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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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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Apprentice Australia - Episode 1 review, RWA: Foundation & Force

Summary - an introduction to a series of blog posts that I'll be writing about episodes of the TV series, The Apprentice Australia. Each will include Real-World Applications (RWAs), so you don't have to watch the TV series, or even be in Australia, to benefit from the insights on offer.


The Apprentice Australia kicked off last night. In the next few weeks I'll post a series of comments on the series. I think there's a danger in presenting, as this series can do, primarily the negative and emotionally reactive side of human behaviour in organizations. While it makes for "good" TV, I think it can also have a depressing effect on viewers who may conclude that people are pretty much rubbish all the time and there's not much to be done about it.

I therefore want to use The Apprentice Australia episodes as behavioural "case studies" and, acting in the role of shadow external consultant or coach, offer a useful counterbalance as I share my hypotheses on the group dynamics and individual personality preferences.

I'll going to suggest some ways that things could go differently and more productively if, instead of being in the decidedly unreal world of "reality TV", these people's behaviour were taking place in a real team, in the real world. Each post will therefore offer a Real World Application that you can use even if you don't follow the series or are not in Australia.

The Apprentice format

As anyone who's watched the series in the US or UK will know, the interview process used to find a new Apprentice is necessarily artificial and made-for-"reality"-TV.

Contestants are typically given short timelines to accomplish very broadly-defined tasks, all with the same goal: make maximum cash. For the losing team, it's back to the Boardroom where the knives come out and someone's sent home. In other words, these are "teams" in name only, since in reality each participant looks out for him/herself.

Welcome to the corporate dogfight pit.

Now, reality TV shows are rarely instructive. So are there any lessons about human behaviour that we as viewers of The Apprentice can learn and relate to our own workplace on a daily basis?

Well I think there are. Despite the artifice of the show, it does offer a prime example of what happens when high-pressure scenarios trigger reactive emotional responses and actions that are not well adapted to the situation...in other words, really pretty rubbish and childish behaviour.


The Battle inside your Brain - balance or blowout?

Moment by moment there is a battle being waged inside your brain. Your limbic system (emotional: fast, reactive, habitual) is producing knee-jerk impulses driven by the survival instinct, while your cortical system (cognitive: reasoning, reflective, considerate) is doing its best to apply your brain's vast ability for mental processing to the effort to modulate, consider and channel this tremendous emotional energy into productive and adaptive behaviours.

Or to put it another way: you've got a fast-acting part of you that's a bit like an impulsive child, and a slower, wiser part of you that guides you toward making the smart move...but can often be subverted in times of high stress and perceived threat. Balance is the key; blowouts can also results. The Apprentice interview format specializes in scenarios geared to produce more blowouts than balance, as this week's episode has already shown...

Episode 1 review

This week we were introduced to all 12 contestants along with the Boss, Australian businessman Mark Bouris, and his two advisors in the series, Diane Stone and Brad Seymour.

As a relatively new arrival in Australia I'm not familiar with the track record of either Mr. Bouris or his advisors (one an ex-footie player, the other his PA). So in this post I'll just look at what happened with the losing team and who heard the famous phrase, "You're fired!"

Let me set some context. In this series of posts I'll not make any predictions about who will be the winner. This is because practically speaking, it's impossible to tell which person has the "right" traits and personality preferences to win the competition, because "right" (in terms of adaptive and effective, producing the desired outcome) will vary tremendously according to any number of factors, including:

• makeup of the team - and as a function of that, quality of reactions/interactions with other team members
  
• degree to which the person's talents and abilities (to the degree he/she can successfully deploy them) are a good match for the task undertaken; not everyone's cut out for every type of task, and it's in these situations when the team must pull together and complement each other's skills
  
• seeing someone's "intro" interview tells you very little about how they will cope under real pressure; what's key is their ability to self-manage and stay focused/productive when faced with real-life dramas
  
• and many other variables...people are complex adaptive creatures so making predictions based on extrapolation of a few data points is nearly impossible

An additional, decisive variable is that the choice of who stays and who goes ultimately rests with Mr. Bouris, who will not directly observe contestants' behaviour during the tasks (depending on his advisors for second-hand information). He will make his decisions based almost exclusively on behaviour he sees in the Boardroom - a high-pressure, politically-charged, personally threatening and therefore survival-mode-triggering setting.

Moving on to assess this week's results, I would argue that it was a lack of political savvy that cost Jane her spot in the competition and saved Carmen from certain elimination for her incompetence as project leader.

Carmen's leadership style is a classic example of Commanding/Coercive, a style that demands immediate compliance and says, "Do what I tell you to do." Furthermore,

If a leader always and only uses only the commanding/coercive style, the overall impact on organizational climate will be negative. While the team will feel the pressure and drive to complete tasks, there is a risk they will ultimately feel alienated and uninvolved by the coercive leader's tendency to create the entire plan without any input from others, then expect others to follow and not ask questions.

Carmen's own awareness of her style and impact on others is minimal. She tended to steamroll others with a powerful ego and drive - one that unfortunately for her is not paired with little self-awareness of how she comes across to other people.

When queried on how things went with one task, for example, she replied that she "put on my power hat" and charged through to an outcome. This is illustrative of her emotional reactive (limbic) style: focused on Power, with her as Protector and taking any dissent, criticism or rejection as an excuse for aggression and revenge. Asked in the Boardroom by Mr. Bouris how she performed as project lead, she confidently stated: "Extremely well!"...which occasioned immediate looks of surprise and disagreement from her team, and tears from her.

Carmen honestly felt that she was driving ahead for the greater good of the team and must have felt betrayed by the sudden realization that they did not see, or value, her role in the same way. This dose of reality for her was as unexpected as it was unwelcome and hurtful. Here we could see some of the vulnerability that her hard outer shell and relentless drive is meant to keep hidden from others.

Nevertheless, the facts are as follows: as project lead Carmen charged ahead with little consultation with her team, poor understanding of the task, grossly underestimated the work required for the projects, underquoted on the projects and then - abandoning all integrity and accountability to the client - tried an 11th hour renegotiation when it was clear that they would struggle to deliver the agreed project on time. These factors, particularly the underquoting, cost her team the victory.

In his assessment of the girls' team, Mr. Bouris accurately observed, "as a team you are completely dysfunctional." Despite the clear evidence for why this was so, he chose not to hold Carmen as team leader accountable. Instead, he placed the responsibility on the team: "right now there's no accountability, it's all down to the project manager, she was too bossy and told us what to do," and further, "there's no room in my organization for a shrinking violet."

On this basis - largely, I would say, based on the single exchange that took place between Carmen and Jane in the Boardroom, Jane was fired, for allegedly not "using her additional experience to hold Carmen to task."

So the lessons from this week's Boardroom:

• charging ahead and doing lots of things (even if quite badly) is less harmful to your survival chances than being more considered and less combative, and
  
• the implicit message of Mr. Bouris's decision to fire Jane not Carmen: when it comes to accountability, leaders don't make mistakes in my organization, underlings do...and will take the fall for it (take note, future Apprentice!)

I've written elsewhere about the need for balance between bold action and considered planning. Popular wisdom provides phrases in favour of both functions, so that while "Fortune favours the bold" and "He who hesitates is lost" are sometimes true, there's also the fact (as this week with Carmen's team) that she should have "Looked before she leaped" into underquoting jobs and she ought to have "Measured twice, cut once" when it came to assessing how much work was truly involved with each project.

Instead, Carmen's team was unified only in stating there was no plan or strategy in place. To paraphrase Canadian political economist and humourist Stephen Leacock, as leader Carmen just "flung herself upon her horse and rode madly off in all directions."


Real-World Application (RWA)

What sort of behaviour is most often rewarded in your organization?

1. Is there a bias for action over planning, with the result that you sometimes put a lot of effort into something only to discover you've headed off in the wrong direction to begin with and that effort is now wasted?
2. Or is there a great tendency to plan and "strategize" endlessly, awaiting new data and ensuring all available information is gathered and options are explored...resulting only in analysis paralysis and inactivity?

To create high performance teams and ensure effective execution on strategy, it's vital to strike the right balance between Role and Reward:

ROLE you do successfully by A) establishing a sense of community (with shared values, a code of conduct, and understanding of how the group adds value in a wider context), and B) letting people know how and where each individual fits into the larger group. Clarify the roles, goals and expectations so that each person's individual efforts are contributing to the group objectives and goals. Build a solid, agreed-upon foundation at the outset to provide an underlying source of enduring continuity in the face of transition, change and even crisis periods to come.

REWARD is about motivation, action and reward - the drive to achievement that comes from the healthy expression of ego and answers the question "what's in it for me?" to tap into the passion and drive of each team member. It is results-focused and promotes action over words, performance over process. To keep people on track and productive, it's important to phrase performance measures in positive language that motivates, rather than coercive language that triggers emotional reactivity and fearful anxiety. This step is about getting things done, the achievement of aspirations.

Look for Monday's post, when I'll provide insights on the remaining 11 contestants - what to watch for in Monday night's episode as their mettle continues to be tested and their personality preferences and reactive styles come to the fore.
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Matthew Lieberman & Case Study at NeuroPower Symposium Sydney

Summary - this post talks about ideas and research shared by social cognitive neuroscience Prof. Matthew Lieberman (UCLA) at the recent NeuroPower Symposium in Sydney. It explores some personal and organizational appliations of neuroscience findings, including what I call "The Battle inside your Brain". Finally as a practical example you'll find the case study I presented at the Symposium, describing how tmconsultancy helped develop a high performance internal communications team at Lloyds TSB bank (includes a link to the full text of the case study).


Matt Lieberman and I first met a year ago here in Sydney and it was great to see him in Australia again last week at the NeuroPower Symposium.

This time I was happy to have more time to discuss with him the possible organizational applications of his brain research...although it should be said that owing to a combined jetlag spanning much of the globe (he newly-arrived from LAX, me from LHR) two popular secondary themes were the relative merits of RedBull vs. Coke and how many cups of coffee one needed during the day before contemplating a few glasses of good Aussie red wine.


Session highlights

Matt and his wife Naomi Eisenberger (who did not attend the Symposium) are co-directors of the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at UCLA. Their pioneering research into applied neuroscience and psychology includes topics such as self-control, self-awareness, emotional regulation, automaticity, social rejection and persuasion.

At day one of the Symposium Matt offered the crowd of 50 people a whirlwind tour of the anatomy and physiology of the brain, including the troubling fact that the exact same part of the brain is often called different things. As we waded through the different nomenclature a plaintive cry went up: "Why can't they just call the parts top/bottom, front/back??"

From there Matt explored the history and relative advantages of different types of brain imaging (TMS, EEG, PET, fMRI) and the different ways we process experiences to form different kinds of memories (explicit/implicit, procedural/working).

Some myths fell by the wayside during this several presentations, including:

• Left brain/Right brain - there aren't nearly as many differences as people may think and most processes combine the two hemispheres in a number of ways
• Male/Female brain - there are virtually no physiological differences between the two, which means that (undeniable) sex differences arise due to other factors
• Mirror neurons don't necessarily work the way that some people think they do
• To speak of "Mind-Body" or "Mind-Brain" connections as if they were two separate things is nonsensical; they are different levels of description for talking about the same thing

Personal and Organizational Applications: the Battle inside your Brain

For me the key takeaway came on day two, as 70 of us learned the brain science behind emotional regulation and the implications for individuals and teams. Matt outlined in great detail the research he's been doing that describes what I call the Battle inside your Brain.

For brevity's sake, and because you'll be reading more about this in future posts, the key point you need to know is this: the self-control centre of the brain is the RVLPFC, or right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, the bit of your brain just inside your right temple. This bit plays a key role in emotional self-regulation, particularly offsetting the emotional intensity associated with limbic pain caused by distress - whether insult, social pain or physical pain.

One of the most effective ways to engage in this emotional regulation is by putting emotions into words. Doing so (somewhat counterintuitively) actually lessens their intensity and makes them more manageable. The thorny bit: it's really hard to do this for ourselves, hence the popularity and effectiveness of various kinds of talk therapy, narrative processes and, I would argue, effective coaching dialogue.

Why does emotional regulation matter? As it happens, there's a lot of truth in the saying, "Control your emotions, or they'll control you!" In this instance, however, "control" is not about denying emotions, pushing them underground or immediately and vehemently expressing them (to the potential distress of those around you).

Rather, it's about striking the right balance.

You've probably heard that anxiety is actually a necessary part of life. Too little and you won't bother to get out of bed in the morning; too much and you simply cannot function effectively - you shut down, freak out or run away.

Neuroscience helps explain this as follows: when we respond to perceived threats, the adrenal system kicks in and heightens brain activity in both the limbic system (emotional: fast, reactive, habitual) and prefrontal cortex or cortical system (cognitive: reasoning, reflective, considerate).

For a time, this heightened activity in both systems will produce the increased mental sharpness that we've all experienced when confronted with a crisis. At a certain point, however, excessive stimulation keeps the limbic system wired while the prefrontal cortex becomes less responsive, literally tightening up and making us less adaptive, worse at creating memories, distracted, detached and prone to tunnel vision. In other words, we are left in raw survival mode and about as sophisticated as a five year-old.

In sum, the Battle inside your Brain is the one in which the cortical system (aided in large part by the RVLPFC) governs and controls the limbic system in order to channel the energy that emotions produce toward getting useful things done.

This is highly encouraging news! Armed with the hard science behind the "soft skills" that help people to manage their own emotional responses (as well as that of others) we can more effectively practice the self-awareness and self-control techniques that ensure maximum productive input with minimum emotional reactivity.


Case Study: tmconsultancy works with Lloyds TSB Bank

As a practical example of the above theory, I also presented a case study at the Symposium, entitled "Developing a thoroughbred team at the Black Horse - Internal Comms at Lloyds TSB Bank"

(Session blurb): Todd will present a consulting and coaching case study on how he applied the NeuroPower framework to help put the new Head of Internal Communications and her team at Lloyds TSB Bank on the road to success. Working with the newly-reorganized team from its inception established a resilient team culture of increased personal accountability and better interpersonal effectiveness. The result: consistently high team productivity and zero team turnover despite a period of dramatic change within the bank and the financial services industry. The case study details the methods and outcomes of tmconsultancy's 18-month engagement with this team at a big-5 UK retail bank in a consulting project delivered through effective face-to-face training and facilitation, combined with a distance coaching program.

You can download the full Lloyds TSB case study here. (As a "live update" to the study, I'm happy to report that at present discussions continue with members of the RBIC team who have sought further consulting support from tmconsultancy for similar projects in the post-merger organization, Lloyds Group.)
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tmc continues to expand and develop - latest update

And now we'll pause for these brief messages...

I've long advised my clients: in a time of change, even if you've nothing to say, you gotta say that there's nothing to say...

Rather than leave the tmc blog to languish, I am writing this post to let readers know that there will be a short interruption in regular posting over the next few weeks, so that the posts that do appear will do so on a more sporadic basis.

Ultimately, the blog will migrate to the soon-to-be-launched tmconsultancy website though it's not yet clear what will happen to the content already posted on this blog and the subscriber list that it's attracted. When those decisions have been made I will be sure to alert subscribers to any changes that will affect them.

In the meantime, a short reading list
To keep your nimble minds occupied, below are links to some recent stories that I've found to be of interest. Who knows, they may yet become blog posts as well but for the moment I offer them for your edification and amusement.

We learn more from success than failure - which supports a central tenet of solution-focused practice: it's important to emphasize when things go well and what people do right instaead of dwelling on what's wrong/barriers/obstacles/blamestorming, etc.: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/successes-0729.html

Old folks tend to be happier folks (see the original press release with a link to the research article here) - essentially as people grow older their experiences enable them to put things in perspective and de-dramatize things that might otherwise seem to be a Very Big Deal. This is similar to the process of how we accumulate the consolation prize of old age: wisdom. In a previous post (What are you thinking? Choose Wisely!) I talked about how people tend to become the way they consistently behave, or: momentary states can become enduring personality traits.

Finally, a recent paper by authors at the consultancy McKinsey & Co. entitled The Irrational Side of Change Management is, I think, a laudable effort at explaining why rational change management models fail to grasp the inherent complexity of human behavioural interaction. Or to put it plainly: people ain't machines. They don't have "levers" and "drivers" or even pumps and pistons, though they do have hearts and legs, and are happy to engage the latter if the former aren't (but that's another article). The McKinsey piece works because it acknowledges two systems at work in human decision-making...though rather than "irrational vs. rational" let's substitute emotional limbic and rational cortical - the two systems that run in parallel (or sometimes competitively) in the brain.

OK happy reading and more news as it develops!
(NB: You can also follow me on twitter for occasional updates on tmc doings.)
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Understanding resistance to change

What's the difference between resistance to change that's driven by emotional reactivity - and resistance that's actually useful feedback?

One of the greatest challenges we all face is to manage our emotional reactions better, so the energy they produce is directed in more useful and productive ways. When we're able to do this, we function better - not just at work but in all our interactions across the board. And chances are we can be more contented in life, equipped to deal with setbacks and celebrate successes.

My previous post was about the nine predictable reactive states that people enter when faced with what their brain's fast emotional limbic system perceives as a threat.

Today I want to expand that concept to talk about how managing those states (in ourselves and in others) can help bring people along on the change journey by enabling them to act in more productive ways.

An article in this month's Harvard Business Review offers useful context to this discussion. The following excerpt is quoted from Jeffrey D. Ford and Laurie W. Ford's "Decoding Resistance to Change - Strong leaders can hear and learn from their critics" (added emphasis is mine, numbers added for reference and addressed in order below).

When change initiatives run aground—as they so often do—change agents can be quick to point a finger at the people who never got on board. The assumption is that they resisted a perfectly logical move, so it fell apart.

However, blaming resisters not only is pointless but can actually lead to destructive managerial behaviors. When managers perceive resistance as a threat, they may become competitive, defensive, or uncommunicative. They are sometimes so concerned with being right—and not looking bad—that they lose sight of their original goals (3). In stubbornly pushing things through without understanding the resistance, they sacrifice goodwill, put valuable relationships in jeopardy, and squander the opportunity to engage skeptics in service of a better plan. They don’t hear about missing pieces and faulty assumptions. And, in true us-versus-them fashion, they presume that only the other folks—the resisters—need to alter their behavior and that the change would succeed if not for the resisters’ irrational and self-serving actions.

It’s true that resistance can be irrational and self-serving (2). But like it or not, it is an important form of feedback. Dismissing it robs you of a powerful tool as you implement change. It takes a strong leader to step up and engage when a change effort meets with pushback. If you can gain perspective by paying attention to, understanding, and learning from behaviors you perceive as threatening (1), you will ultimately deliver better results.

Taking these highlighted parts in the numeric order I've assigned:

(1) The lattermost comment makes the useful point that reactive behaviour can easily provoke reactive behaviour and produce an escalating emotional chain reaction that undermines any chance at a productive outcome. Leaders of a change initiative therefore need to carefully monitor their own reaction to the (potentially hostile) behaviour of team members. Unmanaged, such a reactive spiral may throw the leader off kilter just at the moment when clear thinking and a level head are most urgently needed.

(2) Yes these strongly emotional reactions are irrational and self-serving - and, I would add, for good reason! They are irrational because they're driven by the emotional limbic brain, not the rational neocortex, and furthermore are geared the the ultimate self-serving purpose: one's own survival. Leaders should therefore not be surprised that emotion-fuelled resistance is both tenacious and enduring.

(3) So what would it look like if that powerful emotion-fuelled response was channelled into more productive, rational responses? And what might those responses look like?

Taking the second question first, in a team setting these more productive, rational responses take the form of eight key team roles:

• Explorer / Motivator
• Inspirational Coach / Facilitator
• Promoter / Strategist
• Practical Problem Solver
• Creative Change Agent
• Visionary Planner
• Auditor / Organizer
• Driver / Completer

Limbic vs. Rational - Reactive vs. Productive

Now how can you tell if someone is being, to put it bluntly, a pain in the ass, or is genuinely engaged in the role of "practical problem solver"? Well, it pays to be able to identify whether that person is being emotionally reactive or rationally productive.

In other words, are they working from their emotional limbic brain response or from their cognitive, rational brain.

Here the comment I've numbered (3) about people who are "so concerned with being right" is instructive. When you find yourself absolutely convinced that you are right about something, there's an excellent chance you're operating from a limbic space.

This is because the limbic brain's function (to ensure your survival) dictates that it must act fast - that is to say, before all the facts are considered. This makes sense: if you stopped to take a long look at the thing that might just be a snake and it turned out in fact to be a snake, it could well have bitten you and you'd be dead before you could say, "My word! Is that a...eurk!!"

Clearly in these situations there's not a lot of room for considering alternatives and taking the time to be open to different points of view. What this looks like in an interpersonal conflict situation is there are one or more people's limbic brains screaming at them (via hormones and neurotransmitters), "Your survival is at stake! This needs to happen MY way, Right Now!!"

Does that sound like any conversation you've been involved in recently...?

The rational brain, meanwhile, evolved later and makes up the majority of our grey matter. It's the bit that distinguishes we humans from other creatures and does the tremendous cognitive heavy-lifting - the sort that allows for playing the violin, designing hybrid cars, calculating your tax return, and thinking of clever things to say in 140 characters of less on twitter. :)

By design, then, the limbic response is the classic knee-jerk reaction - act first, then consider.

Meanwhile, the rational brain is capable of weighing options and alternatives, gathering data and information - consider first, then act.


How this applies to "resistance to change"

Having made this distinction between the two sorts of behaviour (and the associated forms of resistance to change - i.e. reactive vs. productive) I hasten to add: there's no point trying to disconnect the emotional reaction to change. It WILL happen, no matter any leader's well-meaning efforts at avoidance and minimization.

The change leader's task is therefore as follows:
(1) First and foremost: manage your own reaction. Like the air hosties tell you, make sure your own oxygen mask is in place before you attempt to engage with others.

(2) Assess the most likely limbic responses of the members in your team and incorporate active measures to address the underlying survival concerns that produce these fight-flight-freeze limbic responses.

(3) Their knee-jerk reactions thus calmed, team members are now better placed to activate their rational brains and channel that emotional energy into productive action.

NB - the bonus step: engage in a facilitated process to help identify team members' particular talents. Everyone can naturally manifest at least two of the eight roles listed above - and when you have all eight covered, your team's extremely well placed to achieve extraordinary results.

tmconsultancy offers focused training programs to help you identify the emotional reactive behaviour patterns and the productive rational styles that manifest in every team. To find out more, email me.

TM

Change is a long car trip with kids in the back

Spare any change (ideas)...?

Melcrum's Change Communications conference in Melbourne has wrapped for the week and has, I think, been quite well received.

A major theme that I heard as I chaired the conference was that those in attendance wanted and needed communications professionals to take a strong advocacy role for change in organizations, to remind leaders of the people-related consequences of change.

The intention was clear, yet the frustration was palpable. What came through was that communicators find themselves largely unable to play this vital role in their organizations.

Many attendees questioned how to effectively counsel leaders who advocate secrecy, low information-sharing and last-minute revelation of tough messages, on the grounds that they "don't want people to react" to the changes.

In fact this seemingly thoughtful intention causes no end of drama, as communication professionals (or anyone on the receiving end of meagre information dribble and too-little, too-late change messages) can confirm.

The reason for this is simple: human beings are neurobiologically hardwired to react to the things that happen around them - and the greater the perceived threat, the stronger the reaction. 

Our advanced survival system

In the interest of survival, we have evolved a system (the limbic system) that is brilliant at bypassing our slow and ponderous rational brain by reacting at lightning speed to possible threats. Whether that's an object that enters our visual field and just might be a snake/spider/other nasty, or an announcement that puts in question our ability to earn a living, threats produce a reaction in the brain long before the rational mind even begins to absorb the more subtle connotations and factual details.

So, in short: people cannot NOT react to things. 

What can and sometimes does happen is people become aware of the reaction and choose to use that powerful emotional energy in a different (ideally, more rational) way.

Communicators can therefore help themselves and, by extension, their stakeholders and clients, by learning about the nine predictable types of limbic reaction and tailoring their communication plans and key messages to calm down people's agitated limbic responses. Doing so makes it more likely that people will be able to manage their own reaction, as the rational brain is given the chance to become more engaged to give a more balanced hearing to the rest of what is being said.

Change is a journey

Speakers at the conference often made the point that "change is a journey". I would agree, though I'd modify that slightly: change is like a long car trip with unruly kids in the back seat, where the kids in question are the reactive emotional responses that people's limbic systems produce. 

Why kids in the back? Well the limbic system, for all its power to help us survive, is not very sophisticated. It is located in some of the most ancient parts of our brains - the ones we share with all sorts of other mammals - which means when we're operating solely from our limbic brain, we're about as sophisticated as a poodle or a goldfish. 

Or a five-year old kid. 

Such childish reactions can take a variety of forms - bullying, sulking, throwing temper tantrums, and a range of other knee-jerk reactions.

So as we consider our leaders and communicators in the front seat trying, like mom and dad, to move forward with the journey AND keep the peace and sanity in the car, let's take a look at the nine kinds of little kids in the back seat of our car journey:

1. "We all have to follow the rules! Mom! Dad! Johnny's touching my side of the car!!" (Perfectionist/Rule-followers)
2. "Is everyone OK? Daddy, do you want a neck rub? Mom, can I sing you a song to make you happy?" (Giver/Carers)
3. "Can't we get there faster? Hey let's race the car next to us! Let's visit every attraction on the list!" (Performer/Achiever)
4. "Didn't you bring my special seat for me? Awwww no one understands me, I have special needs..." (Romantic/Individualist)
5. [says next to nothing, watches everything and everyone, probably tracks the route on a map and notes everything with interest] (Observer/Data-gatherer)
6. "Are you sure you know the way? Do we have the right map? What if we run out of gas? Were we supposed to take that last exit...?" (Loyal sceptic/Paranoid)
7. "Hey! I've got a GREAT idea, let's have a singalong! Let's play count-the-cars! Hey who wants a game of rock-paper-scissors? Ohh, I know...let's stop and eat at that place, that looks great!!" (Epicure/Fun-seeker)
8. "We're going to stop NOW. I want OUT of this car. No actually I changed my mind, we're going to drive ALL night and get this over with!" (Protector/Bully)
9. "Hey, let's calm down everyone. What can we all agree on? What do you want mom? And you dad? How about you, sis? OK so the consensus is..." (Peacemaker/Facilitator)

If you'd like to find out more about these nine kids (and their adult counterparts that you may be currently experiencing in your workplace...) email me for further details. If you were an attendee at the Melcrum Communications Conference in Melbourne last week, be sure to inquire about the special "Change is a long car trip" offer.

That's all for now - enjoy your weekend!

TM

What are you thinking...? Choose wisely!

A friend recently quipped: "What's the definition of optimism for an investment banker?" His answer: Ironing five shirts on a Sunday night.

While the times around us are changing, as they ever will, one thing remains the same: your power of choice. You can see any situation as a crisis or as an opportunity. As an ending or a new beginning.

This may sound trite and Pollyanna-ish to you, but rest assured there is good reason for you to cultivate an awareness of what choices you make during your each waking moment. Where you place your attention will determine your level of happiness...both now and later in your life.


We become what we think about all day long.

These words, attributed to the early 19th century American essayist, philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, neatly present the commonsensical insight of something that has now been confirmed by neuroscience.

In fact the book The Wisdom Paradox : How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger As Your Brain Grows Older by neuropsychologist Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg (see here for book excerpts and here for a short book review) makes a compelling argument that wisdom is essentially the ability to know what to do in a given situation and make good decisions, fast, based on having seen and dealt with similar situations in the past.

So like anything, practice makes better. Unsurprisingly, the way to become good at something is to do it often and to learn from your efforts.

In this way wisdom is not so different from playing a sport or a musical instrument - over time you build up memories of how to do something, which can be readily accessed later on by the fast, memory-building part of your brain (based in the limbic system).

So here's the lesson: if you practice playing the piano badly through your years of life, then you're only ever going to be a bad piano player (though you'll have very ready access to the skill of playing it badly!).

Similarly, if you continually cultivate a mindset focused on crisis, negativity, the downside, and being fearful, then later in life those are exactly the memories you'll most readily access and - hey presto - you're stuck in the same rut of continually thinking everything is rubbish.

Like giving up any vice or bad habit, however, it's never too late to quit and the positive effects can begin to add up immediately. If you begin to manifest positive aspects of your character, some of the noble qualities of what you're like when you are at your absolute best, then those are the attributes to which your brain will make the strongest connections. They will become habits, taking you upwards in a positive spiral towards greater happiness and a more hopeful outlook on life.

Even if you're doubtful of the science behind the matter, I think you'd agree that manifesting a character-filled approach to life by learning to focus on the possibilities rather than the negatives has relatively few down-sides. (Of course, if you're immediately prone to pointing out what the downsides might be, that in itself could be a useful piece of insight for you...!)

I'm reminded of a story about an executive who, no matter what news was presented to him, responded by saying "That's great!" Staff members bearing really negative messages were, to say the least, disconcerted by this reaction, until they learned to see the philosophy behind it - that nothing is unequivocably positive or negative in itself - it all has to do with the meaning we choose to attach to it. Like Hamlet says, "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so".

What are you thinking about, all day long? And is that the way you want to think your whole life long...?
TM