Holiday Times can be filled with stress and hardship for many individuals. People can become isolated and alone. One key characteristic of Resilience is the ability to reach out and connect with others. Humans are social creatures – we need each other to be successful. The more connected we are, the healthier we can be and the less connected we are the more we decrease our effectiveness and our health and happiness. A recent article in the Psychology Today Magazine says Love is as critical for our mind and body as oxygen. It's not negotiable. The more connected we are, the healthier we will be both physically and emotionally. We hear stories all the time about random acts of kindness and how they bring humanity to companies and offer an uplifting story. For example, A Southwest Airlines pilot delayed a flight to Tucson to accommodate the needs of a distressed grandfather racing to be at the hospital bedside of his toddler grandson. The pilot refused to budge until he made it on the plan despite the security concerns and schedule pressures. The pilot told the grandfather “they can’t go anywhere without me and I wasn’t going anywhere without you.” The event immediately went viral celebrating someone acting on their values and showing genuine caring.
This season let us find a way to stay connected with others and practice a random act of kindness every day.
Many of us think that communication is talking - and we talk. We interrupt, advise, reassure, judge, analyze, criticize, etc., etc. But, good communication requires good listening as well as talking. In fact, studies show that listening is the most important skill in effective communication.
We’ve all have had someone say to us “You just don’t understand what I am saying or you’re not listening” and you may have felt you were listening just fine. Truth is all conversations occur within ourselves first. Another words, we may think we are seeing people as they are but in truth we are seeing people as we are. This means that real listening cannot occur until we challenge the perceptions we hold about ourselves and other people. Perceptions are the lens or filters we see the world through.
What happens in relationships is we tend to think we know what the other person is going to say so we hear what we expect the person is going to say but often not the actual words that were being spoken.
According to Inscape Publishing there are 5 Realities of Communication:
Real listening is what can create a powerful conversation and we create that possibility through understanding the filters that have around the individual speaking and the topic of conversation.
According to Albert Mehrabain there are three elements of communication; words, tone of voice and body language. Interesting, though is that he attributes the following weights to those elements:
7% to the words
38% to the tone of voice
55% to the body language
Another way to view this is through the Three Levels of Listening:
Level One – Awareness of the words the speaker is using and listening to those words only. This is the level where you the listener would be thinking of your own agenda as well – what am I going to say next – what am I going to cook for dinner etc. The focus is more on themselves than the speaker.
Level Two – Awareness of what the speaker is saying and how they are saying it. The attention is on the speaker and we are able hear more of what is not being said through body language and tone of voice.
Level Three – Attention is only on the speaker with a subtle awareness of what is happening in the room and environment around them which is impacting communication.
These studies allude to the importance of understanding yourself and the potential lens or filters that you view people, situations and events through. Because after all effective listening can be very situational – I listen very well in some situations but poorly in others. Becoming conscious of the type of events or people that we easily engage with and those we don’t can be a powerful start toward creating impactful conversations.
The tool that I highly recommend to better understand your own listening approach is the Personal Listening Profile. For more information – click here:
“The creative individual has the capacity to free himself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. He is capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept.”
-- John Gardner
There’s an interesting article in Strategy+Business on clues to opportunities.
The article speaks to what causes us not to see opportunities even when they are right in front of us. Psychologists call this tendency – Confirmation bias. People tend to notice things that confirm their pre-existing beliefs and attitudes. As humans, we tend to accept or reject information quickly and don’t take the time to challenge any of our pre-existing assumptions on a topic. Yet, it is only through critical thinking that we are able to see outside the box. Howard Shultz, the founder of Starbucks tried to convince the original leadership to convert their retail stores to something more of a European Coffee Bar. When they didn’t accept his idea, he started his own coffee shops and later bought out Starbucks Retail. The rest is history.
What opportunities are we missing because of our past conditioning and assumptions?
There's been a lot written about rituals and starting one's day off right. I know for myself how I start my morning is critically important and I have to work hard to make sure that I take time to integrate these items into each and every day. A couple of my morning habits that I have is to read and meditate. I have found that these two little actions have a direct impact on my overall effectiveness.
For one, giving myself quiet time before I engage in alot of conversation with my family is very important. Which means that I have to be organized the night before and wake up early to have time to take care of myself and then spend time with my husband before we go our seperate ways.
Knowing what you need and what's most important often dictates your morning ritual. The key is to know and honor yourself first thing and then open up to others from there. One cannot achieve full effectiveness if they have not attended to their own needs first. Whether you are a parent to young children or work in a corporation - taking time for yourself before you try to meet the daily demands will lead to a more productive and fullfilled day.
Make your morning ritual fit you, experiment with activities and establish a ritual that you can practice every morning. Here are common examples:
Read
Meditate
Exercise
Reflection, jounaling
Spend time in nature walking or just sitting and observing
Plan your Day
What are your morning rituals? How do you jump start your day?
In our changing world and economy we are faced with more information and choices. We each have our resolve tested – do we keep going or quit. These changing times test our commitment and our resolve. Almost without fail we can look throughout history and see examples of how persistence led to achievement. Thomas Edison failed nearly two thousand times with the light bulb. John Grisham had his first book rejected by 12 publishers and sixteen agents.
In this day and age, it can be easy to jump ship at the first sign of adversity only to find ourselves wondering and sometimes wishing – if only if…
Persistence can be deceptive though, we may think we are determined but if we observe our actions we will notice that we give up or change courses quickly without even thinking about it. Resolve involves all levels – mental, emotional and physical, the mental toughness to keep going and the fortitude to keep acting even in the face of adversity while being aware of our emotions and how they are affecting us.
We also have seen examples where persistence becomes stubbornness and a refusal to change with the times. Achieving the right balance between flexibility and tenacity is the ability to remain committed and persist in challenging times but be willing and open to switch course on a moment’s notice. Change is the name of the game and the ability to adapt quickly can be the key to success. It is critical to be open and aware of our environment and what it may be telling us while being committed to the end goal.
We’ve all heard of the 80-20 rule. 80% of your results come from 20% of your time. Google has applied this concept with their engineers. People can choose to work on anything they want outside of their normal day to day responsibilities approximately one day a week and get other people involved with them to work on those projects. Google has developed an internet site where people can post something like “Wouldn’t it be cool if……” and then others can respond saying I love the idea and have talents that could be used to accomplish this task. Many of their key initiatives such as Gmail have been accomplished with this idea. Other companies have expanded on the concept, one in particular let Customer Service Representatives spend one hour a week to foster an idea or master a new skill. New training products have been developed as a result of this initiative.
I would bet what has made this initiative so successful is that it has given people the power to choose how to spend 20% of their time and talents. Most of us when given a choice will use our time in an activity that we are good at and enjoy. However, it’s sometimes easy to come up with a really cool idea but more challenging to gather the right people with the right talents around you to implement the thoughts into action. The key to both of these examples is commitment from the top. Leaders need to support this initiative, by assuring that people do get the time to spend as they want and then some accountability and follow-through to assure that the ideas get acted upon.
However, it’s a great way to foster creativity and growth and build a culture that supports it.
“Everyone has the will to win, but it’s only those with the will to prepare that do win.”
-- Bobby Knight
It was said when Michael Phelps won the gold meadow for swimming that he practiced 6 hours a day – 6 days a week – even on holidays. An athlete knows what they need to do to win a game or compete in a big event. However, for most of us we don’t have the luxury to practice 6 hours a day at our craft. What we do have though is time to prepare and plan.
I often do a team building exercise in training sessions where I split people up into small groups and they put together a helicopter. I go into this spiel about the monsoon season and their only hope for survival out of this dessert island is to build a helicopter. Soon the race is on between the teams to see who can complete their helicopter so it is flight ready in the shortest amount of time. Each team has someone act as a time keeper and record the amount of time they spend planning and how much time they spend actually putting the craft together. Interestingly enough almost 100% the groups that spend the most time planning are the ones that get their craft flight ready in the shortest time period. Now for some, this may run contrary to what we might think. Conventional thinking may say that the key to winning in this scenario is people working together and staying very focused on the task at hand. Certainly, those are important ingredients but without the upfront preparation and understanding – the actual task takes longer.
Rudy Giuliani former mayor of NY City tells a story of a judge that gave him advice early in his career that for every hour you will spend in court – you should spend 4 hours preparing and practicing. Be prepared that something will always go wrong. Giuliani attributes this advice to helping him navigate through the September 11th crisis. Although, no one could have predicted what happened that day, they had prepared for other events such as loss of power or poisonous gas attacks. Those emergency drills gave him and the city the knowledge and skills to react effectively and expediently on the day of the disaster. It’s not that some people are better at thinking on their feet than others – it’s that they are more prepared and therefore able to think on their feet.
Preparation is the key, yet I will bet that few of us actually spend enough time preparing, rehearsing and planning. Most people use lack of time as the excuse but as I learned in facilitating the helicopter exercise without plan and preparation we end up with busy activities that lead to the unintended results. The only ingredient we can count on when things don’t work out is ourselves and if we are prepared we can rise to any challenge that comes our way. Let us hope that our challenge won’t be as big as Rudy Giuliani’s was on 9/11 but be prepared for the unexpected and be able to respond quickly and effectively because "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." -Seneca
“The influence of each human being on others in this life is a kind of immortality.”
-- Winston Churchill
Feedback happens all around us. Our bodies naturally send us messages when something is wrong. In nature we see feedback occur to balance the natural course of things, like a thunderstorm that comes when it’s extremely hot. In our jobs we constantly need feedback on our performance to improve our effectiveness. Yet, people tend to shy away from direct and honest communication. If you want to perform at your best – feedback matters.
People get better at what they do when individuals they work with give them timely, honest observations of their performance. In today’s changing world, you have to evaluate what’s working and what’s not, what’s staying the same and what’s changing. Feedback plays that role. When rightly done, it impacts the bottom-line, yet it is not happening fully in most organizations today.
David Bradford and Allen Cohen, authors of Power Up, describe leadership as a capacity for increasing the total power of each individual. While few would disagree that this is a lofty goal to aspire to, few leaders know how to make it happen. When you give a person an honest appraisal of their behavior, the purpose is to influence them to make a change. As a leader, whatever kind of feedback you give has an influence, positive or negative, which can work both from the top down and from the bottom up. In other words, power is increased through mutual influence with feedback allowing each person to impact the other.
For influence and feedback to take hold there are a couple conditions that need to be present:
Commitment to a vision or goal . If people are not on the same page, feedback cannot happen. When both parties are dedicated to achieving the same outcome, feedback is natural and part of the process of achieving the vision.
Openness and Trust. When openness and trust develop, both parties can be more responsive to feedback and influence can expand. As a leader and direct report get to know each other they feel safe in voicing their thoughts and feelings as well as discussing their goals, aspirations and concerns. Managers can feel confident that their feedback will be received and understood and staff can feel comfortable in communicating what’s on their mind.
Challenges and Myths:
Leaders often view feedback as something done once or twice a year during review time or when performance issues arise, usually after the problem has reared its ugly head. Workers frustrated by a problem finally speak out after months or years of silence. Communication about the quality of work, done only at select times, makes it impossible to improve. Feedback done only at select times often results in unspoken defensiveness or espoused statements of action with no change. We need a continuous loop of information to help us gauge how well we are doing. Imagine getting feedback from our bodies only once a year! We would not be able to function properly and diagnosis would be a much lengthier process.
Finding Time:
The challenge most people face is time. Most leaders have multiple demands on their time and the crucial conversations that need to occur don’t. Yet they pay a hidden price that may not be evident right away and the bottom line of that cost is performance. The key to feedback is having the conversations about the key issues. When you postpone or avoid an important discussion you are giving power to that unresolved issue. The only way around a problem is to face it directly with compassion and understanding.
Feedback is natural and we all need it regardless of where we are on the corporate ladder. What creates effective organizations is open dialogue and mutual influence that builds relationships. As Don Peters, former CEO of Ford Motor Company said “Results depend on Relationships” and relationships are developed through successful interpersonal exchanges. Let us not be afraid of feedback but embrace it.
"We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures." ~Thornton Wilder
One of the major foundations for resilience is relationships and the concept of giving and reaching out when in need. Often though the missing link in this concept is gratitude. Without gratitude the loop cannot be finished. When you give you are putting energy out – gratitude keeps the energy flowing. In our busy lives, sometimes we forget to say those two important words – Thank You. We may appreciate another’s kindness and intend to follow through but somehow it gets forgotten in the myriad of our busy lives. Yet, without gratitude without reciprocating – the energy gets blocked and it won’t continue to flow.
it’s easy to feel appreciative when everything is going well in our lives but what about the periods that seem like nothing is coming together or we feel lost and in that proverbial black hole. However, it’s gratitude that often proves to be the secret ingredient out of our misery. Taking the time to say Thank You for whatever is right with the world can shift our thinking and feeling giving us a sense of optimism to begin the day and the courage to open our hearts and minds.
When we feel gratitude we are more optimistic which gives us the confidence to tackle new things or finish a task that we started. Research by Psychologists Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough showed people who were in the gratitude condition felt fully 25% happier - they were more optimistic about the future, and felt better about their lives. This same research points out that gratitude is the "forgotten factor" in happiness research. They point out the benefits of expressing gratitude as ranging from better physical health to improved mental alertness. People who express gratitude also are more likely to offer emotional support to others. .
However, expressing gratitude just once in awhile doesn’t lead to long lasting benefits. It’s like being a professional athlete and only practicing right before a big game. Gratitude is a muscle that needs to be expressed daily, a simple thank you to a colleague or friend, a journal reflecting on the good things that are happening. From now on, first thing in the morning and the last thing at night – Reflect and take time to say Thanks.
In closing, here’s a wonderful poem that illustrates the power of gratitude written by Hafiz.
It Felt Love
How
Did the rose
Ever open its heart
And give this world
All its
Beauty?
It felt the encouragement of light
Against its
Being,
Otherwise,
We all remain
Too
Frightend
-- Hafiz
Here's a great TED talk that talks about the importance of understanding purpose. Simon Sinek makes the distinction that people don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. It is interesting though that most of us tend to forget the why and start with the what we are selling or doing. Here's the link and let me know what you think.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html.