A positive New Year's resolution for 2009

Greetings from one of the places where the New Year 2009 had its earliest beginnings: Sydney, Australia. I sincerely wish my readers health, happiness, growth and learning this year - and I hope that you look forward to achieving your goals even as you appreciate the good things that happened for you in 2008.

At this moment of good intentions, hopefulness and a fresh start to the year, I'd like to suggest a New Year's Resolution that I know will bring delight and greater happiness to those who decide to have a go.

Like most things that consistently work well, it is based on common sense and is not very complicated. In my work with both individuals and groups of people, one of the things that has most often delivered positive outcomes and, well, there's no other word for it, a "feel-good" atmosphere is: the practice of offering sincere, positive feedback to other people.

The Affirm

The technique that describes how to do this most effectively comes from the world of solution-focused practice and is described in the book The Solutions Focus: Making Coaching and Change Simple (Jackson/McKergow 2002, 2007).

The Affirm is a deceptively simple, yet highly effective tool, one that is based on the principle that people feel better (and in organizational terms perform better) when they are appreciated and their strengths, talents and attributes are noticed in a positive way. Giving sincere, positive feedback is one of the most underrated tools in the box. It seems we are stronger at spotting mistakes and homing in on what’s wrong or not so good. And yet how many of us do not warm to the praise of those around us and feel pretty good as a result?

So is this just a matter of giving compliments willy-nilly to anyone and everyone?

Well, no.

You'll have noted by now that I've mentioned the word "sincere" several times. To identify the sort of compliments that leave people deflated and cynical, rather than buoyed-up and energetic, I invite you to imagine the manager who delivers, with the emphatic two-thumbs-up gesture, a loud: "You guys are GREAT!" Such a comment misses the mark entirely because it is insincere, it's unspecific and it's so open-ended as to be totally irrelevant to the receiver.

By contrast, Affirms work as effective positive feedback because they are:

• Authentic and sincere,
• Specific and detailed,
• Relevant to the context

So if, using these points as a guide, we were to coach our well-meaning manager in the example above, he might revise his comment to the team to sound something like, "I think it's great the way you guys worked together to get that widget proposal delivered yesterday - even though there were different ideas on how to get it done, I really like how you managed to build on each other's contributions and produce high-quality work despite a really short lead-time. Well done!"

By cleansing the practice of complimenting others from the stink of insincerity, this technique helps to create a more positive environment, one where it's OK to give and to receive sincere positive feedback and to look for what's working rather than what's not working. It's not only a great way to mind your use of language to help spread some happiness and positivity in the world, it's an absolutely essential ingredient in effective engagement of people and the creation of high-performance teams in the workplace.

Most astoundingly, it can even be used to turn around some quite negative situations. If someone is complaining or "having a moan" about something, you can even Affirm them in such a way that they actually feel heard and are more likely to stop moaning and get on with something more productive!

Because you affirm the person's underlying strength, talent or attribute rather than the moan itself (which is really just a symptom, a transient reactive emotional state they've been triggered into) you actually enable the person to get back in touch with their higher cognitive and more noble qualities. With a gentle prod you can help them become more resourceful and actually get on the path to solving their own problems instead of inflicting them on everyone around them.

Check out this Affirm activity as an example of how this can play out in real life - from my own experience, I've had great results introducing it to people who very quickly get in the spirit of things and revelled in the challenge of finding the person's positive noble qualities lurking beneath even the most cantankerous moaning and bellyaching.

I wish you every success with your Affirming in 2009!
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

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

Have the respect to be direct in your communications

Hi, I’m back.

A friend predicted that I would become “time poor” during my first weeks in the new role at Mercer and he was (as he so often is) correct…hence my lack of posts.

Part of the issue is that I am a bit of an idea magpie, collecting, connecting and considering interesting insights and odd bits until I’ve come up with a tapestry that I think is ready to be unveiled to the world. People have told me they enjoy and value this approach and I’ll admit it’s my preferred way of synthesizing and opining about things.

Trouble is, it makes for fairly lengthy posts and it time to gather the threads and to weave my tapestries. And of late, on the subject of time, see above…

There is, however, a matter that I can be silent about no longer, hence this brief outburst that I deliver coupled with the promise of more considered work in the weeks to come.

Passivity and Politics

I have noticed a pattern in the language used by some people who facilitate workshops, in particular certain kinds of communication workshops. In a desire to offer no possible offence to anyone at all (fuelled, in my view, by a pronounced vein of political correctness) I’ve heard the most roundabout constructs being used in settings that are meant to foster authentic and direct communications about what people want and expect from one another.

Examples of this pernicious pattern of passive parlance include:

“I am wanting to move on with this session.”
“I am thinking that there’s another view to consider”
“I am needing some more clarity around this issue.”
“I am feeling uncomfortable with this situation.”

The passive voice can be useful in English usage, but I find here it is not. I think the motive for passive use in this way stems from the desire to be “nice” – that is, to be excessively indirect and offer no offence to anyone. This is, however, an action that a) contains the arrogant presupposition that you can predict how the person will react and b) the manipulative desire to control how he/she will react – neither of which are positive and authentic approaches to communication.

In my view it’s more authentic, honest, and frankly respectful to be direct and speak your mind plainly. Maybe the other person will be offended and get highly precious (gosh I love that word!) about your interaction. Guess what? That’s their prerogative, and now you’ve got something authentic to work with.

To close, I want to give credit to Rafe Spies of Sydney's Straight Media, who reminded me in a conversation last Friday evening of George Orwell’s 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, which is I think a terrific tract on defending plain usage from the twin threats of barbarism and jargonism (itself a bit of jargon I’ve invented, but nevermind). I refer in particular to Orwell's rule number four from that essay: Never use the passive where you can use the active.

I want to be clear about this: people create more than enough misunderstanding and confusion even when you use the active, direct voice…there’s no need to worsen matters by being indirect and passive in a misguided and manipulative desire to be “nice”.

TM