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Changing Because You Want To: Part 2

2013-06-03T09:30:00-07:00

Here is Part 2 from my guest blogger Elizabeth Gibson. Elizabeth is a prolific writer, speaker and business psychologist, who uses her behavioral sciences acumen to help individuals and organizations transform for bottom-line business results. She uses the framework she describes below with her business clients and for large scale organizational change, such as the one she describes in "Big Change at Best Buy," by Elizabeth and her co-author, Andy Billings.

Head: Why should I change?

The challenge of the Head arena is that you must truly understand the reasons for change and its benefits to you. The way you think about the world has a fundamental effect on your readiness for change. At one time, people believed the earth was flat and would not sail too far from land to avoid falling off “the edge of the world.” When Columbus and his astronomers shifted their thinking to the “world is round” they became ready to sail around the globe to new worlds. Ditto for Queen Isabella’s shift in mindset as she decided to fund the expedition. Listed below are some ways of changing how you think about the change:

• Be willing to look at things from a different point-of-view than you have in the past. Talking it over with someone who is well-informed and objective can really help. • Educate yourself with facts and information, and be willing to shift your mind-set. • Pinpoint what needs to change and why. • Think through compelling examples of what the change could mean for you —positives about the future and concerns about failing to change. • Forget about telling yourself just “to change” —it doesn’t work.

Heart: What’s in it for me? What do I stand to lose? To gain?

The Heart is the motivational and emotional arena. Here live feelings. Nothing changes without emotion being involved. How do you feel about the change that you’ve identified in your Heads? What is your sense of readiness and your confidence in your capability for learning the new behaviors that will be needed? “Where do I fit in? Where am I headed? What do I have to contribute? What’s in it for me? What do I have to give up? Do I want to be part of this?” But above all, ask yourself the following questions and answer them honestly:

Why is this important?
What’s in it for me?
Can I be successful?

Hands: What do I do differently? How do I learn to do it?

The Hands is the behavioral-operational arena and it is about acquiring the specific skills and capabilities to start, stop, do more of, or do less of some action, some behavior. You might think of this as, “Well, … what do I actually do differently on Monday?” What are the new skills and practices that I must apply on the floors of the store? You know that you are in the Hands arena when you ask yourself questions such as, “What do I do differently? How do I do it? How am I doing?” Some of the things you can do to successfully meet the challenges of the Hands are listed below:

• Create detailed “maps” or descriptions of the new behaviors. • Develop someway of getting yourself intensive feedback; keeping track of/ measuring your changing to show your progress. • Reward new, emerging behavior patterns in you. • Align all the consequences you can to systematically reinforce your new behaviors. • Unlearn/extinguish old incompatible forms of behavior.

And never forget, all change requires energy and time. Without adjustments in the way you think, feel, and act, nothing really changes. Also, remember that changes don’t happen all at once. As you successfully change you will pass through three, consistent stages:

Make it Clear: Coming to grips with the need or desire to change
Make it Real: Working it through
Make it stick: Maintaining momentum

Changing Because You Want To: Part I

2013-05-20T11:47:26-07:00

I'm delighted to introduce to you my friend and colleague Elizabeth Gibson as a guest blogger. Elizabeth is a prolific writer, speaker and business psychologist, who uses her behavioral sciences acumen to help individuals and organizations transform for bottom-line business results. She uses the framework she describes below with her business clients and for large scale organizational change, such as the one she describes in "Big Change at Best Buy," by Elizabeth and her co-author, Andy Billings.

Jumping the curves. Like jumping from the top of one tall building to another. Letting go of one secure place to try and get to another. The one thing certain about change is the uncertainty it creates.

When was the last time you successfully made a change in your life? Actually, to be more specific, when was the last time you successfully changed some aspect of your own behavior? As in break a “bad” habit or adopt a new “good” one. How’d that go for you? It’s not easy, but there are ways to make it more do-able.

All change requires energy and time. Without adjustments in the way you think, feel, and act, nothing really changes. Typically these changes don’t happen all at once. It might be helpful to think of yourself as moving through three phases of a change:

Make it Clear: Coming to grips with the need or desire to change Do you see a need for change? How uncomfortable are you with the status quo? Do you have any sense of urgency about changing?
Make it Real: Working it through Are you struggling with making the change work? Are you looking for ways to make it work?
Make it stick: Maintaining momentum Are you looking for ways to leverage the change? To enhance it?

Simply recognizing where you are in the midst of a change can be helpful, especially when you consider that changing deep-rooted behaviors requires changing how you think about something, how you feel about it, and then what you actually do about it.

Another way of describing the think/feel/do trio is as the Head (thinking), the Heart (feeling), and the Hands (doing). Successfully changing requires attention to the challenges and questions that arise in the Head, the Heart, and the Hands.

Head: Why should I change?

Heart: What’s in it for me? What do I stand to lose? To gain?

What do I do differently? How do I learn to do it?

Putting together the phases of change and the “arenas” of change we now have a map for steering ourselves through a change in our own behavior:

The term arena, like the three arenas at the circus, captures the simultaneous, non-hierarchical, non-linear aspects of change. Something is usually going on in each arena at any given time, although what’s happening in one of the three arenas may grab most of our attention. Perhaps paradoxically, while it is easier to think about three separate and unique arenas, they are most effectively handled by dealing with their interrelations.

This is just a map; it’s not the territory. The next blog describes how to work through the necessary changes in all three arenas of the Head, the Heart, and the Hands.

Time to Take My Own Career Advice

2013-05-17T11:48:04-07:00

Though I help others craft their value propositions and enhance the way they communicate their personal brands, I recently recognized that I might need my own refresher course. I was at a dinner event last week and faced the inevitable question: “Tell me about what you do.” I found myself in the trap of brushing off the question, assuming it was a polite conversation-starter. You know…mandatory cocktail-party banter. I gave a quick answer and moved on to the next topic. Later that evening, a friend delicately pointed out that I hadn’t genuinely described what I do so that others could understand my value. She was right. It was a missed opportunity.

After reflecting on that situation, I realized that we can all get into a rut when it comes to sharing our value propositions with the people around us. I have spent much of the last year promoting my book, which helps professionals to understand the way they are perceived by others in the workplace and the impact that can have on their careers. A big part of the book’s success stems from using stories and case studies to vividly illustrate key points – an important thing to remember the next time someone asks me what I do.

If given the opportunity for a do-over, I might say something like this… While my book targets individuals, the majority of my work is actually done with corporate groups to help them develop and strengthen their leadership brands. I recently completed an engagement for a Fortune 500 high-tech company, leading a two-day workshop on-site for the organization’s next-level leaders (rising stars or “high-potentials”). During those interactive sessions, I helped the company to maximize its high-potential talent by working with participants to develop their intangible business skills. Things like communication and global and generational collaboration. Self-awareness and perspective taking. Adaptability and impulse control. These attributes are often overlooked in the realm of professional development, but research clearly proves they are required for career success.

The company that hired me recognizes that helping their fast-track employees enhance their technical and functional skills is only part of the solution. The people who emerge to effectively lead the company in the years ahead will be the ones who also have this intangible skill set–allowing them to motivate and inspire teams, influence decisions, and remain flexible during rapidly changing market conditions.

As part of my workshop with these corporate high-potentials, I guided the participants through a proprietary process that allowed them to analyze their intangible skills in a unique, measurable way:

• Understanding the time-tested and most studied leadership success factors (not just the art, but the science behind these factors)

• Assessing themselves against those proven success factors and discovering how colleagues and co-workers would assess them in comparison

• Developing specific strategies and tactics to move toward closing the gaps between the desired and actual perceptions of their leadership brands

Ironically perhaps, I offer a very tangible and quantitative approach to improving intangible skills.

Using stories to “paint a picture” of what we do brings our value propositions to life for the people around us. For years, I’ve told my coaching clients about the value of incorporating that technique. My experience last week was a bold reminder that I really should follow my own career advice.

Letting Go: No More Perfectly Prepared Presentations and PowerPoint Decks.

2013-04-08T09:14:00-07:00

OK, I admit it. Being uber-organized feeds my need to feel somewhat in control of my time, resources, and results. I love the feeling of being over-prepared for a presentation with a solid framework, rocking transitions, and a theme that seems to magically appear with each and every story. However, beyond the selfish and seemingly productive advantages of being highly prepared, I've seen some disadvantages that could slowly, but surely impact the overall quality and texture of my presentations, my ability to grow as a speaker and, ultimately, the depth of the connections I can make with my audience members.

We’ve been trained and conditioned to over-prepare for every meeting and every presentation. For many that means Gantt charts, Excel spreadsheets, wordy proposals, and the ever dreaded bulleted PowerPoint decks. For speakers that means detailed presentation outlines, choreographed stories, and perfectly timed humor. Sure, our audience expects the clarity, structure and wit that come from carefully planned presentations.

However, our audiences also want a fluid experience and a more authentic connection with their presenters. What this means for all of us is that we need to be more responsive to our audience “real-time”. As hard as it will be for some of us (ahem) to let go of our perfectly organized framework and visual models, it will serve us to be much more fluid and in-the-moment. One way to do this is to reconsider the carefully crafted bullets, statistics, and quotes that sometimes plague our PowerPoint slides. We will need to, (brace yourself here), veer from our detailed slides and use visuals that don’t tie us down to what we see on the screen. As presentation strategist and owner of reflectivespark.com, Paul Vorreiter points out, your visuals should support your stories and inspire your explanations. I for one, am willing to throw out my well-crafted charts and parallel bullet points to enhance my audiences’ experience. Are you?

What You Don't Know CAN Hurt You

2013-04-05T07:35:31-07:00

I frequently talk with corporate audiences about the concept of "blind spots” and the impact they can have on our professional success. In a recent guest blog, I shared the story about my personal epiphany on this subject. And let’s just say, it wasn’t pretty. Blind spots affect all of us, including me. To find out more, I invite you to read about my experience in a guest blog for Whitney Johnson, the co-founder of Clayton M. Christensen’s investment firm Rose Park Advisors, a former Institutional Investor-ranked sell-side analyst on Wall Street, and a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review.

Leadership and the Spotlight

2013-03-25T07:11:48-07:00

Renowned leadership expert John Baldoni has a compelling and insightful viewpoint on this subject. John was kind enough to write the foreword for my book, You – According to Them, and I would like to share an excerpt. In this essay, John discusses his thoughts about a style of leadership that has proven to be worthy of the highest honors in many organizations.

"Leadership lives in the high visibility of center stage. We all know certain leaders who crave the spotlight, while others accept it reluctantly. Either way, their success positions them at the front of the corporate theater. Some leaders, however, take a different approach to that starring role. Rather than limiting their contact to the first few rows of the audience, they deliberately make the shift to leadership “in the round” for better access to the full spectrum of their operations.

Among the successful leaders who follow that philosophy is Frances Hesselbein, former CEO for Girl Scouts of the USA and current executive director with the Leader to Leader Foundation. Hesselbein likes to run her organizations from the center, using something she calls “circular management.” We can learn two important lessons from this idea of 360° leadership and the people like Hesselbein who have used it successfully.

First, leaders who purposely increase their visibility throughout more layers of the corporate hierarchy can gain a number of advantages. For example, the CEO of a small publishing firm I know makes a habit of frequenting the shipping room when book orders are heavy. Rolling up his sleeves to pack boxes sends a powerful message to his team that everyone shares the workload, and the experience allows him to gather direct feedback from a more diverse group of employees. That increased sense of awareness gives him the insight to make better business decisions when he returns to the executive suite.

The second lesson we can take away from this concept is the understanding that visibility is a two-way street. Putting ourselves in a position on the leadership stage to see more clearly also allows us to be seen more clearly. In times of crisis, a highly visible leader can reassure employees that someone is in command and everything will be okay. However, the intense scrutiny isn’t just reserved for those moments. Giving others a 360° view of everything we say and do comes with some risk."

Since the people around us have the vantage point to see things we sometimes can’t, they often view our behaviors and communications in a very different light. They may or may not know our true intent, and that can occasionally lead to negative interpretations. Unless leaders (or those seeking to advance) are actively looking for those potential misperceptions and working to correct them, their leadership presence can be undermined, their reputations can erode, and even the most promising careers can be derailed. I refer to these unintentional misperceptions as our professional blind spots.

Whether you are already standing in the leadership spotlight or working your way toward a starring role, think about your own leadership style. What do you want to project from center stage? More importantly, what does that look like to the people around you? How can you ensure that the performance your audience members experience is the same one you intended to give?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic. And if you’d like to learn more about the powerful impact of perceptions in business, I hope you’ll check out my book, You – According to Them, available on amazon.com.

A Year End Toast to Leadership Finesse

2013-01-04T14:24:00-08:00

I'm happy to introduce you to my husband Brandon Canaday and to share his most recent post. In it, he does a beautiful job reflecting on the year's many blessings and capturing the essence of my new book. You can read it here. As you will see, Brandon likes to use drips of inspiration related to his love of fine wine and all that goes into producing it. Brandon is Vice President of Strategic Accounts with Caringo. Prior to his current role, he spent 12 years with Dell in various Senior Management and Director positions. His career evolution has given him personal insight into the global corporate world from many different perspectives – experience he draws upon to serve clients and to compose his many musings on leadership.

How Would Your Colleagues Vote?

2012-11-06T12:59:34-08:00

With the presidential election upon us, it’s safe to say that we’ve all had a chance to experience the power of perceptions in the last few months. No matter what side of the political fence we live on, we tend to make judgments about the candidates based on how they deliver their messages – their facial expressions, tone of voice, body language and demeanor. Think about the recent debates. Does a candidate seem to be exhibiting strength or is he being combative? Does he sound confident or flustered? Does he appear energetic or disengaged? As the fluctuating poll numbers demonstrate, perceptions can make a world of difference.

The same thing happens in the business world. But instead of losing an election because of negative perceptions, we might lose out on the promotion…the bonus…the new job. We all know colleagues who have killer resumes but still can’t seem to get any career traction. On the surface, they are doing everything right, but they’re simply stuck. The likely culprit? Less-than-glowing perceptions by their supervisors and co-workers -- or what I call professional blind spots, those unintentional behaviors or attitudes that can subtly derail promising careers.

Even the smartest and most talented professionals have blind spots. However, the people who are truly successful have learned how to identify and eliminate them. They pay close attention to the way they deliver messages and how those messages are received. They know how to “read” responses in others, ask for honest feedback, and modify their behaviors to make sure they are being perceived exactly as they intend. They have mastered the art of creating positive perceptions. Which equate to great reputations. Which translate into career success.

Now that we have all stepped in to those voting booths, take a moment to think about how your professional reputation would fare in an office election. If you were on the ballot for advancement as a corporate leader, how would your colleagues vote? Would you win by a landslide? Or do you really want to calculate the exact margin of error before you answer? Either way, I hope you’ll see the value of learning more about this critical issue. I’d love to know what you think.

Career Potential: Are You Getting a “Thumbs Up” or “Thumbs Down”?

2012-10-22T09:36:00-07:00

When we are introduced to new co-workers, we typically don’t receive copies of their resumes along with the nice-to-meet-you handshakes. We might sit through an hour-long meeting with the new guy on the team and not have any idea about his experience, accomplishments or degrees. But chances are, at the end of that hour, we’ve already decided whether he will be great to work with – or not.

Did he look bored and apathetic? Were his papers rumpled and disorganized?
Did he avoid eye contact and refrain from contributing to the discussions? We mentally give this guy the “thumbs down” within minutes, and no amount of world-class credentials can overcome that kind of negative impression. When it comes to career success, perceptions count in a big way!

So how are you perceived by your co-workers? That’s a question being asked much more frequently these days, as experts and survey statistics continue to confirm the direct link between a positive workplace perception and professional advancement. Just last week, leadership expert and best-selling author Michael Hyatt blogged about the same topic.

How Are People Left When You Leave Their Presence?

I’d love to know what you think. And if you’re interested in improving your perception in the workplace, I hope you’ll consider reading my book, “You – According to Them: Uncovering the blind spots that impact your reputation and your career.” (www.amazon.com)

Leadership Strengths: Not a Zero Sum Game

2012-10-04T07:00:00-07:00

The most effective leaders bring depth and dimension to their leadership brands by knowing when and how to exhibit varying shades of their strongest attributes – even when those variations might seem like opposite ends of the spectrum.

For instance, five mid-level managers within a company might all exhibit extremely high levels of confidence. But the one chosen to move to the next level is often the manager who can balance that confidence with a sense of humility in the right situations. Sharing credit with her team when she steps to the podium to accept a performance award. Being able to graciously admit making a mistake. Taking time to consider the ideas of other team members even though she already has a solution in mind. The manager with the well-balanced brand knows how to temper that fierce confidence with a generous splash of humility…just enough to be open to the possibility that, despite her own expertise, the best solution might come from a different source. Timing and finesse are critical as leaders strive to master the delicate art of brand balance – knowing when, where and how to offset certain attributes for greater impact. Think of great leaders who demonstrate complementary (or even opposite) attributes in certain situations.

Confidant yet humble
Highly energetic yet calm in a crisis
Competitive yet empathetic
Task oriented yet people-sensitive
Strategic yet conceptual/creative
Visionary yet realistic/practical

These are just a few of many examples. What other seemingly paradoxical attributes have you seen or adopted as a successful leader?