Career Changes: Tips for Women Who Want to Improve Their Lives

Published on by toddfonseca

Photos via Pixabay

Note: This guest post was written by Gloria Martinez who loves sharing her business expertise and hopes to inspire other women to start their own businesses. You can contact her at – info@womenled.org

Changing any aspect of your career can be stress-inducing, whether you want to try out a new business idea on your own or simply go for a promotion at your current job. Not only do you have to worry about the process of boosting your resume and dealing with interviews, but there’s also the financial side to consider as well. Even the smallest change to your job can have an impact on your income, and if you’re one of the millions of Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck, that can add up to trouble very quickly.

The good news is that there are several things you can do to amp up your career without the anxiety. Starting with a good plan is essential, especially if you want to branch out on your own and create a business from the ground up. Fortunately, there are many more resources available to small business owners than ever before that will make the process smooth, but it’s still a lot of work. If you want to stay within the same field but are looking to move up the ladder, there are still many things you’ll want to think about, such as how to make the most of your resume.

Read on for some tips on how to change up your career as smoothly as possible.

Know Where to Begin

Starting your own business may seem like a huge jump, but these days, it’s easier than ever for entrepreneurs to take their careers into their own hands. It does require quite a bit of research, however, so you’ll need to be prepared. Learning about the market and your competitors is crucial, as is writing out a business plan and thinking about how you’ll finance your endeavors. New businesses take a while to generate revenue, so you’ll want to make sure you have some money in savings to tide you over, or you might consider keeping a day job while you get things up and running. You’ll also need a way to accept payment from your customers, and luckily, you have some easy options that will allow you to stay on top of the financial end of things.

Think About Creating a Home Office

If you’re switching careers to start your own business, or if you decide to work for a company remotely, you’ll need to set up a functional home office to serve as your head of operations. Using a spare room or a corner of another room (living room, dining room, etc.) can help you get started — all you need is some basic equipment! However, if you’re completely out of free space inside the home, you might need to take a look outside. For example, many people seek out prefab steel buildings or garages to use as home offices. Once you have it wired for electricity, you can move in your office furniture, computer, printer, and supplies and get to work!

Boost Your Resume

When you’re ready to tackle a new title or go for a promotion, you’ll want to make sure your resume is updated and highlights your skills without showing gaps in employment. Look online for templates that you can use to make your resume a glowing recommendation of your abilities, and think about how you can tailor your cover letter to stand out.

Dress for Success

Your wardrobe may seem like a superficial thing, but when it comes to finding a new job, it’s important to dress for the career you want. You don’t have to spend a small fortune on an entirely new closet full of clothes, but updating some pieces will help to give you confidence when you walk into that interview. So, look for items that you can mix and match, as well as neutral colors that will give you a professional look.

Create a Self-Care Routine

Self-care is an important part of keeping your mental and physical health in good shape, and when you’re taking on the stressful task of changing jobs, it’s especially crucial to ensure you’re aware of your needs and how to take care of them in order to reduce stress. Create a routine that will be easy to stick with while helping you feel like the best, most confident version of yourself. Getting enough sleep, eating right, and fitting in exercise are three of the best ways to start.

Changing your career can be a life-altering move, so it’s important to make sure you begin with a solid plan that will help you move forward without a hitch. Do research, especially if you’re going to start your own business, and talk to someone who has been through it. With some good planning, you can make positive change happen for yourself in no time.

Being Authentic

Published on by toddfonseca

“In the morning, after the rain, I headed for a rusting watchtower at the edge of the U.N. compound to see what water had done to the desert. Already frogs had emerged from subterranean slime chambers and filled the air with their calls, and in the trees starlings and doves with mad red eyes cooed and hollered. I was excited, too. The previous week had been hot and dust ridden, and a thousand years of pulverized earth seemed to scrape inside my eyelids. Clouds had been gathering in grand formations for days, but they always sailed out of Kenya dry and mute, only to be torn open by the ragged volcanoes on the horizon, above Uganda.”

[reference: https://theamericanscholar.org/letter-from-kakuma-camp-kenya-nowhere-girl/#]

Writer and journalist Neil Shae writes of his experience staying in the Kakuma refugee camp in Northwestern Kenya.  Established in 1991, the same year as the collapse of the Somali government and the ensuing civil war that continues to this day, Kakuma is one of many camps in Kenya that host displaced Somali refugees who fled their country due to the war.  Many Somalis have been in this camp for years, working, and having children that know no other life than that inside the camp.  One such child, Halima Aden, was born in Kakuma and along with her family “stood in long lines for water and had to barter for pots and pans and coal.  She drank PediaSure in the camp because she was underweight.  She grew accustomed to the taste and still drinks it.”

[reference: http://www.startribune.com/minnesota-somali-model-walks-milan-runways-and-cleans-hospital-rooms-in-st-cloud/417709063/]

Resettlement of Somali refugees is handled by the U.S. State Department but voluntary agencies (VOLAGS) contract with the government to help in the process and given Minnesota has very active VOLAGS such as Lutheran Social Services, Catholic Charities, and World Relief Minnesota, a number of Somalis call Minnesota their home.  Halima is one such Somali having been in the US since leaving Kakuma at the age of 7.

While Halima’s refugee story is unfortunately not unique, what has happened to her in the last few months is anything but typical for a 19 year old university student.  Known by her friends as someone who consistently will “try things no one else will”, Halima entered the Miss Minnesota USA Pageant.  Not only did she compete, but Halima transformed the competition making national news when, in order to stay true to herself and her religious beliefs, she wore a Hajib and ‘burkini’ during the swimsuit portion of the competition.

Being a 19-year-old is hard enough with all of the peer pressure and Snapchat social media messages to conform and be like a Kardashian, yet here is a young Somali refugee girl taking on the decades-old established pageant industry swimsuit mainstay by staying fulling covered and wearing a Hajib which in today’s society could incite violence from the unfortunately growing number of those less tolerant of those holding her religious beliefs.

This is authenticity.

Halima’s story has important lessons for all of us who might aspire to be as true to ourselves as she is but are more likely in the moment to find ourselves falling short.

The Asch Conformity Experiments

In 1956, Solomon Asch conducted a number of experiments titled – Studies of Independence and Conformity: I. A Minority of One Against a Unanimous Majority.  In these trials, a group of participants were shown a figure with a line and asked to compare it to a second figure with three lines.

One by one, the participants were asked to determine and then announce which of the figures in the right box matched the figure in the left box.   What one of the participants didn’t know, however, was that each of the other participants in the room were actually not participants in the experiment at all.  Rather, they were working with the researchers and in 12 of the 18 trials, these ‘confederates’ were all to give the same incorrect answer.  The actual participant was near the last to declare their answer.  The question the researchers were trying to understand was whether or not the actual participant would be influenced by the confederate majority to conform and give the wrong answer or would the participant stand out and announce the correct answer.  Just to make sure the answers were obvious; a control experiment was conducted in which the participants did not announce their answers and but simply wrote them down.

The result was that in the simple writing of the answer, almost 100% gave correct answers.  However, in the test scenario, of the 12 “wrong” group answer cases, 75% of participants in the experiment conformed and gave the same wrong answer at least once during those 12 trials even though the answer was obviously wrong.

[reference: http://psyc604.stasson.org/Asch1956.pdf]

While most of us would think we would be in the 25% minority, this simply isn’t the case.  These studies have been repeated and the results have held up over time.  The pressure for conformity to the group and not being outcast is far too great even when we know the answer to be wrong.

Decades later, in 2005, researchers repeated this test wondering what is cognitively happening during the experiment.  Are the participants consciously making their choice or is something else happening?  To understand the answer to this question, researchers took MRIs of participants to understand which areas of their brains were activated under different scenarios.

What they found was surprising.


“There was no activity in brain areas that make conscious decisions…” in either the conformity or non-conformity scenarios.  Instead, they found that the conformity group had activation in the area of their brains associated with spatial awareness.  It was as if their brains were reinterpreting what they saw in order to bend reality to the group’s perception.  It was an unconscious act of brain rationalization.  Whereas the non-conformity group had brain activity in the amygdala and other areas associated with strong emotions related to fight, flight, or freeze.

[reference: http://www.ccnl.emory.edu/greg/Berns%20Conformity%20final%20printed.pdf]

I’m often told that as people grow in their careers from individual contributors to management and higher levels of leadership, they seem to lose their guiding principles and start acting like all of the other leaders.  The Asch experiments indicate this may not be a conscious act per se but an unconscious assimilation process to bend reality to fit the group norm.

But all is not lost, there are those that, like Halima, remain authentic.  What sets them apart?  Some of it is their inherent personality, but there are other attributes you can leverage to make it more likely for you to remain thoughtful and authentic.

Authenticity Brain Hacking

Your Acceptance Group

 

In their 2011 paper, DeWall and Bushman reviewed the existing research on social acceptance and rejection.  They describe how evolutionarily, social acceptance was critical to survival.

“With no fangs, fur, or claws, and with long, vulnerable childhoods, humans are ill-suited to fulfill their survival and reproductive needs living in isolation. Given these vulnerabilities, early humans survived harsh environments by depending on small groups of other individuals to meet many of their survival and reproductive needs.

Because our ancestors evolved in small groups, social rejection likely signified a death sentence. Even among early civilizations, such as that of the Greeks, exile and death were treated as equivalent punishments.”

[reference: http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~schaller/308Readings/DeWall2011.pdf]

Furthermore, Chaldini in his book Influence, discusses the importance of social proof.  That is, when we see others all doing the same thing, in ambiguous situations we tend to go with the crowd as both a short circuit to the ‘correct course of action’ but also to not ostracize ourselves from the group and ‘suffer’ from social rejection.

The way you can use this to your advantage is by having a clear sense of who your core acceptance group is so that no matter the situation, you always feel safe in knowing that there is a group you belong to.

Halima, for example, has extremely strong ties with family, and her religious community.  They serve as a foundation that, regardless what happens, is  always there for her.  She didn’t grow up with other pageant participants or identify with this group, in fact, she knew she was an outsider and brought her group and her beliefs with her when she stood on that stage covered head to ankle while others wore revealing bikinis.

And while she did not win Miss Minnesota USA, her story, presence, and confidence landed her a modeling job where she now graces international runways while still being true to her beliefs.  But how does she make sure not to lose herself and begin to identify with this new group of models?  By committing to and spending time with her core acceptance group.

When not modeling around the globe, Halima continues to work at a St. Cloud Hospital pushing her cleaning cart through the halls, changing bedsheets and scrubbing toilets.

“I’m proud of my modeling job, but I’m also proud of this job and that this was my start,” she said. “You go home and you feel good — especially if you’ve done a lot of rooms that night.”

She still shops at the mall, buys groceries, and spends time with her longtime friends.

“I still do the things I used to do before,” she said. “I’m still a part of this community.”  

[reference: http://www.startribune.com/minnesota-somali-model-walks-milan-runways-and-cleans-hospital-rooms-in-st-cloud/417709063/]

Not only do you need to know who your core acceptance group is, but you must spend significant time with this group.  We become the average of the people we are surrounded by and as you move into larger leadership roles, you may be inclined to spend more and more time working which will keep you away from your core acceptance group and eventually, you may lose all contact with that group altogether.  If all that remains then is your leadership work group and if social acceptance is critical to your survival and your core group is gone, you’ll suddenly find yourself unconsciously conforming to this group and losing your authenticity.

Avoiding Loss Aversion

Daniel Kahneman in “Thinking, Fast and Slow” introduces the concept of loss aversion and how the pain of losing is psychologically twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining.  Essentially, once we have something, we don’t want to give it up and conformity is safest way to keep what we have and avoid loss.

Author Tim Ferriss, leveraging the teachings of the stoic Greek philosopher Seneca, practices a week of poverty from time to time to experience what he calls a ‘worst-case’ scenario where he lives without access to his vast resources.

“Seneca teaches you to value only those things that cannot be taken away, meaning you would actively practice poverty, for example, subsisting on the meagerest of food and clothing for, let’s just say, one week every two months. The way Seneca would phrase it is all the while asking yourself, “Is this the condition I so feared?”

That type of practice … helps you to live life offensively as opposed to defensively. So, I would say that on a daily basis I revert to some of the basic principles of stoicism to make decisions about where to invest my time, which relationships to cultivate, which relationships to sever so forth and so on.”

[reference: http://tim.blog/2011/05/18/philosophy-as-a-personal-operating-system-from-seneca-to-musashi/#more-5562]

 

By successfully managing through his worst-case scenario, Ferriss reduces his loss aversion.

You don’t need to practice a worst-case scenario like Tim to manage your loss aversion, but Bridget Casey provides some ideas to consider –

“To practice poverty for a week (or two, if you really want to get into it), all you have to do is select a limited number of clothes from your closet, shop the grocery store as if you are on the strictest budget imaginable, don’t drive your car, turn off your TV, and cut out any extra spending from your budget. You will be left eating ramen while reading a library book and wearing the same clothes you wore yesterday.”

[reference: for more ideas, check out Bridget’s post – http://www.moneyaftergraduation.com/2016/01/04/why-you-should-practice-poverty/]

But it isn’t so much about giving things up, as much as it is knowing and appreciating the important aspects of your life that can never be taken away.

For Halima, she has put her modeling career in perspective,

“‘I have this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, let me make the most of it, and let me have a good time… Because modeling could just be a one-season thing for me, and that’s something I’m OK with.’”

[reference: http://www.startribune.com/minnesota-somali-model-walks-milan-runways-and-cleans-hospital-rooms-in-st-cloud/417709063/]

When you believe the same, you will no longer be saddled with loss aversion.

Practice Nonconformity

‘We don’t rise to the level of our expectations; we fall to the level of our training.’ – Archilochus, Greek soldier, circa 650 B.C.

We all hope that we will do the right thing, and many of us believe we will if and when the time comes when we are asked to do so.  Unfortunately, as we have learned earlier, our brains our hard wired to react in certain ways to seek acceptance and avoid loss, both of which make it almost impossible to avoid conformance.  The only way to be successful then, is to practice the skills noted above and to practice nonconformity.

By practicing small acts of nonconformance, you will recognize and subsequently become comfortable with the heart racing, stomach tightening, self-doubt, embarrassment, and other associated feelings making it more likely that you will make good conscious versus unconscious decisions.

If you are looking for some ‘small acts’ ideas to practice, consider the following:

  • If you are a person who has trouble disagreeing, give yourself one “No” each day for a week that you will use when asked to do something at home or at work.
  • If you are self-conscious about what you wear or how you look, purposely wear different socks, mismatched shoes, or refrain from wearing makeup for a day.
  • If you use social media, try posting something a little different from your norm.

The idea is to know yourself, identify something that makes you slightly uncomfortable, and do it.  Psychologists call this cognitive behavioral therapy.  Basically, through repeated exposure to something uncomfortable the reaction we have can be muted and controlled.

Once you have practiced this skill on smaller, less significant issues and build up your confidence, when you are faced in the future with a situation that would otherwise be threatening, you will have the skills to stay true to yourself and your values.

—————–

 

As you come to better understand the story of Halima Aden, what you’ll find is someone whose life experience, relationships, beliefs, and inherent character have created a person who has the skills to be authentic in all aspects of her life.  But being authentic isn’t something one can easily do simply by reading an inspiring story, but rather by understanding that it is a characteristic and skill that can and needs to be developed.  One needs to have a core acceptance group, understand and combat loss aversion, and practice small acts of nonconformity to build their authenticity muscle.

Ironically, the key to being an authentic leader, is what you do, where you spend your time, and who you spend it with when you aren’t in your leadership role.

Kusimama Imara, my friends.

The key to being an authentic leader, is what you do, where you spend your time, and who you spend it with when you aren’t in your leadership role. Click To Tweet

Lying for Success

Published on by toddfonseca

“The only way to get ahead is lie, cheat, and put yourself before others. ”

“Wow,” I thought.  I actually died a little inside as I heard these words spoken by a young professional woman who had come to a recent event that I had hosted.

Our current political climate, stories of philandering leaders, the 2008 housing economic meltdown, and abuses by religious leaders, provide strong support for her thesis.

She isn’t alone.  Not only do many people feel this way, but research seems to support this position.  Stanford professor, Jeffery Pfeffer, in his 2015 book, Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time dispassionately illustrates through data and social science that modesty, authenticity, honesty, selflessness, and trustworthiness are the antithesis for getting ahead and being ‘successful’.

“What makes individuals successful is often times the opposite of what people have been told to do,” Pfeffer says. “While we’re told to be modest and honest, and to take care of others and not self-promote, when you actually look at what produces leadership success, at least success as defined as career advancement and achieving a high salary, it’s pretty much the opposite of that.”

“Some of the greatest and most successful leaders in the history of business and politics have not always told the truth,” Pfeffer says… He says that the truth about good leaders is that they are often really good liars.

[reference: https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-10-01/professor-truth-about-really-good-leaders-theyre-often-really-good-liars]

So, it is no surprise, that one reviewer concluded that in order to be successful the keys are:

  • Inauthenticity works
  • Aggressiveness/assertiveness work
  • Acting and playing a role work (“immodesty” works)
  • The right amount of dishonesty works
  • And, apparently, leaders (and employees) self-centeredness work

[reference: https://ffbsccn.wordpress.com/2015/11/10/leadership-bs-my-six-lessons-and-takeaways/]

Is this what Pfeffer intended by his book?  Should we now be teaching people that to be ‘successful’ this is what it takes?  Pfeffer responds by indicating he isn’t a moral philosopher but a scientist, and he is going to teach everyone the science and hope that when these future leaders using his research rise to power, they use their power for good instead of evil.  [for quote and full article, please reference – – https://www.ft.com/content/788abdba-562e-11e5-a28b-50226830d644]

Said differently, the only way to succeed is to lie and cheat your way to the top, then once you get there, be a good person.

Great plan.

I can understand why my friend feels the way she does.  After all, a tenured Stanford professor who has taught organizational behavior since 1979 and author of 14 books filled with scientific research tells us it is so and the only hope is a change of heart once these leaders get to the top.

But is there another way?

Are there, for instance, any companies that employees love to work for, believe in its mission, trust their leaders, and would actively encourage friends to join them at their company?  There are such organizations, even Pfeffer points this out using DaVita as one such example.  Forbes survey of 30,000 employees provides an annual list of such places.

The 2016 top 100 list of employee- selected companies is impressive, including Google, Apple, Facebook, Walt Disney, Medtronic – these companies have a combined market capitalization of over 2 trillion dollars and if this were GDP this group would be in the top ten countries in the world.   There are also notable non-profit organizations such as the New York City Fire Department, Mayo Clinic, and even Stanford University where Professor Pfeffer has tenure.  Has he, Sheryl Sandberg COO at Facebook and author of Lean In, John Noseworthy, Bob Iger, Omar Ishrak, Sundar Pichai, as well as so many other leaders lied and cheated their way to the top?

[reference: https://www.forbes.com/best-employers/list/]

I don’t know.

What I do know, as far as lying goes, is that we all lie.

Each and every day.  Some small, some big.

According to a University of Massachusetts study, 60% of adults lie at least once in a ten minute conversation, 40% lie on their resumes, 90% lie on their dating profiles.  [reference: http://mentalfloss.com/article/30609/60-people-cant-go-10-minutes-without-lying].  So if we are all liars, how come we all are rising to the top of our organizations?  Is it because some people are just better liars than others as Pfeffer indicates?

Not really.

The simple fact is we are horrible at detecting lies.  We think we are good at it, but the research shows otherwise.  In general, we can accurately detect truth and lies about 54% of the time – basically it’s basically a crap shoot. [reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16859438]

Therefore, not only do we all lie (and if you think you aren’t a liar, you’re lying to yourself right now) but we are all really good liars because most of the time people aren’t any better than chance at knowing if we are lying.  So lying, even being a good liar, isn’t the key to being CEO, president, chief of police, dean of a university and so on.

As far as being selfish or immodest, we all have these attributes too.

Do those who lie, cheat, and steal get ahead – yes, they do.
But they aren’t the only ones who do so.  History is replete with leaders who are the opposite – Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Abraham Lincoln, and numerous others.  Does it mean they never lied, were angry, selfish, or proud? Of course not, they would not be human if this were the case and to think differently is naive.  But was the core of their approach and success based on these negative attributes and did they only change once they rose to the top?

Not at all.  It’s what they did and how they did it in spite of these all too human characteristics that made them truly great.

Success has many different definitions and many paths.

The question is, what kind of a leader and what kind of person do you choose to be?

What kind of leader and what kind of person do you choose to be? Click To Tweet

Go for No

Published on by toddfonseca

“Nah to the ah, to the No, No, No”

Megan Trainor makes it clear in the song “No [Untouchable]” through her repeated “No’s” to her would be suitor that she isn’t interested.

For those who don’t know the song and for those who must hear it now just click here!

And to most people, hearing the word “No” is something all of us want to avoid in our interactions whether you are attempting to get a date, negotiate a promotion, discussing a pay raise, getting a specific price on a new car, or making a deal for providing a service.  “No” is the death nail that stops forward progress and hearing it brings most of us great distress and we will dodge situations and avoid questions that may prompt this response.

We are so wrong in this thinking.

Instead, we should not just welcome but embrace “No”.

To understand why, let’s first take a vacation.  Let’s go somewhere tropical and beautiful, say Costa Rica.  It has been an amazing week of adventure and relaxation with friends.  On your last day of the trip, you decide to spend it lying on the beach.  It’s hot and all you have to do is drink some ice water, but once you started thinking about it, a nice cold bottle of beer would taste amazing.  One of your friends is with you on the beach and they are leaving to run an errand.  Being a good friend, they offer to bring back a bottle of your favorite beer from the only place nearby that sells alcohol, which is a rather fancy resort hotel.  Your friend warns you that it may be expensive, given there are no other sellers nearby, and asks you how much you are willing to spend.  You agree that if the actual cost is more than your maximum, no beer.  They won’t buy it.

What is the amount you are willing to pay?

Researcher Richard Thayer asked exactly this question of participants in an executive development program, and their median answer was $5.88 (note: this is an inflation adjusted answer as their actual answer was $2.65 in 1985).

How close were you to this number?

Actually, this question was asked to only half of the participants.  The other half had the same exact setup but the only difference was that the phrase “rather fancy resort hotel” was replace with “small rundown grocery store.”  For this group, the maximum amount they would pay for the beer was 76% less – $3.33.

But why would this be?  It is the same beer, just as cold, and they would be enjoying it on the same beach so there is no premium to pay for atmosphere.  Why would the maximum amount they would pay for a beer change because of who is selling it?  Either it is a maximum or it isn’t.

[reference: http://www.economiapsicologica.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/thaler-mental-accounting-and-consumer-choice.pdf]

The answer lies in something researchers call the “Ultimatum Game”.  In this game, there are two participants.  One participant, whom we will call the Giver, in sight of the other participant, whom we will call the Receiver, is given ten dollars.  The rules are then explained to both the Giver and the Receiver together.

The Giver is to hand over some amount of the ten dollars to the Receiver.  If the Receiver agrees to the amount, then both the Giver and Receiver keep their split of the ten dollars.  If, however, the Receiver does not agree to the amount given, then all the money goes back to person running the experiment.

In a logical world, any amount offered by the Giver should be accepted according to economic theory because the Receiver, even if only offered one dollar, would have one more dollar than before the experiment began.  Who would turn down a free dollar?  But this isn’t what happens when this experiment is run.  As it turns out, the Receiver isn’t very grateful to receive only a dollar and readily gives it up so that the Giver can’t keep the remaining nine.  It doesn’t make logical sense.  If the same experimenter simply came up to the two participants and said, “can I give you one dollar and you nine dollars?” to the two participants, they would accept.  The end result is the same.  But our idea of fairness and revenge drives the decision to say “No” in the first scenario.  It is emotional reasoning.

[reference: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard_Thaler/publication/4719534_The_Ultimatum_Game/links/09e41510fce9496e3d000000.pdf]

Understanding this fact is key in understanding almost all decision making.  While we would like to think of ourselves as logical, straight forward, fact based decision makers, we simply are not, even in the simplest of everyday decisions.  Daniel Kahneman writes about this extensively in Thinking Fast and Slow.  We are full of cognitive biases and irrational behavior.  Seeking “Yes” feels like a logical strategy, but because we are not logical creatures, we have to rethink “No”.

Embracing “No”

There is a sales technique called Foot In The Door (FITD), the crux of which is what is called building a “Yes Set”.  That is a series of “Yes” answers to ever increasing requests.  Research in the 1960s showed that homeowners would overwhelming turn down (83%) having a large billboard in their yards saying “Drive Safely” but one group of homeowners actually agreed 76% of the time to this request [reference: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini].  The only difference between these two groups, was that the second group weeks earlier had been asked and agreed to place a small 3-inch square sign in their front window that stated, “Be a Safe Driver”.  They had agreed to a small earlier request, and now to be consistent with their earlier agreement, also agreed to a large yard sign whereas had they been asked for the large sign first, the overwhelming majority would have said No.  From this point forward, not just sales people, but most of us are taught to strive for “Yes” and to avoid “No”.  In fact, the 1981 book Getting to Yes remains a bestseller.

The limitation of this thinking is, when you know you are being sold to or someone is trying to convince you of something, you could say yes all day long, but because your guard is up you won’t remain open to what might actually be a good opportunity.

In his book, Never Split The Difference, FBI Negotiator Chris Voss, describes three types of “Yes”: Counterfeit, Confirmation, and Commitment.  The first is really a “No” and is told just to get rid of the requester.  The second is a simple yes that doesn’t further the discussion – e.g., is the sky blue, ‘yes’.  The last is the real deal but it only comes from trust and rapport which doesn’t happen if you are on guard.

Embracing “No” creates this path.  Here’s why –

“It comes down to the deep and universal human need for autonomy.  People need to feel in control.  When you preserve a person’s autonomy by clearly giving them permission to say “No” to your ideas, the emotions calm, the effectiveness of the decisions go up, and the other party can really look at your proposal.  They’re allowed to hold it in their hands, to turn it around.  And it gives you time to elaborate or pivot in order to convince your counterpart that the change you’re proposing is more advantageous than the status quo.”

“This means you have to train yourself to hear “No” as something other than rejection, and respond accordingly.  When someone tells you “no,” you need to rethink the word in one of its alternative-and much more real- meanings:

  • I am not yet ready to agree;
  • You are making me feel uncomfortable;
  • I do not understand;
  • I don’t think I can afford it;
  • I want something else;
  • I need more information; or
  • I want to talk it over with someone else.

Then, after pausing, ask solution-based questions… ‘What about this doesn’t work for you?’ or ‘What would you need to make it work?’”

Once you embrace this understanding, you may find yourself in a situation where you can feel the other person holding back and you are fine hearing the “No” but they simply aren’t saying it.  In these situations, Voss suggests creating a “No” to break the tension.

You preserve a person’s autonomy by clearly giving them permission to say “No” Click To Tweet

Here are two approaches to driving to “No” –

  • Say something you know is totally wrong, like “it seems like you against taking on a high visibility project”
  • Ask what they don’t want, for example “Let’s talk about what you would say ‘No’ to.” I like the last one because it implies there is something that they would say “Yes” to and encourages this thinking subconsciously.

– – –

What all this is getting at is, it is time to embrace that as humans we are moved by both reason and emotion and that the only true, strong, collaborative, trusting relationships and interactions come through our emotional selves.

Understanding, embracing, allowing, and encouraging “No” is one way to do just this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Too Busy To Help

Published on by toddfonseca

In March 2014, a social experiment was conducted Victoria Station shopping center in London where five-year-old Maya was ‘left alone’ to see if anyone would take a moment to help the obviously lost and alone girl.  In an hour, over 600 adults passed by her but only one stopped to help and that was after she had passed her by once before [reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5aIpUVAwZs].

What’s going on here?

While there may be many dynamics in place, one place to turn for answers is the now famous social psychology experiment conducted in 1973 by two Princeton University professors Darley and Batson, reported on in their paper “From Jerusalem to Jericho”.

Using the biblical story of The Good Samaritan as their inspiration, they enrolled 40 seminarian students at Princeton to take part in what the students thought was an assessment of vocational career interests of seminary students after graduation.

As each student individually came for the assessment, they were told that in addition to the various questionnaires they filled out, they would also be recording a response to a story so that there would be a greater understanding of their interests beyond what a simple questionnaire could achieve.

  • Half of the students were asked to read the story of The Good Samaritan
  • Half were asked to read a story about post graduate career options

Once they completed reading the story, each was then told that they would record their response in a recording facility in the neighboring building for which they were provided a map which directed them from the current office they were in, to the recording studio nearby.   Participants were once again divided into different groups.

  • One group was informed that they were already late for their recording session and should hurry next door (high hurry condition).
  • Another group was told the assistant is ready for you, please go right over (intermediate hurry).
  • A third group was told that it would be a few minutes before they would be ready for the recording but that they might as well head on over (low hurry).

As each student went to their recording session, they went through an alleyway where a victim was “… slumped in a doorway, head down, eyes closed, not moving.  As the subject went by, the victim coughed twice and groaned, keeping his head down.”

Each student’s reaction was then recorded – did they ignore the person, acknowledge them, ask if they needed help, provided help and so on.

What the experiment showed was, regardless of whether the students were preparing to record their response to The Good Samaritan or a response about post graduate career options, their response to the victim was the same.  Just thinking about giving a speech regarding doing a good deed for someone in need had absolutely no impact on the outcome.

What did have an impact, was whether or not the student was in a hurry.

  • 63% helped if they were in the ‘low hurry’ group
  • 45% helped if they were in the ‘intermediate hurry’ group
  • 10% helped if they were in the ‘high hurry’ group

[reference: https://faculty.washington.edu/jdb/345/345%20Articles/Darley%20&%20Batson%20(1973).pdf]

These are seminarian students, half of which were preparing to record their thoughts on The Good Samaritan parable, yet only 10% of them stopped to help if they were in the high hurry state.  Interviews with the students afterwards indicated that while they recall the victim, their focus on what they had to do was so high due to the hurry condition; they somehow filtered out or justified the person’s condition and kept on with their task.

What this means for us, who are likely not seminarian students studying to be in the service of others, is that good intentions are not enough when hurry consumes us.

Good intentions are not enough when hurry consumes us... Click To Tweet

Let’s look at something that is contributing to our ever-increasing feelings of hurry.

1/3 Of Your Waking Life

In December 2015, research conducted by Deloitte was reported in Time Magazine with the headline “Americans Check Their Phones 8 Billion Times a Day” with the average person checking their phone 46 times per day while those younger checked far more frequently:

  • Age 18–24: 74 checks per day
  • Age 25-34: 50 times per day, and
  • Age 35-44: 35 times each day.

I’m not sure why people my age aren’t represented; perhaps we are still using telegraphs and typewriters.

[reference: http://time.com/4147614/smartphone-usage-us-2015/]

Similarly, Nottingham Trent University tracked phone usage of participants over a two-week period and they found the average person checks their device 85 times a day, spending a total of five hours browsing the web and using apps, which is about a third of a person’s waking life.

[reference: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3294994/How-check-phone-Average-user-picks-device-85-times-DAY-twice-realise.html]

I’ve written before about how we get a dopamine hit dealing with the notifications and emails on our phones.  This literally becomes an addiction we must feed and maintain.  Research reported recently in the Minneapolis Star Tribune indicates that while drug addictions have decreased it is speculated that phone and app addiction is the new drug of choice.

Few people can look at this notification screen without feeling that slight bit of anxiety to clear all of those red numbered notifications on each app.

All of this produces a feeling of being constantly behind, not being able to keep pace with all of the activity and leaves you with an overwhelming FOMO (feeling of missing out).   This elevates cortisol, increases feelings of and contributes to a feeling of being hurried, which prevents connection with others.  In fact, our cognitive distraction is so high, we don’t even see the needs of others around us just like five-year-old Maya above.

What To Do?

There are three levels of action you can take to tackle these distractions.  For the brave and those willing to go cold turkey, jump all the way to level 3.  Otherwise, you may want to take a few weeks at each level to slowly get accustomed to your new world.

Level 1 – Embrace Boredom, Schedule Distraction Time

Cal Newport, a Computer Science professor at Georgetown University, in his book Deep Work, Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, discussed four rules for success at Deep Work.  Rule three is to Embrace Boredom.  Newport suggests that instead of scheduling focused work time, most of our working day should in fact be focused time and we should instead schedule our distraction time.  This could be ten minutes every couple of hours, or a larger scheduled block of time each day.  Regardless, the point is to schedule the time into your work day and not allow phone notifications, distractions, websites and other items take you out of focus.

Level 2 – Remove the Addiction by Eliminating Notifications

The key is to eliminate the dopamine hit that causes the addiction.  Using your phone’s settings, turn off all of the notifications on your apps.  This will rid your phone of those pesky number filled red circles, and reducing the temptation to check the app.  For instructions on how to do this:

Go one step further by turning off cellular data and Wi-Fi – this way even if you check your phone, there won’t be any new data to get distracted by yet you can still use your phone as, well, a phone.

Level 3 – Remove Social Media, email, and Other Notification Apps Altogether

You might be surprised after a few weeks at Level 2, that you really won’t miss their ‘benefit’ but will instead find you are more focused on deep game changing work.  You will be more connected to those around you finding ways not only to help and be engaged, but also create an environment of trust, respect, and collaborative innovation.

—

As stated earlier, good intentions aren’t enough when we are consumed with our hurried lives. To make behavioral change, one needs to take small easy steps until that action becomes automatic.  Once this occurs, take it to the next level and repeat!  While it may take time, start now.

The rewards are deep meaningful work and even more meaningful relationships with the people right in front of you, the people with real faces versus the ‘social media’ version shared to the world.

 

Dealing with Challenging Coworkers – The Eyebrow Story

Published on by toddfonseca

One of the great things about being a parent of four boys is the endless supply of material they provide.  As they’ve gotten older we’ve seen the supply of food products evaporate in transit from the grocery store to the pantry.  There are days I hear rumors that brownies were made, but by the time I get home, they’re nowhere to be found.  All this food feeds their ever-growing bodies as we churn through multiple pairs of shoes throughout the year (really, size 13 shoes?).  And as their voices got deeper, the facial hair arrived and there is only so long I’ll let them go without shaving.

Being a typical Minnesota “towhead” (note:), my sons’ facial hair is very light and it takes a few days for the noticeable “Shaggy-esque” type whiskers to emerge.

  • Side note: many people mistakenly believe the phrase is “toe head” but in fact the first word is “tow” referring to the tousled mass of light yellow fiber resulting from combing out the fibers from certain plants into thread; since these pale fibers resemble human hair the term “towhead” is occasionally used to describe blond children which I honestly didn’t know until I wrote this piece – thanks wisegeek.com!

On one particular morning where this was the case with one of my sons, I made it clear that I didn’t want to come home from work to see an unshaven face.

Fast forward to later that day.

I’m sitting down to our family dinner and my wife gestures to whisker boy and says to me, “Notice anything different about your son?”

I glanced down the table, and the boy stops eating and stares forward not quite avoiding my gaze but not looking at me either. The first thing that hits me is his hair is combed. This in itself is usual.

“Hair washed and combed today?” I reply.

He smiles and my wife shakes her head.

“What?” I say.

“Told you it wasn’t noticeable,” my son replies triumphantly.

My other three boys are laughing now.

“Well I noticed it right away,” my wife counters.

It’s at this point I’m starting to feel a little stupid for missing whatever it is I should be seeing. I felt a little like when those “magic eye” books came out in the early 90’s and everyone else is quickly spotting the 3D unicorn and all I get is a headache unfocusing and straining my eyes. “Just stare through the picture…look behind it…don’t focus…”.

Finally she hints, “Check near his eyes.”

Given the length of his hair and the fact he has combed it down, his eyes are a bit hidden but then I see it.

No eyebrows.

They are completely gone. His brow is smooth as can be. I’ve always wondered what eyebrows were for and most experts would say to keep sweat, water and debris out of the eye. But at the moment, I’m thinking they are needed to look…well…normal.

“What the heck,” I mutter. “What happened to your eyebrows?”

Now the other kids are in an uproar and I get the feeling this isn’t the first time this conversation has taken place.

“I had an accident,” was my boy’s guarded reply.

Shaking my head I struggle to understand this. What kind of accident results in your eyebrows disappearing?

A deep sigh later the story unfolds. “I was shaving this morning with the electric razor and stopped paying attention for a moment and nicked part of my eyebrow…”

While my son continued the story, I must stop here to tell you what was going through my mind. How does one stop paying attention when shaving? What could be so distracting that staring in the mirror with a battery operated cutting device vibrating at high speed which grabs away at little hairs pulling and cutting them clumps at a time one loses the location of said device? Even if you look away from the mirror for a moment, it is impossible not to know where it is by tactile nerve impulses alone. I imagine the elbow of his “razor arm” resting on the side of the bathroom counter while shaving and somehow it slips off and he over compensates and “bam” there goes a chunk of brow? Honestly, the truth of what really happened may never be known (I don’t what to even speculate further). What I do know is the outcome.

“So, wait a minute,” I interrupt. If you just nicked a part of the brow, how is it that both brows are entirely gone?”

Through whimpered cries of laughter, my wife explains. “He thought it would look better to shave them both off than to have one just missing a small piece.”

Of course.

Why hadn’t I thought of that?

I suddenly fear a large investment in eyebrow pencils is coming and shudder at memories of my grandmother’s painted brow way up on her forehead and quickly let my oldest know in no uncertain terms will he be allowed to start drawing in his facial features.

Having set yet another new ground rule in place that I never considered I would have to verbalize, I realize that this entire experience gave new meaning to the term “brow beaten”.

—

The Moral of the Story

As I thought of this story, I couldn’t help think about how I totally missed the missing eyebrows even when I thought I was really looking at him.  In my mind, I saw him one way and even with the evidence in front of me, I totally missed the obvious change (c’mon, missing eyebrows, who misses that?).

And if we do this with how people look, imagine how we frame our thoughts about other people and their abilities and motivations.  Think about how stagnate our beliefs are about our friends, family, and people at work.  We’ve placed everyone in our nice little box that fits our beliefs about them.  Anything that doesn’t fit in the box we ignore (like missing eyebrows).  We partly do this because our minds like habit and automatic pilot because then we can reduce our cognitive load and focus on the unique and important things we encounter throughout the day.

The downside is, we miss all of the other wonderful changing and multi-dimensional facets of those around us.  Our experiences shape and change who we are every day.  But do we allow ourselves to see those wonderful changes in other people and keep an open mind about who they are, who they are becoming, and grow the richness of our relationships?

This is especially challenging with those we have difficult relations with.  Think about those coworkers that you not only don’t see eye to eye with, but become deflated when you are in the same room with them.  Chances are you filter all their actions through a lens of negative motivations on their part (e.g., they are only trying to make themselves look good, they are lazy, they take credit for other people’s work, etc.).  The unfortunate reality is they probably think the same thing about you.

So how can you see them for something different than what you think?

—

Self Affirmation Theory

Oddly enough, research in ‘self affirmation theory’ shows us the answer.  Correll, et. al. write in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology –

  • “Research has demonstrated that people often resist information that conflicts with their personal views. Though new information may improve understanding, people seem to be motivated to discount both the source and the content of a challenging message in an effort to protect their existing beliefs (Cohen, Aronson, & Steele, 2000; Reed & Aspinwall, 1998; Sherman, Nelson, & Steele, 2000; for a review, see Sherman & Cohen, 2002). This close-mindedness apparently stems, at least in part, from concern over self-regard. Cohen and his colleagues suggest that, because people derive a sense of worth from their beliefs, and from the notion that those beliefs are an accurate assessment of reality, contradictory information can endanger their sense of personal worth. To protect that sense of worth, they attempt to reject the conflicting information.”
  • A crucial tenet of self-affirmation theory, though, is that the ultimate goal of a defensive reaction is the security of the global sense of self-worth, not the security of the domain, per se.  The individual should defend a given domain only to the degree that the more general sense of self-worth is compromised by its loss. Accordingly, if global self-worth is temporarily bolstered by success in a second, unrelated domain, the individual should be more willing to tolerate a threat to the domain of interest. Typically, self-affirmation research involves exactly this type of test. In research on persuasion, a self-affirmation in one domain leads people to acknowledge the merits of counterattitudinal arguments they would otherwise reject. Cohen et al. (2000), for example, asked half of their participants to write a paragraph about an important value (to affirm their sense of self-worth) before exposing them to arguments that challenged their views on capital punishment or abortion. Compared with control participants who wrote about less important values, those who wrote about a central value were more willing to recognize the strengths of the challenging argument.”

[reference: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/cccc/85d618c07d70a38aeab5ec700a1a6da07110.pdf]

What all this means is, in order to be open to new ideas that challenge our existing beliefs of others, we need to first prime ourselves with self affirmations about existing values we hold that have nothing to do with the person we are attempting to be more open toward.  It is important to physically write them down and not simply think them.  Here are two examples of what these self affirmation of values look like:

  • “My relationship with my family is very important to me because it is my parents and brother who helped push me to be who I am today. Without them, I probably wouldn’t have the patience and motivation to have applied for this university and be successful here. Whenever I have a problem, it is my family I can go to to help me through it. My friends are also very important. If I didn’t have the strong loving relationship with my friends from home, I wouldn’t be who I am today. My new friends that I have made [here] are also a big part in my life because they make me smile every day.”
  • “For me the sense of humor of someone is the most important thing. Every time someone makes me laugh it gives me comfort and happiness. I think having a good sense of humor is the best quality that a person can have. It does not matter if a person is good looking or not if they can make others laugh. Every time I meet someone I care if they have a good sense of humor or if they are funny. That is why most of my friends are always laughing, because we all like to make jokes and laugh together. I even think that laughing, making jokes and having a good sense of humor is what keeps us together as friends. Furthermore, our sense of humor is what makes us unique as a group of friends.”

[reference: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Geoffrey_Cohen/publication/259650286_The_Psychology_of_Change_Self-Affirmation_and_Social_Psychological_Intervention/links/02e7e52f3312ea8b3e000000.pdf]

—

I share all of this, so that no one ever has to shave off their eyebrows in order to be seen differently by those around them.

Take the easier path!

Identify a person you need to improve your relationship with, write out some value based self affirmations, become more open minded, and begin to appreciate who they really are.

 

What This Lost Dog Can Teach You About Work

Published on by toddfonseca

Have you ever gotten that call on your cell phone where you don’t recognize the number?  I usually think it is either a wrong number or someone trying to sell me something, but as a parent there is always a worry that maybe it is someone I don’t know calling me about an emergency involving one of my kids.  These thoughts were going through my mind as my wife and I were driving home from a basketball tournament and she listened to the message from the unknown caller.  As it turned out, the message was from my youngest son Nathan who was using a friend’s cell phone to inform us that they had found a lost dog wandering around the neighborhood.

We were only about a mile from home so it was only a few minutes later that we walked in the house and I saw a beautiful black dog, a little afraid, cowering in our front room as my son tried to comfort him.  “Jack” was etched on his tag and according to his address he was good ways away from his home.  I left phone and text message for the dog’s owner who was likely out trying to find his lost dog.

About an hour later, my phone range – success!

Jack’s owner, a very nice gentleman, found his way to our house and immediately Jack sprung to life, his tail wagging excitedly followed by a hearty “woof” as his owner came through the door.  The reunion was so sweet as dog an owner embraced.  Jack’s owner was so appreciative and the relief on his face was evident having worried for his lost dog imagining the worst of what could have happened to a black dog wandering the streets in the middle of the night.  They both left with quite the happy pep in their step!

The next day, his owner sent me this note:

  • “So many people would have seen Jack and thought, “Lost dog. Not my problem.” If it was your son who brought Jack in, nice parenting job, Dad! Jack has always had separation anxiety, and it seems that I’ve caught it from him. We are both grateful for last night’s reunion.”

His statement was ironic because my son had told me that others who had seen the dog that night had either said to ‘leave the dog alone’ assuming he would be fine.  This got me thinking about The Bystander Effect.

The Bystander Effect

 

This phenomenon has been extensively researched over decades starting back in the 1960s after the murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens New York where purportedly numerous witnesses to the event did nothing to help the young woman.

The typical bystander effect study involves participants “…either alone or in the presence of one or more other participants…suddenly witness[ing] a staged emergency (e.g., the experimenter becomes injured, a perpetrator offends someone, a thief steals something).  Their responses to these emergencies are recorded, typically in terms of their probability of intervening and the time it takes them to do so.  Results in the multiple-bystander condition are compared with results in the single-bystander condition.”  The typical result is that an individual’s likelihood for helping another person decreases when they are in the company of other bystanders.  With no other bystanders, people almost always help.  One theory is that there is a diffusion of responsibility which essentially postulates that there is a tendency to divide one’s responsibility by the number of bystanders present.

The more bystanders there are, the less personal responsibility an individual bystander will feel. Click To Tweet

A meta-analysis of the research conducted from 1960 to 2010 by Fischer et. al. indicates that there are moderators to this effect and it is not as simple as the statement above would indicate.  In fact, the more serious the emergency the more likely people will intervene and in some cases having other bystanders increases the likelihood of action especially in those cases where bystanders would likely work together supporting one another.

[reference: http://www.uni-muenster.de/imperia/md/content/psyifp/aeechterhoff/sommersemester2012/schluesselstudiendersozialpsychologiea/fischerkruegergreitem_bystandermetaana_psybull2011.pdf]

How this Applies at Work

As I thought more about this, I realized that the The Bystander Effect take place repeatedly each day at work.  It happens when people are signing off documents – if there are a number of people signing there is an assumption that one can rely on all of the other experts on the list and their careful review to ensure the accuracy of the document’s contents.  But if everyone operates under this assumption, no one is making a critical review of the document.  This is not the case if there is only one person signing.  The same can be true of emails.  Notice how many people are copied on emails, is everyone really taking a careful look at the contents?  Before computers, there were cc’s (carbon copies) to others but this list was usually less than five people.  Copying numerous people may be a way to cover yourself, but it doesn’t improve the actual review and agreement of a message or document’s contents.

The bystander effect also happens in large group meetings where a lot of ideas may be generated, but at the end of the meeting it isn’t clear what actions are moving forward, and who owns them.  This usually creates the feel of déjà vu where participants feel like the same issues and conversations have taken place before, but no real differences are happening.

So how do you combat The Bystander Effect at work?

Get Specific

Research shows that if people are singled out and asked for help with a specific task, they are more likely to do it versus asking a group for generic help with a problem.  Therefore, if multiple signatures are required for a document, make it clear exactly what unique aspect each individual is expected to be reviewing and signing off on during the review.  One way I have seen this done effectively is to have a review matrix the lists the critical elements to be reviewed (data accuracy, reference checks, use conditions, grammar, message consistency, etc.) and which person or functional representative is responsible for each item.

Be Selective

Only send emails and documents to the those who have responsibility for carrying out the tasks or reviews requested and make those requests clear and specific by person as noted above.

Make One on One Requests

When asking for volunteers to come forward to drive an action or run a program, this is best done by having one on one conversations with individuals versus asking a group.  In a group, each person will already consider themselves doing their part and defer to someone else in the room believing that in such a large team, a number of people will surely raise their hand.  My experience has been the opposite.  I learned this lesson the hard way when leading our cub scout pack and would ask for parent volunteers.  Just asking got me nowhere, but having a list of responsibilities and projects and a requirement for each parent to sign up for one or more of the items was extremely successful.  For those more difficult projects, one on one conversations with specific parents worked every time.

Lastly, whenever you find yourself copied on an email, signing a document, or being asked to volunteer, remember Jack the dog and take the responsibility to get clarity and ensure that the work gets done.

 

Feed Your Soul at Work!

Published on by toddfonseca

The other night I met a gentleman named Curt.  “Mind you that’s Curt with ‘C’,” he said as he reached across the table and took my hand.  I was having dinner with Curt and his lovely bride Jean, both of whom I was meeting for the very first time that evening.  I also met Jim and Lynn who my wife and I would also break bread with.  One more couple, Greg and Angie, good friends of ours, completed our group of eight.   After the introductions, a number of us attempted to read the MoosePie times.  I say attempted because the low lighting and our advancing age had us all manipulating the one page newsletter to find the right angle and distance to maximize both light and focus.  Entertaining to watch I’m sure for those a little younger in the room.  Along with the ‘times’, our place setting also included a fake $20 bill that could be used to bribe one of the cast members for a clue.

As you may have guessed, we were all at a whodunit comedy dinner theater, The Mystery Café (cue Toccata and Fugue in D Minor).  This particular show was a spoof on the X-files, and our challenge was to solve the mystery of how last Tuesday had disappeared from everyone’s memory.  And, as it turned out, this evening’s show was the last of this production and the cast was especially engaging.  They story was hysterical and entertaining (yes, I’m now at the age where these are things I enjoy doing.  I’m sure the buffet at Golden Corral is soon to be next on my hit list), but the highlight of the evening was meeting Curt.

You see, once Curt learned that I worked for Medtronic, he proudly informed me that he was now on his second Medtronic pacemaker.  Throughout the evening during the various breaks in the show, he appreciatively informed me about his journey that started with his first implant in 1992 and his later diagnosis of atrial fibrillation which required his new pacemaker to use only one of his two leads he had implanted.  He was current on recent technology advances, informed about his care and disease, and he kept track of all the research and business practices of the company I work for. He was so proud to not only have his device but also so appreciative for it keeping him alive – “I’m pacemaker dependent,” he said.  “I wouldn’t be here enjoying each and every moment if it wasn’t for this,” he said tapping his chest and smiling at his wife. When the show was over and as we put on our coats to leave, Curt grabbed my hand, pulled me close and whispered conspiratorially, “after I had my first pacemaker replaced, they cleaned it up and gave it back to me with my named engraved on it.”  He squeezed my hand, pursed his lips holding the emotions in as his eyes welled up, and then turned and left.

Curt with a ‘C’, his name engraved on his pacemaker and forever in my heart.

—

As you can imagine, this not only made my day, but Curt’s story will always be with me.  Then again, as time passes, Curt and his story are at risk of becoming distant memory.  And on those work days when nothing seems to be going right, Curt and his story are far from my conscious mind which is when I need it the most.  I need that reminder of the positive impact of what I do can have on the the previous and future Curt’s.

How can you keep similar experience close to your heart and mind and have the emotional charge that stories like Curt’s are there when you need them?  Below, I’m going to share some of the things I do for just this purpose.

External Mental Hard Drive

Years ago, a good friend and I were talking about the power of stories in teaching.  The problem I had was anytime I was preparing for a talk, I couldn’t recall any relative stories to share.  That when she suggested I start a “story box” so that each time I read or experienced something that might prove to be a good story to share later, I could capture the story in Evernote along with tags that describe the essence of the story (e.g., teamwork, leadership, change, creativity, etc.).  Then, in the future, I would have a ready library of stories easily searchable in the cloud.  Since that time, I have amassed over a thousand stories in Evernote, some from web pages I’ve clipped, books I’ve read, discussions I’ve had with others, or experiences I’ve had personally.

Then I realized I could expand my external hard drive to also capture those stories of thanks, gratitude, attaboys, and other experiences that impacted me no matter how small (more on that in a minute).  If I have pictures or an illustration, I include them as well and put all of these in a special folder in Evernote.  I make sure that at least once I week I look through this folder and pick a few items out and not just read but take the time to revivify with the thoughts, feelings, and emotions that I can recall to feed my soul.  More importantly, on those days that have gone particularly poorly, I’ll take a fifteen-minute break and reopen this folder to recharge my emotions and reset my perspective.

Frequency is More Important that Size

Dr. Ron Friedman writes in The Best Place to Work, that “Small, frequent pleasures can keep us happy longer than large, infrequent ones.”  Researchers, Dunn, Gilbert and Wilson reported in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, on several studies on this phenomenon –

  • “Another advantage of small pleasures is that they are less susceptible to diminishing marginal utility, which refers to the fact that each unit increase in the magnitude of a pleasure increases the hedonic impact of that pleasure by a smaller amount than did the previous unit increase. Eating a 12 ounce cookie is not twice as pleasurable as eating a 6 ounce cookie because the first X% of a cookie’s weight accounts for more than X% of its hedonic impact. People can therefore offset diminishing marginal utility by ‘breaking up’ or ‘segregating’ a pleasurable experience such as cookie-eating into a series of briefer experiences (Kahneman, 1999; Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; Mellers, 2000; Thaler, 1999).”
  • “Nelson and Meyvis (2008) asked participants to sit in a chair equipped with a massage cushion. Half the participants experienced a continuous 180 second massage, while the others experienced a massage of 80 seconds, followed by a 20 second break, followed by a another 80 second massage. Compared to participants who experienced one longer massage, those who experienced two briefer massages (interrupted by a break) found the overall experience more pleasurable and were willing to pay about twice as much to purchase the massage cushion.”

[Ref: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/danielgilbert/files/if-money-doesnt-make-you-happy.nov-12-20101.pdf]

What was also found in this last study was that the participants had all predicted prior to their experience that they would enjoy the one long massage more than the discontinuous massage.

This finding is so key, because like those participants, most of us think we need that big experience, car, or trip to ‘make us happen.’ When research repeatedly shows that frequency wins over size every time. That means that you should fill your hard drive with as many experiences and thank you emails, large and small throughout the day.  The other benefit of this practice is that the more you do this, the more you start looking for these little positive nuggets.  We train what is called the reticular activating system to focus on these experiences, much like when you buy a new car and suddenly find that everyone else on the road has the same car.

Pay It Forward

Finally, pay it forward.  Who knows, you may be someone’s Curt and transform their day when they most needed it!

 

 

 

This Simple Change Will Transform Your Workday – Love Your Job Part 2!

Published on by toddfonseca

I’m the occasional reader of Stephen King novels, not so much the horror genre, but books like Misery, The Stand, and a few years ago, Under the Dome.  I could only hope to be a fraction of the writer that King is, with more than 350 million copies of his book sold, he is in the top ten best-selling fiction writers of all time [ref: http://www.top10base.com/top-10-best-selling-fiction-writers-time/].  In his book, On Writing, King reveals the inspiration for his books – the fusion of two divergent ideas.  Take Carrie, according to King –

“I’d read an article in LIFE magazine some years before, suggesting that at least some reported poltergeist activity might actually be telekinetic phenomena – telekinesis being the ability to move objects just by thinking about them. There was some evidence to suggest that young people might have such powers, the article said, especially girls in early adolescence, right around the time of their first —

POW! Two unrelated ideas, adolescent cruelty and telekinesis, came together, and I had an idea …”

It is his powerful opening premise that hooks me into his books.  His subsequent prose, character and world building, action, and plot twists keep me reading well into the early morning hours.

Yet I am only an occasional reader – why?

It’s the end of his books..

More often than not, they are an enormous letdown for me.  When I read, The Stand, I became completely enveloped in his post-apocalyptic world, and the practical challenges around putting a viable society back together in the wake of such a tragedy.  I even appreciated the supernatural overtones peppered throughout the narrative.  But the ultimate climax left me wishing I had simply not finished the book.  After investing so much time and emotional energy into this 900-page tome, I avoided King for years.  That is until I picked up, Under the Dome.  As I stood in the bookstore flipping through the first few pages, I found myself just moments later well into the opening chapter as I sat at the store’s café with my new purchase.  As I read this even longer 1000-page book, the narrative and setup were so captivating I lost all track of time.  The entire premise was so intriguing and watching how society degenerated under these extreme conditions, I had to know not only how the inciting event came to be but how all of this would resolve.  Unfortunately, the ultimate answer and ending were even worse than I could have thought possible.  Apparently, I am not alone as there are posts on Reddit and Quora discussing this issue [ref: https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2btyjk/what_stephen_king_book_has_the_worst_ending/].

Regardless, the result is that I have yet to pick up another Stephen King book since Under The Dome.

Here Comes the Science!

Serial Position Effect

My experience with King’s books have a deep psychological underpinning known as the Serial Position Effect.  Over fifty years ago, in 1962, Bennet Murdock reported on research where participants were asked to recall word lists of different lengths 10-2, 20-1, 15-2, 30-1, 20-2, and 40-1; where the first number was the list length and the second number was the presentation time in seconds.  In order words, 10-2 denoted a list of 10 words presented at a rate of 2 seconds per word.

What is clear from this data is regardless of the length of the word list, participants were likely to remember the first few and last few words in the list.  It also shows how dominant the last words are in our memory.  The number of words and probability of recalling them is substantially higher than any other words in the list.

Remembering the first few words is known as Primacy.  Basically, these early words have nothing else competing with them and stand alone in our memory.

Recall of the last few words is known as Recency.  The simple graphic to the right illustrates this phenomenon.

The effect of Recency exists beyond word list recall.  It applies to our experiences.  Our last experience carries a strong position in our minds and how we view the experience as a whole.  This is the case with my reading of Stephen King books.  I remember the beginning but while I recall some of the concepts and plot twists in the middle, what stays with me the most is the end.  Keep this fact in mind while we talk a bit more about Primacy.

Primacy and Starting Strong

If 1962 wasn’t far back enough for our first research article, we’re going back even further to 1946.  It was in this year that Solomon Asch published “Forming Impressions of Personality” in The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology [ref: http://thenewschoolhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/asch_formingimpressionsofpersonality-web.pdf].  Of particular interest for us is experiment number five.  In it, participants were placed in an A or B group and then read a list of six characteristics that described a person.  They were then asked to write their impressions about that person in a short paragraph.  Before I show you the two lists, here are some typical examples of the responses from both groups:

Series A

  • A person who knows what he wants and goes after it. He is impatient at people who are less gifted, and ambitious with those who stand in his way.
  • Is a forceful person, has his own convictions and is usually right about things. Is self-centered and desires his own way.
  • The person is intelligent and fortunately he puts his intelligence to work. That he is stubborn and impulsive may be due to the fact that he knows what he is saying and what he means and will not therefore give in easily to someone else’s idea which he disagrees with.

Series B

  • This person’s good qualities such as industry and intelligence are bound to be restricted by jealousy and stubbornness. The person is emotional. He is unsuccessful because he is weak and allows his bad points to cover up his good ones.
  • This individual is probably maladjusted because he is envious and impulsive.

What were the two lists?

  • Group A: intelligent – industrious – impulsive – critical – stubborn – envious
  • Group B: envious – stubborn – critical – impulsive – industrious – intelligent

If you look carefully, the six characteristics are identical.  The only thing that is changed is the order in which they are presented.  Yet the perception and judgement of the participants about these two people were different.  The author writes:

A considerable difference develops between the two groups taken as a whole. The impression produced by A is predominantly that of an able person who possesses certain shortcomings which do not, however, overshadow his merits. On the other hand, B impresses the majority as a “problem,” whose abilities are hampered by his serious difficulties. Further, some of the qualities (e.g., impulsiveness, criticalness) are interpreted in a positive way under Condition A, while they take on, under Condition B, a negative color. This trend is not observed in all subjects, but it is found in the majority.

This starting bias made by the first few words colors the entire belief for the type of person they were reading about.  This is why first impressions are so important because they anchor our believes about a person or an experience.  Again in the case of Stephen King books, the beginning and premise are so strong, you can’t help but get hooked in.  Otherwise you wouldn’t even get past the first pages and the book would go unread.  In the latter case, there is no opportunity for recency because you never get past the beginning.

Putting Recency and Primacy to Work @ Work!

In order to transform your workday, you need to manage your day to start strong and end even stronger.  That means, your first activity of the day should be something that you are really enjoy doing – a hook if you will.  This is not the time to do the worst task you have planned for the day.  How you start will affect the rest of your day and the energy you bring to it.

Similarly, end your day with something powerfully positive.  For some this might be a 1:1 with a favorite mentor, completing a particularly satisfying action item, it might mean working out at your company gym, or in my case, walking to the parking garage with my best friend at work and laughing all the way to my car.  These final activities at work are the ones that will weigh the most in your memory, they will affect your mood and how you both view your day and your work.   The opposite is also the case.  If you end the day on a horrible event, meeting, interaction, or project, this will negatively paint the entire day’s experience and you will start to see your work as nothing but negative.

If for some reason, you can’t adjust your calendar each day to take advantage of Primacy and Recency,  make sure you use Prediction and Anticipation as I wrote about in How to Love Your Job (Part 1).  These can be used in any situation, meeting, event, activity and can greatly alter your perspective for the positive.

Together, these neuroscience based hacks are the foundation for transforming how you see your work and soon you will have programmed yourself to Love Your Job!

 

The Real Reason Why Your Goals Aren’t Working!

Published on by toddfonseca

A number of years back, in a fit of uncontrollable impatience during an event we now refer to simply as “The fence incident” I made the unwise decision to vault myself over the backward fence instead of using the gate which would, at least in my mind, take too much time.  Looking back, I’m still impressed with the amazing height I achieved to ensure I would easily clear the top of the chain links. Unfortunately, I also lost all control resulting in an unscheduled trip to the emergency room.  Turns out my shoulder isn’t supposed to be positioned where my sternum normally resides.

That was over fifteen years ago and in the last few years I’ve really noticed that the flexibility in the dislocated shoulder has substantially diminished.  Wanting to improve my joint and connective tissue health, I came upon something called gymnastic strength training.  I’ve always wondered how men’s gymnastics can do positions on rings where they seem to defy the laws of physics.  How is it their shoulders doesn’t rip out of their sockets?

The key is mobility which is a combination of strength and flexibility.  Former US Junior Olympic Gymnastic coach, Christopher Sommer, created a program (https://www.gymnasticbodies.com/) for normal people to learn joint, connective tissue, and strength training.  He calls the training ‘foundations’ because all of the exercises progress toward doing seven foundational gymnastic positions including manna and straddle planche.

Now honestly, take a look at these pictures.  Actually performing a planche or manna is not my goal.  My goal is to improve my mobility not to mention getting through just the first foundation level takes an average of 18 months.  I’ve done a lot of different exercise programs, but I have stayed with this one three times longer than anything else (currently 9 months in).  What makes this program so different and what can this teach us about goal setting?

Let’s take a look at the science of goals.  SMART goals aren’t the only key to success.  In fact the science has evolved a lot in this space and what you may have learned historically about goal setting may actually drive the opposite of what you are working to achieve.

Three Types of Goals

First, we should ground ourselves on the different types of goals.  Research in this area tends to categorize goals into the following three categories –

Do Your Best Goals – You can probably discern from the name that these types of goals have no measurements associated with them.  One is simply instructed to ‘do their best’.  Using a sports analogy, if one were learning to shoot a free-throw, a do your best goal would be to improve their free throws over the course of a training period.

Performance / Outcome Goals – This goal has a specific outcome such as achieving a free throw percentage of 80% or better by the end of the training period.

Process / Learning Goals – An example of learning goals would be to learn the various fundamentals associated with a good free throw – for example learning the correct footwork on the line, how to aim the ball, the position of the shooting arm and elbow, the use of the legs, the importance of achieving a fluid motion, and the appropriate release and follow through of the shot.

Almost all goals in the business setting are of the performance or outcome nature.  They are easiest to measure – grow revenue by 5%, close 10% more deals, produce 25% more product, release new product by X date, and so on.  These are the types of goals that have run factories for years and increased productivity.

However, these goals don’t always work as intended.

The Role of Complexity

Some of you may be familiar with Daniel Pink’s TED talk about motivation.  In it, he talks about an experiment where participants were given a candle, thumbtacks and matches and instructed to attach the candle to the wall so that wax won’t drip onto a table.  In some experimental conditions, participants were told they would receive money if they scored a time within the top 25%.  The actual average time for these groups actually took 3.5 minutes longer than those who weren’t offered any monetary incentive.  In fact, study after study shows that extrinsic rewards don’t work for complex, creative tasks. https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation/transcript?language=en]

My favorite story on this topic involves the Marshmallow Challenge.  Tom Wujec’s TED talk describes this challenge in which teams of four are given 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string and one marshmallow, and the teams are to build the tallest freestanding structure with the marshmallow on top in only 18 minutes.  On average, team achieve a 20-inch-tall structure.  However, when Wujec offered a $10,000 reward for the highest structure, the winning structure didn’t reach 20 inches.  It didn’t even 15 or even 10 inches in height.  At the end of 18 minutes, there was no winner.  None of the team’s had a standing structure when the time expired.
[reference: http://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_build_a_tower/transcript?language=en]

A meta-analysis by Wood et. al. looked at numerous studies and found that the effects of goal setting becomes less pronounced as the task becomes more difficult
[reference: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Wood15/publication/232486726_Task_Complexity_as_a_Moderator_of_Goal_Effects_A_Meta-Analysis/links/0deec539511bc608c9000000.pdf].

So what works for complex tasks? What goals drive achievement?

In 2005, Seijts and Latham reported in the Academy of Management Executive about their research in which participants were asked to play what is known as the cellular industry business game.  It is a complex game with multiple variables and changing conditions where the goal is to improve market share by the end of the game.  Three groups were formed with three different goals –a ‘do your best’ group was instructed to simply ‘do their best’ to improve market share, the ‘performance/outcome’ group was asked to improve their market share by 20%, and the ‘learning/process’ group was asked to identify three effective strategies to drive market share.  The result of this studied showed no difference between those with the “performance” and “do your best” groups.  However, the “learning/process” group achieved twice the market share of those in the other two groups.
[reference: http://www-2.rotman.utoronto.ca/facbios/file/22%20-%20Seijts%20&%20Latham%20AME%202005.pdf]

But are learning or process goals always the best?

Next we need to consider environmental factors.

Challenge versus Threat Environment

My youngest son told me a story recently about a friend in his math class that has struggled mightily with his grades.  He had not gotten a passing score yet and his parents had taken away all privileges (extrinsic rewards) until he got A’s on his work (Performance / Outcome goal).  Unfortunately, his friend’s grades didn’t improve.  In this situation, the boy was operating under a “threat environment”.  That is, his situation was not seen as a positive challenge to achieve a new skill but a threat to avoid further punishments and loss.  Work by Dweck et. al. has shown that when people adopt this threat mindset, they interpret their inability to achieve the desired outcome as an indicator of low ability that severely impacts their self-esteem [references: Dweck & Legget, 1988, Heiyman & Dweck, 1992; Mueller & Dweck, 1998).

Similarly, in The Best Place to Work, Ron Firedman writes that when people are in the threat mindset “…[they] had to exert significantly more mental energy than participants in an approach [challenge] state just to accomplish the same level of work… The avoidance [threat] group also overestimated the difficulty of the task before getting started.”

In their paper “Challenge versus threat effects on the goal-performance relationship”, researchers Drach-Zahavy and Erez conducted studies where participants were placed in one of three stress conditions – low, threat (negative), and challenge (positive) and assigned one of three goals – do best, difficult [outcome/performance], and strategy [learning/process].

Their results found that difficult or outcome/performance goals were superior in every scenario but one. Performance dropped substantially in the Threat [difficult] goals condition [reference: https://ie.technion.ac.il/~merez/papers/dz.pdf].

So What Goals Should You Use and When Should You Use Them?

At present, research indicates that when someone is first learning the skills necessary to tackle a complex project, process or learning goals are superior.  And then, once they have learned these fundamental skills, outcome/performance goals are superior unless a “threatening” environment exists.   We have all seen employees who are struggling to perform.  They are put on a performance improvement plan usually consisting of specific performance/outcome goals (vs. learning goals) and their performance usually gets worse.  They take longer, second guess themselves and begin a spiral into poorer and poorer performance, just like the study above illustrated.

These lessons also explain my success at sticking with my exercise program.  The weekly goals built into the program are learning goals that have kept me motivated to keep learning achieve the next progression.

So the next time you are creating goals for yourself or those you work with, consider current skill level, task complexity, and whether there is a challenge or threat mindset.

And if I ever achieve that planche hold, I’ll let you know.