Author, Consultant, Executive Coach - Helping people and organizations grow into desired results

Wednesday 28 October 2009

Get yourself a Lifeline - highlights from "Who's Got Your Back"

In keeping with this week's focus on building strong relationships, I want to share some insights I've gained from Keith Ferrazzi's book Who's Got Your Back: The Breakthrough Program to Build Deep, Trusting Relationships That Create Success--and Won't Let You Fail.

The book is a really useful reminder of how important it is to have key people in your life who are smart, will tell it to you straight and will hold you accountable. In it, Ferrazzi suggests that you set up a Personal Advisory committee (sort of like political leaders have their kitchen cabinets), one that is both reciprocal and that evolves as you develop personally and professionally.

My biggest takeaway from the book was the lesson that Ferrazzi himself learned in growing his consulting business: that I don't have to do it ALL myself. It's vital to enlist the help of trusted people to shape ideas and ensure projects actually happen.

So how do you connect with those trusted people to form what Ferrazzi calls a Lifeline Relationship? I like his suggestion to "practice the art of the long slow dinner" during which you chat and get clear that each of you:
  1. recognizes a need in your lives to change and achieve more
  2. is interested in working together as partners to help achieve your mutual goals
  3. is willing to put your needs on the table, for the good of the partnership
  4. recognizes the benefits of such a partnership
  5. is committed to honesty, rigour and self-reflection
  6. is willing to not let each other fail

Building Lifeline Relationships depends on Four Mindsets - which can be learned and practiced:

Generosity
- sets the base: the end of isolation by cracking open a door to a trusting emotional environment, the kind that's necessary for creating relationships in which the following mindsets can flourish

Vulnerability - letting your guard down so mutual understanding can occur

Candour - the freedom to be totally honest with those in whom you confide so that you are able to share your hopes and fears

Accountability - following through on the promises you make to others (and yourself)


And how do you know when a Lifeline Relationship is unlikely to happen, or has passed its use-by date? Ask yourself:
  • Does the relationship feel unbalanced? Do you ever feel taken advantage of?
  • Do you find that your basic values and habits are misaligned?
  • Have you tried to practice the Four Mindsets to improve your relationship repeatedly, without success?
  • Does the other person simply nod his/her head instead of really listening to you?
  • Does the other person take your goals seriously? Does he/she forget to follow through on helping you toe the line?
  • Do you feel you would be stronger, happier, or more successful without this person in your life?
These handy guidelines may help you develop not only lifeline relationships with some trusted advisors but lifelong friends as well - which is great because in life, from time to time, we all need to know who's got our back.
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Monday 26 October 2009

Apprentice week 5 analysis, RWA: "The Relationship is the Customer"

"The most important thing in life is sincerity—if you can fake that, you've got it made." ~ Comedian George Burns

Summary: Today's post reviews episode 5 of The Apprentice Australia and offers a Real-World Application (RWA) on building great relationships with customers.


Review of episode 5: Sydney Marriott hotel

The task was to run a floor of 5-star suites at the Sydney Harbour Marriott hotel, catering to the hotel chain's highest-profile and most exclusive guests.

To be brief: when it comes to customer service a few candidates on this week's episode "got it" and a few simply...didn't.

Consider the following exerpt from a brilliant article entitled The Relationship is the Customer by Charlie Green, posted on his Trusted Matters blog:

The customer is not the transaction. Nor is the customer the discounted present value of all future transactions. The customer is also not just the buying individual, and not just the firm.

Motives matter. If the motives are entirely about the seller, there can be no true customer focus.

Customer focus will always be bogus if it is merely a means to the seller's end. The comedian George Burns famously said, "The most important thing in life is sincerity—if you can fake that, you've got it made."

Business is in danger of no longer getting the joke.

Customer focus should be about the customer. The point should not be winning competitive battles, but increasing the collaborative relationship with customers themselves. The point should be the customer relationship.

The relationship is the customer.

In it for the customer


The two whose behaviour most clearly aligned with the customer service and relationship-building philosophy described above were Morello and Gavin. We saw each of them connecting with the guests in an authentic and warm fashion, going above and beyond the call with some unusual requests and pretty outrageous/drunken behaviour...and doing it with a smile and good grace. Mr Bouris highlighted Morello's exemplary service in the Boardroom, telling him there was nothing to say because he essentially did everything right. I'd argue Gavin was not far behind.

I don't put Sam in this category because - credit where credit's due - he hustled to put things right, yet my impression was that he was engaged in firefighting and I saw little genuine warmth and connection. Simply put: his heart wasn't in it. Similarly MaryAnn was very task-focused and wanted to get things right but from what we were shown on the episode her role didn't seem to provide her with many chances to connect with customers.

To discuss the development conversation that would have needed to happen with John is a lengthy post in itself. I'm frankly at a loss to understand the mechanics underlying his failure to step up this week and unfortunately for him it was no surprise on to see him fired on this week's performance.


In it to win it

In contrast to Morello and Gavin, Carmen and Sabrina really didn't get it. Carmen was more focused on barking orders and making curt demands of her fellow team members then she was on dealing with the clients in an engaging way. In her post-episode video diary she seems once again to exhibit little awareness of her how her manner comes across to others. She laughed off the key role she had as front desk/concierge as merely playing "yes, sir/no, sir" which doesn't sound to me like relationship-building.

In fact Carmen was frankly destructive of her relationships with her own fellow team members by setting them up early to fail and take the blame for delays and customer dissatisfaction. In the preview of next week's episode we're shown how this trend continues. In the absence of developmental work, she can do little else...which makes for interesting fireworks and "good" TV but a toxic team environment.

In the Boardroom this week Sabrina was in the firing line and only narrowly escaped. I seriously doubt that she's learned the lessons that she needed to, however.

So intent was her focus on looking good and doing the right thing that she failed utterly in the role of concierge: it took her 2.5 hours to make a restaurant suggestion and then it was for one that was closed that day; she messed up all the room service orders; in dealing with the "anniversary couple" she completely missing the irate husband's body language and suggesting he join the Marriott Rewards program(?!).

Most of all she seemed to laugh off all the errors she made, smiling relentlessly on the hope that would get her through and then - the gravest sin of all - described the customers as "high maintenance". Unfortunately for her, she remains blinkered by her own narcissism which translated in this instance into an attitude that seemed to say, "how dare they fail to appreciate how well we are doing our jobs!"

In all the above, Sabrina focused on her own agenda and ignored the fundamental truth of customer service: the relationship is the customer.


Real-World Application: The Relationship is the Customer

Is the focus in your organization on building relationships, or just getting an "increased share of the customer wallet"?

Do your people do a great job with a warm smile because they want to, or have they mastered the art of "faking sincerity"?

And if you're uncomfortable thinking about these questions, would you like to change things for the better?

Developing the quality of internal relationships can often be instrumental to the way your client-facing staff members perform their roles. As the face of your organization, they are both your calling card and your best source of vital client feedback.

To learn more about how tmc can help you to improve the quality of relationships at your organization, contact tmc.


Note: For those of you outside Australia who wish to view the episodes of The Apprentice Australia that I'm discussing in this series of posts, you can find them on YouTube here. Meanwhile if you're in Australia you can see not only the episodes to date but also post-episode video diaries on the Nine website here.

Related previous posts:
Analysis of episode 1, RWA: Foundation & Force
Preview of episode 2, RWA: Conflict Management
Apprentice week 2 analysis, RWA: Giving/Receiving Feedback using Head & Heart
Apprentice week 3 analysis, RWAs: Team Leadership and Setting a Team Culture
Apprentice week 4 analysis, RWA: Coaching for high performance

Photo credits: Sydney Harbour Marriott photo from Marriott hotels, Sabrina photo is from news.com.au.
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Tuesday 20 October 2009

Apprentice week 4 analysis, RWA: Coaching for high performance

Summary: Today's post reviews episode 4 of The Apprentice Australia and offers a Real-World Application (RWA) on "Coaching individuals for high performance," in organizations and on their own.

To learn more about how tmc coaching can help you and your organization, read this 2-page overview on tmc coaching, learn about the Solution-Focused coaching style, or simply email Todd.


Review of episode 4: Pub Nights in Mudgee

The Boss: Mark Bouris
In the time between last week's episode and this one it seems Mark Bouris has reflected upon and/or received good counsel about his decision making in the Boardroom. I suspect this week we're starting to see more of the good judgment that's made him an Australian business success story.

This time in the Boardroom when both Heather and MaryAnn took full responsibility for aspects of their team's shortcomings - with MaryAnn even offering to forfeit Team Pinnacle's clear victory on ethical grounds - Mr Bouris praised rather than punished their displays of accountability. In addition he came down much harder on potentially misleading advertising and in so doing remedied the errors in judgement that I thought he made last week.

Another development in the Mark Bouris' style this week was what I think is a useful shift in perspective. Rather than pressing each team's Project Lead to talk about the "weakest link" in their team, Mr Bouris made several comments on the positive traits he saw in team members - which recalls the ideas offered in the analysis of episode 2 on giving feedback using the Affirm technique.

Offering someone positive feedback doesn't mean you close the door on pointing out his/her areas of development (which we've all got!). On the contrary, it's a highly effective way to help the person stay on top of his/her emotional reactions and win the Battle inside their Brain.

Neuroscience is beginning to offer hard evidence to help explain what we implicitly know from lived experience. In particular, it suggests that the "Command and Control" approach isn't an effective way to motivate, develop or lead people. When we feel threatened and get defensive our capacity to pay attention, take in new information and process it creatively essentially disappears.

In The Apprentice format, the people who get the most feedback in the Boardroom on their performance (and especially areas for development) are typically the three who are up for elimination. True, this ensures they will pay close attention to what's said, but for one of them the feedback will come too late to be effectively applied in further weeks. This week's trio on the hotseat were from Team Eventus.

This week in the Boardroom

As Team Eventus Project Lead, Heather again exhibited the sort of controlling behaviour that she did in episode 2 when she was put in charge of designing the cereal box graphics. This week did not use a consultative decision-making style and instead quickly arrived at what she thought was the "right" decision on the price for the evening. This was followed by a lot of positive talk (e.g. This is going to be great! It's going to be awesome! Why wouldn't anyone come to a night like this?! etc.) to convince herself and presumably her team that this was the right decision, but this positivity had the effect of making it hard for her team to tell her that they all thought the price was too high.

What ended up happening was the team fell victim to the psychological error of confirmation bias. They saw only the information that confirmed Heather's pre-existing decision about the price - information that ultimately proved inaccurate, since on the night people were unwilling to pay such a high price for the product on offer. Despite a last-minute inspiration to raise more money with a raffle in the bar, her team lost by over $1,000 ($2,814 vs. $3,930).

In the Boardroom Heather was credited with being "passionate and optimistic" but this loss caused her to "eat humble pie". Asked why she should stay, Heather could muster little more than, "I have so much more to give". She was advised by Mr Bouris to improve her management skills, which I'd suggest would among other things involve her learning to hear other people out rather than jumping prematurely to the one, "right" decision. This is a team member with great potential but as Mr Bouris suggested, could definitely benefit from some coaching to frankly assess her own strengths and weaknesses and clearly identify what she has to offer.

This week smooth-talking charmer Gavin missed a trick by failing to think of the table sponsorships idea - a financial blunder that cost his team the victory. Though in the Boardroom he made much of "putting his hand in" and actively participate in every project, and though he was credited with confidence and persuasiveness, he was faulted for seeming unwilling to take accountability when things fail to work out as planned.

As before, Gavin needs to do more than look good and speak well. Mr Bouris pointed out that he is "the guy the team looks toward" when they need leadership and stated, "You've been too measured...I want to see the real Gavin, I want to see the best come out of you from now on." While he is clearly strong at the intangible areas of relationship development and team building, a development area for Gavin continues to be producing tangible practical results - in this case, setting a course of action and sticking to it, not getting distracted by the dancing girls, costumes, making friends and doing deals. While clearly adept at playing to this strengths, Gavin could usefully be coached to become aware of his blindspots and formulate a course of action that addresses them.

It was hard not to feel for Blake this week, whose halting performance in the Boardroom exhibited a clear lack of confidence, even a bewilderment at what was happening around him, and a lack of energy to fight for his own survival. He was faulted by Mr Bouris for not stepping up on decisions and for flying under the radar, which Blake said he "does not do on purpose." Yet when asked why he should stay could only muster: "I don't have the background [in marketing]...I have skills but not experience. [...] I'm here to work for an organization I can build a career out of" - hardly a compelling case of value-add to Mr Bouris' organization.

Self-doubt of this sort is normal and we all experience it occasionally (otherwise we'd risk becoming thoughtless automatons or egomaniacs). The time and place to express it, however, is not the kill-or-be-killed Boardroom setting. This is a clear case of someone whose performance is slipping and could benefit from coaching. A coach could help Blake to a) identify what he wants and b) develop an practical action plan that plays to his strengths, to help him focus less on apologizing for what he can't do and get the best results from those things that he does well.


Real-World Application (RWA): Coaching for high performance

I liked the moment when Mark Bouris mused aloud, "there's some positives there, we've got to try to figure out how we get the best out of them." Above I've suggested some ways that coaching could help develop these three people. Similarly, in previous reviews I've highlighted personality and character traits that would be useful to explore and develop in a coaching conversation.

When I speak to people about coaching, however, I notice there's a lot of confusion about the subject. Since coaching came into vogue in the business world some years ago there's been an explosion in both the different kinds of coaching on offer (executive-, business-, skills-, team-, behavioural-, personal-, life-, sports-, health-, and even dating-coaching!) and the sheer number of people who now call what they do "coaching"...with widely varying degrees of expertise. There seem to be a lot of misconceptions these days about what a coach does and how the coaching process works.

Here are my views on coaching - what it is, what it isn't, and what it can do for you and your organization.

"Hey, I don't need therapy!!"
Some people shy away from coaching because they think it's going to get all soupy, emotional or just too personal...like some kind of therapy or counselling. Broadly speaking, while therapy tends to focus on feelings and experiences related to past events, coaching is oriented towards goal setting and encourages you to move forward. So you don't have to be sick to get better: while therapy aims at helping a dysfunctional person to become functional, coaching helps a functional person to achieve high performance and is action-oriented. The focus is on where your are right now, where you want to be, and how you can get yourself there.

"How's that different from having a mentor?"
Mentoring differs from coaching in both the type of expertise on offer and the nature of the relationship. A mentor typically has years of experience in the field, someone who is able to offer advice from the perspective of "been there, done that." The means the mentor is usually older and more experienced than the person being mentored and the relationship is more teacher-pupil. An important difference from coaching, then, is that a coach does not need any expertise in the client's field of work, while a mentor provides the perspective of "when I was in your shoes and facing the same situation, here's what I did...."

Coaching for high performance
A coach works in side-by-side with you to explore your current situation with the objective of identifying what you want to achieve and creating a plan of action to help you get there. In this process the coach does not have to be an expert in the client’s business - the client is the expert. The coach's expertise in this partnership is to serve as a sounding board and to occasionally reflect back certain information (like recurring themes or patterns).

Note, however, that the coach does not have the answers. The coach's role is to ask useful, thought-provoking questions - ones that encourage you to find your own answers and clarify your own thinking. The real value of a coach is to help you draw on your own wisdom and insight, arriving at your own conclusions and resolve to address the situation with practical action.

In this way a great coach is a little bit like Lao Tzu's definition of a great leader: "...he who the people barely know exists and, when his work is done and his aim fulfilled, people will say: we did it ourselves." Or as renowned psychologist Carl Rogers is credited with saying, "in order to truly help someone we must be able to enter their lives, help them resolve their issues and then exit their lives without them ever knowing we were there."

How can organizations and individuals benefit from coaching?
While it's tricky to put a precise ROI on an intangible service like coaching, here are a few stats that have been compiled over time:
  • A study of Fortune 100 executives found that coaching resulted in an ROI of almost six times the program cost as well as a 77% improvement in relationships, 67% improvement in teamwork, 61% improvement in job satisfaction, 48% improvement in quality. (Manchester Consulting Group)
  • Productivity increased by 88 percent when coaching was combined with training, as compared to a 22 percent increase with training alone. (International Personnel Management Association)
  • A study of a Fortune 500 telecommunications company found that executive coaching resulted in a 529 percent ROI. (MetrixGlobal)
  • Productivity among salespeople who had participated in an intensive coaching program rose by an average of 35 percent (Metropolitan Life Insurance Company)


Related previous posts:
Analysis of episode 1, RWA: Foundation & Force
Preview of episode 2, RWA: Conflict Management
Apprentice week 2 analysis, RWA: Giving/Receiving Feedback using Head & Heart
Apprentice week 3 analysis, RWAs: Team Leadership and Setting a Team Culture

Credits: I gained useful insight and the ROI stats, from Dutchcoach. Photo of Heather by Richard Polden.

Friday 16 October 2009

Apprentice week 3 analysis, RWAs: Team Leadership and Setting a Team Culture

Summary: This post reviews episode 3 of The Apprentice Australia and offers Real-World Applications (RWAs) on integrating new team leaders and building a strong team culture.


Review of Episode 3

This week saw a trade in team leaders, so the "boys team" Pinnacle was led by Amy and the "girls team" Eventus by Gavin. The end result was a victory for Gavin's team, which made nearly triple the profit of Amy's team and resulted in Amy's elimination. This week I'll talk about some interesting personality matchups of "like with like" in both teams, about Amy's departure, and comment on the Boss himself, Mark Bouris.

Like with Like: Personality and character matches this week

This week's task was to create, market and sell a new flavour of savoury pie. There were three interesting matches made of "like with like" personality and character:

Carmen & MaryAnn
During the production process Team Eventus had only two people making the pies which meant progress was slow. With just one pie machine in the factory, Team Pinnacle couldn't get their pies made until Team Eventus finished. Carmen sought to maximize her team's pie production and put Team Eventus at a huge disadvantage by monopolizing the machine until the final production deadline had passed, while her partner MaryAnn wanted to put a cap on their pie production to give Team Pinnacle a fair go and get their pies made. Carmen's response: "No, we're not going to do that! What were you thinking?"

Later in the Boardroom Diane Stone said Carmen and MaryAnn were a "super-cohesive team" and for the most part they were, thanks to their shared behaviour of forceful, charge-ahead action that had ironically set them at odds in episode 1. The contrast between them in this case, though, was that MaryAnn is better at connecting with other people (she has better access to her Heart) while Carmen is exclusively task-focused and loses all perspective of the other people involved (she relies primarily on Head). We see this in particular during the sales at the market, when Carmen, never having tasted one, said Team Eventus' pies were "tough and gristly, made with the cheapest cuts of lamb to save money" and when confronted by Blake said simply, "We're in this to win!" and "You need to go in hard and aggressive - there are no rules!" This attitude would come back to haunt her in the Boardroom, though I think not nearly as much as it should have done (of which more below).

Sabrina & Gavin
In her post-show diary Sabrina said simply, "Gavin gets me and I get Gavin." These two are almost identically matched in both personality and character. You can imagine being on their team would be a lot of fun, so long as things were going well. If things get tough, however, which in this case would mean: reputations on the line and appearances at stake, Sabrina in particular needs to be mindful of the Boardroom warning she received about trying to relativize Carmen's clearly unethical behaviour (see below). Otherwise this week's task let the two of them focus on their strengths: persuasiveness in getting free marketing materials and wooing people with charm as when they were selling pies from the van at Darling Harbour. Getting a late start and having a whole load of unsold pies in the van suggests that a focus on practical outputs remains a development point for them both. Look for more fun and a continued focus on the team dynamics from this duo in weeks to come.

Heather & Amy
Due to illness Heather did not figure highly in this week's episode, but in an aside at the very end she pronounced her deep admiration for both Amy's gutsiness and ethical behaviour. It seems these two are quite well matched in personality and character as well, though at this point we won't see this develop any further.

That someone as focused on ethics and integrity as Heather would speak so highly of Amy gives us an insight into Amy's behaviour in the Boardroom. Amy remarked straight off that it was "nice to be on the side not attacking each other," a reference to all-female group dynamics in Team Eventus to that point. When her team's loss was revealed she did not relativize or waffle: she immediately put her hand up and took reponsibility. Later in her exit interview she said simply, "if we failed as team it's because I've failed them."

I think Amy is actually being too hard on herself. Some development coaching I'd offer her during the task would have been: don't be intimidated by the blokes in Team Pinnacle, continue to swiftly address problematic behaviour (like Sam's moodiness at the outset) to assert authority as project lead, and to nominate a loyal and responsible lieutenant like John, whose quiet leadership came to the fore this week.

Nevertheless, Amy's accountability is to her credit. I'd expect it will serve her well in the real world as she continues to grow her Melbourne-based recruitment company. But that same accountability proved to be the kiss of death in the "one-strike-you're-out" world of the Apprentice Boardroom.

This poses an interesting question for Mark Bouris: two weeks running he's insisted that he wants people to take a stand, that he has no time and no place in his organization for "shrinking violets" who sit on the fence. Then when presented with someone who takes steps up to take responsibility, he says "I applaud you for putting your hand up"...and fires her, claiming that her accountability "left me nowhere to go."

However this was not the most serious error in judgement that I think Mark Bouris made this week. Carmen beamed with pride in the Boardroom as she took credit on behalf of her and MaryAnn for the marketing of the pies in the organic market as "home made". In fact the pies were factory-made and while early on Diane wondered aloud if this presented a possible "Trade Practices problem" Carmen cheerfully said, "in this case, perception is reality." This is not a clever case being made of the added value of perception since every other comment Carmen made clearly indicates her sole focus was winning and maximizing profit. This is someone who just doesn't get it.

And Mark Bouris' response as business leader and future Boss? Though this was "a clear case of being deceptive...[and] you don't play around with things that aren't correct in terms of your marketing" he concludes: your conduct was a "technical breach, which we will overlook on this occasion."

A fish rots from the head down

It's as if the names Enron, Andersen, WorldCom, Bear Stearns, AIG, Adelphia, Parmalat, Tyco, Cendant, Putnam Funds (and the list goes on...) have taught us nothing at all. As if the GFC hasn't produced serious questions about the pursuit of profit/shareholder value above all else and about how business people are trained in elite institutions.

If the top man in an organization fails to model the values that are expected of his reports and team members, there's not much hope that those values will take root. So again, this week Mark Bouris made two errors in judgement:
  1. He eliminated the one person who's thus far shown leadership and accountability exactly the kind of behaviour he's said he expects and wants.

    In my view it should have been Sam who left; his body language in his video diary was moody and downcast, saying "If I'm still here next week," his behaviour was tetchy and his actions were mostly fence-sitting - all of which Mr Bouris has said he doesn't need. He wasn't just out of his depth in this task, I'm afraid he's in too deep overall and through no fault of his own - he simply lacks the life experience needed to better manage his emotions and tap into his gifts in stressful business settings.

  2. He's overlooked clear breaches of ethics and of good old Australian "fair go" sportsmanship.

    In my view, Team Eventus ought to have had their profit decreased by the amount of whatever fine would normally apply for deceptive trade practices and/or had a penalty applied for unethical conduct.
Of course we need to bear in mind this is not reality, this is TV. Below are the number of hits on each person's Episode 3 video diary (including Amy's exit interview) on The Apprentice Australia website. The figures tell the tale - the audience loves a good scrap:
Amy - 3538
Carmen - 768
Blake - 565
Gavin - 331
Sabrina - 272
Heather - 202
Sam - 195
Morello - 176
John - 146
MaryAnn - 145
(figures current as of time of writing this blog post)

Real-World Applications (RWAs): Team Leadership and Setting a Team Culture

There was confused leadership this week, from both project leads suddenly leading new teams and from Mark Bouris whose contradictions and errors in judgement send mixed messages.

How does your organization clarify the leader's expectations of their team and create a team culture that sets team members up for success and high performance from the very start?


RWA#1: "Leader-Team Foundation" session puts you on course for success

In the US Navy when a new Captain assumes command of a ship there's a recognition that you can't simply swap one Captain out and a new one in. Each Captain has his own personality and leadership style and each ship has its own culture and way of doing things. Navy vessels are considered to be on war footing every time they leave port, placing servicemen and women in harm's way on a daily basis and leaving no margin for error or misunderstanding between Captain and crew. The Navy manages these leadership transitions with a formal process called a New Reporting Relationship (NRR) session, which provides some useful tips for the business world.

Similarly, a new leader in an organization can engage in a facilitated process to manage his/her leadership transition, in the form of a Leader-Team Foundation session. This helps make explicit the nature of the leader's new leadership style and expectations of the team.

Some typical goals from a Leader-Team Foundation session:
  • Clarify a new leader's vision, mission, and goals for the group as well as expectations of his/her direct reports.
  • Inform the group of the leader's preferred leadership style and decision-making approach.
  • Begin/continue to install explicit productive behavioural norms in the group.
  • Alert the leader of concerns, barriers, issues and strengths facing the team.
  • Expedite the development of the new team (in the “forming stage”) by learning about each other and promoting clear, open communication.
Desired outcomes of a Leader-Team Foundation session:
  • Understand the leader's vision, goals and expectations for the team.
  • Provide the new leader with the information needed to make sound and efficient decisions while setting priorities, policies and procedures.
  • Clarify the role of each team member in relationship to the new leader and each other.
  • Clarify concerns, priorities, and expectations of all members.
  • Identify and discuss dilemmas and challenges facing the group.
  • Identify mutual needs and identify actions needed to move forward.
  • Discuss any constraints facing members or the group to take such actions.

RWA#2: "Team Culture Foundation" session creates high-performing teams

Whether a team is newly-formed or already existing, get your team pointing in the same direction with a facilitated Team Culture Foundation session. The session involves individual reflection, interviews and group dialogue aimed at finding answers to the following questions and, where differences arise, agreeing on ways to resolve them - both now and in future:
  • What's the timeline of the team and where are we now?
  • Who are the heroes and villains of the past?
  • What are the five rules - spoken or unspoken - that you remember from first joining this team?
  • What are the team rules?
  • Who makes those rules?
  • How are they enforced?
  • How easy or hard is it to change them?
  • How does this team interact with the rest of the organization?
  • What are the three most helpful team patterns?
  • What are three least helpful patterns?
  • What are the behaviours that are banned/encouraged in our team?
  • How do we induct new people into the team?
  • What's our team's value proposition?
  • Is there an agreed code of conduct for our team?
  • How can we track how we're doing as time progresses - do we have regular check-ins?
Note that you can add the Heart element as well, for example with a 500-Word Story Exercise (details of which in a future post).

For details on how tmc can help you to run facilitated Leader-Team Foundation and/or Team Culture Foundation sessions, email me.


Note: For those of you outside Australia who wish to view the episodes of The Apprentice Australia that I'm discussing in this series of posts, you can find them on YouTube here. Meanwhile if you're in Australia you can see not only the episodes to date but also post-episode video diaries on the Nine website here.


Related previous posts:
Analysis of episode 1, RWA: Foundation & Force
Preview of episode 2, RWA: Conflict Management
Apprentice week 2 analysis, RWA: Giving/Receiving Feedback using Head & Heart


With materials and insights from Jack Fontaine & Jean Baumann; Peter Burow.
Amy & Sam photo credit: www.news.com.au

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Monday 12 October 2009

Story conference: habits, corporate culture & stories for change

Summary: An article based on content presented at the Celebrating Story conference held last week in Melbourne, Australia. The post talks about how individual habits form, how organizational habits are the corporate culture or "the way we do things around here" and how, during culture change projects, stories can be used to mediate the tension between individual survival responses and participation in the larger (organizational) group.
NB: This post is an abridged version of an article on transformational culture change in organizations due to be available later this month - to request a copy of the article upon its publication, email the author.

Habits are handy

Remember when you first learned how to drive a car or ride a bike?

In the beginning it took a whole lot of conscious, focused attention to learn this new task. Quite soon, though, the movements needed for that activity became more or less automatic. So much so, that sometimes you (like most people) will drive somewhere you've been to many times before and, upon arrival, have no recollection at all of having made the trip.

Similarly, if you try to explain in words to someone how to ride a bike, it's a really hard thing to do. Your long repetition of bike-riding behaviour has turned it into a habit and actually put it outside your conscious awareness, into an automatic set of movements.

The mechanics behind this process work like this. When you first sat astride that bike or buckled up in the driver's seat of a car you engaged in some pretty serious and focused attention, so as not to either scuff your knees or wrap your dad's car around a tree. At times like this, you're consciously engaging your cortical brain - that's the part which engages in complex tasks by weighing different options, considering evidence and laying down the new neural pathways required for learning and skill acquisition.

This is the "heavy-lifting" part of your brain; a processing powerhouse, the possession of which separates we humans from other species. It's hugely expensive to operate in caloric energy terms: it takes about 25-30% of the body's available energy to engage in sustained cognitive activity, like that required to learn a new complex task. That's why after a long period of intense concentration like studying for a test you're exhausted. Even though you were not very physically active, you probably demolished a big meal soon after and had a nice long sleep.

In order to manage your body's resources most efficiently the brain automates as many cognitive activities as possible. New learning is swiftly turned into automatic patterns of behaviour. They become habits and, as you have probably experienced, they can be very tricky things to try to change. As they become simply "the way you do things," they drop out of your conscious awareness. You find you have "imperfect introspective access" to your habits, making them hard to shift and a very powerful force for the maintenance of the status quo.


Vive la différence


Eating the same evening meal day in, day out can be comforting habit. It's efficient, no thought is required and it probably saves time and effort that you can expend on other things.

However, it also means you'll miss other experiences and culinary opportunities. It leaves you exposed if the ingredients for your favourite meal are suddenly unavailable. Your body may rebel against this monotony and develop an intolerance for some of the foods. The point is: the efficiencies that habits can bring can also stand in the way of the flexibility needed to adapt to internal and outside changes.


Organizational habits: Corporate Culture

A similar process happens on a wider scale in organizations. They can be said to have "habits" too, ones that, taken together, form the corporate culture - a concept that is most often described simply as "the way we do things around here". Corporate culture can therefore also be a powerful force for the maintenance of the status quo and, as with the dinner example above, most of the time that's OK.

However for an organization to be flexibly adaptable (e.g. for the organization to move from where it is now to where it needs to be in order to deliver on its strategic goals) many of the habitual patterns wrapped up in the corporate culture will need to change as well.

Now mention “corporate culture” to people in an organization and most will return a blank look, an uncertain smile, or a tentative nod. Having a conversation about culture is a bit like trying to talk to a fish about water - the awareness level is just not very high, because everyone is so completely immersed in the culture.

Any organizational change initiative will very quickly run smack into habitual, automatic patterns of behaviour. The way that people are invited to take part in that change process will therefore determine from the very start how successful the shift will be, and what results will be achieved as the new strategy is executed.


Change can unbalance "The Battle inside your Brain"

Since the habits of corporate culture are powerful forces to maintain the status quo, you need equally powerful countervailing efforts to shift these habits. The thorny question is: will making a powerful case for culture change encourage people to rationally evaluate new ways of operating using their cortical brain networks, or will it represent a source of disruption, insecurity and distress that's seen as a threat and triggers a limbic survival response in each individual?

The way that a change initiative is launched and managed will determine how well you set people up to be on the productive side of The Battle inside their Brain.

Remember that the limbic emotional brain network is where you see the classic knee-jerk reaction - act first, then consider - as it makes decisions first, then seeks justification (or rationalization) for the decision after the fact.

Meanwhile the cortical rational brain network is built to weighing options and alternatives, gathering data and information and then make decisions based on careful analysis and thoughtful debate - consider first, then act. It's in this latter part of the brain that our better nature and true talents as functional adults is located. During a change, you want people to be spending lots of time there and as little time as possible in their limbic survival mode.

What's tricky is that the limbic survival reaction produces powerful emotions and reacts faster than the cortical rational brain. Here's why.


Survival strategies and the Individual

When any change happens in their environment, people will have an immediate response at a very basic level of the brain, the limbic system.

This is a survival response and one that is deeply hardwired - essentially it provides the motivation to focus your attention and assess the situation that you now face in terms of what threats may be present and whether there's action that needs to be taken to ensure your survival.

These survival responses are made up of something that you've no doubt heard of before: the "3 F's" of fight-flight-freeze response.

The limbic system is much older in evolutionary terms than the larger cortical brain, which means that these emotionally-fuelled fight-flight-freeze reactions happen even before we’re consciously aware of them. Now, these reactions have to be fast or they wouldn't be of much use to keep you alive in threatening situations where instant action is required.

The price you pay for the limbic system's speed is that it bypasses the rational cortical brain. Because your rational cortical brain is the part which enables you to consider evidence, weigh alternatives and make well-thought-through decisions, it means that pre-cortical, unconscious reactions can produce some really dumb decisions. Also because the limbic system is a critical part of our age-old, hardwired survival mechanism there's no way to "turn it off". That is to say, you can't NOT have a reaction to things.

The question is, what you do with the emotional energy that results.

Managing this energy requires that people know their most frequent survival strategy: fight-flight-freeze. To use less provocative terms, think of them as gears that you switch depending on whether you need to go forward, reverse, or just be in neutral.
  • Forward (fight) is all about action, but it can't be your only survival mode; faced with something bigger and toothier than we are, it makes sense to have other reactions to fall back on.
  • Reverse gear (flight) is the withdrawal mode, where you disengage to observe the surroundings for signs of danger and decide whether to re-engage or flee still further.
  • Neutral (freeze) in this context is the in-between mode, staying put and being mostly non-threatening and compliant.
These reactions are reactive, not thoughtful. Fighters will unthinkingly attack a change initiative, Fleers will unthinkingly withdraw either mentally or sometimes even physically from the environment, while Freezers will unthinkingly agree and be compliant, but not have any capacity for real engagement with the change.

People in survival mode are in a emotionally high-strung state of limbic lock-down. They will be barely functional as rational adult individuals and even less inclined to participate in groups. Since each person's limbic behaviour tends to trigger a limbic response in others, teams devolve into an animalistic battle of each-against-all.

As each person's limbic response ricochets and intensifies that of others, the group's level of emotional reactivity rises and other team members come to be viewed one of two ways: as competition or food. In such a setting change becomes impossible and people long for the safety and familiarity of habitual patterns - hence why so often a few months after a change is introduced, people revert back to pre-change behaviour patterns.


We live in tribes and tell stories

This may all sound quite grim, a bit like an organizational Lord of the Flies (a.k.a. The Apprentice TV series). Thankfully, two characteristics of human beings offer a way to mediate this state of high tension between individual survival and group participation: 1) we are inherently social animals and 2) we are meaning-making machines.

1) Our social brains. There's something called the default mode network in the brain, which is "what the brain does when it is doing nothing in particular" and involves primarily two areas of the brain.
Researchers don’t agree on all the components of the default network, but consensus is growing that it has two major hubs: the posterior cingulate cortex, or PCC, with the precuneus, and the medial prefrontal cortex. The functions ascribed to those two areas may give clues to what the default network is good for. The medial prefrontal cortex is involved in imagining, thinking about yourself and “theory of mind,” which encompasses the ability to figure out what others think, feel or believe and to recognize that other people have different thoughts, feelings and beliefs from you. The precuneus and PCC are involved in pulling personal memories from the brain’s archives, visualizing yourself doing various activities and describing yourself. [...] Together, these hubs give you a sense of who you are. Their prominence in the network has led some researchers to propose that the function of the default mode is to allow you to internally explore the world and your place in it, so you can plot future actions, including contingency plans for various scenarios you might encounter.*
So it seems that when you're not thinking of anything else, you're thinking about yourself - as defined by your social relationship with others. In other words: as defined through interactions with the group.

2) Stories. A good deal of research has confirmed the human predilection to make characters and narratives out of whatever we see in the world around us. Put simply, we are meaning-making machines. In keeping with the above, it's also interesting to note the role that stories play to promote social cohesion among groups and serve as a valuable method for passing on information. Moreover, stories and narratives play a key role in persuasion: people accept ideas more readily when their minds are in story mode as opposed to when they are in an analytical mind-set.** (Hat-tip Shawn for this article.)


Practical takeaways

God turns you from one feeling to another
And teaches you by means of opposites
So that you will have two wings to fly
Not one. ~ Rumi

Illustration credit: Simon Kneebone, Cartoonist & Illustrator


Our default mode is to define our selves in social terms through relation to others and we tell ourselves stories to make sense of the world around us. We're naturally tribal, storytelling creatures. In this tension of opposites, between the individual's concern for survival and his/her desire to belong to a group, there can be found both the high energy of the emotional limbic survival response and the amazing human capacity for complex thought and meaning-making.

From the very start of a change process, leaders need to use stories and encourage people to channel their emotions into productive behaviours. This can be successfully done in two practical ways:
  1. Help individuals to recognize and manage their own limbic emotional reactivity, through awareness of the nine predictable limbic types (see below, Workshop).
  2. Engage the group with story, with a narrative journey of change that sets the context, lays out the strategy, invites participation, shows the benefits, engages at an emotional level, outlines the detailed plan, and finally looks forward to positive future state (see below, Consultancy).

Are you a slave to your emotions or is your emotional energy serving you?

Workshop: The 9 Survival Strategies - which ones you use and how to put them to work for you (as presented at Melcrum's Strategic Comms conference Sydney, and used by Deutsche Bank, Lloyds TSB Bank, AMP, and other organizations in Australia and the UK).


What's the story of your next organizational culture change project?

Consultancy
: To learn more about how tmc helps leaders to effectively engage their teams through times of change, email Todd.



References:
Peter Burow. "The Art & Science of Transformational Leadership."
**Jeremy Hsu. "The Secrets of Storytelling: Why We Love a Good Yarn - Our love for telling tales reveals the workings of the mind," Scientific American Mind, August/September 2008, 46-51.
M.D. Lieberman, D. Schreiber & K.N. Ochsner. "Is Political Cognition like riding a bicycle? How cognitive neuroscience can inform research on political thinking," Political Psychology, 24(4) 2003, 681-704.
*Tina Hesman Saey, "You are who you are by default," Science News, 176(2) July 18th 2009, 16.

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Tuesday 6 October 2009

Apprentice week 2 analysis, RWA: Giving/Receiving Feedback using Head & Heart

Summary: This post reviews episode 2 of The Apprentice Australia and offers Real-World Applications (RWAs) on how to give and receive feedback.

Previous related posts:
Analysis of episode 1, RWA: Foundation & Force
Preview of episode 2, RWA: Conflict Management

Analysis of week two

TEAM EVENTUS (winning team)

What was shown of the behaviour the all-female team members demonstrated a team divided... dare I say: catty?

Carmen
's comments about team leader Sabrina (whom she had invited into the Boardroom with her last week for potential elimination) were critical and caustic, in keeping with Carmen's central theme of revenge for perceived betrayal. Watch for more fireworks from Carmen's corner as it seems she has not yet learned how to channel her abundant energy into more productive behaviour.

Heather joined in the fray early this week when her desire to use her experience in advertising as team leader was thwarted by Sabrina thrusting herself forward for the role. Heather did not contest Sabrina's suggestion but then seemed inwardly resentful throughout the task as a result - a function of not wanting to deal with a difficult or potentially painful situation. When Heather did apply her experience to the project, we saw another side of her: a perfectionist pursuit of what is right according to her expertise/rules. Working with the graphic designer she repeatedly said, "no that's not it, that's not right" and worked literally up to the last minute on fine-tuning and adjustments - which could have led to disaster. Despite this long time commitment, Heather looked stressed and anxious during the pitch, most probably out of fear that it still wasn't right. In the weeks to come a developmental goal for Heather will be to present her ideas assertively while also making room for other perspectives, adopting a position of curiosity rather than a compulsive quest for what is right according to her own standards.

Sabrina wasted no time in putting herself forward to shine this week - and then manifestly failed to do so. Using her characterisitc forcefulness she effectively nominated and acclaimed herself team leader at the outset (team approval at that point being really just a formality in her mind). In the event, not much was shown of her leadership or contribution to the project aside from her singing voice on the jingle and her delivery of a negative and critical assessment of Heather's design efforts. Worse, she nearly blew what to that point had been a strong team pitch to the Ogilvy execs by getting defensive during the Q&A and arguing with their feedback. Incredibly, she repeated this blunder in the Boardroom by cutting across and attempting to correct Diane Stone's report on Eventus' performance. It's possible that Sabrina talks a good game and fronts herself as being capable of much more than she can actually deliver. In short, she's a fraud and at a certain level she knows it. Her persona is therefore built on tenuous foundations and she will be on perpetual high alert for any threat to its maintenance...which makes her incredibly resistant to feedback and fearful of any assessment of her by others. Her development task remains the same: cultivate modesty and objectivity, greater awareness of others through opening herself to feedback, and learning to deliver feedback to others in a more constructive way.


TEAM PINNACLE (losing team)

Lynton's elimination this week stemmed largely from his over-reliance on data, information and logical, step-by-step process. In his exit interview he seems not to have learned the lesson: he states there is not a lot he would have done differently, says they made the best possible use of the tools and information available, but failed to talk about how he would correct the two major shortfalls: his failure to remember the clients' names(!) and the lack of engagement and energy in his "wooden" presentation to Ogilvy. It's likely that he thought his way was the best way, so despite claiming to have a "dream team" to work with, he insisted on delivering the pitch on his own. In the Boardroom his detached, non-emotional mask began to crack as he continually pursed his lips - a blatant microexpression that may have indicated anger/annoyance, disapproval/disgust, or impatience at not being able to speak, but in any event clearly demonstrated outwardly the emotional distress that he was unwilling to actually put into words.

Jon, meanwhile, was this week's target of Mr Bouris' war on "shrinking violet" behaviour and "fence-sitters" - which seems to be code for everyone who's not making a big noise about their own contribution. I'd agree that Jon seems ambivalent about his role and was too easily brushed aside by Gavin during the interviews - all the more reason for him to insist that some groundwork be set before tasks are undertaken so there's greater role clarity and even debate about how to proceed, before proceeding. So, more Foundation before the Force.

Sam meanwhile got positively manic and made good use of his creative side during the brainstorming session - which is, after all, what a brainstorming session is meant to be about - but then got some stick for being unfocussed. At present there is simultaneously a lot of goodwill towards him and doubts about his youth. That said, he stuck his hand up and took responsibility for an idea in the Boardroom, which earned him kudos from Mr Bouris since everyone else on Team Pinnacle was in prevarication/plausible deniability mode. In the weeks to come Sam needs to keep on being himself and continue to earn the respect of his team members by engaging with them in an energetic, authentic way - in other words, with Heart.


Real-World Application (RWA) #1: Head and Heart

Lynton and Sam offer good examples this week of the contrast between Head and Heart.

HEAD is about data, tasks and learning. It looks like this: get clear on the step-by-step actions, make resources available, allocate them efficiently and leverage them to move forward. Ensure good information flow, analyze data for patterns to apply and exploit. It's logical, procedural, rational and non-emotional.






HEART is about empathy, inclusion and relationships, creating a personal connection so that internal competition does not tear the team apart. Being smart about connecting with the team helps foster a sense of belonging for each team member. People don't work for companies or money - they work for people. As team leader, offering a sense of personal commitment will build authentic relationships between team members, who gladly go the extra mile for you...and for each other.

There's an old saying: "People don't care what you know, until they know that you care." With Sam it seems pretty clear that what you see is what you get - to use the phrase, he wears his Heart on his sleeve for all to see. On the other hand, Lynton's Head-strong efforts to dazzle with his marketing know-how and to put himself forward as the expert presenter during the pitch actually alienated him from team members. It also blinded him to the fact that a joint presentation would have been more compelling because it would draw on the diverse strengths of the team members, including Jon's input from his role as parent, Gavin's charm and easy way with people, Sam's energetic enthusiasm and Andrew's warmth and engagement.

Using only his Head and not his Heart, Lynton failed to engage either his team or the client, and paid the price. His exit interview shows that this lesson hasn't sunk in. Logically, his Head-based behaviour still makes rational sense to him. As yet, he hasn't developed the Heart-insight to understand where things went wrong. Opening himself to emotional and Heart-style engagement with others will therefore be his developmental task in his post-Apprentice career.

Of course both Head and Heart are necessary elements and each is an effective counterbalance to the other. We can get so focused on results that the human dimension, that of emotions and relationships, gets forgotten. Yet it is the central task of leadership to successfuly reincorporate exactly that dimension to to engage people in getting things done.

What does your team or organization do to ensure a good mix of both Head and Heart in decision-making, activities and interactions?

An excellent tool for reincorporating the human dimension, the Heart in an organization, is by enabling people to communicate more effectively by giving and receiving feedback.

Real-World Application (RWA) #2: Giving & Receiving Feedback

Giving feedback: The Affirm
This week Sabrina demonstrated the kind of feedback that many managers give: pointing out what's wrong, challenging decisions with a lot of "why" questions and generally putting the person at the receiving end on the back foot. This highly critical approach focused on the negatives will be interpreted by many people as a threat - and drive them into their limbic, emotionally reactive survival mode.

Rather than offering negative, destructive feedback, there's a tool that helps you to give constructive feedback aimed at a collaborative and mutually-agreeable outcome. Working on the basis that people work better when they are appreciated, a good approach is to Affirm the things you notice that are going well and the resources, skills, talents and attributes that a person has demonstrated.

At first this might seem like a pointless waste of time, just soft-stuff, hand-holding and not getting the point across. Or like those empty compliments that some managers lavish indiscriminately on team member - a load of sickly-sweet, nonspecific and insincere praise. But the Affirm is something else.

Good Affirms are:
Authentic and sincere

Specific and detailed

Relevant to the context


And...they feel really good both to the giver's brain (since it's linked to compassion) and the receiver's brain, since they help position the receiver to win the Battle inside their Brain. Good Affirms calm the knee-jerk, emotionally reactive limbic brain and invite the attention and involvement of the rational cortical brain, where the mental heavy-lifting takes place and whence people produce their most useful behaviour and activity. (Learn more here.)

Receiving feedback: Active Listening

Even if you're not being Affirmed, you will still need to receive feedback from others in order to learn, develop and grow. Scottish poet Robbie Burns wrote, "O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us." And he's right, we gain invaluable insight from the outside perspective that can only come from other people.

Assuming you've won the Battle inside your Brain and quieted the noise of your emotional reactivity, here are some good Active Listening habits to cultivate:
  • Reassure/encourage - convey genuine interest, show you're paying attention, keep the person talking by occasionally saying: "I see..." "Yes..." "Say more about that..."
  • Reflect/paraphrase - convey understanding by restating what the person has said, not necessarily word-for-word but as you've heard and understood it, sometimes taking a guess at the underlying feelings: "You feel that..." "I can imagine you would feel angry that"
  • Restate/clarify - check that you have understood the speaker's intended message (NB: whether you agree with it or not!): "So if I understand you correctly, your idea is..." "In other words, you're saying..."
  • Summarize - to highlight important facts, ideas, etc., review progress so far and establish basis for further discussion: "These seem to be your key ideas..." "Let me just check where we've got to so far..."
The opposite behaviours can be called listening stoppers:
  • Denial - "No, that's not true." Also, body language like lip pursing, rolling eyes, ignoring comments.
  • Counter-interrogation - responding with questions that attack, criticize or make false assumptions
  • Offering counter-opinions - Rejecting the other person's point of view out of hand and substituting your own, "accurate" version: "Let me tell you what really happened!"
When team members can learn to give and receive feedback using Heart, it opens the channels to and engages the rational brain to better process the Head-based facts, data and information. A winning combination!

tmc can help you and your team members to give and receive feedback more constructively, interact collaboratively, and more productively deliver the results you need. To find out more - contact me.

Note: For those of you outside Australia who wish to view the episodes of The Apprentice Australia that I'm discussing in this series of posts, you can find them on YouTube here. Meanwhile if you're in Australia you can see not only the episodes to date but also post-episode video diaries on the Nine website here.
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