronger and better able to withstand adversity. Furthermore, we can explore the full range of our talents and how they can help us to grow into well-adjusted and fully-functioning human beings.

We can come to view our past hardships as something of a gift. I heard a proverb once that is, I think, of Chinese origin:

One disease, long life; no disease, short life.

I take this to mean: if you never face adversity, you will be more likely to succumb to the first major problem you encounter; whereas, if you have been strengthened by the things that have challenged but not destroyed you, your resilience is much greater.

The thought I like best from Furman’s book is that everyone is due a certain amount of happiness in life. If you didn’t have that happiness in your childhood and early life, imagine how much more you can expect to find later in your life!

Wishing the world were other than it is gives you nothing more than a potent recipe for unhappiness...acting to make it what you want is a step toward happiness and satisfaction. So – get started on rewriting your narrative today!
TM

SFC Day Two, plus: "Lord of the Skies"

It's struck me over the two days I spent at the Singapore Facilitators Conference (SFC) 2008 that the theme neuroscience everywhere continues.

Several of the sessions talked about tapping into people's different functional styles in order to facilitate the energy of divergent worldviews and perspectives in (sometimes quite large) group settings - helping to achieve strength from diversity and a rich tapestry of thought and opinion rather then a shouting match of adversarial position-defending. Two of the process tools - Open Space Technology (OST) and the World Cafe - are designed in particular to foster the cross-pollination of ideas across large numbers of people in a moderately structured format.

A few sessions spoke specifically about brain function and how the rich interplay of nurture/nature shapes how our minds make meaning and sense of the world around us. The focus was largely on getting people into a functional, rational space (their NeuroRational Type as I would term it) so they can access the best in themselves and be more open to the opinions of others. Interestingly, I gained further insight into human emotional, limbic responses from quite another quarter on my trip home.


Social Behaviour under Stress

On my way back to Sydney I was unexpectedly part of what I thought was an interesting experiment in social behaviour under stress.

My 7.5 hour flight from Singapore was on board the Qantas "flying art" aircraft Wunala Dreaming, a beautifully decorated 747 with Aboriginal depictions of Australia's best-known icon, the kangaroo.

The flight was tracking for early arrival in Sydney, but due to bad weather was diverted to land in Canberra. There for a variety of reasons we proceeded to spend a further 7 hours sitting on the plane parked next to a disused RAAF hangar, finally being evacuated to hotels at 3AM.

To say the process was chaotic would be to engage in mild understatement, but that's not what I found most interesting. First, some context: there were people on the plane who had come from various places in Europe, which meant flying via London-Singapore and had already been in planes and airports for upwards of 30+ hours before finding themselves locked in a 747 in Canberra.

Nerves were on edge.


Lord of the Skies

What ensued was a small-scale version of Lord of the Flies...in an airplane setting. By this I mean that an already long journey, made longer and more stressful by this diversion, provoked a variety of responses from people.

Stripped of comforting social and cultural conventions and further stressed by fatigue and environmental factors, people's behaviour began to revert to quite an emotional (limbic), even primitive state of being.

While our lives were cleary not in jeopardy - quite the opposite - our brains could not tell that was the case. For tired people in a harrowing situation, the limbic reaction was one of life-or-death. The focus was on survival and people's behaviours began increasingly to reflect their Core Belief Types.

As I've written previously, there are nine Core Belief Types, or basic survival strategies. They consist of three different groups; each group includes the three modes: fight-flight-freeze. So that as the night wore on to become early morning and different versions of a solution were mooted, only to be found impractial, I watched with fascination as people in the plane (including yours truly!) freely shifted gears between the three modes of fight-flight-freeze or, to put it another way, their forward-reverse-neutral gears.


Spiralling down, climbing back up again

Within each of our Core Belief triads, each of us has a default mode. On the plane, some people's initial response was flight (reverse gear) not in that they tried to break out of the plane, but they simply put in their headphones, nodded off or passively watched the situation unfold. Others were in freeze (neutral gear) or compliant mode: although they may have been increasingly annoyed by the mounting inconvenience, they did not act - choosing instead to have a whinge about it to their neighbours or sigh heavily in frustration. Still others were in fight mode quite early on, taking action by using their mobiles to inform local journalists about the situation, speaking directly the the chef de cabine, even demanding answers from the beleaguered cabin crew members.

So what kept us from savaging the crew and one another like the ill-fated boys on Golding's island? A couple of things.

We were given semi-regular updates on the progress that had been made thus far, which lessened the sense of helplessness that we felt in a situation whose solution lay quite outside our control. This, in turn, helped people to better manage the things that were in their control and develop a useful explanatory style based less on emotionally-reactive views and more on a rational (cognitive) view of the situation.

As often in these situations, I observed a sense of community form within the plane. There is nothing like a shared crisis to get strangers talking to one another. People shared stories of the destinations they had hoped to reach, the obligations or opportunities that await them when they finally arrived and generally expressed themselves. A sense of "making the best of a bad situation" arose which I think people found quite hopeful and suggested that there was a way through, it remain just to get it identified and carried out.

After a nosedive (or two) into survival-based and reactive Core Belief (or NeuroLimbic) types of the so-called "lizard brain," I credit the majority of people on that flight with climbing back up into their more powerful rational brain and accessing the particular gifts and talents of their NeuroRational profiles to foster a sense of community and personal connection that saw us all through. It also beats being emotionally jangled and miserable for 7 hours - with negative long-term effects on your health in the that entails.

And so it was that this Dreamtime journey on the Flying Kangaroo had many lessons for us all...

TM

Singapore Facilitators Conference - Day one report

A quick post and greetings from Singapore, where I presented a session yesterday at the Singapore Facilitators Conference on "Facilitation with the brain in mind". After an overview of the NeuroLimbic and NeuroRational types, (as developed by author and strategist Peter Burow in his book, NeuroPower) a lively discussion ensued which featured shared stories and experiences. I find these conferences invaluable because there is always such a wealth of knowledge and experience in the room, so many talented practitioners in diverse fields willing to share what they know and hungry to learn more from each other.


Are you going up?

A useful exercise looked at creating your elevator pitch - the 20 second summary of your offering that you would be able to reel off in the course of an elevator ride with a prospective client. The pitch should be a brief description of what you do and how you offer value, benefit and quality to your client.

Most of all, it needs to be structured so that the client cannot simply say, “Oh yeah, we already do that kind of work with another company," or “we already do/have that in-house,” or “We don’t need/use that.” Worst of all, if you give your pitch and the client simply says, "so what?" then you have yet to deliver the information that's needed to start a useful conversation.

A pitch is not simply saying your name and what you do: "Hi I'm Frank and I'm a consultant," or "I'm Debbie and I work with XYZ company." That practically begs the "so what?" response.

A great pitch needs to:

• show how you help your clients achieve their goals
  
• describe in detail where you add value and the benefits of your offer
• stimulate a conversation, so the person will keep talking after you leave the "elevator"

Working together with about a dozen other conference attendees, we came up with the following pitch:

We are all storytellers. Everything that happens in our life, we tell ourselves a story about it, to make some meaning of it and explain it to ourselves and others. If you spilled coffee on yourself this morning, you automatically told yourself a story about what just happened. It might have been "oh, I'm so clumsy!! I always drop things..." or you might have said "well, I guess I'll know for next time not to put my mug on the edge of the table like that!"

People act the same way in organizations. They tell themselves and others stories about their day-to-day existence and experiences. As with the spilled coffee example, those stories can be positive, negative or somewhere in between.

If you are a leader or manager, how useful would it be for you to know what stories your team members and direct reports are telling? To know whether they are hopeful stories or fearful ones? Are people able to share their stories and gain comfort from that fact that they're not the only one who feels the way they do, that they're not alone? Or do their stories not line up with each other, which is why there is miscommunication, tension and conflict in the office?

Most of all, you probably want to know whether the stories they're telling match the story that you, their leader, want them to be telling! That they are aligned with the goals and expectations of the organization.

If that is something that would be of use to you, we have processes for getting those stories into the open and talking openly and honestly about what they mean - for the individuals, the team, the organization, and for you as a leader. If it's of interest to you, I'm happy to talk further with you about how that would work...

Looking forward to another day at the conference today, will report more news tomorrow!
TM

Comments, connections and cheek

A loyal blog reader has gently chided me for the recent post on Framework Fatigue..."cheeky" was the word he used, in fact. I believe he was most likely referring to my high rating of the NeuroPower framework as compared to the many others listed.

Since this same reader had previously requested more details on my post about the nine core belief types, I shall now strive to substantiate my evident passion. Starting today and through the month of November, I will provide more indepth content about the NeuroPower framework.

NeuroPower basics

As I've suggested, the NeuroPower framework (as developed by author and strategist Peter Burow) integrates many components and is both comprehensive and holistic. Nevertheless, it can be boiled down to four basic principles, or maxims:

1. there are six intelligence centres that are the neurobiological basis for human personality and behaviour - tapping into these centres dramatically improves the quality of communication and understanding in human interactions
2. these six centres combine to produce NeuroRational Types, or archetypes, which describe your particular gifts and genius - the thing you were born to be able to do really well and that you are able to manifest when you perform at your best
3. your survival strategies, or core belief types, are deeply rooted in your "lizard brain," the brain's limbic system that governs both memory and emotional reactions; knowing the blindspots the result from your own particular fight-flight-freeze reactions is key to getting them under control (so that they don't control you) and fostering personal success
4. the developmental aspect of NeuroPower is focused on character - helping people get their emotional reactivity under control so they are able to tap into what's best in themselves, integrate the diverse talents of their Master and Mirror archetype profiles, and choose their behavioural set-point to reflect the desired outcome, context and other factors
   

Links to NeuroEducation

In a separate note, another visitor alerted me to the possible connection between the themes of the Framework Fatigue post and Jenifer Fox, a prominent figure related to the Strengths Movement in the US. I suspect that this reader is, like me, a connector and just can't resist making a good connection when there's one to be made. Thanks for that - there will certainly be a lot of overlap to discuss between Jenifer's work and the growing movement to bring brain-based parenting into the mainstream of Australian education as part of the NeuroEducation program.

Getting LinkedIn

Finally, regular readers know that I frequently link to people by using their LinkedIn profiles, which is a shorthand way of putting their own bio front-and-centre. I've also made good use lately of LinkedIn to develop contacts and explore markets in Singapore, Hong Kong and the UK - which, along with Xing (formerly OpenBC) and ecademy, has produced tremendous results.

So successful has this connecting been, in fact, that there are plans underway to launch intensive NeuroPower training programs in all three of these markets in the first half of 2009, starting with London in April. Watch this space for more details!
TM

An antidote to doing too much

A recent bit of client work reminded me clearly: some things can't be rushed. To learn a powerful and multifaceted new tool and skill set, there's no cutting corners.

Take poetry for example - of late I'm reading Stephen Fry's fantastic The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within.

Together Stephen and I are working to help me rediscover the appreciation of poetry first instilled in me in by my 9th grade English teacher: Mr. Tom Sherry. A gravel-voiced, rough-hewn farmer and boxer, he was just about the most unlikely guy to ever reel off Shakespearean soliloquies and stanzas of poetry, but there you have it - Mr. Sherry taught me much of what was worth knowing about life during my formative years. In fact it's from his class that I learned W.E. McNeill's phrase: "the man who knows is wanted"...so in some respects I can thank (or blame!) him for my present career in consulting.

Speaking of teachers and training, I'm reminded of what Alexander Pope wrote of learning:

A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring:
There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fir'd at first Sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless Youth we tempt the Heights of Arts,
While from the bounded Level of our Mind,
Short Views we take, nor see the lengths behind,
But more advanc'd, behold with strange Surprize
New, distant Scenes of endless Science rise!
So pleas'd at first, the towring Alps we try,
Mount o'er the Vales, and seem to tread the Sky;
Th' Eternal Snows appear already past,
And the first Clouds and Mountains seem the last:
But those attain'd, we tremble to survey
The growing Labours of the lengthen'd Way,
Th' increasing Prospect tires our wandering Eyes,
Hills peep o'er Hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

Poetry's beauty and power lies in its ability to do much with fewer words than prose; the poet's original intent is fleshed out as the listener fills in much of the meaning, making it simultaneously more vividly real and more relevant to that person's world. It is a collaborative art form, and one that merits the time it takes to learn to do well.

Ars longa vita brevis

The life so short, the craft so long to learn.—Hippocrates c.460

Yet in learning this, as with so many complex systems, is easy to grow impatient - to watch with mounting despair as "Alps on Alps arise" to humble our laboured efforts. So many nuances, subtleties, intricacies - and time is so short! Must rush, get more done, take more classes, cram even more into each breathless moment....

It's precisely then that it pays to look not only at the many peaks still to go, but to offer oneself the satisfaction and reassurance of reviewing just how much distance has already been covered.

Another useful perspective was offered today by my Montreal-based friend, colleague and coach Magella Sergerie: the opposite of doing isn't not doing...the opposite of doing is just being. Sometimes our efforts at doing too much (or learning too much) are simply counterproductive as we need to take that breather to recharge the batteries and climb a few more of those mountains.
TM

Photo credits: the Welsh 3000's by Owain Rees

Keeping it local (Update: 1% for the planet campaign)

As part of tmc's commitment to donate 1% of gross revenues to environmental causes, I'm happy to announce the first beneficiary is the Manly Environment Centre (MEC), which has received a donation of a refurbished Dell notebook computer with full MS Office suite and antivirus software.


The MEC is Australia's first suburban environment centre, actively dedicated to the protection of the local environment. The Centre offers accredited internships and work experience opportunities for a range of overseas, regional and local students in all fields of the environment and administration.

It also provides local field work, administration, marketing, project management, research and event planning opportunities to those volunteers looking for practical experience in the environmental or events industry.

The computer is a valuable addition to the Centre's resources as it will assist volunteers and students to prepare reports, manage projects and do research on the Internet.

The MEC project closest to heart and home for me is the role that it continues to play in protecting the local Little Penguin colony and the long-nosed bandicoot population by having them both declared as "threatened populations." I applaud the work of centre volunteers and Penguin Rangers and am happy to support the MEC's ongoing efforts.
TM

Global outbreaks of Framework Fatigue and Model Mania

In my recent travels across Australia, the UK, Canada and Asia, I've been talking to businesspeople and consultants about what tools and consulting approaches help them to achieve practical and sustained results - in their lives and in their businesses. In these conversations I have noticed two trends: framework fatigue and model mania.

Framework Fatigue

There are many, many models, personality profiling tools, psychometric assessments, systems and frameworks in the marketplace today. You've doubtless heard of them, possibly used them, possibly been subjected to them. To name just a handful:

• MBTI - Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
• JTI - Jung Type Indicator
  
• KTS - Keirsey Temperament Sorter
• FIRO - Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation
  
• DISC - four quadrant behavioural model
  
• NLP - Neuro-Linguistic Programming
• EI - Emotional Intelligence
  
• AI - Appreciative Inquiry
• SF - the Solutions Focus
• CBT - Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
• BT - Brief Therapy
• NVC - Non-Violent Communication
• VIA Signature Strengths Survey
  
• MBS - Management by Strengths
• Strengthsfinder by Marcus Buckingham (Gallup)
• SDI - Strengths Deployment Inventory
  
• HBDI - Herrmann Brain Dominance Indicator
• Systems thinking (e.g. Senge's Learning Organization)
  
• ICP - InterCultural Competence Profiler
• ILA - InterCultural Leadership Assessment
• Belbin Team (Roles) Inventory, a.k.a. Self-perception Inventory
• LSI/OCI - Life Styles Inventory/Organizational Culture Index (Human Synergistics)
  
• LGAT - Large Group Awareness Training (Landmark Forum, Goldzone)
  
• (...and the list goes on...)
  

Are you starting to get a case of information overload? Well that's what framework fatigue feels like. So that you can find your way out of this maze, and in the spirit of full disclosure, I'll give my view.

I have used some of the frameworks listed above in my own consulting practice to good effect with clients, notably Solutions Focus, Strengthsfinder, NVC, some systems thinking and some of the ones based on Jungian psychology. Of the others I can say that most are sound, useful and provide some insight to certain areas of human behaviour and performance. Then there are the bad apples; a few have decidedly poor reputations.

Model Mania

You may have had the experience where, despite their better natures and good intentions, enthusiastic people skilled in a given framework, system or method will claim for it explanatory powers far beyond what the thing was ever built to do.

This is model mania: the belief that the entire world can be understood through a particular lens, often to the exclusion of most (if not all) others.

In the famous turn of phrase offered by the American financier and Presidential advisor Bernard Baruch: "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

I've always been partial to a 'toolkit' approach, and in my consulting engagements always look to 'make it fresh' for each new client, using the tools appropriate to the context and issues present each time.

For those of you faced with so many available options and with so many of those options claiming to be all things to all people, how do you know which one does what, let alone which one works? I offer the following checklists, the first one what to beware of, and the second what to look for.

Checklist: what to watch out for

If you observe the following, it's time to ask some hard questions. If the framework, model or system:

• Actively fosters long-term dependence on the consultant or service providers
• Features a lot of hard-sell and constant expectations of signing up for more 'advanced classes'
• Uses processes that are done 'to' you rather than 'with' you
• Keeps materials, tools and mechanics of the actual processes a tightly-guarded secret from you
  
• Categorically condemns certain forms of human behaviour while others are lauded in an unqualified manner (i.e. stop all 'red' and 'green' behaviours in favour of doing only 'blue' ones)
• Encourages you to recruit others (family, friends, colleagues) in an ever-widening, Borg-like assimilation process
• Makes far-reaching explanatory claims across all aspects of human behaviour, as seen through a single keyhole view
  

Checklist: what to look for

To get the best long-term value and real results from your time and money invested, you should reasonably expect the following from an explanatory framework focused on human behaviour:

• Transparent - the tools are put in your hands for you to use for yourself with guided tuition
• Holistic - it has language that works 'from the boardroom to the boilerroom' and all the moving parts work well together
• Integrated - the framework features both internal consistency and an ability to coexist harmoniously with other explanatory models in your existing 'toolkit'
• Humanistic - its tenets line up with what the great traditions and civilizations of the past have had to say about human behaviour, personality and group interaction
• Scientific - uses the latest neuroscientific insights on brain function in a practical applicable way
• Empowering - offers insights to identify blind spots and reactive behaviours, in order to break repetitive patterns of unhelpful behaviour and help you achieve what you want for yourself
• Positive - is based on the belief you are not 'broken' and focuses on helping people achieve all they are capable of being by accessing their particular gifts and talents
• Developmental - describes the process toward personal integration and realization of one's full potential
• Interactive - more than a model for self-awareness, it gives you the tools to better interact with others and relate to them emotionally, cognitively and behaviourally
• Versatile - has application to the fields of self development, effective communication, management skills, fostering better leadership, transformational change in organizations, interpersonal relations, negotiation, sales skills, persuasion and influencing, difficult conversations...
• Practical - results-focused and applicable from the very first day of training

Having used and studied most of the frameworks on the long list at the top of this post, I can say that I have yet to see one that ticks all the boxes of the list immediately as well as the NeuroPower framework.

What is most positive about it is that I have not needed to 'unlearn' any of my previous training. The NeuroPower framework (as developed by author and strategist Peter Burow) is an integrated toolkit of useful and practical tools based on neuroscience and brain function. There is plenty of room for other tools and methods that you are already using and that work - because if they work, they must by definition line up in significant ways with brain function.

In this way NeuroPower happily coexists along with other methods and systems...though it's possible that once you have experienced its holistic nature and powerful explanatory insights into human behaviour, it may become your preferred toolkit for any number of applications!

As always, to find out more you can email me to talk about how I am using NeuroPower in my work with clients around the world.
TM

Surviving vs Thriving - insights from the Lion City

Singapore has long been a strategic nexus of commerce and trade. Here you have "instant Asia" - Indians, Chinese, Malay, Japanese - along with masses of Western and other expats and the multinational firms that employ them. Today Singapore offers many useful insights into what is happening in the region of Southeast Asia and also globally.

Out of this mix of cultures and worldviews, a particularly Singaporean view has emerged. Here the business culture is fostered on a deeply pragmatic view of the world...and yet it is not all short-term practicality. The government is strongly focused on Singapore's future wellbeing, with carefully laid-out strategies geared to the long-term objective of ensuring the city-state's place on the world map of commerce and business.

Certainly on the surface of it, with construction sites and container ports running literally 24/7/365, it seems the Lion City is poised to roar ahead through the current economic turmoil and beyond.

In my previous post I mentioned the difference in the US presidential election between McCain's politics of fear and Obama's politics of hope. During my visit over the past few days here in Singapore I've been listening to the insights of local executives and the thoughts expressed at the first Singapore Human Capital Summit. It seems as though there are two prevailing mentalities, similar in nature to the themes of fear and hope.

Let's call them surviving vs. thriving.

Surviving
This mentality is focused almost exclusively on the short-term: let's hit next month's numbers and then take it from there. It's a reactive strategy, designed to do the bare minimium required to ensure economic (and, hopefully, individual job) survival. It's therefore also bereft of long-term strategic focus, considered thought, and high-level awareness of consequences - the intended and the unintended.

Thriving
The other mentality is practical, yet future-focused. As one executive argued,

Right now I'm not putting money in marketing because who knows what the market will be doing in 6 months time. But I think it's important to invest in my people. If things don't get so bad, it means I've got a team that's ready to perform and I'll eat the lunch of my more reactive, fearful competitors who haven't similarly invested. But even if I have to shed some staff, they'll still have the skills when it comes time to hire them back later on. At worst, there's a relationship to be strengthened by developing their skills - and that relationship can also be the competitive advantage I need over other companies in a tight labour market!

Both styles, short-term and long-term, may be valid depending on context and a host of other variables. Looking at the above two philosophies, I know which company I'd like to work for. (And wasn't it an exclusive focus on the short-term that got the world into the current economic crisis in the first place...?)

Maybe here at the crossroads of Asia, the combination that Singapore has woven of "pragmatic long-termism" has some valuable insights. Straight from the lion's mouth.
TM

Neuroscience everywhere, plus: fear and hope on the campaign trail

Seems like everyone's talking neuroscience these days...

Neuroscience and osteopathy
Two weeks ago when I was back in the UK, I stopped by the clinic of Steve Makinde who, besides being kind enough to confirm that I had in fact been travelling with two fractured ribs (ouch), mentioned that he's pursuing a Masters degree in Neuroscience at University College London. So why does an expert in osteopathic medicine take a sudden interest in the brain? Well it turns out he wants to explore both the physiological and the neurological pathways of pain to see how best to provide effective patient care - to explore, I suppose, the mind-over-matter dimensions of pain relief and injury rehabilitation. This echoes the work that colleagues of mine in Australia are doing with neuroscience related to diet and body shape, and I plan to put them in touch with Stephen to see what useful conversations might result.

Neuroscience and human behaviour: Hard science + Soft skills
A week ago in Montreal I spoke with my colleague Elizabeth Hirst, communications consultant and coordinator/instructor at McGill University's innovative program in Public Relations Management.


We had a great discussion based largely on the fact that we've been pursuing parallel interests in neuroscience and human behaviour. How gratifying it is to us both that there is now hard science that backs up the of "soft stuff" of managing and communicating with people in organizations, an area to which we've both spent years influencing clients to pay more attention.


Fear and hope
Our conversation eventually turned to the American Presidential race and the way in which McCain's approach is fast, jerky, emotionally-charged and high-pressure, in stark contrast to Obama's more measured, considered messages of hope for the future. It seems to me that the Republican campaign is based on keeping people in a limbic state, where their knee-jerk responses will have a comforting predictability that (McCain/Palin hope) will deliver the White House in a few weeks time.

The limbic, emotional part of the brain makes decisions first, then seeks justification (or rationalization) for the decision after the fact. McCain has said he, like Bush, prides himself on acting fast and sorting out the details later. While to some voters this may seem an attractive trait, a form of real decisiveness, it's exactly the sort of decision-making the produced a war in Iraq with no detailed disengagement plan for the post-"regime change" period.

The rational brain, where our better nature and true talents lie, gathers information first and then makes decisions based on careful analysis and thoughtful debate. It makes it easier to imagine a positive future state, to believe in the fundamental optimism and resilience of the American people and their ability to recraft the American Dream for a new century.

It's the opposite of trying to operate from a locked-down, fear-based state of mind - a space which is fundamentally ill-suited to handling complex situations with multinational repercussions.

The American political process (and, I'd hazard to say, American culture in general) is not famously known for considered thought and examination of the issues at play. It's more about instant gratification and short attention spans - a tendency worsened by media that seek to keep people in a limbic state as well (after all, when you're scared shitless you crave more information, which is a great way to sell newspapers).


For the sake America's future, and for the rest of us in the world outside the USA, let's hope that Obama's message of hope and belief in the common sense of the American people will prevail over the politics of fear and reactivity.
TM

Views of a planet worth saving

I've not had the time to write on this trip that I'd have liked to have, but it's been great to travel and gather thoughts and ideas for future posts.

For the moment I can report that after mixed fall weather in London I've had exceptionally nice weather here in Montreal and Halifax, an Indian summer to accompany the turning of the leaves and fall colours blanketing the landscape.

Connecting with nature's beauty and the spectacle of such large-scale changes in the cycle of the seasons is a fantastic experience. Watching two deer pick their way along the side of Mount Shefford in Quebec's eastern townships and surveying the vast forests of Nova Scotia with the deep auburns, fiery reds and brightly-tinged orange leaves have been just a few of my favourite moments back in Canada.

All the more reason, I think, that we act to ensure the preservation of these natural spectacles. For as big as nature is, it's evident that the collective ability of humans to affect the world around us now outweighs nature's ability to absorb the impact.

In a previous post, I said I would support the 1% for the planet movement. I need to revise that - but in a way that effectively revises my contribution upward.

You see, the 1% for the planet organization actually takes 20% of contributions that companies like mine make to it, in order to fund its non-profit activities, with the 80% balance going to charities. Now this is fair enough; it's their call and they need to support themselves somehow.

For my part I'd rather have my 20% going directly to the charities and environmental groups that need it, rather than designing logos, running marketing campaigns and the other activities that the 1% organization is doing.

So I will adhere to my commitment of contributing 1% of tmc's gross revenues directly to charitable organizations, and will name the bodies that I support in the pages of this blog. I wish the 1% for the planet people every success and appreciate them popularizing the concept. For now, however, I'm choosing to go direct!

I trust you are enjoying nature wherever you are - it's the easiest and cheapest way to refresh your mind and recharge your batteries.
TM

Social animals, status chimps, clever humans

We are social animals. Our sense of self develops first in relation to our environment and immediate caregivers, then the others in our family unit, our clan, our tribe or our village. Our identity involves a complex dance between the polarities of being grounded as a part of something larger (relatedness to others) and the expression of self (individuality).

This dance is described in psychological terms as the interaction of the superego (parental and societal rules), the id (self-expression) and the ego (sense of self and of personal agency).

The ego helps us to set our individual goals and identify our motivation to achieve them. And because of our social nature, we also discover that in order to accomplish many of the tasks in our lives we require the assistance, support, and cooperation of others.

Like our nearest animal relative, the chimpanzee, our social relations are encoded with status, with games and a pecking order – literally the “who’s who in the zoo”. Status helps lend some structure to our interactions with the other members of our group and, in evolutionary terms, helps to ensure the survival of the group entity. As an individual, status can be simultaneously reassuring (we know where we fit in) and tremendously threatening.

To illustrate the point, look at the picture below, and imagine that you are the orange circle in each of the two groupings.

From the work of German Psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus.

What feelings do you experience when you imagine your position in the group on the left versus the group on the right?

Is your ego telling you that one situation is acceptable and the other is not?

Do you take comfort from the fact that in both groups, you are actually at the centre of a group of others?

Most interestingly, did you spot that in both groups, the orange circles are in fact exactly the same size…?

The point is this: we are animals and therefore social. We are (essentially) chimps and therefore have status in our groupings. Yet we are more than our animal origins.

As humans we can apply our larger brains and evolved minds to define and shape our own reality. This enables us to keep our ego-based fears from getting in the way of our relatedness to others.

Now this is not to demonize the ego (which is a normal and necessary part of who we are) it's a call for a reality check. And a reminder that we have the choice to define our own reality such that, no matter the “size” of those around us, we are less concerned with the relative differences in size than with striving to be the best orange circle we can be.

Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have said, “People are just about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” If you define your happiness as always relative to those around you, it will remain always beyond your control.

On the other hand, if you choose to define happiness for yourself then you will always be the best measure of its accomplishment – and you will be better positioned to reach out to others to help you get there, since you’ll have nothing to fear from them and everything to gain.

Choose wisely, it’s your life after all!
TM

On the Road – insights from training and travels

Hello from the city of Cairns in tropical north Queensland. I’ve completed four days of training with Unique People on the application of the NeuroPower framework (as developed by author and strategist Peter Burow) to one’s personal development and in working with clients.

The workshop looked in-depth at how neuroscience and neurobiology offer the "hard science" behind the traditionally "soft" concepts of human behaviour and interactions. I've learned a lot about the tremendous integration of knowledge across a wide variety of disciplines to produce both hands-on consulting/coaching tools and processes for personal growth.

It’s great to be in Cairns. Up here you have Australia at its most diverse: the Reef, the Rainforest and the Red of the Outback. My new colleague and friend Joe Foster put it well I think when he said “You know, I half expect to see dinosaurs roaming through the valleys here.” There’s an ancient and primordial feel to the environment here and, as a boy who grew up in landlocked diary-farming country, I find it exotic, fascinating and – at the moment – quite grounding.

For the next several weeks I will be On the Road, and as that phrase evokes the great Beat spirit of Jack Kerouac I thought I’d share a quote of his that relates to the feeling of this place that I’ve described above:

I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling. Ecstacy, even, I felt, with flashes of sudden remembrance, and feeling sweaty and drowsy I felt like sleeping and dreaming in the grass. (from Dharma Bums, 1957)

In the same novel Kerouac writes, “I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.”

What a great insight. You are the master of your own destiny, and your life is the canvas upon which you can write and paint the adventures of your choice – according to your rules, by your own lights. It begs the question: how many of us are willing to take full responsibility for our lives, accountability for our actions, and deal with the outcomes that arise from them?

It’s a skill not all of us have developed. Yet it’s absolutely vital, for there can be no greater responsibility than the one you take for your self. I’m not talking in the Gordon Gecko “greed is good” way, I mean in the “ensure your own oxygen mask is in place before you assist others” sense.

After all, you are the only vessel you have to take you through your adventure on the planet, yet so many people live as though they have no choice in what they do every day. And there are few things more debilitating than feeling like you have no choice in any situation - the result can be learned helplessness, depression, resentment and emotional lashing-out. So why continue to be unhappy, or play the victim?

I reckon we shy away from responsibility because it sounds scary and we might fail. So how about a reframe…Steven Covey suggests we think of it as our “response-ability,” which takes us back to Kerouac’s metaphor of a page full of our responses to the challenges and adventures of life.

When you live according to your own standard of success (rather than what you imagine everyone else is thinking) you will be happier and healthier in life.

OK let’s leave it there for now and I’ll post more insights and thoughts as my travels continue.

On that note, I’m in Cairns until 28 September, in London from 30 September -07 October, then in Canada (Montreal, Halifax and Toronto) until 16 October, followed by Hong Kong 18-21 October and finally Singapore 21-25 October before I'm back to Sydney again.

During the coming weeks I look forward to meeting more fellow travellers and friends, both On the Road and virtually, as an outgrowth of this blog.

In the meantime, travel well!
TM