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February 8, 2012

Reclaiming The Power of Your Intuition Part 1

L’atmosphere Camille Flammarion

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” Albert Einstein

Most people have experienced the often vague feeling of knowing something without having any memory of its source. This phenomenon is known as a “gut feeling,” a “hunch” or “intuition.”

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, intuition is the ability to understand or know something – immediately – without conscious reasoning. Although this knowledge can come in any form (thoughts, images) its primary channel is feeling. The word “intuition” comes from the Latin word “intueri” which roughly translated means to “look inside” or to “contemplate.” Although there is general (though often tepid) acceptance that intuition exists, there is still no scientific agreement on what it is.

Gavin de Becker, author of The Gift of Fear (not my favorite title) refers to these signs as “Messengers of Intuition:”

Hairs raising on the back of your neck
Chills down your spine
Spiders of anxiety crawling across your skin
Concern, wonder or doubt in the back of your mind
Lack of comfort and ease around a certain person (and I would add place or thing)

Many people experience intuition in their gut, as in:

“I felt in my gut that I should not get on the plane.”
“My gut instinct tells me to avoid this business deal.”
“My gut reaction is not to go out with this guy, but he seems so nice.”

Learning to discern differences between genuine intuitive impulses and conditioned, negative voices and feelings requires practice. For example, I’m fully aware that as an often anxious flier I’ve heard the voices of worry and felt the physical sensations of fear when I’ve boarded a plane. This makes it challenging to know what’s intuitive and what’s habituated. Only by developing greater self-awareness and internal listening, over time, can we begin to make those fine distinctions.

Where Does Intuition Come From?

Il Sogno Michelangelo Buonarroti

Researchers studying the processes of intuitive experience have so far concluded that the human brain has dual systems for receiving and analyzing sensory impressions, one conscious and one unconscious. In the unconscious, our sensory impressions are compared with previously stored images.

We all have an inner picture book of stored experiences based on what has happened to us in earlier life. The greater the experiences, the bigger the reservoir of sensory impressions. According to researcher Lars-Erik Bjorklund, “It can be a matter of smells, gestures, an ineffable combination of impressions that makes what we call intuition tell us something.”

It’s important to note that these memories are only stored in our brain if they effect us. In other words, impressions form memories, if they are emotionally resonant. The hippocampus (where memory is stored) though independent, interacts with the amygdala (emotional center) in concert to determine what will be encoded and stored. How and why the hippocampus decides to select a memory is still not understood.

But is intuition more than just a hunch that is the outcome of stored memory and sensory impressions?

If researchers are correct and intuitive glimpses are the result of unconscious stored impressions, what accounts for so many insights where there is no past experience? There are legions of stories about how people’s lives were saved, accidents averted and successes achieved where no prior (at least conscious) information was known.

We’re Afraid

Gothic Night Works Tate Gallery

Once upon a time, people, especially women, were burned at the stake for even admitting they heard “voices” or experienced feelings and sensations that were not sanctioned by group norms. It’s estimated that about nine million women were burned for witchcraft throughout history. Perhaps the notion of “women’s intuition” is the legacy of that frightful practice.

Fortunately, the specter of execution no longer hangs over us but for most of us, conformity to group agreements still influences what we think – and what we feel. We’re subjects of the conditioning of the social groups that shaped our childhood and those that continue to exert pressure for acceptance. Although Western cultures, in general, have become more tolerant of the concept of intuition, it’s still suspect relative to the near reverence we have for data and logic.

This thinking is pervasive in business settings. Most people still believe that their decisions are driven primarily by rational reasoning. Science would say the answer is a combination of both, but the jury is still out, as the saying goes.

Part of the problem is that we apply a higher standard to the predictive outcome of intuition as opposed to logic. If we measured the accuracy of our intuitive based decision-making to that of our logical reasoning, we might be surprised to find that our over-reliance on logic isn’t as accurate as we believe.

Another mental tendency that confounds our ability to listen to our intuitive senses is black or white, either-or thinking. Organizational consultant and systems thinker Peter Senge explains, “People with higher levels of personal mastery can’t afford to choose between reason and intuition, or head or heart, any more than they would choose to walk on one leg or see with one eye.”

The methodologies of most Western education and business systems are based on left brain development. We don’t have the skills or support in our culture to cultivate our intuitive sensing. Often this is a matter of belief and trust. Although mistrust in the unknown is common (one of the factors that keep us averse to change in general) there are literally hundreds of things we believe in and act on without proof.

Harvard Business Review author Modesto Maidique writes, “Ask an experienced CEO how he/she made a major decision and their typical response is “intuition” or “gut feel.” Yes, analysis plays a role, but intuition was found to be a major or determining factor in 85% of thirty-six major CEO decisions that we studied. Some were good decisions, some were not, but regardless intuition seemed to rule the roost.”

Since his recent death, the life, times and beliefs of Apple founder Steve Jobs has received widespread attention. Job’s experience with intuition is worth noting, given his acclaimed ability to presage a new age of communication with the vision of his products. According to Jobs, “I began to realize that an intuitive understanding and consciousness was more significant than abstract thinking and intellectual logical analysis. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work.”

These surprising statistics and testimony from Steve Jobs and other CEOs belies the apparent bias we meet when valuing our own intuition or that of others. Regardless of corroboration from business leaders on the value of listening to our unlimited intuitive knowledge, many people still discount their intuitive voices or sensing.

Even when the information (messages) we receive from our purest intuitive response feels right, (sometimes exciting, sometimes uncomfortable) it still can feel at odds with the “evidence” of logical reasoning. Often it isn’t even the result of our own experience, but that of others that influences us to ignore our intuition.

We dismiss first impressions and confuse nagging doubts and troubling thoughts with negative thinking and conditioned reactivity. Maybe we’re not skilled enough in emotional literacy to distinguish between the information that different feelings provide. Or are we too reliant on the opinions and approval of others?

While these factors may be true, I believe the primary obstacle to deepening our relationship with our intuitive self is that we are simply out of practice. That little child within us, filled with wonder, openness and absent the restrictions imposed by later socialization, understood this better than the adult who struggles to maintain a certainty and control that doesn’t exist.

In Part 2 we’ll explore the obstacles we face when trying to reconnect with our intuitive wisdom. We’ll also look at ways we can strengthen our ability to listen more deeply and derive greater benefit from our intuitive impulses.

As always, I appreciate your comments, questions, readership, subscriptions, shares and tweets.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under Coaching & Mentoring, Human Resources, leadership, Life Skills, management training, mind-body, organizational development, well-being

Tagged as business skills, creativity, decision making, emotional intelligence, emotions, Fear, feelings, gut feeling, Health, imagination, intention, neuroscience, Psychology, success, vision

February 1, 2012

The Management Model You Can’t Manage Without – Part 2

“Brain science’s transformation of management isn’t just about another new technique or model. It’s about shifting our paradigm to incorporate the hard data of science and fundamentally changing the way we think about business.”

Charles S. Jacobs, Management Rewired

Neuroscience will revolutionize the way we do business. It will do that because it will eventually transform the way we view the way human beings function.

In Part 1, we explored some of the fundamental principles that underlie contemporary management practices. It is safe to say that while issues like motivation, learning and “performance” are all topics that dominant management theory, they are not well understood within the context of human psychology.

The dominant left-brain functioning which underpins management concepts keeps us stuck in old practices based on ideas of fragmented human experience.

The good but challenging news from the neuroscience front asserts that fragmentation isn’t really possible without a significant cost to well-being. Unless we view the person as a whole system we’re missing the amazing dynamism of human functioning and the interrelatedness of social communication.

One huge neuroscience “aha” is that brains are social. They function in relation to other brains. That information is a mighty revelation for most of the business world. As Management Rewired author Charles S. Jacobs wrote, “Doing business seems more complicated in the world according to neuroscience. In the world of logic and common sense, I can just do what I want with no more concern for relationships or mind-sets than a billiard ball has. Now science teaches me that my actions are constrained by the relationships I find myself in and that I have to account for how others think. Thankfully, though, my brain is naturally configured (with mirror neurons) to work just the way neuroscience tells me it must.”

Just as traditional neuroscience had for many years considered the brain as an isolated entity and largely ignored the influences of the social environment as a factor; now management theorists will have to recognize the considerable impact of social structures on the operations of mind and body.

The Contribution of SCARF

David Rock’s SCARF Model provides a groundbreaking translation of hard neuroscience to the practical applications of business management.

Every system, design and organizational practice elicits a response from employees’ brains. Either an action triggers a threat response (moving away) or a reward response (moving towards). When a brain encounters what it perceives as a threat response, it necessarily becomes less efficient as it mobilizes for safety.

According to Rock, “When you encounter something unexpected – a shadow seen from the corner of your eye – or a new colleague moving into the office next door – the limbic system is aroused. This is the “minimize danger, maximize reward” response; the fundamental organizing principle of the brain.” This fight or flight response mobilizes a person’s neurophysiology to “flee” or “fight” threat and releases stress response hormones that flood the body.

Writing about SCARF, blogger Ed Batista points out, “Our typical reaction to the strong negative emotions generated by a threat response is to suppress them, particularly in the workplace. But this response has many undesirable consequences, from reducing our own memory function to raising the blood pressure of people around us. So the cost of a threat response isn’t borne solely by the person experiencing it, but by anyone who interacts with them or depends on their effectiveness. It’s a shared–one might even say contagious–social experience, and this highlights the importance of group dynamics, perhaps most significantly the extent to which it’s safe (or unsafe) in a given group to express negative or difficult emotions.”

This transformational knowledge isn’t convenient for most organizational leaders. David Rock’s salient argument implies consequences for all business leaders, “Although a job is often regarded as a purely economic transaction, in which people exchange their labor for financial compensation, the brain experiences the workplace first and foremost as a social system. Leaders who understand this dynamic can more effectively engage their employees’ best talents, support collaborative teams, and create an environment that fosters productive change. Indeed, the ability to intentionally address the social brain in the service of optimal performance will be a distinguishing leadership capability in the years ahead.”

The 5 Domains of SCARF

(S) Status

Status is a powerful force in every person’s work experience. While many factors (beliefs, values, past experience, emotional awareness and sense of self-esteem and competency) all shape our (often) unconscious responses to status, it is a primary activator in the brain’s reaction to threat or reward.

The brain determines status in relation or measurement to others. Rock points out that, “Your brain maintains complex maps for “pecking order’ of the people surrounding you.” Recent studies show that the brain may prefer the rewards of status even more than cash. In her research at the National Institutes of Mental Health, neuroscientist Caroline Zink found that we process money in the same part of the brain (the striatum) as social values. Zink maintains, “It’s hugely influential even (when we’re not) in direct competition with someone else.”

Another recent scientific finding impacts the status domain; we experience social pain in the same region of the brain as physical pain.

It appears that the knowledge of this “neural overlap” established “an increasingly close relationship between our experience of physical pain and the painful emotions that come with feeling socially rejected. The latest study shows that getting dumped, disrespected or excluded is experienced as pain.”

Recent studies also show that loneliness is playing an important role in understanding the role of social status in the workplace.

In a recent New York Times article, the connections between psycho-social behavior and work were explored, “Because it is part of the human condition, loneliness is often regarded as a personal problem. But managers may need to view it as an organizational issue as well, ” according to research by Professor Barsade and Hakan Ozcelik, associate business professor at California State University, Sacramento.

In a sample of more than 650 workers, the researchers found that loneliness, reduces an employee’s productivity in individual and team tasks – “Loneliness tends to distort social cognition and influences an individual’s interpersonal behavior, resulting in increased hostility, negativity, depressed mood, increased anxiety, lack of perceived control and decreased cooperativeness.” Emotional contagion expert, Professor Sigal Barsade is further exploring whether loneliness may also be “contagious” as she has found with emotions like anger and happiness in the workplace.

Nearly every aspect of workplace activity is touched by the brain’s assessment of status. Interpersonal communication, team interaction, email communication, workplace design, promotions, meetings structure, performance reviews and the entire repertoire of feedback methods need to be reexamined in light of what we now know about the role of status in the brain’s response mechanisms.

A lack of consideration for factors that evoke status issues heightens the risks of employee hostility, reticence and may even stimulate conflict.

(C) Certainty

The brain craves certainty . We can blame the brain for our incessant drive for certainty. Dr. Robert Burton, former Chief of Neurology at the University of California at San Francisco-Mt. Zion Hospital, comments, “I don’t believe that we can avoid certainty bias, but we can mitigate its effect by becoming aware of how our mind assesses itself. We need to recognize that the feelings of certainty and conviction are involuntary mental sensations, not logical conclusions.”

One reason we’re hard-wired to seek certainty (where in the real-world there is none) is due to the brain’s brilliant capacity for prediction. Jeff Hawkins, inventor of the Palm Pilot and founder of a neuroscience institute writes, “Your brain receives patterns from the outside world, stores them as memories, and makes predictions by combining what it has seen before and what is happening now. Prediction is the primary function of the neo-cortex and the foundation of intelligence.”

Being a prediction machine, the brain gathers information and makes assumptions based on the “safest” possible outcome. In the larger scheme of brain tasks, this mechanism has an elegant purpose – the conservation of precious neural energy and the protective effectiveness against real threat responses.

When you can’t predict the outcome of a situation the brain signals an alert to pay more attention. When this happens a threat response can occur. David Rock’s example speaks to the fragile role that assumptions form in the brain as it tries to accommodate multiple possibilities in predicting outcomes, “Imagine expecting a colleague to phone you at 3PM. It’s now 3.06PM. You automatically start to try to predict futures: If he calls now, will he apologize? What made him late? Is he okay?” The emotional “stakes” will also play a role in how the brain demands certainty. Imagine if the caller was the employee’s boss, child, or parent. Who the caller is impacts the urgency for certainty.

While no one can guarantee certainty in an uncertain world, organizational leaders can try to provide greater perceptions of certainty in the ways they structure organizational processes and activities. Rock recommends, “Sharing of business plans, rationales for change and accurate maps of an organization’s structure promote this perception.”

Providing greater transparency and promoting a climate of trust can also contribute to fostering feelings of certainty. Leaders and managers that influence the conditions that promote greater satisfaction, contentment, calm and confidence will better ensure that employees’ threat responses are not unnecessarily activated.

(A) Autonomy

It’s long been recognized by science that when research subjects’ control is thwarted, the organism experiences significant degrees of stress. It seems that choice is a necessary variable in the maintenance of overall well-being. The balanced brain seeks an idiosyncratic degree of both autonomy and social connection.

In the right personal doses, autonomy – freedom of self-control – activates the brain’s reward center. Because “a little can go a long way,” even small expressions of self-control satisfy the brain’s need for autonomy. Office space, control over decisions, flexible work-hours and connection but not reliance on co-workers can all contribute to satisfaction.

Unfortunately, most management systems today are still top-heavy with authoritarian control. Micro-management and environments laden with criticism trigger threat responses, however subtle. These stressors all cause the brain to take defensive, even aggressive postures for self-protection.

(R) Relatedness

Most Westerners have been conditioned to images of self-reliance and competiveness as the dominant themes of success, especially in relation to work. The concept of collaboration is still a relatively new idea in the workplace and the systems that foster it aren’t routinely practiced. Organizations talk teams but many employees don’t have the skills or mandate to operate as such. Yet, most leaders would agree that effective relationships are essential to meet business goals.

The brain’s needs for relatedness and certainty are interconnected. In David Rock’s view, “Each time a person meets someone new, the brain automatically makes quick friend-or-foe distinctions. When the new person is perceived as different, the information travels along neural pathways that are associated with uncomfortable feelings.”

Rock’s organizational advice is that “Teams of diverse people cannot be thrown together. They must be deliberately put together to minimize the potential for threat responses. Trust cannot be assumed or mandated, nor can empathy or even goodwill be compelled. These qualities develop only when people’s brains start to recognize former strangers as friends. This requires time and social interaction.”

(F) Fairness

Since 2009, post-recession media coverage has broadcasted images and information that highlight unfair policies and practices that impact the lives of most people. This information has resulted in consistent polling that shows that the majority of Americans do not feel they are playing on an economically fair playing field. This has challenged many people’s notions of fairness and has contributed to lower than ever trust levels of most institutions.

Perceptions of unfairness generate strong limbic system responses that can trigger resentment, hostility, anger and even rage. While people’s ideas of fairness are wide ranging, even small actions perceived as unfair, can activate the flight or fight response. Loyalty and trust in organizations and workplace relationships are governed by beliefs about fairness. Although, those beliefs may not be openly expressed, they are nonetheless motivating choices and impacting behavior.

Fairness is a primary threat response. It is rooted in our evolutionary past in basic social survival interactions. Given our innate preference for fairness, cognitive dissonance can play a major role in mitigating fairness. Yet our cognitive mind games can’t ensure that emotional backlash won’t occur when employees perceive injustices.

Workers are constantly trolling the environment for examples of fair treatment. When they perceive fairness feel-good dopamine is activated in the brain; with a sense of trust increasing levels of reinforcing oxytocin are released.

Organizational leaders should note that employees are relating to fairness within the workplace at multiple levels. Organizational decisions, hierarchical structure, hiring, firing and promotions, salaries, manager-employee treatment, executive privilege, division of labor, benefits, information sharing and cronyism are all liable to create lasting impressions of fairness.

The Leadership Challenge

If you are a leader, the learning curve is steep. Most leaders are on unfamiliar ground when it comes to understanding human dynamics. Embracing innovation may mean looking at your employees in an entirely new light. Old paradigms must give way to new ideas and actions that may seem uncomfortable and “uncertain” at first.

The first step is overcoming our personal resistance to change. This is difficult because you first have to convince your brain that this is a good thing. But one thing is true – these changes are inevitable. We can’t hold back the tide of knowledge about who we really are, what we really want and how we really function. The earth really isn’t flat.

As always, I appreciate your readership, subscriptions, comments, tweets and shares.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

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Filed under Human Resources, leadership, management, Neuroscience, organizational development, organizational psychology, performance, Training * Development

Tagged as brain science, change management, coaching, collaboration, communication, David Rock, emotional contagion, emotional intelligence, Health, motivation, Psychology, SCARF, workplace relationships

January 26, 2012

The Management Model You Can’t Manage Without – Part 1

In his book, Your Brain at Work, author David Rock gave organizational leaders an essential model for understanding human dynamics at work.

Forget the “toolkit.” This model is the foundation that holds everything affecting performance in place. Managers, leaders and co-workers entering the brave new world of business in the 21^st century who ignore this knowledge face a serious uphill climb.

We can’t really blame organizational leaders for misunderstanding human dynamics. The modern organization and the rest of the Western World has been chugging along since the First Industrial Revolution shaped by the thinking of French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes.

In 1641 Descartes wrote his famous essay Meditations which declared that the brain and the mind existed in two separate spheres – one material and the other ethereal. His belief that the physical brain was purely a mechanical instrument has since shaped the dominant world view of how humans function.

In his early research, Freud attempted to offer a vision that the brain could change in response to a person’s experience. The Viennese scientific community roundly rejected his notion. Flash forward to 1968 when Johns Hopkins graduate Michael Merzenich took up research at the University of Wisconsin and discovered that brains do reorganize themselves based on sensory experience.

Even though Merzenich’s groundbreaking work was first rejected by the scientific establishment, it opened the door to serious reevaluation of the premise that the brain is fixed. In May 1999, Dr. Merzenich was honored by the National Academy of Sciences for his work on brain plasticity. These early pioneers helped to break the Cartesian spell that is still unfolding; at long last neuroscience has recognized that the brain is in fact, “plastic.”

Far from our brains being static and immutable, we’ve learned over the last century that the potential for humans to change is possibly limitless. This breathtaking realization doesn’t seem to have translated into organizational appreciation for the true potential of its workers. Although some enlightened organizations have made learning a permanent structural feature and embedded it system-wide, most companies are still not committed to on-going employee development as an essential business ingredient.

Who and What are we Managing?

There are certain terms in mainstream business lexicon that bug me – performance is one of them. Increasingly, people are finding that the term performance feels degrading and controlling.

Although the word performance has its roots in the 14^th century as a term for carrying out or doing, its application in the 18^th century to describe exhibitions and entertainment, can strike some workers as more apt. Some critics have suggested that the terms, contribution, accomplishment and service might be more appropriate to describe the role that workers play in meeting organizational goals.

Business dictionaries define performance as “the accomplishment of a given task, measured against standards of accuracy, completeness, cost and speed.” While there is no real known metric to substantiate most worker performance, many organizations act as if they know. We can’t know this because we don’t know how to quantify the profound mysteries of human behavior.

The findings of neuroscience are helping us to get a little closer to unraveling some of those mysteries. Using neuroscience to understand human behavior – motivation, conflict, reticence, resilience and influence – is the logical means to enhancing awareness and skill development.

The beauty of learning via neuroscience is that we expand self-knowledge in the process of understanding how other individuals and groups work. Rock smartly asserts that “neuroscience provides a data-processing frame for self-awareness.”

The explosion of knowledge from neuroscience is influencing the way we understand what performance actually is. I often wonder what people mean when they talk about rating, assessing and improving performance. They’re caught in the doing of performance without actually understanding its component parts – how we think, how and what we feel and what we do as a result.

The culture at large seems fixated solely on behavior. We’re a “doing” culture. We assume, expect and demand behavioral solutions and change often without acknowledging the inner mechanisms that result in behavior. The latest expression of the language of our doing culture is the use of the word “drive.” Everyone’s driving something – metaphorically speaking – earnings, sales, solutions, profits and performance.

Author Bruce Watson wrote: “Once a clearly defined term, the word drive has become one of the most insidious and overused buzzwords in the business lexicon.” Literally, the word drive means to compel or control something, so its application to concepts such a human performance has no factual basis.

I expect that sometime in the near future, the word management will even come under intense scrutiny. Can we really manage human behavior? How effective are the systems we’ve constructed in organizations to compel or steer human behavior? I believe that the findings in neuroscience are forcing organizational leaders to stop assuming they can control human dynamics without understanding how they work.

Still skeptical and wary of psychology and the so-called “soft skills,” many organizational leaders lack basic information about the factual underpinnings of human behavior. They continue to marginalize and minimize the impact of human internal processes on the effectiveness of professional life. Too many leaders want the human product without the mess and the fuss of human emotions. They are as W. Edwards Deming stated,” afraid of dealing with the business of people.” But as Deming also counseled, “Any leader of transformation, needs to learn the psychology of individuals, the psychology of a group, the psychology of society and the psychology of change.”

The Practical Applications of Neuroscience to Human Behavior at Work

For executive coach, David Rock, practical neuroscience applications evolved in the natural progression of his work. In attempting to source and explain the changes in cognitive processes his clients were experiencing, he began to draw on the findings of neuroscience. As a result of that interest, Rock identified five domains of social experience that the brain treats as survival issues: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness. Named SCARF, the model “describes the interpersonal primary rewards or threats that are important to the brain.”

The critical importance that forms the basis of the SCARF model is that experience is relational – our brain co-exists with other brains. Status is simply not self–determined; certainty relies on interpersonal events; autonomy is defined relative to outside forces; relatedness is necessary if we are to thrive and fairness is judged through a complex of emotional interconnections with others.

All of these domains form the core of the way that work is carried out by people. Behavior or performance is the outcome of these processes. If my brain, in all of its complexity, perceives that I am not valued (S), unsafe (C), controlled (A), alone (R) and mistreated (F) you as a manager are unlikely to see me perform optimally. Granted, this is all subjective – which adds greatly to its complexity. Shaped and influenced by outside events and past experiences, my organizational “behavior” can only be addressed by understanding the fluidity of the social dynamics impacting my brain.

The knowledge that the brain exists in relation to other brains and the potential of reward and the danger of threat, calls many common management practices into question. In Part 2 of this post, we’ll explore each domain in greater depth and the implication it holds for many practices which form the core of modern management.

Rock’s seminal model paves the way for an entire body of knowledge translating the findings of neuroscience into the language of business. Writing about working with the SCARF domains, Rock stated, “It’s a way of developing a language for experiences that may be otherwise unconscious, so that you can catch these experiences in real-time.”

Everything that is important about the way we work is managed by the ways we manage our brains. Whether we work alone, for someone else or manage others, these processes are determining our responses.

Understanding the way we work, isn’t just some abstract, theoretical idea. The exquisite work of the brain is such that as you learn, you build a new brain and as a result – new experiences.

As always, I appreciate your readership, comments, subscriptions, tweets and shares.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

8 Comments

Filed under brain, change management, changing behavior, Coaching & Mentoring, culture, employee engagement, leadership, Life Skills, management training, managing people, mind-body, Neuroscience, performance, psychology, Self-Management, Training * Development, work

Tagged as David Rock, emotional intelligence, human resources, motivation, relationships, scarf model, trust in the workplace

January 19, 2012

The Mirror in Us: Mirror Neurons & Workplace Relationships

“We use the same cells to build a sense of self, since these cells originate early in life when other people’s behavior is the reflection of our own behavior. In other people, we see ourselves with mirror neurons.”

Marco Iacoboni, author, Mirroring People, The Science of Empathy and How We Connect with Others

(Thanks to my partner, George Altman, for this excellent guest post)

Emotions and actions are powerfully contagious. When we see someone laugh, cry, show disgust and experience pain, in some sense we share those feelings. When we see a great actor, musician or athletic perform at the peak of their abilities, it can feel like we are experiencing something of what they feel.

In the 1990’s when a research team at the University of Parma, lead by neurophysiologist Giacomo Rizzolatti, made the serendipitous discovery of “mirror neurons,” a new revolution in our understanding of humans as social beings began. Since that time, neuroscience findings have helped us to appreciate the implications of the powerful sharing of experience.

Relationships are all about connecting with others. However, very few people consciously think about how relationships are formed. When relationships are working, there is a tendency to take them for granted and not think about how they’ve been established.

When our relationships start to fragment and hit bumpy roads, we might give the nature of the relationship some deeper thought. But, the level of thought is more inclined to reflect our anger or disappointment and some unconscious need that’s not being fulfilled.

Looking through the lens of mirror neurons gives us an entirely new way of seeing how relationships work. Mirror neurons are those neurons in the brain’s frontal cortex that when activated, result in imitation or mimicry that many scientists now believe is the foundation of empathy.

These neurons map actions we see others perform onto our brain circuitry. They fire both when you do something and when you see someone else do something. The scientific understanding of this phenomenon is young, and we will undoubtedly learn more about why and when this neural wiring is activated. Already, we know that movement alone is not the only activator. Sound also plays a role in the process providing us with an “embodied simulation” of the experience.

While many factors play a role in relationships, think of mirror neurons as a hard drive in the formation and maintenance of social communication. Our needs, values, beliefs and their manifestations, on the other hand, are the software programs that determine the quality and nature of our relationships.

While we strive to maintain our individuality as we go about our daily activities, the reality is that we live our lives in relationship to others. Their behavior and actions affect how we think, what we feel and what we do. It is impossible to separate us from our biological evolution as social beings. And, so have our brains evolved as social entities. From a neuroscience perspective, we’re all connected… brain to brain.

In his book on Mirror Neurons, UCLA neuroscientist, Marco Iacoboni, cites an experiment that illustrates the impact mirror neurons have on us starting with our earliest experiences. In the study, two children were placed in a room filled with two of each of many different objects. Researchers found that when one child put on a cowboy hat on, the other child did too. When one played with a particular toy, the other soon followed. In order to understand the essence of our relationships, we not only need to be attentive to our inner and interpersonal communication, but also to appreciate that our brains coexist with other brains.

How Mirror Neurons Work

As we interact with others our communication occurs on three levels: body language, words that reflect content and vocal patterns (volume, tempo, etc.). These are the communication “delivery” systems that we use to communicate our intentions consciously, or most likely, unconsciously. At the same time, we interpret the intentions of others as a result of the mirror neuronal circuits of our brain being activated. These circuits respond to body language, facial expressions and gestures; in general any intentional movement occurring in the other person.

For instance, when I see you frustrated, my mirror neuron circuitry for frustration is activated, evoking feelings associated with frustration. At the same time, I perceive the movement/ expressions on your face, which drive the same motor responses on my face. This information is transmitted through the insula in the brain, which acts like a bridge between the limbic brain (the emotional center) and the mirror neurons.

This bi-directional flow of information comes through our five senses into our bodies, is transmitted upward to our brains and then travels downward back to the body. So, we’re not simply “mindreading” other’s brains, we are mind-embodying their experience.

I believe that we can’t experience another person’s emotional state unless somewhere in our biology we have experienced and have a language for that emotion within ourselves. After all, how can I experience another’s joy unless I have an experience that I’ve labeled joy and am able to “imitate” that experience myself?

Becoming more competent in emotional literacy expands the language you have for describing your emotions and deepens your self-awareness and understanding of other’s emotions.

When we’re mindful of our experience in the moment we have the opportunity to use our understanding of mirror neurons – as the trigger of that experience – and learn more about ourselves in the process. For example, I can then ask, “What can I learn about myself as I feel the anger rising in me, as I see your anger?”

How Awareness of Mirror Neurons Can Benefit Your Workplace Relationships

Mirror neurons not only enable us to “imitate’ other’s actions; they also enable us to mirror other’s intentions and emotions as well. While it’s true that there is still an interpretative component when we “infer” others’ intentions and feelings, we can use the guidance our mirror neuronal responses to empathize and gain a better understanding of other’s thinking and emotional states.

Understanding mirror neurons, you can act in ways that may influence positive emotional responses. In doing so you are increasing the likelihood of emotional attunement and enhancing relationship building in the process. This translates into shared meaning and connection that deepens the rapport you have with others. Discoveries in the science of mirror neurons have shown that mimicry is powerfully hard-wired so that we may take our cues for action from a deeper place of emotional arousal.

People in the workplace want their relationships to be authentic and positive and will respond negatively to anxiety, anger, vacillation, and defensiveness. Having the awareness that our non-verbal and verbal patterns are being “imitated” in the other person puts the responsibility on our shoulders to communicate and act in ways that move people toward us.

There is a definite connection between mirror neurons, mindfulness practice and empathy. Using our understanding of mirror neurons and being able to tune into and reflect on our emotional state enables us to shift our attention appropriately between self and other. It is the blueprint for a deeper understanding of others and relationship building.

Part of the Italian team that discovered mirror neurons, neurophysiologist, Vittorio Gallese, suggests that we live in a “we-centric” space. Understanding of mirror neurons is not only changing the idea of how we see others, but how we understand the concept of “self.”

Modern life and business has been shaped by the belief that we are totally individualistic – “islands” unto ourselves – and that that self and others are completely differentiated. Recent science is blowing this idea, that has governed our lives for centuries, out of the water. According to Gallese, “By means of a shared neural state realized in two different bodies that nevertheless obey the same functional rules, the “objectual other” becomes “another self.”

We can now begin to imagine what the world of work would look – and feel like – if this was the organizing principle of all of our relationships.

As always, I invite your comments and very much appreciate your subscriptions, shares and tweets.

Louise Altman

Intentional Communication Partners

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Filed under brain science, change management, Coaching & Mentoring, communication, Critical Thinking, emotional intelligence, emotional literacy, employee engagement, Human Resources, intention, interpersonal communication, management, managing people, organizational psychology, performance, self development, Training * Development

Tagged as awareness, body language, cooperation, emotional contagion, empathy, EQ, feelings, Health, influence, motivation, neuroscience, Psychology, workplace relationships

January 12, 2012

Even 5 Minutes of Meditation Can Change the Way You Work

How about 5 minutes a day of rest in 2012? 10 minutes of peace? 15 minutes of renewal? 20 minutes of rejuvenation? You can have it all.

Meditation can change the way you work – and change your life in the process.

Knowledge about the benefits of meditation isn’t new. Pioneers like Jon Kabat-Zinn began to mainstream meditation into Western culture when he founded the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in 1980. Kabat-Zinn was breaking new ground when fresh from MIT, with a degree in molecular biology, he began meditating and created the clinic, “The idea of bringing Buddhist meditation without the Buddhism into the mainstream of medicine was tantamount to the Visigoths being at the gates about to tear down the citadel of Western civilization.”

Since that time, meditation has been slowly working its way into the lives and institutions of Western societies. Research on the medical benefits of meditation has mounted. But meditation, in any form, in the workplace is still in a nascent state. Google broke new ground in 2007 when it invited Jon Kabat-Zinn to give a talk and lead participants in a mindfulness meditation.

The corporate mindset still views meditation as “foreign,” a form of indulgence. It’s still misunderstood as having religious or “spiritual” connotations. And too many workers still can’t find 5 minutes in their 1440 minute day to “just sit.” There is a lot of resistance to just letting go and not doing – even for 5 minutes.

But behind closed doors, in walled off cubicles, in parked cars, home offices and even public bathrooms, those at work are putting their computers on sleep, relaxing their bodies and quieting their minds with their own brand of meditation.

The Evidence is Mounting Every Day

I’m not going to try to convince you with too much more evidence about the benefits of meditation. In a past post, The Neurobiology of Mindfulness, I covered recent research from neuroscience that is transforming our understanding about the impact of mindfulness meditation on the brain. The big news is that in just eight weeks of mindfulness meditation, positive changes can be detected in neural activity.

A study at Massachusetts General Hospital showed that after eight weeks of mindfulness meditation the regions of the brain located in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), important for learning, memory, executive decision-making and perspective-taking, were thickened. Also, certain regions of the brain like the amygdala, which involves the threat and fear circuitry, were thinned.

These studies are critical because the area of the brain most vulnerable to stress of any kind is the PFC. According to Dr. Rajita Sinha, a professor of psychiatry and neurobiology at Yale, “The PFC is important for top-down regulation of emotions, cognition, desires and impulse control. As nerve tissue in this region disappears due to constant battering from repeated stressful events, our ability to counter-act may wane.”

These stark findings should remind us that our bodies are not space capsules hurtling through life taking on constant flak without a cost. Our hearts and our brains need care and nurturing to operate optimally. As Jon Kabat-Zinn reminds us, “In most Asian languages, the word for mind and heart are the same. So if you’re not hearing mindfulness in some deep way as heartfulness, you are not really understanding it. Compassion and kindness towards oneself are intrinsically woven into it. You could think of mindfulness as wise and affectionate attention.”

How Do I Get Started?

Anyway you get started is good. Meditation is a deeply personal experience that needs to work for you. Experimentation is often the initial way people begin this process. Finding something right for you is important.

Don’t get caught up in having to follow a method or technique. As I have written before, it took me some time to find comfortable, doable ways to practice. Remember, one of the important things (besides meditating) that you are doing in the doing of meditation is creating new neural habits as you establish a routine.

To help you to explore some ways to begin, here are some tips and resources to consider.

Establishing a time and place – This is very important. You want to maximize your success by finding a time frame and location conducive to your practice. While Jon Kabat-Zinn recommends starting with 15 minutes (long enough he says “to get really bored and antsy and learn to make room for unpleasant moments”) I suggest that even if you only begin with 5 minutes, it’s a good thing. You can always build to 15 as you progress and build those new neural habits. You don’t need an ashram or to be surrounded by candles. You just need quiet. Once you grow in your practice, you’ll be able to drop into five minutes of stillness in many different settings.
What do I do with my body? Relax it – this is the key. It will take some time to learn to let go and the place to do much of this work is in your body. You begin with several deep slow breaths, ideally those that come from your belly. Closing your eyes is preferable. Uncross your legs with the soles of your feet touching ground (unless you are in a cross-legged posture). Rest your hands on your lap or at your sides. You don’t need to have your hands in any kind of “mudra” like position.
What do I do with my thoughts? Nothing – that’s the point. With mindfulness meditation, you are simply noticing what you experience and not trying to feel anything differently. Too many people bail out because they don’t think they felt anything different or special. Mindfulness meditation is not about getting anywhere else except where you are. Thoughts will arise. “This is boring,” “Why am I doing this?” “This is a waste,” etc. Feelings will come and go – frustration, impatience, even annoyance. Your “task” in the moment of sitting is simply to allow, non-judgmentally, all the ways you distract yourself from being in the present moment.

Resources:

How to do Mindfulness Meditation: A very simple step by step explanation of the process. Remember, you can vary a practice to suit your needs, these steps are guidelines.

Another version on Mindfulness Meditation: A brief overview from a Buddhist practitioner’s experience

UCLA Mindful Awareness Center Online Meditation Course - A great resource. An affordable six week introductory online course designed to move at your own pace. The center (MARC) also offers information, downloads and in-person classes for those in the Los Angeles area

Transcendental Meditation (TM) – This form of meditation, popularized by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, is a system that’s been in global use for decades. Simple and effective

10 Minute Mindfulness Meditation Video with Deepak Chopra – Brief intro on meditation from Deepak. Around 2.00 minutes you’ll find yourself in a lovely peaceful space with some soothing music and guided instruction.

Why Meditate? 10 minute video with the Dalai Lama on simple breathing and the value of meditation in dealing with difficult emotions. I’ve learned a great deal from the Dalai Lama and have found his books enriching as well.

Mindful Movements and Meditation with Vietnamese Monk Thich Nhat Hanh – A short and beautiful little video on the values of mindfulness meditation and the ways we move and see in the world. Love that bell!

Brief Intro to Mindfulness Meditation with Susan Piver – Practitioner and blogger Susan Piver provides excellent instruction on the practice of mindfulness in this video.

Guided Meditation with Kelly Howell – Brain Sync founder Kelly Howell, uses the latest brain wave technology in various forms of MP3 formats and DVD. Guided meditation, with music and voice-over is very effective for many meditators and a nice break from a routine of more traditional mindfulness practice.

Sounds True – Sounds True offers options in many formats from different sources and wisdom teachers. A wonderful resource

Health Journeys’ Guided Imagery with a Purpose – Founder Belleruth Naperstak has an exceptional track record using guided imagery to support better sleep, stress reduction, weight loss, help with grieving, easing effects of surgery, PTSD relief, irritable bowel syndrome, depression, phobias, giving birth, headaches and much more. Belleruth’s soothing tone and carefully selected words have been researched and tested with great outcomes. Available in different formats including iPad and iPhone apps.

This is just a taste of what is now available to help get you started and support you in developing a meditation practice. But the most important thing you need is your will and commitment to begin. Yes, we now know that meditators live longer, focus better and are more resilient. It is a skill that anyone can develop. But most important, meditators know that peace is possible, even in the midst of chaos and bad news. We hold it within us.

20^th century writer, Trappist monk and mystic Thomas Merton reminded us “Man was made for the highest activity, which is, in fact his rest.”

Imagine that.

As always, I appreciate your readership, comments, subscriptions, shares, likes and tweets.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under brain science, business, changing behavior, Coaching & Mentoring, Health benefits, Human Resources, meditation, mind-body, mindfulness, Neuroscience, personal development, Self-Management, Training * Development, Uncategorized, well-being

Tagged as awareness, breathing, emotional intelligence, Health, impulse control, motivation, peace, resiliency, stress

January 5, 2012

The Ultimate Diet for a New Year – The 7 Day Mental Cleanse

It’s diet season, right? Put down that muffin and pick up that kale. There’s no shortage of articles, ads and advice on shedding those extra pounds. Even if you don’t achieve your weight goals (and I wish you luck in doing so) it’s still a good thing to cleanse your body.

But, what about your mind?

Going into a New Year dragging pounds of old mental baggage isn’t going to produce much change. And isn’t that what resolutions and affirmations are all about – change?

Are you willing to try out a really challenging but ultimately very rewarding new kind of diet? Then the 7 Day Mental Cleanse is for you.

If you believe, as I do, that thought is the real causative force in life, then this diet may be the most important one you’ll ever do. Most of your life today is conditioned by the habitual tone of your past thinking. And if you are concerned about the condition of your life next week and next year – the thoughts you entertain today are shaping that future. If you want to get off of auto-pilot and become more consciously responsive to your experience, the mental cleanse will help you to do that.

Most thoughts are habits. For most of us, little of what we think routinely is new or spontaneous. In a recent study, Dr. Joe Tsein, Co-Director of the Brain & Behavior Institute at Georgia Health Science University reported, “Habits, for better or worse, basically define who we are. Habits provide mental freedom and flexibility by enabling many activities to be on autopilot while the brain focuses on more urgent matters.”

No doubt about it, we’re exquisitely hard-wired to function. The question here is – what kinds of mental habits have we formed?

What’s the Mental Cleanse and How does it Work?

One caveat before we begin; this isn’t an easy practice for most people. If it was, we’d change much more easily than we do. Dr. Tsein’s statement above captures the essence of the challenge – the brain favors routines so it can focus on more important things. The trick is that you get to decide what’s important if you take yourself off of auto-pilot. You put the brake on – with your conscious mind – and choose which direction you want your brain to take.

The latest news from neuroscience suggests that humans can learn to consciously control individual neurons in the brain. A recent study in the journal Nature reported that “individuals can rapidly, consciously and voluntarily control neurons deep inside their heads.”

We’re running out of excuses as the archaic meme that human beings can’t change gets steadily disproven.

Essentially, the mental cleanse is simple. For seven days you must not allow yourself to dwell on any kind of “negative” thought. The word negative is broad and very idiosyncratic so it’s better if you decide what’s negative for you. I’ll offer a few guidelines to consider:

Is the thought productive, constructive?
Is the thought critical of you or someone else? (we’re not talking about losing your ability to be discerning)
Is the thought unkind? (to yourself or others)
Is the thought a form of worry, doubt, failure or disappointment of any kind?
Is the thought fear-based?
Is the thought going to trigger emotions such as envy, jealousy, resentment, frustration or unproductive anger?
Does the thought place a limit on possibilities or opportunities that you might consider? (weigh this carefully – it’s easy for rationalization to creep in)

Sticking with this discipline won’t be easy. In fact, you may find yourself wanting to bail out after a short try – but hang in there! You may only get through a few hours on the first day before you find yourself up against another limiting thought – if that’s the case, go easy on yourself – take a deep breath and start again. And restart again, when you stumble.

Taming Monkey Mind

“Monkey Mind” is a term some Buddhists use to describe how the mind jumps from thought to thought like a monkey jumps from tree to tree. Rather than existing in the present moment, the monkey mind’s erratic thought processes distracts us from existing in the present moment.

The wonderful thing about the 7 Day Mental Cleanse is that it not only helps us to see the patterns of our thought process, but it builds the capacity to bring our minds back to the present moment. Early studies show that mindfulness meditation can change the brain structure in just eight weeks, so any form of mindful attention is playing a role in neuronal shaping.

In referring to the work of psychologist Donald Hebb (1949) the author of Buddha’s Brain, Rick Hanson explains, “When neurons fire together, they wire together and mental activity actually creates new neural structures. As a result, even fleeting thoughts and feelings can leave lasting marks on your brain; much like a spring shower can leave trails on a hillside.”

Thought Awareness is Not Thought Stopping

Thinking we can stop a certain train of thought is a recipe for frustration. Thoughts arise and we do not have to understand or know the source of each one to make the kinds of changes we want in our thinking process. As Buddhist monk and author, Thich Nhat Hahn beautifully states, “Thoughts and feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.”

Recent studies show that thought suppression or thought stopping doesn’t work. Yale psychologists Ameli Aldao and Susan Nolen-Hoeksema found that “suppression strategies for thoughts and emotions are associated with greater anxiety and depression whereas other strategies (such as problem solving, acceptance and cognitive restructuring are associated with less anxiety.”

“Allowing” thoughts is an important part of this process. We accept that they exist without dwelling on them or figuring them out – acting almost like a “witness” or “neutral observer” to our thought process. Most important, when we do this, we don’t give thoughts the energy to trigger unhelpful emotions or feelings.

The mental cleanse practice allows us to gently redirect our thoughts by learning new neural habits by thinking about a whole new group of thoughts. Typically, a few days into the practice you will realize how much of your thinking is focused on the so-called negative and is mostly anchored in the past or fixated on the future.

Don’t Give Up

Sometimes the mental cleanse process kicks up some old emotions. That’s a good thing. I didn’t say a comfortable thing – but ultimately a releasing and rejuvenating thing. When we begin to shift our thoughts away from our habituated, restrictive patterns we also find ourselves confronting the beliefs that keep that type of thinking in place. This is important because the more we mitigate limited beliefs; the more we free our thinking process.

One last important tip – if you decide to take on this valuable challenge, don’t tell anyone what you are doing until you’ve completed the process. The last things you need are the thoughts, beliefs and feelings of others complicating and influencing your thinking. This is all about your experience and how you live in the world every day – thought by thought. A mental cleanse will reveal what you think about, how often you think it and what you mainly focus on in your thoughts.

This is not simply an exercise in positive thinking. Periodic mental cleanses will help you to quiet the incessant chatter in your mind, strengthen your ability to pay attention and focus and build greater patience.

Every time you become aware of the content of your thoughts you reclaim the power to control your response to circumstances that are beyond your control. Work, relationships, health, world events, financial situations – there is not one area of your life that will not benefit from increasing your conscious awareness.

It’s the ultimate tool to begin a fresh new year.

As always, I appreciate your comments, subscriptions, shares and tweets.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

WHAT TO REMEMBER WHEN WAKING

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Tagged as best practice, buddhism, coaching, creativity, emotional intelligence, Health, human resources, learning, mindset, motivation, philosophy, Psychology, resolution, twitter

December 28, 2011

Revisiting the House with Four Rooms

In 2010 I wrote a blog post that struck a chord with many readers. The Four Rooms of Wellness, was inspired by the beautiful work of the late author, Rumer Godden.

Everyone is a House with Four Rooms,

A Physical, a Mental, an Emotional and a Spiritual.

Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time,

But unless we go into every room, every day,

Even if only to keep it aired,

We are not Complete.

Nearly every day The Intentional Workplace search engine results show that some version of this enduring metaphor has been searched. I believe that author Rumer Godden’s aphorism speaks to some inner knowing and truth about the ways we can derive the most meaning for our lives.

The turning of another year can be a perfect time to dive a little deeper into our multiple selves. A time to retrieve our personae and sit, quietly and without judgment – with our true self.

The Mental Room

“The ancestor of every action is a thought.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

The power of thought is one of the most creative forces in the Universe. Some would say – the most powerful. We don’t usually give a second thought to thinking, but our thoughts are constantly creating our experiences.

Science refers to this as “metacognition” and as author Debbie Hampton of the Best Brain Possible explains, “Instead of just unconsciously acting on feelings and thoughts, the trick is to become aware of them, observe them without judgement, sit with them, work with them, and think about them. Where do they come from? What in your past might make you react this way? Are you reacting to the present situation or just playing out a pattern from the past?”

The language we use – to think and speak – is the narrative of our inner and outer world . Look around the room you are sitting in now; in the purest sense, everything in it is the product of someone’s thought. Our thoughts are the domain in which we can exercise our greatest control. Not rigid or authoritarian control, but choice. In the moment to moment choices we make, we demonstrate the power of our thought.

The scope of our control over thought continues to be understood through neuroscience. According to a recent study discussed in Nature, researchers stated, “Individuals can rapidly, consciously and voluntarily control neurons deep inside their head.” While it is important not to underestimate the challenge of controlling our thinking (especially where there is history of emotional or physical trauma) the news from science is very encouraging.

We’re entering an era where we understand that our thoughts need not be victims to external influence, but are the epicenter of our own life force and behavioral direction.

The Emotional Room

“The emotion that can break your heart is sometimes the very one that heals it.” Nicholas Sparks

There’s still a great deal of confusion and resistance to allowing ourselves to fully inhabit this room. In business, emotions are still viewed as – irrational, a nuisance, a sign of instability. But when I ask organizational leaders what they most want from “engaged” employees they often say: passion, confidence, enthusiasm and determination. These are all emotions.

While the introduction of emotional intelligence into the language of the workplace has raised awareness, most cultures have a long way to go towards embracing emotional life. According to Miriam Greenspan, author of the excellent book, Healing Through the Dark Emotions, “We’re all conditioned by emotion-phobic cultures and have internalized many ideas about the “negativity” of feelings.”

There are over 2000 words in the English language alone that refer to feelings, yet our personal emotional repertoires remain relatively tiny. We haven’t built a language and recognition of emotions as they arise in our bodies. Yes, our bodies. Talking about feelings is not the same as experiencing them . Emotions speak through our bodies – what neuroscientists call “embodied cognition.”

Sensuality is not a word we often associate with our emotional lives. It’s a word often reserved for sexuality or the enjoyment of certain tactile or taste pleasures. But it is, in fact, through our senses that we experience our feelings. If we’re not “in touch” with our bodies, except through the limited experiences of sex, physical exercise, eating and illness, it is difficult to listen to the emotions that are speaking through us all the time.

The way we breathe is an important clue to how we relate to our emotions. Feelings of anger, fear, jealousy, resentment and frustration are all emotions that contract us physically (and mentally). These feelings pull us in, forcing our breathing to become very shallow, even halting. Yet, when we experience feelings of contentment, calmness, elation and gratitude, we feel a sense of breathing out – of expansion. Even emotions that some might think of as sad, such as empathy and compassion – provide us with a feeling of release.

I have long contended that every emotion has the potential to be a resource in our lives. Feelings are an exquisite source of information about our experience. They do not lie. They are a blueprint of the truth of our experience. They reliably chart whether we are living our values or not. They brilliantly point to how we are meeting our needs or not.

The emotional room is a powerful place to reflect on your truth. Visit it with curiosity (one of the “neutral” emotions) and leave your judgment by the door. You are there to listen, learn and be humbled by your humanness.

The Physical Room

“It’s helpful to realize that this very body we have, that’s sitting right here and now..with its aches and its pleasures..is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive.” Pema Chodron

Being awake and alive requires many of us to basically shift our relationship to our bodies. Most of us are spending too much time “in our heads,” cut off from our senses and the messages from our bodies. Most of the time, we’re not listening – we’re pushing. Our miraculous bodies often take a beating from us and deserve more TLC.

More rest. Better nutrition. More movement. Better posture. More hydration. Less criticism. Less stress. More self-love. It all counts. The body serves us over and over even when we deny its basics needs. How often do we “thank you?”

The core of our being is our breath or Prana in Sanskrit, Ha in Hawaiian and Chi in Chinese. In order to regain our natural connection to our body’s life force, we need to change our relationship to how we breathe. It is the key that unlocks the door between the mind and the body.

As we race from one task to the other, we rarely given our bodies a thought. Too many of our bodies are anesthetized by busyness. The reclamation of our relationships to our bodies should be one of our highest priorities. According to Dennis Lewis, author of Breathe into Being, “ In today’s noisy, high-stress world, many of us sit, stand, sleep, speak, act, and move in ways that undermine our breathing and our physical, emotional, and spiritual health. When we look at ourselves in action, when we actually sense and observe ourselves honestly for a moment, we see that we carry enormous amounts of unnecessary tension throughout our bodies. We may sense it in our hands, face, eyes, jaw, tongue, throat, belly, back, chest, and so on. These tensions impede the harmonious flow of the breath of life through our body/mind.”

Enter the physical room often. Bring your appreciation. Bring your respect. Celebrate this glorious temple of your life.

The Spiritual Room

“The 20th century was built never to allow room for reflection, only work.” Umair Haque

This room isn’t about doing – it’s about being. It’s doesn’t have to be about religion or ideology. It is the room where your spirit comes alive – where it feels free. It is the room that reflects and shares the immensity of YOU. So many wonderful gifts live in this room – too many untouched.

The gifts in this room don’t have to be marketable, branded, explained, justified or perfect. They simply need the space to go where your intuitive sense takes them.

Mining the infinite riches of this room just requires your willingness to explore the unknown and the new. It requires your care and your time.

I can’t think of a better way to pay tribute to this room than to share the beautiful words of poet David Whyte. David’s tribute to remembering who we are reminds us that “There is a small opening into the new day which closes the moment we begin our plans,” and that “what you can plan is too small for you to live.”

This is the essence of The Spiritual Room – and the essence of all four rooms – to live wholeheartedly.

In that first
hardly noticed
moment
to which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
which closes
the moment
you begin
your plans.

What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.

What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.

To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.

You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.

Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to your
one love? What shape
waits in the seed
of you to grow
and spread
its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself?
In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?

~ David Whyte (The House of Belonging)

May you dwell well in all four rooms. Here’s to a compassionate, abundant and wholehearted 2012 for all.

A special thanks for your readership, support, subscriptions, tweets and shares.

Louise Altman, Partner, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under Coaching & Mentoring, emotions, Human Resources, inspiration, Life Skills, management theory, mind-body, performance, personal development, Stress, Talent Management, well-being

Tagged as 4 rooms of wellness, breathing, David Whyte, emotional intelligence, Health, motivation, neuroscience, Psychology, rumer godden, self help, spiritual, thoughts

December 14, 2011

The Joy of GIVING BACK

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit. ~Nelson Henderson

I was reminded by a recent offering from Chris Brogan of the power of the post to energize and deepen community through giving. This year I am struck by the sheer magnitude of the need surrounding us. I’m also inspired and impressed by the legions of wonderful organizations that work tirelessly with creativity, commitment and love.

Researcher Stephen Post says helping a neighbor, volunteering, or donating goods and services results in a “helper’s high,” and you get more health benefits than you would from exercise. Researcher Elizabeth Dunn found that those who spend money on others reported greater happiness than those who spend it on themselves. Regardless of the proven benefits of altruism, helping others contributes to making real a vision of a we vs. me world.

Having literally dozens of worthy organizations to share with you, it was very tough to pick just five. Not on my short list are outstanding organizations that serve and protect our environment, our human rights and the precious animals that share our planet. You know who they are and if your favorite groups and causes are not on my little list – I hope you will consider giving to them once again.

Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one. ~Nicholas Berdyaev

A few months ago, on Blog Action Day, I wrote about the acute hunger needs facing nearly 1 in 6 Americans and 1 in 7 globally. That means that over 13% of the planet lives without adequate nutrition. Tragically, most of us do not have to go further than our own communities to find families and children in need. Food banks are springing up in neighborhoods everywhere. Many people prefer to give locally. Feeding America partners with food pantries all over the US and you can donate through them directly or find a local food bank here.

“It is every (man’s) obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it.” Albert Einstein

A few years ago, good guy (and fine actor) Matt Damon started Water.org. Since then Damon has done much more than lend his considerable global “brand” to a desperate cause – his group has created scalable solutions for remote villages and communities in 8 countries. Currently, 884 million people lack access to safe, potable water. (that’s more than 3x the population of the US)

Based on the simple idea (and challenging mission) that clean and sustainable water is a basic human right,, Water.org has played an important role in educating people on the shocking facts that prevent millions from obtaining fresh, clean water and sanitation. When people learn that every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water related (preventable) disease, they are quick to support this global cause.

I’ve seen and met angels wearing the disguise of ordinary people living ordinary lives. ~Tracy Chapman

There are more slaves now than at any other time in human history. It is estimated that there are about 27 million slaves around the world, with more than half being less than 18 years old. According to some estimates, approximately 80% of trafficking involves sexual exploitation, and 19% involves labor exploitation. Slaving is big business – just as it always was. While the average cost of a slave is only $90, the profits from prostitution, forced pornography, labor and debt bondage are enormous.

Forced to work in a brothel along with other children, Somaly Mam was brutally tortured and raped on a daily basis. One night, she was made to watch as her best friend was viciously murdered. Fearing she would meet that same fate, Somaly heroically escaped her captors, with the help of a French aid worker, and set about building a new life for herself. She vowed never to forget those left behind and has since dedicated her life to saving victims and empowering survivors.

In 1996, Mam created her first nonprofit organization that worked with local law enforcement to raid brothels and reintegrate the trafficked women into society. That group has evolved into the Somaly Mam Foundation dedicated to ending sex slavery around the world with a results-oriented, three-step approach: action, advocacy & awareness. Mam, now 38 or 39 (she does not know her birthday), has established a model for addressing this issue and has already helped more than 4,000 women escape the brothels. Somaly Mam stands as an active symbol against the oppression of our human brothers and sisters. Contributing to their work helps towards eradicating slavery forever.

Every action in our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity. ~Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The Lionheart Foundation is dedicated to providing emotional literacy education programs that significantly alter the life course of incarcerated adults and at-risk youth. Currently, there are over 2 million people in prison in the United States, which is the global leader in the amount of incarcerated citizens. China, with 4 times the population of the US, has 1.6 million imprisoned people.

Lionheart’s programs have been integrated into thousands of institutions, schools, and community programs throughout the United States and abroad. The Lionheart Foundation, established in 1992, by the inspiring author of Forgiveness: A Bold Choice for a Peaceful Heart, Robin Casarjian, provides professional trainings and free nationwide distribution of resources to advance emotional awareness and competency within prison populations.

The cultivation of emotional literacy nurtures and elicits the best in people. Knowing this, it surely makes good sense to offer the necessary resources to support emotional literacy for every prisoner, youth-at-risk and young parent. In fact, most adults and all children can significantly benefit from the heightened emotional competence gained through specific education in this domain. If we truly want public safety, we must make emotional literacy a national priority. A donation to the The National Emotional Literacy Projects for Prisoners and Youth-at-Risk will support unique, accessible, and powerful resources toward this end.

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. ~Anne Frank

I first learned of the great work of Partners in Health when I read the book, Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder, about the remarkable Dr. Paul Farmer

Dr. Farmer’s world-renowned work in developing the PIH model of care shattered the conventional wisdom that drug resistant TB and HIV/AIDS could not be treated in developing countries. PIH proved otherwise, developing a model to treat DR-TB in the slums of Lima, Peru and delivering antiretroviral therapy in a squatter settlement in rural Haiti. National health authorities in both countries incorporated the lessons learned by PIH in these pilot projects into national health systems.

Since then, PIH has expanded its community based approach to health care and socioeconomic support to 12 countries worldwide. The work of PIH is driven by three goals: to care for patients, to alleviate the root causes of disease and to share lessons learned with other countries and NGOs.

Through community partners, PIH works to improve access to food, shelter, clean water, sanitation, education and economic opportunities. In 2012, PIH will make history by opening the doors to Mirebalais Hospital. For the first time poor rural Haitians will have access to lifesaving medical care. PIH believes that high-quality medical care is a human right and their exceptional work is proof that it is possible. Giving to Partners in Health enables these remarkable people to continue to set a new standard for global medical care for every man, woman and child in our world.

I sincerely hope that these mini-profiles of ordinary people and organizations doing extraordinary work in these challenging times will inspire you. The good news is that there are literally thousands of motivating stories of work being done for the greater good in every nook and cranny of the world. The bad news is that the need keeps growing. That’s why I hope you will share your abundance, in any way you can, with these fine organizations and any others that speak to your heart and call you to action.

Tis’ always the season for giving – but at this time, it feels especially fulfilling.

Wishing you a wonderful holiday season!

As always I appreciate your readership, subscriptions, shares and tweets.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under charity, emotional literacy, Human Resources, organizational development, personal development, values

Tagged as altruism, causes, chris brogan, clean water, donation, feeding america, helping others, human trafficking, hunger, partners in health, paul farmer, prison projects, somaly mam

December 8, 2011

Management, Neuroscience and Emotional Contagion – Redux

This week marks the 2nd Anniversary of The Intentional Workplace. I’m pleased to say that in the past year the blog’s readership has greatly expanded. Thank you! All of this year’s posts continue to attract readers but two in particular stand out. They deserve a rerun.

I wrote Why Neuroscience Should Change the Way We Manage People from a purely organic sense of what was evolving in my work. As the science of understanding how the brain works continues to reshape our knowledge of human dynamics, it seems logical that management has to be re-thought in light of this new information.

Most management practices are the legacy of centuries-old thinking about human motivation. Much of that thinking is now anachronistic. Everything in today’s organization needs to be reexamined in light of the information that is emerging about what humans need to thrive. If we truly pay attention to this information, the fundamentals of management will be transformed.

It has been over fifteen years since the concept of Emotional Intelligence made its way into mainstream organizational life. It’s striking to me how foreign the world of emotions still is within the business mindset. Too many people are still acting as if emotions are a nuisance, or inappropriate – even taboo.

Our collective understanding of the role and value of emotions is still widely misunderstood. We’re way behind the illuminating findings of the neuroscience of emotions. Emotional contagion is real. It’s operating within every group, team and workplace relationship – regardless of whether leadership acknowledges it’s existence or not. Senior leaders would be wise to learn how it works. The conditions that leaders create can shift the emotional atmosphere of a culture, a meeting or a single interaction. We hope they’ll read the second most widely read post of this year - Leadership and Emotional Contagion.

Whether you are rereading these posts or discovering them for the first time – I hope you’ll enjoy. And I hope you’ll be back for more as The Intentional Workplace enters Year 3.

As always I appreciate your readership, comments, tweets and shares.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under business, change management, Coaching & Mentoring, communication, employee engagement, Human Resources, leadership, management theory, organizational development, Training * Development, workplace

Tagged as emotional intelligence, EQ, motivation, neuroscience, well-being

December 9, 2009

What is an Intentional Workplace?

What is an Intentional Workplace?

We may have to use our imagination more than our experience in trying to answer this question.

The dictionary defines intentional as: done with intention or on purpose.

Not too many people have had the experience of working in environments that operate intentionally or “consciously.” You know – the kind of organization, team or workplace where conscious thought for addressing human needs is understood, recognized and integrated into the system.

We are speaking, of course, of human dynamics and work and how they fit with the needs of a business. (Unfortunately too many people we meet in business still confuse their own personal needs with those of the organizations they work for.)

We often wonder why more people today don’t have greater expectations for intentional workplaces.

Is the concept of an intentional workplace a revolutionary idea?

Why do so many peoples still believe that they cannot get their own deeper needs met through their work?

And what makes people persist in thinking they can do their best work and thrive when they are working in incompatible and uncaring work environments?

Work is a vitally important foundation of most of our lives. Not just because of economic necessity but because what we do is central to the deepest dimensions of our being in the world. We have all had the experience of meeting someone new and within seconds are asked, “What do you do?” What we do, in collective societal terms, often defines who we are.

“Work is about a daily search for meaning as well as bread; for recognition as well as cash; for astonishment rather than torpor; in short for a sort of life rather than a Monday to Friday sort of dying.” Studs Terkel (from his book Working)

It continues to astound us that work – what we do, how and where we do it – and why – continues to be, for so many of us, driven by an unexamined set of assumptions. For many, what we do is still mainly driven solely by economics rather than intrinsic purpose.

To us, intentional work is work that has meaning. And that meaning is defined and experienced by the person performing the work. While we may share a collective meaning about our work with a business or a group of people, first and foremost, it’s about the worker’s sense of purpose. When we work from this place our work is truly a “vocation,” whose Latin root (vocare) means a calling.

Intentional work is fulfilling. The process and the final outcome are satisfying and provide the person doing the work with a sense of gratification and accomplishment.
Intentional work is respectful and has integrity. The person producing the product or service respects what they do and how they do it. They take genuine pride in the effort and the result.
Intentional work serves the greater good. That means that everyone, the worker, the team, the company and the end user all benefit.

To us, an intentional workplace:

Puts people first. It creates a conscious process that is built on the understanding that human dynamics are real and is, in fact, the engine that is the driving force of all work endeavors.
An intentional workplace respects human needs and consistently strives to accommodate those needs. It also makes an on-going commitment to create the conditions that enhance a sense of well being at every level of the system.

With some exceptions, the 19^th century model of work still dominates the 21^st century workplace. Largely driven by patriarchal values and demands for logic and linear thinking as the primary levers for production, the American model of work still relies essentially on the vision of men like Fredrick Winslow Taylor.

Taylor, an efficiency zealot and the “father” of theories based on time-motion and task management, laid the groundwork for most of methods that grew into the 20^th century’s modern organization’s philosophies and practices. Obedience, regimentation, predictability and conformity were the “skills” required for success in Taylor’s world.

The sublimation of the personal needs and feelings of Taylor’s workers went unquestioned and hardened over time into a sort of hostility and mistrust of emotions in the workplace that still is prevalent today. To be successful, early models of the organization and business required that there be a negation of the inner life of the worker.

It was not until management guru Peter Drucker declared in the 1950’s that organizations were human communities and that employees should be considered “assets,” that the fossilized thinking of Taylor’s world was effectively challenged.

The harsh legacy of this history still shows up in today’s business ethos as a suspicion for self knowledge. Intrapersonal and even interpersonal skills are considered “soft” and at the bottom of too many to-do lists.

As the world of work now moves from the Age of Information to the Age of Imagination, creativity, the ability to form and sustain trusting relationships, cultural sensitivity and savvy will become the new coins of the realm.

Fear-based workers and workplaces will find themselves hard pressed to compete in these “softer” more open environments. “Survivor Consciousness” organizations and workers that hoard power and lack emotional intelligence will be in the caboose of real change.

While the turbulent economic realities of the past eighteen months may slow down the pace of the changes taking place in how we work and what we expect from work, they cannot be stopped. No one can predict where, when and how these coalescing forces will take place. But one thing we know is for certain, the most powerful tool available for creating and sustaining meaning in our work is ourselves.

To be continued…….

Louise & George

Intentional Communication Partners

We’d love to hear what work means to you?

What is your vision of an Intentional workplace?

Filed under meaning of work, work, workplace

December 16, 2009

Communicating Intentionally

Communicating – Intentionally

The driving force that shapes an Intentional Workplace is the way the people in it communicate.

Let’s face it, most of the communication that takes place in and around work is far from being intentional. Much of it is off the cuff, abbreviated, lazy, habituated and based on unexamined personal expectations and assumptions.

A great deal of the communication that happens around work is ineffective. And most people would agree that we need effective communication to work optimally.

So – why don’t we experience more effective or intentional communication in the workplace?

First, let’s get back to exploring what makes communication intentional. In our last post - we define intentional as something done with intention or on purpose.

We call that conscious communication.

It implies that we are speaking with awareness of our purpose AND it’s effects on others. (Some of you are probably thinking – well that is obvious, isn’t it?) We’ll step out on a limb and say – while it may be obvious – conscious communication is pretty rare – especially in the pressure laden environment of work.

Imagine you are at work (juggling thoughts, feelings and actions, which most of us are not consciously aware of in the moment) the phone rings and it is (Tom). You have been expecting some information from him that you need to finish a report.

We’ll add to this scenario that you are not particularly fond of Tom. You pick up the phone only to learn he still does not have the info you want and is calling to explain why.

Boom – if you are like most of us, you are triggered emotionally.

Given a situation like this – how do you communicate?

What starts running through your mind at this point?

“I can’t believe this is happening.”

“This really is going to screw up my schedule.”

“I’ll never finish in time now.”

“How could he wait till the last minute and be so inconsiderate.

If this is an example of your internal dialogue, these thoughts, unchecked, will determine how you will respond.

Without an immediate internal adjustment, it is likely that you will say something you will regret later on. And if your words don’t betray you, your body language will tell some truth about what is really on your mind.

After all, we cannot NOT communicate. Everything we say, do and don’t do – communicates.

The plain fact is that internal scripts are always going through our minds.

They drive our feelings and consequently, our communication. Problem is they run on auto-pilot. Often we let our internal dialogues masquerade as our spontaneous thoughts. Too bad we can’t hit the delete button for the old unwanted files in our heads!

Unless we bring our awareness to those thoughts we run the risk of sloppy, unintended communication. Another consequence is that we really can’t be fully present in any communication if our minds are running old software and the next to-do list.

We can come across to others as poor listeners, uninterested and inauthentic.

We may not believe that our lack of real presence is registering with others (after all aren’t they running their own internal narratives?) but people will often have a surprising list of the great, good and lousy communicators they deal with when asked.

Which list are you on with your colleagues? More important, which list do you WANT to be on?

Caring is a big part of your communication dynamic. If you don’t care about how you communicate and how you are perceived as a communicator, you won’t have the motivation to elevate your skills.

If you want to change the way you communicate but don’t seem to be able to – it’s time to ask:

What in me is allowing this to continue?

It’s a great question (one that you can apply to many other situations where you may feel at an impasse).

It implies, of course, that the responsibility for your end of the communication is up to you – and only you.

The “Basics” of Intentional Communication:

Think before you speak. In other words, practice developing mindfulness about what you say, when you say it and why.
Develop skill around your body language habits, especially tone of voice. This is a biggie – and the “wrong” tone of voice (as perceived by the recipient in your communication) can send a message south instantaneously.
Watch your words. In the big scheme of things in body language land, words are the less important players, but they still matter.
Notice what you are feeling in all of your communications. How do they feel? Are your emotional responses appropriate to the context of the communication you are having in the moment, or are you dragging some historic emotional baggage into the moment?

In many ways, skillful communicating is simple, but far from easy.

It takes a lot of conscious control to break crusty old habits. Often our emotions (which have been habituated as well) don’t easily bend to our new intentions. It is often much more comfortable to slide back into the old behaviors.

Most of us were not given the tools of good communication. We learned through the conditioning of our role models. How good were they? Intentional communication is an art form. It starts with thought and is grown to habit through practice. That’s the hard part.

This is the first of many posts on communication. It is a huge topic and there is a lot to say and explore.

Thanks for listening and let’s continue the conversation. We’d love to hear your comments.

Louise and George Altman

Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under communication, interpersonal communication, listening, work, workplace

Tagged as body language, communication, emotionalintelligence, workplace communication

December 30, 2009

Being Patient

Being Patient

As we say goodbye (and some might say good riddance) to ’09 and prepare to greet a New Year – and decade – we can’t think of a more resourceful emotion to cultivate than patience.

Now, the act of being patient is most definitely behavioral – and it requires skill.

Patience is also a feeling state – one with very specific (and beneficial) physiological markers.

When we are patient, our mind is relatively clear. It is the opposite of a confused, jumbled state of thoughts. You can’t do patience when your thoughts are racing in what Buddhists often refer to as “monkey mind.”

One of the great enablers of the state of patience is your breath.

Awareness of how you are breathing sets up the body – and consequently the mind to be calmer. It allows you to consciously choose how to think about the object of your impatience.

To be patient requires an ability to be internal (self-aware) while being keenly observant of the people and things in the external environment.

There is rarely one object that triggers your impatience (for example, the traffic that is slowing you down from getting to your destination – or even thinking about the traffic that may slow you down later).

Usually the momentary thought that seems to escalate our impatience is just one of many that are we are carrying around.

Impatience is a tricky emotion, so to speak.

Impatience, like many other emotions can become habituated. Recent neuroscience now shows that all thought creates neural networks and emotions like impatience can become one of our default states when triggered by external – or internal (your thoughts and feelings) events.

When things are not going the way we want or expect, our thoughts signal our brain to feel a particular emotion because we’ve now got them hooked up to certain recurring experiences.

Impatience can also be problematic because it is one those springboard emotions to other feelings like frustration, annoyance, resentment and anger.

In other words, impatience can be a very slippery slope.

Typically, many of the people we work with in our seminars cite their lack of patience as an impediment to maintaining positive communication with others – especially at work. “Developing more patience” is often at the top of the individual and team lists when defining goals for building better relationships – in every part of life.

What stops us from being more patient?

Ah…a critical question. We’ll say what we usually say when asked about what stops us from doing anything – that is – our beliefs. Here are a few of the belief stoppers we have often heard:

I’m not the patient type, too Type A or whatever
I don’t have time to be patient
It’s not about me – it’s about them (other people) or It (the traffic) why should I be the one to have to work at patience?
Patience is endurance, resignation, compromising, accepting, condoning and forgiving. (These old Calvinistic ideas are part of the collective story of how the “virtue” of patience has come down through the ages) Ultimately, they do not have to have anything to do with the act of practicing patience.

“Our patience will achieve much more than our force”. Edmond Burke

Learning to practice patience is a very practical skill to develop. It will serve you in every single area of your work – and your life beyond work.

Being more patient with things outside of you will bring many gifts. You will sharpen your focus, become a better listener and accomplish more with less frustration. But most important, being more patient with yourself will give you the greatest gift of all – peace of mind.

As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts. What keeps you from being more patient? Can you imagine a more patient you in the coming year – and if so, how would you benefit?

Wishing you a Wonderful New Year – filled with patience, calmness and peace!

Louise and George Altman

Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under communication, emotions, feelings

Tagged as communication, emotions, feelings, patience

January 7, 2010

Intelligent Emotions – at Work

Intelligent Emotions - at Work

“Hardwired to connect with each other, we do so through emotions. Our brains, bodies and minds are inseparable from the emotions that animate them. Emotions are at the nexus of thought and action, of self and other, of person and environment.” Diana Fosha, Daniel Siegel & Marion Solomon, The Healing Power of Emotions, 2009

Driven by stunning advances in neuroscience in the mid – to late ‘90’s, the concept of emotional intelligence entered the lexicon of the American workplace.

Through his ground breaking books on emotional intelligence (and the most requested article to date for the Harvard Business Review) former NYT science writer Daniel Goleman has contributed to a growing understanding about the practical application of emotions in the workplace.

Since that time there have been dozens of books written exploring the topic. Seminars on development of the “competencies” of emotional intelligence (like our own) have been offered in hundreds of companies globally.

In our work, development of the skillful use of one’s emotions is foundational.

Whether we are talking about leadership, conflict, generational diversity or team building – elevating emotional competency is at the core.

Taking an informal tally of our audiences, it seems that about a third has some knowledge or experience with this thing called “emotional intelligence.” It’s also not uncommon for us to encounter some level of skepticism about the role and value of emotional development in the workplace.

These attitudes reflect the larger cultural confusion about the functions and purpose of feelings. Despite greater societal acceptance of psychology and mind-body research, most of us arrive in adulthood with a surprising lack of understanding how and why we feel what we do.

Generally much of Western culture still worships at the altar of the “rational”.

We still see emotions as uncontrollable, unpredictable, sloppy – and even weak. This is particularly salient in the workplace. There are many reasons for this, too many to explore in this post, but belief in the myth of the separation between business life – and personal life – is behind a great deal of the misunderstanding.

There is a vast difference between acting out emotionally – and consciously expressing what we feel. It takes skill and courage to express what we actually need and want – which is what emotions are conveying.

Too many people we encounter actually operate from the erroneous belief that emotions are fixed. They believe that we are stuck with our limited emotional repertoires. No wonder we are turned off – and even hostile to our emotional lives.

What would you say if we asked you to name the emotions that most optimize your work?

A very interesting question, isn’t it? How many of us think about our emotions in that way?

When we ask people we work with to name the emotions they experience in themselves and others as most prevalent at work – the responses follow a very familiar pattern.

Frustration

Impatience

Annoyance

Anxiety

Fear

Anger

Resentment

While it isn’t always such a gloomy list (occasionally passion or dare we say – happiness shows up) this list of emotions seem to drive the engine in many of today’s workplaces.

No wonder there is so much conflict, mistrust and stress associated with work.

Now let’s return to the original question – Which emotions most optimize how you do your work?

How about – patience, optimism, calmness, satisfaction, enthusiasm, encoragement, inspiration, curiosity and determination to name a few?

The bottom line is that we cannot do our work without being emotional – the question is what emotions are we cultivating to do it?

The good news is that we are not at the mercy of our emotions. The science is in – the emotional brain has enormous plasticity.

We can channel and shape our feelings in ways that maximize their brilliance and practicality if we learn to retool our early conditioning and beliefs about the nature of emotions.

Our beliefs about emotions can be an enormous obstacle to developing the capability to use our emotions intelligently – and with great purpose.

Making a commitment to work with the mind and the heart is the essence of emotional intelligence.

Nothing could be more a more practical – or rational business decision.

“Human emotion is not just about sexual pleasure or fear of snakes. It is also about the horror of witnessing suffering and the satisfaction of seeing justice served, about our delight at (a) sensuous smile. Or the thick beauty of words and ideas in Shakespeare’s verse, about…any Mozart, any Schubert, and about the harmony that Einstein sought in the structure of an equation”. Antonio Damasio, Neuroscientist, USC Brain & Creativity Institute

This is the first of many posts exploring emotional intelligence and the role of emotions at work. We invite you to join the conversation. What are your thoughts about emotions in the workplace?

6 Comments

Filed under communication, emotional intelligence, emotions, feelings, work, workplace

Tagged as communication, emotional intelligence, emotions, feelings, work, workplace

January 13, 2010

Are You Listening?

Are You Listening? The Essentials of Real Listening

“Some lucky people seem to have a magic touch when it comes to getting people to buy into their plans, goals and desires. But, in reality, reaching people isn’t magic. It’s an art…and a science. And it’s easier than you think.” Mark Goulston, author, Just Listen

Yes, we all know that listening is important.

It is considered, by broad consensus, an essential business ingredient. Listening is required for relationships to be balanced and harmonious. Negotiators point to listening as the key to delivering successful agreements.

Most people we work with say that listening is sorely missing in the workplace – and the majority wants to be better listeners themselves.

When we ask our seminar participants, “When did you last feel like someone you work with was really listening to you” - most say they can’t recall. Some say, never.

Why are we such poor listeners?

What stops us from really tuning into others?

Maybe that’s it? To listen, we have to take the focus off of ourselves – and place it on to others – and many of us are not very good at that.

Or, we don’t have the time? Or, technology has captured our attention so much that we have lost our people focus?

Or, all of the above?

Or, could it be that few of us were ever very good listeners to begin with?

How many of us were taught the art – and science of listening when we were young? We all learn by modeling. If the listening modelers in your early world were competent communicators – chances are that at least some of that rubbed off on you.

But typically most of us absorbed the lessons taught by ineffective listeners and in some cases, toxic communication modelers.

Good listening is SO important in our ability to be successful at work – and in our social and intimate relationships that everyone could benefit from a thorough remedial or refresher tutorial

Our motivation for becoming better listeners needs to be crystal clear before we focus on our listening skills. Listening is not about technique. Listening well isn’t just about getting clear and concise information. Because the quality of our motivation is shaped by our intentions, it’s important to understand why and what we value about listening, first and foremost.

Being willing to commit to better listening as a means to get better quality information is smart and practical, it’s by no means the heart of the matter.

The essence of listening is about connecting with others.

That may sound a little too soft for some of you, but we assure you – the science is unquestionably clear about this.

Because we are hard wired for empathy (driven by our amazing “mirror neurons” or “Dalai Lama neurons” as neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran calls them) when we demonstrate to others that we are truly interested in their experience – powerful feelings can be evoked.

Ramachandran asserts that these hardwired neural interconnections are so potent because they have the capacity to “dissolve barriers between self and others.” In other words – to care about each other. The beauty of mirror neurons allows what we are doing to be mirrored by others, even if they are not consciously aware of it!

And caring about others (which does not have to imply agreeing or even liking another person) is the fundamental difference between simply hearing vs. listening.

In ways that neuroscience does not yet understand, caring (a feeling) turns on the lights that signal to us – this communication is different than others.

Consequently, listening when we care, is perceived and received in a completely different, apparently more meaningful way, than when we intend to simply disseminate information.

The Three Essentials of Real Listening

Check out your beliefs – this refers to the beliefs you hold about the importance and value of listening in your experience. Also, explore the beliefs you have about people you are communicating with. Why? Because the beliefs we have act as perceptual filters in our listening experience. So the question becomes what are you listening for? Personal beliefs are key listening filters; so are cultural filters like gender, age, generational experience and nationality. Add emotions to the filters list as well.

Caring – We need our empathy or “Dalai Lama” neurons turned on to demonstrate to others that they matter. This can get challenging when we don’t like or agree with someone but have decided that we want to listen to what they have to say. In these circumstances, we need to search for the motivation, however small, to make the difference. Doing so will make our efforts more meaningful and far more effective.

Become more aware of your nonverbal and verbal habits – Body language and tone of voice are largely responsible for how other people respond to your communication. Words matter, but if they are not congruent with the perception of your body language, they may send a double message.

Real listening can ease conflict, lessen resistance and help build trust. Real listening can move people to see what they could not see before, feel a range of different feelings within the course of a conversation – and act in ways they never anticipated.

Real listening can be potent, practical and rewarding. So – what stops you from making a commit to becoming a better listener in every area of your life?

We look forward to hearing your thoughts about listening. Please join the conversation, leave your commentsand questions above.

Louise and George Altman

Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under communication, emotional intelligence, emotions, listening, relationships, workplace

Tagged as communication, emotional intelligence, listening, relationships, work relationships, workplace

January 18, 2010

Joining the Haiti Blog Challenge

Thanks to Kelly Diels over at Cleavage for creating the Haiti Blog Challenge.

Like so many others, we have been deeply moved by the devastation in Haiti and want to do everything we can to help. To broaden our continuing efforts, we’d like to join the generous blogging community by offering a $5 dollar contribution for every comment and subscriber on our blog for the rest of January.

We are also donating the proceeds of our coaching revenue for the week of Jan. 18th to support the extraordinary examples of service being performed on behalf of the people in Haiti.

There are many heroic organizations working beyond human imagination to save lives in Haiti but we have a special place in our hearts for the work of Dr. Paul Farmer and the amazing staff at Partners in Health. You can also read an update of their work from field at that link.
So many of us are so blessed and we are grateful to be able to join in this blog challenge.

Thank you so much for your support!

Louise and George Altman

Intentional Communication Consultants

Filed under Haiti Blog Challenge

Tagged as Haiti Blog Challenge

January 21, 2010

What Can You do to Help? You are Hard-Wired for Altruism

What Can I Do to Help? (We Are All Hard-Wired To Altruism)

In the past week we have seen an extraordinary outpouring of help and compassion for the people of Haiti. We’re witnessing unimaginable acts of heroic valor as emergency and medical teams struggle to surmount gargantuan odds.

Tragic events of the past decade appear to have galvanized a greater global awareness and motivated unprecedented acts of kindness in response.

In the past decade we have also been the beneficiaries of the knowledge that we are hard-wired for altruism. The work of bioethicist Dr. Stephen Post’s Institute for Unlimited Love (Case Western University School of Medicine) alone has generated 50 studies on altruism, compassion and kindness.

Scientists call this the “helper’s high.” When we give and engage in acts of kindness, the “pleasure” and social attachment centers of the brain are activated.

The classic definition of altruism is selflessness. But is altruism solely an act that benefits the welfare of others? That’s not what the research is demonstrating.

In fact, studies show that the “helper’s high” appears to act as an antidote to the stress response in the giver. While it is too early in the research to understand all of the variables that may contribute to this, we can take comfort that when we act (genuinely) out of concern for others, we get a biological benefit as well.

“All the great spiritual traditions and the field of positive psychology are emphatic on this point – that the way to get rid of bitterness, anger, rage and jealousy is to do undo others in a positive way. It’s as though you somehow have to cast out negative emotions that are clearly associated with stress with the help of positive emotions.” Dr. Stephen G. Post, PhD

While we don’t refer to any emotion as negative (we believe that all emotions can have value – it depends on what you do with them) we agree that we can cultivate more of these self -healing emotions in our lives. (see earlier post: Intelligent Emotions – at Work)

Altruism in the Workplace?

But how does altruism work in the workplace? While it may be a more natural reflex to give of one’s self at home, or through volunteerism or simply by writing a check to a cause – it may not be as easy to do where we work.

Some business theorists, in fact, still hold out that altruism and capitalism are incongruous. They suggest that the engine of competition that drives the marketplace requires a tougher and more adversarial emotional climate to thrive. They believe that economic success still depends on a survival of the fitness ethos.

Of course, this is very much at odds with the management trends of the last twenty years which lean more (real or not) towards flattened hierarchies and team cultures

The reality is team oriented business cultures are not there yet. We talk teams and power sharing but still practice a sometimes ruthless form of competition. We have little substantive experience of the power of workplace cultures based on empathy and egalitarian principles. They are still referred to as “soft.”

So, while we are waiting for organizational structures to shift, it seems as if it is up to individuals to create the change they crave in the workplace.

One by one, we can instill acts of kindness and altruism in our day to day life at work. Regardless of where you work, in large corporations or sitting alone with your computer, each day presents opportunities to act “selflessly.”

Much has been written about performing random acts of kindness (like leaving a big tip for a small check; giving up a parking space or buying someone a small gift for no reason). But when we act out of kindness and altruism towards our business colleagues we have the added benefit of contributing towards creating a more harmonious and trusting workplace culture

So – what can you do today, right now, where you work to demonstrate your altruism?

Can you compliment a colleague?

Can you listen to others and demonstrate your interest?

Can you offer your help even though your plate is full?

Can you give where you would normally expect to get?

The possibilities are endless. So are the benefits.

Thanks for being part of the conversation. Share your thoughts, ideas and examples of workplace altruism.

Louise and George Altman

Intentional Communication Consultants

Filed under emotional intelligence, emotions, feelings, meaning of work, work, workplace

Tagged as altruism, emotional intelligence, emotions, empathy, workplace, workplace relationships

January 27, 2010

You Have To Laugh (it’s good for us all)

You Have to Laugh (it’s good for us all)

When was the last time you had a really good laugh? You know, a deep down belly laugh – one that lasted and lasted till you teared up?

Well according to Dr. Madan Kataria, a family practice doctor from India, it’s not only fun….it is a tonic for your well-being!

According to the research, we adults are hardly laughing – that is, in comparison to our experience as children. Kids laugh, on average, 150 times per day – adults average 6. As for smiles, children beam about 400 times a day, we sad sack adults – 15.

Let’s face, we need to laugh and smile more!

When Dr. Kataria began his first Laughter Club in ’95, it included 5 members. The Laughter Yoga Clubs now total 6000 in 60 countries. (wonder if there is one in DC?) That’s a lot of laughs. Obviously, Dr. Kataria is on to something here.

It’s really not yoga. The laughter gurus say it is more like exercise. And the physiological and social benefits of laughter are rather amazing.

De-activates the hormones that fuel stress (well that makes sense, it’s hard to be fearful, anxious and angry when you are laughing)
It provides a good cardio workout (wow – 10 minutes of hardy laughter equals 30 on a rowing machine!)
Oxygenate the lungs and improves respiration
Lowers blood pressure
Reduces pain (a study produced in the Journal of Holistic Nursing reported that post-op patients, told one-liners, perceived less pain than patients who didn’t get the humor dose)
Improved immune function due to increase in number and activity of natural killer T-cells

All of this and a real time - out too.

We have all had the experience of seeing how humor can shift even the most hardened perspective.

The really fascinating part of this information is that the laughter doesn’t even have to be real. Yes. You can fake it, or as they say at the Laughter Club – “Fake it – till you make it.” The benefits remain the same.

So what are you waiting for? Regardless of the state of the office, the state of the world or the state of your mind……try it out for yourself.

Here’s something to help you get started. Trust us and stick with it till you get a chuckle.

Here’s to your health!

Louise & George Altman

Intentional Communication Partners

PS we love to hear from you!

Filed under feelings, work, workplace

Tagged as humor, laughter, laughter clubs, well-being

February 4, 2010

Trust and First Impressions

Trust and First Impressions

(Part 1 of Trust Series)

Trust is a fragile and complex thing. It’s made up of our thoughts, beliefs, values, feelings and most important – our actions.

It is often indefinable, highly personal and mostly an unconscious process that governs the why and how of what we do.

Although trust, at all levels, appears to be at an all time low – we still desire it and mostly understand that we need it to achieve success in our professional and personal lives.

It shapes our expectations and drives our feelings and behaviors.

A study, (from the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University) has uncovered one important aspect of the highly idiosyncratic intricacies that contribute to the formation of trust. The research findings were based on participants playing a computer game (unbeknownst to them – with a computer, not a person) where they were “betrayed” early in the process.

The study asserts that when a person forms a bad first impression of a another person or situation, negative feelings are harder to overcome than if a betrayal happens after some form of positive relationship is established.

Any surprises here? Well, first we know that body language is a far greater influence on the impact of a communication than words alone. Even if we are not dealing face to face – most communication specialists concur that we are sending non-verbal information in all we do.

It’s also true that trust has a great deal to do with our intuitive responses and the past experiences we bring to an interaction. So – what we feel (intuitively) and what we have experienced (past thinking and feelings) are always mitigating our choices to trust – or not.

If Trust is Not Established Early On – It May Be Lost

What’s revealing about the study is that even when participants playing the game experienced (after the initial breach) 30 more rounds of pure cooperation, it wasn’t enough to gain back their trust. In fact, players who were betrayed in rounds 10 and 11 (of 30) were on average, 40% more cooperative than those who experienced early betrayals!

The researchers logically conclude that first impressions are mostly lasting ones.

It seems we are much more likely to give people a break once that early, often quick test of trust, has been positively established.

Working in Low-Trust Conditions

Consequently, the implications for our relationships work and beyond, are enormous.

The implications for organizations are equally critical, given that today’s economic climate demands extraordinary performance to survive and grow.

Is extraordinary performance possible without trust? Surely, even the most talented and dedicated professional requires trust to operate optimally in a work environment.

Recently we’ve been following the tremendous struggles of many people to find and get jobs. Quite frankly, many of their stories are distressing testimonies to how many companies have lost their way in the hiring process. Terribly long waits, poor or no feedback after interviews, lack of follow-up, double messages on status and in some cases, outright lies and disrespect for prospective employees and new hires are not uncommon.

What possible expectations could these organizations have in terms of loyalty, commitment and trust, given their initial treatment of these employees? Can they really expect that people will give the above and beyond effort that’s needed these days just for the paycheck and benefits?

How long will the fear and gratitude of landing a position in this economy drive exceptional performance?

And if the paycheck is the bottom line, what’s the quality of that commitment?

Will it last when labor and economic conditions stabilize?

Will the employee that was treated so badly in the hiring process simply forgive and forget the organization’s actions and suddenly be more trusting? While it’s possible that certain factors, for example, liking one’s job or manager, can carry a person through an initially bad experience, the organizational trust factor may never be restored.

The bottom line is – trust is deep. Much deeper than the external conditions we face everyday. We are just beginning to understand the labyrinth of factors that must be satisfied within a person to build trust.

So – how do first impressions impact your decision to trust?

How does it feel to work in a low-trust environment?

Join the conversation; we’d love to hear your comments!

Louise and George Altman

Intentional Communication Partners

Check out Part 1 of the Trust Series: Trust and First Impressions

Filed under communication, emotions, feelings, listening, meaning of work, relationships, trust, work, workplace

Tagged as low trust, relationships and trust, self development, trust, trust in the workplace

February 11, 2010

WHO DO YOU TRUST? And Why It Matters

WHO DO YOU TRUST? And Why it Matters!

(Part 2 in The Trust Series)

“Trust is a delicate property of human relationships. It is influenced far more by actions than words. It takes a long time to build, but it can be destroyed very quickly. Even a single action – perhaps misunderstood – can have powerful effects.” Douglas McGregor, author of the business classic, The Human Side of Enterprise

In 2006, the Wharton School of Business published an article (Promises, Lies, Apologies: Is it Possible to Restore Trust?) about the research of three of their professors on the variables of trust. In it, they used the following scenario to beautifully illustrate the complex factors that form our capacity to trust.

Let’s pretend that you lend someone a DVD to watch with the understanding that they will return it to Netflix when they are done. You find out that they forgot to return the film. Would you trust them again?

Got your answer? Let’s move on to the next scenario.

Now imagine that the person you lent the DVD to told you they sent back the movie, but you see the film in a pile of mail in their car? Where’s your trust level now? Would you lend them another DVD, or anything, in the future?

We have used this scenario in countless seminars on Trust to generate some real incisive thinking and dialogue about the nature of trust. It has raised some fascinating questions about the dynamics of trusting – and trustworthiness. Typically, it provides a pathway for us to see the rules, conscious and unconscious, that drive our behavioral choices in relating with others.

Undoubtedly, some the examples we have unearthed in these conversations will ring some bells for readers.

Some typical responses to the first scenario:

Yes, I would give the person another chance
Yes, it’s just a DVD
Depends on who the person is (ah ha! This is a biggie because for most people that’s a decisive factor – with Trust – CONTEXT matters – the who, what and why of it shapes our decisions to trust)
Never again. Burnt once, won’t get burned twice (an oft heard collective belief that can draw rock solid parameters around our experiences)
Never lend anything to anyone anyway! (admittedly this response is a minority one – but every group we’ve worked with has at least one)

It is important to note here that when explored, most people say their choices are governed almost entirely by their past experience. While that may seem logical, unless you want to base the rest of your life’s decisions on the past (and for many of us, this is usually based on what’s not worked rather than what has worked ) this may be the time to examine the beliefs that drive your choices.

Back to the second part of the scenario (where you have made the choice to trust and you were “betrayed.” ****)

Some more typical responses:

It reinforces that people can’t be trusted
Once I am let down by another person, I won’t risk trusting again
Lying is unacceptable and I won’t tolerate it
People can forget, especially if they are busy and absent minded
I would approach the person and tell them I saw the DVD and ask them what happened

Interesting range of responses, don’t you think? Where do you find yourself gravitating?

Two important notes to share about what we have written so far. First, note the red asterisks above, next to the word betrayed. A colleague, referring to our last post on Trust & First Impressions contacted us to say that she found the use of the word betrayal really striking.

Her take was that the words we use to describe our experience can make a huge difference in how we feel about a person or situation. This is critical.

Even though the word betrayal is commonly used in research and writing about trust issues – it is one of those powerful words (like deception) that can evoke the strongest emotions and reactions. These reactions can and do cloud our perceptions and drive us to make choices that can be unwise and often inappropriate to the current circumstances we face.

Finally, it’s also important to say that the Wharton study found that promises to correct future behavior and apologies (that must meet a series of criteria to be accepted as “sincere”) do matter.

In future postings in the Trust Series, we’ll look at the role of lying, apologies, intuition and forgiveness on trust. We’ll also explore the essential ingredients of building and restoring trust once it’s been eroded or broken, especially in the workplace.

So – who do you trust and why?
What criteria affect your choices to trust – or not?
Are you more/less trusting with co-workers, friends, family?
Do you believe that relationships, especially in the workplace, can thrive without trust?

Your comments are valuable to us – we’d love to hear from you!

Louise & George Altman

Intentional Communication Consultants

Filed under communication, emotions, interpersonal communication, relationships, trust, workplace

Tagged as trust, trust and relationships, trust in the workplace, trustworthiness

February 20, 2010

5 Reasons to Develop Your Empathy

5 Reasons to Develop Your Empathy

“Empathy is the one weapon in the human repertoire that can rid us of the curse of xenophobia.” Frans B.M. de Waal, author, The Age of Empathy

Are We Living in The Age of Narcissism or the Age of Empathy?

Maybe it’s both.

For human beings, both are innate. Freud believed that narcissism was a normal developmental task necessary for a child to form a healthy sense of self-esteem. As the child ages, self-interest is balanced with mature goals, which include the positive regard and concern for others that is the essence of empathy.

In the language of pop psychology, the over-done and misunderstood label of “narcissist” is typically used to describe someone who is self-absorbed, self-possessed and self- serving.

In mythology, Narcissus was a handsome Greek youth who rejected the desperate advances of the nymph Echo. As punishment, he was doomed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water.

The Discovery of Mirror Neurons is a Game Changer!

Speaking of mirrors – fast forward several thousand years to the (accidental) discovery in 1995 by Italian neuroscientist, Iaccomo Rizzolati, of “mirror neurons.”

Author of the excellent book, “Just Listen“ Mark Goulston, M.D. describes the discovery of mirror neurons as follows:

“(Italian Scientists) studying specific nerve cells in macaque monkeys’ prefrontal cortexes found that the cells fired when the monkeys threw a ball or ate a banana. But here’s the surprise: these same cells fired when the monkeys watched another monkey performing these acts. In other words, when Monkey #1 watched Monkey #2 toss a ball, the brain of the first monkey reacted just as if it had tossed the ball itself.

Scientists initially nicknamed these cells “monkey see, monkey do” neurons. Later they changed the name to mirror neurons, because these cells allow monkeys to mirror another being’s actions in their own minds.

The new name is more accurate, because we’re finding that humans, just like macaques, have neurons that act as mirrors. In fact, studies suggest that these remarkable cells may form the basis for human empathy. That’s because, in effect, they transport us into another person’s mind, briefly making us feel what the person is feeling. In a 2007 article titled, “The Neurology of Self-Awareness” in Edge, V. S. Ramachandran, a pioneer in mirror neuron research, commented, “I call these ‘empathy neurons’ or ‘Dalai Lama neurons’ for they are dissolving the barrier between self and others.”

Empathy is “hot”

It is the subject of dozens of compelling articles and books exploring the implications of empathy – and a lack of – on our families, workplaces and our global society. In his latest book, “The Empathic Civilization” author Jeremy Rifkin declares that the discovery of mirror neurons will change the way in which we define human nature.

Curriculums in some medical and law enforcement programs are being redesigned to expand empathic skills to deepen the bonds of understanding. In the UK, “empathy” training is retooling the way service providers, like call centers, measure their bottom line success.

Empathy is our second nature, but it also fragile. A lack of proper nurturing of empathy in childhood, or the presence of certain brain disorders, like autism, can result in switched-off empathic abilities. We all run the risk of acquiring what has been referred to as “Empathy Deficit Disorder” (EDD). While we may have developed the foundations of empathy as children, we can become hardened and turned-off to people and events around us, as a form of psychological self-protection.

The formation of EDD doesn’t happen overnight. It is more like a gradual process of chipping away at our empathy core through the repetitive practice of erosive thoughts, beliefs, feelings and behaviors over time.

“Just as you can develop EDD by too much self-absorption, you can also overcome EDD by retraining your brain. That is, research also shows that your brain is capable of being trained and physically modified through conscious practices. This is known as neuroplasticity. You can “grow” specific emotions and create new brain patterns that reinforce them. As you redirect and refocus your thoughts, feelings, and behavior in the direction you desire, the brain regions associated with them are reinforced. What’s more, changing your brain activity reinforces the changes you’re making in your thoughts and emotions. The result is a self-reinforcing loop between your conscious attitudes, your behavior and your brain activity” Center for Adult Development, 2007

Empathy is a powerful emotion – and a powerful skill. It has the potential to transform your perspective on a dime. What you see in your world is largely filtered by your empathic lenses.

Our self-imposed empathic filters that monitor our world can sometimes be broken open by the jolt of personal crisis or a powerful external event. We can also commit to an on-going practice of a heart – mind opening process by consciously practicing development of our innate empathic muscles.

5 Reasons to Develop Empathy

Empathy is the cornerstone of effective communication. It can expand understanding and convey values and recognition of needs (which is what every communication is essentially about).
The ability to “step into another’s shoes” deepens and broadens our perspective-taking skills. We develop greater capacity to see outside of our own narrow windows on the world. When we do this, our relationship skills grow and our ability to generate creativity and ideas increases.
Empathy begets other self-supportive emotions. When we cultivate greater empathy in our lives (for self – and others), we enable the triggers of other nurturing emotions like: contentment, satisfaction, confidence, courage, compassion and dare we say – love. Studies have shown that when we experience these emotions they act as an antidote to the detrimental hormones released from stress.
Increasing your capacity for empathy is critical if you want to be a better listener – and increase your skill at responding to conflict. Empathy is the quintessential “joining” emotion. It can bring us together at an emotional level even when we disagree with another person. People in triggered ”negative” emotional states can’t really hear and solve problems on a “rational” level until they switch from their emotional brains to their pre-frontal or thinking brains. Our ability to convey understanding through empathy can be instrumental in supporting that process.
Demonstrating empathy is contagious. Yes, that’s true. Along with the discovery of mirror neurons, neuroscience has also found that emotions can be contagious. Road rage is a good example of anger contagion. New studies show that kindness and altruism can model positive feelings and behaviors in our workplaces, families and the society in general.

The conscious commitment to practice empathy in our lives will yield immediate and definite long term changes in our relationships, well-being and our world view. Seeing and acting through our empathy filters provides us with a very different way of being in the world.

In our next post, we’ll look at the barriers we create to acting more empathically. We will also explore practices that can activate our “empathy genes” and trigger those in others.

In the meantime, let us know how empathy works in your emotional life.

What do you see as the role of empathy in relationships, especially those that are work-related?

You may also be interested in this related post: What Can I Do To Help: We are all Hard-Wired for Altruism

Thanks for being part of the conversation.

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under emotional intelligence, emotions, empathy, feelings, interpersonal communication, relationships, self development, work, workplace

Tagged as business, emotional intelligence, emotions, empathy, inspiration, life, personal, relationships, thoughts

February 25, 2010

Becoming More Empathic – Part 2 (Bringing Down Some of the Barriers)

Becoming More Empathic – Part 2 (Taking Down Some of the Barriers)

Most scientists agree that we are born to cooperate with others.

In other words, we are born to be more “WE” than “ME.” Sometimes we wonder.

The mounting research continues to paint a much rosier and more positive picture at least for the potential of a kinder, gentler workplace, society and planet.

According to Dr. Thomas Tomasello, author of “Why We Cooperate,” shared intentionality is the essence of human nature. He writes, “Children are altruistic by nature, and though they are also naturally selfish, all parents need do is try to tip the balance toward social behavior.”

Given the increasing evidence of our natural tendencies towards cooperation with others, it’s logical to question – what happens to those innate impulses as we grow up? Why do so many of our institutions seem cold to the needs of people? Why do so many of our workplaces seem driven more by fear and greed than by equanimity and caring?

These are important questions that speak to the ways in which we have shaped our personal and social structures over time – and allowed them to work against our innate values of cooperation and empathy.

While we may not feel we have much control to change prevailing social systems – we do have control over our own emotional domain. We know that as the trusting and playful child within us interacted with the world, we made choices for self-protection that have suppressed those early positive impulses.

Over time, those impulses formed into “strategies” to get by and get what we want, rather than what we truly need. Let’s also keep in mind that repetitive thinking, feelings and behaviors take shape as part of our neural networking. If we don’t like the programming, we can change the software, but it takes effort

Reawakening our empathic impulses can be the key to enormous opportunities for greater self-evolution. As we outlined in our last post – 5 Reasons to Develop Your Empathy - cultivating empathy can trigger a whole array of complementary positive emotions within us. While our original biological proclivity towards empathy seems geared towards productive social cooperation, ” enlightened self-interest” also translates into enormous benefits for the individual.

In this fascinating, TED TALK, Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, provides some insights into how empathy and compassion work and some reasons why we may or may not act on our innate impulses.

What Stops Us? 7 Beliefs That Can Block Empathy

Beliefs play a big role in governing our choices (conscious and unconscious). And since beliefs fuel our emotions and result in behaviors, they can impede or enable our natural empathic flow towards others. Here are a few examples of empathy blocking beliefs:

We believe that certain circumstances are not appropriate for demonstrating empathy. This is especially true when it comes to beliefs about work, business, etc. (This belief is often a branch of a larger belief that business and the personal life are or should be separate.)
We believe that certain people, or categories of people, are not deserving of our empathy.
We believe that human nature is essentially selfish (except our own?)
We believe that if we relate empathically we will get: lost emotionally, taken advantage of, manipulated or be perceived as soft or weak.
We believe that empathy doesn’t work – or that it doesn’t work with certain people and or situations
We believe that empathy is not equated with “results”
We believe we must agree with or forgive the beliefs or actions of others in order to extend our empathy to them

Do you find any of your own beliefs represented anywhere on this list? Well, you are a rare bird if you do not! We all grapple with these choices, in some form or another, as we attempt to meet our daily needs and navigate life’s challenges.

Unearthing the beliefs you hold about empathy is a critical first step in the process of expanding your capacity and empathic skills.

Understanding when, how and who you extend empathy to will also provide you with a blueprint to the parameters you’ve created to contain your feelings.

In our next post, Part 3 of the Empathy Series, we’ll look at some of the practices you can do to activate your empathic nature. (You can find Part 1 in the series here)

Till then, we’d love to hear your comments and have you join us by subscribing to this blog.

What are some of the beliefs you hold about empathy?

What kind of role can empathy play in the workplace?

Thanks for stopping by – and joining the conversation.

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under business, communication, emotional intelligence, emotions, empathy, feelings, inspiration, personal, relationships, self development, thoughts, work

Tagged as business, emotional intelligence, emotions, empathy, inspiration, life, personal, relationships, self development, thoughts

March 4, 2010

The Starting Point for Empathy – YOU! Part 3 The Empathy Series

The Starting Point for Empathy is YOU – Part 3 The Empathy Series

In this series, we’ve explored some reasons to consciously act on developing our empathic skills. In the last post, Becoming More Empathic we outlined some of the ways to remove the obstacles we create in responding empathetically to others. In this post, we’re going to focus on the most important part of the equation – you.

The reality is that we are often as hard on ourselves as we are on others. We’ve often joked that if we sat next to ourselves at a restaurant and overheard our own internal ”self-talk” we’d be offended enough to get up and leave the table! We can be very tough internal judges, self-critics and task-masters. So the practice of empathy has to begin with how we treat ourselves!

The critical question is:

Can you extend yourself the caring, kindness and understanding that are the hallmarks of empathic behavior?

The Wise and Delightful Voice of Pema Chodron Speaks Volumes to the First and Most Important Practice of Empathy.

The correlation between our inner and outer judge is strong. The measures and standards we use towards others often apply first to ourselves. So the place we begin to look first – is always within.

Once we decide to act more empathetically in the world, it’s also important to look within to explore these powerful factors:

Your Self-Talk. How do you talk to yourself? What do you say and how do you say it? When you “fall short” of your own expectations, how do you treat yourself? Unquestionably, the quality of our self-talk is connected to our ability to empathize with others.
Your Beliefs. This is a biggie. Your beliefs about everything filter your perspective, shape your feelings and show up as your behavior. So if you believe that so and so is a lazy slacker, you will be far less able to express any empathy towards him or her – even if some thread of it exists within you. Judgement blocks empathy – and the place to look for judgements is within your belief system.
Your Emotions. For example, how do fear and anger work for you. Just as there are emotions that enable the emotion of empathy to flow, there are several that impede it – fear and anger being the great gatekeepers. Because of the interrelationship between those two powerful emotions – they can be explored and their inner workings revealed together. Two quick examples: we may “fear” that if we demonstrate our empathy towards someone, we may be taken advantage of: and we may withhold our empathy when we also experience anger at someone’s behavior. Because most of us don’t have a great deal of experience “holding” multiple and seemingly contradictory emotions, we allow the more protective (at least to the ego) emotion trump the other.
Your Willingness to stay open and accept the caring, kindness and empathy others show you. Sometimes people are more willing to express these feelings towards others, than receive them. This is usually because allowing empathy in from others, can trigger other feelings like vulnerability that we are not used to experiencing.

As we wrap up this series we want to reiterate the power of the role of empathy in every aspect of your life – family, work, relationships – and most important to you and how you experience the world. Seeing the world from your empathic lenses may feel a lot harder, more vulnerable and even naive these days. But the benefits greatly outweigh the costs of self-protection.

Empathy heals. The scientific evidence is in. Empathy enhances well-being in ways we are just beginning to understand.
Empathy brings people together - it is one of the great “joining” emotions. Empathy is an essential ingredient in advancing trust and understanding in relationships, working collaboratively and creatively with others and illuminating mighty conflicts and tiny misunderstandings.
Empathy feels better than being angry and fearful – when we hold back our empathic impulses we inevitably close ourselves down. Emotions are meant to flow (the root word of emotion comes from the Latin words, e’movere, meaning to move – out). Emotions are meant to move! Blocking our impulses carries a price tag – you cannot simply shut down the flow of one emotion without impacting others.

Ultimately, the greatest gifts of empathy come not simply from understanding the other person’s feelings, but what it does for you in the short – and long-term.

We hope this series has been helpful to you. You can read Part 1 and Part 2 here.

We’d love to hear your thoughts and questions on empathy. We hope you will take a minute and leave a comment (see Comments Section in the Header above) and subscribe to receive notice whenever we publish a new post!

Thanks for joining the conversation.

Louise and George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under business, communication, emotional intelligence, emotions, empathy, feelings, inspiration, life, listening, personal, relationships, thoughts, work

March 18, 2010

FEAR in the Workplace

FEAR in the Workplace

“Fear is an aggressive predator of joy and creativity in the workplace.” Terence Deal & M.K. Key

Some years ago we came across an important book that has shaped our thinking about workplace culture. Revised in ’98, Driving Fear from the Workplace, by Dan Oestreich and Kathleen Ryan, revealed the realities and costs of the culture of fear that pervades so many workplaces.

Sadly, it seems that fear is an even bigger player in today’s workplace. Given the economic tsunami of the past 18 months – and prospects for continued contraction – it looks like fear will continue to be a dominant emotion in the workplace landscape for the near future, at least.

The book’s title was inspired by a one of the “Fourteen Key Principles for Management Effectiveness” from the founder of the 80′s Quality Movement, the late W. Edwards Deming.

Deming’s 8^th Key Principle – Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.

Wow – seems like a remarkably logical premise, doesn’t it?

So, why then is fear so prevalent throughout most workplaces (of every shape, type and size)?

The answers are deep and complex. Partly, they go to two roots: the dominant driving memes of a culture – and our own personal understanding and skills in managing internal and external fears. Every dominant societal institution is a fear carrier. We can’t think of one that’s fear-free. Can you?

Now we’re not saying that fear doesn’t have a biological protection purpose – but we’ve gone way beyond that in explaining, promoting and expressing fear in our cultures. Psychologists describe the innate emotion of fear as the stimulus response to a perceived threat. That’s the essence of what’s called the flight or fight response.

Perceived threat are the operative words here. Fear does not have to be REAL to turn on the corrosive physiological mechanism of the flight or fight response. At some level, we just have to perceive that it might be real. So FEAR in most cases (unless there really is someone lurking in the shadows, or a rattle snake on the path in front of us) is a FUTURE – BASED emotion that can control our thinking, feelings and behaviors without being real!

“We can’t run a successful society when fear-based (non thinking) is the norm.” Jason Seiden

Driving Fear from the Workplace describes some of the “undiscussables” (the secrets that everyone knows) at work:

Management practices
Co-worker performance
Compensation and benefits
Change
Bad news
Conflict
Personal problems
Individual feelings

Certainly, there have been advances in the ways that organizations handle employee input into these areas – BUT in our experience, we’ve got a LONG way to go, especially in dealing with the last two items on the list – personal problems and individual feelings.

Partly, this stems from the persistent collective belief that there is no place in business for the personal and a general lack of emotional intelligence in the average workplace.

There’s another important force that keeps fear alive in the workplace – too many people still believe that fear is a desirable emotional driver at work. We regularly encounter people who still see fear as a positive and useful motivational tool to drive their own – or other’s performance.

We strongly disagree. We believe that these ideas are relics of the old command and control models of management which dramatically limit personal and organizational evolution. There are a whole range of emotions that could play a much more inspiring and energizing role as motivational drivers than scaring ourselves and our colleagues into submission!

So – does your workplace exhibit the signs of a fear-based culture? A few examples:

Lack of willingness to speak up about all or certain issues
A culture of aggression (as opposed to more balanced assertion)
Leaders who model fear-based behaviors as the norm
Unwillingness to assert for one’s own needs (scheduling, amount of time spent at work, work overload, co-worker issues
Excessive gossip and blame permeating teams and departments

Although we are likely to be witnessing or experiencing fallout from fear where we work – it’s important to assess the degree to which the culture is driven by it.

It’s also important to understand how much of the FEAR FACTOR we bring to the table from our own emotional baggage. Because emotional contagion is real (see post Intelligent Emotions – at Work) allowing our fears to intermingle with the culture’s fears can make for an energy sapping low productivity cycle that affects everyone.

So what do you think? What role does fear play in your work environment? In your own work behaviors?

Thanks for adding your voice to the conversation. (add your comments in the header)

Filed under business, communication, emotional intelligence, emotions, feelings, interpersonal communication, life, meaning of work, personal, relationships, self development, Uncategorized, work, workplace

Tagged as anger, bosses, business, communication, emotions, Fear, feelings, leadership, life, personal, relationships, self development, thoughts, workplace

April 1, 2010

How Optimistic Are You – and Why it Matters!

: Image by JLA Kliché via Flickr

How Optimistic are You – and Why it Matters!

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Einstein

We recently heard about a boss who surveyed his senior staff about their levels of optimism. 10 being the highest and 1 the lowest – this group averaged 4. Concerned, but not completely surprised regarding the results, he has decided that his team’s low level of optimism isn’t good for them – and consequently, not good for business. He believes that to succeed in these tough times, he needs a staff that is, “bold, creative and determined.”

What about you – what’s your score on optimism – right here, now, today?

If it’s low, do you know why?

Is it temporary, reflecting a piece of news you heard earlier or something that hasn’t worked out as you expected? Or is it indicative of deeper feelings and beliefs about a specific situation, person or possibilities?

Unless you are one of those blessed with a “sunny disposition” possessing a positive outlook about everything – most of us experience optimism within a context. For example, you’d (likely) be far less optimistic about the potential for bipartisan Congressional harmony than the prospects and possibilities for your 5 year old child’s future.

Optimism is a fascinating topic that is understandably getting a great deal of attention these days. The more we read about it, the more we see that it is, in many ways, a polarized and misunderstood concept.

We agree with people who say that optimism is too broad a description to really drill down and get at its universal meaning. It’s more of an umbrella term that covers a variety of feelings and experiences.

So what is optimism?

While optimism has been the subject of research for the past 30 years, interest has increased significantly in the last decade. Many scientists believe we are hard-wired for optimism (interestingly in the same part of the brain as pessimism) just as we are for empathy (see 5 Reasons to Develop Your Empathy). Optimism, scientists say, is necessary for our survival.

Recently, we’ve also learned a great deal about the links between optimism and well-being, health and immunity. In ’09 a huge ongoing government study, The Women’s Health Initiative, demonstrated that nearly 100,000 women identified as optimists were far less likely than pessimists to develop heart disease.

In 1990, Martin Seligman released a pioneering book called Learned Helplessness which opened the door to more research in optimism and an ever growing interest in positive psychology. Seligman’s bold assertion was that pessimism was largely learned and that it was possible to un-learn limiting cognitive habits – and re-learn new more supportive cognitive skills!

“When no one believes in a better future, despair is a logical choice and people in despair, almost never change anything.” Alex Steffens

Optimism is intricately linked to beliefs.

To change anything – our relationships, our capabilities, our workplace – our world – requires a belief that change is possible. Without an enabling belief, we cannot change our behavior. Behind every optimistic and pessimistic thought – is a belief.

Beliefs are where the action is. When we paint ourselves into the corners of pessimism, we need to take a closer look at the beliefs that drive our feelings. Some of those beliefs are personal – based on our own experience, but many of the beliefs that influence us are “collective.” Somewhere along the way, we downloaded the beliefs of our parents, our institutions, and our society.

For example: Here is an excerpt from a February 2010 ABC News Poll:

Consumer Confidence near Low Point,
With Little Optimism about Economy

“Consumer confidence is on a cold streak, locked in place since the beginning of the year at very near it’s worst-ever rating – and more than three in four think the economy is stalled or will decline in coming months. A separate, forward-looking measure finds little in the way of optimism for the economy’s future. Just 23 percent think things are getting better and 77 percent say the economy is staying the same or getting worse – a chilling assessment given the very low ratings of current sentiment.”

Ouch! Bad News by any measurement, right?

The question is what do you do with information like that? Maybe you have a job that seems solid and your experience tells you things are fine. You are, in fact, optimistic about your future progress and prospects where you work. How does the headline above impact your experience? Or does it?

Or maybe the poll information above reinforces the pessimism you are carrying around and triggers feelings that are right on the surface (like fear) or dormant (like worry or anxiety).

What are we listening/looking for?

Just like we “feed” pessimism with the kind of thinking we are doing, we have to “feed” optimism to nurture and keep it alive.

We are not talking about the “Pollyanna” “sticking our heads in the sand” stuff here. Many critics of optimism ( Alex Steffens calls those critics the “impossibility lobby”) seem very concerned that we not fall in the trap of “unthinking” optimisim because it can lead to complacency, myopia and heaven forbid – disappointment!

We are warned to be “cautiously” optimistic. Not quite sure how that works? Cautious optimism sounds like a kind of partial belief in something or someone – a way we put the brakes on feelings as a form of self-protection.

We like to think of it as an “eyes-open, fully present” optimism. The kind that is aware and conscious of the “facts” and understands that the reality we draw on for our conclusions is an ever-changing and fluid state. And so are we.

What You Can Do to Water the Seeds of Optimism

Take stock. Certain emotions, like gratitude, can play a big role in feeding your optimism. Everyone has something to be grateful for and noticing that everyday is a reliable way of shifting your mood and your thinking.
Be more generous. Pay it forward, as the saying goes. Not just with money or gifts, but with your thought process. Yes, it works. The latest neuroscience shows how givers (as well as recipients) benefit.
Watch your body language. Body language not only communicates to others what you feel – it cues your emotions.
Pay attention to your language. The words you use matter, as does your tone. Psychologists point out that our optimism depends on our “explanatory style,” the narrative we use to describe our experience. Pessimism is often associated with a blaming style.
Maximize your successes. Unless you are some wild-eyed egoist, you are probably not talking to yourself (or others) enough about what you’ve accomplished and done well!
Minimize your “failures.” In NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming) terms there is no such thing as failure, only feedback. Extract the value from past mis-takes – and move on.
Challenge your limiting beliefs. We can’t say enough about the power of beliefs in terms of defining experience. Beliefs fuel your optimism – and your pessimism. Make a list and connect the dots.

Optimism is about so much more than “thinking positively.” It is about our deeply rooted values, emotions and experience. It has everything to do with how you live your life – and what comes to you while living it.

So what can you do to feed your optimism? How can it make a difference in your life?

Love to hear your comments, questions and suggestions.

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under business, communication, emotions, life, self development

Tagged as emotional intelligence, emotions, Health, Martin Seligman, Optimism, Pessimism, Psychology, Social Sciences, Thought, Women's Health Initiative

April 15, 2010

Working with Millennials

Working with the Millennials

We recently got a call from a potential client asking for help with one segment of their large workforce, “We need some help on improving the communication between our Millennial employees (born after 1980) and our Traditionalist (born between 1925 and 1945) customers.”

No surprises here. While some believe that the whole generational issue is too generalized and over-blown – our experiences working with multiple generations demonstrates to us that the differences between them can be real and quite substantive. Those differences impact behavior, feelings, assumptions and expectations that affect every aspect of the workplace.

The so-called Millennial (aka Gen Y) age cohort (79 million strong) is entering the job market in what author Jim Heskett (HBR – How Will Millennials Manage?) refers to as a “millennial watershed.” Up until now, the Baby Boomers comprised the largest group in the workforce. But that is about to change – radically.

What kinds of changes will Millennials bring to the workplace?

What’s it like to work with and for Millennials?

And most compelling – how will Millennials change the nature of work, or will they?

More has been written about the Millennial generation than any of the others (Gen X (born 1965-80) Baby Boomers (1946-64) and the Traditionalists.

Millennials have been described as: over-protected, over-coddled, over-scheduled, over-confident and self-entitled. On the other hand, they’ve also been called: civic-minded, risk -taking, bold, innovative, entrepreneurial, flexible, optimistic and balanced in their views on the role of work and life. A recent Pew Research Study describes Millennials as: “confident, upbeat, self-expressive, liberal and open to change.”

What Shapes the Millennial Mindset?

While many factors go into the shaping of values and the cultural and individual mindsets of a generation, one thing stands out about this generational cohort – Millennials are digital natives – they have never known a world without digital technology.

As a result, this generation has experienced and formed a world view vastly different from even their nearest cohort – Gen Xers. Of course, the Millennial’s relationship to technology can be seen as one of their greatest strengths, or weaknesses, depending on your perspective.

Dr. Clare Graves, a student of motivational psychologist Abraham Maslow, described “values” as a basis of human evolution. Graves thought that values imprinting was at its peak at age 10. If you reflect back on what was happening in your personal orbit and in the larger world the year you were 10, you’ll get a sense of the events and trends that were shaping your own values structure.

In 1995, the world of a ten year old Millennial looked like this: Bill Clinton was President: The Oklahoma City Bombing took 168 lives: Yahoo was founded; the DVD was introduced; O.J Simpson was acquitted: the Dow Jones hit a world record; the first computer animated film, Toy Story was released; Batman Forever was the Best Picture; Seinfeld, the most popular TV show and Kiss from a Rose by Seal won the Grammy.

“The Millennials will become to the world, what Baby Boomers were to America. but in a sustainable, emancipating way, humanizing the world.” Siva Subramaniam

That’s quite an expectation, let’s hope it’s accurate!

Like all generations, Millennials face an uncertain economic future. Expectations of easy employment, workplace flexibility and escalating earnings may elude Millennials, at least for the near future. Generation watchers speculate that the economic upheaval of the past two years may “discipline” Millennials and force them to readjust their expectations.

While it’s too soon to know what the effect the downturn will have on this generation’s work behaviors and patterns, it is clear that many Millennial work values could serve them well in a reconfigured work world.

The Millennial’s vision of work and their preferences for balance in their work – life may position them to take advantage of the changing landscape of the post-recession American workplace. Gen Y expectations are vastly different from their elder cohorts in ways that may maximize their adaptation to the new environment:

Most Millennials are not expecting to make a life time commitment to a job or company and are more content to work on a project or consultancy basis. While that may pose challenges to employers in terms of retention, it’s also more suitable to shifting economic conditions.
The majority of Gen Y’s are not looking to employers to guarantee health and pension benefits. They may look instead for work flexibility and trade-off traditional benefits for more freedom from the grueling schedules so many Xer’s and Boomers are keeping.
As more businesses and institutions tool up for greater social media connectivity, global commerce and communication, the Millennials are perfectly poised to jump into the driver’s seat to make it happen. They are intuitive about networks and innovate easily. They love to learn and change is a welcome challenge. (According to the ’08 Pepsi Optimism Project, 95% of all Millennials of the 2,008 surveyed had positive associations with the word change). Their boldness is what’s needed to regenerate economies right now.
They are naturals at teamwork. They like to share power and ideas and that makes them perfectly suited to an interconnected global workforce.
Gen Y’s desire meaningful work. Sustainability and community matters to them. They could be the catalysts to accelerate the pace of change that is so needed to remake business and institutions to survive and thrive in the 21st century.

What is true of all the generations is that what we want and what we do in work – and in life – is driven by our values. While we may not be consciously aware of all the ways that our values drive us, we can be sure that the key to understanding our motivations and those of our multi-generational kin is by exploring values.

We often hear other generations lament that the Millennials lack work ethic values. So it’s always interesting to hear a Millennial describe, often with great clarity and passion, what work means to them and how they approach it.

To be sure, there are many differences to explore between the generations. As our workplaces become more populated with Gen Y energy, thinking and behavior, the way we work will inevitably change.

Author John Hollon (Millennials at the Gate) puts it well: ” Maybe that’s the one thing the Millennials can teach the rest of us: that work is the means to help reach our goals but not the end goal itself. They are going to do it differently, and like it or not, better be ready. Once this generation fully takes over, our workplaces will never be the same.”

If you are a Millennial, what’s your experience of your generation’s take on work? If you work with Millennials, what has your experience been?

And before you go…… check out the How Millennial are You Test?

As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts, questions, suggestions and comments!

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

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Filed under business, communication, generations, meaning of work, relationships, self development, values, workplace

Tagged as Add new tag, Baby Boomers, Generation Y, Millennial

April 30, 2010

Your Four Rooms of Wellness – How to Live in Them

The Four Rooms of Wellness – How to Live in Them

There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.

Rumer Godden. A House with Four Rooms

The Four Rooms metaphor has had a powerful impact in our workplace seminars. It initiates lots of questions, inspires thinking and leaves a lasting impact (just today we received an email from someone who attended a seminar several years ago who mentioned the quote still lingers in his mind).

What does living in the Four Rooms mean?

What are the Four Rooms – and how does “visiting” them add to the quality of our daily life?

We’ve used the Four Rooms concept to create a model and a program for wellness – but the metaphor can stand alone to increase our conscious awareness to honor all parts of ourselves so that we can deepen our experience of life. The idea is based on the principle that when our mental, emotional, physical and “spiritual” selves are in alignment – we can more fully manifest life’s richness and meaning. .

Wellness, stress and mindfulness are buzzwords that have entered the mainstream lexicon of our culture. They can mean very different things to different people. We are inundated with information every day about the latest research on mind and body. And while we are grateful for the knowledge, we must take what is useful and meaningful for us personally in order to reap the benefits.

But the Four Rooms speak to something deeper than just information, however useful it is. First we must define what a state of wellness is for us – and what it means to us. Once we gain greater clarity about what each room means for us – and how we can actually live in them – the commitment to visit them must be regularly renewed.

“Wellness” is an active state which must be practiced daily to realize the on-going benefits. Activating wellness requires conscious awareness, focused attention and a commitment to personal accountability.

Ultimately, each of us must accept responsibility for what we think, how we feel and what we do. Living in the Four Rooms helps to balance and deepen that connection.

The Four Rooms

Room 1 – The Mental Room

We place the mental room first because we believe that our individual thought is at the root of every emotion, action and experience. Thought is our greatest creative asset and the actor in every thing we do.

To really live in the mental room we need to become more self-aware, which neuroscientist V S Ramchandran refers to as the “Holy Grail” of neuroscience.

Developing our ability to be self-aware, to “bear witness” to our experience opens the doors to all of the rooms. In the mental room dwells the beliefs, assumptions and expectations that drive our experience. Becoming more intimate with how they work – holds the key to greater mobility and choice in moving through our four rooms.

The thinking process (and its branches of beliefs, assumptions and expectations) forms the basis for how we perceive our own well being and our power to change it.

Ways to Connect and Renew our Relationship to The Mental Room

Develop Self-Awareness
Seek out Silence
Understand Your Thinking Process
Focus on one task at a time
Practice Positive Imaging

Room 2 – The Emotional Room

This is the room where our feelings reside. Neuroscience has shown that our feelings do not simply emanate from one part of our brain (the limbic system), so we can imagine that this room is vast. It encompasses our entire body. You have more neural networks for feeling in your stomach and heart than anywhere else in your body.

Some of us really ignore this room. It’s like the extra back room, filled with clutter, that seems like just too much work to organize. Others spend way too much time in the emotional room, reacting on auto-pilot to life’s events, rather than using the knowledge of the mental room for balance.

The tools of emotional intelligence can give us a whole new level of freedom in which to explore this room. We tend to think of this room as a messy place filled with anger, anxiety, resentment, impatience and frustration. While there should be a welcome sign on this room’s door for all of our feelings, remember that this is also the room where calmness, confidence, contentment, satisfaction, love, joy, empathy and compassion live. There is room for all.

The Guest House by Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Ways to Connect and Renew our Relationship to The Emotional Room

Expand Your Emotional Literacy
Practice Developing Your Senses
Cultivate Bringing Emotions that Heal You (like Gratitude) into Your Daily Experience
Make more Connections Between Your Thoughts and the Emotions they Trigger

Room 3 – The Physical Room

This is the room where the physical body lives, our precious vehicle for experiencing life through our senses.

There are lots of experiences of life in our physical room. What we are talking about goes beyond eating less junk food and working out (though that can make for a healthier physical room). Our focus in the physical room is about developing a much deeper relationship with our bodies as the source for our experience of being fully alive.

To accomplish this, most of us need to make greater connections between our mind and our body. We tend to think of stress as the inevitable culprit that attacks us from the outside, describing it in almost “viral” terms. While stress can definitely be felt in the body and can wreak real havoc there, its trigger source is in the mental room. External events happen constantly that can be experienced as stress, but it’s the mental room that opens the door for stress to take up residence in the body.

Ways to Connect and Renew our Relationship to The Physical Room

Meditate/do relaxation techniques often
Rest often/get the sleep you really need
Get in touch with the messages of your body language
Eat consciously/drink enough water
Move, dance, play, exercise, laugh
Focus on your breathing as a critical support system for your body awareness

Room 4- The Spirit Room

The spiritual room is not about religion or ideology. Living in it doesn’t require a particular set of beliefs or faith. Visiting this room is about identifying what makes us come alive, how our “spirit” (regardless of how we define it) expresses our deepest values and the meaning and purpose of our life.

Living in this room requires that we more closely define what inspires and brings us joy. Whatever the experience – being in nature, working with passion, being with those we love, sharing ideas, caring for those in need, painting a picture, creating a wonderful meal, traveling to places we love – bring us into alignment with the spiritual room.

Whenever we visit this room, we integrate all four rooms in harmony. In this room, we find new sources of creativity, energy and peace. Here we discover what truly feeds us – the source of the real needs behind the endless quest for self-expression.

Ways to Connect and Renew our Relationship to the Spirit Room

Meditate/Reflect
Be in silence
Serve others
Practice self-compassion
Spend time in beauty
Do what you love to do
Stop judging yourself & others

Living in the four rooms does not require a great deal of your time. It requires your presence and awareness of their existence. It is the acknowledgement of your greatness, complexity and simplicity. Visiting the four rooms can be a source of perpetual wonder. You as your own reservoir of delight!

So – What is the concept of the Four Rooms for you?

Are you living with the awareness that your mind, feelings, body and sense of spirit are one integrated whole?

Which room do you spend most of your time in – and how would it enrich your life if you visited the others more often? How would your work, relationships and wellness benefit from it?

We’d love to hear from you and invite your comments, thoughts and questions

Thanks for stopping by and sharing this conversation.

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under communication, emotional intelligence, emotions, empathy, feelings, inspiration, life, relationships, self development, thoughts, values, workplace

Tagged as growth, Health, human resources, lifestyle. awareness, neuroscience, personal growth, stress, wellness

May 11, 2010

LIE TO ME

LIE TO ME

We’re hooked. Not to lying, but to the Fox Network series, Lie to Me.

In its second season (beginning in June) LIE TO ME is the compelling drama series inspired by the work of Dr. Paul Ekman, who can read clues embedded in the human face, body and voice to expose the truth and lies in criminal investigations.

Based on extensive research, Ekman found that the micro-expressions associated with some emotions were basic or biologically universal to all humans. The following is Ekman’s (1972) list of basic emotions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise.

In the series, actor Tim Roth (he’s great) plays Dr. Cal Lightman, the world’s leading deception expert. If you lie to Lightman, he’ll see it in your face and your posture or hear it in your voice. If you shrug your shoulder, rotate your hand or even just slightly raise your lower lip, Lightman will spot the lie. By analyzing facial expressions and involuntary body language, he can read feelings ranging from hidden resentment to sexual attraction to jealousy.

But we do digress. This post is not about Lie to Me, as fascinating as it is. It’s about lying – who lies, how much we lie, what we lie about and – why we lie.

As a result of doing many talks and seminars on trust in the work world, we’ve had some rich conversations with people about lying. But since we began doing more research for this post, we admit we are both intrigued and disturbed by what we are learning about lying.

Seems like – lots of people are lying. While we don’t want to accuse our readers of being liars, the statistics unfortunately show that lying is becoming commonplace.

Or maybe it has always been “normal” to lie?

Psychologist Robert Feldman (author of The Liar in Your Life: How Lies Work & What They Tell Us about Ourselves) states that people lie without even thinking about it (which means it’s outside of their conscious awareness). His research shows that we lie on average 3 times in a 10 minute period when we are becoming acquainted with someone. Dr. Feldman also says we lie less to those we are close to but when we do, the lies are bigger. Intriguing? Disturbing? See what we mean?

What Do We Lie About?

Looks like we lie about nearly everything. Here is a general sampling taken from the LIE TO ME website where people submit examples of their biggest “lies.”

I created a fake boyfriend on Facebook to make someone jealous, so now all my friends think he’s real. I made two more fake profiles and they’re now “friends” with my friends. I keep lying to myself that they are real people.
I got caught smelling like smoke, but lied and said I hadn’t been smoking. However, the truth is that I do smoke
I am married but I still love my ex with all my heart. I’m slowly cracking
I pretend I am blind to get women to have sex with me
I tell my mom I’m doing homework when I really go up to my room to watch porn.
I broke the company vehicle and told my supervisor it probably was the overnight people who did it and didn’t report it. They lost their jobs.
I lie to myself by denying that I have a pain pill addiction, and that I can quit anytime I want. No one knows this.
I never went to college. Because I am Asian and we commonly use aliases in lieu of our birth names, I was able to use an older brother’s Ivy League transcript without his knowledge to secure my first job. I now work at a prominent investment bank.
My parents think I skip on church because I’m tired, and my best friends are Mormons. I don’t believe in God, and nobody knows it yet.
I fell asleep while boiling eggs in my wife’s favorite pan. It was destroyed, so I buried it in the backyard and told my wife I had no idea where it disappeared to.
I wear a fake wedding ring so that when I go out for drinks I have an excuse if I am not interested in someone.

Whew! See the range of lies here. Everything from ruining a pan while boiling eggs to feigning blindness to get sex! BTW – the last one is an oldie with enduring utility.

There is also a lot of lying going on in the workplace. Recent surveys show that about 15% of workers who lie get caught. The reasons people give for lying at work probably won’t surprise you:

People lie about experience and qualifications to get jobs (that’s probably getting harder to do and at the same time there is more urgency to do it)
People lie to appease their bosses and co-workers
People lie about their mistakes or progress on work projects and things they have done or not done
People lie to keep the peace and not hurt others’ feelings

Why Do We Lie?

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” Oscar Wilde

Well Oscar, sometimes it is. But more often, the “truth” is far more complex.

Lying, secrets, omissions, fibs, exaggerations, trust, truth are all interconnected. They have everything to do with our values – and our conscious awareness.

In our seminars, most people cite honesty and trust as the two most desirable values they want in workplace relationships. They also add they are in very short supply.

Values drive what we do. They are about what gives us meaning. Satisfying our values can be tricky, and internal values conflicts are common. If two values, honesty and kindness, are very important to me, I can find myself in a difficult position when you ask me how I like your new much-loved snake face tattoo (which I find ugly). Which value do I honor – honesty or kindness?

Often things are true, but hurtful. When we choose to spare someone our “truth” are we lying? Maybe we are exercising our empathy and compassion by masking our true responses in certain situations. The Buddhists call this “compassionate action.”

No one wants to be called a liar. Unless we have some deeper psychological problems, we all want to think of ourselves in positive terms. So lying often requires a rich narrative, in other words – the stories we tell ourselves to justify our “lies.”

Research shows that when we lie, our brains work harder. The latest thinking is that deception and truth telling may arise from different parts of the brain. We could be wired for truth, which means that we have to exercise a great deal more brain power to rationalize and cover our deceptions – to others and to ourselves. We’re not genetically programmed (surprised?) to lie. Instead, we learn from models of early deceitful behaviors.

This raises a very compelling question – which parts of ourselves know when we are lying.

Is the same part that knows, the part that fabricates and covers up the lie?

Most people would never think of their lying behaviors as malicious. Yet, it is common for people to describe lies in such strong language. That is because lying hurts. Betrayal is a very strong and over-used word but being the recipient of mistruths can feel like being betrayed. To trust another takes a measure of “faith.” Too few of us respect this emotional vulnerability in others – and in ourselves.

While some lies are truly ugly and malicious, most lies are more garden-variety. We lie because we are scared of the implications of telling our truth. Our human vulnerability is always seeking a safe place and a soft landing. We crave acceptance. We desire belonging. And sometimes lying is just a poorly developed strategy to obtain the love, recognition and affiliation that we all want and as human beings – need – for our survival.

So – what are your thoughts about lying? What’s your experience of being lied to?

Are some lies acceptable? Is truth culturally determined?

Thanks for your comments and questions.

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

(Related posts: Who Do You Trust? and Trust & First Impressions)

Filed under communication, emotions, empathy, feelings, life, personal, relationships, thoughts, trust, values, work

Tagged as body language, Dr. Paul Ekman, honesty, Lie to Me, lying, microexpressions, Psychology, truth

May 20, 2010

Why is Handling Conflict So HARD? & What We Need to Know to Change It!

“The problem with American business is that it is afraid of dealing with the business of people.”

W. Edwards Deming

In the late 90’s we created and led a very successful public seminar on Conflict Management. In the ten years that followed, we met thousands of participants who attended those seminars armed with their workplace war stories.

Some came because they wanted to improve their conflict management skills, but most came because someone (their manager, HR, etc) “suggested” they attend. Once we got the initial resentments of the participants who got “sent” out into the air, we would inevitably discover the amazing common ground that most employees in the workplace struggle with – how do we navigate the range of people differences and get work done effectively? Often, not an easy task!

People bring all of their unresolved emotional baggage to work – and there is little we can do about that.

Enduring outmoded collective beliefs like – work life and personal life should be separate – are really old, old-school ideas that speak to a lack of knowledge about the neuroscience of emotions and human dynamics. People don’t stop being people just because they are at work.

But what really struck us in those years of experience was how little people know about conflict in general – where it comes from and how to respond to it. Even more telling is how little management and organizations know – and do to address it.

There are deep, historic reasons why business continues to manage conflict so poorly. Part of it has to do with the “legacy” of the organization as machine. People never did fit smoothly into the Frederick Taylor model of people as widgets. Their needs and emotions are sloppy and unpredictable and mess up the engine of production, right? All of these factors have undoubtedly contributed to the habitual ways organizations structure their management practices and policies. Conflict issues usually get relegated to HR or some other designated entity and usually get remedial treatment.

Occasionally, an “enlightened” organization (or HR professional) will provide workers with conflict resolution skills training – a good thing (for consultants like us – and we believe for the participants and the organization). Unfortunately, too often those interventions are not system-wide and do not address the structural roots that can trigger conflict within an organization or department. Consequently, individuals and managers are left to fend for themselves with varying levels of conflict awareness to resolve the inevitable issues that will arise in the process of work.

What’s Missing in the Conflict Equation?

One thing that has consistently emerged for us while working with people to increase their conflict management abilities is the persistent belief that there is a magic formula we can learn to resolve conflict. If there is one – we don’t know about it. There is no magic bullet!

Our experience has taught us that becoming more successful in responding to conflict requires rigorous self-awareness and the deepening of knowledge and skills at many levels. The tendency of many people we have worked with is to look outside of themselves for answers, which often includes futile fault-finding and blaming.

There is an interesting saying within the mental health professional that goes: “Not everyone can be the patient.” Meaning – someone has to step up to the plate – regardless of the source/s of the conflict.

Becoming More Skillful in Managing Conflict – A Checklist

“Everything we do is in service of our needs. When this one concept is applied to our view of others, we’ll see that we have no real enemies, that what others do to us is the best possible thing they know to do to get their needs met.” Marshall Rosenberg

What is your Conflict Style? Few people have transcended what they learned as children about conflict. This has everything to do with expressing and handling feelings. Think back – who were your earliest conflict modelers and what did they teach you about conflict? Most of us learned some version of the three predominate conflict “styles” – avoid, attack and defend. If those fit your description, maybe it’s time to learn something new and go beyond those old conditioned responses?
Identify Root Causes – Most of the time we never get to the real source/s of conflict. The root of a conflict has to do with human needs. Most of us are not practiced in identifying our deeper needs; we just keep roaming around the surface. That is one reason why conflicts continue to stay unresolved and recycle with new triggering external events.
Understand What Type of Conflict You are Dealing With. Most conflicts are internal – yes, we’ll repeat that – internal. Even if we are reacting to something external that is triggering us emotionally – it is often our internal processes that drive the conflict (at least our part in it). All conflicts are not interpersonal. We can have an internal conflict when no one else is involved. Many conflicts are structural in nature. This is especially true within the workplace. The problem is too many people are internalizing conflicts whose roots are organizational and trying to solve issues that are out of their control!
Examine Your Beliefs. Unchecked beliefs play a huge role in conflict. Your expectations, assumptions and behaviors are driven by your beliefs. We have beliefs about EVERYTHING – people, work, how things should be done, why people do and don’t do things, etc. And we have deep-rooted beliefs about conflict. The first question to ask yourself is: What do I believe about conflict? Can anything positive come from this experience?
Undeveloped Emotional Intelligence Skills. Without making a commitment to develop our emotional awareness and skills competencies, we really can’t expect to improve our ability to manage conflict. Most conflict is triggered or exacerbated by a lack of awareness of why we feel what we feel and how to manage those emotions more constructively.
Ineffective Communication Skills. Lots of conflict results from lazy or unclear communication. In the blizzard of contact that happens in today’s world, it is easy for misunderstandings to happen. Only about 1/3 of our audiences rate their listening skills as very good. We ALL need to get better at listening and practicing empathy towards others.
Care. Seems simple, doesn’t it? You have to care. An alarming number of people we encounter in today’s workplace tell us they really don’t care about their co-workers! These people often see workplace relationships as a means to an end – and that end is getting things done. If you see people at work as tasks – and not as people (with their own needs and feelings) you’re likely to have much more conflict. This gets even more challenging when you don’t like someone or they are “poor performers.”

It’s our experience that concentrating and applying even one of these principles in responding to conflict will shift your outcomes. You will feel and see the difference, even if it is, at times, subtle. While you may not get instant or total resolution to every conflict, understand that you are creating a new process – and shedding a life long pattern of habits that keep producing the same outcomes and results.

Whether you are a manager, a co-worker, parent, friend, partner or spouse, becoming more familiar with what drives your responses to conflict will serve you and those around you – well! Ultimately, it is about how you respond to the many events that are outside of your control to “fix” that shapes conflict. The big fix is inside – HOW you think, feel and respond to those events is always your choice.

Your Turn

What do you believe about conflict?

What have been the most productive ways you have found to manage it?

Are workplace conflicts more challenging – if so, why?

We love to hear from you. Please share your comments and questions. Be sure to subscribe so you’ll receive notice whenever we post.

Thanks for joining the conversation,

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

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Filed under business, communication, conflict, conflict management, emotional intelligence, emotions, empathy, feelings, interpersonal communication, listening, relationships, work, workplace

Tagged as anger, beliefs, bosses, human resources, marshall rosenberg, personal, Psychology, self development, thoughts, w. edwards deming

June 3, 2010

Beyond Anger Management – You and Your Anger

“The beliefs we have about anger and the interpretation we give to the experience are as important to its understanding as anything intrinsic to the emotion itself.”

Carol Tavris Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion

This post is not a prescription for managing your anger or an analysis of the many anger management programs on the market. Instead, our purpose is to dig more deeply into the nature of anger – wherever it occurs (and context does matter).

Anger has been called the “misunderstood emotion.” Why is that? Seems like we know everything there is to know about anger, don’t we? While there still is no scientific consensus on anger’s roots or definition, each of us has accumulated strong beliefs about this powerful, universal emotion.

There are many reasons why anger is so “misunderstood.” This is due, in part, to the mixed messages cultures send regarding the acceptance and norms of the expression of anger. The signals for tolerance of the expression of anger comes to us early, from the time we are toddlers, through the overt and subtle messages of parents and societal influences.

In the US where there appears to be a high tolerance for the expression of anger, much depends on context. In practice, the US is actually quite ambivalent about anger. While the public discourse, especially through media, is skewed towards demonstrations of anger and vitriol, there are still many situations where expressing direct anger is essentially taboo. One primary place where the expression of anger is still largely unacceptable is the workplace.

Now we are not suggesting here that anger in the workplace doesn’t occur. It is, in fact, pervasive and insidious – and mostly unmanaged. Anger gets played out in many different ways through work, especially through relationships. But there is a major difference between acting anger out (venting) – and the honest and appropriate expression of anger. We have few models for doing that safely and productively in the workplace. So it is unsurprising that so much anger shows up as: gossip, vindictive and selfish acts, lying and even violence when the pressure cooker of the workplace tips the scales.

The general lack of emotional safety in most workplaces triggers and reinforces the anger many workers experience. Surely, every employee has the responsibility to manage their emotions, but the structural conditions of many workplaces ignore and exacerbate inevitable human dynamics.

Does Your Anger Have Value?

Let’s begin by laying down a framework for what we believe about emotions. In our work we never refer to groups of emotions as good or bad, positive or negative. Certainly dealing with emotions like anger, rage and hate are far more difficult than happiness, confidence and enthusiasm. And given the wreckage that anger often leaves in its path – it is understandable that we would have negative views of it.

Our point here is that every emotion potentially has value – it all depends on how we think about it – and then act on it. In our view, all emotions are a source of information about our experience. If we meet our needs and our values are in alignment with our actions – the emotional outcomes we want will usually be the result.

The challenge with emotions often is that they become unconscious and habituated to certain thoughts and behaviors creating repetitive neural patterns. Emotions reside in the body. So working with your physiology in concert with your thinking process is how you begin to “unhook” your unwanted emotional reactions.

Think Of Your Anger As A Wake-Up Call.

“Most people with real anger problems think that something outside of them controls what they think and feel.” Dr. Steven Stosny

What’s complex about anger is not simply how you get rid of it, but how you understand it. Your anger is “showing” up for a reason. True, you have to deal with the habituated behaviors that lead to or trigger anger, but first you have to do some introspection to understand its root source.

Unfortunately, too often we tend to look for the sources of our anger outside of ourselves. It is easy to blame others and external events for our anger. But the bottom line is – no one can cause you to be angry but you. You may be triggered by dozens of events, circumstances and situations in a given day (who isn’t?) but your response is always your choice. That’s why anger can be a great learning tool (didn’t say an easy one, did we?). Identifying your anger triggers (some of us need several pieces of paper for this assignment) is a very valuable way to start understanding what your anger wants.

Typically, underneath our occasional or patterned anger responses are needs that are not being met. Identifying and understanding the needs and beliefs behind your anger is the next step to making different choices in your responses.

How Angry Are You?

Most of us think of anger as a big blustery loud show of force. But there is also the seething slow – burn type of anger that can be just an intimidating to others as the screamer type. Some of us are anger-averse – we’ll do anything to avoid conflict and displays of anger. Since anger can’t be permanently buried, it will show up in some other way, like chronic illness.

The ways in which you express your anger has a great deal to do with your conditioning. Unless you have advanced your skills in emotional literacy, the language you use to describe your feelings often doesn’t actually capture what you are truly experiencing. Having a broader understanding of the range of your feelings is valuable because you can get deeper insights into the why of what you feel when you know more about what you feel – and when you feel it.

For a start – take the anger quiz here! You’ll notice the questions don’t just pertain to anger – but to the whole range or “family” of feelings that are degrees of anger. Anger is often lurking in the background of:

Irritation – do you walk around with a general sense of feeling “irritated” for portions of the day or in connection with certain events or people?
Annoyance – “cousin” of irritation, annoyance starts to ratchet up the anger scale a bit. Some people find it easier to say they are annoyed when they really feel angry.
Impatience – the epidemic emotion of our time! We don’t know anyone who does not experience some form of impatience – for some it is chronic.
Frustration – this takes impatience to the next level. Frustration is worth a post in itself (hey, good idea). Frustration is a real indicator that we are not meeting our needs (often in the moment) and often signals another feeling – overwhelm.
Resentment – Deeper roots here. Old hurts, unresolved issues, old baggage. People can drag resentment around for a long, long time. All emotions can be cumulative, resentment is almost so.
Hostility – Usually an overt expression of unresolved anger. As we can turn anger inside (sadness, depression can result to name a few) hostility’s target is the outside world. It is often a defense against deeper feelings.

Learning the differences between feelings that we experience can also help us to proactively respond to the thoughts and needs triggering the emotion. For example, irritation and impatience are often springboards to anger. If we recognize the sometimes subtle physiological reactions we experience when we are getting irritated or impatient, we can often avert moving into full-blown anger.

Anger can also act as a cover emotion. For some people, it is easier to show their anger rather than their hurt, sadness, grief or fear. So it is important to understand with greater precision what it is we are truly feeling. Anger is a powerful emotion energetically that packs a significant physiological punch, especially on the heart. According to the Institute for Heart Math, anger can lead to incoherent heart rhythm patterns. Our hard-wired mechanism for the fight or flight response can take a damaging toll on our bodies if chronically activated.

The good news is that we can unlearn what we have learned to break the habits of anger. There is even encouraging new research that shows that learning certain inner technologies: self-awareness, cognitive insights, breathing methods, meditation and good ole’ self-disclosure can undo the physiological damage of repetitive and repressed anger. New evidence also shows that our other emotions, compassion, empathy and love, can be healing salves to the emotional and physiological wounds of anger.

Undoubtedly, anger can act as a force for change and good. Anger can motivate and energize us, calling us to take action. It can also control us and intimidate and provoke those around us. To change our relationship with anger, we must first, get to know it more intimately – learning how deep the roots of our anger go. Second, we begin to understand the beliefs that fuel our anger, and most important, identify the needs that drive our anger. With these steps we can begin to recalibrate the healthy expression of anger in our lives.

As always, we love to hear your thoughts and comments. Thanks for joining the conversation.

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under anger, anger management, business, communication, compassion, conflict, emotional intelligence, emotions, empathy, feelings, life, relationships, self development, thoughts, values, workplace

Tagged as feelings, Health, human resources, Psychology

June 10, 2010

Talking to Yourself – Are You Judging or Coaching?

We once heard someone say that if we overhead a conversation at the next table in a restaurant with people talking to each other the way we talk to ourselves – we’d get up and leave. Know what we mean?

This statement has stayed with us for a long time, especially when we are judging ourselves harshly or listening to the stern self-judgment of others.

Why do we do this? Why are we so hard on ourselves?

In psychological and personal development circles, it’s called Self– Talk and in our experience few people do it constructively and compassionately.

Self-talk is that endless mental chatter, often between parts of our selves that is essentially our LIFE SCRIPT. It is the narrative that we run about our experience and the state of the world inside our heads. Self-talk isn’t just pop psychology jargon, it is a real function of the processing of our brains as we attempt to gather new information and self-regulate.

Mostly self-talk is our brain running on auto-pilot, out of our conscious awareness. Researchers say that 75% of the average person’s self-talk is negative. We don’t know how they measured that, but it sounds about right in our experience.

Where Does Our Self-Talk Come From?

The roots of self-talk are interesting. According to moral development expert, Lawrence Kohlberg, it begins with our earliest repetitive self-mutterings as toddlers, when we use certain words we hear for comfort. As we get a bit older, we use it to learn to self direct our behavior by talking to ourselves as if there was someone else in the room.

By about age 7, this self-guiding talk becomes internalized thought. At this point what a child has heard, seen and felt around them become their own internal voices. Fundamentally, what we have integrated by that age are most of the basic beliefs, ideas and often, feelings, of our closest care takers and cultural influences.

Most childhood experts agree that self-talk is a remarkably positive human (and unique) mechanism. Using self-talk to learn new behaviors and guide healthy and ethical choices is fundamental to positive growth. It is the essence of what we call “conscience.” But experts also point to children and adults whose self-talk is so contradictory and self-defeating that they can act destructively or simply out of impulse.

Who is this Inner Critic?

“It is a voice within you, but it’s not you.” Sharon Good

One thing many of us know is that the Inner Critic is a know-it-all. The Inner Critic or Judge is an all- powerful, seeing and knowing voice. The Critic can draw with complete accuracy (or so it thinks) from the past – and see with uncanny vision into future. In fact, the Inner Critic mostly likes to hang out in the past and future. It also shows up in the present, but usually just to point out how things didn’t go well in the past and might not go so well in the future. It dwells on mistakes.

“The Inner Critic uses words in powerful ways. One of its favorites is mistake. It dearly loves this word. “That was a mistake. I should not have gone out to lunch. I should have sent that email. I should not have eaten that sandwich. I should accept that invitation.” Embracing Your Inner Critic, Hal & Sidra Stone

The Inner Critic has one essential message that shows up in several ways:

There is something wrong with you
There is something wrong with them
There is something wrong with the world

What is so important to understand about your self-talk and its implications is that your thoughts (self-talk) trigger your emotions (feelings) and drive your behavior. Self-talk is not idle. Ultimately it translates into choices and actions.

Can we turn our Inner-Critic into an Inner–Coach?

The good news is that we can. Unless we have certain psychological or brain disorders, we can change, with effort and consistency, and rewire our brains to positive self-talk.

The brain likes and looks for patterns. Negative or positive. The brain likes patterns because it doesn’t have to work as hard in processing information. Every time we change a negative self-talk pattern (and we do this – thought by thought) we are reshaping our neural networking.

The brain will also eliminate unused neural pathways. In other words, if we disrupt and minimize certain thinking patterns, the brain will eventually excise that neural network.

The 5 Essential Tools to Changing Self-Talk

Awareness – This is the basic tool for change. Becoming conscious of what you are saying to yourself is key. Noticing the patterns of your self-talk, negative and positive. This often shows up as chronic worry (the “mother ship” of self-talk), anger, irritation, fault-finding and blame.
Cultivate Your Neutral Witness – The neutral witness is a keen observer of what you say to yourself and under what circumstances your self-talk is triggered. The witness is non-judgmental. Its job is to observe and note – not to fix or prescribe.
Stay in the Present – Of course we all have to reflect on the past in order to self-correct (gently) and plan (non-obsessively) for the future. But the Inner Critic has a much tougher time operating in the NOW, so it is a good place (and in reality, the only place) to be.
Watch your Language – The Inner Critic’s language is much harsher than that of the Inner Coach. The Critic’s voice is generally not very kind. Language can be loaded with emotional impact and the Critic likes to use words that dramatize and catastrophize circumstances. While the Critic may say something like: “Tina has betrayed my trust and our relationship is over,” the more rational, kinder Inner Coach may reframe the experience by saying “Tina’s actions are upsetting to me and I want to understand them better before making a decision.”
Start Replacing Inner Judgment Statements with Positive Ones – Yes, despite what many “Outer Critics” say about positive affirmations – they can work. But they are less effective if you don’t believe them. So if you say “Wow I look great” over and over, yet you really believe you are 20 lbs overweight they won’t work. Find statements that match what you believe, even if they seem only a bit more positive than your negative self-statements. In other words, inventory all of your goodness, your best qualities and accomplishments and use them to support yourself – often!

You can change your personal narrative. Start now by imagining a day of self-talk that reinforces your most positive beliefs (about yourself, others and the world). It can have a life-changing impact on your work, relationships, health and your finances. It also feels a lot better.

Is your inner dialogue more of a critic or a coach?

How does your inner-critic limit you?

As always we love to hear your comments and questions. Please take a moment and let us know what you are thinking.

Thanks for joining the conversation.

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

10 Comments

Filed under anger, brain, changing behavior, communication, compassion, emotions, feelings, inner critic, life, personal, relationships, self development, self-talk, thoughts

Tagged as human resources, personal growth, Psychology, self help

June 24, 2010

Is Self-Deception Keeping You in the Box?

Have you ever wondered if there was a missing ingredient that could improve your relationships – in the workplace and beyond?

Well, it wasn’t until we came across the book, Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the Box, written by The Arbinger Institute, that we were able to put our finger on an important part of the puzzle. – Self Deception. Not that it’s THE ANSWER, but it can go a long way in changing the quality and nature of your relationships.

Understanding how acts of self-deception affect our perception of others is the first step. This can give us insights into recognizing the behaviors that can lead us to treat people more as objects – means to our end – and not living breathing human beings with needs just like our own.

It is easy to get caught up in the endless “doing” of work and lose sight of who is at the other end of our “transaction”. Managers, even seasoned ones, who pride themselves on their results orientation, can lose their focus seeing interactions between people – as tasks. Another workplace reality is that we simply do not “gel” with or even like, some of our co-workers – all the more reason to see past their humanness.

“We define self-deception as not knowing – and resisting the possibility – that one has a problem. Arbinger Institute

So, what is self-deception? Here’s one perspective: when we act in ways that are contrary to what we believe is right and appropriate, especially in our relationships, we are engaging in self-deception.

Now it is true, we can deceive ourselves in many ways. We can make promises to change our behavior that we never keep, we can deny our own self-destructive habits and rationalize choices that betray our inner truths. But relational self-deception is particularly common and can become habitual if we’re not self-aware.

Because we unconsciously create patterns of thought and responses to problems and issues in our lives, we often develop beliefs that people and events are the root cause of our actions. In other words, we blame others for our actions. We lie to ourselves.

Essentially, our unconscious acts of self-deception have at the core our common failure to see the humanness in people. We fall short of taking into account that people have their own needs, beliefs and values that drive their behavior.

When we act in a sense – against our own values, we put ourselves into a “box.”

In the Box

When we’re in the box we see and respond to others through the lens of self-deception. We lose sight of others and to justify our behavior we blame or find fault with them. They then become a problem, a nuisance, an obstacle …no longer a “person.”

The distortion of self-deception can take many forms. We exaggerate the shortcomings of others and pump up our own virtues. When we deceive ourselves we see the other person as the problem and find all the things that we imagine to be wrong about that person and their behavior. Doing so allows us to feel justified in terms of our thoughts and behavior. In other words, we need the other person to be “blameworthy.”

To make matters worse, we often don’t even know this is happening… that we have a problem. Many of us carry around our very own “boxed in” perspectives, a result of unconscious conditioning and habits. We unconsciously create “boxes” of self-deception.

Dance of the Boxes

When we find ourselves in situations of disagreement or conflict (which may have as its roots self-deception) we encounter the other person’s “box.” Each person then provokes the other and like a well-choreographed dance, we have the “dance of the boxes.” Each helps to create the very problems they blame the other for and justifies a reason for staying in the box.

It works something like this: let’s assume that you were just promoted to a manager’s position and assigned to lead a cross-functional team. You believe that a manager’s role is to achieve results and that it’s important to build a cohesive and trusting team environment. It’s your intention to do so.

It’s now six months later into your role as manager and things have not worked out as you envisioned. Team members are not collaborating, schedules are not being met and trust is low.

If you were acting from within the box, seeing your team through the filter of self-deception, you would most likely see them as the problem and try to change their behavior. This is a common in-the-box problem-solving approach.

Now, it’s important to note that being in the box does not mean that the team’s behavior needs to improve. Remember though, when we’re in the box it’s a distorted view of other’s in which we place blame on them or circumstances to justify our self-deceit.

In order to get out of the box, this manager needs to first self-reflect on the following questions:

What or whom do you think is causing the team problems?
How would you describe yourself in your efforts to achieve results?
How do you see each of your team members?
How do they see you?
Do your behaviors match your intentions?
Have you inflated your virtues (i.e. “ I’m fair,” “ I work hard,” “I care about the company”)
Have you inflated the faults of your team members (i.e. “ They’re lazy,” “They don’t care,” “They don’t have the same sense of commitment”)

So, how do we get out of the box when we don’t even know that we’re in it, and stay out of the box?

There is a decisive moment (most often at the subconscious level) when our thoughts are focused on what we imagine the other’s person’s needs and feelings might be. The process of getting out of the box begins with this awareness.

There is always an emotional component associated with the thoughts we’re having about the other person. If we are connected to those feelings we have about the person, seeing them as people, we climb out of the box. In those moments we have a choice to act contrary to our deeper intentions, or to honor them.

What getting out of the box and sustaining out-of-box experiences boils down to is empathy. The only way to stay out of the box is to shift our focus to the other person, to honor the other person’s unique experience.

When we lift that curtain of blame, we open ourselves to more respectful and creative ways to respond to the issues and conflicts inherent in our relationships.

So – what experiences put you inside the box – and help you to get out?

As always, we love to hear from you, so please take a minute to comment! And thanks for joining the conversation!

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under changing behavior, communication, emotional intelligence, empathy, feelings, interpersonal communication, life, personal, relationships, self development, thoughts, work

Tagged as bosses, emotional intelligence, empathy, human resources, lying, personal, personal growth, Psychology, self development, self-deception

July 1, 2010

Breathing Your Way to a Calmer Workplace – A Simple Solution

In nearly all the seminars or workplace interventions that we facilitate, we take at least 5 minutes to introduce a simple breathing meditation.

Two things stand out about these exercises – they are often greeted by uncomfortable chuckles, groans and a few eyebrows being raised when first mentioned – and they are cited as one of the top 3 top takeaways in the evaluations!

It seems remarkable when we say it – but are you remembering to breathe?

That is what this simple post is all about.

Naturally, if we are alive, we are breathing. The question is how.

Watch a baby sleep – that is how we start out in life, with deep, slow, abdominal centered breathing. Unfortunately, poor breathing – fast, shallow and choppy – becomes a bad habit for most adults, especially when stressed.

The average person reaches peak respiratory function and lung capacity in their mid-20′s. After that, we began to lose it at a rate of 10-27% for every decade of life! Unless we are doing something to maintain or enhance our breathing capacity, it will decline the longer we live.

Most people breathe exclusively with their upper body, many hold their breath unconsciously. These stress responses, created at a young age, usually in reaction to emotional traumas, worsen over time. They contribute to a whole range of physical problems – and place our bodies in a permanent state of the “flight or fight” mode.

Clinical studies prove that oxygen, wellness, mental focus and life-span are dependent on proper breathing. Lung volume is a primary indicator of longevity. Optimal breathing contributes to lowering blood pressure; improving asthmatic conditions; maintenance of body ph levels; relief from headaches and burning of fat and calories just to name a few benefits.

Our breath supplies 99% of our entire oxygen and energy supply. Our physiology and brain need oxygen flow to be regulated for optimal health. The brain’s ability to maintain clarity and focus depend on unimpeded oxygen flow.

Emotions and Your Breathing

One of the most powerful connections you can make to shift your emotional state is learning to regulate your breathing. You build the capacity to do this by:

Becoming conscious of your breath throughout the day
Noticing the connection between how you are breathing and what you are feeling
Building new habits of breathing by bringing your regular awareness to your breathing before known stressful circumstances (like certain conversations, times of day, important events, etc)

The experience and intensity of your emotions is regulated by your thought and your breathing. These are inextricably connected. Typically when we are angry, frustrated or impatient, our breathing is shallow and choppy. Fear usually triggers us to hold our breath, while being calm we experience easy, full whole body breathing.

Consequently, if you want to ratchet down your emotions, your “go-to” place should be your breathing.

Try this little experiment:

Step 1: Close your eyes and imagine a time where you were really angry. Get into it. Visualize the situation and especially the person/persons with whom you were/are angry. Got that?

Step 2: Ok, now while holding this scenario in your mind’s eye, begin to get in touch with your breathing, slowing it down, regulating it to a smoother pace. Stay here for a few seconds.

Step 3: Now while maintaining your slow and steady breath, recall the scenario and the anger you felt a few minutes ago.

What happened? If you respond like many people in our workshops do, you will find it next to impossible to stay angry while focusing on your calmer breathing pattern.

Why? Because emotions are experienced in the body, even though they are triggered by thought. The state of your physiology either enables or disables feelings. When you learn to regulate your breathing – you are also learning to manage feelings, a key competency of being more emotionally intelligent.

5 Steps to Training Your Breathing Process

The reality is every time you allow short, shallow upper body breathing to be your main method of obtaining oxygen flow; you are training your breathing patterns. Like everything else, changing habits takes commitment – and consistency. Approaching these changes simply and incrementally often works best. Here are several steps you can take:

Decide on several times/occasions each day to stop and bring your attention to your breathing. It can literally be a minute or two.
Identify a few breathing techniques (there are dozens online, books and audio downloads ) to experiment with for a few minutes a day. If you are doing this at work (if you can, this can be very supportive) many of our clients say they find ways to either close their office doors for five minutes once or even twice a day to do their breathing/relaxation practice (one person reports doing it in their car, several in their workplace bathrooms for privacy) Be creative – find a spot.
If you don’t feel you have time consider that in a given 8 hour work day there are 480 minutes or 28,800 seconds to work with! Can you spare 5 or 10 for your mental and physical well-being?
Once you have identified a technique that works for you, begin to make this a routine practice. Don’t judge yourself or give up if you miss a day or more, just keep going. Consistency (even with lapses) will build your practice (and your breathing capacity).
Once you’ve got your regular (private) practice underway, start integrating your breathing technique into your daily activities (like driving, waiting in line or on hold) and conversations with others. The more you practice, the more you will notice the connections between your breathing and your behaviors.

If you stick with your breathing practice, we’re betting that you will find a little goes a long way – and you’ll want more. Learning a simple quick breathing technique and integrating the practice into your daily life will often lead to creating a meditation routine. The more you do, the more you will rest and relax – and the better you will feel. It is really that simple.

So how do your breathing habits affect you, especially when stressed?

How do you think taking a few minutes out, each day, would support your energy level and mental focus?

As always, we love to hear your comments, so please take a few minutes to share your thoughts!

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under anger, anger management, brain, changing behavior, emotional intelligence, emotions, feelings, life, personal, self development, thoughts, work, workplace

Tagged as breathing, fight or flight, Health, human resources, meditation, Psychology, relaxation techniques, stress

July 8, 2010

What Do You REALLY Want? 9 Steps to Achieving Better Outcomes

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where -” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat

Working with seminar participants and coaching clients, we often find this question – what do you really want? – can be the hardest to answer.

It’s not uncommon for people to respond to that question by describing what they don’t want. That’s fine; sometimes we help to refine what we want by being clear on what we don’t want.

The problem with this common approach is that it keeps us in the “problem state.” The problem state is essentially the place we want to get away from, and as such, it carries with it all the emotional, physiological and mental “stuff” that burdens us.

This post is about how we approach, plan and pursue what it is we REALLY do want. Apart from getting at the kind of details and specificity that can make a big difference in our course of action – this process is also about how you use your energy to get there.

Doing this process, also helps to reveal more about how your mindset actually works – especially in pursuit of moving towards what you want. Essentially, we are either moving towards something or moving away from it.

Even the words you use to describe your experience have a moving towards or moving away quality to them. Your beliefs, values, attitudes, assumptions, expectations and feelings make up your mindset.

Moving away thinking “I don’t want to work so far from my home any more,” has a past orientation. It places your mindset in the “I don’t want to be here or do this” mode – not a very resourceful state. The emotions typically associated with moving away thinking – impatience, frustration, annoyance, resignation can keep us anchored in apathy and procrastination.

On the other hand, moving towards thinking can have a completely different energetic feel. We start thinking new, fresh, opportunity, possibility feelings – optimism, enthusiasm, curiosity and confidence to name a few.

Asking yourself the question – what is it that I really want – gets you closer to deeper levels of motivation – your emotions and your needs. Behind everything we do – is a need. The more we know and understand the needs that drive us – the better able we are to satisfy them

Beyond Goal Setting

Planning and goal setting can be positive things to do (they can also set us up in a trap of self-sabotage). The question is how we do it.

One reason so many of our goals don’t come to fruition is because we have stated them far too ambiguously at the onset. Another reason is that we don’t plan the incremental steps necessary to take actions in doable behaviors. We bite off – far more – than we can chew.

To achieve our goals and realize our outcomes, we need to harness and mobilize our resources – internal and external – to succeed.

We’ve used versions of the following model personally and with thousands of clients working on a range of issues. The process of this model evolves throughout the series of steps, accumulating knowledge and experience as a result. But you can also use many of the steps individually to highlight a particular area you may want to develop.

For example – Step #2 – How Much Control or Influence Do I Have? – is a powerful stand-alone question, applicable to many situations. It is also common for people to go through this process and discover that they must refine Step #1. This is a good thing. The more specificity you bring to Step #1 – the better the process works.

Too many of us stay stuck in unproductive circumstances, relationships and emotional patterns because we do not have a clear assessment of our actual or real control in a situation.

Many of the conflicts (internal and external) that people have, especially in the workplace, are mired in the erroneous belief that through will or wit they can change events and people around them to suit their outcomes.

The 9 Step Outcome Model

You can apply this process to anything you would like to change, develop or achieve. Keep in mind – it is a process, not a magic formula. Like all change or developmental processes, it takes time, patience and consistency. We find it really helps to write your responses.

State your desired outcome in positive and specific language. Use “I” statements. (If you use statements like “I don’t want to be alone,” your mind will first form an image (usually your least desired) of – being alone. Avoid using should, won’t, can’t, not, must, etc, words.)
How much control or influence do I have in achieving my outcome? (How dependent am I on other’s actions to achieve my outcome? What are my beliefs about what I think I control and what I do not?)
What needs would be satisfied by achieving this outcome? (Most of us are not experienced in identifying and working with our needs, yet needs are the main drivers of our motivations. Getting more familiar with your needs is really important and will support you in this process)
Start identifying bite-size steps and stages in this process beginning with the first step you’ll take and when you will take it. (The “bite” size has to be small enough to be doable yet big enough to be compelling)
State in sensory-specific words: When, where and with who (if appropriate) do I want to achieve my outcome? (Learning to use your visual, auditory and kinesthetic senses is an important part of this process. Many of us are not in touch (a good example of kinesthetic language) with our sensory experiences in ways that directly relate to our feelings (and intuition). We also have olfactory (our oldest and first developed sense) and gustatory senses, but most of us don’t use them as our “primary” channels.
What will I have to see, hear and feel to let me know that I have achieved my outcome? (This is your “evidence” question. Also, it strengthens your imagery skills and requires you to visualize (and or hear/feel) a realized outcome in a positive future state. To be most effective, infuse your descriptions and imagery with emotion.
What resources do I have or need to help me achieve my outcome? (These resources are both internal (persistence, patience) and external (a supportive co-worker). Load up your description with as many resources as you can think of. This step helps you to learn to recognize and allocate your assets with greater ease. )
What might be the outcome of getting your outcome? Everything we do has implications. (Though you can’t foresee what they all might be, this question helps you to imagine how achieving your desired outcome will fit within the larger context of your life. Will it mesh with your values? How will others be affected?)
What might stop me from achieving my outcome? (Some people think this step should be at the beginning of the process. If that works for you, put it there. Our experience is that it is an excellent end point. There may be real external factors that can impede your progress and it is valuable to factor that into the equation. Most of the time, we find that the biggest obstacles we face in achieving our outcomes come from within. That inner critic, an unexamined or unsupportive belief, emotional habits, etc are the primarily blockers to explore.)

Identifying, planning and implementing the behavioral (mental and emotional) steps to achieving our goals is referred to in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) as a well-formed outcome. When you engage this process you will begin to experience multiple benefits as a result:

You’ll begin to see, hear and feel things with much more clarity and detail
Your attention will become more focused and responsive to your conscious control
You’ll be more aware of the language you use to describe your experience and express yourself
You will begin to create a more active channel to your intuition, activating it with more frequency and trusting it as a source of guidance (think of it as your internal GPS)

So – what are you waiting for? Grab a pen (writing longhand accesses different channels of info in your brain than typing) and get started. Let’s see what was that first question? What is it that you REALLY want?

As always, we love to read your comments and questions. Please take a minute to share and thoughts. Thanks for stopping by. Be sure to subscribe to receive notice of our weekly posts!

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under brain, business, changing behavior, communication, conflict, emotions, feelings, goal setting, goals, inner critic, intention, life, personal, self development, self-talk, thoughts, values, workplace

Tagged as achieve, human resources, inspiration, life, motivation, NLP, oucome model, patience, planning, Psychology, senses, steps

July 16, 2010

Why Today’s Workplace Needs Emotional Intelligence More Than Ever!

We learn a lot from our seminar participants. Their insights and experiences are our primary lifeline to what is happening – at every level – in today’s workplace.

And too often, what we are hearing – isn’t pretty.

Overworked, overburdened, stressed, exhausted, cynical, pessimistic, untrusting, disengaged, resentful, frustrated, fearful and angry are common descriptions too many people have given us of their work experience since the ’08 economic downturn. Not that things were rosy before – but pre–recession “good times” tended to obscure the picture and skew reports.

Since we began integrating Emotional Intelligence (EI) into our organizational consulting in the late ‘90’s, we’ve watched it slowly grow to become a more accepted “best practice” in many business settings. Many leaders and HR professionals have come to understand and inform their organizations that all intelligence is not cognitive.

Lately, more organizational leaders are seeking out EI training, coaching and interventions for their employees.

Why is that?

Well if you’ve seen the some of the surveys and reports we’ve read, you know that trust and engagement are at all time lows. Reports of bullying and escalated conflict (taking many different shapes and forms) are on the increase.

At a time when creativity, innovation and sustained engagement are urgently needed to restore and fuel new business, organizations cannot afford for their employees to be carrying so much emotional baggage. More than ever, employees need the tools to navigate interpersonal differences, manage change effectively and build strong relationships.

How Can EI Help?

While there are no magic formulas, increasing EI awareness – for people and organizations (yes, workplace cultures can be EI rich or deficient) can significantly contribute to healthier workplace environments. In our work, we are always hearing reports of how enhanced EI skills support personal and organizational efforts.

Let’s take the example of Jim, a manager in a Midwest manufacturing plant. In his workplace conflicts have been the norm for a long time, but have gotten worse since the recession. Jim reports that his company has tried everything to reduce arguments, lower turnover and absenteeism and implement changes.

“Initially, we never entertained the idea of Emotional Intelligence. I guess we thought of it as some California “love-in” kind of thing. When we heard about training people to develop their empathy competencies, we thought it sounded like a real waste of time.”

Now that his employees have developed and are using their emotional intelligence skills, Jim’s perception about EI has completely shifted.

“We looked under every rock, used all the right language and people still couldn’t deal with differences, their own issues and handling changes. Now we are starting to experience what respectful communication and collaborative thinking can do to turn those negative numbers around.”

What the Heck are EI Competencies Anyway?

There is no universal definition of EI. So let’s begin with our favorite “definition.” It’s based on the work of Robert Cooper and Ayman Sawaf, authors of the book, Executive EQ.

“Emotional intelligence is the ability to sense, understand and effectively apply the power and acumen of emotions as a source for connection, collaboration, influence and inspiration.”

This rich description captures the potential of using strong EI skills as a sustainable resource for self-motivation and healthy relationship management. Nearly everyone has the potential to build their capacity by developing the competencies identified as fundamental to the skillful use of emotional intelligence.

With some variation, most EI developers use the following competency clusters to organize skills.

The first two are considered to be intrapersonal skill sets.

Self- Awareness
Self-Management

Self- Awareness - Our success and accomplishments in the workplace rely on our ability to be aware of ourselves and our impact on our environment.

What’s that mean?

First and foremost, what do we know about our mindsets – how we think, feel and act? Until we develop the skills of self-awareness – conscious thought, feeling and action – we often operate reactively, in auto-pilot mode. Unless we have a strong awareness of our intrapersonal process – we tend to look everywhere except inside for motivation, problem-solving and to meet our needs.

Self-Awareness is the “mother-ship” of EI competencies – the foundation on which all other skills sit.

Self-Management - This critical competency addresses how we manage our internal processes. Everyone gets emotionally triggered, especially in the workplace. The question is how solid are our skills to honestly and clearly identify what we feel – and then to make a choice about how we are going to handle those feelings.

Without strong self-management skills we’re often looking for something or someone else as the cause and remedy for our experience.

Poor self-management skills drain personal and organizational resources. Managers spend as much as a third of their time managing conflicts and dealing (often indirectly) with employees who lack skill in these competencies.

The second cluster of EI competencies centers on our relationship abilities:

Social Intelligence
Relationship Management

Arguably, relationship building and the ability to collaborate effectively are among the most important skills for the 21^st century workplace. Some of us are naturally gifted in this area – but for most of us – it takes a great deal of “work” to maximize our people skills.

Social Intelligence – We’d single out two areas that we believe are the cornerstones of this competency – the ability to respond to others empathically – and the ability to develop trust in relationships. Both of these are worthy of multiple posts in themselves!

Although often misunderstood, empathy is not sympathy, coddling, indulgence, condoning, pampering, overlooking or conceding towards others. It is simply our ability to relate to others with care and consideration, even when we don’t like them or disagree with their views or actions. Empathy is natural to us all, unless those channels have been shut down in some way. Consciously acting empathically requires that we be as in touch with our emotional brain as with our “rational” brain.

Trust, in serious short supply these days, is the glue that binds relationships. Can we really be effective in our work without it? We certainly don’t think so.

Trust is a personal and idiosyncratic experience. It stems from our values, beliefs and the experiences that have been shaped by them. The more that we know and understand about how trust works for us – and for others – the better. Without that knowledge, we largely act from past experience (not always an accurate barometer) or from unchecked assumptions and expectations.

Relationship Management – Clearly this competency is built on all the others. How capable and flexible are you in relating to others to maximize your personal and organizational goals? That’s the challenge.

There is no question that people bring all kinds of emotional issues to the workplace. One reason (and there are too many to list in this post) is because most organizations don’t hire for EI competencies. As a society, we are not at the point (yet) where we have fully realized the value of social and emotional skills to accomplish work more effectively.

The three skills we want to highlight within this competency group are:

Listening
Assertiveness
Conflict Management

Regardless of the professional or organizational goals – EVERYONE benefits from expanding their EI competency.

Better listening elicits greater understanding and rapport. Assertive vs. aggressive communication strengthens leadership and influence while respecting the boundaries of co-workers and colleagues. In workplaces burdened with unresolved conflict or conflict-averse climates, good conflict management skills contribute to creating “cultures of permission” where people can speak honestly and respectfully about their differences and disagreements – freeing up creativity in the process.

In a post-recession climate as perks, benefits and assurances of security are reduced; organizations and leadership must fill that void with new incentives. More satisfying emotional experiences and workplace relationships are a key to that future.

As always we love to hear your comments and questions and invite you to become part of this conversation. What do you think EI skills bring to the workplace? What are your EI strengths and how do they support you professionally – and personally?

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under brain, business, changing behavior, communication, conflict, conflict management, emotional intelligence, emotions, empathy, feelings, goals, interpersonal communication, leadership, listening, meaning of work, relationships, self development, values, work, workplace

Tagged as bosses, collaboration, competencies, EI, EQ, hiring, human resources, Psychology, trust, trust in the workplace, workplace relationships

July 26, 2010

Your Beliefs Run Your Life: But You Can Change the Storyline

“You see everything is about belief, whatever we believe rules our existence, rules our life. Don Miguel Ruiz, author The 4 Agreements

“What’s the most resilient parasite? An idea. A single idea from the human mind can build cities. An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules. Which is why I have to steal it.” From the film Inception

Have you seen the film Inception?

It’s a stunner! A riveting, mind-bending movie that raises fascinating questions about the potential of our dreams and the nature of our unconscious and subconscious worlds.

The film’s concept of “Inception” explores the idea of entering into another person’s subconscious mind (via their dreams) to implant an idea – a seed that takes hold and becomes a belief. From this seed grow thoughts, feelings and actions. The seed must be deeply planted, infused with emotion for the dreamer to live out their beliefs on a conscious level.

While the premise of the film is fascinating, the point of this post is not to examine the state of dream sharing technology – but to look at the underlying truth that beliefs are powerful motivating forces in our lives.

The idea that given the right emotional climate a belief, not of our own choosing, can drive our thoughts, feelings and behavior is certainly not new.

Beliefs, the thoughts we operate on as truth, are the engine that drives our experience. They form the basis for our thinking, shape our emotional responses and result in actions, in and out of our conscious awareness.

Beliefs drive our actions at work, in relationships, as parents, as friends, as citizens, as consumers – every choice and decision we make is the result of the patterns of our belief system.

Beliefs run the show. Trace the trajectory of a behavior and you’ll always find a belief underneath it.

Where Did Your Beliefs Come From?

“A belief is nothing but the generalization of a past incident.” Santosh Sachdeva

Unlike the Inception story line, we aren’t suggesting your beliefs were implanted through dream sharing or any such complex process. But experience by experience, starting at a very early age, you absorbed the beliefs of your caregivers. They modeled the world as they saw it – and impressionable little you – integrated their views and experiences.

Everything in your young world – family, culture, media, peers, institutions, games, music, stories, play and sports carried implicit and explicit messages about how the world works – how the world is. And unless you were an exceptional child – you bought it. It wasn’t until you began to mature – emotionally, developmentally and experientially – that you challenged some of those beliefs to suit who you thought you really were.

In this early conditioning phase you learned about the the world and what is happening in it, the universe, family, relationships, trust, health, work, money, emotions, what’s possible, what’s not possible, what has value, what does not, what’s right, what’s wrong, why you are here – essentially the meaning and purpose of everything. By the time you arrived at the tender age of ten, most of your values – which stem from your beliefs – had been formed.

From our beliefs, especially the core foundational beliefs; we construct a narrative about ourselves, others and the world.

The world is a safe place. The world is a dangerous place.
Life has meaning and purpose. Life is random.
People are essentially good. People are essentially not good.
Most people can be trusted. Most people cannot be trusted.
I am capable of shaping my own experience. I am controlled by fate and have little control over it.
I am competent, and strong. I am vulnerable and weak.
Life can be enjoyable, easy and satisfying. Life is hard, struggle and unfair.
Work is about making money. Work is about fulfillment and satisfaction.

From each of these core beliefs, grew thousands of other beliefs. The important question is how much the beliefs you downloaded as a child; reflect who you are now and who you want to be?

You Can Change the Story

We live our lives as if our beliefs were facts. Few are. Beliefs are amazingly resilient things. That’s because from the time of their early “inception” they become neurally connected, fused to certain memories and emotions, and are practiced repeatedly as behaviors (even if the practice is simply mental).

Unless beliefs are explored, identified and traced for their inter-connections and examined – they go on running the show.

The bottom line is that our beliefs either empower us – or limit us. The choice is ours. While many of the beliefs we acquired as children served us well – some are simply habituated patterns that sap our energies and continue to produce the same unwanted outcomes.

We are not suggesting that unraveling old, unsupportive beliefs is a snap, but it is possible (now there’s an example of a belief in action).

Keep in mind that beliefs are habits of mind – and as such take time, persistence and repetitive practice to shift. Start with the smaller beliefs first and you’ll find that even the tiniest branch of a belief has deep and extended roots.

Start identifying your beliefs. Makes lists. You have beliefs about everything. Some support you, others don’t. Select the topics areas you want to understand better (your work, your health, your relationships in general or one relationship in specific) and begin to list everything you believe about it.
Begin to differentiate between the beliefs you list that serve you and those that limit or drain you. Notice the energetic shift when you think and write about them.
Indentify the emotion/s that you experience when you think of one of those beliefs (e.g. My new boss ______ is inaccessible, self-centered and a terrible listener) (emotions I feel when I believe this: frustrated, annoyed, anxious)
Identify the behaviors you engage in when you experience this belief and the feelings associated with it (I don’t say anything; I talk nonstop; I complain to my co-worker)

Once you start this process you will begin to unearth a whole constellation of beliefs, many of which are interconnected. As in the example above, you will see that many of these beliefs have you locked into unsustainable ruts. They are unproductive and deplete your energies.

Even when we find ourselves in challenging external circumstances (like with a boss with isn’t a very accessible, empathetic or inquisitive person) holding on to certain beliefs will not improve the situation, it will likely exacerbate the problem.

When we work with beliefs, we are always coming up against the essential question of what is in our control – and what is not. This informs everything. In the case of the inaccessible boss, what do we believe is in our power to change? The boss? The company policies or politics that hire certain types of people? Or, our behavior?

Exposing our beliefs – from the smallest to the deepest core beliefs – demands that we take much greater responsibility for what we think – feel – and ultimately do in any situation.

Once you get comfortable with the process, you will learn to look at all of your beliefs in this way.

Identify the belief that is driving you
Challenge its validity. Is it true? How do you know that?
How is this belief connected to your other beliefs? Is it part of an old pattern?
What are the feelings associated with this belief?
Practice self-empathy. Try not to judge yourself for having this belief. Be compassionate towards yourself.
Begin to reframe the belief. Using our inaccessible boss as an example, try some version of, “In the past when I have encountered people like my new boss, I’ve written them off and given up. This time I am going to explore the belief that I have the resources and skills to find ways to see him/her differently, practice new ways of communicating and stay positive and engaged in the process.”

We are not talking about sticking your head in the sand, compensating for the faults of others or pretending everything is all right, when it is not. What we are suggesting is that the more we understand how our beliefs direct our thinking, feelings and behavior – the more choices and emotional space we create for ourselves.

One more thought about Inception. The movie’s tagline is: Your Mind is the Scene of the Crime. Intriguing thought, isn’t it? While even the most vivid imaginations can’t take responsibility for the external “realities” around us we can be sure of one thing – when it comes to what we think, what we feel and what we do – as the writers, the editors, the producers, directors and actors of our life stories, we play a huge role in our life’s outcomes.

As always, we invite you to please share your thoughts, stories and questions in the comments section. You are part of this conversation and we love to hear from you.

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under brain, business, changing behavior, communication, compassion, emotions, empathy, how to, intention, life, management, personal, personal development, self development, thoughts, values, work

Tagged as bosses, changing beliefs, coaching, employee engagement, feelings, human resources, Inception, limiting beliefs, meaning, positive thinking, Psychology, self development, The 4 Agreements

August 12, 2010

LEADERS WANTED: Creative, ethical, emotionally intelligent, assertive (not aggressive) inspiring and passionate

Trust in leadership has taken a big hit in the past few years, reaching all time lows in public perception since the economic downturn.

In a recent Rasmussen poll, the CEO’s of the nation’s largest corporations were viewed favorably by just 22% of American adults, lower even than the ratings earned by members of Congress!

A poll conducted in the UK found that only 15% of employees totally trust their managers – and 85% are also in doubt about information given to them from above. Granted, we know that historically polls usually show higher trust numbers for worker’s immediate bosses, but these numbers are dismal in any measurement.

Employees are understandably more cynical about leaders than ever before. The illusory self-protection of cynicism is not only personally corrosive but carries huge implications and challenges for an economy that needs the commitment of its workers more than ever.

The question is – where are these numbers going and how will these huge trust issues impact the business environment in general?

The economics of the past nearly two years have been game changers. The dislocation and fear created during the fallout from this recession have dramatically impacted worker’s trust issues and raised serious questions for leaders at every level.

In most cases overburdened, stressed-out workers are managing with diminished resources and are operating on the fumes of the fight or flight response. Many employees, asked to do more and more to salvage their jobs and the company, are continuously rising to the occasion. That’s a major reason why “productivity” levels are still rising (as are profits!). Many people are performing with the constant anxiety that their jobs may not be secure.

While it may be true that people are staying put now in a buyer’s market workplace, their situation is not sustainable.

The 2009 Emerging Workforce Study revealed that employers are significantly underestimating worker retention rates. While companies in the study planned for turnover rates of 14%, the research showed that 26% of workers surveyed plan to leave their jobs when the market stabilizes.

The study identified two significant cultural trends that can have an impact on a company’s success in the near future – the role of social media and a desire for workers to feel more connected to their employer!

People can’t do their best work when their dominate feelings are anxiety, worry and frustration. But most critically, they can’t perform well without – trust. And leaders can’t lead without respect.

Leaders must address issues that contribte to the conditions for trust and respect to be restored (if it was there in any form to begin with)

Let’s begin with what leaders should avoid doing.

Harvard Business School Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter listed the negative actions leaders often take during turbulent times. They include:

Taking shortcuts that undermine culture and values
Exercising too much control
Diverting employees from urgent tasks that ignore what is really going on in the culture
Risking that rumors become the dominant information due to weak communication
Create more anxiety from poor communication regarding uncertainties
Create no outlets for emotions

We want to reinforce the importance of this last bullet pointed item!

Professor Kanter points out that when there is no outlet for emotions. “Anger and grief mount with no way to express or deal with these emotions. People might start acting in strange ways, undermining teamwork. Solution: Create facilitated sessions for venting. . Teach managers about dealing with trauma and ensure that they acknowledge people’s grief and anxiety.”

Eight Critical Steps All Leaders Need to Take Now

1. Attend to communication issues at all levels (starting with your own) Demonstrate that despite uncertainties and challenges there is a commitment to honest and clear communication

2. Be Real. Cynicism is at an all time high. People can sniff out a lack of authenticity a mile away.

3. Model the role of Emotional Intelligence (EI) in your interpersonal, team and organizational roles.

4. Identify, understand and strive to clean up the trust leaks that are apparent and hidden.

5. Give employees consistent and regular opportunities to ask questions and express what they feel – and need. Even if you don’t know all the answers and can’t deliver precisely what people want – your sincere attention to their concerns will be hugely appreciated.

6. Recognize. Praise. Acknowledge.

7. Be clear and accountable about expectations, while giving people ample autonomy and authority.

8. Give employees support in the dealing with the stress loads they are carrying (where possible provide all types of coaching, onsite and outside programs and work flex scheduling)

Every one of these steps makes a difference. It’s a leader’s job to create the conditions to support employee success – not add to the emotional albatross most people are carrying around these days. Give people more than you take.

You’ll need all of the qualities listed in the LEADERS WANTED qualifications above. They will not guarantee your success or the economic security of the company – but one thing is certain – it’s going to be a much longer and harder road ahead without them.

As always, we invite you to please share your thoughts, stories and questions in the comments section. You are part of this conversation and we love to hear from you.

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

You Can Do Anything – But You Can’t Do Everything!

Filed under business, career, changing behavior, communication, emotional intelligence, emotions, leadership, management, trust, values, work, workplace

Tagged as bosses, Fear, flight or fight, leaders, low trust, stress, trust and relationships, workplace relationships

August 23, 2010

Driving Yourself to Distraction: What You Need to Know to Maximize Your Work & Your Sanity

“We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.” – R.D Laing

The Scottish psychologist, R.D Laing wrote these prescient words in 1970.

In our work as organizational development consultants, we see an alarming increase of the effects of overwork and overwhelm on our clients.

Many of the circumstances that are contributing to the pressure on workers today are simply beyond their control. Volatile economic conditions are having a profound impact on the way we work and it is likely that the full effects will unfold over a long period.

Given this turbulent environment it is increasingly important to ask yourself this question:

“What Is In My Control – And What Is Not”?

That’s THE question. Regardless of the problem or situation – think of this question as your guiding mantra. What is in your control – and what is not?

But for now, let’s apply this question to look at the ways that technology is impacting your work life – and beyond.

How much of the technology you use in your life is in your control?
How much of the technology you use is enhancing the quality of your life and the effectiveness of your work?
How much of the technology you use is contributing to increased distraction, lack of focused attention and increased impatience and frustration?

In a compelling article in New York Magazine, In Defense of Distraction, author Sam Anderson describes the hyperactive scenario that is becoming the norm for most working people – whether in corporate settings or at the outposts of the self-employed (that’s us).

Equipped with laptops, blackberries, cells and video and surrounded by blizzards of emails, text messages and tweets, there are no longer any real boundaries to our work days.

We can and do, work anywhere and at any time. Take a flight on any weekday and try to find someone simply reading a book! Laptops are out on tray tables, spreadsheets compete for space with the bad peanuts and people are working non-stop from San Diego to Houston.

Science is weighing in with more studies examining the effects of technology on how we think, feel and get things done.

In his book, iBrain, researcher Dr. Gary Small (UCLA) posits that, “The current explosion of digital technology not only is changing the way we live and communicate but is rapidly and profoundly altering our brains.”

Daily exposure to high technology-computers, smart phones, video games, search engines like Google – stimulates brain cell alteration and neurotransmitter release, gradually strengthening new neural pathways in our brains while weakening old ones. Because of the current technological revolution, our brains are evolving right now – at a speed like never before.”

While it is true that research on the plasticity of the brain (its ability to change in response to stimuli) is well established, what’s less known, is how technology is re-shaping it.

While we know that adults now spend an average of 8.5 hours a day in front of digital screens of one type or another (Council for Research Excellence), we don’t know exactly how it is affecting us!

There is, however, ample anecdotal information on the ways that people report feeling more stressed, over stimulated, exhausted and scattered by the information, stimulus and demands on their time and on the use of their energy.

Most people still believe that multi-tasking works. Recent studies show that the brain cannot focus on one task while doing the other.

Because the brain processes different types of information from different channels, the switching required to multi-task, is simply inefficient.

Information and time are lost in the switching process. When subjected to MRI, researchers note that they can see the multi-tasking brain struggling, even though they still don’t know what is going on in the process.

Two key questions for those who still pledge their allegiance to multi-tasking -

What is the quality of the attention you pay to any one task?

How do you feel in the process of doing 5 things at one time?

Productivity expert David Allen points out that “the real challenge is not managing your time but maintaining your focus: if you get too wrapped up in all the stuff coming at you, you lose your ability to respond appropriately and effectively. Remember, you’re the one who creates speed, because you’re the one who allows stuff to enter your life.”

“Life is the sum of what you focus on”
– Winifred Gallagher

In her book, Rapt, author Winifred Gallagher, discusses the relationship between attention and presence – the ability to be present in the moment. While all humans have the capacity to be attentive (consciously choosing what to focus on) few practice it with any consistency.

Gallagher cites the “magic” of focused attention as the elixir for all that ails our addled minds and depleted energies. Maybe she is right?!

While we’re interested in the role of e-technologies on how we work, we are more concerned with their impact on how we think, feel and consequently communicate.

Our mantra is that awareness is the cornerstone of effective and productive communication (interpersonally and internally). Awareness, our conscious attention, drives everything we do, feel and say. Distraction diverts our awareness and puts our brain on auto-pilot.

Most of us give surprisingly little attention to how our minds function. But mind training works. It can improve the quality of our thinking, change the way we focus our attention and significantly enhance our productivity. Consider it an important investment.

How we are doing things cannot be separated from what we are thinking. It may seem like a long thread between our cluttered in-boxes and our fragmented thinking processes, but the connection is there.

Gallagher stresses that our attention is our responsibility. It is our choice.

The Brain Needs A Break – and How

Let’s go back to our core question at the beginning of this article – remember?

What is in your control and what is not?

To gain more clarity, focus your attention, feel and become more productive, it is important to be able to answer this important question.

Keeping the control question as a framework, consider the following:

Am I satisfied with the quality of my ability to focus my attention on the tasks I have prioritized (prioritizing can be a part of this problem but is not the focus of this discussion)?
How do I feel doing my work on any given workday? (Nearly everyone experiences frustration, impatience and irritation in the course of getting things done – but if these emotions are your norm – that’s a problem)
What is my relationship to my e-stuff? (blackberries, email, texts, social media, etc)
Can I get through my non-work time (assuming there is some) without e-stuff? (checking emails, texting for business, etc)
How has my increasing use of e-technologies affected my interpersonal communication? (you may want to check with an impartial “observer” to get an accurate read on this question)
Am I able to let my to-do list go? In other words, are you allowing enough time to let your mind – rest?

Depending on how you answer these questions you may want to begin to make some changes in your relationship to your e-stuff and the way you approach getting your work done.

4 Steps to Regaining Control over Your Tech Time

First and foremost, take stock of how you talk to yourself about all this. Yes, your inner dialogue matters. If you begin the day bemoaning how little time you have and how much work you have to do – you will set the stage for disabling emotions (we’ve mentioned a few) to take hold.
Get a handle on your e-stuff. Take good old-fashioned notes on what you use, how often and for what purpose. Can anything be eliminated? What’s being over or under used?
Read the In Defense of Distraction article and note the ways in which you typically distract yourself. What changes (even tiny ones) can you make immediately to begin to regain your focus? Make the connection between the state of your desk, files (and this includes your e-files) and your thinking. Start small but do something to de-clutter and re-organize.
Find some time every day to quiet your mind. Experts in this field routinely point to the power of some form of meditation or relaxation technique. Get outdoors – every day! Make decisions – and let go. This is very important and for some people – really hard to do. Practice with the teeny tiny things first. Slow down. We know this is a radical suggestion for some of you, but its importance cannot be overemphasized. We are talking about a mental and physical act here. If your thoughts are moving at lightening speed, your physiology will respond immediately. And most importantly, remember this is a process. Starting with smaller chunk sizes almost always works better than taking on big projects and goals to change. Taking on these changes in small, consistent and conscious ways will help you to re-train your ability to focus.

So – do we have your attention?

We hope so. The reality is that we live in an over-wired world that is getting faster and more demanding. Many of us are losing our connection to the kind of peace, silence and space most people took for granted years ago. Most of us long for it in different ways – but we feel too caught up in the to-do list to make a break – even for a few minutes a day.

The ease and possibilities of technology are exciting. They’ve opened up a whole new world. But unless, we step back and take a look at where we are in the process, we can get lost. Distraction and inattention are taking a serious toll in many workplaces and relationships.

Where you are – and where you want to be is ultimately your choice.

As always, we invite you to please share your thoughts, stories and questions in the comments section. You are part of this conversation and we love to hear from you.

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

“Cynicism distracts the brain from solution-building and rewires it to problem-blaming instead. It can also increase hormones that produce dangerous levels of stress. It rewires the brain for damaging practices such as distrust, doubt and scorn. The parts of the brain that are engaged in cynicism differ from those involved in more positive behaviors such as compassion for others or building meaningful solutions to problems. Eventually the brain moves cynical behavior from its working memory over into the basal ganglia where your mind stores habitual behaviors. At that point… choices for positive behaviors are harder to make” Dr. Ellen Weber

Filed under communication, emotions, feelings, goals, how to, interpersonal communication, life, management, meaning of work, personal, personal development, self development, self-talk, work, workplace

Tagged as brain, business, distraction, human resources, meditation, multitasking, patience, Psychology, relaxation, stress, technology, well-being

September 1, 2010

Cynicism – The Price We All Pay

“Cynicism is an unproductive reaction to disappointment. It springs from the helplessness people feel when they are disappointed by others and allow themselves to become detached observers rather than active participants. It carries with it a sense of entitlement that says, “You have disappointed me therefore my cynicism is justified.” Jamie & Maren Showkeir

Where are you on the cynicism meter these days?

If you are in the red zone of low to no trust – you have plenty of company.

Have you become a cynic? Hard core or soft – cynicism can be sapping you of your vitality, spontaneity and possibilities.

The signs of cynicism are obvious –low or no trust, blame, criticism, divisiveness, either-or thinking, pessimism, negativity, sarcasm.

At work, in relationships and in relating to the world – cynicism has become a dominant response to life’s events. Cynicism’s on the rise and has become a pervasive meme in the culture at large.

It seems that lots of people are cynical about everything today – the economy, leaders, colleagues, media, government, corporations – you name it! To be sure, there is good reason to question the conduct and motives of many of our institutions. As citizens, employees and parents we should be demanding greater responsibility, accountability and transparency (of ourselves as well).

But often cynicism breeds apathy – not activism. We inoculate ourselves with ever-increasing doses of cynicism as a defense against life’s disappointments and often wear our cynicism like a badge of honor.

While it’s easy to understand why cynicism is rampant – and even celebrated as “realism” by many in the cynic’s fan club, cynicism costs us all dearly.

What is Cynicism?

Dictionary.com defines a cynic as a “person who believes that only selfishness motivates human actions and who disbelieves in or minimizes selfless acts or disinterested points of view.” Other definitions include words like bitter, contemptuous and pessimistic.

Cynicism is not an emotion. It is an internal state that’s made up of our thoughts, feelings and behaviors. It colors our perception of what we see – what we feel and how we act in the world. While cynicism itself in not an emotion, it can trigger and reinforce many life-sucking emotions – hostility, anger, frustration, impatience, bitterness, resentment, hatred, rage, annoyance, doubt, anxiety and fear are all emotions associated with cynicism.

Cynicism is a psychological self-protection against – hurt, disappointment, sadness and most important – fear.

Cynicism is often fueled by anger – whether it’s the big noisy kind or the seething slow-burn types of anger. It can also be a distraction. A cynical response is sometimes easier to handle than taking action to make changes in our lives and in the world.

While cynicism is sometimes justified, unless the strong feelings it evokes drive us to constructive action, it can corrode our spirit and sap our energies.

The unchecked feelings that fuel cynicism can also take a big negative toll on our relationships, mental & physical well-being, families, organizations, institutions and our culture in general.

The lenses of cynicism can become a habituated reaction to the world around us. When we are cynical – we are mostly out of conscious awareness – reacting on auto-pilot to events and behaviors we have determined (often without examining) as suspicious and untrustworthy. Because the state of cynicism is fraught with unproductive feelings, it clouds our critical thinking process and saps our ability to make rational choices.

Justifications for Cynicism – All Roads lead to Beliefs

How we define cynicism tells us a great deal about our thinking process – and our beliefs. Beliefs are at the core of cynical reactions. You’ll often hear cynic’s rationale expressed with statements like these:

I’ve been “burnt” too many times in the past to let myself get “taken in” again
The world is a hard, tough place and you have to be tough to survive in it.
I’m not cynical – just experienced.

All of these statements carry some truths. They also carry old hurts and wounds and lot of doubt and fear about the world. When we live based solely on the experiences of the past, we poison the well of creativity, spontaneity and possibility.

Is this the place you want to be? Is this line of thinking and feeling ultimately serving you and your goals? And what are the implications for workplaces, schools and institutions scarred by cynicism and plagued by mistrust? What kind of future are we building with cynicism?

There are so many reasons not to trust. There is ample evidence for disappointments at many levels. It is easy to see the negatives.

But it is much harder to dig deeper and affirm what is working in our lives, our organizations, our families and friendships and our society. This is the key to staying vibrant, hopeful and in the “game.” Most important, it’s vital to stay present! One of cynicism’s worst aspects is that it claims our presence. While we may not be able to solve all the problems we see, we can stay aware and engaged. We can choose where to apply our energies because we haven’t squandered them on cynical impulses. It’s not about sticking our heads in the sand. It is about taking responsibility and making choices internally – and externally.

It takes discipline and constant activation of our deeper wisdom to not bail out emotionally. When we succumb to our cynical self, we disregard all the good within and around us and align ourselves with the worst behaviors and actions of others. In doing so, we separate ourselves from the world and take refuge in the temporary illusory protection that cynicism shields.

So – where are you at on the cynicism scale?

How does your cynicism or the cynicism of others impact your feelings and energy?

What do you see as the most useful antidotes to cynicism?

As always, we invite you to please share your thoughts, stories and questions in the comments section. You are part of this conversation and we love to hear from you.

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

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Filed under anger, brain, business, changing behavior, communication, emotional intelligence, emotions, feelings, leadership, life, management, meaning of work, personal development, relationships, self development, trust, values, workplace

Tagged as brain science, coaching, collaboration, cynicism, EQ, Fear, human resources, influence, low trust, motivation, professional development, Psychology, stress, success, teams, trust in the workplace

September 9, 2010

5 Reasons Why Business Can’t Afford to Ignore Psychology For Another 100 Years!

“The problem with business is that it is afraid of dealing with the business of people.” W. Edwards Deming

Honestly, we don’t get it.

Why is business still so ignorant about the basics of human dynamics?

Awareness of human psychology as it applies to work has evolved at a glacial pace while technology flies by it at the speed of light.

What’s taking so long?

Well, part of the story starts back in 1911 when Frederick Taylor – the “father” of professional management as we know it, propelled his ideas for advancing worker “efficiency.” The Taylor method prescribed a clockwork world of tasks timed to the hundredth of a minute, of standardized factories, machines and people. Naturally, ordinary workers resented having to work faster than they thought was healthy or fair.

Little was known or considered at the time about the “human dynamics” of workers and modern psychology was still in its infancy. In fact, it seems that the “human side” of worker’s needs was viewed as rather inconvenient by some of the industrial leaders of the time. Surely, the inner workings of the human being were a nuisance at best to people like Henry Ford who complains, “Why is it when I need a pair of hands I have to get the whole man?”

Sorry Henry – that’s just how we work – we fussy human beings. WE need things like meaning, security, purpose, pleasure, novelty and rest to “perform” at our best.

Sadly, the machine metaphors of Messrs Taylor and Ford still guide many of the underlying processes of the modern workplace. The command and control thinking and practices implemented during that time are still driving the management behaviors of most business leaders today.

It’s still not uncommon for business leaders to ask questions like:

Are emotions an asset or a liability in the workplace?

Shouldn’t we be removing emotions from the decision-making process?

These questions defy basic Brain Science 101 knowledge in the year 2010!

You can’t separate one part of the human brain from another. They work together in concert – for a purpose. The old shibboleth that personal life is separate from business life is simply wrong in light of what we now know about the human brain.

When you shut down a feeling, it comes at the cost of the prized function of another part of the brain, the neo-cortex (“working memory”). Working with the new neural science, however, we can educate a person to use cognitive strategies to address their strong feelings and return to a more balanced brain state.

What Business Says It Needs

When you ask business leaders what is needed to survive and thrive in today’s complex economic and global marketplace, the list is long – leadership, creativity, collaboration, innovation, motivation, trust, teamwork, partnerships, learning organizations, rationality, quality decision-making and problem solving skills, accountability and resiliency.

But even though there is often consensus on what’s needed – there doesn’t appear to be any real understanding of how you get these things from people – or where they come from.

The basic view of how the brain works is still a mystery to most business leaders (reflecting the lack of knowledge in the general populace). There is an over reliance on the so-called “rational” region of the brain (the prefrontal cortex) and a fundamental lack of understanding of how the “emotional” side of the brain works.

What’s even more baffling is that many business leaders don’t even recognize the need to understand how people function – what makes them tick. These management mindsets are completely out of step with the growing body of science of the past two decades that illuminates the how and why of what we think, feel and act!

The amazing information coming from research on neuroscience, physiological responses and emotional processes form the basis of a new blueprint that should be driving every management model.

Unfortunately – most managers are still operating out of the old, ineffective, unproductive models that have shaped how we “manage” people.

Why This Thinking Has to Change

Brain science research of the past fifteen years has significant implications for the way that we work now and can work in the future. Based on the work of many leading thinkers in this area, like David Rock, author of Your Brain at Work and Quiet Leadership, brain science knowledge can and should influence how we work. Ignoring the realities of how humans function at their best – and their worst – is an expensive and foolish decision that no organization or business should risk.

5 Reasons Business Can’t Afford to Ignore Psychology

Stress levels are at an all time high. Exacerbated by the recession and the realignment of work, the performance of employees will continue to decline. The myth of productivity is based on the effort of workers who continue to override their physiological needs by using an already exhausted part of their brains to “push through.” This is not sustainable.
The “legacy” of command and control models must end. Technological speed, globalization, economic imperatives, cultural diversity and generational change all signal the end of management as we have known it is inevitable.
Fear is not sustainable. If brain science illuminates anything, it is the knowledge that fear brings out the worst, literally, in the brain. While the “threat response” is a part of our neural make-up, it saps brain power and taxes the body heavily. Bottom line – using fear as a motivator or management tool is a recipe for long-term failure.
Creativity, sorely needed if business is to succeed, needs a different environment to incubate new ideas. The on-demand, 24/7 culture that most workplaces have created often does not support the generation of new thinking. New neural research demonstrates that the intuitive brain needs “quiet” to allow for new insights. In fact, the creative process is supported when the thinker employs learned strategies to disengage from old thought patterns.
The New Workplace is in dire need of emotional intelligence. It’s not that we have to separate emotions from business; it’s that we need to develop a far greater capacity for emotional self-management. New brain knowledge reinforces that the concepts of emotional intelligence are on the right track for helping us to address challenging emotions – and learning how to reframe our thinking to get access to more of the feelings that energize and enliven our work.

The challenges and complexities of re-inventing the world of work as we know it may seem daunting. As a culture we are in the in-between of the old ways of knowing and doing things and a future that is unfolding with the lenses still out of focus.

One thing most of us can agree with is that the old models are not working. Human beings aren’t widgets, feelings aren’t expendable and workers can’t do the work of a new century with the old, tired routines of the last.

Brian science knowledge is showing us a path to understanding our psychology – the dynamics of how to bring out the best of how we think – and how we work.

Maybe it’s time, we listened.

As always, we love to hear your comments and thoughts. What is your experience of how the workplace handles the dynamics of people? If you manage someone else, what have you learned in terms of bringing out the best and the worst in others? What lessons do you think the new science can help us to accomplish in terms of creating a more vital, constructive and successful workplace?

Thanks for joining the conversation!

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under brain, brain science, business, career, changing behavior, communication, emotions, feelings, leadership, management, meaning of work, personal development, self development, thoughts, work, workplace

Tagged as bosses, coaching, cognitive strategies, collaboration, David Rock, EQ, mental models, mind, mindsets, motivation, neuroscience, Psychology, stress, thoughts, well-being

September 16, 2010

Creating a WE vs. ME Workplace

“The power of an organization is the capacity generated by relationships. Positive or negative organizational energy is determined by the quality of relationships. Those who relate through coercion, or in disregard of others, create negative energy. Those who are open to others and who see others in their fullness create positive energy.” Margaret Wheatley, Leadership from the New Science

Do you work in a WE or a ME centered workplace?

For most of you the answer will be a ME workplace.

What’s the difference – and why does it matter?

ME or I centered workplaces are still the norm. They are characterized by cultures that are high on fear and low on trust. People don’t feel or believe they can speak honestly and contribute ideas and opinions freely. Organizations preach teams but many team members operate as lone wolves.

In ME based workplaces, employees feel they have to protect turf, leaders are perceived as ineffectual or autocratic and self-protection is the dominant feeling. Anxiety, frustration and resentment are the common emotions found in ME centered workplaces.

WE focused workplaces bring out the best in their employees – at every level. WE centric leaders are characterized by caring, courage and vision and to use the old expression, walk the talk. Environments that foster WE centered behaviors encourage diversity of thought and expression of feeling. They encourage risk-taking and tolerate “failure.” WE cultures support sharing and discourage territoriality. They are dedicated to fairness and the achievement of the full potential within everyone. Confidence, passion and satisfaction are the common emotions found in a WE centered workplace.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

Despite decades of discussions and program implementation of leadership and team building, the consensus is that most workplaces are still not healthy, vibrant relationship building systems. In fact, many are downright toxic.

There are many reasons for this. The “legacy” of top – down, command and control thinking and management still prevails in most organizations. Fear is the dominant emotional driver in too many workplaces. Most organizations still don’t understand and factor in the human equation in terms of policies and practices. Communication and emotional intelligence are still relegated to the territory of “soft skills” and are often not considered as essential job requirements. In fact, too many business pundits still question their validity in the business environment!

Most organizations are either clueless about the impact of power dynamics or just don’t care. Unhealthy competition, gossip and positional power struggles are often the result.

Lack of organizational trust and transparency is growing. Even employees, who like their jobs or their managers, often report they don’t trust their company or its leaders.

Economic and societal pressures always exacerbate individual, group and organizational systems and often reveal the weaknesses that are concealed during “rosier” times.

FROM US TO THEM

It’s easy to find a list of the cultural forces and organizational factors that contribute to Me based workplaces. Many people feel trapped within organizations and teams that are completely out of step with their values. They want more collaboration, trust and partnership in their workplace relationships and aren’t interested in engaging in power plays.

But regardless of the influence of structural norms and hierarchical influences within a workplace, every person has a critically important role to play in creating more WE focused work environments.

What WE bring to the table matters. Cultures are important but they are merely the aggregate of mindsets. Creating more WE based cultures, depends on each and every one of us getting far better at two critical competencies of emotional intelligence – self awareness and self-reflection. While blame is common in ME centered workplaces, self-responsibility and self- management are the cornerstones of WE based cultures.

This is not to say the actions of the organization or institution in which WE operate are not important, but ultimately WE have a choice in how to respond. WE focused cultures cannot flourish unless there is accountability at all levels of responsibility.

SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE – THE NEW SCIENCE OF WE

“Perhaps the most stunning recent discovery in behavioral neuroscience is the identification of mirror neurons in widely dispersed areas of the brain. Italian neuroscientists found them by accident while monitoring a particular cell in a monkey’s brain that fired only when the monkey raised its arm. One day a lab assistant lifted an ice cream cone to his own mouth and triggered a reaction in the monkey’s cell. It was the first evidence that the brain is peppered with neurons that mimic, or mirror, what another being does. This previously unknown class of brain cells operates as neural Wi-Fi, allowing us to navigate our social world. When we consciously or unconsciously detect someone else’s emotions through their actions, our mirror neurons reproduce those emotions. Collectively, these neurons create an instant sense of shared experience.” Social Neuroscience & the Biology of Leadership

See, what you do matters. What they do matters. There is nothing “woo-woo” about emotional contagion. It’s real. Emotions, whatever they are, spread. Leaders who lead with fear (whether they are consciously aware of it or not) spread fear. Leaders who lead with empathy – spread empathy. Empathy is the ultimate contributor to building WE based cultures.

The latest neuroscience has powerful implications for the ways in which we organize our workplaces, our schools, our families and our societies. Our brains work on an organizing principle with two primary tasks – minimize threat and maximize reward.

The need for status (recognition), certainty (safety), autonomy (self-mastery), relatedness (affiliation, love) and fairness are either satisfied or frustrated by WE or ME cultures.

The latest scientific findings clearly show that social needs are as important to WE humans as the need for food and water! Our brains are wired to work within the social context of community.

BUILDING THE WE IN ME

Developing the WE factor inside of us takes work. It’s easy (for most of us) to jump into the ME vs. YOU pool. Our entire culture is organized to support that. WE isn’t popular. Oh yes, we teach our kiddies to share their toys and not whack little Jacob with a baseball bat, but as a culture we are still modeling aggression, attack and ruthless competition as our primary values.

So building our WE behaviors can take vigilance and practice. Here are some of the basics:

New Belief Systems - we live by our beliefs (some are conscious and most are not) We have dozens that govern the way we relate to our own feelings, those of others, behave in relationships (inside the workplace and outside of it) and treat other people. Unless we make a determined effort to unearth our deepest beliefs, we cannot change our behaviors.
Value Your Values – Everyone has values. WE refer to them, but often we don’t really know them or live by them. Unless you honor your own values, you can’t possibly understand or respect those of others. WE centric cultures use values as a guiding force.
Know Your Needs – Most people can’t really name their needs. We’re not talking about food or water here – but needs that relate to our social interdependence with others. Identifying your needs is central to understanding your values and beliefs. They are the drivers.
Evaluate your Communication Strengths – and Weaknesses. If you are too aggressive, commit to learning how to express yourself in a more assertive style. There is a huge difference in the eye and ear of the beholder.
Get your Assumptions, Judgments and Expectations of others under control. They’ll reflect your beliefs and values – so make the connections. This is important because we tend to judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behaviors.

Whether we live and work in ME or WE cultures depends a great deal on US. Each time we interact with someone in the workplace (and outside of it) we make a deposit or withdrawal into the Bank of WE or ME. The problem in most workplaces is that the bank is overdrawn. All of the big and little daily interactions have drained the coffers. So how each of us acts now, will decide the cultures of the future.

As always we value your COMMENTS.

What are your thoughts about the concept of WE and ME workplaces?

What contributions can you make to creating more collaboration and real community in the workplace?

What beliefs do you think hold us back from working with more respect for mutual interests and needs?

Thanks for being part of the conversation.

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under brain, brain science, business, changing behavior, communication, conflict management, emotional intelligence, emotions, empathy, feelings, interpersonal communication, leadership, management, meaning of work, organizational culture, organizational development, personal development, relationships, self development, social intelligence, thoughts, trust, values, work, workplace

Tagged as bosses, coaching, collaboration, EQ, Fear, Health, human resources, low trust, neuroscience, personal growth, Psychology, self development, trust in the workplace, work relationships, workplace relationships

September 23, 2010

Changing How You Work: Using the E+R=O Formula

“Freedom is the ability to pause between the stimulus and the response.” Rollo May

Beware of quick fix formulas! On this we can mostly all agree.

The E + R = O (EVENT + RESPONSE = OUTCOME) formula, which we picked up on from Jack Canfield’s - The Success Principles How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, is an effective, practical and not a quick fix tool that can help you to change the way you work.

Why?

Because to use it, you have to change the way you think. Doable – yes! Easy – no!

Here’s how it works.

Defining the Event

The Event can be anything. A feeling, a co-worker’s comment, the traffic, a misunderstood email, a layoff, the weather, your partner’s behavior, anything. In other words – anything and everything that is outside of your control to change (fix, manipulate, control, etc).

Let’s stop right here. If you made a list of all the possibilities that can fall in that category, you’d have a huge list of most of your life’s situations and circumstances. Getting this part right is the key to using this “formula” successfully. Because on that list will many things that are VERY important to you. And because they are important to you, they have many of your values and beliefs invested in them. On this list of very important things will also be the “events” that push your buttons and really trigger you emotionally.

The key is working with your thinking. Thinking about your thinking is the first stop on this train. How do I think? When this _event_ happens – what do I typically think? What happens next? What do I feel in response to these thoughts? What do I do in reaction to these thoughts and feelings?

In many cases, you will see that your reactivity to certain “events” is part of a habituated pattern of thinking on your part. The brain likes stimulus, but it loves certainty, so habits form creating neural networks from repetitive behavior (count thought as a behavior).

There is a growing amount of research showing that when we consciously change behavioral “strategies” in our daily lives, we rewire the brain and establish new patterns of activity. Scientists have discovered “neuroplasticity” which quite simply is the ability to alter (positively and negatively) the neural networks in our brains.

So the big takeaway – and the most important part of your work using this formula - is to grapple with the all-important question of what you believe is in your control and what is not. When you are working with clarifying this – it is valuable to make another list while you’re at it – the what’s in my control list.

Understanding the Response

Ok, now we are getting to where the action is. This is where you get to make choices – and more choices, sometimes minute by minute, about how you want to RESPOND to life’s events. This is not about how you responded in the past (though that might be constructive information) it’s about how you CHOOSE to respond in the moment or in the future. This is your choice point.

Regardless of what unfolds in life’s events (and sometimes this can be very hard and a long process) you get to choose how you are going to respond. You are in the driver’s seat. You have the freedom to choose.

There are three components to your response – your thoughts, your emotions and your behavior. Too often we start by trying to change our behavior first before we have gotten our thinking process lined up. Understanding your common emotional triggers can give you a blueprint for how you typically respond to certain events.

What’s also important to understand about your response – (root of word – responsibility) is that you are 100% willing to take response-ability for your response. For many of us, that can be a real challenge.

The ego will often kick up a fuss if you start taking too much responsibility. It can backlash with thoughts and old beliefs like, “Why should I have to always be the one who changes?” “Life’s dealt me a very hard blow and I am entitled to be depressed.” “This is completely unfair (and it might be) why should I act fairly in response?”

See this simple little formula packs a punch. To implement it successfully, you have to do a completely honest self-assessment, reappraise your beliefs, activate your deeper values and access feelings that enable you to respond differently like: empathy, confidence, optimism, courage and calmness, to name a few.

The Outcome

We use this formula (personally and professionally) all the time. Our clients say it can really challenge them and help them to shift their perspectives (a key to changing behavior). But sometimes they want guarantees.

“Well, I’d be willing to change my behavior if I thought it would impact the way my co-worker acts.”

“I’ll take responsibility for my actions, but how do I know that my partner will care that I’ve changed?”

Here is the real deal.

There are no guarantees. The word Outcome is just a word. We can never really know what the outcome of a situation, despite our best efforts, will be. This is once again, a control issue. We can only respond to circumstances with our full self-awareness and as broad a perspective as possible as to the external factors we face.

Since we are always getting outcomes (usually without applying much conscious thought) this formula gives us, at least, a better opportunity to help shape the outcome to what we really want.

We think that the most important outcome we can ever realize in any of our responses to out-of-our control events are the internal rewards of giving 100% of our conscious efforts.

Too many of us are spending enormous amount of our time and precious energies attempting to control what is not in our control to “fix.” This is NOT to say that we shouldn’t use our wisdom and determination to positivity influence the circumstances we meet that we believe need to be changed. This is our choice. But first, let’s be crystal clear about what we can actually “control” and what we cannot, how we use our energy, the effects of our impact externally – and most important – internally.

As always, we enjoy reading your comments, so please take a minute to share your thoughts with us. Thanks for sharing and tweeting this post and please be sure to subscribe to receive notice of our weekly posts!

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under brain, brain science, business, changing behavior, communication, emotional intelligence, emotions, empathy, feelings, goal setting, how to, intention, interpersonal communication, life, management, personal, personal development, relationships, self development, thoughts, values, work

Tagged as awareness, coaching, E+R=O, emotional triggers, empathy, EQ, human resources, Jack Canfield, life, motivation, neuroscience, outcome, Psychology, thought control

September 30, 2010

Do “Sensitive” Men Get Overlooked in Business?

We’ve been intending to write about issues exploring men and emotions in the workplace for months. It’s an important topic that gets little attention anywhere, certainly in business related media.

An opportunity to wade into the vast waters of this subject presented itself with the recent publication of the Harvard Business Review article, “Sensitive Men: It’s Your Glass Ceiling,” by Andrew O’Connell.

There are some interesting assumptions in this piece that we think reflect the current thinking that dominates the business world regarding the role of gender and the place of emotions.

Here are some excerpts from the article:

“If you’re a caring and empathic guy, but you’ve noticed that you’re a lot more likely to come home from work with a headache than a promotion, chances are you’ve been banging into a glass ceiling — the same glass ceiling that stops women from rising to the C suite. A team led by Mark C Frame from Middle Tennessee State University finds that the higher you go on the corporate ladder, the more you’re among people who put a lot of stock in assertiveness and independence — what psychologists call “agentic” qualities — rather than on such things as caring about others’ feelings.”

The article goes on to say that the nearer you get to the top the more “task-related” behavioral expectations grow. Qualities the author labels as “communal,” (aka “soft”) are even less prized. It’s all about action and results.

The study on which the article is based was drawn from a large sample (14,000 men and women) and suggests that “agentic” vs. communal behaviors may have more to do with promotion than gender alone.

The article recommends several possible strategies “sensitive” men (and we assume non ”agentic” women) can use to overcome their communal liabilities:

Play up the task-oriented side of your personality
Switch to an organization that is more aligned with communal qualities
Play the “organizational game” and play the role that your company favors (the author of the study suggests that the sensitive guy can find opportunities outside of the workplace to nurture and retain their communal inner qualities)

We have to admit, this article (and study) pushed our emotional buttons. While the study contributes a piece to the puzzle of achieving gender parity in the workplace, it’s also laden with assumptions and unexamined beliefs that reveal a great deal about gaping holes in our understanding.

Let’s begin by defining the word the author uses to describe the desirable qualities for the climb to the top – “agentic.” Must admit, this word is new to us.

Generally defined as “Social cognition theory perspective that views people as self-organizing, proactive, self-reflecting and self-regulating, not just as reactive organisms shaped by environmental forces or driven by inner impulses. Agentic leadership is derived from the term Agency. This leadership style is generally found in the business field by a person who demonstrates assertiveness, competitiveness, independence, courageousness, and is masterful in achieving their task at hand.”

Questioning the Assumptions

Assumption #1 – “Agentic” is better than Communal

In using the word “agentic” is the study implying that the behaviors of self-organization, pro-action and self-reflection are absent or incompatible in those with so-called communal values? Is self-regulation a euphemism for containing emotional expression? And are assertiveness (a misunderstood and misapplied term in business and the culture at large) independence and courage mutually exclusive with communal behaviors?

Assumption #2 – Sensitivity is Weakness

While the article does not define the word “sensitive” except to ascribe it to these undefined communal values, it does carry with it certain implications, especially for men. At best, the essence of the word describes someone who possesses acute and deep perceptions of the outside world. Depending on what world view lens I put on, I can also see this man as “soft, or ineffectual.” In the book, The Male Factor, extensive interviews with a large, cross-section of working men revealed that for most of these men, any display of emotions, led them to not trust the judgment of their emotive colleagues!

Assumption #3 – The Traditional Male Model of Work is the Right Model

The world of work as we know it has largely been the brainchild of men. Since the beginnings of “modern management” in the late 19^th century, the conditioning, thinking, emotional landscape and behaviors of men have shaped the norms of today’s workplace. Does this study presume that the dominant themes of male culture that still drive the workplace are the best models for the future of work?

Assumption #4 – Men Don’t Feel

We’re not sure about the assumptions made in this study about men’s emotions. If sensitive men and most women are more communal, we assume that means they feel more. News flash: Everyone has feelings. Whether you are from Venus or Mars, you feel. Undeniably, there are gender differences in brain activity. But we believe that the behavioral differences have more to do with socialization, than hard-wiring. Truth is many men are still raised in cultures where their emotional expression is repressed at worst and misunderstood at least. Too many men are conditioned to rely on what they perceive to be their “rationality” vs. their emotions.

Assumption # 5 – Playing the “Organizational Game” Produces Success

First, let’s define success. If it’s exclusively about promotions, perks and pay – that’s one thing. If success to you means that you live your life in accordance with who you are – this defintion of success is one-dimensional. Too many people are playing the “game” and are exhausted and dispirited as a result. Isn’t this old tired model for success ready for retirement?

Assumption # 6 – Hey Sensitive Guy – Satisfy that Communal Thing on Your Own Time!

Suggesting that this sensitive guy and communal gal live these parts in their social and family lives is a complete reinforcement of the body-mind split. For decades, studies have shown that the body, mind and emotions are one integrated system that you can’t turn on and off like a switch. This kind of 19^th century mindset also reinforces the myths that there is a Personal Self and a Work Self. This meme is incredibly resilient and continues to do damage in understanding the true nature of human dynamics in the workplace. It flies in the face of everything that enlightened leadership thinkers have preached for at least a generation.

If we want to gain real depth of understanding of the forces that drive behaviors (that lead to decision and policy making) in business, we need to get better at questioning the powerful underlying assumptions of these premises.

Sadly, the culture we live in still believes in and promotes the idea that “nice guys finish last.” If the nice has to do with feelings and last represents the glass ceiling, we’ve got a long way to go!

So we’d love to hear from you all – sensitives, agentics and non-agentics – all welcome.

Thanks for sharing and tweeting this post and please be sure to subscribe to receive notice of our weekly posts!

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under business, career, changing behavior, communication, emotional intelligence, emotions, empathy, feelings, leadership, management, meaning of work, organizational culture, organizational development, personal development, relationships, work, workplace

Tagged as body-mind, bosses, EQ, gender, glass ceiling, human resources, men, motivation, promotions, Psychology, sensitive men, thoughts

October 7, 2010

Why is Conflict So Hard – What We Need to Know to Change It (Reprise)

Note: We’re on the road .. so today’s post is a rerun of one of our most popular posts this year. Needless to say, conflict is escalating in the workplace (and outside). The rise in incidents (those that are reported) of workplace bullying is significant and is directly related to failures in conflict management. An important point we want to get across is that resolving conflict is an inside job – first. Resolving conflict has to begin with an understanding of our thinking process and emotional triggers before we can begin to work with others to explore solutions.)

People bring all of their unresolved emotional baggage to work – and there is little we can do about that.

What’s Missing in the Conflict Equation?

Becoming More Skillful in Managing Conflict – A Checklist

What is your Conflict Style? Few people have transcended what they learned as children about conflict. This has everything to do with expressing and handling feelings. Think back – who were your earliest conflict modelers and what did they teach you about conflict? Most of us learned some version of the three predominate conflict “styles” – avoid, attack and defend. If those fit your description, maybe it’s time to learn something new and go beyond those old conditioned responses?
Identify Root Causes – Most of the time we never get to the real source/s of conflict. The root of a conflict has to do with human needs. Most of us are not practiced in identifying our deeper needs; we just keep roaming around the surface. That is one reason why conflicts continue to stay unresolved and recycle with new triggering external events.
Understand What Type of Conflict You are Dealing With. Most conflicts are internal – yes, we’ll repeat that – internal. Even if we are reacting to something external that is triggering us emotionally – it is often our internal processes that drive the conflict (at least our part in it). All conflicts are not interpersonal. We can have an internal conflict when no one else is involved. Many conflicts are structural in nature. This is especially true within the workplace. The problem is too many people are internalizing conflicts whose roots are organizational and trying to solve issues that are out of their control!
Examine Your Beliefs. Unchecked beliefs play a huge role in conflict. Your expectations, assumptions and behaviors are driven by your beliefs. We have beliefs about EVERYTHING – people, work, how things should be done, why people do and don’t do things, etc. And we have deep-rooted beliefs about conflict. The first question to ask yourself is: What do I believe about conflict? Can anything positive come from this experience?
Undeveloped Emotional Intelligence Skills. Without making a commitment to develop our emotional awareness and skills competencies, we really can’t expect to improve our ability to manage conflict. Most conflict is triggered or exacerbated by a lack of awareness of why we feel what we feel and how to manage those emotions more constructively.
Ineffective Communication Skills. Lots of conflict results from lazy or unclear communication. In the blizzard of contact that happens in today’s world, it is easy for misunderstandings to happen. Only about 1/3 of our audiences rate their listening skills as very good. We ALL need to get better at listening and practicing empathy towards others.
Care. Seems simple, doesn’t it? You have to care. An alarming number of people we encounter in today’s workplace tell us they really don’t care about their co-workers! These people often see workplace relationships as a means to an end – and that end is getting things done. If you see people at work as tasks – and not as people (with their own needs and feelings) you’re likely to have much more conflict. This gets even more challenging when you don’t like someone or they are “poor performers.”

Your Turn

What do you believe about conflict?

What have been the most productive ways you have found to manage it?

Are workplace conflicts more challenging – if so, why?

We love to hear from you. Please share your comments and questions. Be sure to subscribe so you’ll receive notice whenever we post.

Thanks for joining the conversation,

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under anger, anger management, business, changing behavior, communication, conflict, conflict management, emotional intelligence, emotions, empathy, interpersonal communication, leadership, life, listening, management, needs, organizational culture, organizational development, personal development, relationships, self development, social intelligence, thoughts, work, workplace

Tagged as body language, bosses, bullying, coaching, collaboration, emotions, EQ, human resources, relationships, stress, well-being, work relationships

October 14, 2010

FEAR in the Workplace (Reprise)

“Fear is an aggressive predator of joy and creativity in the workplace.” Terence Deal & M.K. Key

(While we are away, we’re sharing another popular post from earlier this year – everybody’s favorite topic FEAR. It’s around in big doses right now. Seems like dormant fears that were obscured by better economic times have surfaced. It’s so easy to allow ourselves to be driven by fear in this economy. But the price tag is high – for business and for our own well-being. Emotional contagion is real. Fear is catchy. Old fears get easily activated. The way we talk to ourselves is critically important in these times. Remember – you are in charge of your own narrative)

The book’s title was inspired by a one of the “Fourteen Key Principles for Management Effectiveness” from the founder of the 80′s Quality Movement, the late W. Edwards Deming.

Deming’s 8^th Key Principle – Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.

Wow – seems like a remarkably logical premise, doesn’t it?

So, why then is fear so prevalent throughout most workplaces (of every shape, type and size)?

“We can’t run a successful society when fear-based (non thinking) is the norm.” Jason Seiden

Driving Fear from the Workplace describes some of the “undiscussables” (the secrets that everyone knows) at work:

Management practices
Co-worker performance
Compensation and benefits
Change
Bad news
Conflict
Personal problems
Individual feelings

Partly, this stems from the persistent collective belief that there is no place in business for the personal and a general lack of emotional intelligence in the average workplace.

So – does your workplace exhibit the signs of a fear-based culture? A few examples:

Lack of willingness to speak up about all or certain issues
A culture of aggression (as opposed to more balanced assertion)
Leaders who model fear-based behaviors as the norm
Unwillingness to assert for one’s own needs (scheduling, amount of time spent at work, work overload, co-worker issues
Excessive gossip and blame permeating teams and departments

Although we are likely to be witnessing or experiencing fallout from fear where we work – it’s important to assess the degree to which the culture is driven by it.

So what do you think? What role does fear play in your work environment? In your own work behaviors?

Thanks for adding your voice to the conversation.

Filed under anger, anger management, brain science, business, career, changing behavior, communication, compassion, conflict, conflict management, emotional intelligence, emotions, empathy, feelings, interpersonal communication, leadership, life, listening, management, needs, organizational culture, organizational development, personal, self development, self-talk, thoughts, trust, work, workplace

Tagged as bosses, coaching, emotions, EQ, Fear, Health, human resources, low trust, Psychology, stress, workplace relationships

October 28, 2010

There is Nothing Soft about “Soft Skills”

Ever since we began to work in the business world, the term “soft skills” always felt off to us. It seemed to denigrate the value of human communication. And to us, there was nothing soft or easy about mastering people skills. In fact, when we’d look around us, especially in the workplace, clear and effective communication seemed rare.

In the nearly 20 years since we’ve made the transition to working primarily in business settings, the use of the term “soft skills” is as prevalent today as it was then -– maybe even more so.

We wonder why?

Things change. Knowledge grows and we reach new levels of understanding about how things work. The language we use usually reflects that (though it takes time).

But not “soft skills.”

Let’s explore this a bit. First, let’s define what people mean when they refer to soft skills. Yes, it’s a common reference used to describe non-technological or unquantifiable skills.

But why was the term coined in the first place? What was the first “coiner” trying to say?

There is nothing soft about human communication. It is deep and complex. Big advances in neuroscience are beginning to reveal more and more fascinating insights about how and why humans communicate. But those findings raise even greater questions, especially for those in the management of human beings.

When we communicate we bring our entire history to bear on the moment of our communication. No communication happens in a vacuum. Each one of us is a product of a history and multiple cultural influences that are shaping our communication. The more we learn about the brain (the “driver” of most communication) the more we understand that our communication is a product of both our hard-wired neural networks and an amazingly “plasticity” that allows for spontaneous experience at the same time. Intriguing.

Yet, in business, we still refer to this wonderment as “soft.” Old habits die-hard. And the business world still seems resistant to the undeniable fact that the brain is first and foremost – a social brain.

Most of the business world is still organized on the principle that a job is essentially an economic transaction. Our organizational structures and management practices reflect that core belief and continue to organize the “human side” of business along those lines.

Creating organizational systems using 19th century knowledge is profoundly misinformed when we are living in an era of stunning neurological research into the purposes, meanings and motivation of human behavior.

The language we use reflects our values (and the values of our culture). Very few of us were raised with an understanding of how human beings “work.” We’re conditioned to learn the values of our culture first through our families and caregivers and then through a long process of the educational system to which we are exposed.

How Curious Are We About Ourselves?

In school we learn about math, science, languages, social studies and other “electives,” but only a tiny fraction of us learn anything about how we and the rest of the human race – relate – internally and interpersonally. We’re conditioned to emotional responses but learn little about the nuances of our own mental and emotional lives.

A few of us study “psychology” as an academic pursuit – and an even smaller number seek out the experience of counselors or therapists, and then it’s usually precipitated by crisis. Managing our own internal needs and complexity is left to the bits and pieces we pick up from family, peers, society and the media. Somehow, we think, it will all just work out.

Most of us are not averse to learning – we attend universities, learn languages, train in technologies, learn to cook, swim, sail, fly, dance, sing, get coached in sports, play instruments and acquire dozens of new skills throughout our adult lives. But when it comes to our own inner world and how it relates to others (including our partners and families) most of us just don’t seem that interested or motivated.

“Soft” Skills are Competencies

There is hope. In the past few years, many of the so-called soft skills have been recognized as competencies. Competencies are those definable, measurable, qualities and skills that are identified as desirable or even necessary to fulfill a job or professional function.

We’d assert that the entire array of competencies required to successfully understand and manage others to achieve their highest potential and performance should be desired and required for every job – at every level – in a thriving, high-achieving global economy.

Unfortunately, the business mindset of today still believes that when the economy is tight, these skills are expendable. The first to go is the money to develop these competencies. Once again, anyone who understands that human energy is generated by neural energy – and when placed in a “threat” position, the human brain signals the “fight or flight” mode and performance becomes more about survival than progress or growth.

The competencies that are needed in today’s challenging business climate are backed by hard science. There’s nothing soft about them – or the need to develop and sustain them. In an era of increasing self-protection, bully behavior and chronic uncertainty, there is nothing soft about developing the ability to stay calm, clear and focused. There’s nothing soft about earning the respect and trust of the team you lead or work with, despite a barrage of challenges. There’s nothing soft about being able to skillfully provide the conditions for people to self-motivate when they are confronting regular disappointments and setbacks.

If we are going to successfully navigate the waters of structural change in this economy – developing the basic competencies of self-knowledge and understanding of human relations all seem – pretty basic.

The Basics

Self – Awareness – A basic operating manual of self
Awareness of others - Recently termed “social intelligence” it is the understanding of the differences in the thinking, feelings and behavior of others – appreciating that we all want meaning in our lives but seek it out in diverse ways.
Brain & Psych 101 – you don’t have to get a PhD to improve your people skills – but you do need to acquire a basic knowledge of how your brain works – and how it drives everything you do.
Emotional Literacy – in some circles, the big, dark still - taboo elephant in the room – feelings. The development of emotional intelligence is the bright light that’s gone on in the past decade. The brain not only has an emotional “side,” it’s the gatekeeper.
Understanding your own intentions and motivation – how they work in your life and how they impact others. This basic knowledge is fundamental to management practices. Yet, we still handle people in ways that place them in “threat” postures and expect them to perform at their best.

We’re willing to bet that if we asked you to grade your colleagues in the “basics,” there wouldn’t be too many A’s in the mix. How would you grade yourself? There is nothing soft about soft skills – and it’s time that business starts recognizing that value.

As always, we’d love you to share your thoughts and comments with us.

Thanks for sharing and tweeting this post and please be sure to subscribe to receive notice of our weekly posts!

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under brain science, business, career, changing behavior, communication, emotional intelligence, emotions, feelings, how to, intention, interpersonal communication, leadership, life, management, management theory, management training, meaning of work, organizational culture, organizational development, personal, relationships, self development, social intelligence, thoughts, Uncategorized, values, work, workplace

Tagged as coaching, collaboration, communication, compentencies, emotional literacy, EQ, feelings, fight or flight, human relations, human resources, interpersonal, life skills, motivation, neuroscience, people skills, Psychology, self-awareness, soft skills

November 11, 2010

10 Ways to Bring Mindfulness to Your Work Day

Tools – give me tools.

That’s what most of the people we meet in the workplace want – tools. Tools to be more efficient, productive, effective and less stressed. Often what they want are solutions to complex problems – more often what they want is out of their control.

So the question becomes – is there a master tool? If so much of what people want at work is control – is there a “tool” to help them?

Well – there is no tool or formula or magic to control other people – or events that can often feel random and overwhelming. However, there is one tool we have that is within our domain to control – and its power is being explored and revealed by an ever-growing body of research – and that is mindfulness.

Mindfulness, a concept and practice inherited from Buddhist traditions, has found its way into mainstream psychology and medicine – and slowly into the workplace.

The benefits of mindfulness are many – and the list keeps getting longer: help with depression, alleviation of pain, quicker recovery from surgery, relationship issues, help with sleep problems, eating disorders, anxiety and phobia issues and overall stress management.

The “magic” of mindfulness is that it rearranges neural networks. Cutting edge science continues to prove this in powerful ways. And the truly exciting news is that power comes from us. We are the tool.

What is Mindfulness?

As earlier stated – mindfulness is a concept and a practice. While there is no set definition it can best be described as:

Paying focused attention
On purpose
Without judgment
To the experience of the present moment

This definition comes from mindfulness pioneer, Jon Kabat-Zinn, a Western Buddhist practitioner who founded the renowned Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

According to Kabat-Zinn, at its’ essence, mindfulness is the “confluence of intention, attention and present time experience.” It is the awareness of awareness.

Daniel Stern, author of The Present Moment in Psychology and Everyday Life, defines the present moment as “being approximately three seconds – between three and ten. And in describing Stern’s work, author Ruth Cohn explains, “many functions in nature and culture that occupy such intervals of time: an exchange of communication between infant and caregiver, a cycle of breath inhaled and exhaled, a musical phrase, a conversational “turn.” Perhaps the moment of now is an essential ingredient in the operating system of our design.”

Bringing the Benefits of Mindfulness to Our Work

Developing mindfulness in everyday life takes effort. Many related practices (meditation, yoga, some martial arts, time spent away from media and technology, time spent in the natural world) will help to cultivate mindfulness. But the mind needs the focus and consistency of a regular practice if it is to undo old neural patterns and learn new ones.

For many, the workplace is one of the most stressful places in their lives. Pressures are constant. Differences, even non-conflictual ones, among people requires lots of neural energy to manage. Most people in this culture work too many hours, often without any breaks. Many workers operate in a low – level flight or fight mode. Out of touch with feelings and the thinking patterns that reinforce stress and anxiety, many people constantly “re-trigger” those negative habits throughout the day. Mindfulness practice offers the possibilities of mental and emotional rest, despite the events that surface in the average workday.

10 Ways to Practice

Make a commitment to practice. The first step is to become more aware of being aware. Essentially mindfulness is the art of being an observor of your self – your thoughts, feelings and your behaviors. As the definition above states – without judgment)
Start slowly – today I will become more aware of _________ and practice by placing your attention on that.
Start each day with a few minutes of conscious awareness. Breathing is the key to opening up your awareness. Instead of jumping right out of bed into your routine, take a few minutes to notice how you feel and consciously set your intentions for the day.
If your tendency is to move at a very quick pace while getting your day started, focus on slowing yourself down. Even if you have to get many things done in a short time frame – you can control the racing to-do list in your mind. This will help regulate your energy in a different way.
In the course of your work, practice really listening to others. This requires you to shift your energy to the other person and take the focus off you and your mental to-do list, even for a few minutes.
Consider ways to recognize other’s accomplishments, needs, difficulties and practice small, simple acts of empathy and kindness that may lighten their load. They have loads too!
Pay close attention to your body language. The way we use our body has a powerful effect on closing our attention down – or opening it up. We can’t stress enough the value and importance of being aware of how you breathe.
Watch your language – the words you use cue your physiology. When you tell a colleague that you are “slammed” in terms of work – you are signaling your brain that it is having or about to have an unpleasant experience.
Take a few minutes to identify what you would like your outcome to be in certain interactions – an important call, email or meeting. Most of us find ourselves in the midst of interpersonal situations with no idea of what we really want. In other words – know your intention.
Find some time, at the end of your workday or in the evening for self-reflection. It’s challenging to do this without judgment. Discernment and judgment are very different. Practice noticing without judging.

We didn’t say this was easy. That’s why it’s called a practice. We get the chance to do it over and over until we can perceive the little shifts and changes that evolve into habits.

There is a power in mindfulness that you can tap into. It’s all up to you.

As always, we’d love you to share your thoughts and comments with us.

Thanks for sharing and tweeting this post and please be sure to subscribe to receive notice of our weekly posts!

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

6 Comments

Filed under awareness, brain, brain science, career, changing behavior, communication, conflict, emotional intelligence, emotions, empathy, feelings, how to, intention, interpersonal communication, life, listening, management training, meaning of work, mind-body, mindfulness, needs, organizational development, personal, personal development, relationships, self development, thoughts, work, workplace

Tagged as benefits mindfulness, body language, breathing, coaching, EQ, fight or flight, focus, Health, human resources, intention, jon kabat-zinn, meditation, neuroscience, Psychology, stress, well-being, work tools, workplace communication

November 18, 2010

Living Your Values at Work

“The most important thing in life is to decide what’s most important”

Ken Blanchard

Seems like people don’t talk or write much about values anymore.

Yes, the word value gets bandied about. Creating value, adding value, etc. While most organizations still use values words in their mission statements, most people don’t pay attention to them. Let’s face it – we’re cynical about values. Other people’s values. But not our own.

This post isn’t about overused and unrealized mission statement values. Or attaching some unquantifiable asset to a brand or skill-set. Our focus here is on personal values. Individual values. Your values and mine. We’re not cynical about those values, are we? Maybe we just don’t give them as much thought as we used to.

But we should.

Why should our values matter to us? Because our values are one of the most potent forces in our lives. These intangibles motivate and drive us in our work. They inform all of our decisions. Along with our beliefs and feelings, values form our internal map of reality. Our values are powerful because they supply our work (and everything else in our lives) with meaning. Real meaning. Meaning that has purpose and depth that reflects who we are in the world. Without them, we get attached (some might say – fixated) to external motivators and rewards. We go on a kind of Pavlovian auto-pilot.

Without a strong sense of our values guiding and supporting us, we can also get caught up in other people’s values – spouses, colleagues, partners, families, cultures. There is nothing wrong with that except that without awareness of how to recognize and satisfy our own core values, we can lose our way and find ourselves working in the service of someone else’s causes and goals.

Digging for Gold

It’s easy to be cynical about using words and calling them values. But values – real values – are fundamental to our purpose as human beings. When we consciously choose to understand them – and the behaviors they drive – a whole range of new choices can open to us.

In our work in organizations, we are always talking to people about their values. Sometimes, they seem surprised. Like someone has come on an archeological dig and asked them to unearth their deeper selves. For some people, what’s important to them about their work – what drives and satisfies them – is right at the tip of their tongues. They’re eager to share what’s meaningful about their work. For others, some deeper drilling is required to pull out those valuable gold nuggets of meaning.

When we become consciously aware of our values – when we make the connections to the feelings that they generate – and understand what behaviors reinforce them, we can experience that Eureka moment of striking gold. Identifying what’s deeply important to us is one thing, living it is quite another.

Values in Conflict

There is a powerful reliability factor in the following “formula” – tap into your core values and connect them with your daily reality – and you will discover a reservoir of energy that you can revisit time and again for replenishment. But it has to be real. No BS works. In fact, this “system” has a built-in BS detector.

Let’s say, authenticity, is one your core work values. If you find yourself playing office politics by agreeing to something that violates that value – you can rely on your emotions to let you know where you are on your values meter. Feelings don’t lie.

If you act in ways that are inauthentic, that are, in conflict with your value – your emotional response may be, anger (at yourself or others), shame, guilt or disappointment. While you may try to talk yourself out of it (“I have to play politics with this guy. He wouldn’t understand if I shared my real views. There would be pushback.”) at your core, no whitewashing the truth will suffice. We’re always getting feedback from our values system, unfortunately, we often choose to either override it or ignore it.

One Size Does Not Fit All

It’s important to note that we don’t all express our (behaviorally) values in the same ways. Consider this example: one thing we often find when working with inter-generational teams are people who will say, “I’m having a difficult time working with so and so because I have a strong work ethic and they don’t.” Work ethic is indeed a value but how we experience and demonstrate the behavioral equivalent of that value can be very diverse. Inherent in their statement is often a judgment that the values are not just different, but one is better than the other.

Unless we understand what our values are – and how we express them (behaviorally) or don’t, we can project them on to our colleagues. Assumptions and expectations are formed (often out of our conscious awareness) and are often wrong.

So if you are a manager or team member or have close working relationships with others, it can be valuable to gain a better, more specific understanding of what’s important to them. What are their values – and how do they express them? If someone is working for you – it’s smart to know how they know their values are being satisfied. That way, you can provide them with experiences that enrich their values and create shared values.

Identifying and Prioritizing Your Values

Working with your values is a process. It requires that you take the time to carefully explore where you are and what you want. According to blogger Steve Pavlina, “your values are your current estimation of your truth.” Living with conscious awareness of your values means that you living in closer alignment with your purpose.

There are many ways to do what’s called “values clarification.” The following process forms the foundation for beginning to work with your values.

3 Step Process to Identify Your Core Values

1. Start eliciting a list of your top 10 values by asking yourself: (for a sample values list look here)

What is important to me about life?

2. Once you have your list – revisit it and prioritize your values in order of importance to you.

3. For each value ask yourself:

Why is this important to me? Write down your responses

You can vary this exercise by:

Creating one master “life” list and then creating separate lists for key areas or;
Creating separate lists for key areas in your life: work, relationships (you can break that down to separate roles as well), family, parenting, etc. and then comparing them

Once you’ve completed this process you may want to continue by connecting a list of your goals to your values. The more you understand about your hierarchy of values, what values you are satisfying and which you are in conflict with, your goals list will shift to work with your list of values.

Most of us waste lots of precious energy and time being distracted by things that do not satisfy our deeper purpose. When we actively engage in a congruent relationship with our values, we begin to generate more positive and supportive feelings that drive a whole new set of results. Even when we “miss the mark,” the fact that we aimed in the right direction can be a reward in itself.

As always, we’d love you to share your thoughts and comments with us.

Thanks for sharing and tweeting this post and please be sure to subscribe to receive notice of our weekly posts!

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under anger, awareness, brain, business, changing behavior, communication, conflict, emotions, feelings, generations, goal setting, goals, inspiration, intention, interpersonal communication, life, management, meaning of work, needs, organizational development, personal, personal development, relationships, self development, thoughts, values, work, workplace

Tagged as Baby Boomers, bosses, coaching, collaboration, emotional intelligence, human resources, inter-generational, Millennial, motivation, Psychology, work ethic

November 25, 2010

Creating a Culture of Gratitude in the Workplace

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.” Cicero

As we approach the holiday season, lots of heart-felt stories about kindness and giving start to appear. Tis’ the season, so to speak. It’s a time when even the busiest and most cynical among us pause (even if only for a short time) and reflect. But too often, the feelings of gratitude that the holiday spirit may generate are focused only on family and friends. Gratitude, after all, is not an emotion most of us associate with the workplace.

But what if gratitude were commonplace in the workplace?

What do you think the impact of a culture of gratitude would be on well-being, relationships, cooperation, stress, creativity, performance and productivity?

Gratitude is a powerful emotion. A growing body of research within the past decade has demonstrated the significant physiological benefits to those experiencing gratitude. Studies at the University of California (Davis) and the University of Miami showed that experiencing gratitude balanced hormonal levels and led to the release of DHEA, “the anti-aging hormone.” Gratitude also boosts the immune system by increasing the LgA antibody. These studies found that engaging in daily “gratitude exercises” can raise the level of positive feelings.

When we activate and experience emotions like gratitude and appreciation, they can become more like our “default” emotions because neural networks are reinforced through repeated experience.

The mounting evidence shows that “gratitude represents the quintessential positive personality trait, being an indicator of a worldview oriented towards noticing and appreciating the positive in life.” (Journal of Personality and Individual Difference)

According to research at the Institute for Heart Math, “true feelings of gratitude, appreciation and other positive emotions can synchronize brain and heart rhythms, creating a body wide shift to a scientifically measurable state called coherence. In this optimal state, the body’s systems function more efficiently, generating a greater balance of emotions and increased mental clarity and brain function.”

There’s no question that cultivating more gratitude and appreciation has a positive effect on the person experiencing it – but what about its effect on others? And does infusing a workplace culture with gratitude result in more positive outcomes?

Gratitude is a Great Motivator of Behavior

Some interesting new studies are beginning to show the impact of gratitude and reciprocity. In a recent study published in the Journal of Personal and Social Psychology, the effect of a job applicant’s gratitude was examined. A fictional student named “Eric,” emailed 69 participants a request for help with his application. Only half were thanked by Eric as a response to their help. While only 32% of those with no thank-you helped Eric with his 2^nd request for help, 66% of those who received thanks responded positively to his request.

In other studies, gratitude played a definite role in increasing positive responses within business settings. For example, one experiment found that customers of a jewelry store who were called and thanked showed an increase of 70% in future purchases. And ever notice that boldly written “Thank You” on the check your server leaves at your table? There’s a reason that idea is catching on. Customers who are thanked leave bigger tips!

Creating Organizational Cultures of Gratitude

“Maybe I shouldn’t let the cat out of the bag, but the practice of gratitude is subversive. Gratitude is subversive because it changes relationships, especially those in organizations where hierarchy rules. Gratitude is subversive because it affirms and validates the importance of our connections to one another.” Ed Brenegar, Weekly Leader

Many of the workplace cultures of today send mixed signals to their employees. While engagement is a big buzzword and most organizations recognize they can’t maintain high levels of productivity without it, people report they feel disconnected and unappreciated. In a recent Gallup Poll 65% of participants said they did not feel appreciated at work. Despite growing productivity rates, higher numbers of workers still express disengagement, low-morale and resentment.

While gratitude is not a panacea for real structural problems within an organization, gratitude and recognition can play an important role in strengthening relational connections between colleagues. This can serve to build communication, collaboration and shared responsibility.

In their book, “How Full is Your Bucket” co-authors Tom Rath and Donald Clifton use the metaphor of a bucket and a dipper. The bucket contains positive emotions – and keeping your bucket full to overflowing is the key. When we engage our “negative” emotions we empty our own buckets – and deplete the buckets of others.

Because so many of our workplace relationships and cultures are fear-based and riddled with emotions like resentment, anger, jealousy and mistrust, we are not accustomed to real praise, recognition and appreciation. As such, we’ve got to go beyond mere politeness, civility and perfunctory thanks to really fill those buckets. It’s got to be perceived and experienced as real.

Gratitude Puts Values Into Action

To truly practice gratitude and to have that gratitude be experienced as authentic often requires a change of mindset – on our part and among others. This can take time. No magic formulas here. Sometimes if all we can muster towards others is respect for their humanness, we start there.

Often we have to dig a little deeper to find what is right – what is working – in ourselves, others and in the workplace. We have to get out of our preoccupation with the future – and begin to have a greater appreciation of the Now. Right now, right here in this moment, what can I appreciate – what can I be grateful for?

Maybe now is the time to write that thank-you note, help someone out who hasn’t asked, or treat that colleague to lunch or their favorite drink?

The power of appreciation and gratitude is especially felt on the holidays and during special times in our lives, but we can enrich our lives and contribute to creating healthier and more satisfying workplace cultures by practicing a little every day.

Special Note: As we approach our near year’s anniversary for this blog, we want to THANK each and every reader for your time, your comments, tweets and shares. We’re grateful for your interest and hope that what we share benefits you – even if just a little!

Thanks again for being part of this conversation – please take another minute to share your thoughts by leaving a comment – and sharing this post with others. In the spirit of giving thanks, we also ask that you take a look at our Giving Back Blogroll. There are some wonderful organizations listed that can really use your help!

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under brain science, business, career, changing behavior, communication, emotions, empathy, employee engagement, feelings, leadership, management, organizational culture, personal development, relationships, values, work

Tagged as appreciation, collaboration, gratitude, Health, human resources, low trust, motivation, neuroscience, performance, well-being, workplace culture, workplace relationships

December 2, 2010

Every Word Has Power (Watching Your Language Can Change the Way You Feel at Work)

“But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.”
~George Gordon Byron

Words are powerful.

What we say reflects what we think. Our spoken word originates in our thought. Typically, most people don’t think consciously. In fact, the common knowledge is that we use only about 10% of our brain’s capacity. Long established habits that have formed hard wired neural networks often dominate our thought patterns – and consequently, our language.

Language is complex; neural patterns are shaped by our learned experiences which are influenced by cultural and social factors. In turn, language influences experience. Some might say language defines our reality. And what we say reinforces what we think – so the endless loop.

How we use our language in relation to our work can be particularly challenging. Preoccupation with time, technology and interpersonal demands can create a high level of stress that can trigger us emotionally – and our language often mirrors our internal struggle

“I can’t talk now – I’m slammed with work.”

“Can’t do it – I am under the gun at work.”

“My time is not my own”

“This guy is a pain in my neck”

“What personal life?”

“It is what it is” *

These words and phrases are not idle or random. They reflect our internal dialogue – the endless self-talk that either deplete or restore our energy reservoirs. Every word, every phrase you use programs your brain. The amazing plasticity of our brains is neutral – it can work for us – or against us.

Think of your language as a label for your experience. Our common conditioning has unfortunately created a habit of labeling experience in two categories – this is good – and this is bad. As we have experiences, we tend to place them in those categories, unconsciously. Our languages supports this – “oh I figured this project would go nowhere – what a waste of time,” or “well that didn’t turn out as I would have liked but I am going to take what I’ve learned from it and move on.”

How we use our language is in effect branding our experience.

Our Language Sets the Tone for our Communication

In the everyday banter of our communication, we tend to lose awareness of the words we use and why we are using them. These habits can be particularly hard to break in the lexicon of the workplace. As we adapt to cultures, we tend to use more of the language of that culture, speaking in a sort of shorthand that we think is understood by those who share it. Naturally, this is very common in close relationships and family systems, and even though many workplace relationships tend to replicate family connections, they have different emotional “stakes.”

A client’s recent example illustrated this well. Bryan, a smart and well-intentioned manager, was hired 18 months before this incident to manage a large group of people with an average of ten years of seniority in the company.

When the group’s long time administrative assistant, Margaret, passed away, Bryan made an “innocent” comment to a colleague, Tina, (with the group for over 10 years) that we need to “find a new Margaret.” Tina, who had been with the group as long as Margaret, had a strong reaction to Bryan’s comment. But it wasn’t until months later that Bryan learned of Tina’s reaction to the comment. Called into a meeting with his manager, Bryan was told that a number of team members felt he was “insensitive,” “callous” and “condescending.” It appears that Tina had shared her reaction with some colleagues, who disturbed by the use of Bryan’s words, surfaced their own concerns and grievances about Bryan, that had been dormant.

Words have weight. They create impressions and make psychological connections. We take for granted that other people “get” our meaning and intention, and we’re often surprised that they do not. The emotional weight of our words can activate emotional issues within others. That is why words are so powerful. According to Nan Russell, author of Hitting Your Stride: Your Work-Your Way, “Poorly chosen words can kill enthusiasm, impact self-esteem, lower expectations and hold people back. Well chosen ones can motivate, offer hope, create vision, impact thinking and alter results. “

Your language impacts others – and it impacts you. How much negativity has crept into your language? How is language reflecting – and defining your experience?

Whether it is the language of frustration, fear, anger, blame, resentment, complaint, disappointment, worry or doubt – your language is either disempowering you (and possibly others in the process) or energizing you.

In essence, all of our language is a statement of judgment – little is neutral. We are commenting on our experience of the world. Listening more carefully and deeply to our language gives us powerful insights about our internal world. Our language is a blueprint to our inner life. Let’s use it wisely.

* About the phrase “it is what it is” – the use of this phrase is becoming more widespread lately. We originally thought of it as kind of Zen-like – a mindful acceptance and recognition of things happening outside our control that we have come to terms with. We’re now thinking that the phrase is more reflective of passivity, a victim like resignation. Heard the phrase used? Maybe you use it? If so, we’d love to hear what you think about it’s deeper meaning.

Thanks again for being part of this conversation – please take another minute to share your thoughts by leaving a comment – and sharing this post with others.

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under brain, changing behavior, communication, feelings, inner critic, intention, interpersonal communication, life, listening, mindfulness, organizational culture, personal development, relationships, self-talk, thoughts, work, workplace

Tagged as body language, business, communication, Fear, human resources, manager, motivation, neuroscience, Psychology, stress, well-being, words

December 9, 2010

Happy Birthday Intentional Workplace! (BTW-What’s an Intentional Workplace?)

Wow – are we really ONE? Whew – we did it! Reflecting on the past year, we have learned a lot. Blogging has its challenges, time enough is one of them. But we approach our anniversary with a sense of satisfaction and a commitment to reach a wider and larger audience in Year Two. While not exactly enjoying the readership of Seth’s Blog, we are grateful for every reader and comment we receive. So for our anniversary post, we thought we’d revisit our first post and again ask the question – what is an intentional workplace? It seems more relevant than even one year ago. With a contracted workforce and too many workplaces riddled with fear - the question of intent and meaning in our work is an important one. What do you think?

What is an Intentional Workplace?

We may have to use our imagination more than our experience in trying to answer this question.

The dictionary defines intentional as: done with intention or on purpose.

Not too many people have experienced working in environments that operate intentionally or “consciously.” You know – the kind of organization, team or workplace where conscious thought for addressing human needs is understood, recognized and integrated into the system.

We often wonder why more people today don’t have greater expectations for intentional workplaces.

Is the concept of an intentional workplace a revolutionary idea?
Why do so many people still believe that they cannot get their own deeper needs met through their work?
And what makes people persist in thinking they can do their best work and thrive when they are working in incompatible and uncaring work environments?

Work is a vitally important foundation of most of our lives. Not just because of economic necessity but because what we do is central to the deepest dimensions of our being in the world. We have all had the experience of meeting someone new and within seconds are asked, “What do you do?” What we do, in collective societal terms, often defines who we are.

For so many of us, what we do, how and where we do it – and why – continues to be driven by an unexamined set of assumptions about what’s possible for us based solely on economics and the “marketplace.” While understandable, especially given the current economic climate, these beliefs can narrow our imaginations – and consequently – our opportunities.

To us, intentional work is work that has meaning. That meaning is defined and experienced by the person performing the work. While we may share a collective meaning about our work with a business or a group of people, first and foremost, it’s about our personal sense of purpose. When we work from this place our work is truly a “vocation,” whose Latin root (vocare) means a calling.

Intentional work is fulfilling. The process and the final outcome are satisfying and provide the person doing the work with a sense of gratification and accomplishment.
Intentional work has integrity. The person producing the product or service respects what they do and how they do it. They take genuine pride in the effort and the result.
Intentional work serves the greater good. That means that everyone, the worker, the team, the company and the end-user all benefit.

To us, an intentional workplace:

Puts people first. It creates a conscious process that is built on the understanding that human dynamics are real and is, in fact, the engine that is the driving force of all work endeavors.
An intentional workplace respects human needs and consistently strives to accommodate those needs. It also makes an ongoing commitment to create the conditions that enhance a sense of well-being at every level of the system.

Taylor, an efficiency zealot and the “father” of theories based on time-motion and task management, laid the groundwork for most of the methods that grew into the 20^th century’s modern organization’s philosophies and practices. Obedience, regimentation, predictability and conformity were the “skills” required for success in Taylor’s world.

The sublimation of the personal needs and feelings of Taylor’s workers went unquestioned and hardened over time into a hostility and mistrust of emotions in the workplace that still is prevalent today. To be successful, early models of the organization and business required that there be a negation of the inner life of the worker.

It was not until management guru Peter Drucker declared in the 1950’s that organizations were human communities and that employees should be considered “assets,” that the fossilized thinking of Taylor’s world was effectively challenged.

The harsh legacy of this history still shows up in today’s business mindset as a suspicion of self-knowledge. Intrapersonal and even interpersonal skills are still considered “soft” and at the bottom of too many to-do lists.

While the turbulent economic realities of today may slow down the pace of the changes taking place in how we work and what we expect from work, they cannot be stopped. No one can predict where, when and how these coalescing forces will take place. But one thing we know is for certain, the most powerful tool available for creating and sustaining meaning in our work is us.

What is your experience of an “intentional” workplace? Ever worked in one? What do you believe are the prospects for such vibrant and honest work environments, especially given the economic challenges we face?

As always, we love to hear from you. We appreciate your comments, questions, tweets and shares!

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under business, career, changing behavior, communication, emotional intelligence, emotions, employee engagement, feelings, inspiration, intention, life, management, management theory, meaning of work, needs, organizational culture, organizational development, personal, personal development, thoughts, values, work, workplace

Tagged as emotional intelligence, Fear, human resources, personal growth, seth godin, trust in the workplace, well-being

December 16, 2010

If You Are Sick, Stay Home (and please get some sleep)

“We have clear evidence that if you consistently work long hours, you will get ill. And what we’re finding in the developed world is that increasingly the hours are upping that more and more people are working longer and longer.”

Professor Cary Cooper, Organizational Psychologist

In the past month, we’ve met with several clients who were sick.

Physically ill. Coughing, sneezing, watery eyes, sore throats – the works. These dedicated managers were very thoughtful and concerned for our health, standing a distance away and avoiding our usual handshakes.

What’s important to note about these executives is that both are senior managers at high levels of their organization. These leaders are the “modelers” of their teams and companies. They set a tone for the culture of well-being in their organizations.

Each confessed they were fortified to the hilt with OTC (over the counter) drugs – just enough to make it through their day. They conceded that feeling this way, they would shave an hour or two off of their usual 10 – 12 hour work days, but felt “way too much was going on at work to stay home.”

What’s wrong with this picture?

Why are so many people (especially leaders) in so many workplaces unable to take care of their own well-being?

Do they need more information on the perils of poor self-care? Do they need more statistics on the insidious role of stress and its impact on the mind and body?

We don’t think so. If information and “rational” thought were the driving factors for human change, we’d live in a very different world!

There is ample evidence that the way that many of us are working is hurting us – and ultimately lowering the productivity and effectiveness of the organizations we work for.

A recent report from the Term Life Insurance Blog stated that 1 in 31 Americans (that’s 10 million) worked 60+ hours a week last year. That’s 200 more hours per person worked compared to 1970 data. The post sites 6 “warning” factors to determine if you are joining the workaholic’s club:

1. Working at home has become routine.

2. You feel bored and unproductive if you are not working.

3. Work and clients have access to you 24/7 and it interferes with life.

4. You think you are the best person for the job and refuse to delegate.

5. You are constantly talking about work.

6. Your workday doesn’t stop when everyone else goes home.

We’ll add two other questions to the list –

“Do you take vacations,” and “Do you work while on vacation – even if it is a “stay-cation?”

A remarkable number of people are identified with their work – as their life. There is nothing wrong with that – as long as your physical and emotional health is cared for in the process.

The Value of Sleep

Time to preach the value of sleep.

It is hard to ignore the growing body of research on sleep. Recent studies show the quality and amount of sleep we get affects our moods, our mental acuity, productivity, creativity, physical activity level and even our weight.

Regardless of what we believe – and what habits we have established – the latest information on sleep needs are surprising:

The Average Amount of Sleep Needed

Newborns (0-2 months)12 – 18

Infants (3 months to 1 year)14 – 15

Toddlers (1 to 3 years)12 – 14

Preschoolers (3 to 5 years)11 – 13

School-aged children (5 to 12 years)10 – 11

Teens and preteens (12 to 18 years)8.5 – 10

Adults (18+)7.5 – 9

Naturally, there are exceptions. Many people pooh – pooh the recommended guidelines for sleep. Some people even take pride in their ability to “get by on 4 hours.”

The reality is that if you are a member of the four or five-hour sleep club, while you may be functioning – you have no idea what your productivity and mental sharpness might be like if you slept for 6 or 7 hours over time. Studies also show that although light sleepers may be able to function, there is a hidden physiological toll on their bodies from a protracted lack of sleep.

Google Takes Naps

Some readers may be thinking, “Yeah, but Google is an Exception,” those radical young corporate hippies make a splash by doing things differently.

Not so says sleep Berkeley sleep researcher, Mathew Walker, “A nap rights the wrong of prolonged wakefulness, but at a neurocognitive level, it moves you beyond where you were before you took a nap.”

Tony Schwartz of the Energy Project points out that despite all the evidence on the benefits of napping, “I’ve yet to come across a single company that actively and enthusiastically encourages employees to nap. A growing number, including Google, provide napping pods and renewal rooms. That’s a great first step, but it’s scarcely the norm to use them. Napping won’t begin to take hold in companies until leaders recognize that it’s not the number of hours people work that determines the value they create, but rather the energy they’re capable of bringing to whatever hours they work.”

While US companies seem unaware of the downside of reinforcing exhausted, stressed out workers to work even harder, the government of the UK has recently taken extraordinary steps to protect workers from the “21^st century Black Plague” of stress. Since classifying stress as a workplace risk, thousands of UK-based companies have come up with new management standards for health and safety to protect workers.

In discussing corporate policies that were created as a result of the UK government initiative, Cary Cooper, Professor of Organizational Psychology at the Lancaster University School of Management stated, “They have come up with management standards for stress which are world-renowned now, and they are a landmark in the sand. They are saying to all of us that the way in which you manage people can be as damaging if not more damaging than faulty equipment and toxins in the work environment.”

So as the year draws to a close, it may be the perfect time to do some self-assessment of your “worth ethic.” How much value do you place on your time, your health and your peace of mind. Where is your energy focused most of the time – and what’s the quality of that energy?

If you and your organization believe that working longer and harder is working smarter – you’re both on the wrong trajectory. Time for a course correction.

Take back your life. Get some rest. Take time for yourself, your relationships and your family. Do something that’s not on your to-do list. Take more walks in nature. Read a book. Laugh more.

You’ll benefit your body, your mind – and your workplace in the process.

As always we love your comments, tweets and shares. Thanks for reading, subscribing and joining the conversation.

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under brain science, business, changing behavior, emotions, employee engagement, energy, goals, intention, leadership, management, mind-body, needs, organizational culture, personal development, values, well-being, work

Tagged as bosses, Health, human resources, napping, neuroscience, Psychology, sleep, stress, work hours, workaholic, workplace relationships

December 22, 2010

The Power of Quiet

“Silence is a great peacemaker” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

For the ancients, the start of winter signaled a time to slow down, a time for quiet reflection. Those days are clearly over. In fact, the reality of modern life is that this time of the year represents for many, the busiest time of the year. The list of year-end to-dos seems to get larger every year.

Another “casualty” of modern life is quiet.

Amidst the cacophony of traffic, leaf blowers, city noise, telephones, giant screen TVs, iPods, music filled stores and restaurants and the increasing noise pollution in our workplaces, quiet is becoming a precious commodity in the 21^st century.

So rare is real silence that many people cannot even tolerate it. The void of silence must be filled with sound to keep ourselves from ourselves.

Research in the last decade has found that noise interferes with our sleep, limits learning, increases aggression, triggers impatience, suppresses our immunity, increases our risk for heart disease and is turning us into terrible listeners. “Everyday noise is under the radar, yet it affects everyone’s life,” said Louis Hagler, a retired physician in Oakland, Calif., and an advocate for quiet, who published in the Southern Medical Journal a review of studies linking noise exposures to health problems.

Although we don’t associate most non-industrial workplaces with noise pollution, studies show that stress hormone levels are on the increase from the effects of steady low-level noise at work.

Taking in the advice of doctors, neuroscientists, acoustic engineers, monks, educators and aggrieved citizens, George Prochnik, author of In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise, states “We’re never going to make progress toward creating a quieter world until we learn to understand our secret love affair with noise. Part of what we have to recognize is that noise is a compelling stimulant. This noise-high can be addictive and adding your own din into the mix can become a way of exerting control. Stepping back from all the stimulation is not easy, but it can be done.”

So as we move through the holiday season and bring this year to a close, consider stopping the action and asking yourself:

“How much quiet time exists in my life?”

“What is the value of quiet in my life?”

“How much quiet time do I want in my life?”

There is a healing power in the quiet. Silence can reveal an abundance of riches if we give it a chance to do its work.

An air of quiet silence

Is blowing

All over

And

All around.

I wish

It can blow

Like this…

Forever and ever

And let me enjoy

A wonderful life

Where

I can give shape

To my imagination

And dreams

And can open doors

For happiness

Before it even knocks

On my door.

Seema Chowdhury, Author

Wishing you Happy Holidays, peace and quiet!

Thanks for your readership, subscriptions and comments. They are much appreciated.

Louise and George Altman

Intentional Communication Consultants

Philip Zimbardo, Social Psychologist

Filed under inspiration, intention, life, listening, thoughts, workplace

Tagged as business, communication, Health, human resources, life, neuroscience, noise, patience, Psychology, quiet, silence, stress, thoughts, well-being, workplace

December 30, 2010

Stepping Out of the Time Famine in 2011

“Many of life’s puzzles can be resolved by simply understanding our own time perspectives and those of others.”

As this year ends and we watch the clock countdown to a new year, we have another opportunity to think about the role of time in our lives.

But this isn’t a post about time management or adding to your list of ways to “maximize” your time. Time scarcity isn’t the issue – after all what did you do with the 8,424 hours (well still some left) you got in 2010? Ultimately, how we use time has everything to do with how we think about time. Understanding more about how you perceive time is the starting point to changing the way you experience it.

Yes, we know you are a very busy person – join the club. Tracking trends back to 1987, USA Today conducted a poll in 2008 to determine how people perceive time and their own “busyness.” The ’08 poll found that in every consecutive year since ’87, people report that they are busier than the year before. 69% responded that they were either “busy” or “very busy,” with only 8% surveyed identifying themselves as being “not very busy.” Women reported being busier than men, and those between 30 and 60 were most busy. While 49% stated that they would like to be “less busy,” you may be surprised to hear that 37% said they would not.

When the respondents in the poll were asked what they were sacrificing to their busyness, 56% cited sleep, 52% recreation, 51% hobbies, 44% friends and 30% family. One interesting statistic in the tracking of the time spent on family showed that in 1987, 59% of those polled said they had at least one family meal everyday – by ’08 that figure was down to 20%.

True, most people are working longer hours. The statistics bear that out. But something more is gripping our psyches and reshaping our perception of time.

“We are the architects of our memories.” Stefan Klein

Each of us has a particular “time focus” that shapes our experience. Those of us with what’s called a “past positive” orientation to time tend to fill our present time with memories of past times and planning for future times. Those with “past negative” orientations are often comparing what didn’t work out in the past to what won’t work out in the future. In each orientation, present time, is often overlooked.

Our past, present and future tense orientations play a large role in how we structure and use our time. These orientations are not set in stone (though we reinforce the hard-wiring of our brains when we act habitually in any tense). All of us are born with a present – tense orientation, which becomes molded and reshaped over time through our experiences.

Our concepts about time are often captured in cultural aphorisms like “time flies when you are having fun” and this is so boring it’s like “watching water boil.” The reality is that the real time you spend – whether you are enjoying something or disliking it – is exactly the same. What changes is your perception of the experience fueled by the accompanying feeling.

Recent studies suggest that it is your emotional experience that most influences your perception of time. If you feel passion, excitement, joy or curiosity, your experience of time seems to flow. The flow state is that experience of immersion you feel when you join an activity with engaged positive feelings.

On the other hand, the boredom of watching “water boil” implies an absence of emotional engagement or investment. When we are not interested in an activity, thing or person, time seems to stand still.

Technology’s Time Warp

There’s no question that technological changes in the past 20 years have radically altered perceptions of time. In fact, we are in the early stages of understanding just how signficant those changes are in brain structure and the perception of time.

While the transformation of our time consciousness is valuable to understand, it’s the realization that only we can control our own thinking about time that is truly important.

Too many of us believe there is a time famine, “there aren’t enough hours in the day,” is a cultural meme that drives our every activity. Too many of us are living life as if it was an emergency. We race from one action to the other, whether we are talking, walking, paying partial attention to what other’s are saying, driving or shopping, there is a frantic urgency to get things done as quickly and “productively” as possible.

We seem to forget, as author Joe Wilson points out, “Every minute of the day is not an emergency, but when you’re in time urgent mode all day, your lizard brain thinks it is. This makes time urgency, as the researchers call this little-noticed affliction, a hidden driver of stress — and a huge factor in everything from heart attacks, to dodgy attention and decisions, to conflicts in your work and personal life, to no personal life at all.”

Taking back your perception of time – and living it differently is within your power to change. Regardless of the external demands on your time and attentions, you have the power to make real changes that will affect every part of your life.

In the story line of your life in 2011, why not change the narrative from that of living in a Time Famine to living in Time Affluence. Savoring a moment, re-energizing the power of an hour and allowing time for nothing will be among the many gifts of making the shift.

As always we love to hear from you – What are your perceptions about time – and how are they impacting you?

Thanks for your comments, subscriptions, tweets and shares!

Wishing you a very Happy and Time – Spacious New Year!

Louise and George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under brain, changing behavior, emotions, feelings, goals, inspiration, life, personal development, thoughts

Tagged as 2011, flow, Health, life, motivation, New Year, perception, Psychology, stress, time, time famine

January 6, 2011

Jumpstarting 2011 with Inspiration

Many people need an inspirational jumpstart this time of year. True, there are many of us that are infused with energy as we take on the New Year. But, as most resolutions don’t hold their charge, often our inspiration needs regular refueling to maintain momentum.

But where do we go for inspiration? Our tendency is to look outside of ourselves to get moved – someone’s act of courage or resiliency, an experience in nature, a film that lifts our spirits or any event that takes us to a higher level. Often just the passage of time – the blank slate of a fresh year alone – can motivate us to feel and act differently.

External inspiration alone, however, only goes so far. It’s not sustainable. True inspiration is essentially an inside-out job.

Inspiration is a feeling – you can feel when you are inspired. Without feeling, inspiration is just thought. It’s when thought combines with certain feelings, that inspiration is ignited. Everyone has different “biological” signatures for their various feelings. So ask yourself – “When I feel inspired – what do I feel in my body?” It’s valuable to know this.

Researchers and practitioners of emotional intelligence refer to this knowledge as emotional literacy. Emotional literacy is uncommon because most of us aren’t implicitly taught how to identify our feelings – how to recognize and name them. Recent studies show that the more that we develop this skill – the more mastery we have in using our emotions as a resource for our well-being.

Inspiration is one of those empowering resource emotions. We can learn to use it to energize and renew ourselves mentally and physically. Once we know how it works for us – we can then mine the external resources we know move us to enable the good feelings that accompany inspiration – and the action it compels!

There are many external resources we can call on to inspire us – to evoke the feeling of inspiration. One very simple – and some might say, hackneyed tools of inspiration, are quotes. The reality is that people still resonate with powerful words and thoughts. How we use them is the key!

Here are a few of our favorite quotes with a bit of narration attached….

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world”

Gandhi’s famous quote always raises the bar on our expectations of our own thoughts and actions. It calls on the highest and the best within us to look inward and act accordingly – even if we fall short in our own estimation.

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as if nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle”

It’s challenging to select one of Einstein’s quotes among so many that inspire. We love this one because it can change the filter on the lens we are looking through when we view the world and its events – big and small.

“No force is as powerful as an idea whose time has come”

We tend to think of Victor Hugo’s quote when thinking about big ideas and large-scale changes. But ideas, however tiny, with potential force live within each of us. Some are on a very low flame – while others have flickered for years, waiting for our attention. Focusing on those forces within us, requires us to develop a deeper relationship with our intuition – that voice within that speaks more through feeling than thought. Thought (what we often call our “reason) can stop intuition in its tracks, so we must be attentive.

“We come to love not by finding a perfect person but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly”

A lesser known quote from the philosopher Sam Keen that speaks to the mystery and fragility of interpersonal understanding. There’s a popular idea that we tend to judge others by their behavior and ourselves by our intentions. We’re quick to find what’s wrong with others – often in search of the elusive perfection we demand in others – but not of ourselves.

“By looking inward, any individual has the capacity to rise to greatness”

A bold quote from the prolific author, Deepak Chopra. This quote inspires our work. It reminds us to constantly reaffirm our commitment to a belief that there is greatness in us all – and that the journey there is inward - first and foremost.

“Mastering” our emotions is the most powerful way we can effect personal (and we add collective) change. Nothing is harder – and nothing is more reliable (and ultimately, inspirational) than knowing that at our core – we are strong and loving. Now that’s inspirational. You can go to the bank with that in 2011!

As always, thanks for your readership, shares and tweets. We welcome your comments and thoughts. If you have a quote that inspires – please share with us.

Louise and George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under changing behavior, communication, emotional intelligence, energy, feelings, goal setting, goals, how to, inspiration, intention, interpersonal communication, leadership, life, mind-body, mindfulness, needs, personal development, relationships, thoughts, well-being

Tagged as 2011, deepak chopra, emotional literacy, Health, intuition, motivation, neuroscience, New Year, quotes, relationships

January 13, 2011

The Language We Use in the Workplace

“I can remember many conversations at work where former bosses would start to pull out the war metaphors—“This is a life and death struggle,” “We are in a battle for our very existence,” and “This is all out war.” The only problem was that it wasn’t actually war—it was computer software, TV news and corporate training videos. Bob Rosner, Today’s Workplace

How does a workplace riddled with war and sports metaphors impact civility?

Only recently we wrote one of our most popular posts of 2010 – Every Word Has Power. Given the deeply disturbing violence in Arizona over the weekend, we felt compelled to revisit the topic and raise some more questions about the role language is playing in creating greater incivility in the workplace. Maybe our war of words is morphing into our 21^st century version of civil war.

Words are not experience, but words shape experience. The language we use is a reflection of our dominant thinking patterns, as individuals and as a culture. Language frames our structure for experience

Is business war?

How much of the language we use in the workplace and in reference to business reflects o deeper beliefs and values? Doesn’t our growing tolerance of harsh, derogatory and uncivil language signal that our core societal values are shifting? What was “unacceptable” even a year ago is suddenly permissible parlance.

How much has the language of “popular” culture and “entertainment” (films, reality TV and talk radio) seeped into the membrane of our thinking and our words?

Battle metaphors in the workplace are not new. In fact, the language of the workplace has its roots in militarized organizational structureswhich is based on positional power and hierarchal dominance.

Targets. Weapons. Pick your battles. Barrage. Trench warfare. Attack. Collateral damage. Surgical strike. Campaign. Frontal assault. Combat. Unconditional surrender. Strategy. Guerilla warfare. Marshalling resources. Maneuver. Command. War room – and even driving results.

The language of war is everywhere – from Trade Wars to the War on Fat.

Is work sports?

Sure sounds like it. In fact, we’ve been in meetings where we weren’t sure if we were working for the NFL or a software company. Now this may be a bit sensitive for the sports lover reading this, but let’s take a look.

Score cards. Even playing fields. Time-Out. The game’s not over till it’s over. Changing the rules in the middle of the game. Game changer. Monday morning quarterbacking. Ground game. Blocking and tackling. The best defense is a good offense. Hole in one. Stepping up to the Plate. Direct Blow. Uppercut. Goal. Pass. At bat. Curveball. Bases loaded.

How many of these terms or catch-phrases have you seen or heard or read in presentations, meetings, conference calls, management books, or on motivational posters in the company break room?

All this language is based on the underlying assumptions we have about business. That like in war and sports, it’s all about winning and zero sum games.

Ultimately, we need to ask these questions:

How is our collective (and individual) language serving US?
Does it reflect the values of 21^st mindsets and knowledge-based, diverse, global workplaces?
Is this where we want to be? More important, is this our vision of the future – where’s this thinking and language taking us?

Is this the way it has to be?

Language is powerful. It can be inclusive, exclusive, demeaning, respectful, hostile, rewarding, judging, caring and oppositional. It can incite and unite. It can be about us – or about them.

Isn’t it time to clean up our language - to be more conscious, smart and purposeful about how we speak?

Can we imagine a workplace culture filled with the language of inclusion and collaboration? Can we imagine dropping the language of defense and promoting a language of cohesion and support?

So before you say another word……….

As always we appreciate your reading, commenting and sharing this blog.

Louise & George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under business, changing behavior, communication, conflict management, culture, emotional intelligence, emotions, feelings, intention, interpersonal communication, language, leadership, management, meaning of work, organizational culture, personal development, thoughts, values, workplace

Tagged as coaching, collaboration, EQ, Health, human resources, metaphors, Psychology, relationships, words, workplace relationships

January 27, 2011

Are We Addicted to Work?

The scene – the window from our midtown Manhattan hotel facing an office building.

The time – 6 am - the usual time we wake when doing seminars or consulting while in NYC.

More than a decade ago, when we started staying at this hotel, the offices were mostly dark at 6 am. But in recent years, more lights in more windows are on at that time – workers already busy at their desks.

What time did they start, we wonder? Have they been there since 5 am?

If you know NYC and its environs, you know that to be in your midtown office by 6 am, you would have to leave your home by 5 am or earlier, unless you live nearby. So if you live – say in Long Island – and caught the 4:45 am train into Manhattan - what time did you get up – we wonder? 4 am?

So if you got up at 4 – what time did you go to bed last night?

If you went to sleep at 10 – you only got 6 hours. And by the way, what time did you get home yesterday evening? Maybe 7 PM – if you were “lucky.”

That means you had about 3 hours of “personal” time in your day. Or maybe not? Maybe you checked your emails or prepared for work today in your precious three-hour time slot, we wonder….

Where then does work begin and where does it end?

What is “personal” life and where does it begin and end? An important question – given that most work life still labors under the illusory belief that we should “leave our personal lives at home.”

How Long Are WE Working?

American workers work longer work weeks and more annual hours than counterparts in many advanced economies. Americans work nine full weeks (350 hours) longer than Western Europeans do, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO). On an annual basis, the ILO says, Americans spend about 1,800 hours a year at work, compared to 1,600 hours or fewer in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.

In fact, 134 countries have laws that set limits on the maximum length of the work week; the U.S. remains the only industrialized country in the world that does not.

Among advanced economies, the United States is the only one that does not require employers to provide a minimum number of paid vacation days. While most U.S. businesses typically provide five to 10 days in vacation for new employees and an average of eight paid holidays, government data indicates it takes about 10 years with the same employer to earn three weeks of vacation.

In contrast, workers in the European Union can count on a minimum of 20 days of paid leave every year, and most get substantially more than that. When paid leave and paid holidays are combined, workers in many EU countries enjoy a minimum of 30 or more paid days off every year. They often get more. Data from the World Tourism Organization shows that the average vacation time for Italians is 42 days a year, 37 in France and 35 in Germany.

Do We Really Want “Time-Off”?

Did you know that more than 25% of Americans don’t use all of their vacation time? And 20% (this seems very low based on our anecdotal information) do some work even while they are on vacation, according to the Families and Work Institute.

According to John de Graff, co-author of Take Back Your Time: Fighting Overwork and Time Poverty in America. De Graff told America.gov. “Americans feel enormous pressure to work so they won’t be seen as slackers.”

Why Do Americans Work So Much Harder?

The debate on work-life issues today is even more polarized than just a decade ago. Little progress has been made to advance the discussion, but the hours Americans work continues to increase.

Noticeably, discussions on work-life balance have also decreased in the post-recession climate. Understandably, given the serious declines and structural changes in the job market, the focus has shifted and many people are willing (some reluctantly) to work even harder to stay employed.

While these forces may shape the employment landscape for now, the important questions about the future of work-life balance will not go away. Working longer and harder is not a sustainable strategy. Statistics on depression, stress-related diseases and anxiety disorders are dramatically increasing. Generational dynamics will also continue to play a major role in defining the way we work in the future. While the direction of Millennial work trends aren’t yet clear, surveys show that this generation has a different set of priorities than their Boomer and early Gen X parents.

“Things fall apart, the center cannot hold,” wrote William Butler Yeats in his chilling 1919 poem, The Second Coming. Many Americans are on a collision course with their work. Is the continued growth of American “productivity” driven by greater efficiency and ingenuity – or built on the backs of sacrifices made in personal well-being?

The reasons Americans work so much harder are many:

Business leaders and cultures “model” long hours and brief vacations
A generation of declining and stagnant wages mean that people have to work longer hours just to keep pace with the cost of living
While lobbyists for industry and corporate interests have significantly increased in the past twenty years, advocacy for the interests of workers continues to spiral downward
The Center for American Progress reports that while in 1960 only 20 percent of mothers worked, that number is now 70% While gender parity in the workplace is a cause for celebration, many of the responsibilities of family life have added enormous burdens to single and dual parent working families. This is compounded by the lack of affordable, convenient and reliable child care options in this country
The U.S. is the only advanced economy without a national paid parental leave benefit. The average is over 12 weeks of paid leave in many parts of the world and over 20 weeks in Europe
The enduring cultural meme of the superiority of the “American work ethic,” is often cited but rarely factually examined and discussed
False cultural comparisons about “others” pit the success and potential of American workers against images of other workers throughout the world as “less than” us
The pervasive presence of technology allows many workers 24/7 access to work tasks. But studies show that Americans use their tech work tools far more than their European counterparts to interfere with personal and home life
Last, not least – our beliefs and fears. Fears about being unemployed, fears about not being promoted, fears about not being valued and recognized for our work, fears about competition, fears about losing control, fears about not having enough and being enough. Our beliefs feed our fears – personal and collective, so it’s important to understand and challenge them. Beliefs and fears keep us tethered to old habits and behaviors, despite the external realities we face.

There is no doubt that the economic landscape and workplace dynamics are undergoing historic change. Change has been in the making for decades – and will undoubtedly continue for years to come. The policies that govern our work will change. The work that we do will change. How we do our work will change. Few will avoid the necessity of change.

So rather than waiting for change to happen to us, these times can provide us with opportunities, however small, to redefine the role of work in our lives.

As with all change, we can begin by asking ourselves some important questions:

Do you think we work too hard as a culture?
Do you work too hard?
What is the meaning of work in your life? Is it just a paycheck or is it more?
What are the most important values in your life – and where does your work fit into those values?
Do you want more work-life balance? If so, what would that look like – and how would that feel?
What images do you identify with that drive your work?
What beliefs govern the choices you make around your work life?

It’s a perfect time to examine – individually and collectively – what work means to us in America – and how it will define our future.

As always, we look forward to your comments and questions.

Louise and George Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under American workers, business, career, changing behavior, communication, culture, employee engagement, generations, intention, leadership, management, meaning of work, organizational culture, organizational psychology, personal, values, well-being, work, work-flex, work-life balance, workplace

Tagged as bosses, emotional intelligence, Fear, Health, human resources, stress, well-being, workplace communication

February 3, 2011

Leadership and Emotional Contagion

“Employees are not emotional islands. Rather, they continuously spread their own moods and receive and are influenced by others’ moods. When they work in groups, they literally can catch each others’ emotions like viruses, a phenomenon known as emotional contagion.” Wharton @ Work, University of Pennsylvania

In the past decade, there has been an important finding in neuroscience that should impact on how every leader leads – emotions are contagious.

One aspect of the research has been to examine the emotional impact of “bosses” on those who work for them – the power of mood to spread and “infect” others. “It is one of the most robust phenomena I have ever seen,” said University of New Hampshire researcher, Richard Saavedra, and it’s all unconscious.”

In 2005, Saavedra and his colleagues at Cal State University at Long Beach examined the effects of leader’s moods on groups. 189 volunteer undergraduates were selected and divided into 63 groups of three and told they were participating in a team building exercise.

Before the exercise, a “leader” chosen from each team was shown one of two video clips — “Saturday Night Live” skits or a vignette on torture — designed to induce a positive or negative mood. All team members’ moods were measured before and after the task.

The results were definitive. Leader’s moods permeated the groups – and “negative” moods trumped the positive.

“Because employees pay great attention to their leaders’ emotions, leaders can strongly influence the mood, and thus attitudes and performance, of their teams through emotional contagion.” Wharton@Work

How Emotional Contagion Works

There is significant research showing how emotions influence memory, perception and cognition. These factors influence every aspect of an employee’s performance – in fact – what is “performance” other than the combination of thought, feeling and behavior?

When people are “infected” by the moods of others, especially their leaders, it impacts everything from their beliefs to the decisions they make. Professor Sigal Barsade, a pioneer researcher in emotional contagion (Wharton School of Business) refers to those under the influence of emotional contagion as “walking mood inductors.”

Professor Barsade’s research began from a direct experience with a co-worker. Journalist Marina Krakovsky writes: “Years ago, shortly before Professor Barsade went to graduate school, she worked in a group that included a curmudgeonly, crabby coworker. Since Barsade wasn’t working closely with “Crabby,” she assumed this woman had no effect on her life. That is, until Crabby went on vacation. The group became a much more sociable and pleasant place to be,” recalls Barsade. Then, when she returned the next week, everybody got uptight again. “I remember how striking it was. It wasn’t that she was telling us what to do, but just the way she was in the workplace that was influencing others.”

Barsade says that the experience led directly to her research into “emotional contagion,” the transfer of moods among people in a group. Emotional contagion and other emotional effects interested Barsade because they helped explain phenomena that, on the surface, may not seem rational.

Ms. Krakovsky also points out, “Emotion and reason have classically been seen as opposing forces, and the insight that changing your thoughts can change your feelings forms the basis of a popular form of psychotherapy. But the true relationship between thoughts and feelings is far more complex. Not only can thoughts lead to feelings (good or bad), but feelings also lead to thoughts and actions, which can feed off each other.” According to Professor Barsade, “Emotions and reason are completely intertwined.”

Groups Have Emotions Too

Little research has been done on the implications of “group emotions” in the workplace. It’s logical to assume though, based on what we are starting to understand about the effects of emotional contagion, that groups within a workplace are reflecting the influences of key emotional players within their culture.

While studies show that all emotions can be “spread,” so-called negative emotions seem to dominate over other feelings. This makes sense, because emotions like fear and anger activate the “fight or flight” mechanism in the amygdala, gripping our physiological process.

New York University neuroscientists have recently received a grant from National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSD) to examine how fears are passed from generation to generation. Existing research has found that babies are especially sensitive to parental negative emotions. For that reason, children of parents who suffered emotional trauma would be particularly vulnerable to a parent’s anxious behavior in response to cues reminding them of the trauma.

Studies like this are important because we can begin to extrapolate this information to understand its implications in workplace relationships and settings. Because of the power many bosses have within their domains of influence, they can trigger the emotions (negative and positive) that workers feel (often latent) toward role models and parental figures.

Freedom from Emotional Contagion

While it is easy to get caught in the grip of emotional contagion (example: road rage) ultimately we can exercise choice over our emotional responses.

“In general, the key is awareness,” says Cal State researcher Saavedra, “The most insidious aspect of a negative mood is that, often, it infects you unconsciously. If you realize, ‘This person is depressed. I’m catching his mood. That is why I’m depressed,’ you can manipulate it. You can control it.”

For this reason, making people aware of the phenomena of emotional contagion is crucial. It is important to understand that when we expose ourselves to the mood of leaders and co-workers who are unconsciously acting out feelings like anger, hostility and fear it can have toxic effects on our well-being – and our performance.

Emotional contagion can work both ways. Fear can spread – as well as enthusiasm or confidence or hope. This is why it’s critical for leaders to understand they can use the hard-wired power of mood contagion in creating a positive emotional climate for those around them. These conscious (authentic) efforts to infuse workplace relationships with positive feelings can impact every aspect of performance.

When leaders learn to consciously manage their own emotions and understand the emotional triggers of others, they can become a potent force for good within the workplace.

As long as management and leaders still cling to shibboleths like “there is no place for emotions in the workplace” we’ll still be subject to harsh and toxic cultures that are inherently anti-productive.

Enlightened 21^st century leaders will increasingly harness the knowledge of emerging brain science to understand the whole-brain perspective of human dynamics. And as they do, it will transform work as we know it.

What is your experience of emotional contagion in the workplace? How have your managers and workplace cultures impacted you and your work?

As always, your comments, questions, subscriptions, tweets and shares (whew) are much appreciated.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under anger, awareness, brain science, business, changing behavior, emotional intelligence, employee engagement, feelings, leadership, management, management training, mind-body, mindfulness, organizational culture, organizational psychology, social intelligence, thoughts, well-being, workplace

Tagged as bosses, emotional contagion, EQ, Fear, fight or flight, Health, human resources, mood, neuroscience, Psychology, stress, workplace relationships

February 10, 2011

21st Century Workplaces – Democracies or Autocracies?

“Most of us don’t think about workplace rights. We think because we live in America we have the rights we need. There are no constitutional protections in the workplace. Federal laws protect you from being fired because of race, gender or disability, but it doesn’t protect you for saying the boss is overworking you or the company’s actions are immoral. You can’t say that sort of thing in the workplace because the workplace is not a democracy.” Thom Hartmann, Author

Lately there’s been a great deal of attention paid to democracy. Everyone’s talking about it. Millions have watched the coverage of the historic protests in Egypt, where hundreds of thousands of people have courageously taken to the streets demanding political and economic freedom.

In fact, we see a rising tide of citizens across the globe expressing their growing discontent with the old order – “the ways of the Old Men are dying,” as one young Egyptian journalist put it.

While the voices for political and economic democracy are getting louder – way, way down under the radar screen there’s another trend brewing. It’s taking shape in different ways – unfolding slowly but surely. It’s a nascent but potent idea – workplace democracy.

I’m not suggesting that anywhere in the corridors of today’s C-suites there’s a clamoring for more democratic workplaces. Even the most enlightened leaders recognize that this concept is unshaped, inherently problematic (especially for the powers that be) and inevitably messy (as real democracy usually is).

But the signs that the “old order” is giving way to something else are everywhere.

What is Workplace Democracy?

Traci Fenton, founder of World Blu, promotes workplace democracy worldwide. She explains: “The word democracy usually conjures up images of voting booths, political pundits and town hall meetings. When we hear “democracy,” we often think “politics.” But organizational democracy is a system of organization that’s based on freedom, instead of fear and control. It’s a way of designing organizations to amplify the possibilities of human potential – and the organization as a whole.”

If you are involved in any way in management issues today – you hear the word engagement being used quite often. Everyone’s either complaining about worker disengagement or looking for ways to “re-engage” employees. Polls done in recent years show that worker engagement continues to decline. In January 2010, Time Magazine reported that only 45 % of Americans said they were satisfied with their jobs, the lowest since such surveys began in 1987.

While there are many variables that contribute to this decline, the bottom line is that at least half (some figures are much higher) of the employees polled report they are unhappy with their jobs.

The Long Shadow of Workplaces of the Past

Let’s face it – the basic meme that governs work today is the same one that’s kept people in the same place for a long time. It goes like this: When you choose to work for someone else (at will – so to speak), you agree to take on a job or a task and execute it in order to make a profit or desired outcome for the person that pays you. That’s the essential agreement and belief that still drives most work.

The “modern” era of the workplace debuted in the early 20^th century when the need for greater and more complex production demanded a different style of work. Enter – Fredrick Winslow Taylor – the first consultant to practice “scientific management,” a revolutionary movement that proposed the reduction of waste through the careful study of work.

The American workplace (the gold standard for efficient work for nearly a century) hummed along for nearly 50 years informed by Taylor’s principles and practices. As Taylorism synthesized with WWII’s strategic planning models, a new style emerged in the post-war era that still forms the fundamentals of the dominant management model of today. Top down styles still rule, power is still concentrated in small numbers and information is still shared on a need to know basis.

In her ’09 post, Gwyn Teatro (You’re Not the Boss of Me) wrote,” I’ve have long believed that too much of the population goes to work, and goes home again, having no sense of either purpose or satisfaction. I suspect too, that neither do they make contributions worthy of their capabilities. For people in this situation, it is more about making a living, than living a life, and while that may have been acceptable to some people of my generation, (even grudgingly so), it is probably not enough for the current generation of workers who fully expect to have a voice in matters that affect them.”

“Because things are the way they are –

they will not stay the way they are.” Bertold Brecht

The signs are everywhere. They may not scream out “give us workplace democracy,” but these signs indicate that seismic shifts are happening in the world of work. Common terms like “work-life balance,” “corporate responsibility, “globalization,” “talent retention” and “work-flex” were not even a part of the corporate lexicon a generation ago.

Despite being battered by a global recession, stagnant wages and brutal job losses, polls continue to show that workers still want to derive more meaning and recognition from their work. The majority of workers mistrust their senior leaders, are skeptical about corporate morality and dislike the intrusion of management on their autonomy.

Indomitable trends that will reshape the workplace landscape:

The continuous impact of technology and social media
The generational tidal wave that has already begun. Millennials are the largest generation to enter the workforce since the Baby Boomers. Of the 76.4 million Boomers (33% of the current workforce) 83% say they will continue to work (in what capacity, we don’t know). By 2030, 70 million Americans will be 65 (20-25% of the population) and their economic behaviors will have a huge impact on the future economy.
The global awakening of the desire for political and economic democracy – a sleeping giant that has shown its power in the recent upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt – how these dynamics will impact the global economy is unknown.
The unabated decline in trust. In the post-Enron decade, institutional trust levels have steadily eroded. These paradigm shifting trends will impact everything from worker expectations to consumer behaviors.
The slow death of autocratic leadership – growing indicators highlight the desire for new leadership models. Those who are “led” want more authentic leadership, greater participation and economic parity (in ’80 the ratio between the highest paid compensation and the lowest (Fortune 500) was 42 – 1. By 2000 it had risen to 500 – 1.

What’s Needed – The Building Blocks of Workplace Democracy

Real transparency – sharing of information, strategies, planning, fiscal practices
Shared process of defining, developing and acting on vision, purpose and mission
More economic parity and revenue sharing – not too many entry-level workers expect to make what the CEO does (if CEO’s will still exist as such in the new workplace?) but they know that the disparity is enormous
Real decentralization of power – despite the “flattening” of corporate hierarchies, most power is still concentrated at the top
Recognition of the “whole person” at work – time to drop all of these 19^th beliefs about work life vs. “personal life.” The information we now have from recent neuroscience renders that thinking anachronistic.
Develop relevant (meaning driven by the real needs of a given workplace) work-life balance. While the “work-flex” movement may have been stalled during the recession, the legitimate and life-affirming needs of workers aren’t going away.
Develop and manage with meaning in mind. Every single survey and study proves that when employees understand and participate in shared purpose – engagement levels rise.
Give workers greater autonomy, access, choice and accountability.

The workplace isn’t going to be transformed overnight. And workplace democracy is a big, bold idea with lots of detractors. But the reality is that tinkering at the edges of change doesn’t seem well suited to the current era of instant information and demand.

While the fledgling movement is still tiny, it points the way to greater vision of what work can be in the future – human centric, values-based, ethical, creative, energizing and most important authentic enterprises.

In his recent post, The Shape of the Meaning Organization, Harvard Business Review blogger, Umair Haque charts a daring vision of the new corporate future, “Companies are going to have to get lethally serious about having an enduring, meaningful, resonant, multiplying, positive proliferating set of impacts – of all types, whether social, human, intellectual, spiritual, creative or relational. An isolated notion of “profit” is obsolete: it’s an arid industrial-age conception of a currency-focused construct that’s built to trivialize everything but what a firm owes its “owners” (its employees, society, community, environment, the future, even its own bigger purpose can all go to blazes). In the 21^st century, we’re discovering the hard way just how threadbare and barren a prosperity that tired, lame, stale idea led to. Hence, the significance team, concerned foremost with creating and delivering benefits that matter in human terms.”

Wow. Now that’s bold!

What do you think?

As always we welcome your comments and questions. Thanks for subscribing, tweeting and sharing this post with others!

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under American workers, business, change management, culture, employee engagement, generations, leadership, management, meaning of work, organizational culture, values, work-flex, work-life balance, workplace

Tagged as emotional intelligence, human resources, neuroscience, trust in the workplace, umair haque, workplace democracy

February 17, 2011

Why Neuroscience SHOULD Change the Way We Manage People

Most organizations and their leaders take pride in updating their systems with the latest technology and equipment. They devote significant resources to ensure their employees are using state of the art processes and materials.

Most organizational leaders would agree that without constant upgrades, they would be trying to achieve success with their hands tied behind their backs.

That’s why it is so baffling that so many of these leaders and their companies continue to operate their most precious “assets” – their employees – using badly dated thinking, outmoded concepts and really old-school beliefs.

As the data from neuroscience continues to mount, we wonder why this crucial evidence-based information is still being so widely overlooked?

One problem is focus – most business leaders simply aren’t focused on this type of information. Some might argue that it is due to a lack of understanding of human dynamics. Many organizational leaders continue to rely on old management philosophies and the mostly discredited theories behind them.

Another thing that keeps old management thinking and systems in place is the persistent belief that psychology is not relevant to business. Certainly our cultural views and policies on mental health reflect a deep seated reluctance to accept the primacy of psychological health in our overall well-being and success.

But in the last fifteen years, there has been unremitting neurological research which reveals fundamental insights about how we humans function. This information is not arbitrary – it’s factual. These studies impact everything about how we structure work. They show how brain functions affect perception, emotion and conscious thought.

While there is a large body of neuroscience that can have widespread application in the workplace, the following are the BIG FIVE. These core ideas have implications for all management practices:

The BIG FIVE IDEAS That Should Change the Way We Manage People

Managing Expectations – As motivation plays a critical role in the how and why of people functioning, it’s important to understand that the brain is essentially a social organ. Research now clearly shows that the brain’s primary organizing principle is to detect whether incoming stimuli is a reward – or threat. It’s part of our early survival mechanism that allows the brain to quickly classify the “danger” level of any situation. According to Dr. David Rock, core social domains (such as social status and certainty (control) drive human behavior.

Rock says, “Labeling and understanding these drivers draws conscious awareness to other non-conscious processes which help in two ways. Knowing the drivers that can cause a threat response in others enables people to design interactions to minimize threats (for example, knowing that a lack of autonomy (for some) may activate a threat response, a leader may consciously avoid micromanaging their employee. Second, knowing about these drivers can activate a reward response enabling people to motivate others more effectively by tapping into internal rewards thereby reducing the reliance on external rewards such as money.”

In responding to this idea in a recent seminar, one manager asked, “So, if we know this about the brain, what are the implications of this knowledge in terms of the entire way we do performance reviews?” A great question in light of this valuable information!

Emotional Contagion is Real – Studies in the past decade have shown that emotions can be “infectious.” The moods of others, especially those in positions of power, can have a real and lasting effect on individuals and groups. Toxic bosses, bully environments and aggressive cultures can “breed” more of the same. Leaders play an important role in their ability to influence the spread of certain types of emotions over others.

The evidence shows that while all emotions can be contagious, “negative” emotions have greater power to influence. That makes sense because when we are negatively “triggered” emotionally, the amygdala in the brain’s limbic system is activated and the “fight or flight” system kicks in, draining energy from the pre-frontal cortex (the “reasoning” part of the brain). All of this can happen unconsciously, unless we develop the tools to bring it into awareness and mitigate the responses.

Suppressing Emotions Costs – The prevailing thinking in business still leans towards the maxim that “emotions don’t belong in business.” These declarations are still being made despite overwhelming knowledge that emotion is as integral to human functioning as any of the so-called rational processes. One recent study provided illuminating information on the costs of emotional suppression, which is still the norm, in most workplace situations.

When we suppress any emotion –the resources that are involved in suppressing that emotion come from the same area of our brains (the Pre Frontal Cortex or PFC) that is used for problem solving and analytical thinking. Like a car, the PFC has only a limited supply of fuel, and if we are using that fuel in another area, then you can believe that there is less fuel to service more important things like being effective on the job and managing your other emotions.

UCLA research, Dr. Matthew Lieberman, found that learning to “label” our emotions maximizes cognitive ability. He asserts that using simple language to “name” anticipated and experienced emotions, actually lowers the arousal of the limbic system producing a quieter brain state. This in turn, allows the PFC to function more effectively. According to Dr. Libermann,”When you attach the word ‘angry,’ you see a decreased response in the amygdala, when you attach the name ‘Harry,’ you don’t see the reduction in the amygdala response. In the same way you hit the brake when you’re driving when you see a yellow light, when you put feelings into words; you seem to be hitting the brakes on your emotional responses. As a result, an individual may feel less angry or less sad.”

The implications of these findings in the workplace (and beyond) are staggering. While we are busy pushing down our true feelings (in some cases we call this being “professional”) we’re not only denying our real experience but we are taxing our cognitive functions and wasting precious brain fuel in the process.

Creativity Needs Cultivation – A number of large surveys done in the past few years show creativity at the top of the wish list for business in today’s competitive environment. It’s instructive to know then, what creativity needs to thrive. Old notions still prevail about “creative” types – that like “leaders” “creatives” are born – not made. Another prevailing belief that plays a role against “nurturing” the seeds of creativity are attitudes towards sleep. Yes, sleep!

Dr. Jeffrey Ellenbogen, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School explains, “There is a cultural bias against sleep that sees it akin to shutting down – or even death. Most people think of the sleeping brain as similar to a computer that has gone to sleep. Wrong. Sleep enhances performance, learning and memory. Most unappreciated of all, sleep improves creative ability to generate aha! moments and to uncover novel connections among seemingly unrelated ideas.”

While nap rooms in today’s corporations are still rare, resting the body and mind doesn’t just depend on a nap. Increased workloads and cyber overload all contribute to a general sense of overwhelm and exhaustion. It’s not uncommon for people to work 12 hours a day. Some people think this is the new normal (hope not). Some managers model it and many companies expect it. But findings in neuroscience signal that an entirely new mindset needs to inform how and how long people should work to perform optimally.

Learning Mindfulness - The popular imagery still evokes a holy man sitting in an ashram meditating most of the day. There is general misunderstanding about the differences between being “mindful” and practicing mindfulness meditation. While research results show that meditation offers a wide range of benefits (in remarkably short periods of time) learning to become more “mindful” enhances cognition in amazing ways.

A simple description of mindfulness is “slowing down and examining one’s thought process and learning to be in the moment.” Simple enough it seems, but a tall order for most people. UCLA researchers also describe mindfulness as a technique where someone pays attentions to their thoughts, present emotions and body sensations, without “passing judgment or reacting.” The result is that the amygdala is less activated and emotions are less intense.

A major Canadian study showed mindfulness to be as effective as antidepressants when it came to preventing depression relapse. Other studies show it offers significant benefits in response to stress and anxiety.

The good news is that what we are learning about the brain and its effect on our well-being and work performance is rich with promise. And nearly every study brings more useful – and potentially life changing information. Research on mindfulness alone is producing 300-400 studies annually.

The mysteries of the brain are unfolding. Only a generation ago, we believed that our brains were static and fixed, prone to inevitable atrophy. Now we are beginning to understand that the brain can rewire itself in remarkable ways. And we are the catalysts!

The not-so-good news is that what remains – in many cases – as stagnant and immobile as our brains are not – are the ways we still cling to old ideas about organizational systems that do not maximize human performance.

We still don’t get that – do we?

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts, questions and comments. Also, appreciate your tweets, shares and subscriptions!

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

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Filed under awareness, brain, brain science, business, change management, changing behavior, communication, culture, emotions, employee engagement, feelings, leadership, management theory, meaning of work, mind-body, mindfulness, organizational development, performance, thoughts, well-being, work, work-life balance, workplace

Tagged as bosses, business, cognitive skills, emotional intelligence, Health, human resources, motivation, neuroscience, Psychology, stress

February 25, 2011

The Neurobiology of Mindfulness – Reshaping Your Brain

“Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed it also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day.”

Sara Lazar, PhD, MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program

Recently I read about the latest research showing that in just eight weeks of daily meditation you can change the part of your brain structure that regulates memory, empathy and stress regulation. For years, studies have documented the many benefits of meditation – improved concentration, enhanced pain management and emotional regulation to name a few.

The current study is important because it is the first to document a difference in brain structure from before someone starts a meditation practice to after they’ve started – and in only eight weeks!

As a long time practitioner of meditation (accomplished after a decade of false starts) I found this information reassuring but not surprising. Since my meditation practice has become routine, I’ve experienced significant changes in many areas of my life. Now neuroscience is steadily documenting what’s happening in our brains when we meditate.

The study that’s generating a lot of excitement examined the brain structure of 16 participants for two weeks before and after they took an 8 week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Progress at the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness (MBSR).

In addition to practicing “mindfulness meditation,” (defined by the center as “focusing with nonjudgmental awareness on sensations, feelings and state of mind”) the participants also got guided meditation recordings and were instructed to tally the time they spent meditating each day. The participants averaged 27 minutes per day practicing mindfulness.

Researchers found increased “gray matter” density in the amygdala, which as the emotional “seat” in the brain, plays a big role in the regulation of stress and anxiety (think fight or flight response). Changes were also found in the hippocampus, which is associated with learning and memory as well in the regions connected to self-awareness, introspection and compassion. Another study done in 2008 at UCLA found similar results. Dr Eileen Luders who led the ’08 study concluded, “This may account for meditator’s singular abilities and habits to cultivate positive emotions, retain emotional stability and engage in mindful behavior.”

Enter the Monks

Before we talk about the monks, it’s important to mention one thing (among many) that keeps people away from reaping the benefits of meditation – that is, the idea that meditation, relaxation techniques, stress-reduction – or whatever term you choose to use has to be part of a religious practice. Often, labels and concepts get in the way of considering such practices. While it can be, and often is, meditation does not have to be connected to anything “spiritual” to be practiced effectively. And the monks will be the first ones to tell you that!

Several studies examining the neurobiology of the brains of monks have provided important insights in understanding the state of “mindfulness.” Neuroscientist Richard Davidson studied a group of monks (each with 10,000-50,000 hours of meditation practice in their lifetimes) by asking them to concentrate on “unconditional loving-kindness and compassion.” He also asked a group of inexperienced meditators to do the same. The results were dramatic. The monks who entered the study with higher frequency gamma brainwaves to slower alpha and beta waves in their resting baseline, showed up to 30 times the ratio of the non-meditators during the experiment.

Two big takeaways from this study show that long-term mental training can alter brain activity and that certain emotions, such as compassion – can be cultivated.

You Don’t Have to Be the Dalai Lama to Benefit from Meditation

This new research reveals an important fact. You don’t have to be a yogi or monk to benefit from practicing some form of meditation. You’ll accrue the benefits regardless of your beliefs.

What we are gathering from this steady stream of valuable research is greater evidence of the “plasticity” of the brain. During most of the 20^th century scientists believed that the brain was immutable and fixed, destined to decline and atrophy. Now we are beginning to understand the ways in which we – the brain user – can be the catalyst to reshaping the brain in previously unimaginable ways. “It is fascinating to see the brain’s plasticity and that, by practicing meditation, we can play an active role in changing the brain and can increase our well-being and the quality of life,” says Britta Holzel PhD, a research fellow at Geissen University in Germany.

Who Has 30 Minutes a Day to Meditate?

I had a feeling you’d be asking that question soon. The answer is entirely up to you. Like everything else in life, it is about choice. Cost-benefit analysis sounds a little too chilly a description – but ultimately – everything that benefits you requires some discipline.

Earlier in this post, I referred to a decade of my false starts in establishing a regular meditation practice. That’s true. It took a long time to get started – to break old habits of resistance – and create new ones to support my practice. I can comfortably say that now, I cannot imagine going without doing some form of meditation, however brief, regularly. Sure, I can get busy and distracted and skip a day or two, but the bottom line is that I feel it. I miss it. I miss the peace and rest that this special time affords me.

Its benefits in my life have been enormous. After the month of a regular practice, I was experiencing more clarity, mental energy, memory recall and greater ability to focus and concentrate.

But nothing compares to the calmness and centeredness that I’ve derived from meditating. I also have found that it has helped me to cultivate new levels of patience – an emotion that is in pretty short supply these days!

While my practice is about 30 minutes on average (it can occasionally be longer or shorter) you don’t have to set such a high bar for your beginning practice. Although, recent studies have focused on this approximate 30-minute duration, we don’t yet know the cumulative impact on the brain of practicing only 5 or 10 minutes at a time. We can though, rely on the experience of pioneers in meditation practice like former molecular biologist, Jon Kabat-Zinn, who started the Mindfulness Stress Reduction program at U Mass Medical Center 30 years ago.

In this excellent video filmed during a meditation session conducted at Google, Kabat-Zinn speaks about the power of practicing “mindfulness” as a moment to moment awareness, that can become part of our every waking minute. Whether we are cooking a meal, driving to work, sitting in a meeting or having dinner with a friend, the “”practice” of mindfulness, does not have to be confined to meditation. According to Zinn, “Mindfulness is cultivated by purposefully paying attention to things we ordinarily never give a moment’s notice to. It is a systematic approach to developing new kinds of control and wisdom in our lives.”

Although, there are multiple rewards to maintaining a regular meditation practice, Kabat-Zinn’s message is that we can become “aware” and “mindful,” fundamentally altering our perception (and physiology) in the process, in the blink of an eye. “Our minds are so highly conditioned to stimuli, Zinn says, that the real meditation process never ends because in a sense the real meditation practice is our life itself.”

So I can’t imagine a better use of time for anyone. Whether you are looking for more clarity of thought, relief from stress, freedom from obsessive thinking, greater empathy towards yourself and others, improved health or simply the experience of being vs just doing – the practice of meditation - and mindful awareness can get you there.

The Tibetan word for meditation is gom which means “familiarization.” So to start, consider taking a few minutes, get comfortable, pay attention to your breathing and let go. Let go. You won’t fly away. You won’t get lost. You won’t waste your time, I promise.

As always, I love to hear your comments and questions.

Do you think some form of mindfulness practice can benefit you? What ways can this benefit how we do our work?

Thanks for stopping by – your tweets, shares and subscriptions are much appreciated.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under awareness, changing behavior, compassion, emotions, empathy, energy, feelings, mind-body, mindfulness, performance, thoughts, well-being

Tagged as coaching, emotional intelligence, human resources, jon kabat-zinn, meditation, neuroscience, Psychology, self development, stress

March 3, 2011

Workplace Needs: Some Recent Hits

A few weeks ago we wrote a post called Why Neuroscience SHOULD Change the Way We Manage People . The post hit a popular nerve and generated a lot of traffic and sharing. Three older posts were nearly as popular so we want to give our new readers and wider audience a chance to read these posts together.

It makes sense that readers drawn to the Neuroscience post would find these other posts compatible – their focus is similar – the workplace is rapidly changing and new thinking and skills are needed to manage new challenges.

There’s Nothing “Soft” About Soft Skills (October 2010) I have to admit that every time I hear the term “soft” skills (which I hear often), I cringe. Why? Because I know how hard it is to communicate effectively and manage my emotions in the process. I also know that most problems and obstacles to successful work performance happen at the level of relationships - not technology or the other “hard stuff.” As I said in the post, “Creating organizational systems using 19th century knowledge is profoundly misinformed when we are living in an era of stunning neurological research into the purposes, meanings and motivation of human behavior.”
Why Business Can’t Afford to Ignore Psychology for Another 100 Years (September 2010) In this post, I looked at the question of why it is taking business so long to acknowledge the role – and value – of psychology in the workplace. Awareness of human psychology, as it applies to work, has evolved at a glacial pace while technology flies by it at the speed of light. There’s still a lot of confusion about psychology and its role in the workplace. But as neuroscience advances our understanding of the connections between the brain, emotions and behavior – this question gets harder to ignore.
Why Today’s Workplace Needs Emotional Intelligence More Than Ever (September 2010) In this post we mentioned that more and more clients are contacting us about emotional intelligence. Since we wrote this post, that’s increased. EI has been around in management circles for nearly fifteen years – so I don’t attribute the spike in interest to its being the “new thing.” There is a lot of stress out there. There’s post-recession shell shock, fear and uncertainty about jobs and the economy and a deep lack of trust (aka “disengagement”) that plagues many workplaces. Escalating levels of bully behavior are just another disturbing symptom.

I hope you’ll take the time to discover (or revisit) these posts. They have a great deal in common – and I’m pleased that readers have found that too!

As always, your readership, comments, subscriptions and shares are much appreciated.

Thanks for stopping by,

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under awareness, brain, business, change management, changing behavior, emotions, employee engagement, interpersonal communication, leadership, management theory, meaning of work, needs, organizational culture, organizational development, performance, personal development, self development, workplace

Tagged as bosses, coaching, emotional intelligence, EQ, Health, human resources, motivation, neuroscience, relationships, trust in the workplace, workplace relationships

March 14, 2011

Why Do We Continue to Think Self-Compassion is Self-Indulgent?

Recently a blog post in the New York Times caught my eye.

Writing in her column in the health section (Go Easy on Yourself, a New Wave of Research Suggests) author Tara Parker-Pope wrote, “Do you treat yourself as well as you treat your friends and family? That simple question is the basis for a burgeoning new area of psychological research called self-compassion – how kindly people view themselves. The research suggests that giving ourselves a break and accepting our imperfections may be the first step towards better health. People who score high on tests on self-compassion have less depression and anxiety, and tend to be happier and more optimistic.”

Compassion, as a potent healing emotion, has been on my “radar screen” since the mid 90’s. At that time, I began to intergrate the concepts of emotional intelligence into my work and study the effects of different emotions on well-being. My earlier exposure to Buddhist concepts and practices led me to consider the role of compassion. The more I learned about compassion – the more I realized its beneficial impact on interpersonal relations.

In Buddhism, compassion’s companion is wisdom – a kind of marriage between emotion and intellect. The key here is that we act with “discernment,” which allows us to cultivate a deeper understanding of the circumstances of others. In doing so, we develop a larger view of reality than our own self-focus usually produces. The key to this attainment, many Buddhists would say, is practice – learning to tune our self awareness to a greater awareness – a larger and more spacious field of being.

As I began to carefully introduce the concepts of compassion and empathy into workplace discussions, I learned two important things. First, the idea of feeling or expressing compassion in business felt too risky, vulnerable and even “unprofessional” to many people. Second, to those self-identified, perfectionists, workaholics and high achievers - the idea of self-compassion was even more remote. These hard self-drivers were often filled with inner judgment and criticism and seemed to be falling short of their own aspirations.

The Connection Between Compassion for Self and Others

In my experience, harsh self-critics judge others with equal severity. Of course, there are exceptions – people who treat others with empathy and consideration, but cannot extend those feelings to themselves. But more often, I think there is a higher correlation between the harsh outer critic and the inner self-oppressor.

What Drives a Lack of Self-Compassion?

If we’re hard-wired for empathy and altruism – what blocks our ability to care for ourselves with more respect?

One major force is beliefs.

Even though our impulses towards compassion and empathy are innate, the forces of our conditioned collective beliefs drive us to mistrust and even disdain emotions like compassion, empathy and optimism.

Kristin Neff, an associate professor of human development at the University of Texas at Austin and a pioneer in research on self-compassion, says, “I found in my research that the biggest reason people aren’t more self-compassionate is that they are afraid they’ll become self-indulgent. They believe self-criticism is what keeps them in line. Most people have gotten it wrong because our culture says being hard on yourself is the way to be.”

What really struck me about Tara Parker-Pope’s NYT post were the comments. Many of those who were critical of self-compassion show how we allow beliefs, often unexamined and inherited from past conditioning, to construct barriers to new information and experience.

Here’s a sampling:

“I’ll need to take some time to process this. NO ONE in the world hates me more than I hate myself. It’s my life mantra, along with “I do not deserve nice things.” This would be a 180 degree shift in thinking for me. People often ask me why I am so kind to others and so hard on myself. My answer always has been that someone has to ride herd on me or I’ll completely fall apart.”
“If we don’t hold ourselves to high performance standards, how can we, ethically and morally, expect others to meet those standards?”
“Oh good grief! Americans think so highly of themselves as it is. Really there shouldn’t be more encouragement.”
“Self compassion when it’s appropriate is wonderful and healing. But some of the nastiest and most destructive people I’ve ever known have self-compassion in spades.”
“Many of those posting negative comments on the subject seem to be confusing self-compassion with self-indulgence. The two are not similar at all.”

Gladly, the majority of comments to the article were positive and reinforcing. But it’s easy to see from these examples above, the harshness and wrath of the inner critic. Some of these comments also reflect the tyranny of either/or, black/white thinking patterns. This form of “oppositional” reasoning leads people to think that if someone is compassionate, they must be lazy or lack rigor in their standards of self and other. This kind of thinking also leads some people to question whether their pain or suffering is “worthy” of compassion given the magnitude of suffering in the world.

Sometimes the echo of critical external voices can seem as demanding as our own inner cacophony. To those demands, nothing we do is ever enough. We must compete, excel, win and succeed in every endeavor. To the mind that believes that failure is not option – there is little room for the comfort of self-compassion. In writing about barriers to self-compassion, author Elisha Goldstein points out, “In our American culture, we’re taught we need to be exceptional to be worthwhile.”

As the last comment in the New York Times article shows, there is a great deal of confusion about what compassion actually is. According to Dr. Neff, compassion has three major components:

That you notice the suffering in yourself and be mindful that you need compassion during that difficult time
That you are as kind and caring to yourself, as you would to a child, partner or friend.
Remind yourself that difficulties and challenges are part of the human experience – and that EVERYONE experiences them, regardless of whether they show it or not.

Simply stated, compassion is an understanding of the emotional state of another coupled with a desire to improve their condition. It’s different from empathy because it compels action. The feeling of compassion leads to acts of kindness – whether it is towards others – or to ourselves.

The Healing Power of Self-Compassion

While research on feeling compassion towards others or self is in its early stages, the initial findings are compelling. Feeling – dare, we say, self-love, is good for you. Studies show that people who practice compassion produce 100% more DHEA, the hormone that counteracts the aging process and 23% less cortisol, the so-called” stress hormone. Recent studies have found that feeling compassion controls inflammatory responses in the body, thought by most scientists to be implicated in many serious diseases, especially cardiovascular.

Seems that the “vagus nerve” acts like the brakes of a car in slowing inflammation in the body. This nerve extends from deep within the brain stem to the heart and helps regulate emotions and body systems. The latest studies show that compassion improves the “tone” of the vagus nerve and in doing so, “mops up inflammation within the body.” Dr. Stephen Porges, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago, refers to the vagus nerve as the “nerve of compassion.”

Psychologist Barbara Frederickson from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill who has studied the effects of loving-kindness meditation on the vagus nerve states, “With just six weeks of LKM (Loving Kindness Meditation) training in novices, we see improvements in resting vagal tone. Just like physical exercise improves muscle tone, emotional training improves vagal tone. High vagal tone is related to both a person’s physical health and their ability to feel loving connections with others. In a way, our bodies are designed for love, because the more we love, the more healthy we become.”

Growing the Muscle of Self-Compassion

The road to self-compassion can be simple. Mindfulness is the key. Your ability to be mindful (without assigning judgment) of your thinking and emotions is the most powerful skill you can develop to increase your self-compassion (and awareness).

One way you can begin is to take a few minutes before you go to sleep and review your day. Ask yourself:

Where was I hard on myself?
What events (internal or external) triggered that harshness within me?
What feelings did I experience – anger, fear, disgust, shame, frustration, guilt?
What were the thoughts that triggered these emotions?
And most important – what beliefs do I hold that fuel these thoughts and feelings? Beliefs are the cement that holds it all together.
Finally, stop and imagine what it would feel like to be kinder and easier on yourself in those moments when you believe you “fall short.” What happens to your energy level when you release your judgment?

Let this type of reflection become a ritual for you. You can practice this mindful review anytime, anywhere. The more that you do, the more you will create the habit of self-compassion – creating a new level of energy and an entirely different kind of motivation.

As always, I love to hear your comments and questions. What do you believe about compassion? Are you compassionate with yourself? If not, what stops you?

Your readership, subscriptions, tweets and shares are much appreciated.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under awareness, business, changing behavior, compassion, culture, emotional intelligence, emotions, empathy, energy, feelings, inner critic, inspiration, life, mind-body, mindfulness, needs, personal development, self development, self-talk, thoughts, well-being

Tagged as beliefs, buddhism, EQ, Health, human resources, loving kindness, meditation, motivation, neuroscience, personal growth, Psychology, self-compassion, self-criticism, self-respect

March 21, 2011

Fear’s Everywhere: How Are You Managing It?

“Fear does not predict the future: it only tells you that you are afraid. The trick is to recognize the emotion of fear when it emerges, accept it, discover its source and decide what to do with it.” Jay Uhler

Last week was powerful. It felt like fear was everywhere.

Living in California, I was sensitive to the non-stop news of the tragic events (still unfolding) in Japan. Empathy, compassion and concern were the primary emotions that I experienced as I learned the details of the unprecedented disaster.

As the news turned to the dangerous situation at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, I started to pay closer attention to the contradictory reports on the possibilities of radiation leakage. Would/could radiation leaked from the plant travel 5,500 miles to the U.S. West Coast? What were the implications? How safe is the San Onofre nuclear plant only 26 short miles away from where we live?

As the thoughts continued, I felt the fear creeping in.

Next I learned that the entire U.S. supply of potassium iodide was nearly depleted – with people buying it not only on the West Coast, but all over the country. I innocently asked the vitamin salesperson at my local Whole Foods if they had any kelp in stock (kelp is thought to have similar effects as potassium iodide). She showed me the empty shelves and asked if I wanted to get on the long waiting list when supplies are re-stocked – but she warned – “everyone’s sold out.”

Fear’s everywhere. Under the most “normal” of circumstances, many of us are still under its grip. There always seems to be something to be afraid of, whether it’s a short-term “crisis” or the looming uncertainties of the future. (In a recent poll of people aged 44 – 75, 61% said they feared running out of money more than they feared dying)

Fear’s Mighty Contagious – Internally and Externally

Emotional contagion is real and its effects can be wide-spread. Fear contagion is dangerous – to our own well-being – and to those around us.

In her post, 4 Ways to Manage Fear, author Jennifer Lauck talks about her recent meeting with a friend, “We sit at a fantastic French café. We are together to enjoy a good meal, a lovely day and each other. As we sit down, I tell her I am scared about what has happened in Japan. She says, “I’m scared too.” We then spent a good share of our limited time deep in talk about how afraid we are, and why. In our conversation, we breed more fear. I can feel it in my stomach, this twist of tension that makes me dizzy. The math is simple. One fear plus another fear equals two fears. When we part, my friend and I now carry twice the fear we had before we met. If we keep up this pattern, we are going to infect the next person we meet with two fears, and if that person adds their fear to our fear, you get fear plus fear plus fear.”

As I write this, I’m noticing that the Japanese crisis is no longer getting top billing in the headlines. Fear sells, and the (thankfully) slightly better news about radiation leakage has knocked it out of the headlines. But given the media penchant for shock and awe, fear will be back in another story, another statistic and another warning.

Fear – Friend or Foe?

We’re brilliantly hard-wired to fear as a survival mechanism. Our ancient ancestors faced with real predators and aggressors, came equipped with a powerful alarm system called the fight or flight response. To work, the system has to constantly “be on.” That’s great if real danger is imminent. It wasn’t meant to be activated if a co-worker got the promotion we wanted or we get cut off in traffic and are late for a meeting.

Here’s why. The fight or flight syndrome, activated by real or perceived threats, triggers (instantly) nerve and hormone signals that prompt your adrenal glands to release a surge of hormones, including cortisol and adrenaline.

Adrenaline increases your heart rate, raises your blood pressure and boosts your energy supply. Cortisol, considered the primary stress hormone, increases sugar in the blood and enhances how your brain uses glucose, robbed from their normal job of repairing your tissues. It alters your immune system and suppresses the reproductive system.

Once this system is turned on, our ability to think clearly and rationally is greatly diminished. The amygdala (emotional seat of the brain) overtakes the neocortex (“reasoning” part of the brain). Energy is drawn into the emotional response and working memory decreases. Most estimates are that the adrenaline maximized for the “emergency” will take about 18 to 20 minutes to decline while other hormones will take 3-4 hours to normalize.

In other words – this is a system you only want turned ON in real emergencies!

Recent research shows that the fight or flight response can be turned on by many situations. Given our emotional history, over time we can hard-wire many stimuli to this response. Even simple distractions, changes and routine frustrations can activate the system. In fact, there are many people walking around in chronic pre-triggered states, where the slightest stimulus can amp up the system into a full-blown emotional hi-jacking. Many people have adjusted to thinking of this as their “normal” state.

While fear is a biologically protective emotion, necessary for survival, it has morphed into pathological conditions of anxiety, phobias and post traumatic stress disorder in modern life.

We aren’t born with many fears and (recent research revealed that two common fears – snakes and spiders may be learned) our common fears are nearly all learned. We’re conditioned by the fears of our earliest caregivers and cultural influences. Early fears become encoded and consolidated by memories hard-wiring our fears and leaving them “prey” to stimuli that recall past experiences.

Managing Fear – Out-Smarting the Predator

“Our intelligence, cooperation and many other features we have as modern humans developed from our attempts to out-smart the predator.

Robert Sussman, Co-author, Man the Hunted: Primates, Predators and Human Evolution

So who’s the predator in 2011? Dangers from radiation leakage are REAL. We are wise to pay attention to the real and possible dangers around us in a calm, balanced and rational way. Most people need better skills to detect and deal with fear in their lives. Fear is insidious and drives much of what we avoid and what we choose. Too many people accept these fears as inevitable – a sign of the times. But unless we manage fear to our advantage – its effects will sap our energies, deteriorate our health, corrode our spirits and lead us to poor decisions.

Your Breath is Your Anchor - Most people have lost touch with their breath. They hunch their shoulders, hold their breath and breathe shallowly. To keep your neocortex engaged, you must oxygenate your brain and body. The way you breathe ENABLES certain emotions (like fear) and disables others (like calmness).
Relax Your Body – Unless you learn to get in touch with your body (and many people are living from the head – up) you will have a tough time disabling fear, anger and other “triggered” emotions. Most body posture is habituated, often by the fear response. Unless you consciously begin to send a different signal to the tight, tense parts of your body, you will continue to hold stress.
Expand Your Emotional Literacy – Many people have a tiny vocabulary to describe and understand their emotions. They say they are terrified when they are only worried. They say they are worried when concern might be a more appropriate response. This is not simply a matter of semantics. Each emotion carries a unique “biological signature” in your body. Get to know it. The more you expand your emotional repertoire, the more control you have over your feelings.
Check Your Beliefs Around Fear – Beliefs drive emotions. If you believe that fear is inevitable, it will be. If you believe that fear is wimpy, you’ll outwardly deny fear, but denial is not an option for the body – it will register fear regardless of your attempts at repression. We’re taught and modeled at an early age what emotions are OK and which are not OK. Most adults are still living with their inherited beliefs.
Think About How You Think – To work with your fears, you’ll have to get a better understanding of how you trigger them. Yes, outside fight or flight triggers, like tsunamis are real, but most fear triggering is done by your thinking. Your thoughts are triggering your emotions all day long. Getting a handle on the events and thoughts that trigger you is critical to making lasting change.

The good news – we now know that the brain is “plastic,” and has a brilliant capacity to rewire itself. How? Through the retraining of our thinking which in turn rewires our neocortex. Turns out the great mitigator of your experience is your thinking. Fear doesn’t own you.

Use it wisely.

As always, I love to hear your comments and questions. What do you believe about fear and what how do you manage it?

Your readership, subscriptions, tweets and shares are much appreciated.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under anger, awareness, brain, changing behavior, culture, emotional intelligence, emotions, energy, feelings, life, management, mind-body, personal development, thoughts, well-being

Tagged as body language, breathing, emotional hijacking, EQ, Fear, fight or flight, Health, human resources, neuroscience, radiation fear, relationships, stress

March 31, 2011

What Rights Should ALL Workers Have? – Part 1

Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home…the factory, farm or office where he works…unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere.
Eleanor Roosevelt, United Nations Remarks, 1953

The most important thing any business has are its people – right?

Lately, I have thought a great deal about the rights of workers. These days, it seems like those rights are in serious question.

Unprecedented legislation has been proposed. The rights of public workers are being challenged. A landmark lawsuit representing the rights of female workers may be litigated in the Supreme Court.

Seems like we’ve gotten to a point where many Americans aren’t sure what they believe about worker’s rights. We’ve been down this road before – about a hundred years ago, then 50 years ago and now in 2011 we’re again asking the fundamental question:

What Rights Should Workers Have?

America has a long and often violent history in the struggle for workers rights. The Progressive Era (1890’s to 1920s) was an age of reform, the nation’s response to the industrial revolution. Its effects touched virtually all American society and the lives of its workers.

While the reforms of that era did not take up the issues of race and the rights of women, it paved the way for later reforms that resulted in women’s suffrage and later, the Civil Rights Movement. The Progressive Movement succeeded because it had “support” from political parties, labor and management and the American Middle Class.

“Enlightened self-interest,” ushered in an entirely new era of change and reform. Independent media (muckrakers) exposed the abuses of power in government – and in business. And good government advocates (which included many politicians) committed to cleaning out corruption at all levels of government, enabled legislative changes that allowed citizen participation to flourish. In fact, it was Governor Robert La Follette, whose “Wisconsin Idea,” provided the leadership for open government, fair taxation, agrarian and labor reforms and the regulation of public utilities and the railroad.

2011 – Where are we Now?

Globalization, economic recession, real and contrived deficit budgeting, demographic shifts and huge technological changes are reshaping the landscape for worker’s rights. The public is placing conflicting demands on the forces that shape our work world.

On one hand some American consumers now want to know the sourcing of their food and other consumer goods (Where were these tomatoes grown and how much were the workers paid? Was child labor used? Were the farm laborers exposed to harmful pesticides in the process?). On the other, some Americans are questioning whether public workers should be allowed the right to collectively bargain for their pay, benefits and working conditions (Why should I, the taxpayer, pay for another worker’s health or pension benefits?)

Our already shaky social contract looks like its coming apart at the seams.

Brutal political fighting, unlimited money in political campaigns and a mostly compromised media have resulted in deeply polarized public opinions about the future of worker’s rights. Unchecked, these opinions will translate into sweeping new laws that stand to undermine many of the gains workers have made throughout the last century.

Cooler heads and balanced fact-based critical thinking are not prevailing. Extremes in thinking and emotions are charting a new course for the lives of American workers. We are, in the beginning of this new century, setting the groundwork for the working conditions of the future. It is happening – right now.

Who are the Workers?

Discussions about the rights of workers tend to assume that we are referring solely to wage workers – those to use the awful phrase that, “Shower after work instead of before.” We get lost in our pro and anti-union rhetoric and often cite the most extreme examples to make our case for our point of view.

There is plenty of evidence that shows that the gains made by the labor movement over the past hundred years have benefited all workers. The impact of unions on total non union wages is almost as large as the impact on total union wages. Union gains have set a standard for all workers’ benefits including salary, sick and family leave, healthcare, retirement and vacation time.

And while we are increasingly pitted against each other in today’s knock-down-drag-out fighting over future fiscal policy, we are, more than ever, interdependent. We are as they say, all in this together. As the U.S. global ranking in education continues to decline, those cheap labor pools that many American companies are now chasing in “developing” countries, may supply the next generation of scientists and engineers to our competitive world market.

We isolate and segregate the state of our working conditions at our own peril.

Whether we are - farm laborers, accountants, teachers, marketing directors, nurses, sanitation workers, miners, software developers, graphic artists, housekeepers, administrative assistants, line-cooks, fire fighters, dietitians, cable technicians, baristas, university faculty, cabbies, school janitors, bus drivers, human resources professionals, actors, electricians, supermarket cashiers, supply chain managers, nannies, food inspectors, pilots, plumbers or free-lance consultants – the future of our work is integrally linked.

The questions we face and decisions we make now will define how America works. While important discussions regarding advances in work-life balance, flex-time, generational shifts and gender parity are in progress – we are again facing fundamental questions of who has rights and what those rights are?

In Part 2 of this post, we’ll explore these crucial questions and examine what “rights” the 21st century worker should have?

Do we believe that worker’s rights are human rights – and if so, what are they? As citizens, do we bear collective responsibility to ensure rights for other workers – or is this a matter of personal responsibility?

How do you think the issues we face as workers now will affect us and every generation to come?

But please don’t wait till Part 2 to share your thoughts and questions.

As always we appreciate your readership and subscriptions, shares and tweets.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under American workers, business, culture, employee engagement, generations, management, meaning of work, work, work-life balance, workplace

Tagged as bosses, collective bargaining, Fear, human resources, unions, workers rights

April 7, 2011

What Rights Should ALL Workers Have – Part 2

In Part 1, we raised some basic questions about the rights of workers:

Do we believe that worker’s rights are human rights – and if so, what are they?
As citizens, do we bear collective responsibility to ensure rights for other workers – or is this a matter of personal responsibility?
How do you think the issues we face as workers now will affect us and every generation to come?
What rights should the worker of the 21^st century have?
Should all workers have the same rights – so they need them? Does the $100k salaried manager, public school teacher or Smartphone assembly line worker need or deserve the same rights?

These are basic but complex questions as we set the ground rules for work in this century. Many of the “rights” workers now have were established within the last hundred years – and many of them are on the chopping block.

Apart from differences in opinions or experience – about unions or taxation or any number of hot button issues – it is crucially important for all of us to engage in a rational and honest dialogue about the future of the human being at work.

Workers Rights Worldwide

Workers rights vary dramatically throughout the world. The legal rights of workers are tied to the code of law within a given country and municipality. While private organizations and institutions can set rules and norms for employee conditions, they have no legal bearing except in relation to public law. While there is general similarity in many labor laws (such as, child labor) the globalization of work has not brought us any closer to universal rights governing all workers.

In Europe each country sets its own standard in terms of labor laws, but must adhere to the criteria established by the European Union (EU) for its member nations. For example, EU law states that workers cannot work more than 48 hours per week and must have the right to 11 hours of rest per day. Every worker is guaranteed at least one full day off each week and paid leave of at least four weeks a year. The EU also mandates that part-time and temporary workers be entitled to the same treatment as full-time workers.

Compare this with the United States which is the only advanced country in the world that does not guarantee its workers paid vacations. Australia and New Zealand both require employers to provide paid vacation of twenty days and Canada and Japan mandate at least ten paid days off. According to the No Vacation Nation Report (2007) the “the gap between paid time off in the United States and the rest of the world is even larger if we include legally mandated paid holidays, where the U.S. offers none, but most of the rest of the world’s richest countries offer between five and thirteen paid holidays per year.”

In the absence of government policies, almost 1 in 4 Americans have no paid vacation and holidays. According to government data, the average worker in the U.S. private sector gets only about six paid holidays per year – less than the minimum legal standard set in the rest of the world’s richest economies.

A Workplace Bill of Rights

In researching for this post, I’ve come to the conclusion that we, as a nation, haven’t done enough thinking about the question of worker’s rights. Yes, there have been bitter fights and valiant struggles over labor rights – and most of the laws we’ve established have come from those roots.

Mostly, the rights that protect workers have been defined by what we don’t want – for example, hazardous conditions and exclusions of certain groups. So you could say – we’ve been pushed more by the pain that workers have endured rather than pulled by a vision of what we want for workers.

In searching for a model for workers rights – we offer the Workplace Bill of Rights™ from Workplace Fairness as a starting point. These statements give us a somewhat neutral and strong template to engage our thinking in creating a vision for workplace rights.

1. Employees should be treated with honesty and respect.

Tall order? First, we must define what honesty and respect mean to us as individuals. These are surely universal human needs, but they are subject to personal definitions.

Can we agree on certain basics? At the bare minimum should workers be protected against coercion, threats, verbal abuse, bullying and harassment? Should bosses and organizations be permitted to lie, misrepresent and make false promises to employees? Where does organizational transparency (to use one of today’s business buzzwords) fit into this category?

2. Working full-time should guarantee a basic standard of living

Getting into some interesting territory with this one! According to the Economic Policy Institute between 1948 and 1979, the richest 10% accounted for 1/3 of average income growth in the U.S. This was consistent for three decades. Between 1979 and 2007, the richest 10% accounted for 91% of average income growth.

3. Workplaces should be free of discrimination.

This should be easy – we all agree, right? Let’s take a case in the headlines now. A massive class-action lawsuit (with the potential to represent 1.5 million female workers) pending against Wal-Mart could set a new standard for the rights of women in the workplace.

The complaints brought in the suit originated with a cashier, Betty Dukes, who believing her efforts towards advancement were not only thwarted but punished with demotion, filed a federal suit in 2001, which “fellow” workers called, “Betty vs. Goliath.” As Fortune Magazine reported, “Her claims are familiar to many female workers who feel their advancement has been hindered by discriminatory practices such as failure to openly post internal job openings. Overall, female workers today are paid only about 80% of what men earn.”

4. No working person should be without health insurance.

Where do we start? You get no argument from this author, but let’s look at the statistics. As of September, 2010, 50.7 million US citizens (1 in 6) had no health insurance. Furthermore, a recent report shows that workers now pay 47% more for family coverage than they did in 2005 while employers pay 20% more. Current trending shows that since that time, many employers are cutting benefits, raising co-pays and in many cases eliminating coverage entirely. The unabated rises in health care costs make sure that these trends will only get worse.

5. No one should have to work his or her entire life.

Attitudes towards retirement are undergoing dramatic changes. The thinking of most Baby Boomers about work is very different from their parent’s generation. Many people want to continue to work as a matter of choice. However, necessity is driving more of this change than anyone ever imagined.

The recent gloomy news that only 11% of the 77 million Boomers believe they will be able to live in comfort when they retire is alarming. Only 55% said they were certain or somewhat certain that they could retire with financial security and 44% said they had little or no faith they’d have enough money when their careers ended. 1 in 4 Boomers say they will never retire.

6. Employees should be able to leave a job with dignity.

Let’s face it; we’re way beyond the era of pink slips, “security” perp walks and awful Friday firings. Since the start of the recession in December ’07, over 5.1 million jobs have been lost. The jobs landscape has been reshaped. Worker “security” is at an all time low. So are worker trust and engagement levels!

Some corporate methods of lay-offs and firings have left the unemployed and employed “survivors” shaken and cynical. As more states look to cut costs, traditional unemployment benefits are being reduced and extensions are being eliminated. Funds for job training and career counseling are also dwindling, leaving many workers, especially those over 55, in untenable situations.

7. Every workplace should be as safe as possible.

No question about it – workplace safety has steadily improved over the last 40 years. Workplace fatalities have declined 23% since 1994. Workplace illness and injury rates have also decreased by 44%. Many factors have contributed to the decline: company policies, employee attitudes and training, OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) safety expertise and better technological communication.

But these gains are in jeopardy. OSHA opponents want to see its funding cut or eliminated. Budget cuts are targeting safety measures at public and private levels and threats to collective bargaining, which have protected worker safety, are increasing.

8. There is more to life than work.

Right on! Here I want to reiterate the points made earlier about the dismal comparison of American worker’s paid leave time to other developed countries. The shrinking options for retirement also bear noting again.

9. Employees are entitled to work together.

What Workplace Fairness illuminates here is the “right” of workers to come together for the purpose of organizing and collective action. Regardless, of what you believe about unions and collective bargaining, the question remains – should we restrict and or/outlaw the rights of workers to protect their own rights through collective actions?

10. Employees should be able to stand up for their rights.

Is it OK for organizations and institutions to coerce or try to force workers to give up any of their rights? Is the loss of rights a fair trade for a salary or benefits? Who should protect the voice of workers to speak up against injustices, unfair treatment and unhealthy workplace practices? When W. Edwards Deming, created the principles of Quality management , one core principle was to “Drive fear from the Workplace.” Without rights, fear rules.

So what should the rights of the 21^st century worker be? And who will grant those rights? Is it likely that corporations, whose primary goal is still profit, will expand worker’s rights at the expense of that profit? Will taxpayers reject the rights of public workers because they are too costly? Where do we draw the line – health and safety, child labor, free speech?

At the core, we need to understand the complex beliefs we hold about the rights of workers. What drives our thinking? How much is driven by biases and stereotypes? How much of what we believe is driven by how much it costs? Is the GDP of this country, or any nation, simply about the growth of money – or does the well-being of its workers measure in that value?

These are hard questions – and we’re at a crossroads.

What do you think?

As always we appreciate your readership and subscriptions, shares and tweets.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under American workers, business, career, culture, employee engagement, generations, management, meaning of work, organizational culture, values, well-being, work, workplace

Tagged as Baby Boomers, bosses, collective bargaining, EU labor laws, female pay, Health, human resources, human rights, labor, paid vacation, Wal-Mart lawsuit, workers rights

April 14, 2011

Work Isn’t Life

“Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirits.” Studs Terkel

A few of you might be reacting to the title thinking, “Hey, my work is my life,” or “My job is the most fulfilling thing in my life.”

But that’s not what this post is about. Because life isn’t work. Yes, it can be a Big part of life, but it isn’t life.

While it is thought that Freud said “Work and love are the cornerstones of our humanness,” it is true that work is the primary activity in most people’s lives. Work and love (however we define it) still are the primary forces that drive most of our actions.

For many, the role of work has changed dramatically in modern life. The way we work is being redefined. The meaning of work is in the process of global transition. Yet, in many ways work’s deeper meanings still form the underlying basis for how work motivates us.

David Whyte, the inspiring author of “The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship, writes, “All of us living at this time are descended from a long line of survivors who lived through the difficulties of history and prehistory: most of whom had to do a great deal of work to keep the wolf, the cold and the neighboring tribe from the door. Work was necessity: work meant food, shelter, survival and a sense of power over circumstances. Work was, and still is, endless.”

While the need for “food, shelter and survival” remains, the meaning of how we define work – and the context of work as part of life is changing. And an important part of that equation is our constantly evolving sense of our “power over circumstances.” How that power is defined and who determines it is a critical aspect of the meaning of work – and life.

It’s Not Just About Stress at Work

70 hour standard work weeks have, sadly, become the norm for many Americans. Even though there have been important gains in corporate policies (over half of companies surveyed say they offer some form of flextime) research shows that employee experience doesn’t match corporate reports. In many cases, employers send their workers double-messages about expectations regarding the hours and ways they work.

We don’t discuss “work addiction” much anymore because it has become endemic in the American work culture.

We tend to think that the American “movement” for work-life balance is simply about the real need to manage stress in this culture. Even though recent studies all point to the workplace as the single greatest source of stress in the culture, the desire for more life outside of work and more life at work, goes beyond “stress management.”

A growing body of research has revealed that as many women are approaching “mid-life” (technically these women are the upper percentages of the Gen X 30- 44-year-old age cohort ) they are “becoming on average, sicker and sadder.” Results from six recent major happiness studies show that this drop in happiness occurs regardless of marital or child status, economic conditions or work-life factors.

Marcus Buckingham, author of Find Your Most Successful Life: What the Most Successful and Resilient Women Do Differently writes, “Over the last 50 years, women have secured greater opportunity, greater achievement, greater influence and more money. But over the same period, have become less happy, more anxious, more stressed and, in ever-increasing numbers, self-medicating.”

For those juggling the real demands of family and work, they do so in many workplaces that are still sorely lacking in support of life outside of work. This is also true for Baby Boomer working women, many of whom now carry responsibilities for children still at home and aging family members who need their help. According to a study done by Harvard and McGill Universities, the U.S. lags far behind nearly all wealthy countries when it comes to familyoriented policies.

Jody Heyman, founder of Harvard’s Project on Global Working Families states that, “More countries are providing the workplace protections that millions of Americans only dream about.” The study notes that the U.S. is only one of five countries out of 173 that does not guarantee some form of paid maternity leave. (The other countries in this special group are Lesotho, Liberia, Swaziland and Papua, New Guinea)

GEN Y – We Want More

Enter Gen Y – a massive demographic wave that is changing the American workscape. Sociologist Kathleen Gerson, describes this generation as “searching for a definition of personal identity that does not pit their own development against creating committed ties to others.” In response to their desires, Gen Y or Millennials have been branded as everything from, “lazy and unrealistic” to “entitled and difficult.”

Millenials have watched their parents and Boomer relatives work for decades only to lose their jobs and retirement benefits after “sacrificing” a lifetime. Sociologist Phyllis Moen points out that, “(Millenials) no longer believe in the myth that working in rigid ways for long hours necessarily pays off. That’s a real change.”

This generation isn’t content in finding just work-family balance – what they’re after is work life balance. They, according to Lisa Horn of the Society for Human Resource Management, value their flexibility just as much as a working mom!

The Need to Ask New and Different Questions

If how we define work – and how we do that work is going through a paradigm shift (and this author believes it is) then we need to start asking a whole new set of questions about meaning. Is work still expected to be drudgery? Do the demands of a job supersede our “personal” needs and desires? Does the crumbling model of authoritarian command and control organizations and bosses have any validity in a new paradigm of work?

Again, author David Whyte offers some illuminating thoughts, “The great questions that touch on personal happiness in work have to do with an ability to hold our own conversation amid the constant background of shouted needs, hectoring advice and received wisdom. In work, we have to find high ground safe from the arriving tsunami of expectations concerning what I am going to DO. Work is a place you can lose yourself more easily perhaps than finding yourself. It is a place of powerful undercurrents, a place to find ourselves, but also, a place to drown, losing all sense of our own voice, our own contribution and conversation.”

After hundreds of years of working in the shadow of a “Protestant” ethic, we are redefining work. But in the process, we are also redefining what makes a fully human life. To do that, we must challenge every assumption that underpins the public and corporate policies that govern work. But we also have to confront our own thinking about what we believe about work, success and of course – money. Money is a big elephant in our mental room.

Our own personal beliefs often justify work without adequate life as much as weak public policy or self-serving corporate practices do. We may not (now) have the economic freedom to fully realize the balance of work and life – but we can reclaim what that means for us.

As always, I love to hear your comments and questions. What do you believe about work, life and work-life balance?

Your readership, subscriptions, tweets and shares are much appreciated.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

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Tagged as David Whyte, family leave policies, flextime, gender balance, Health, human resources, motivation, stress, trust in the workplace, well-being, work-family balance

April 21, 2011

Emotional Baggage at Work

“Other things may change us, but we start and end with family.” Anthony Brandt

We all bring it – we all have it. It is a matter of degree – and awareness.

In every interaction we have at work, we bring the dynamics of our families, culture, generation and gender with us.

The first problem is that most of us don’t even realize it.

Workplace dynamics are part of a system. We’ll define a system here as- a set of interconnected things or parts that form a complex whole.

The second problem is that the modern workplace doesn’t operate as a whole.

Most organizations and institutions think in parts – still functioning from a 17^th century fragmentation model. According to Sylvia LaFair, Author of Don’t Bring it to Work: Breaking the Family Patterns That Limit Success, “Most business leaders aren’t trained to think systematically, but rather in dichotomies or dualities. When problems occur, they resort to a predictable analytic response: sort and judge, sort and judge and sort and judge.”

The highly trained left-brained executives are responding to today’s complex and unrelenting pressures with a very small and outdated toolkit – let’s isolate the problem (even if the “problem” is human complexity) and fix it. Too many leaders still think understanding and using psychology in business is akin to “doing therapy” and that factoring feelings into the equation is “soft.”

No One’s on Top of the Mountain

Let’s face it – most of us have plenty of unfinished emotional business.

Because of our collective conditioning and the old memes that govern work, we don’t like to admit it. In fact, some of us are downright embarrassed about it. The reality is that with the exception of those of us that grew up with the mythic world of the Norman Rockwell family image – growing up left many of us with emotional scars.

Most of us drag our unresolved family hurt with us to relationships with peers and significant others, through schooling and into the workplace. Once in the workplace many of us tend to view workplace relationships primarily through the prism of our past experience.

A boss becomes a Dad or Mom. A co-worker becomes the competitive sibling. We become the long-suffering son or daughter yearning for recognition. The “incompetents” at work replace the kids that let us down. The raise we don’t get becomes the rejection from team sports. The childish bully ways of some ripen into more sophisticated power maneuverings.

It’s an emotional stew that is mixed with the real adult demands to work effectively and productively in diverse cultures with people we often barely know who have different backgrounds, styles, preferences and mindsets. Place that stew within competitive workplace cultures filled with super-achievers and technological tools that often impede personal communication and you’ve got a potentially volatile mix.

Go Team!

The question of how family dynamics thwart or enhance the current structuring of teams in the workplace is fascinating. Logically, the success of teams depends on effective communication, trust and transparency and a real willingness to collaborate with others. Yet, too many team members still function like sole proprietors.

Too many well-intended books and consultants develop language and refer to different behaviors and temperaments in the workplaces as – the hero, the martyr, the scapegoat, the victim and the persecutor. This labeling does nothing to help us to understand the competing and often, unrecognized needs that reside underneath unresolved emotional baggage.

“When it’s Hysterical, It’s Historical.” Michele Conlin

Because working with emotional intelligence is such an important part of our work, we’ve witnessed some incredible emotional tangles in workplaces. Often, these “problems” are disguised as garden-variety conflicts, personality issues and stylistic differences. But when you get down there in the weeds to unravel these often, intractable, problems, the real issues emerge.

Sometimes the presenting problem seems new. New employee A, doesn’t get along with older employee B. Employee A is young, new to the ways of organizational expectations and dynamics. But to the more seasoned employee B, A can’t do anything right.

Upon further inspection, it seems that employee B, hasn’t liked anyone that’s been hired for A’s position. They’re all lazy, incompetent and insincere. While lacking in people skills, B’s got some clout because he is talented in his area of expertise. He resents that management keeps hiring these inexperienced loafers and isn’t shy about sharing his feelings.

Given the opportunity and the right set of questions, Employee B reveals that he had the “same problem with my spoiled, precocious younger brother.”

Bottom line, we could talk about new hires and qualifications and team spirit until the cows come home! Employee B’s big aha moment only comes when he realizes his “transference” onto Employee A is inappropriate and misplaced.

The Role of the Brain

Author David Rock’s SCARF Model offers a blueprint to help us to understand the true drivers of human social behavior. If we accept the premise that early childhood learning imprints our psycho-social development and sets us up for how we relate to others – inside and outside of work – the latest findings from neuroscience can illuminate how we can work with these dynamics.

Although all of the domains within the SCARF model are relevant for this discussion (Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, Fairness) the role of status provides a compelling glimpse into the family dynamics of the workplace. According to Rock, status is about relative importance, “pecking ordering” and seniority. One researcher points out that status is the most significant marker in human health and life span. Another study showed that an increase of status (our relative importance) was similar in strength to a financial windfall.

The perception of a potential or real reduction in status can generate a strong threat response. According to Rock, one of the primary themes emerging from neuroscience is that much of the motivation that drives social behavior is governed by an “overarching organizing principle of minimizing threat and maximizing reward.”

Competition, which still underpins the structure of systems and management practices in most organizations, can set these early childhood dynamics in motion. Certain forms of real or perceived competition (of any type) can act as emotional triggers that activate the fight or flight response. The brain perceives threat and acts to protect the organism.

This is not woo-woo touchy feely stuff – it’s well established science.

Yes, We Know – Managers Can’t Be Therapists

Conversations about the role of family dynamics in the workplace often end with the statement, “Well this may all be true, but we’re not here to do therapy.”

No one’s suggesting that managers become therapists – or that the workplaces hold counseling sessions. However, if we continue to operate our organizations as if human dynamics don’t exist, well continue to have the same problems.

The revolution in the business mindset will come when we acknowledge the full spectrum of the human experience and stop acting as if work was simply an economic transaction!

Because so many organizations and leaders are averse to discussing emotions, we continue to work in systems that try to compartmentalize human experience.

Many organizations and managers are understandably afraid to open up a “can of worms” by allowing feelings to be acknowledged. Rather than seeking out appropriate and creative ways to address emotional issues at work, they continue to sweep them under the proverbial carpet.

These are short-term strategies because these patterns are unlikely to resolve themselves. In fact, many experts on bully behavior in the workplace cite lingering childhood issues as the chief causal factors driving this growing problem. Some experts estimate that 20 to 50% of workers’ time is wasted in unproductive workplace dramas.

Every organizational leader needs to understand that you cannot expect optimal performance, high levels of creativity and participation, trust and team cooperation in an atmosphere where people are still playing out their unconscious childhood traumas. That’s simply counterintuitive.

We have much to learn about ourselves and others. Without question, we all bear responsibility for our own behavior. But there is a whole new world of knowledge available to us that can give us the tools to understand the old, unexamined patterns that drive us. From a purely business standpoint, it is simply inefficient not to equip workers with information that could free them from habituated and unproductive behaviors.

Workplace relationships are the lifeblood of business. The health, strength and resiliency of those relationships are a powerful economic engine. And those relationships, so often characterized as exhausting, frustrating and draining can be transformed to offer support, community and inspiration.

Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind, captures the new mind of work perfectly, “The future belongs to a very different kind of person – with a very different kind of mindset – creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers.”

If we accept that we operate at work unconsciously as dysfunctional family systems – can we imagine learning to recognize those patterns differently and transforming them into healthy life-affirming patterns?

What do you think?

As always, I love to hear your comments and questions. What do you believe about work, life and work-life balance?

Your readership, subscriptions, tweets and shares are much appreciated.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

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Filed under brain science, business, culture, emotional intelligence, feelings, interpersonal communication, leadership, life, management, meaning of work, needs, organizational psychology, performance, work, work-life balance, workplace

Tagged as bosses, David Rock, development, diversity, dysfunctional families, emotional baggage, emotional intelligence, fight or flight, human resources, neuroscience, SCARF, teams, workplace relationships

April 28, 2011

Why Do We Have To “Promote” Kindness at Work?

“I now realize I have been working with my eyes closed. I appreciate even more a professor with whom I work occasionally: he always makes the point that leaders, managers — everyone in fact — should never underestimate the importance of kindness at work.” Gill Corkindale, Harvard Business Review

Recently an article by Harvard Business Review (HBR) author, Gill Corkindale, “The Importance of Kindness at Work” really got my attention. I noticed that the piece received lots of tweets, shares and comments, too.

Seems kindness at work - or a lack of it - is a popular topic. Lots of Twitter comments sharing the article link were prefaced with statements like – what the workplace needs more of and kindness: is it lost in the workplace?

We’re talking about human kindness here folks – normal, everyday civility, courtesy, caring and consideration.

Have we reached a point where we have to promote kindness – sell it, monetize it and justify it – for it to become a workplace norm? Will we have to refer to it as a “strategy” to be more productive at work? And let’s hope it never gets called a business “best practice.”

Peruse the comments section of the HBR article and you’ll get a cross-section of real life stories (as is Gill Corkindale’s) of what’s happening for so many people in the workplace.

Some of the comments tell stories of supportive managers and kind co-workers. There are also examples of workers, who faced with the inevitable emotional and physical challenges that human beings face, are met with cold shoulders from their bosses and unsupportive company policies.

How sad.

How do we account for this? What makes us turn our backs on others in their time of greatest need?

Certainly, weak federal laws and company policies leave workers in the U.S. much more vulnerable when ill or in times of family need than in most other developed countries. But what makes us – as managers and co-workers, withhold kindness from others?

Certainly, highly competitive workplaces, pit employees against one another.

Certainly, the demands and pace of most workplaces keep people over-focused on tasks instead of people.

Certainly, technology, albeit a wonderful tool, has depersonalized face to face contact.

Certainly, fear-based management practices promote anxiety, worry and resentment within workplace cultures – all kindness killers.

And all of these things have the insidious effect of eroding the very essence of our humanness – our empathy.

Empathy Deficit Disorder – Kindness Killer at Work

While it’s not yet classified as a disorder in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, most psychologists will attest to the growing problem of EDD – Empathy Deficit Disorder.

According to Dr. Douglas LaBier, “Based on my 35 years of experience as a psychotherapist, business psychologist and researcher, I have come to believe that EDD is a pervasive but overlooked condition with profound consequences for the mental health of individuals and of our society. People who suffer from EDD are unable to step outside themselves and tune in to what other people experience. They have become alienated from their own hearts.”

You see, we’re hard-wired for empathy. Our natural tendencies towards feeling the feelings of others usually develops at around eighteen months of age. The evolution of empathy, made possible by mirror neurons in our brains, has allowed us to develop the social skills that make modern societies possible.

But just as we are hard-wired toward understanding and acting with compassion towards others, social scientists are finding that those impulses can get blocked when our attention is over-focused on ourselves, our problems or crises.

An intriguing study done at Princeton Theological Seminary demonstrated this dynamic. A group of divinity students were told they were going to deliver a practice sermon and would each be given a topic. Half of the students were given the topic of the Good Samaritan (the biblical story about the man who stops to help a stranger in need by the side of the road).

The other half of the students were given random sermon topics. One by one, they were told when it was time to go and give their sermon. Some were told to rush and others were not. As they went from one building to the other, each one passed a man who was bent over and moaning in need of assistance.

It was found that over 60% of the seminarians passed by without stopping to help. It didn’t matter whether they were contemplating the parable of the Good Samaritan. What actually determined whether someone would stop and help was how much of a hurry they thought they were in. Only 10% of those who were told to rush offered help, whereas 63% of those who thought they had extra time stopped to help.

The implications here are clear – we are hard-wired for empathy and can have the best of intentions – but our stress response can override them.

Reclaiming our Humanness at Work

The good news is that we can keep the Good Samaritan alive within us – we just have to commit to staying conscious 0f our thinking process.

Distraction is a powerful force – but a teeny tiny window of 5/10^th a second allows us to recapture conscious thought. Speaking about that “opportunity,” Douglas LaBier stated, “Just as you can develop EDD by too much self-absorption, you can also overcome EDD by retraining your brain to take advantage of what is known as neuroplasticity. Similar research shows that as you refocus your thoughts, feelings and behavior in the direction you want, the brain regions associated with them are reinforced. What’s more, changing your brain activity reinforces the changes you’re making in your thinking. The result is a self-reinforcing loop between your conscious attitudes, your behavior and your brain activity.”

To rekindle kindness in the workplace, we need to regain our focus on what we truly believe is important. We can block our natural empathic impulses with beliefs, judgments and emotions that keep us separate from other people. We can lose ourselves in the endless demands of business imperatives – which are usually not people centric. We can blame a harsh and uncivil vision of the world for our aloofness and cynicism. But finally, it comes down to us - to the moment by moment choices we make to look away – or extend a hand.

Because emotional contagion is real and powerful, what each one of us does matters. There’s always a witness in the workplace. Someone who watches and waits to be heard and understood. Someone who wants to reach out but is afraid to act alone.

There is an artificial separation and compartmentalization that most organizational structures impose on human connection. Those structures and systems often inhibit open communication and contact, despite the era of teams. But those obstacles don’t have to stop us, as individuals, from reaching out to our co-workers, even with a smile, acknowledgement or thank-you.

Ultimately, our actions are dictated by our thinking. What we believe about kindness in the workplace (and outside of it), what we believe about people (including ourselves) and their “motives,” and what we believe about the possibilities for creating change will determine what we do.

While, it’s not always comfortable or easy to reach out to others, it’s almost always gratifying. And it will, bit by bit, contribute a different energy to our workplace cultures.

One of the comments in the HBR articles contained this wonderful stanza of a poem called Threads, by a former CEO and author of Love and Profit, James Autry.

Listen.
In every office
you hear the threads
of love and joy and fear and guilt,
the cries for celebration and reassurance,
and somehow you know that connecting those threads
is what you are supposed to do
and business takes care of itself.
Someone needs to say “amen”.

Amen.

Your kind comments, tweets and shares keep this blog alive – and are much appreciated

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under business, compassion, empathy, management, managing people, meaning of work, organizational culture, organizational development, performance, work-life balance, workplace

Tagged as bosses, collaboration, distraction, emotions, Empathy Deficit Disorder, harvard business review, human resources, kindness, motivation, neuroscience, Psychology, stress, trust in the workplace, workplace relationships

May 5, 2011

Emotional Mindfulness – What Can Anger, Sadness, Hate & Despair Teach Us?

I’m experiencing many contradictory feelings this week – how can so many potent emotions sit side by side within me?

Ever get this feeling?

Of course you do. You do, because you’re a human who is experiencing a range of feelings that can often seem completely at odds with each other.

Which feeling do I pay most attention to? Do I have to choose one feeling over the other?

No – you don’t! All of your feelings are valid and they are all an expression of some energy within you. But learning to ride the waves of these different, often difficult energies within can be challenging.

Let me share with you what brought this on.

The past few days, at least in the United States, we’ve witnessed a roller coaster of feelings. Yes, I’m talking about the death of OBL – Osama bin Laden. It’s sparked intense conversations and powerful emotions.

Like many other people, I’ve felt strong currents of different emotions –sometimes unsettling, at times, uncomfortable.

Then I discovered a short post by blogger Susan Piver – Osama Bin Laden is Dead. One Buddhist’s Response. It asks important questions – and raises powerful issues. Susan writes:

“How do you kill your enemy in a way that puts a stop to violence rather than escalates it? Strangely, I keep coming back to the same rather ordinary conclusion: the answer is in our ability to face our emotions. When we know how to relate to our anger, hatred, despair, and frustration fully and properly, they self-liberate. When we don’t, when we can’t tolerate them and therefore act them out, we create enormous sorrow and confusion.”

This post isn’t about the death of a tragic, violent madman – or the “legitimacy” of the different emotions people feel in response to his death. But Susan Piver’s excellent post raises important questions about how much we understand the complexity of our emotions, particularly as we struggle to balance those feelings with “reason”.

Underneath feelings are more feelings. Some emotions are easier to feel and express than others – more socially sanctioned, more comfortable. The pain of grief, the isolation of fear and the unremitting stress of frustration are difficult for everyone, especially when we try to bear them alone.

Emotions are not meant to stay “stuck.” The English word emotion is derived from the French word ‘emouvoir.’ The French is based on the Latin word emovere , where e- means “out” and “movere” means move. Not stay inside. But to move – out.

In other words – emotions need to be released. Too many people still think that emotions can be suppressed. While we can attempt to keep emotions “down,” recent research shows that trying to do so comes at a cost.

Dr. Daniel Beal co-authored a Rice University study examining emotional suppression in the workplace, “Our study shows that emotion suppression takes a toll on people. It takes energy to suppress emotions, so it’s not surprising that workers who must remain neutral are often more rundown or show greater levels of burnout. The more energy you spend controlling your emotions, the less energy you have to devote to the task at hand.”

New neuroscience definitively shows that when we attempt to remain “neutral” and suppress what we really feel – precious neural energy is siphoned from the neocortex (the so-called “rational”) brain, limiting our thinking processes and sapping our neural reserves.

Feelings: Right/Wrong/Black/White

As part of our work, we’ve spent countless hours listening to people talk about their feelings. One thing is common – people tend to speak about how they feel in dichotomous language.

Feelings,some people say, are either good or bad. Negative or positive. Black or white. In our seminars, participants typically create lists of the positive (good) emotions and the negative (bad) emotions. You can guess which feelings get placed on each list.

Why is this?

According to Miriam Greenspan, author of How the Light Gets In; “We have less difficulty with the so-called positive emotions. People don’t mind feeling joy and happiness. The dark emotions are much harder. Fear, grief and despair are uncomfortable and are seen as signs of personal failure. In our culture, we call them “negative” and think of them as “bad.” I prefer to call these emotions “dark,” because I like the image of a rich fertile dark soil from which something unexpected can bloom. Also, we keep them “in the dark” and tend not to speak about them. We privatize them and don’t see the ways in which they are connected to the world.”

What Did You Learn About Your Feelings When You Were a Kid?

The answer is often a window on how you are experiencing your emotions to this day. Few of us were taught how to understand and relate to our emotions in healthy ways. In fact, many of us were taught to mistrust and devalue our emotions. Miriam Greenspan explains, “Nowhere in school does anyone tell us that paying attention to our emotions might be valuable or necessary. Our emotions are not seen as sources of information. We look at them instead as indicators of inadequacy or failure. We don’t recognize that they have anything to teach us. They are just something to get through or control.”

Imagine if we had been given a rich vocabulary to describe our emotional palette when we were young?

Imagine if we had been given tools to manage feelings as they arise to constructively channel those energies?

Imagine if we grew up with the skills to cultivate our emotions and use them as a resource to enhance our lives?

Tools to Build Emotional Mindfulness

Get More Emotionally Literate – Emotions continue to suffer from a “bad rap.” Some people are downright phobic about them. One of the key principles of emotional intelligence is that emotional learning is infinite. No one is ever “done.” Learning more about the range of your emotional experience can liberate you and build the foundation for greater emotional choice.
Notice What You Feel – To become emotionally mindful, you’ll need to learn to pay better attention to what you feel – and where you feel it. Emotions live in the body, not in your head. We’re often cut off from our physiological responses (like our breath) and misread how we feel as a result.
Accept What You Feel – This can be a tough assignment because sometimes what we feel is scary, exhausting, unattractive or embarrassing. YOU are not your anger or fear. You have feelings of anger and fear. While you may choose to gain a deeper understanding of how and why those feelings “show up,” you feel what you feel. Suppression and denial are temporary palliatives, not solutions. Most deep-rooted feelings don’t simply vanish. They are there to get your attention.
Identify Your Addictive Emotions – Yes, our own emotions can be habit-forming. For some people anger is a repellent – to others it’s a stimulant. Emotions like anger and resentment can act like “cover” emotions to hide the scarier and less socially acceptable feelings (depending on our cultural influences) like sadness, hurt, grief and fear. Some people only “do” happy. They develop a philosophy and language to keep things “light.” While that’s fine, it often acts as a form of repression and keeps others from comfortably expressing what they truly feel.
Pay Closer Attention to What Triggers You – Triggers or “hot buttons” are like maps to our thoughts and beliefs. They are offer invaluable insights into how needs are being met or unmet. Chances are your emotional triggers carry a lot of old emotional baggage. The more you know about what triggers you – the greater the opportunity to use your conscious awareness to deactivate those reflexive emotional reactions.

Much of how we experience our emotions has to do with what we believe about them. If we believe that grief and rage have no value, then we will have a difficult time when those feelings arise. If we believe that all emotions are intelligent and carry important information about our experience, then we can stay open to the inner wisdom that is trying to emerge.

This isn’t easy. Experiencing the so-called dark emotions is hard. But what we gain can be deeply rewarding.

Miriam Greenspan expresses it beautifully; “The “dark emotions” are inevitable. They are part of the universal human experience and are certainly worthy of our attention. They bring us important information about ourselves and the world and can be vehicles of profound transformation.”

As always, I invite your comments and questions. Also, many thanks for your readership, tweets, shares and subscriptions.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under emotional intelligence, emotions, managing people, mindfulness, organizational culture, well-being

Tagged as dark emotions, emotional hot buttons, emotional suppression, emotional triggers, Fear, feelings, grief, Health, human resources, neuroscience, personal growth, Psychology, sadness, stress

May 13, 2011

Conscious Communication – It’s All About US

Underneath every communication is a feeling. This feeling drives your communication. How conscious are you of the subtext of your communication and the impact it has on others?

Every time we do a seminar or facilitate a meeting, people say they want better communication in the workplace. What most people are hungry for is communication that is real, honest, clear, concise and most important – respectful.

Communication is suffering in today’s lightening speed world, filled with distractions, time pressures and technologies that put people at a personal distance from each other. Maybe that’s why communication is getting sloppy. Habituated thoughts and behaviors make up too much of what passes as communication these days.

Some communication “experts” believe that our reliance on technology has diminished our ability to communicate, and worse, de-valued it in the process. So much of communication, especially in the workplace, is task or thing oriented. It’s about getting us from point A to point B or accomplishing a goal. In the American high-tech, low-touch culture, we are seeing the effects of weaker communication skills – and more worrisome, a growing desire to by-pass human interaction altogether.

According to Sherry Turkle, MIT Professor and author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, “We make our technologies and they, in turn, shape us.”

Are we losing our ability to connect face to face?

Even more important – are we losing our desire to connect face to face?

The Brain is a Social Organ

Communication is a collaborative experience. While it starts with our internal life, once the brain engages another brain, the entire process of social interaction begins. As Your Brain at Work author, David Rock says, “Few people work in isolation anymore. The capacity to collaborate well with others has become central to good performance in just about any endeavor. Yet the social world is also the source of tremendous conflict, and many people never master its seemingly chaotic rules.”

Louis Cozolino, Professor of Psychology at Pepperdine University has written extensively about the social interconnection of brains. Cozolino’s work suggests that “my brain needs your brain” – that it is the power of being with others that shapes our brain. He asserts that just as neurons need each other to grow and thrive through neural communication, our brains themselves need other brains, as they influence the brains’ development and their capacity to learn, adapt and heal throughout life.

Communication is a Skill

Communication is a complex set of skills that takes time, patience and practice to develop. Great communicators are rare. While some of us are born with natural “gifts” that make communication easier, most of us learn through modeling of our care-givers and peers. We learn “strategies” for getting our needs met through communication which are mostly “me” centered. These strategies are often superficial and never get to the root of our purpose for all communication – getting our deeper needs met.

We can’t get really good at communication unless we value it. It has to be important to us. If the only value that drives our communication is getting things done – that will be reflected in the outcome. We enter into communication with our own set of needs, feelings, expectations and assumptions. And so does the other person. If we’re not conscious of what’s driving us at a deeper level, we’ll miss our “aim” as communicators.

You have to care about something more important than your agenda to positively influence a communication, even with the most basic communication.

Daniel Goleman, author of “Working with Emotional Intelligence” captures the essence of the challenge, “Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy. The more attentive we are to others, the more keenly we will sense their inner state and pick up on subtle clues.” Without empathy, most communication is simply an empty vessel – expedient at best.

Practicing Conscious Communication – 10 Basic Guidelines

Our focus here is on in-person face to face contact but these guidelines are the basic foundation of all communication.

1. Be Intentional – This means – know and understand your motivation. This is basic 101 in acting school. The best actors know why they are standing where they are standing and why they are saying what they are saying. Otherwise, communication is on auto-pilot and you’ll find yourself in the midst of it without understanding where you are and want to be next. This may seem like a lot of work, but it’s much harder to muddle your way through sloppy communication than to enter it (at least) with clear intentions.

2. CARE – You can’t mandate kindness, consideration and respect. Everyone wants it (when you ask) but somehow we think we can get by without it in most communication. Finding something to care about (besides your own agenda) elevates your communication. Respect, honesty, fairness, cooperation, affiliation – these are the kinds of values that can charge your motivation to communicate with more care.

3. Get Emotionally Literate – What you feel is what drives how you communicate. If you are exhausted and frustrated, your communication will reflect that. Is that what you intend? If you are anger or resentful, be sure that will come across in the communication unless you clean it up.

4. Check Out Your Beliefs - If you think that the person at the other end of your communication is lazy, or a nudge or a slacker – then don’t be surprised if that gets communicated. Search your beliefs database to find something about the person or the situation that gives your communication more meaning.

5. If You Can’t Be Honest – Don’t Expect Much – Workplace communication is a challenge for many of us, because we don’t think we can truly be honest. I don’t mean hurtful, but real. But lying (even the little ones) is real communication poison.

6. Consult Your Trust Barometer – It’s really surprising to me, but many people I meet in the workplace don’t have a real handle on how and why they trust. They can tell you who they trust and don’t trust – but the motivation is often murky. Since the basis of most decisions and communication involve trust, it is important to gain a deeper understanding of the why and how of your trust levels.

7. Respect Basic Courtesy – At our core, every human being has a basic need for respect. Simple courtesies can be powerful – even more so because they are becoming (sadly) rare. On a practical level, a recent study found that when managers just increased their praise and recognition of one employee once a day for 21 business days in a row, six months later, those teams as opposed to a control group, had a 31% higher level of productivity. While the reasons for this are complex, one reason is that on stress, the neocortex (the so-called “thinking” brain) shuts down, siphoning off precious neural reserves. Praise, on the other hand, tells that part of the brain it is safe – so performance is elevated as a result. Still wondering why telling only one employee affects the whole team? We’ll give you a clue - emotional contagion!

8. Listen! – Everyone can use better listening skills. Real listening – meaning I stop attending to ME and I focus on YOU – is uncommon. Poor listening results in miscommunications, lost opportunities, and an erosion of trust. People we work with identify poor listening among the top three reasons they do not trust someone.

9. Don’t Send People “You are not important” messages – Let’s face it – most people put people who can help them at the top of their priority list to contact. Not following up, not returning calls and email messages has become epidemic. We claim we don’t have time. While this may be true, it sends a message to most people that they are not that important. Even when many people say they understand, they don’t. No one likes to feel used or ignored. Most people won’t mention it – but they won’t forget it either.

10. Jargon and Shorthand Communication – Our language is overflowing with colloquialisms that substitute for clear articulation of our meaning. We just assume that the person at the other of the communication knows what we mean. Here are just a few examples:

It’s complicated - this usually means I don’t want to talk about it now (or maybe ever)
Bottom line it for me – a popular business phrase that usually is a euphemism for hurry up.
The ball’s in your court – a sports metaphor that essentially communicates – it is your responsibility and not mine.
Anything that prefaces communication with the word Honestly – Though it’s common, the underlying message when you say, “honestly, when you made that statement in the meeting,”……implies some level of insincerity.
Jargon & Acronyms – Not everyone understands your abbreviations and references. This is especially problematic as texting is short-handing language (like LOL). People assume that everyone understands the meaning. Same is true for business professionals who have become used to using their own industry jargon with people outside of that culture. In response, people can feel annoyed and frustrated and tune out.

These are not simple habits to break. It takes time and commitment. Becoming a more effective communicator will make you a more conscious person. Not only do you need to become more self-aware in general – but you have to practice that mindfully in each interaction.

If you do two things will happen. You will see people begin to respond to you in a very different, much more positive way – and you will feel GOOD about yourself in the process.

Now who doesn’t want that?

Join me in continuing the conversation by adding your voice. Your comments, tweets, shares and subscriptions are greatly appreciated.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under awareness, business, change management, communication, emotions, empathy, employee engagement, intention, interpersonal communication, leadership, management, managing people, mindfulness, needs, organizational culture, performance, social intelligence, trust, values, well-being, workplace

Tagged as bosses, courtesy, emotional intelligence, employee recognition, EQ, Health, human resources, motivation, neuroscience, Psychology, social neuroscience, stress, trust in the workplace, workplace relationships

May 20, 2011

The Power of Beliefs at Work

“The voice in the head tells a story that the body believes in and reacts to. Those reactions are the emotions. The emotions, in turn, feed the energy back to the thoughts that created the emotion in the first place. This is the vicious circle between unexamined thoughts and emotions, giving rise to emotional thinking and emotional story-making.” Eckhart Tolle

Beliefs are potent because they drive behavior. Behind every action, decision and communication are beliefs.

Your beliefs are made up of thousands of (mostly) unexamined thoughts that you have suffused with emotional content since childhood. Some beliefs are more charged than others because they carry core emotional content. Often they are tied to early childhood needs that are unsatisfied and unresolved. Sometimes they fade due to adult experience and emotional maturity – but often they do not.

Belief, a thing so powerful that it can inspire life and death, has only recently been studied as part of the emerging field of social neuroscience. “Belief has been a most powerful component of human nature that has somewhat been neglected,” says Peter Halligan, a psychologist at Cardiff University. “But it has been capitalized on by marketing agents, politics and religion for the best part of two millennia.”

Fortunately, that’s changing. Scientists are now working to understand a neurological model of how beliefs are formed and how they affect us.

The studies of Matthew Lieberman, a psychologist at the University of California, shows how beliefs help people’s brains categorize others and view objects as good or bad, largely unconsciously. He demonstrates that beliefs (in the case of his study on prejudice or fear) are most likely to be learned from the prevailing culture.

Your beliefs, or habits of mind, are sometimes based on ideas that support you.

I am capable of continuous self-improvement.

Other people are trying to do the best they can at work.

I can find the time I need to accomplish what I truly want.

And your beliefs, which are mostly out of your conscious awareness, can sap you of your energy and limit your choices.

I’m a Type A personality, I can’t change my impatience.

People are just not as committed as I am to producing high quality work.

No matter what I do, there is never going to be time to get things done.

On any given day, we’re driven by this entire network of beliefs that control what we do – and how we do it. Largely, these beliefs are unexplored and unchallenged. They form the basis of our assumptions and expectations about our own lives, other people’s experience – and what is happening in the world.

Walls of Protection

Think of your beliefs as Walls of Protection. Constructed mostly from early experiences and reinforced – by you – and your culture over time. Unless you identify and question the validity of a belief, it will continue to permeate your experience.

These Walls of Protection can only offer superficial relief. They can never satisfy the real need that lies behind every belief. So in a sense, we become prisoners of our own beliefs. Bound up within an intricate web of interrelated beliefs, systems are created that can only be untangled, bit by bit.

As Dr. Lieberman’s UCLA research showed, many beliefs are learned from the prevailing culture. All of us are subject to multiple cultural influences, especially at young impressionable ages. The impact of cultural influence is particularly strong when emotional investment is high. Families, schools, religious institutions and peer relations are fundamental – and no one escapes their influence.

For adults, workplace cultures play an important role in impacting and reinforcing beliefs. Workplace cultures, which are the aggregate of the emotions, attitudes, beliefs, values, ethics, and behaviors of the people who work there, and the organization itself, are huge transmitters of cultural norms (beliefs).

When we are at work, we’re usually either swimming in sync with the prevailing beliefs of our group or organization, or fighting an uphill battle against them. Managers and consultants often talk about alignment as a critical tool for organizational success. But individual beliefs must first be self-aligned before they can be “onboard” with the collective goals and values of an organization.

Your Brain on Beliefs Can’t Tell the Difference

There’s growing evidence of the intractable nature of our beliefs. According to a Newsweek report on a ‘09 study on examining faith and beliefs, author Lisa Miller wrote, “Belief in God, disbelief in God, and belief in simple empirically verifiable facts all lit up the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that governs your sense of self. We are, in some sense, what we believe.”

That’s why understanding the beliefs that shape the way we relate to others, conduct our work and make our decisions are critical in terms of the way we perform at work! We spend countless hours learning new information, adopting the latest technologies and implementing strategies to upgrade our work processes. Yet, underneath it all are old beliefs that often undermine change and impede true progress.

Why do we seem to have such a curious lack of interest in what forms the very foundation of how we live?

How many of our beliefs about change prevent us from changing – or even considering it?

Could it be that many of our beliefs (even the unpleasant ones) offer us comfort by reinforcing our world views?

A Handful of Limiting Beliefs

Some beliefs are “core” beliefs meaning that they are central to many of the things we do and most important – feel. Think of core beliefs as having many branches that enable smaller, intertwined beliefs. If you want to chip away at core beliefs, take aim at the smaller branches first.

There is never enough time to do all the things I need/want to do – This nearly epidemic belief is terribly debilitating. This thinking creates a time famine mindset where nothing we do can ever be enough. We live our bottomless to-do lists in an ever exhausting spiral of disappointment and frustration. Often, every thing suffers, especially our own well-being. We jump from task to task under the illusion that our multi-tasking works.
Other people don’t care (or can’t do) the work as well as I can. While some people are very upfront about this belief, most of us don’t like to fess up to this one. But it is often the belief that lurks behind – micro-managing, blame, judgment, “perfectionism,” criticism and second guessing of others. This belief is toxic to self and others.
I can change my boss, my co-workers and my organization – I’m not exaggerating when I say that 75% of our seminar participants and coaching clients start out believing this. And the “tools” they say they want to work with others are often a euphemism for ways to change other people. This belief is very resistant to change – for obvious reasons. While I am not suggesting we can’t use our skills to positively influence others to change, or improve certain circumstantial givens – we have to be very clear on when we are trying to impose our delusion of control.
It’s everyone else’s fault including my company’s – Some things are the fault of others, or the system we work in. Plenty of people have challenging co-workers and work in toxic organizations. The question is where we draw the line between our own responsibility (to ourselves, others and our workplace) and that of uncontrollable external situations. Blame accomplishes little, especially when it freezes us to the action necessary to improve our circumstances and those around us.
I need to take care of other people first – This is a deeply rooted belief that shows up in many ways. Its origins come from the “I’m not worthy, I’m not enough,” early childhood impressions. It can also come from the “I’m the only one capable of doing it,” core belief. Bottom line is that it places an enormous burden on the believer. This is the person who is always doing – always working – always trying to get things done and make things happen. It’s exhausting and endless. This believer forgets that in order to be truly productive, you need to care for yourself – first

“The pain pushes until the vision pulls.” Michael B. Beckwith

Often, it isn’t until we are stretched to the max or worse that we change. Pain, after all, is a great motivator. We are also hard-wired with a tendency to resist change until the pain of not changing has a higher price tag. We have beliefs about all of these things.

But change isn’t magical. Yes, sometimes experience over time does change us – although it’s not always simple or easy. When we choose to explore (you can explore without making a “commitment”) and shift our beliefs, we do exercise the only control we really have – our thinking.

Unearthing old dysfunctional beliefs is powerful. It can be the key to changing what we perceive, how we behave and most important – how we feel.

As always, I invite you to share your comments. Your thoughts, readership, tweets and shares are appreciated.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under changing behavior, emotions, employee engagement, feelings, life, mind-body, needs, organizational culture, thoughts, well-being, workplace

Tagged as Beckwith, behavior, changing beliefs, emotions, Health, human resources, multitasking, neuroscience, power of beliefs, Psychology, social neuroscience

May 26, 2011

OLDIES BUT GOODIES: On Wellness, Self-Deception & Psychology at Work

Due to a serious family illness – the blog’s on hiatus for now.

Looking at the recent Top Ten stats, the following posts have been consistently in the Top 5. We hope you’ll discover, or rediscover them!

The 4 Rooms of Wellness - Based on a wonderful quote by Rumer Godden, the post explores the concept of living in all four rooms of our being – mental, emotional, physical and spiritual. The post continues to take on new meaning for me as people relate to it with their questions and stories. A favorite..

Is Self-Deception Keeping You in the Box? - What’s it mean to deceive ourselves? How do we hurt ourselves when we act in ways that are contrary to our deepest values and beliefs?

5 Reasons Why Business Can’t Afford to Ignore Psychology for Another 100 Years - Why do so many organizations continue to ignore or devalue the human equation in business? Why are so many managers managing without understanding and appreciating the psychology of the people they manage? Important questions.

Hope you enjoy the reruns!

As always, your comments, readership, subscriptions, shares and tweets are appreciated!

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under beliefs, business, change management, employee engagement, leadership, management, managing people, meaning of work, mind-body, organizational development, performance, values, well-being, work, work-life balance, workplace

Tagged as 4 rooms of wellness, bosses, communication, emotional intelligence, EQ, Health, human resources, motivation, neuroscience, Psychology, self-deception, stress, workplace relationships

June 22, 2011

Forgiveness at Work – Cleaning our Emotional House

“Forgiveness is a lovely idea until you have someone to forgive.” C.S. Lewis

I’ve thought a lot about forgiveness lately. Often when we face life’s major passages, a flood of old thoughts and feelings suddenly reappear. But I must admit that I am not at the place where I started when I began to think about the concept of forgiveness for this post. My longer than usual research took me to deeper places than I had imagined.

I realized how complex, fragile and essential the role of forgiveness is to every human being and every culture.

While most of us engage in small acts of simple forgiveness every day – for many there are chasms of wounds that lay untouched, waiting for the resolution and reconciliation that may never be.

For thousands of years, the concept of forgiveness has mainly been the province of religious and philosophical teachings. The legacies of those theological and moral influences formed imperatives to forgive and repent. Not until the post-WWII era of collective psychology did the idea flourish that forgiveness had value and purpose in everyday life. The motivation to forgive was no longer simply atonement in preparation for eternal life, but greater freedom to living a fuller life in the present.

The why and how of forgiveness has since occupied therapeutic relationships, 12 step programs, popular fiction and self-help books and most recently – entire countries and cultures as they seek to resolve their pasts and begin anew.

In the past two decades, neuroscience has contributed to our understanding of the impact of forgiveness in interpersonal relations and personal well-being. Scientists are now able to find areas of neural activity and link those to experiences of forgiveness. This advance is providing major insights into the nature of forgiveness and a range of other related emotions.

What is It?

Forgiveness is a deeply personal and emotional experience that is impossible to define. Dr. Katherine Piderman from the Mayo Clinic says that “forgiveness is a decision to let go of resentment and thoughts of revenge.” Forgiveness is intertwined with many emotions – resentment, grief, rage, sadness, hurt, betrayal, vulnerability, anger and fear are often part of the experience.

But is forgiveness a decision?

When I started this piece I found myself mostly on that side of the discussion. At some level, forgiveness is a choice, a decision we make or don’t. We must consciously decide, at some point, within our experience of the process of forgiving, to let go. But forgiveness is not simply a rational decision. Woven within the cognitive process of forgiveness are unresolved emotions and deeply rooted beliefs that often impede or block the ability to forgive.

Your Beliefs are a Key to Forgiveness

Underneath the struggle and the questions to forgive or not, are beliefs that reflect the core of our human values. Many of those beliefs originate from our earliest cultural conditioning.

Forgiveness is closely connected to our sense of “justice,” so we can trace our tendencies and willingness to forgive directly to those beliefs we hold.

Do you see forgiveness as strength or a weakness? Do you believe that some acts are simply unforgivable? How are your beliefs about forgiveness connected to the beliefs you hold about character and the ability to change?

It is often the case that only when we believe that justice (regardless of the issue) has been served, in some acceptable way, that true forgiveness can be accomplished. Because the way we trust is so connected with our ability to forgive, the beliefs we hold about trust are also very important.

This is not to say that we must trust someone to forgive them, but withholding trust is often synonymous with an unwillingness to forgive. A study in the journal Psychological Science reported that believing, for example, in the possibility that people can change shapes their ability to forgive. The research shows that although a person’s trust could be easily eroded, it could be restored if they believed in moral improvement. Those who believed in a fixed moral character, incapable of change were much less likely to regain trust after it was lost.

These major questions can shape our lives and determine the actions we take and the feelings we carry with us, sometimes, for a lifetime. That’s why it is important to understand the roots of our inability to forgive.

Patterns of Forgiveness in the Workplace

Workplaces can be repositories for many offenses that we find difficult to forgive. Gossip, lies, unfair treatment and insensitive communication can become magnified and trigger old traumas. Often to just get along, we must overlook pettiness, management and organizational practices that offend, hurt and challenge our sensibilities.

While it is important for us to remember that often these actions, while insensitive, can be unconscious and not designed to hurt us, it is equally important that we not suppress what we feel when they happen. Rationalization has limited impact when our values are being challenged, or violated. Too often unforgiving attitudes accumulate when we attempt to bury our truths. This can trigger old wounds and resurface unresolved grievances.

Workplaces can also present countless opportunities to “practice” forgiving and letting go. In the pressure and pace of most workplaces, it’s easy to overlook the human consequences of our sloppy communication and lack of consideration towards others. If we stay present and aware of what we are feeling as these events occur, we can respond out of choice and not reaction. Sometimes these situations can remind us of old, untended hurts that need attention. A comment or behavior by a co-worker can trigger a disproportionate reaction that has more to do with old emotional baggage than the situation at hand.

Can We Learn to Forgive?

Most of us are not “schooled” in the practice of forgiveness. Dr Fred Luskin, Director of the Stanford Forgiveness Project points out that many people spend far more time complaining and blaming others, rather than finding what is good and positive in them. His work has focused not only on researching the nature of forgiveness but on developing cognitive strategies that can be learned as a skill.

Dr. Luskin’s 9-Step Program is abbreviated here:

Know exactly what you feel, be able to articulate what about the situation is not OK and then share your experience with couple of trusted people.
Make a commitment to yourself to do what you have to do to feel better. Forgiveness is for you and not about anyone else.
Forgiveness is not necessarily about reconciliation or condoning other’s actions.
Get the right perspective about the situation. Your distress is coming from the hurt feelings, thoughts and physical upset you are suffering now, not the incident that happen two hours or ten years ago.
In your moments of upset, practice a simple stress reduction method to sooth your body’s fight or flight response.
Give expecting things from people that they do not choose to give you.
Invest your energy into looking for other ways to get your positive goals met instead of mentally replaying your hurt.
Forgiveness is about personal power. Look to the beauty, love and kindness around you rather then focusing on old wounds.
Amend your grievance story to remind you of the heroic choice to forgive.

Dr. Luskin points out that only by changing the narrative of your story and how you tell it, can you find a new way through forgiveness.

Forgiveness Begins With Your Ability for Self-Forgiveness

“The first part of any conflict we must resolve is not between “me” and my “neighbor,” but between “me and me.” Thom Rutledge, Author The Self-Forgiveness Handbook

Some say that the deepest act of forgiveness begins with self-forgiveness. While forgiving others can be liberating – self-forgiveness can bring an even deeper peace. Our lack of self-forgiveness can be relentless. It can haunt us for minutes or for years. Whether we have hurt someone else and cannot let the pain of that self-realization go, or we are harsh on ourselves for our “failures” and “imperfections.”

According to Buddhist monk and author, Thich Nhat Hahn, “Every time we tune into the inner dialogue that says are we are not (smart, thin, rich, successful, good, etc) enough or liberate ourselves for what we did or did not do, we are choosing to live in blame and resentment – only it’s toward ourselves and not others. To practice forgiveness we must first forgive ourselves for not being perfect.”

For most of us, forgiveness is not easy. We need the motivation to forgive. We need to apply our most skillful emotional intelligence to “hold” us safely as we go through the process of forgiving.

We must allow ourselves time and space as we release and let go. For some this is a spiritual process – for others, a way out of a self-imposed emotional, mental and physical prison.

Many of the things we will forgive, we may never forget. And that is understandable, and perhaps for some, desirable. But there is no question that there is great healing power in the act of forgiveness. It is ultimately, transformative – for us, for others and for our cultures.

As always – your readership, comments, shares and tweets are much appreciated.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under awareness, change management, changing behavior, emotional intelligence, feelings, life, management, organizational psychology, performance, personal development, Uncategorized, well-being, workplace

Tagged as emotional intelligence, fight or flight, forgiveness, Health, human resources, motivation, neuroscience, personal growth, Psychology, success, trust in the workplace, well-being, workplace relationships

June 30, 2011

The Missing and the Disappeared – The Emotional Trauma of Layoffs

“Organizations that once saw people as assets to be nurtured and developed began to view those same people as costs to be cut.” David Noer

I recently heard a story that really troubled me. Laura (her fictious name) is middle-aged (an age range that keeps being redefined in today’s marketplace) and hanging on to her job by a thread. Laura works for a mid-sized hospital in New Jersey – let’s call it “Good Samaritan.”

Hospitals have had record layoffs in the “new economy,” with over 152,000 in 2010 alone. Although Laura is deeply concerned about the future of health care providers and the prospects for her long-term employment – her greatest stress is the treatment that she and her colleagues are experiencing as a result of the “great disruption.”

You see, in the past two years, Laura often finds her former co-workers and friends, “missing” when she returns to work after a weekend or holiday. Some simply “disappear,” with no word about their dismissal. No one speaks their names. No trace of their belongings can be found. References to former employees are discouraged in memos and meetings.

How does Laura know these are the new rules? Is it codified policy at Good Samaritan?

No, says Laura – it is not. Everyone learns quickly (even the newly hired) via the grapevine. She attributes the firings, layoffs and secrecy to the new hospital COO, hired in 2009. Everything changed when she was hired.

Laura is depressed and anxious most of the time. She dreads every workday, especially Mondays. Needless to say, employee morale is terribly low. Laura would love nothing more than to leave, but the market’s weak, especially for someone “her age.” She’s supporting her laid-off spouse and subsidizing her aged mother. It’s a sad story – but what’s more disturbing – it is becoming shockingly commonplace.

Laura’s Not Alone – Layoff Horror Stories Abound

These stories really shake me up. While they don’t surprise me – they are deeply distressing – as they should be to anyone who has an interest in the economic and societal well-being of this country. Too many people are being treated badly – inhumanely in today’s workplace. There are hundreds of horror stories describing how people, many after years of service, are literally trashed. I know that this isn’t news, but my concern is that it is becoming “normed,” in our thinking and rationalized as the new normal.

Laura’s story seems tame in comparison to some events described here:

An executive assistant who worked for his company’s Creative VP (they were hired together) for 17 years, who worked long hours on a presentation and then found a check with a layoff note marked, “No Severance” on his car windshield in the company parking lot.
An IT employee in a badly understaffed Tokyo branch of his company, who found himself in the midst of a sudden takeover. When he took a day off to take his wife (in the 3^rd trimester of her pregnancy) for a check-up, then another half-day off because he was ill the following Monday, gets a call asking if he’d resigned. When he arrives back on Tuesday, the newly hired HR person from an outsourcing firm tells him he’s fired as of month’s end and says, “We need people who are available to work in the office 24/7 without question,” and “taking off two consecutive days is essentially stealing from the company. It’s not the company’s fault that you will not be able to support your family.”
A group of employees receive an email invite to an optional conference call, usually held to share financial reports and updates. Later that day, the same group is told to meet in the conference room to hear the call together. So far – all routine. On the call, the CFO, claiming to be out-of-town (in reality he’s in a hotel 5 miles away), breaks the layoff news. Wait there’s more; they are also told they have to come back to work the next day to find out when their last day will be and that the date is subject to change because many of them will have to train their non-local replacements. The company then enforced a zero tolerance for noncompliance with the request, warning that the laid-off workers would lose their separation agreement which allows them to file for unemployment benefits.
Then there is the man who is asked to create and deliver “exit packages” (containing severance pay, final paperwork, etc) to those being laid off… and then gets his own package the day after he finished handing them out to everyone else.

It raises some powerful questions.

Who are we and what are we becoming?

The examples above are among the worse, but tragically, they are by no means uncommon. It is fair to say that there are many conscious and considerate employers out there that have gone to great lengths to layoff employees in a respectful and just way. And given the burden on so many human resources staff to carry out these mandates from senior managers, let’s acknowledge how stressful this must be for them.

But it’s also fair to say that too many of us, especially in positions of relative power, remain silent and in doing so, condone the actions of our organizations. We adopt the language of “fiscal austerity” and “fiduciary responsibility” in justifying the unconscionable treatment of our co-workers.

Engagement, Loyalty and Trust

Engagement is a big buzzword these days. I regularly see reports and polls measuring engagement or lack of it. Endless strategies are being discussed to attract “top talent” or retain it.

Loyalty’s been declared dead or near death in today’s workplace. It was, “killed off,” says author Lynn Gratton, in a New York Times article, The Shifting Definition of Workplace Loyalty, “through shortening contracts, outsourcing, automation and multiple careers.” Considering the future of workplace loyalty, Gratton states, “Looking at the bigger picture, you can consider loyalty to your team, your department or a cause.”

Workforce consultant, Tammy Erickson, states that the quid pro quo of “modern” employment is more likely to go like this, “As long as I work for you, I promise to have the relevant skills and engage fully in my work; in return you’ll pay me fairly, but I don’t expect you to care for me when I am 110.”

Trust, according to Gratton, is about the present, while loyalty is about the past. But according to author, John Hagel, “We all agree that trust is increasingly important but trust is rapidly eroding. It turns out that the very practices that helped us build trust in the past are now contributing to the erosion of trust.” Hagel wisely points out that people who now commonly refer to themselves as a “personal brand” continue to promote themselves in the same way companies have historically done – identify key strengths and credentials and hide weaknesses.

However, in the new rules of building trust, Hagel offers a new prescription, “In a more and more challenging world where we constantly confront situations that we never encountered before, what is our reaction when someone presents an image of great strength and complete control, with no weaknesses? We don’t trust them. We know that we are all human beings, possessing unique strengths but also great weaknesses. We are all increasingly challenged as we face mounting performance pressures. If someone only presents strengths and accomplishments, we know they are not sharing with us the full picture. If they don’t trust us enough to share their weaknesses and vulnerabilities, why would we ever trust them?”

Hagel’s bold perspective suggests that we are at the precipice – in the in-between of old models of trust and loyalty and something very different. A completely new idea is being born as the outmoded thinking erodes.

Layoff Survivor Syndrome is Real

Laura, our distressed hospital employee, suffers from what organizational psychologists call Layoff Survivor Syndrome. It is a pronounced psychological and physical stress response, a form of trauma, to the shock of job loss all around you and chronic uncertainty of the future. It is also a result of losing the support and companionship of co-workers.

According to Harold G. Kaufman, a professor of management and director of the organizational behavior program at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, “In fact, survivors are also victims. Like people who escape harm when others are hurt in a natural disaster or terrible accident, employees who keep their jobs in a downturn often feel guilty. It’s exactly as when you lose a good friend or a sibling you feel responsible in some way.”

Grief is the appropriate response for loss. Loss of co-workers, loss of affiliation, loss of financial security, loss of routine and yes, even a loss of a sense of loyalty. Unfortunately, many people don’t take the time they need to go through the inevitable stages of grief, or even recognize or acknowledge them. It’s easy to become overwhelmed by the mix of emotions a person can feel under these circumstances – grief, fear, hurt, sadness, guilt, resentment, anger and a sense of betrayal.

Though some organizations have started to recognize the vital role emotions play in every aspect of their employee’s well-being and resulting performance, too many have displayed a stunning lack of emotional intelligence in their post-recession era behavior.

How Your Brain Says “Threat”

In an earlier post, Why Neuroscience Should Change the Way we Manage People, I laid out the rationale, based on the latest research, on how and why we cannot continue to manage based on an early 20^th century paradigm.

What we now know is that the brain is a social organ. It’s neurological and physiological functions are directly shaped by social interaction. According to David Rock, author of Your Brain at Work, “When leaders trigger a threat response, employee’s brains become much less efficient.”

Our amygdala sits like a sentry, watching, guarding and protecting us against perceived threats. When activated, it acts with the brain stem (our “Reptilian” brain) and our response to the danger is fight, flight or freeze. The freeze state, from a brain perspective, is a state of dissociation.

David Rock’s work highlights how powerful the impact of threat can be, “Although a job is often regarded as a purely economic transaction, people exchanging their labor for financial compensation, the brain experiences the workplace first and foremost as a social system. When people feel betrayed or unrecognized – for example when they are reprimanded, given an assignment that seems unworthy, or told to take a pay cut, they experience it as a neural impulse, as powerful or painful as a blow to the head. Most people who work in companies rationalize or temper their reactions; they “suck it up,” as the common parlance puts it. But they also limit their commitment and engagement. They become purely transactional employees, reluctant to give more of themselves to the company because the social context stands in their way.”

Let’s not be deluded. The fiscal and managerial choices that have been made in the past three years will reverberate for a long time – and the implications will continue to unfold. The idea that most employees will forget, adjust and move forward (with even higher expectations of performance) is naïve. The past is indeed prologue and cannot simply be swept away by economics or managerial declarations.

Let’s not forget Laura and so many like her that are working harder than ever, stretched mentally, emotionally and physically. And let’s also remember Laura’s colleagues, unceremoniously banished from their jobs without so much as a goodbye.

It’s a legacy we all share.

As always – your readership, comments, shares and tweets are much appreciated.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under American workers, change management, communication, employee engagement, leadership, management, managing people, organizational culture, organizational psychology, performance, work, Workers Rights

Tagged as bosses, career, emotional intelligence, Fear, Health, human resources, layoff, loyalty, motivation, neuroscience, Psychology, termination, trust in the workplace, workplace relationships

July 7, 2011

Envy, Jealousy, Resentment – The “Comparison” Emotions at Work

“Comparing is a trap that permeates our lives, especially if we’re high-need-for-achievement professionals.” Thomas DeLong, Harvard Business Review

Working with emotional intelligence in the workplace since the late’90’s, I’ve found there are three emotions that many people don’t like to admit to feeling – envy, jealousy and resentment. This is understandable. Owning our human experience of envy, jealousy and resentment isn’t attractive – but it’s vitally important to do.

“Envy, says author Bruna Martinuzzi, the “unmentionable” emotion, is perhaps one of the most pervasive and powerful of all the disruptive emotions that affect our corporate environments.”

Often used synonymously, envy and jealousy have different meanings.

Envy, starts with the desire for something that someone else has. Unchecked it can escalate to harboring ill will or acting out against the object of our envy. Envy says – I want what you have. When we envy, we are acting on a belief that having this thing we want will provide us with greater stature or happiness – and that not having this thing diminishes us in some way. The thing can be anything: looks, money, position, relationship, even time.

Jealousy, envy’s cousin, usually carries more suspicion. We believe in some way that the thing we want and do not have rightly belongs to us. Typically, jealousy is associated with another person.

Resentment is usually a companion emotion to envy and jealousy. Why don’t we have this thing – and why do they? Resentment gnaws away at us and can be a springboard to anger, hatred and even depression.

All three have one important factor in common – they are fueled by making comparisons. From the time we are young children, we begin to measure ourselves by what others do – and what they have. It’s a natural human impulse that can only be tempered by what we as adults learn and implement in our thinking management.

There’s a direct line between what we think, how we feel and how we behave – and when we compare we trigger a feeling.

Where Does Envy, Jealousy and Resentment Come From?

We all arrive in adulthood with a load of emotional baggage. Our nature which takes the form of our personality, style and psychological makeup plays a major role. So does nurture – how we are raised and conditioned shapes our inherent state. But culture is a huge factor in how we define and measure our self-worth, self-image and self-esteem. The early messages we introjected about success, achievement, accomplishment, competition, status, power, fairness and justice all laid the foundation for the values and beliefs that fuel our feelings of envy, jealousy and resentment.

Understanding how we are neurally hard-wired for these emotions can also give us important insights into how they function.

Our judging mind is a critical enabler in generating envy, jealousy and resentment. One part of our brain, the neo-cortex (the so-called rational mind) brilliantly sifts through information, draws on information and past experiences and makes assessments. The other part of our brain (the ancient Reptilian brain) is also busy trolling the environment and making judgments. But this part of our brain doesn’t mitigate information with reason. Its job is survival. Its unconscious reactivity plays a key role in the fight or flight response. Will it eat me or will I eat it is the still the primary domain of the so-called Lizard Brain.

In recent years, research has found that the same area of the brain that controls envy and jealousy is the same part that detects physical pain. “It’s interesting that the part of the brain which detects physical pain is also associated with mental pain,” said Hidehiko Takahashi, who led the research.

The Workplace is an Emotional Cauldron

It is easy to see why envy, jealousy and resentment are routinely triggered in most workplaces. Position, power arrangements, lack of trust and transparency, miscommunication, time pressures and real or perceived scarcity of resources can pit people against colleagues and the “competition.”

In fact, unbalanced competitiveness can set the stage for envy, jealousy, resentment and greed. Because competition is the primary ethos that drives Western business, competing with others is an expected and even desirable function of the business model. Often the language of competition is filled with war and sports metaphors, further increasing the chance that emotions like envy and jealousy will become triggered, even habituated responses.

In his Harvard Business Review article, The Comparing Trap, Thomas DeLong points out, “No matter how successful we are and how many goals we achieve, this trap causes us to recalibrate our accomplishments and reset the bar for how we define success. What we’ve done in the past doesn’t matter; real success or achievement requires something more – a title we’ve never held, a task we’ve never done, a company we’ve never worked for. The process of comparing requires us to keep making our target more difficult to hit. And if we manage to hit this difficult target, we simply create an even more difficult one at which to aim.”

The Drivers for Envy, Jealousy and Resentment

At the core of our motivation are needs. We’re not talking about “business” needs here, but about our fundamental universal core needs – for physical well-being, connection to others, peace of mind and meaning in our lives. Most of us aren’t well-versed in identifying what needs are driving us (they underlie every value and belief we have) but everything we do is in satisfaction of a need.

From a needs perspective, being in a state of envy, jealousy and resentment is the polar opposite of feeling safety, tranquility and equanimity. These emotions enable a state of expansiveness. On the other hand, when we are experiencing envy, jealousy and resentment, we feel a state of contraction - physically, emotionally and mentally. When we experience these emotions, our needs are not being met. Even when we are aware of our needs deficit, we rationalize our state as temporary – on our way to satisfaction. Too many people stay in this “stuck state,” trying to function from this unsatisfying place, chasing the next goal.

Are there any positives to experiencing the emotions of envy, jealousy and resentment? Yes - every emotion holds potentially valuable information about our needs – albeit sometimes challenging. Your emotions provide you with a continuous barometer of whether you are meeting your needs – or not. Feeling calm or confident or enthusiastic – needs met. Feeling envious, jealous or resentful – good chance your needs aren’t met.

In describing envy, New York Times author Natalie Angier writes, “Envy may help keep us in line, making us so desperate to look good that we take the high road and start to act good, too. We struggle with our private envy, our longing for more esteem than we command, and the struggle only sharpens the painful contrast between the imagined perfection of the envied adversary that we have enshrined on an imaginary throne, and the defective merchandise that is ourselves. If you desire glory, you may envy Napoleon,” Bertrand Russell said. “But Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay, envied Hercules, who never existed.” If envy is a tax levied by civilization, it is one that everyone must pay.”

As always – your readership, comments, shares and tweets are much appreciated.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

1 Comment

Filed under beliefs, changing behavior, emotions, employee engagement, feelings, goals, interpersonal communication, management, needs, organizational culture, performance, self development, well-being

Tagged as business, collaboration, communication, emotional intelligence, envy, Fear, human resources, jealousy, motivation, neuroscience, resentment, stress, workplace relationships

July 14, 2011

Be Here NOW – Getting Off Auto-Pilot

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: Our life is the creation of our mind.” ~ BUDDHA

While the Buddha may have said that over 2,500 years ago, today’s neuroscience is helping us to understand the mind’s complex hard-wired mechanisms with stunning speed.

A 2007 study, conducted by Norman Farb at the University of Toronto showed that most of us are not consciously focused and are on “auto-pilot” 46.9% of the time. Our minds are wandering, not attentive to the tasks at hand or on immediate outside experience, instead we’re looking into our own thoughts.

So where are we when we are there – and not here?

Let’s start with a little primer on the so-called mind. According to Psychology Today, the unconscious is “where most of the work of the mind gets done. It’s the repository of automatic skills (riding a bike), the source of dreams, intuition and the engine of much of our information processing.” It is where we store the beliefs and thoughts that are often too uncomfortable to handle emotionally.

Some of us tend to think of the unconscious as a “black hole of unacceptable impulses,” dark, imposing and out of control. Think of the unconscious as the warehouse of your “habits of mind,” which contain past memories and associated experiences that continue to fire neurons that keep it active and in the “present,” but out of your conscious awareness.

When we act on “auto-pilot” our behavior tends to become repetitive. On one hand, auto-pilot functioning is the brilliance of the brain at work. We don’t have to learn certain things over and over again. I can type this post without having to focus (much) on the mechanics of typing, rather I can concentrate on the content of the material at hand.

The down side of this smartbrain functionality is that our thought patterns become hard-wired through repetition. Repetitive thinking and behavior reinforces existing neural networks – so what we continuously do, say, think, etc. tends to strengthen (literally thicken) our brain’s hard- wiring.

When we are operating with conscious awareness, we are always breaking new ground neurally because we are generally learning (even the slightest nuance) something new. We literally form new cells (neurons) every time we shift our thinking in new directions.

I still look to Freud who defined the conscious mind as including everything that is inside of our awareness. When we activate our conscious awareness we take ourselves off of aut0-pilot and engage the rational functions of the pre-frontal cortex of our brain.

How We Process Experience

Reporting on the ground breaking Farb ’07 study, author David Rock described two distinct systems humans use to interact with the world.

The first system, called the “default network,” is the home of auto-pilot. It happens when you are mostly idle (relatively speaking) and you think about yourself. This example illustrates it well – you’re sitting on a beach on your vacation, it’s a lovely day and there’s a nice breeze cooling you off from the sun. Nice picture, right? But for many of us, we’re not sitting there in the present moment, relishing the experience, taking it in – we’re off thinking about what time we should be back and how much more or less vacation time we have left.

David Rocks states it well, “When you experience the world using this default (narrative) network, you take in information from the outside world and process it through a filter of what everything means, and add your interpretation. Sitting on the dock with your narrative circuit active, a cool breeze isn’t a cool breeze, it is a sign that summer will be over soon.”

The other way of interacting with your world is through direct experience. Studies show more regions of the brain are activated when we are in this mode. You are literally more aware, taking in a far greater range of information through your senses in real time. You are as they say – out of your head and into your experience.

When we’re on auto-pilot we can often go through an entire experience without any real recollection of how we felt or the details of what happens. We are as the term goes, “phoning it in.” It’s only when something out of the norm occurs that we break through auto-pilot and that often is happening externally and not of our own volition.

People make phone calls, conduct meetings, send emails and give reports and they are just not there – where are they? Does it matter?

It matters if you want to be less reactive to external events and circumstances.

It matters if you want to develop more emotional balance in response to outside situations.

It matters if you want to be more attentive, achieve greater concentration and more focus.

It matters if you want to take in more information and experience what happens around you more fully

It matters if you want to show others that you are listening, caring, interested, concerned and empathic.

Being Mindfully Aware is Different from Being Aware

Much is being written about mindfulness these days. Several significant studies have demonstrated the positive impact of mindfulness “practice” on mental, emotional and physical well-being. Research is on-going and is trending towards revealing even greater benefits from becoming more mindful.

Because of its roots in religious and metaphysical practices, many people associate being mindful with meditation. While mindfulness meditation is a valuable practice – learning to become more mindfully aware doesn’t require you to sign up for any spiritual or religious beliefs.

Take this example – Imagine that I ask you to look at your right foot. In doing this, I am essentially asking you to become aware of your right foot, which you may not have been before I brought it to your attention. In this act you become conscious of your right foot. The question becomes what happens in your thinking when you look at your foot (or anything). Do you notice what is wrong with your foot?

When we bring mindful awareness to anything, we are in fact, aware of how we are experiencing what we see, hear, feel, etc. We are aware of the judgments – the perceptual filters – we are bringing to the experience. In doing this, we are more able to control the reactiveness of our responses. We notice what we notice. We take in a greater field of information. We are aware that we are aware. If we feel something (annoyance that our foot’s not that attractive) we are aware of that feeling without being “caught” in the emotion.

Dr. Dan Siegel, Clinical Professor and Co-Director of the UCLA Center for Mindful Awareness Research, has been a pioneer in understanding the neurobiology of mindfulness. He defines mindful awareness as “a kind of focused attention on the workings of our own mind. It helps us to be aware of our mental processes without being swept away by them. It enables us to get ourselves off of auto-pilot and the ingrained behaviors and habituated responses and takes us beyond the reactive emotions that we have a tendency to get trapped in.”

It’s estimated that we humans have about 60,000 thoughts a day. Auto-pilot works perfectly well for many of the tasks we must carry out every day. But remember that many, if not most (depending on your level of awareness) are dredged up (automatically) from your unconscious old software. These thoughts produce feelings and behavior patterns, some of which are unhelpful and do not support who we are today – and where we want to be in the future.

Changing Unwanted Auto-Pilot Reactivity

Whether you are aware of it or not, your brain is performing an amazing set of actions every moment that is literally reshaping it as you think. Known as “neuroplasticity,” the brain reorganizes pathways based on new experiences. Every time you memorize a fact, learn something new – think a new thought – neural networks are being reconfigured. This incredible process responds to every image, concept and feeling you have.

Because of this remarkable science we now know that your ability to be more mindfully aware plays a significant role in reshaping your neural architecture. Just as the therapist works with a client to make what is unconscious, conscious, when you take yourself off of auto-pilot responses, you are rearranging your mental, emotional and physical systems.

It is possible, through practice, to turn off your unwanted auto-pilot responses. You’re building new neural circuitry every time you do. It takes time, especially with deeply ingrained behaviors and emotional triggers. Keep in mind that every time you do, you reinforce the new neural pathway. That is why repetition is so important.

A few tips….

Notice more. Set an intention, even if it is only in one part of your experience to notice more about how you react.
Notice your judgments. Notice how and what you judge, about yourself and others. Judgments are big players in the auto-pilot circuitry.
Pay attention to specific events where you seem to go on auto-pilot. Some people even brag about it, like in meetings. Auto-pilot mode doesn’t serve anyone – especially not you.
Become much more aware of how your body feels. The auto-pilot mode is often associated with certain feeling states – boredom, frustration, anxiety, and anger. Unless you want to keep triggering these emotional responses, bring more mindful attention to what you feel and where you feel it in your body.
Become more aware of how you are breathing. Breath is an emotional enabler. There is a wonderful quote that says – “Your breath is a doorway between your mind and your body.”
Notice the stories you tell about your experience. Some people have a recurrent narrative they offer about specific experiences. These storylines are usually told on auto-pilot and are used to maintain an emotional status quo. Sometimes they are not even factual, but we come to deceive ourselves into believing they are true. Shake off the stories; find some new ones, which speak more deeply to your real and current experience.
Pay attention to the non-verbal feedback you are always getting from others. When we’re on auto-pilot we miss valuable information from the signals people are always sending each other, usually unconsciously.

Victor Frankl’s flawless quote illuminates the benefits of mindful awareness perfectly – “Between the stimulus and the response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.”

As always, your comments, questions, subscriptions, tweets and shares (whew) are much appreciated.

Louise Altman, Partner, Intentional Communication Consultants

Filed under attention, employee engagement, Life Skills, mindfulness, Neuroscience, performance, personal development, Quality of Life, Self-Management, Training * Development

Tagged as auto-pilot, body language, coaching, cognition, conscious awareness, dan siegel, emotional intelligence, feelings, Health, human resources, Psychology, wisdom

July 21, 2011

Your Vacation State of Mind

Everything is a state of mind. Your vacation, whether you are hiking, camping, lying on a beach, taking the family to Disneyland, or simply “staycationing” at home with a good book reflects your state of mind.

Generally we tend to think of a vacation based on the externals – amount of time we have off from work, our budget, desires of family and friends, access to certain locations, etc. But our vacation time mostly begins in our imagination. What is it that we want? What is it that we really want? What do we believe is possible? What do we believe we deserve? Often these desires and needs are out of our conscious awareness, but regardless of our level of awareness they are driving our choices and decisions.

The origins of the word vacation shed light on its orginal purpose –the root word comes from the Middle English word vacacioun, the Anglo French vacacion and the Latin vacatio – which all meant freedom and exemption.

So how free and exempt do you feel while on vacation?

Or do you even take a vacation? Millions of Americans do not. Of course, some have such restrictive finances, employment or family obligations, that they cannot. For them we wish more freedom and exemption.

But for many Americans the restrictions are more internal rather than externally imposed. Turns out American workers gave up 67 BILLION dollars of vacation time in 2010. In fact, an Expedia study showed that only 38% of American said they take all their vacation days!

The ripple effects of the recession have resulted in workers taking off even less time. Saddled with a bigger work load and more fear than ever, employees are hesitant to leave their work behind or form “bad” impressions that they are not carrying their load. This, of course, is creating new norms and expectations in the workplace that certainly won’t benefit the health and well-being of workers.

Another growing trend is the lack of freedom workers allow themselves when they are on vacation. A Rasmussen Report showed that 72% of workers check into work or their emails while they are on vacation.

Joe Robinson, author of Don’t Miss Your Life, writes in his article – The Taboo Toxin of Overwork, “We’re working ourselves to death. Many of us have become so fused with our work we have become our jobs. One woman told me she has zero identity outside her work. We create the self through labor in this land, unlike in other countries, where your family or regional background give you a sense of who you are. We’re a young land, we move around a lot and wind up defining ourselves by our jobs. Performance becomes the sole source of identity and value. Step away from it, and you have no value. You hear the nag in your head bellowing, “Get busy” — even if you’re at home on a Sunday morning.”

Why Do Americans Work So Hard? C’est La Vie?

According to the International Labour Organization, Americans work 137 more hours per year than Japanese workers, 260 more hours than the Brits and 499 more hours per year than the French.

Using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average producitivty of the American Worker has increased by 400% since 1950. In his article, The U.S. is the Most Overworked Developed Nation in the World – When do we Draw the Line?, author G.E. Miller says,“ One way to look at that is that it should only take one-quarter the work hours, or 11 hours per week, to afford the same standard of living as a worker in 1950 (or our standard of living should be 4 times higher). Is that the case? Obviously not. Someone is profiting, it’s just not the average American worker.”

While it is true that American workers, per capita, are more productive than European workers, economist Paul Krugman takes a deeper look at French worker output – often the object of ridicule in the U.S. media. Using data from ’08 (because U.S. companies laid off many workers, while European companies did not) Krugman states:

G.D.P. per capita: Per person, France produces 73 percent of what the United States produces in year
G.D.P. per hour worked: A French worker produces about 99% of what an American worker produces in one hour
Number of workers: For every 100 workers in the U.S., France has about 84 workers
Hours per worker: For every 100 hours and American works, a French person works about 88

“So French workers are roughly as productive as American workers. But fewer French people have jobs, and when they have jobs, they work fewer hours. So why is it that fewer people in France are employed? During their prime working years, the French are as likely to have as many jobs as Americans. But fewer young people work (in part because the government offers more generous college aid) and the French tend to retire earlier. And why do the French work shorter hours? For the most part, probably because government policies mandate that workers take vacation time. The bottom line is that France, which has the same levels of technology and productivity as the United States, has made different choices about retirement and leisure.”

So where do we draw the line? Who draws the line? Who will satistfy the insatiable appetite for ever greater productivty?

Grab Your Baguette, a Book and Relax!

Keep in mind that vacation is a state of mind. How you think about it represents how you think about your needs, values and emotions. Rest is not optional. Even if you are just heading to your backyard or a nearby park to just do nothing (imagine!) you have the power to declare yourself – on vacation.

I’m taking a short vacation too. This blog will be back in mid-August – But first, a few words.

Go for a walk.

Have a picnic in the park.

Take a trip to somewhere you have never been.

Spend a few hours a day every day hanging out with your children (or friends) and really be present for them (no smartphones b or iPads!)

Listen to music every day. Better yet, see live music as much as you can.

Sing.

Eat well.

Play ball or whatever else you love to play.

Make something with your hands.

Garden.

Have dinner with family and friends.

Go out for ice cream.

Learn something you have always wanted to learn but thought you never had the time for.

Meditate.

Wonder.

Reflect.

Just Be.

Live the life the universe would have you live, not one imposed upon you. As Anna Quindlen once wrote, “Nobody ever said on their death beds, ‘I wish I had spent more time at the office.”

With that, I will leave you with a wonderful song (and don’t miss the Eric Clapton solo at the end).

Enjoy your vacation!

As Always, your readerships, comments, subscriptions, shares and tweets are appreciated.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under American workers, business, career, culture, employee engagement, performance, Quality of Life, Stress, values, well-being, work-life balance, Workers Rights

Tagged as coaching, EQ, Health, human resources, life, overwork, productivity, vacation

August 10, 2011

Collaboration: The Essential Emotions

Successful collaboration is built on a high level of emotional literacy. Without the capacity to generate and sustain certain feelings, our ability to collaborate authentically with others isn’t possible. By the time we reach adulthood, our emotional repertoire has become habituated. This, of course, is fueled by our thinking process which is also fixed into patterns. Beliefs are the engine below stoking emotions that are triggered by outside events and social interactions.

Depending on the culture in which your thinking, beliefs and emotions were cultivated – you are either swimming upstream or downstream by the time you reach the workplace. Style and personality also play an important role in the mix.

Increasingly, today’s workplace “models” are trending towards collaboration. In many cases, management hasn’t made it beyond the buzzword – another case of language and practice being miles apart.

But there are growing examples of companies that are really serious about shaping environments and culture towards more collaboration. Beyond philosophy, these organizations understand that without collaboration, innovation is not possible. Demographic and generational forces and the power of social media and sharing are also driving the trend towards collaboration.

What’s Missing?

So far, I haven’t read anything about the emotional skills that form the essential structure of collaborative relationships. The legacy of hierarchical, authoritarian and competition-driven cultures isn’t collaboration friendly. The emotions that many put down as soft are the very emotions that create the core of effective collaborative interaction.

Most of us are not schooled in the practice of the kinds of emotions that support collaboration. We don’t get recognition or promotions for displaying appreciation or equanimity towards others – but these are the very feelings that promote an atmosphere of comfort, inclusion, creativity and trust.

Recent work in neuroscience has shown that social-emotional learning goes on throughout the adult life. Our early emotional learning does not have to determine how we relate to others. The beauty of the discovery of neuroplasticity gives all of us the freedom to work consciously to change our emotional habits.

Since the brain is a social organ – and emotional contagion is real, how we relate in groups is always reinforcing and reshaping our cognitive landscape. Most of the time it is being done outside of our conscious awareness. Developing collaborative skills requires a high degree of emotional awareness and exceptional competencies of self-management.

The very good news is that our potential for learning and re-learning is open-ended. Just as collaborative learning cultures are a constant work in progress – so are we. We can learn to cultivate the emotions that contribute to the collaborative process. The more that we familiarize ourselves with how these emotions work in other areas of our lives – the more we can practice these emotions with those engaged in our collaborative efforts.

Empathy – No question about it – the big-ticket emotion that provides the foundation for collaboration, sharing and openness. Developing our skill in understanding what is important to others is critical. Allowing ourselves to be interested in and touched by other’s experience is essential to the art of collaboration.
Patience – An emotion in short-supply these days. This powerful emotion (and skill) serves us in every single area of our lives – and is crucial when we strive to meet others in an open and nonjudgmental place. Patience is also one of the most valuable emotions in our ability to listen – authentically – to others.
Curiosity – I consider this one of the “neutral” emotions. You don’t have to like or agree with someone’s point of point to demonstrate curiosity. Many people have turned off their curiosity antennae. They’re inundated, overloaded and even bored. They’ve heard it all. The natural curiosity of human nature suffers. Curiosity is a wonderful asset – and a spark to other emotions like enthusiasm and wonder.
Forgiveness – Everyone makes mistakes. Sometimes they are even biggies. Unless we are engaged in a deeper understanding of where we stand in terms of forgiving and letting go (that doesn’t have to mean condoning or denying our own feelings) it’s hard to work and collaborate with others effectively. Old emotional baggage will resurface unless we are on top of it.
Passion – What are you passionate about? Some people are passionate about the process and potential of collaboration. Whatever it is – it’s likely to be a valuable asset in your collaboration skills tool kit. Emotions are contagious– so your passion is catchy within the circles in which you collaborate.
Appreciation – Gratitude goes hand in hand with appreciation. Both require us to step back and take a deeper look at what’s right and working for us (and others). These emotions are perspective shifters – sometimes on the spot. Appreciation works magic in groups because it is the polar opposite of judgment. Judgment distances us from others – it creates artificial separation. Appreciation is a joining emotion – even if it’s self-appreciation.
Confidence – It’s essential to bring confidence to the table. Confidence is a very self-empowered state and it can be inspiring to others. It can lift a group’s energy. But we have to be aware that the ways in which we express our confidence don’t alienate others – especially if our stylistic tendencies are more assertive. It is important to be aware of how other’s take in our behavior when we are expressing our version of confidence. Keep in mind that the goal of true collaboration is to invite the full participation of everyone.
Optimism – Collaborative efforts can be hard work. As blogger Gwyn Teatro beautifully states it, “(Collaboration) is a labor of love ~ deeper and more focused. It holds more tension and requires us to listen to each other and communicate on a variety of levels through diverse means.” Sometimes the natural cycles of conflict arise when we are working through difficult terrain with others. Often well-intentioned people can get stuck when trying to communicate, especially when decisions need to be made. Maintaining our optimism through those challenging rough patches takes work – but the sustaining qualities of optimism can keep us emotionally afloat.
Calmness – Ah…the elusive emotion – especially in the face of dealing with others in important and difficult circumstances. Calmness is the great enabler of patience – and in fact, of all emotional awareness. There’s abundant research that shows that we cannot think clearly (using the so-called “executive center”) of our pre-frontal cortex when we have activated our limbic system’s flight or fight response. Developing knowledge of what triggers us emotionally is the key to cultivating more calmness in our thinking and approach to others.

All of these emotions, critical to successful collaboration, are within our power to habituate. Take stock and identify what are the dominant emotions you feel on a typical work day. Understand that you’ve habituated these feelings every day through cognitive and behavioral reinforcement.

If you believe in the potential and transformative effects of collaboration, these skills will serve you at every level of your collaborative interactions. The beauty is that they will also transform every other area of your life. It’s a process – and it’s doable.

As always, your comments, questions, subscriptions, tweets and shares (whew) are much appreciated.

Louise Altman, Partner, Intentional Communication Consultants

10 Comments

Filed under awareness, brain science, changing behavior, employee engagement, feelings, Life Skills, management theory, managing people, mindfulness, Neuroscience, organizational development, performance, personal development, Quality of Life, Self-Management

Tagged as appreciation, coaching, collaboration, emotional intelligence, emotional triggers, EQ, Health, human resources, learning, patience, Psychology, relationships, soft skills, trust in the workplace, workplace relationships

August 18, 2011

Anxiety & the Quest for Certainty

“The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition that impels us to unfold our powers.” Erich Fromm

Most of us would agree that whatever we do, we cannot predict the future. Yet, many of us spend an inordinate amount of time trying to control the uncontrollable. This is a waste of our time and although we resist that idea, we continue to believe that endless rethinking will bring greater clarity. Ultimately, chronic over-thinking creates even more frustration and worry.

Some of us worry endlessly. Anxiety is always lurking in the background – regardless of the circumstance or issue. Work, relationships, money, health, family, appearance, the state of the world and the future – always the uncertain future.

Chronic anxiety is common. It manifests itself in illness, interpersonal conflict, road rage, impatience and sleeplessness. Stress costs the nation over 300 billion dollars annually with direct medical costs near 92 billion. While there are many factors that contribute to this, much of what we call stress is self-produced anxiety.

Despite knowing that we cannot control most situations and circumstances in life, we continue to hold on to the idea that at some level we can.

The Brain Loves Certainty

We can blame the brain for our incessant drive for certainty. Dr. Robert Burton, former Chief of Neurology at the University of California at San Francisco-Mt. Zion Hospital, comments, “I don’t believe that we can avoid certainty bias, but we can mitigate its effect by becoming aware of how our mind assesses itself. We need to recognize that the feelings of certainty and conviction are involuntary mental sensations, not logical conclusions.”

With about forty environmental cues that the brain can consciously track at any given moment (and subconscious cues numbering around 2 million) the brain elegantly selects the amount of data it will use by recognizing patterns. The brain likes patterns.

Author David Rock states, “Like an addiction to anything, when the craving for certainty is met, there is a sensation of reward. The ability to predict and then obtain data that meets those predictions generates an overall towards response. Its part of the reason games like solitaire, Sudoku and crosswords puzzles are enjoyable. They give you a little rush from creating more certainty in the world in a safe way.”

So we can guess that the emotions associated with the perception of certainty – satisfaction, contentment, calmness, confidence, relief, comfort, stability and safety – are experienced as rewards to our pattern seeking brains.

If The Brain Loves Certainty – It Really Doesn’t Like Uncertainty

Because everything we do in life is based on our brain’s drive to minimize danger and maximize reward, our emotional (or limbic system – home of the amygdala (the flight or fight response) is constantly trolling our environment for cues. David Rock refers to these reactions as either towards or away responses. Towards responses move us in the direction of reward – away responses are attempts to thwart threat.

In our quest for certainty, we unconsciously and consciously trigger the limbic system by the way we think about the events in our lives. Think of your limbic system as a hyper-vigilant sentry – guarding a command post searching for incoming marauders. This system is easily aroused and difficult to undo. Once activated the limbic system is placed on even higher alert. A cascade of unwanted thoughts and hard to manage feelings start flooding our physiology and disengaging becomes even harder.

Our insatiable appetite for certainty is another reason we cling to beliefs that are outdated or simply are not true. For most of us, our greatest “blind spots” are our unexamined and unchallenged beliefs. To reduce the ambiguity of uncertainty, we construct beliefs that create the illusion of assurance. These entrenched beliefs are enabled by self-deception. They come at a cost.

Some people argue that self-deception is necessary for self-preservation, and that makes sense. While self-deception may be a short-term fix, it forces us into further self-delusion by creating a world seen only through the perceptual filters of our own deception.

“The psychological condition of fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate danger. It comes in many forms: unease, worry, anxiety, nervousness, tension, dread, phobia, etc. This kind of psychological fear is always of something that might happen, not of something that is happening now. You are in the here and now, while your mind is in the future. This creates an anxiety gap.” Eckhart Tolle

The only place we can ever be is here. As author Eckhart Tolle says, most of us are here – but our minds are in the future. One of the triggers and casualties of the quest for certainty is that we spend more time in our heads in the past – rehashing what went wrong – and in the future – trying to plan perfection – than we do in the here and now.

To resist “what is” takes energy. What we are actually resisting are the feelings associated with certain thoughts. Author Raphael Cushnir explains, “The truth about emotions is pretty straightforward. They’re messages from the brain that are delivered in the body. To receive these messages we need to feel them where they arise. If we’re lonely, for example, the message might show up as a stab in the heart, a tug in the stomach, a welling behind the eyes. Counterintuitive as it may seem, to feel a painful emotion fully, at the site of its delivery, is the best way to help it diminish. Not feeling the emotion causes it to grow stronger, remain stronger and mess up our lives in many ways.”

Research in neuroscience shows that emotion suppression, reduces cognitive resources and suppresses memory in the process. It is only with acceptance of “what is” in the here and now that we can fully integrate the messages of our brain and body. This doesn’t mean that we settle for mediocrity or what we don’t want, but instead we tell ourselves the bare truth in the moment of our experience.

The truth is we can’t predict the future – whether it be a minute, a decade or a lifetime. The truth is we can’t control what others think or how they behave. The truth is we are both fragile and vulnerable and powerful and resourceful at the same time. That is the miracle of being human.

We humans crave peace because it feels like certainty. But the “truth” is closer to Eckhart Tolle’s wise words, “Don’t look for peace. Don’t look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance. Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you then, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender. When you accept, what is, every moment is the best moment.”

Ah……….isn’t the moment grand?

As always, your comments, questions, subscriptions, tweets and shares (whew) are much appreciated.

Louise Altman, Partner, Intentional Communication Consultants

Filed under attention, awareness, change management, changing behavior, emotions, intention, Life Skills, mind-body, mindfulness, organizational psychology, personal development, Stress, thoughts, Training * Development

Tagged as anxiety, certainty, coaching, eckhart tolle, emotional intelligence, EQ, Fear, fight or flight, Health, motivation, neuroscience, Psychology, self development, self-deception, well-being

August 25, 2011

What’s Your Workplace Narrative?

“You have a mental dialogue going on in your head that never stops. It just keeps going and going. Have you ever wondered why it talks in there? How does it decide what to say and when to say it? How much of it turns out to be true? Michael Singer

What’s your workplace narrative – you know your storyline about your job, your boss, co-workers and the company you work for?

Actually, your narrative goes beyond that – it’s the accumulation of all your experience and thinking about everything that goes into your work. Your narrative is a product of everything you believe or have experienced that has anything to do with work.

When you tell yourself something like, “There is never enough time to get everything done,” you are not simply focused on the task at hand. More likely, you are voicing many accumulated frustrations and the prospect of more to come. This is not to suggest that many people are not overburdened, overworked and overextended. They are. While there are many reasons for this – and forces to “blame,” the Voice in your head is the one thing within your private domain to control.

The Narrative Matters. It can Inspire – It can Deplete

In this blog, we’ve talked about the inner critic that incessantly stalks and drives many of us. We’ve discussed how beliefs trigger our feelings and shape our actions. Both of these dynamics create powerful themes that influence the stories we tell ourselves about work, relationships, health, family, what’s possible and what isn’t.

Because work is such a time-consuming and identity-shaping theme in most people’s lives, the narratives we form, over time, are deeply important to understanding our feelings, values and motivations.

Our narratives are usually very resilient. They survive despite experiences that challenge them. What’s important to remember is that every narrative generates multiple feelings and behaviors. Most of us don’t act outside of our narratives. Our actions reflect a particular narrative we have about people, places, things and events.

Notice your emotional reactions as you are reading some sample narratives below. Some may be familiar, some not. Some may be yours. The amount of resistance you have to a particular narrative should be a clue to investigate it further.

Unless I work very hard, I won’t succeed.
You can’t really trust anyone in the workplace.
Mine is a thankless job.
I’m just doing this job to pay my bills.
Nice (guys) finish last.
There’s no fairness in the workplace.
It’s all bullshit – everyone lies.
Only people who play the game get promoted.
My co-workers are incompetent, lazy, etc.
My boss is incompetent (a jerk, a liar, etc)
My company doesn’t care about its employees.
I’ll never get ahead in this job.

I’m not suggesting that some of these items can’t be “true,” but if you are constantly running these narratives in your mind, you can’t expect to feel good or perform well in the process!

The Narrative is the Voice Inside of Your Head

If you are like most people, the voice in your head rarely shuts up. It’s like a constant companion. We try to distract ourselves from the Voice but no matter what we do it’s rarely quiet. It’s there before we go to sleep and the minute we wake. Sometimes the Voice is more demanding than at other times. Sometimes the Voice is really bossy, even dictatorial. Sometimes it’s just annoying.

Here’s a simple workplace scenario… You forgot to give a colleague of piece of information you promised today. You realize it on your way home from work…. The Voice takes over:

“Oh no, I forgot to email Sean with that information! I can’t believe it. Oh God, I really should have. What’s he going to think? Should I pull over and do it right now? I wonder if he realizes it. Maybe he’ll forget? I could do it when I get home or maybe it’s ok to wait until the morning? No, I don’t need to stop the car, now. Later is ok. How could I forget it when I made a point of saying it was not a problem? What’s wrong me? Too much work, too many things to remember.”

And unless you have the awareness and the skill to shut the Voice down, it either continues to run the same tape or shifts to another topic…..

You pass the supermarket at this point. Your mind notes that you planned to stop there on your way home tonight. The Voice takes over…

“Oh I can’t stop now. I have to get this email out. But unless I stop we won’t have anything for breakfast and I promised the kids something for dessert tonight. I have to get more organized with the shopping list. There are other things I need too but I don’t have time. I should have done this yesterday.”

So who/what is this Voice and what does it want? Does it want to be helpful? Does it want to get your attention so that you change your behavior? Does it have its own agenda? Why is it so pushy and even mean? What’s its value?

See the Voice inside your head remembers everything – doesn’t it? It never seems to be forgetful or make mistakes.

In his brilliant book, The Untethered Soul, author Michael Singer discusses ways to relate to the Voice, “The best way to free yourself from this incessant chatter is to step back and view it objectively. Just view the voice as a vocalizing mechanism that is capable of making it appear like someone is in there talking to you. Don’t think about it; just notice it. No matter what the voice is saying, it’s all the same. If you are hearing it talk, it’s obviously not you. You are the one who hears the voice. You are the one who notices that it’s talking.”

The Voice Feeds on Your Narratives

Write down your top 5 narratives – job/work, money, primary relationships, health, future prospects – and begin to listen to the Voice more attentively – you’ll see how the Voice relies on your narrative to give it life.

The Voice also feeds on the past and the future. It’s not really concerned with the Now except to tell you that there is something about the past and future you aren’t noticing. When you really start paying attention the Voice, you’ll realize that there is always a problem. The Voice is never content.

If you’re not careful, the Voice becomes the narrative.

What Does the Voice Want?

Control.

The Voice is responding to feelings – usually unexpressed, unexplored feelings. All emotions are energy in motion (the Latin root of the word for emotions means to move energy). When those feelings/energies become pent-up and pressures mount, the Voice gets louder and more frequent.

But according to author Michael Singer, even when you are not particularly bothered by something, the Voice still talks. You could be walking down the street and it says things like, “Look at that dog! It’s a Labrador. Hey there’s another dog in that car. He looks like my first dog. Whoa, there’s a cool car. It has Alaskan plates. You don’t see many of them in this area.”

Singer believes that the Voice makes us feel more comfortable with the world around us. Like backseat driving, he suggests that the Voice helps us to feel like we are in more control of the world than we actually are. To some extent, what the Voice is seeking is the certainty that doesn’t exist, despite all of our mind’s machinations.

Freedom from the Narrative

We can free ourselves from the Voice. Understanding the complexity of emotions, thoughts and sensory inputs isn’t easy – but it is possible. The payoff is a quieter, clearer mind and feelings that don’t feel oppressive.

The first step in freeing ourselves from unhelpful narratives is to define what they are. Challenging the validity of your narrative is a critical step in this process. How do you know these themes that organize your behavior and drive your feelings are true? What are the beliefs that you carry that fuel the narrative? And what needs are you trying to satisfy in keeping the narrative alive?

Once we begin to unravel the grip of limiting narratives, we can begin the process of forming new ones. Designing new narratives doesn’t mean creating far-fetches ideas that don’t resonate with realities. It requires subtle exploration of themes that more accurately express what we truly are and where we want to be.

No doubt, when you try on new, more empowering narratives, the Voice will become disoriented. There may even be some pushback. But don’t despair, as you’re rewiring your neural pathways, eventually the Voice will become quieter, less panicked.

Remember, the Voice is not YOU.

What’s your workplace narrative? How’s does it affect how you do your work?

As always, your comments, questions, subscriptions, tweets and shares (whew) are much appreciated. Louise Altman

Partner, Intentional Communication Consultants

The Workplace Bullying Institute

Filed under awareness, beliefs, change management, employee engagement, managing people, mind-body, mindfulness, organizational psychology, Self-Management, self-talk, Training * Development, work

Tagged as authenticity, changing beliefs, consciousness, control, emotional intelligence, human resources, internal voice, narrative, responsibility, vision

September 1, 2011

Are Aggressive Workplace Cultures Enabling Bullies?

“Nothing strengthens authority as much as silence.” Leonardo da Vinci

Much has been written (thankfully) about the pervasive increase of bullying in the workplace. Not as much has been written, though, about the tacit, even welcome, atmosphere of aggression in many workplace cultures.

Throughout my years of consulting in organizational settings, I’ve been disturbed by the consistent reports from employees of workplace aggression that is rationalized, tolerated and condoned by management.

There’s always been a fine line in defining the sometimes subtle distinctions between assertive and aggressive behaviors. The differences are dependent upon idiosyncratic perceptions. Since we’ve now added bully behavior to the spectrum, the lines get even blurrier.

When I stand over your desk or point a finger at you and say, “No offense, but that’s not the way you do things around here,” chances are you’ll see me as an aggressor – maybe even a bully.

Those who describe themselves as non-assertive or at least, non-aggressive in the context of their workplace, similarly report that their cultures either excuse or ignore aggressive behaviors.

Many workers are encouraged by management to adopt more aggressive tactics to get the job done more effectively. Some employees believe that “something is wrong with me,” or “I won’t get promoted” unless they adopt the particular brand of aggression that’s the norm in their workplace. Self-blame is not uncommon when faced with choices that go against who we are and our own natural communication style.

Do Nice Guys Finish Last?

The tenacious meme that “Nice (guys) finish last,” still rules most organizational mindsets. A recent study done at Cornell showed that “people who are disagreeable earn more than people who are agreeable, and the gap is biggest among men who earn 18.3% on average more than those who are significantly more agreeable than average. The comparable figure for women is 5.47%.”

Authors of the study conceded that they found their findings puzzling. “Given the reliance of organizations on teams,” they write, “It would seem that people high in agreeableness would have at least a slight economic advantage.” The professors concluded that the reasons for this gap can be attributed to the “powerful effect of masculine stereotypes on men’s earnings.”

In his excellent blog, Minding the Workplace, author David Yamada points out a criticism of efforts to establish anti-bully legislation from two corporate employment lawyers who claimed that “legal protections against workplace bullying are contrary to high performance expectations for workers and the value of healthy competition.” They go on to say, “tension created by competition fuels productivity at work and anti-bully measures would, “not only inhibit productivity and employers’ freedom to hire and fire at will employees but moreover, it would chill critical workplace communication.”

Despite the formidable political hurdles, there’s no question that crafting workable anti-bully legislation is complex and implementation will be even more challenging. But the statements made by these attorneys reflect a deeper problem – the ingrained mindsets that drive the belief that cooperative and collaborative workplaces are not conducive to profit-making.

While many organizations and managers may talk team, they still are the enforcers (male and female) of the dying status quo that feeds on conformity. The persistence in promoting and enabling aggression in the workplace (consciously or not) seems at odds with a larger culture that on the surface is growing weary of uncivil behavior. In June, 2010, a poll done by Weber Shandwick showed that 65% of Americans thought incivility was a major problem that has worsened since the financial crisis surfaced in 2008.

Bully Behavior

Bullying takes many forms: belittling comments, persistent criticism, withholding of resources, email attacks, gossip and lying, ignoring or excluding others, yelling, insults and worse.

Although interpretations of other’s actions and intentions are highly subjective, no one wants to or should be the recipient of this kind of unacceptable behavior. Attempts to minimize a person’s reports of being bullied as “victimhood,” or self-indulgence are part of the problem – not the solution.

Dr. Sandy Hershcovis, author of a University of Manitoba study on workplace bullying states, “Bullying can be subtle and may include behaviors that do not appear obvious to others. For instance, how does an employee report to their boss that they have been excluded from lunch? Or that they are being ignored by a coworker? The insidious nature of these behaviors makes them difficult to deal with and sanction.”

The root drivers of both aggressive and bully behavior are similar:

Low self-esteem, often masked as self-confidence
Unresolved emotional issues, usually stemming from circumstances outside the workplace
Low self-awareness – failing to understand the impact of one’s own actions on others
Lack of ability to connect with one’s own natural empathic nature
Confusion about how to get needs met without denigrating others
Habituated and unregulated negative behaviors that have grown compulsive with repetitive experience
(Deluded) sense of power

Why Do We Allow Bully Behavior?

While bully behavior may be “old news,” it isn’t going away. It’s on the increase in nearly every industry and institution. Over 50% of the individuals and organizations we work with say they have a mild to serious bully problem in their workplaces. A weak economy, poor job market, increased incivility in the media and politics to mention only a few stressors continue to provoke aggression in the culture at large.

Bully behavior is pandemic. Attempts to minimize, isolate and marginalize bully behaviors within organizational settings are largely ineffective. Organizations ignore this growing trend at their own expense. Most organizations continue to perceive and define behavioral problems with a 19^th lens. The last two decades have produced ample neuroscience to demonstrate that bullied brains – the aggressors’ and the victims’ cannot function normally, let alone, optimally.

According to neuroscientists like Jean Decety of the University of Chicago, the brains of bullies may actually work differently, due to biological predisposition and early childhood experience. That should not suggest that we treat bullies as sick or outcasts, regardless of their onerous behavior. They deserve our compassion and support to get the help they need so that their behavior does not harm the well-being of others and contribute to workplace toxicity.

Bully behaviors continue in workplace settings for many reasons:

Aggression is systemic – it takes a bigger vision or an outside force or intervention to shake up the system to begin the process of change
Until recently, federal and state laws defining civil rights have not included or defined bullying as a distinct violation. This makes the job of those in HR who want to take action, difficult or even impossible. Those filing complaints have had to prove illegal discriminatory harassment, which occurs (according to the laws to date) in only 20% of bullying cases. This will change depending on the progress of the Healthy Workplace Bill. However, legal limitations should not impede the efforts of HR and every level of management to set clear, definitive organizational guidelines that certain behaviors will not be tolerated.
Senior managers and human resources lack the knowledge, information and sometimes, the will, to understand the latest research and data on the psychological and sociological foundation of bullying and its implication for the workplace.
Some HR staff believe they lack the authority (and in many organizations they do) to intervene when they think bullying is taking place.
FEAR. Fear is at the core of what keeps most hostile environments and bully behaviors in place. Fear from managers, department heads and co-workers who do not want to “rock the boat.” Fear from those who are conflict-averse. Fear from managers who justify the aggressive behavior of those who work for them because they are “star performers” or politically well-connected. Fear from those who are bullied and suffer quietly because they are afraid of losing their jobs. And fear from the bullies – who are often unconscious of the inner struggles that drive them.

We will only be able to create “healthy workplaces” when we sweep the cobwebs off our eyes, recognize that courage is required to confront fear and understand that unless we transform the workplace culture – things are only going to get worse.

I’d like to hear from you if you fall into any of the categories discussed in this post. For those trying to cope with being bullied there are many good resources for you to contact:

Bully Free at Work

Minding the Workplace (blog)

Bullies Be Gone (blog)

As always, your comments, questions, subscriptions, tweets and shares (whew) are much appreciated.

Louise Altman

Partner, Intentional Communication Consultants

9 Comments

Filed under American workers, business, career, change management, communication, employee engagement, human rights, leadership, management, organizational culture, performance, personal development, Training * Development, Workers Rights, workplace

Tagged as aggression, assertive behavior, bosses, bullying, coaching, collaboration, emotions, empathy, Health, healthy workplace, human resources, incivility, meaningful work, neuroscience, Psychology, stress, workplace relationships

September 8, 2011

Developing Emotional Competency

Since the term Emotional Intelligence was popularized in the mid -1990′s by former New York Times science writer, Daniel Goleman, work on EI has found its way into mainstream business.

Goleman’s first book, Emotional Intelligence, was based on the work of university researchers John Mayer and Peter Salovey, who were trying to scientifically measure the difference in people’s emotional abilities. At the time, Mayer and Salovey granted Goleman permission to use the term emotional intelligence for a book he was writing on emotions.

This post isn’t intended to take sides in the controversy that developed over the use of the term emotional intelligence or the scientific rigor that many critics of Goleman’s work allege is lacking. Regardless of the debate, there is no doubt that the concept of emotional intelligence struck a deep chord in American society.

Certainly the introduction of any language for emotional life within the workplace was sorely needed! Remarkably, until Goleman’s book opened the door, discussion of feeling was still almost taboo with the “modern” workplace.

What’s a Competency?

Arguably, scientific measurement of the complexity of human emotion isn’t exact. While there are some reputable instruments on the market gauging emotional tendencies – they are not always the reliable predictors of behavior or performance measurement that employers can bank on.

In fact, this is true with most personality and style measurements. Emotional competence, like other skills and abilities must be viewed within the interconnected system of each person.

Daniel Goleman’s early work can also be attributed to academic Howard Gardner, whose ground breaking conception of individual competence changed the face of education after the publication of his classic work, Frames of Mind in 1993.

Gardner’s idea was that each human possesses multiple human “intelligences.” This important contribution broadened the scope of understanding and appreciation of human capacities beyond analytic reasoning. Another important benefit of the EI (Emotional Intelligence) “revolution” has been the recognition that IQ is not the only criteria for success in work.

Chart of Howard Gardner’s Multiple “Smarts”

	Category	Description
A	Abstract Intelligence	Symbolic reasoning
S	Social Intelligence	Dealing with people
P	Practical Intelligence	Getting things done
E	Emotional Intelligence	Self-awareness and self-management
A	Aesthetic Intelligence	Sense of form, design, music, art and literature
K	Kinesthetic Intelligence	Whole-body skills like sports, dance

While there is still consensus today that IQ is fixed in childhood (that doesn’t mean we ever stop learning) the good news about EI (or as some call it EQ) is that learning has the potential to be unlimited.

Research conducted since the formulation of the EI concept, has made that abundantly clear. Our capacity to grow our emotional awareness and develop our skill in emotional self-management is infinite.

The Emotional Competencies

In the past decade, Goleman has revised his core EI capacities expanding the category of social awareness to social intelligence. Goleman explained, “When I wrote Emotional Intelligence, my focus was on a crucial set of human capacities within an individual, the ability to manage our own emotions and our inner potential for positive relationships. Here the picture enlarges beyond a one-person psychology—those capacities an individual has within—to a two-person psychology: what transpires as we connect.”

While not in agreement with all of Goleman’s categories, our work in developing EI centers on the same four core emotional competencies:

Self Awareness (emotional awareness, accurate self-assessment)
Self-Management ( emotional self-control, self-regulation, emotional literacy, trustworthiness, resiliency, self-motivation, optimism)
Social Intelligence (social awareness, empathy, interpersonal effectiveness)
Relationship Management (inspiration, influence, conflict management, assertiveness, collaboration)

All EI learning is based on the development of the first competency – Self-Awareness. Without a strong foundation (that is always fluid and changing) of personal self-awareness, it’s difficult if not impossible to do the hard work of self-management. Growth of all the competencies depends on it. While there are multiple layers to work on within each competency – a few essential skills can play a major role in developing and strengthening these core competencies:

Self-Awareness – Once again the preeminent skill. The challenge is that development of this skill is never “done.” It is, essentially, a moment by moment opportunity. Skillful self-awareness transforms us from reactors to external (and internal) stimuli to responders and even, creators, of our own experience. Author David Rock refers to the “attentional blink,” the time gap required between identifying different stimuli (such as, one thought or feeling after another) . Usually we have ½ second before the mind can be free to think about something new.

Seems impossible, but there is growing research that shows that becoming more “mindful” can slow this process allowing us more time to shift our internal directional signals! Developing mindfulness also appears to accrue benefits over time, allowing us to take in more of our experience and increase choice. One way mindfulness supports this is by decreasing our “internal noise” which distracts us and limits attention and focus.

Self-Management – Our clients (like me) usually want to skip to this competency and get it done! We want to get to the bottom of that unwanted emotion and make it go away. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. First step is that we must begin to develop a much broader and more specific emotional vocabulary for our experience. Most people tend to describe their feelings in a handful of generalized terms. Our emotional landscape is rich and deep and our language needs to fit the experience.

Emotional literacy is essential to being able to accurately describe what we are feeling. Recent research has revealed that verbalizing (naming) our feelings can actually limit and even reverse our limbic response by switching on the prefrontal cortex (reasoning). Researcher Matthew Liebermann points out, “When we put feelings into words you’re activating the prefrontal region and seeing a reduced response in the amygdala. In the same way you hit the brake when you’re driving when you see a yellow light.”

Social Intelligence – The essence of this competency requires constant practice to understand your self within a larger social framework. What’s the impact of You on those around you (and beyond)? What’s the impact of the social environment on YOU – your thoughts, feelings and actions?

Skills development in this area can be very challenging. Most of us are coming from Me vs. We thinking most of the time. All of us are the products of our cultural conditioning so our orientation to others will have its roots in our early learning. This can require lots of remedial learning.

Empathy – the great “joining” emotion is a critical tool to develop to expand this core competency. Every time we meet another person, we get the chance to practice our empathic skills. Changing our perceptual lens to develop greater capacity to understand the world from another’s perspective is critical to developing greater social intelligence.

Relationship Management - Some people are natural “relaters.” They gravitate towards others in ways that create comfort and acceptance. This is a tall order for others, especially those who are more unassertive or aggressive in their relating style. But for most of us, developing skill in relating to others successfully is challenging.

While there is a time to assert our needs and feelings with others, excelling in this competency requires us to turn our attention to what others’ think, feel and want. Listening authentically is critical. Wherever we are in our listening skills abilities, improvement is always possible. Listening deeply is the key to all the categories of this competency whether it be as a source of influence and inspiration, resolving conflict constructively or sharing and working collaboratively with others.

Developing our emotional competencies is a life long journey. It cannot be accomplished in one training program or a few coaching sessions. It requires a willingness to stay the course (however wavering). It depends on our commitment to deep and honest self-assessment and an end to the rationalization that keeps our lives and relationships in the same place – year after year.

Given your best efforts – over time – a new kind of wisdom will emerge. From that behavioral changes won’t seem as daunting. Relationships will become easier and more rewarding. But most important – your competencies will build a core inner strength that will serve you in every part of your life. You can’t lose what you’ve gained and no one can take them away. They are your gift – and your treasure.

As always, I love to hear your comments and questions.

What are the competencies you need to develop?

What competencies are in greatest need in the workplace – in our culture in general?

Your readership, subscriptions, tweets and shares are much appreciated.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

7 Comments

Filed under change management, Coaching & Mentoring, emotional intelligence, employee engagement, HR, leadership, performance, personal development, Talent Management, Training * Development

Tagged as competency, emotional comptencies, EQ, neuroscience, Psychology

September 15, 2011

How Your Workspace Affects How You Feel

Before I worked from home and was able to control my workspace, I had a long history of “redecorating” every single office space I ever worked in.

Regardless of the size or circumstances, office environment was so important to me that I simply could not work comfortably without personalizing my space. Even in the most cramped and undesirable spaces, I’d do what I could do to tidy and clean the space, adjust the lighting and air where possible, and most important – adding an aesthetically pleasing touch that reflected ME.

Organizing work space goes way back to the industrial revolution when managers were trying to find out how to make their workers more productive. Initially, the goal was to reduce injuries, but since then we’ve learned that organized and healthy work spaces can improve productivity by enhancing overall well-being.

We now have abundant research that tells us that a workplace can make us physically and mentally sick and drain our productivity. At a time when people are working longer hours than ever – and resiliency and creativity are critical – shaping a workspace to meet our physical and psychological needs really matters.

Stress costs businesses hundreds of billions of dollars every year. And that does not factor in the financial, physical and emotional toll on employees and their families. While there are many factors (today’s chronic job insecurity and heavy work loads top the list) that increase stress, environmental factors can play a major role in triggering or exacerbating those situations.

According to a 2006 study at Rockefeller University, stress can even shrink your brain cells and prematurely age your immune system. A person’s response to stress causes neurons in the hippocampus—the part of the brain with a central role in memory processes—to shrink, resulting in memory loss. The same phenomenon can occur in the prefrontal cortex, the region of the brain used for decision-making and maintaining attention or focus.

Reducing stress is not a luxury – and maintaining control over your workspace is one important way of minimizing it.

The Psychology of Workspace

Not everyone reacts to their workspace the way I do. Some people can plop down in any area, regardless of the surroundings, and work. But most people want to bring some semblance of their own organizational and personal style to their workspace. Office design, environmental factors and clutter all can play an insidious role in increasing our “allostatic load.” So it’s wise to become aware of what works and what doesn’t when we look around our workspace to explore possible remedies to enhance our work life.

One of the best things you can do to decrease your stress load and inspire your creative juices is to put together a workspace you feel good about. And even though you may have limited control over structural factors that affect your space, every step you take towards improvement will benefit your work.

Let There Be Light

Much of the brilliant new workplace designs being done today focus on light. Natural light, of course, is preferable but often difficult to control in many office buildings.

One of the first things I used to do in my workspace overhauls was to get maintenance to cut the fluorescent and overhead lights. When those lights went out, I felt instantly better. I’d bring in table lighting which created a calmer, more natural feel to the space. White fluorescent lighting has been shown to impact hormone levels, increase eye strain, migraines and depression. If you can’t control it, try to take breaks from it by going out into natural light as often as possible.

Getting outdoors, even for short intervals, also gets you some fresh air. Many office buildings, especially older ones, don’t provide adequate ventilation. A study done at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs shows that cutting ventilation rates even a little increases the incidence of “sick building syndrome” among workers by 23%.

All of this is complicated by the huge increase of EMF’s (electromagnetic fields) in the workplace. Electromagnetic pollution is everywhere, anything electrical emits EMFs. Even copiers, printers and scanners emit ozone which can irritate the lining of the lungs. Minimize your use, where possible, and do some research on ways you can limit your exposure.

Feng Shui = Common Sense

Have you ever moved a chair to the other side of a room and felt better? Ever clean out a desk or closet and felt a sense of relief or accomplishment? These simple things are part of the essence of the 5,000 year old art of feng shui which governs building design, the calendar and numbers and the placement of objects. For as long, East Asian structures have been located and designed using principles of various schools of feng shui.

Now even real estate sales in the USA, are being influenced by feng shui requirements. According to John Lim, a Citibank VP of business, who has seen a significant increase in the purchase of office condominiums by Asian buyers, “ In Chinese, Japanese and Korean, the word for number four sounds like death – which is why so many buildings in Asia do not have a fourth floor, the reason why American buildings often skip the 13^th. And in Chinese, the number 8 is a homophone for the word for getting rich. The eighth floor and building numbers with eights in them often sell at a premium.”

You don’t have to prescribe to any particular philosophy of feng shui to reap its many benefits. Clearing clutter (disorder being a giant feng shui no-no) is part of its basic premise. While getting a water fountain (a tiny table-top one will do) is associated with the positive flow of energy (and cash) to adherents of feng shui, adding one to your workspace may simply bring you some serenity.

Intention is a fundamental principle in feng shui, which believes that a space should facilitate its intended purpose. While your intention may be to be productive and creative, yet piles of papers, unwashed coffee mugs and unopened mail cover your work surfaces – you are sending yourself (and others) the opposite message.

Clearing clutter (everywhere) is essential to harmonizing your mind and your workspace. This should not be reserved for annual spring cleanings, but a regular work in progress.

You’re Never Too Old to Learn to Clean Your Room

Another important part of improving your workspace is cleaning it. Besides adding to office clutter, electronic equipment is a magnet for dirt. Research by microbiologist, Dr Charles Gerba, found that keyboards have 3295 microbes per square inch compared with 49 per square foot for the average toilet seat!

Clean your screens and keyboard and don’t forget the chords and wires that lead to your equipment. Dirty keys and screens aren’t inspiring and a basic principle of feng shui asserts that every time you notice something that isn’t clean or in working order, you deplete your energy thinking about it.

Add Beauty

Yes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. While you may not want to add fresh flowers to your workspace (I do) everyone’s spirits can be lifted by touches of color. While too much color can be distracting for some, many workspaces are too industrial and drab to elevate our aesthetic sense.

Plants can add to a workspace aesthetic and clean the air at the same time. Office walls, carpets and furnishings contain synthetic chemicals that pollute the air. Research performed by NASA has proven that plants can remove pollutants such as benzene and formaldehyde that contribute to “Sick Building Syndrome.” Chinese evergreens, English Ivy, Peace Lilies, Philodendron, Snake Plants and many plants in the Dracaena family are known air purifiers.

Personalize

Your basketball trophies may not meet my criteria for decoration but if they are meaningful to you – that’s what counts. Everything in your workspace (and what’s missing) tells the story of you to others. The little touches that you add should be the things that remind you of what’s good in your life. They should inspire and uplift you. Your workspace is a wonderful opportunity to reflect your creativity.

Green Your Space

Regardless of where you work – you are part of a global workplace. That pile of paper on your desk came from trees in another part of the world and if you toss it in the trash it could wind up in a landfill thousands of miles away. And where’s that plastic water bottle headed? If your office doesn’t recycle, recommend they do. Or take your recyclables with you and dispose of them at home.

Think about how you use the equipment in your office. Do you leave the computer on 24/7? No need to. Studies show that putting equipment on the sleep mode or powering down entirely saves energy. How about those chargers? When you leave them plugged in when you are not charging you waste energy.

There are lots of wonderful office supplies made of reused and recycled materials available. Explore those resources and ask your company or local office suppliers to stock more green stuff.

Your workspace, however small, is an important statement to yourself about the meaning of your work.

While it may seem frivolous in light of so many serious issues we all face these days – feeling good, inspired and refreshed is essential to doing good work.

So take a look around your workspace – How do you feel about it? What changes, even tiny ones, could make a difference to you?

You’ll feel better if you do, I assure you! (P.S. none of the workspaces above are mine)

Your readership, subscriptions, tweets and shares are much appreciated.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under Office Design, Stress, well-being, workplace

Tagged as clearing clutter, environmental design, feelings, feng shui, home office, sick building syndrome, workspace

September 22, 2011

Netflix and the Lost Art of Apology

“A stiff apology is a second insult,” G.K. Chesterton

The Netflix mess has brought the matter of apology front and center.

While it’s true that CEO apologies are still rare, the overwhelming consensus is that this one was awful. In fact, most comments I’ve read believe that the infamous Netflix apology letter added insult to injury. By the time the letter from CEO Reed Hastings arrived in customer mailboxes, the company had lost over a million customers angry over the recent 60% rate hike.

Business leaders still don’t understand that customer satisfaction alone is not enough. The fundamentals of respect, honesty and trust matter more. First and foremost, customer decisions and reactions are emotional.

Apologies that don’t address the complexity of human feelings are useless – and sometimes damaging. Apologies perceived as insincere can erode any remaining potential for the rebuilding of trust.

How Do You Say I’m Sorry To 24 Million Customers?

The truth is that the Netflix apology letter was really a rebranding announcement. Apart from what critics feel is either a horrendous business decision or a highly manipulative maneuver, the letter has created a buzz around the question of apology in the age of social media.

The annals of weak and disingenuous corporate apologies are growing. Customers find CEO apologies scripted by lawyers and public relations dishonest and offensive. The shoddy attempts at “reputation repair” add to the understandable cynicism that is corroding the public’s institutional trust.

Corporations and public figures fear litigation and political backlash, so they verbally dance around the edges of their mistakes and failures. These apologetic “mashups” further erode public confidence in leadership. And the negative reaction to Netflix’s mangled apology will undoubtedly have a chilling effect on the future of similar admissions.

What’s missed by most corporate leaders and public figures is the potential for opportunities to heal and restore broken faith and relationships with sincere communication in the form of apology. According to Harvard Business Review author Holly Weeks, “When an offense has torn the fabric of a relationship, an apology is a stage in its repair. An effective apology can reassure people that the transgression is understood and not likely to be repeated.”

The likelihood of an apology is tied to the culture of the corporation, government body, state or country of origin. While many factors impact the cultural awareness and acceptance of apologies and admissions of wrong-doing (e.g. laws) the aversion to apology more common in the U.S. is not universal.

Arthur Rosen, Professor Emeritus of Law at the University of California said, “When faced with a change that they have seriously wronged another person, Americans typically deny or challenge the claim or may try to explain or justify their actions.” For example, the Japanese system requires that civil and criminal defendants give their victims or society a personal apology.

Is There a Recipe for the Perfect Apology?

Whether it is an institutional or individual apology, certain rules apply. Context and circumstances do matter and have to be factored into how we apologize.

Timing. You know the old saying, “timing is everything?” Well, that is particularly true in the stages of apology. A too-late apology can be completely ineffective and anger the offended party even more. In today’s super-fast world of social media, public apologies must be carefully timed to “get out in front” of the inevitable public fallout. On a public and personal level, delayed apologies can seem callous, defensive and controlling.
Assumptions. Nothing’s worse than being on the other end of an apology that assumes what you think and how you feel. This is delicate because while the apology needs to address the possible impact of the wrong doing, it must not further offend. I don’t want BP telling me I feel fear when in fact, I feel anger. The same is true with personal apologies.
Apologies are not about you. Apologies are about those offended. Get off of the stage. Focus on others. Too many people use apologies to explain themselves or their company’s actions. Combining the apology with the business announcement was one of the chief criticisms of the Netflix apology letter.
Do it in Person. Obviously corporate and public apologies can’t take place in person – but the method matters. If you have an opportunity to deliver a personal apology in person and instead you choose to do it by phone or email – expect that your actions may be seen as cowardly or lazy.
Take Full Responsibility. Too many apologies equivocate, defend and even blame. This is the death knell for acceptance, let alone forgiveness.
Acknowledge the Hurt and the Damage Done. This is very hard for most of us to do. It requires that we face what others are feeling – and the impact of our offense. This is where most people jump in and try to “fix” the emotions others are feeling. To ease our emotional discomfort, we try to manage what others are feeling, which can escalate the damage.
Show Remorse – This is the part where you tell them how you feel. If it isn’t real – it won’t be received.
Ask for Forgiveness. A lot of apologies omit this crucial step. Too scary. It can also come across as an unreasonable expectation given the emotional stakes. Just because you have contritely asked for forgiveness, don’t expect it – at least in the moment. Forgiveness takes time and in some situations, is not possible.
Provide Assurances, Try to Compensate. It is only by demonstrating an authentic attempt to be honest and take responsibility that we can expect those we’ve offended to consider trusting us again in the future. If the circumstances call for or allow it, we should also try to offer some form of restitution. In the case of Netflix, the only thing I could see they were offering was the continuation of the red envelope!

Trust is more fragile than ever. Yet, everything that is important in society and relationships depends on it. A study done at Wharton School of Business defined trust as the “Willingness to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations about another’s behavior.”

When corporations, governments and individuals lie or abdicate their responsibilities, they chip away at the leaking reservoir of public trust. Everything we do – from the serious act of extracting fossil fuels from the core of the earth to the simple pleasures of watching a DVD – rely on some measure of trust.

Relationships are the great glue that holds us all together. Jonathan Cohen, a professor of law at the University of Florida helped institute Florida’s “safe harbor” laws which allow offenders to offer “benevolent gestures expressing sympathy or a general sense of benevolence” to victims.

Based on his work some states have since adopted versions of these “I’m Sorry” laws. In speaking about his work, Professor Cohen captures the power of the potential of apology, “Apologizing isn’t just for the aggrieved person; it’s for yourself. When you refuse to apologize for a wrong or are told by a lawyer or insurer not to do it, it dismantles one of life’s most basic moral lessons – owning up to our mistakes. Apologies are needed to re-establish the moral universe.”

What do you believe about apologies, public or personal?

As always, I appreciate your readership, comments, subscriptions and shares!

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under communication, conflict management, culture, leadership, management, organizational culture, trust

Tagged as apology, CEO Reed Hastings, corporate communication, forgiveness, human resources, lies, Netflix, netflix apology letter, relationships

September 29, 2011

Is the 2011 Employer: Mean at the Bottom and Not Lean at the Top?

“The U.S. has one of the highest levels of inequality of any industrialized countries in the world. It’s created a great deal of mistrust in everything.” Brain Vargus, Professor, Indiana University – Purdue

I recently had an experience at my local mid-sized “natural” supermarket (we’ll call it Toms) that inspired this post. The store had just been renamed (let’s call it Alfalfa) having just completed a rebranding, after being acquired by a large national chain.

Everything seemed mostly the same, with new labels and a few new products. One thing did stand out though – lots of new faces behind the counters. I wondered why.

After shopping I made my way across the parking lot to the local Starbucks – and guess what? One of my favorite check-out people from the old Toms was now a barista. He proceeded to explain why he quit the new store …… seems the friendly family owned and run Alfalfa had immediately instituted some very unpopular employee policies:

Across the board pay cuts, rehiring same workers with lower pay
No health benefits for part-time workers (less than 32 hours per week)
Keeping full-time workers below 32 hours (to avoid paying health benefits) by designing crazy shifts and cutting hours on the spot
Most men paid higher salaries than women

“I didn’t want to work for a company that treated people like Wal-Mart,” the personable barista told me, “and people are leaving Alfalfa in droves.”

In fact, the CEO of Alfalfa has stated publicly that he was proud that they have a 95% employee turnover rate when acquiring new stores. Alfalfa’s CEO also keeps his employer costs low – at one store only 2 employees got a raise after their six month review – $.50 per hour.

While my local barista found his new Starbucks benefits package far more generous than his previous employer, he still (rightly) believes that his wages (less than $9.00 per hour) are too low. His CEO, Howard Schultz, who is credited with bringing the company back to profitability, got a 45% compensation increase to 22 million in 2010, which included a salary increase of 1.3 million.

Now That’s a Raise

In 2010 CEO’s on average were paid $11.4 million dollars up from 9.2 million the year before. In contrast, the average worker saw their annual pay go up to $33,121, from $32,049 in 2009, according to the Institute for Policy Studies. So the pay gap of CEOs to workers shot up 20% last year, to 344 times an average worker’s pay from 287 times. In the 1980s, this pay gap was just 40 times. http://money.msn.com/investment-advice/ceos-got-a-big-raise-how-about-you-brush.aspx

The pantheon of CEOs with super sized salaries is large. Recent notables include Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg. Seidenberg made the recent list of CEOs whose salaries exceeded what their companies paid in taxes. Seidenberg received a salary of $18.1 million – the company got a $705 million dollar tax refund against profits of $107 billion dollars.

Wal-Mart CEO, Michael Duke’s $35 million dollar salary when converted to an hourly wage, works out to $16,826 per hour. By comparison, an average Wal-Mart store employee is paid $8.75 per hour which is about $13, 650 in gross pay.

Many CEO’s cashed in big after making huge cuts within their employee ranks. Fred Hassan, CEO of Schering-Plough, earned $49.7 million last year and $33 million after leaving the company when the firm merged with Merck, resulting in 16,000 layoffs. According to Kevin Murphy, a professor of finance at The University of Southern California, “We have the recipe for controversy over CEO pay: big increases in CEO pay that show up following run-ups in stock prices coupled with high unemployment rates.”

We All Pay

So who gets hurt when my local barista’s wages get cut? What happens when CEO’s Seidenberg and Hassan get mega raises and their respective companies let 30,000 workers go? While economists have not done enough research on these questions, studies within other disciplines point to alarming trends:

University College London epidemiologist Michael Marmot found that there was more illness in the U.S. than the UK due to growing income inequality. He attributes the differences to greater stresses on the American worker.
A Kennedy School of Government study showed that income inequality breeds corruption, especially true in democracies where wealth and power can be more easily exchanged.
Harvard Professor of Economics, Edward Glaeser states that unchecked inequality can lead to greater inequality. Glaesner’s work points out that as the rich get richer they acquire greater political influence and may support policies that make themselves richer at the expense of others.
Consumers – whose spending is 70% of the economy have reached their limit. Even people with jobs are cutting back. Median wages continue to fall, with weekly wages in July, 2011 for those with jobs were 1.3% lower than eight months before. As consumers continue to cut back spending, corporate profits will decline hurting the economy even further.

Does Income Inequality Breed Mistrust?

There’s growing evidence that income equality is steadily eroding trust among employees. A 2008 study from The Organization for Economic Cooperation (OECD) showed that with one exception – the United States – people living in high median household incomes were more trusting. While ranking fourth in median income among the 30 countries surveyed, the U.S. ranked as the 10^th least trusting country, with only 48.7% of people saying that generally speaking, most people could be trusted.

The OECD’s data also showed that higher levels of trust are closely associated with lower levels of income equality. According to Eric Uslaner, a University of Maryland professor of government, “Inequality is much more significant than wealth and the reason is that trust reflects the view that what happens to me happens to you. That we’re all in this together. And inequality works exactly to counter that.”

Existing trends in income inequality, benefits reductions and cost cutting are not likely to be reversed in the immediate future. This raises serious questions about the future of trust and employee morale.

How can employers “engage” employees if there are major disparities in their compensation levels?

How are growing gaps in income equality hurting teamwork, trust and motivation?

And most important, how can the lost trust, sense of betrayal and lingering bitterness between polarized employees and organizations be healed?

What do you think?

As always, I appreciate your readership, comments, tweets and shares.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under American workers, employee engagement, management, organizational development, performance, Talent Management, Training * Development, Workers Rights

Tagged as CEO pay, human resources, income inequality, motivation, pay gap, salary, stress, trust in the workplace, wages

October 6, 2011

Listening to Empathy: A Response to NYT David Brook’s Limits of Empathy

“The existentialists have constantly reminded us that what is worth understanding and knowing is our existence, the human condition, and that engagement and involvement are superior to a detached stance. Our mirror neurons show that we are not alone, but are biologically wired and evolutionarily designed to be deeply interconnected with one another.”

Marco Iacaboni, Mirroring People: The Science of Empathy and How We Connect to Others

Last week’s widely read and wildly simplistic New York Times article by David Brooks, The Limits of Empathy, dismissed empathy as “a delicious moral emotion” that does not lead us to moral action. Judging by the large and overwhelmingly negative comments on the site, his readers mostly disagree with Brook’s premise.

While this blog has written about empathy before, not enough can be said about its potential to transform our experiences. The Brooks article serves as a good vehicle to shed some more light on the subject. While Brooks raised some questions that are, from the perspective of science, not yet answered; his examples border so much on the conclusive, that is hard not to assume that his agenda may be more cynical than exploratory.

Brooks begins his article by stating, “We are living in the middle of an empathy craze.”

Within the context of his piece I think Brooks is implying that this isn’t a good thing – or at least, that it’s a fad. It is true that in the past few years there has been a huge increase in research and interest in the concept of empathy. I think this is a very good thing.

Though the term empathy was first used by psychologist Theodor Lipps in his work in 1932, it was philosopher Robert Visher who first coined the term in 1873. My point, Mr. Brooks is that empathy – described as human feeling – hasn’t been around very long. And it has only been within the past ten years that scientific research has accelerated our understanding of the role of empathy as a human dynamic.

If Mr. Brook’s concern is that some may speculate that empathy offers us a potential panacea for our social ills, I think it’s safe to say – we are only at the beginning of our understanding. Empathy and altruism are evolutionary and we’re discovering that many species (chickens are the latest) share emotions and respond to each other’s distress.

Brooks: “People who are empathetic are more sensitive to the perspectives and sufferings of others. They are more likely to make compassionate moral judgments. The problem comes when we try to turn feeling into action. Empathy makes you more aware of other people’s suffering, but it’s not clear it actually motivates you to take moral action or prevents you from taking immoral action.”

Reasonable concern, Mr. Brooks. But when I read between your lines I think you are blaming “the morally delicious” empathy for a lack of moral action. Like empathy, morality (is complex) and originates in the biology of the brain. In her new book, Braintrust, What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality, neurophilosoper, Patricia Churchland points out that the neurobiological act of maternal bonding, modified by evolutionary pressures and cultural values are the shapers of moral behavior.

According to Churchland, we’re as wired for morality as we are for empathy but the defining influences have to do with our cultural conditioning as to the direction our inherent dispositions will take.

Brooks: “In the early days of the Holocaust, Nazi prison guards sometimes wept as they mowed down Jewish women and children, but they still did it. Subjects in the famous Milgram experiments felt anguish as they appeared to administer electric shocks to other research subjects, but they pressed on because some guy in a lab coat told them to.”

Extreme arguments that focus on the heinous acts of the Holocaust and other atrocities are often compelling but not necessarily useful in understanding the complexity of human behavior.

Here I think using some examples from the article’s reader comments will help get to the heart of Brook’s analogy:

“Leave it to David Brooks to look at soldiers whose obedience to authority overrode their empathy for their victims, and blame the empathy, instead of the submitting to authority.”

“If Nazis cried when exterminating Jews, it’s because empathy conflicted with duty and lost. This doesn’t mean that empathy is insufficient, it means that the code of authority is evil.”

“Empathy is no fragile flower, in other words; it’s a powerfully *other* way of seeing and feeling. If that Milgram fellow in the white coat kept on barking out his little orders to continue with the experiment, the truly empathic guy would probably just say, “Hey, buddy, Dr. Milgram, Sir? Maybe you need to take off that white coat of yours for a bit and take a little breather, no?” The empathic guy, in other words, isn’t *in a mood.* He’s seeing it all very, very differently.”

The late psychologist Heinz Kohut captured the spirit and purpose of empathy when he said, “Empathy and introspection should be looked at as an informer of appropriate action.”

Brooks cites the work of City University of New York philosopher Jesse Prinz in arguing that empathy can often lead people astray. “It influences people to care more about cute victims than ugly victims. It leads to nepotism. It subverts justice; juries give lighter sentences to defendants that show sadness. It leads us to react to shocking incidents, like a hurricane, but not longstanding conditions, like global hunger or preventable diseases.”

I think that this example demonstrates a common inability to define empathy and understand its scope. Typically misunderstood as feeling what others are feeling (which has a whole host of other implications), Dr. Nicolas Danziger has described “true empathy” as the “ability to imagine how others are feeling, especially people who are not the same as you.”

In Brook’s extreme conclusion that empathy blinds us to sound judgment we can also detect the shadow of something counselor Dr. Mark Stebnicki called “empathy fatigue.” Empathy fatigue is defined as “emotional detachment brought about by prolonged emotional exposure.” And according to author Jamil Zaki, “to live in this world is to be exposed to prolonged emotional exposure. It is no longer relegated to the field of counseling. It is inescapable.”

While we all recognize that the immediacy of living in a wired, connected global world is impacting our natural empathetic tendencies in unimaginable ways, our own thoughts and beliefs also play a major role. Various studies, most notably, the Batson Princeton Theological Seminary study, found that empathetic intentions were often trumped by inattention and self-focus – nothing venal, simply distractions that kept people from taking action.

Internal shut-off switches such as thoughts, judgments and beliefs can tamp down our inclinations towards understanding and helping others. There is plenty of evidence to suggest two important factors that influence these tendencies: we are inclined to be more empathic with those that are more like us – and – we can reverse these habits through awareness and conscious cognitive intervention.

David Brooks seems disappointed that a few decades of research and public awareness of a promising social glue – empathy – hasn’t produced enough results. He claims that empathy is “insufficient.”

But as we uncover the complexity of our emotional world our challenge is to enhance and act upon our capacity for empathy. As we learn more about our amazing interconnected social brains, it’s our responsibility to take the information and use it for mutual benefit.

Cynicism and skepticism won’t take us very far – but our empathy has no limits.

As always, I appreciate your readership, comments, tweets, shares and subscriptions.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

6 Comments

Filed under brain, change management, Coaching & Mentoring, emotions, empathy, Neuroscience, organizational development

Tagged as david brooks, emotional intelligence, feelings, human resources, limits to empathy, morality, motivation, Psychology

October 13, 2011

Why Do So Many People in the Workplace Still Believe that Self-Development is Therapy?

Beliefs are powerful things. They persist even in the face of evidence – even in the light of experience.

The world of business – that is, the world of commerce, is still largely under the impression that feelings have no place in the workplace. In light of what we now know from a wealth of neuroscience – that’s just dead wrong.

In 2011, few people still deny the existence of psychology, or that human dynamics are the workplace.

But too many people still hold the common assumption that self-development, that is – self-growth – is frivolous, a luxury, unnecessary, unproductive, unprofitable, impossible and inappropriate in the workplace.

In 2011, most people would say that change in the workplace is not only inevitable – but essential for growth and survival.

But too many people still hold the unhelpful and untrue belief that people don’t want to change, don’t need to change or are immune to change.

Why is that? Why is it that we still haven’t made the link between personal and organizational development?

In their excellent book, Immunity to Change, co-authors, Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey point out that recent research has completely altered what we now know about adult development,. “When we began our work, thirty years ago, the accepted picture of mental development was akin to physical development – your growth was thought to end by your twenties.”

The growth of the field of neuroscience has made a major contribution to redefining our understanding of mental complexity and the lifelong potential for cognitive development. Learning does not stop in young adulthood – it is continuous.

Recent science has also affirmed that cognition and emotion are inseparable – providing ample evidence for us to surrender the false idea that our feelings are less important than our intellect or can be compartmentalized. In fact, authors Kegan and Lahey point out that organizations are “incredibly impeded by the covert dynamics that are never acknowledged around the emotional life of the organization. In order to really alter the dynamics of an organization, you’ve got to get that stuff out on the table, or it’s going to block you all the way.”

What Keeps the Myths Going?

Change is rarely easy, but it is possible. Our “immunity to change” is built on old beliefs that are constructed for self-protection. We deny, delay and resist change as a way to minimize the anxiety of life’s inevitable uncertainties. Avoidance is part of the brain’s structural defense against threat. Unless we use our cognitive abilities to consciously acknowledge and explore our resistance, our neural hardware continues to harden and thwart attempts to change.

Some common inhibitors to change include:

Beliefs – the power of personal and collective beliefs can’t be overemphasized. Unraveling the knots of our beliefs can be one of the most illuminating and freeing actions we can take towards change. Beliefs drive behavior, that’s why they are the starting point for change.
The Perception that Self-Development is Weakness – this is still a common belief in this culture, especially within the workplace. We tend to seek power (the perceived antidote to weakness) in externals and deride those who seek internal knowledge.
Lack of Self-Awareness – the key to change (what do you want to change and why?) is dependent upon your level of self-awareness. Immunity to Change authors, Kegan and Lahey, refer to the “blindspots” that keep us from even seeing what needs to be changed.
Fear of Change – we hear this term all the time. Unless we understand what it is we fear – it’s of little value to say fear is blocking our change. Most of the time what we fear is an illusory loss of control of the unknown. We don’t know and can’t know the unknown so we believe that if we stick with what we know, we’ll be safe.
Unwillingness to Feel our Vulnerability – Attempts at self-protection often mean we create strategies to avoid experiencing the natural human feelings of vulnerability. So one strategy (usually subconscious) is to avoid anything that feels like change. Because we live in a results oriented culture, allowing a temporary sense of loss of direction that is part of feeling vulnerable, feels unacceptable.
Stigma – Despite all of our “progress” there is still a stigma attached to seeking outside help (even coaching). It can still feel like a weakness to many people. Too many of us still can’t admit we don’t have all the answers, even if we are having difficulties and need support and new information.
Lack of Skills or the Language for Change - Most of us haven’t had the training or exposure to the skills necessary to initiate and implement change in our lives. Many people, even those leading change in organizations, still don’t understand the fundamentals of human dynamics. People still talk about wanting to “just change behavior” without a basic understanding that how we act isn’t a separate function from what we think and feel. They are completely integrated processes.

Our anti-change narratives take many forms. If we listen closely to our self-talk (or our self-talk reinforcing itself to others) it can go like this:

“I’m not ready. I’ve got to get certain things in order before I can take that on.”

“This will never work.” Or “I’ve tried this before and it didn’t work.”

“I don’t want to rock the boat right now.”

“I can’t risk that kind of upheaval in my life now.”

“I don’t want to open up a can of worms.”

Peter Drucker, a “father” of modern management stated that, “the basic assumptions underlying much of what is taught and practiced in the name of modern management are hopelessly outdated and wrong.” The complexity of business today demands that workers have a greater command of their mental complexity.

Performance based solely on past bottom line results is a limited model on which to run global business and achieve more meaningful work. Unless people and organizations begin to embrace the idea that self-development is organization development, our advances will be confined to the remedial.

Building our emotional competencies, expanding positive capacities like resiliency, optimism and trust are the essence of self-development.

In the words of authors Lisa Lahey and Robert Kegan, “There is no expiration date on your ability to grow. No matter how old you are, the story of your own development – and the stories of those around you — can continue to unfold.”

Your readership, comments, subscriptions, shares and tweets are always appreciated.

Louise Altman, Partner, Intentional Communication

Filed under change management, Coaching & Mentoring, employee engagement, leadership, Life Skills, management theory, organizational development, Training * Development

Tagged as beliefs, emotional intelligence, emotions in the workplace, human resources, immunity to change, neuroscience, Psychology, self development

October 20, 2011

8 Ways to Decrease Organizational Fear

“The fantasy about organizational life is that people will behave in logical, unemotional and well-organized ways. It’s as though the boxes on the organizational charts are designed to keep the messiness of reality, people and emotions away from work.”

Dan Oestrich and Kathleen Ryan, co-authors, Driving Fear from The Workplace.

How is it that with flattened hierarchies, employee engagement, empowered teams and learning organizations there is still so much fear in most organizations?

Fear, the terrible artifact of hundreds of years of authoritarian and assembly line management thinking, is still fully operative today.

Unconscious thinking, lack of self-awareness, rigid and unchallenged personal and collective beliefs and ignorance, misuse and abuse of power keep fear alive. In all of its overt and covert forms, fear still plays as major a role in most organizational life as it did a hundred years ago. The forms have changed. Because management by fiat isn’t an attractive “brand” these days, fear has become more sophisticated and multi-layered. It’s mainstreamed into cultural norms and buried in organizational systems and structures.

There are still many organizational “leaders,” caught in the paradigm shift of modern organizational practices, who erroneously believe that the two primary human emotional motivators are fear and greed. The news from neuroscience about the function of the human brain as a “social” organ either hasn’t trickled up to these leaders or has not sufficiently impressed them to get management practices in line with scientific facts.

We aren’t taught to understand human power dynamics. Our confused, beleaguered education systems still have not determined that understanding intrapersonal and interpersonal fundamentals are keys to personal, professional and institutional success. Many organizations, departments and teams are still slavishly hashing out adolescent power struggles that counter genuine productivity and cause real and unnecessary suffering in the process.

It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way?

If you believe, as I do, that fear is the enemy of engagement, that it thwarts personal and collective progress and that it makes us sick, it’s crucial that we identify the ways that fear permeates organizational culture and personal behavior.

The list is long – but let’s highlight a few of the most important practices that can decrease the atmosphere of fear in the workplace:

Increase, Enhance and Model Self Awareness – Unless we are enmeshed in self-deception, it’s difficult for fear to dominate our thinking, feelings and behavior when we are truly self-aware. Awareness and honest self-reflection can act as an antidote to engaging in fear-based behaviors.
Learn, Practice and Promote Emotional Intelligence – There is simply no excuse for leaders in the 21 century to dismiss the value of emotional literacy and competency. Fear’s an easy and primitive emotional response to elicit – the cheap seat in the house. Inspiring and influencing others through passion, enthusiasm and courage should be the true calling for leaders.
End Conflict Aversion – Too many people are too afraid to have the critical conversations they need to have to make real progress. Most of the carping, bullying, gossiping and congealed old feelings that keep conflict alive are the result of people being fearful of honest confrontation. A lack of skill plays a big role in conflict aversion and fear is the glue that holds it together.
Leaders – Loosen the Reins of Control – One of the top three challenging topics still most mentioned by managers in my seminars is delegation – essentially the fear of letting go of control. In many cases, structural impediments (practices, rules, norms) impede managers from relinquishing control, but often this is a personal limitation imposed on others because of fear.
Overcome Your Resistance to Change - If you haven’t noticed, nothing is standing still anymore – not that it ever was – but it seems to be going faster today. Unless you come to terms with the ways you avoid, deny and resist change, you are going to lock fear tactics into place – for yourself and others.
Stop Trying to Control Information, Resources and Decision Making – This item relates to all the other points above (well – actually they are all inter-related). Regardless of your position within an organization, you have the opportunity to share your knowledge and model trust in your handling of these important organizational currencies.
Model “Transparency” – Transparency is one of those buzz words that’s losing its meaning. Honesty, reliability and integrity are in such short supply that many of us have become understandably cynical about the possibilities of real transparency in the workplace. The reality is we cannot sustainably accomplish what we need to accomplish without it. When you model these rare qualities you strike a blow against the domination of fear.
Reduce Work Load – What’s fear got to do with workload? Everything. Recently a client shared her distress over how her manager was overseeing her work load. Although she had been traveling extensively for business, putting in long nights working on several projects, our client is still fearful of asking her boss to reduce her load or support her in some way. In fact, on her last day before heading off to a one week vacation, her manager gave her another assignment due shortly after she would return. Badly stressed, she spent most of her family vacation on the computer. Her manager, consciously or not, seems to be clueless as to her employee’s stress level. While our client has a responsibility to share her concerns with her boss, this leader isn’t taking any responsibility to address the fear that is driving one of her most tenacious and responsible employees.

Wise leaders think about the ways fear impacts their employees. They are concerned and proactive in identifying the ways fear incubates in a culture and infects the mindsets of workers. These leaders understand that fear, like other emotions, is contagious. They understand that the human brain is wired for two essential responses – threat and reward. Wisely, they choose to align their organizational practices and work processes with the latter.

What do you believe organizations and their leaders can do to reduce fear in the workplace? What do you believe you can do to decrease your own fears at work?

As always, I appreciate your readership, subscriptions, comments, shares and tweets!

Louise Altman, Partner, Intentional Communication Consultants

Filed under business, change management, changing behavior, Coaching & Mentoring, employee engagement

Tagged as bosses, emotional intelligence, Fear, human resources, neuroscience, Psychology, stress, well-being

October 27, 2011

Question the Answers: Using Critical Thinking to Change Workplace Dynamics

“Heresy is another word for freedom of thought.” Graham Greene

I often hear people say, “We need more critical thinking in the world, we should be teaching it in schools.” I don’t disagree with those ideas. But I wonder if we understand how much change real critical thinking would bring – to our schools, to the workplace, to our cultures and to our personal lives.

I’m not an expert in the progress of pedagogy, but I suspect that the teaching of critical thinking isn’t at the top of most school lists in this “Age of Austerity” (at least for most). We don’t really understand critical thinking enough to know how much we struggle and suffer from a lack of it.

Most corporations and institutions say they need innovation, creativity, sustainability and trust to compete in the 21^st century. They understand that the new worker is a knowledge worker and that continuous learning is the jewel in the crown of assets to get there. But I don’t think they really mean they want critical thinkers!

Critical thinkers ask questions. They must “live in the questions” as the poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote. To the critical mind, questions lead to more questions. Critical thinkers not only challenge the status quo, they shake it up. They turn the status quo on its head and always ask, “Is there another way?” That’s not comfortable to those who have an “immunity” to change.

That’s why it’s tough for most institutions and organizations to really embrace the full meaning and possibility of unleashing critical thinking within their cultures. While we’re in the grip of a powerful cultural meme that says that governments stifle progress and growth and businesses free it – neither are true.

Critical thinkers pose a threat to norms, to the safe and the orthodox. Critical thinkers toss the moneylenders out of the temple. Their very essence is to challenge atrophied practices and outdated assumptions.

For critical thinking to thrive, it must operate in an atmosphere of trust. Power politics, organizational and personal, shut down free thinking and the honest exchange of ideas – and are the enemy of critical thought.

The Essence of Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is essentially the ability to think about thinking. Most people don’t think about their thinking, and it’s not a skill many of us have acquired. In a results-driven culture, thinking about thinking feels passive. But developing the skills of a critical thinker is anything but passive. In its purest form, it requires the present and active involvement and engagement of the thinker in every experience.

In defining critical thinking many people get negatively hooked by the word – critical. The critical in the context of critical thinking doesn’t mean disapproval or judgment. In fact, the skilled critical thinker needs to have the ability to think with great clarity and neutrality. The critical thinker is not without opinion, but has the ability to view experience from multiple perspectives.

Sharpening the Skills of Critical Thinking

The classic core elements of critical thinking include: observation, interpretation, analysis, inference, evaluation, explanation, and meta-cognition. How we understand and define these tools is important to the development of critical thinking.

Observation – I think of this as the constant development and refinement of our ability to not only be self-aware but to cultivate the neutral (non-judgmental) “witnessing” of our own experience of self and others. This is the foundational skill we use to build critical thought.
Challenging Beliefs and Norms – Norms form around comfort. While comfort may feel good, it can also be a refuge from change. Unexamined beliefs form major blind spots to critical thinking. We cannot discern the evidence we need to substantiate certain claims and assertions, if non-factual beliefs dominate our thinking.
Ask Deep and Engaging Questions – Questions are surely the crux of critical thinking, but learning to ask deeper and more engaging questions is the key. Most of us have been conditioned by rote learning and memorization and our questioning skills have been weakened in the process.
Brain Integration – One major cultural assumption that limits critical thinking is the idea that emotions are the enemy of reason. Rationality (the thinking we associate with the neo-cortical functions of our brain) is nearly always considered the Supreme ruler of critical thinking. Truth is we need a greater ability to integrate and balance both our so-called thinking brain and our feeling brain to maximize understanding and heighten experience. Familiarity with the information from our feeling brain invites intuitive and sensual experience into the equation.
Collaborative Thinking – Critical thinking is social thinking. Practices in all areas of culture, but especially in the workplace, continue to foster authoritarian, left-brain, hierarchical thinking processes. Collaborative thinking requires exceptional listening abilities and the willingness to let go of control in over-asserting our own positions.
Information and Learning – The critical thinker understands that learning is a continuous process and is actively seeking and open to new ideas and experiences. The critical thinker seeks out information not as a means to an end but to understand more about other people, their experiences and the larger world.
Becoming Literate in the Emotions that Support Critical Thought – All emotions are of value to the critical thinker, but some are particularly important to engage, promote and sustain critical thought. Courage, confidence, enthusiasm, excitement, fascination, passion, optimism, satisfaction, wonder, appreciation, empathy, compassion, acceptance, calm and curiosity – the great driver of critical thought.
Meta-Cognition – A very spiffy term to describe the critical thinker’s automatic awareness of their own knowledge and their ability to understand and control their own cognitive process. So – learning more about how we learn serves the critical thinker in their continuous path of growth.

Our need for critical thinking is greater today than ever before. We need to find a way to step outside of isolated and polarized thinking. We must learn to question the assumptions, information and behaviors that have led us to where we are now.

Most of us would agree that tepid reforms won’t change our workplaces or our culture. Critical thinkers challenge the safe, the comfortable and the inevitable. They are always going for ideas that have greater impact and depth. They make connections between things that appear on the surface as unrelated. They seek out possibilities even when problems seem insurmountable.

If we want to truly unleash the power of critical thinking, we’ll have to overcome the barriers of fear and passivity; entrenched and informal power arrangements; bias and conformity and the willingness to tolerate uncertainty.

It’s a tall order – are we ready?

As always, I appreciate your readership, comments, subscriptions, shares and tweets!

Louise Altman, Partner, Intentional Communication Consultants

8 Comments

Filed under change management, Coaching & Mentoring, Critical Thinking, employee engagement, HR, leadership, management, organizational development, performance, self development, Training * Development

Tagged as coaching, collaboration, Psychology, thinking, workplace

November 3, 2011

The Bullies Among Us

In every nook and cranny of the workplace – private, public and non-profit – bullies are dominating their co-workers, often with the tacit and explicit approval of management.

I feel compelled to write something about these toxic behaviors that are permeating our schools and workplaces. Within the past two years, in nearly every public seminar my company conducts and in many private conversations with clients, the subject of bullying comes up. Employees, some in human resources, seem immobilized in dealing with the problem. Many would rather avoid dealing with it, rather than take on what they see as a thorny, messy and possibly fruitless intervention.

I’m no expert on the subject and no stranger to it either. But I’d like to use this week’s post to share some thoughts, information and resources that I’ve gathered in researching the problem. On the personal side, I can say that having been the victim of high school bullies, the impact is painful and life-changing.

The more I read about the issue, the more I am convinced of its seriousness and far-reaching implications. Avoiding the problem and applying weak and fragmented interventions is a recipe for escalation. Advances in neuroscience have shown that emotions are contagious. So what can management possibly expect when these toxic pockets of anger, hate, rage, shame, fear, humiliation and revenge are allowed to fester unattended?

It appears that most of the efforts to deal with the problem made by management and institutions too often focus on personalities, rather than a rigorous examination of the cultural norms that feed and enable bullying behavior to flourish.

Why the Rise in Bully Behavior?

This problem is so complicated and multi-layered that I hesitate even attempting to identify some of the factors that may contribute to the widespread statistical increase in bullying (of all types).

Not enough has been written about the dramatic changes in organizational culture that may be implicated in the increases in bullying behaviors in the workplace. The pressures from economic forces and globalization must be considered in any analysis.

Over the past twenty years there have been radical changes transforming the way business is conducted at every level. Globalization, huge demographic shifts, economic turbulence and massive technological change have created a sea change in the way work is done. Much slower to change, however, have been organizational mindsets and understanding of the impact of these sweeping changing on human dynamics.

While organizations have recognized the importance of investing in upgrading workers’ technical skills, far less has been allocated to increasing communication competencies and interpersonal skills. As a result, the pressure on managers continues to increase while their skill base limits their abilities to coach rather than dictate and manage their own escalating stress in the process.

Writing in a comprehensive report on bully behaviors and organization change, Michael Sheehan, of Griffith University in Australia has said, “Organizations appear to have developed a culture whereby the achievement of organizational goals justifies the means. In this culture, managers may perceive that they have a mandate to use whatever techniques or behavior is deemed necessary in the deployment of their human resources.”

Sheehan makes the point that downsizing and restructuring processes have impacted managers from many directions. Squeezed from all ends, managers find they lack the external and internal resources to meet and exceed expectations.According to Sheehan, “In the struggle for efficiency and profit in turbulent market conditions, organizations do exert pressure on their managers. Organizational change, including terminations and the introduction of new technology, increases organizational demands on managers and consequently increases managerial stress These pressures tend to lower the threshold at which managers, particularly those operating at the limits of their skills competencies, might adopt bullying behaviors – even if involuntarily.”

Inside the Bullied Brain

Bullying alters brain chemistry. Studies show that prolonged bullying can produce chemical and structural changes to the brain that can result in cognitive and emotional damage – in some cases as severe as that done in child abuse. Unfortunately, not enough research has been done in adult cases, although most researchers agree that the residual affects result in PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) for most adults.

In his article, The Bullied Brain, author David Walsh reports that the level of the stress hormone cortisol is higher in bullied boys meaning that their stress reaction system is in constant overdrive. Research from McLean Hospital found that brain scans of bullying victims showed significant shrinkage in the corpus callosum — the brain tissue that connects the left and right hemispheres. This makes it difficult for victims to process what is happening around them and to respond appropriately.

Walsh points out that when the brain’s “alarm system,” the amygdala is repeatedly activated the brain is in a constant state of arousal. It’s as if the radar is finely tuned, always ready to pick up the slightest hint of a threat.

In his excellent blog, Minding the Workplace, bullying expert, David Yamada suggests a link between bullying behavior and domestic abuse. In speculating why the bullied stay in their jobs despite their hostile and threatening environment, Yamada explains, “abused parties stay in the relationship, either hoping that things will change or otherwise feel trapped without options. The abuse continues and the target keeps enduring it, sometimes for years. On occasion they become so consumed with the bullying situation itself that their “fight or flight” instincts break down and they become embroiled in a game they can’t win.”

It’s important to also understand the high correlation between the bully’s brain and their own untreated and unresolved victimization from childhood abuse. Although not all bullies are the victims of abuse, the percentage demonstrated in studies is high. The bully cycle gets replayed over and over – and the number of victims stemming from the original violence increases until a victim breaks the chain by getting the help they need to heal and recover.

What Can We Do?

The most important things anyone can do to help break the spiraling cycle of bullying in our culture is to learn, educate and take action. There are a growing number of resources that can help.

Understand the signs of bully behavior at work – From spreading gossip and rumors, exclusion and isolation, constant and unfounded criticism, tampering with personal belongings, intrusion of privacy, yelling and using obscenities to physically abusing or threatening abuse.
If you are the object of workplace bullying – There are a number of common mistakes those who are bullied at work should avoid. Most common is to engage in self blame. Self blame often leads to attempts to placating bullies, which rarely, if ever works. It’s also important to seek outside help and support. Recognize that this situation is likely to escalate and you are under psychological strain while you are involved in it.
If you know someone who is being bullied at work – You can be a source of support and help to a bullied colleague. Our silence is often perceived as permission that allows bullying to continue. However, it’s crucial to stay aware and cautious. Those who stand up for bullies publicly could find themselves on the firing line. This is especially true when the manager is the bully and if the organization has a history of condoning bully behaviors.
If you are in a leadership position or human resources within your organization – I continue to be surprised by HR professionals who do not seem to know much about anti-bullying interventions. Get to know the roots of the ten-year history of the movement to address bullying in the workplace. Learn about the American Psychological Association’s Psychologically Healthy Workplace Program Familiarize yourself with the legislative initiatives that are gaining momentum in the U.S. The Healthy Workplace Campaign details here. Since 2003, 21 states have introduced legislation and as of 5/2011 16 bills are currently active in 11 states.
Because workplace bullying is often associated with weak leadership and organizational policies, it is important to understand and identify the practices and norms that may be enabling and sustaining bullying in your organization. Five key goals should guide your efforts:

Widespread surveys of the workplace climate with guaranteed anonymity for disclosure
Quick management responses to allegations of bullying with rapid investigations
Fully developed policies regarding bullying, discrimination and harassment which articulate mechanisms for responding to bullying, grievances and safety concerns.
Clear, articulated guidelines for management role modeling to prevent and intervene in suspected or actual bullying incidents.
Providing training and education to prevent aggression and bullying in the workplace. Counseling and support opportunities for victims and perpetrators of bullying.

If you believe, as I do, that bullying is a form of psychological violence, you will want to do what you can to eliminate it from our institutions and workplace cultures. It is a destructive force that threatens our well-being, destroys productivity and poisons our society.

We’re wise to heed the words of Gavin de Becker, author of the Gift of Fear, “The solution to violence in (America) is the acceptance of reality.”

I am very interested in your thoughts, experiences and suggestions for dealing with bullying in the workplace.

As always, I appreciate your readership, subscriptions, tweets and shares.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under business, change management, Coaching & Mentoring, conflict management, employee engagement, leadership, management, Neuroscience, organizational psychology, performance, Stress, Training * Development

Tagged as bosses, bullying, communication, emotional intelligence, Fear, human resources, Psychology, stress, workplace relationships

November 10, 2011

Gratitude, Kindness and Caring in the Workplace

I’ve decided to jumpstart the Thanksgiving season by recycling several very popular past posts. What I’ve noticed in the past few months is that these posts (and several related ones) consistently show up in the top-tier. While we don’t need a holiday (hopefully) to feel and show our gratitude, kindness and caring towards others - it certainly is a good time for reflection on what we value deeply and how we live our values.

We begin with Creating a Culture of Gratitude in the Workplace. Gratitude is one of my “Go To” emotions. One of the competencies of emotional intelligence is developing the ability (this is ongoing work) to cultivate the emotions that create positive self-supportive energy within us. For me, gratitude is grounding. It helps remind me of who I am – and where I want to be — even if I’ve taken a temporary detour. I find it especially centering when I get lost in too much comparing and striving. Gratitude helps me to re-focus and gain greater clarity and perspective.

Why Do We Have to “Promote” Kindness at Work generated a lot of attention. I wrote it in response to a Harvard Business Review article that explored the absence of kindness in today’s workplace. It’s disturbing to me that we have to make the case for people to treat each other with kindness and respect at work. What many people construe as an empathy void in others, is often just a symptom of Empathy Deficit Disorder brought on by too much self-absorption and distraction. We all sometimes block our natural empathetic tendencies towards others as a form of emotional self-protection. It’s a natural, but often unconscious response. Unless we’re aware of what and why we block our feelings, it can become habitual. (P.S. I love the little poem at the end of this post)

You can’t build positive relationships at work if you don’t care about the feelings of other people. I am consistently amazed at how many people expect productive outcomes in work relationships when they don’t show an iota of care in their communication. Short and simple this post, Workplace Relationships – You Have to Care makes the case that caring counts

Hope you enjoy!

As always, I appreciate your readership, subscriptions, tweets and shares.

Louise Altman, Partner, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under Coaching & Mentoring, emotions, Human Resources, organizational culture, performance, relationships, self development, Training * Development, workplace

Tagged as collaboration, communication, emotional intelligence, empathy, feelings, well-being

November 17, 2011

Because I Said So: The Slow Death of Authoritarian Leadership

We’re watching it happen before our very eyes. From the uprising in the Middle East to the emergence of the Occupy Movement – much of the world is experiencing profound collective introspection. For some it’s a slow bubbling – for others; a fast boil.

Our beliefs, practices, institutions and our leaders – especially our leaders, are undergoing intense scrutiny and criticism. The effects are chaotic and exciting, all at once.

Ever since 1939, when psychologist Kurt Lewin named a style of leadership that has prevailed for time immemorial – authoritarian or autocratic, we’ve watched its slow demise. In the 72 years since Lewin’s research, we’ve studied, analyzed and considered the need and role of authoritarian leadership.

Lewin correctly recognized the limits of authoritarian leadership even in the turbulent period in which he did his work. Imagine opening the daily newspapers of that era, where Mussolini, Hitler, Hirohito and Franco reigned with absolute power.

Lewin, who escaped Hitler’s Germany himself, was remarkable in his understanding of the effect of a leader’s style (behavior) on his “followers.” The authoritarian leadership style, still the prevalent global leadership style today, is characterized by nearly absolute control in determining direction and making decisions.

The influence and impact of others remain subordinate to the power of the authoritarian leader. This “style” has been so influential in the development of modern management systems that the term for those who work for those leaders still remains – subordinates.

Lewin wisely recognized that authoritarian leadership produced lower levels of participation and creativity. In his three stage theory of change; Lewin believed that the first step required an “unfreezing” of the inertia that resisted change and a dismantling of the mindsets that kept the status quo in place. Lewin thought this phase of change typically resulted in confusion and chaos. We know that the old ways are no longer working and we still haven’t caught sight of the how and what will come.

The new mindsets are being birthed, but we can’t get to the third stage of completion until we get through those uncomfortable, often arduous first two steps.

The Beginnings of Leaderless –ness?

Regardless of your politics or opinions of the two month old Occupy Movement, they can be credited for raising the level of awareness and conversation of critical issues to an international dialogue in an extraordinarily short period.

One of the most confounding and interesting developments of the Occupy Movement has been its embodiment as a leaderless entity. Mirroring its predecessors in the Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement has so far consciously resisted the identification of leaders.

According to Micah Sifry, Editor and Curator of the Personal Democracy Forum, the notion of “leaderless-ness” does not connote a disorganized, uninformed mass, “Political movements can’t be leaderless. The Occupy Movement is, in fact, leader-FULL. That is, the insistent avoidance of traditional top-down leadership and the reliance on face-to-face and peer-to-peer networks and working groups create space for lots of leaders to emerge, but only ones that work as network weavers rather than charismatic bosses.”

The leaderless-ness of the Occupy Movement has been a challenging concept in a culture that promotes leadership styles that model the strongest, loudest and most persistent among us. It’s commitment to giving a voice to the most marginalized and timid among us is both refreshing – and important.

The proliferation of all things Occupy – speaks to the underlying powerless of most people in relation to most institutions. The Occupy concept is spreading. Occupy Education, Occupy Boardrooms, Occupy Nonprofits, Occupy Museums – even Occupy Hollywood. The Occupy Movement is awakening values. It’s speaking not just to leaders and institutions whose primary allegiance is to the protection of power, but to systems and practices that are perceived as exclusionary, excessive, imbalanced, unfair and unjust.

Ultimately, the nonhierarchical Occupy Movement focuses us on the question of power – who has it, how it is used and whether it is shared.

Authoritarian Leaders in a Connected, Networked and Social World

Leadership style has a direct causal relationship on the values, culture, motivation and success of an organization or institution. Classically, authoritarian leaders are not concerned with the will and needs of their “followers.” They lead by methods, with varying degrees of sophistication, of coercion. There’s little shared vision. While in today’s world, they have learned to speak the language of team work, talent, innovation and social purpose, their subjective lens on the world still requires the subjugation of the will and needs of others.

Leaders in a wired world are now exposed in ways that were unimaginable even five years ago. Their actions are inevitably visible, sometimes immediately, especially problematic for them as the demand for transparency becomes more urgent. In a networked world, authoritarian leaders stand out like totemic figures, who by their very position, become targets.

Micah Sifry’s comments on how technology is changing the political world, can be generalized to the organizational leader, “The notion that a political movement might arise without charismatic leaders is inconceivable. Every previous movement, after all, has had its figureheads. But it’s a vastly different kind of leadership that is emerging. It’s one that is like the networked technology that supports it. Most of us come from a world and a generation that only knows one kind of leadership, the one whose organizational structure looks like a confusing government flowchart.

Everything about our industrial age institutions, trains us to think of leadership as top-down, command-and-control. Give the right answer, get into the right school, get a good job, work your way up the chain of command, win the good life. But today, more and more of us live in a sea of lateral social connections, enabled by personal technology that is allowing everyone to connect and share, in real-time, what matters most to them.”

While today’s authoritarian leaders are inescapably on a collision course with technology, social media and generational demographics, making the transition to more democratic and participative leadership and systems will not be easy. The models are starkly different. They require radically different mindsets and skills to succeed.

Not known for their empathic skills, authoritarian leaders must literally learn to rewire their neural networks to expand their appreciation and understanding of others. Studies have found that the higher the degree of preference for social dominance orientation, the lower the activation in the brain centers for pain recognition in others.

Organizations and institutions built on the old hierarchical models will become increasingly difficult to sustain in such a highly competitive, interrelated global environment. The new model of leadership will require highly conscious mindsets that understand that systems are comprised of whole persons with unique needs and skills.

The signposts are clear. The emerging leader desires partnership, balance and creativity. This leader is not reluctant to share power. This leader is not driven simply by an individualistic vision. This leader understands that real trust and loyalty are not quaint artifacts of bygone days – but real energies to be harnessed for the collective good.

These leaders are committed not only to their own constant evolution – but the evolution of others. Unlike the autocratic leader, these leaders understand that unless we’re in this together, there’s a world of trouble ahead.

So where are we now? Is it possible to imagine an organization, a world without authoritarian rule? Can we glimpse the possibilities of something new emerging?

I hope so.

As always, I appreciate your readership, subscriptions, tweets and shares.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners

Filed under business, change management, Coaching & Mentoring, employee engagement, Human Resources, leadership, management theory, organizational culture, Talent Management, Training * Development

Tagged as autocratic leaders, emotional intelligence, leaderless movement, motivation, personal democracy forum, Psychology, social networks, trust in the workplace, workplace relationships

November 24, 2011

Do You Want Red, White or Pink Wine? Talking Emotional Literacy

“The publication of Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence in 1995, marked a turning point in popular culture. Finally, emotions were deemed critical to human intelligence. Ironically, the book presents a model of emotional intelligence that is founded in the subordination of emotions to reason.”

Miriam Greenspan, Healing Through the Dark Emotions

Wine Connoisseurs know that there is a vast array of wines to be had when given a choice. Telling the restaurant server you would like “white” doesn’t give them much information. But unless we know and value the difference in wines, we get used to the habit of just requesting the generic brand.

There are over 2000 words in the English language alone that refer to feelings. While that may seem excessive, a bit of education about the world of emotions quickly reveals that each feeling we have has a unique, sometimes, nuanced character. While there are universal experiential similarities in the primary emotions, each one of us has an individual biological signature that lets us know what we are feeling. If we pay attention to that information – we’ll soon realize that our emotions, felt, over time, have a remarkable physiological similarity.

But naming emotions is not simply a cognitive act. I can give you a list of feelings that while interesting, does not guarantee that you can identify those emotional states in your body. This is a critical part of the emotional literacy learning experience. Until you connect the name of the emotion with the bodily sensations that express it, you won’t know if you are feeling worried or just concerned. There’s an important difference.

Getting out of our heads and into our bodies is the key. Scientists refer to this as “embodied cognition,” a very nifty term for the important fact that receiving, exchanging and communicating information with our environment is simply not a mind-brain event.

The Old Emotion vs. Reason Split

According to Jeffrey Schwartz, a research psychiatrist at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), “Cognition is embodied when it is deeply dependent upon features of the physical body. Dominant views in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science have considered the body as peripheral to understanding the nature of mind and cognition. Proponents of embodied cognitive science view this as a serious mistake.” This new understanding of the brain-body communication changes our definition of cognitive processing. It elevates the body as a source of information about our experience as valuable as that of the mind.

In writing about the age-old reason vs. emotion split, author Miriam Greenspan discusses the work of Emotional Intelligence author Daniel Goleman, “Despite its considerable contribution to valuing and understanding emotions, (Goleman’s) work is limited by a masculine bias against the emotional brain itself. Emotional control is the main goal.”

Greenspan compares Goleman’s perspective with that of pioneering neuroscientist Candace Pert, author of Molecules of Emotions: Why You Feel the Way You Feel. In Pert’s model, emotional intelligence is suffused throughout the body, with every part – the endocrinal, gastrointestinal and immune systems all playing important roles.

Highlighting Pert’s work, Greenspan states, “ Emotional intelligence hinges not on one part of the brain dominating another, but on a smoothly flowing system of emotional “infoenergy” throughout the body/mind. Emotions don’t need to be ruled; they need to be tolerated and expressed. They have an intelligence unto themselves; not when they are dominated, but when they are free-flowing.”

Naming What You Feel Changes What You Feel

There’s some relatively new news in neuroscience that is one of the game-changers in increasing our emotional competency. In 2007, UCLA research, Dr. Matthew Lieberman, found that learning to “label” our emotions maximizes cognitive ability. He asserts that using simple language to “name” anticipated and experienced emotions, actually lowers the arousal of the limbic system producing a quieter brain state.

This, in turn, allows the Prefrontal Cortex (PFC – the “so-called rational brain) to function more effectively. According to Dr.Lieberman, ”When you attach the word ‘angry,’ you see a decreased response in the amygdala, when you attach the name ‘Harry,’ you don’t see the same reduction in the amygdala response. In the same way you hit the brake when you’re driving when you see a yellow light, when you put feelings into words; you seem to be hitting the brakes on your emotional responses. As a result, an individual may feel less angry or less sad.”

The implications of these findings are impressive and important for our day-to-day emotional and cognitive functioning. While we are busy pushing down our true feelings (in some cases we call this being “professional” “adult” or “mature” ) we’re not only denying our real experience but we are taxing our cognitive functions and wasting precious brain fuel in the process.

Another important outcome of increasing our ability to identify, allow and listen to our feelings is potentially decreasing the physical aggression which so often results from emotional triggering. When we “use our words” to mitigate our triggered emotions, we begin to switch off the fight or flight hormonal releases that spike physiological aggression. This aggression can be outer and/or inner directed depending on our degree of emotional overwhelm.

Using Your Words

There are two goals to accomplish when we get emotionally triggered. The first, typically with associated feelings of fear and anger, is to regain our composure and state of equilibrium as quickly as possible.

But the second goal, not reserved just for the challenging fight or flight group of emotions, should be to develop a greater ability to extract the message from the feeling. If you accept the idea that emotions are as Miriam Greenspan describes, “infoenergy,” then you recognize the potential value from each little emotional gem. Think of these emotional messages as barometers that gauge the state of your needs.

In her excellent blog, Brains on Purpose, author Stephanie West Allen suggests ways to practice mindfully identifying feelings and becoming more familiar with the language of our bodies. “Sometimes we become distracted from the direction in which we want to be going. Our purpose may become clouded by anger, annoyance, confusion, jealousy, fear, or other feelings that knock us off-balance and take us off the path. Brain research has provided a handy way to deal with the distraction. We label the feeling, saying in our mind or, if appropriate, aloud, statements such as “I am angry” or “I am nervous.” When we make statements like this, that part of the brain feeling the distracting emotion is calmed. We can then return to clarity and purpose. The neuroscience literature calls this “labeling the affect.”

One prescriptive note to this excellent suggestion is to change the language you use from “I am angry” and “I am nervous” to “I feel angry” and “I feel nervous.” I believe that the language softens the totality of the experience. We “are” many things, and anger and nervousness or any other feeling passing through does not define our total experience.

As Stephanie points out it is often difficult – in the heat of the moment – to stop and remember to label what we are feeling. That’s why when we learn to practice this mental notation when we are not in emotionally triggering situations, we learn to build a capacity that cumulatively rewires the brain. Most of us need practice, practice, practice. Eventually, this can result in a shift in how we react when our emotional buttons get pushed – regardless of the source.

While it takes consistent effort – the payoff for becoming more emotionally literate can be enormous. We can experience, after all, a sense of greater freedom and liberation from tyrannical emotional states.

Wisely, author Miriam Greenspan assures us, “Befriending emotional energy is about focusing our attention on these sensations and reactions nonjudgementally, allowing the body to feel what it feels, and the mind to think what it thinks, while maintaining a witness consciousness – a mindful awareness of the stream of sensations and thoughts as they pass through our bodymind.”

Science is helping us to learn that the surest way to release and move through our emotions is to embrace them. The more we know them, the more we understand their message. The more we invest in our emotional literacy – the more energy we free up. Keeping the lid on what we feel is an idea whose time has passed.

As always, your readership, comments, subscriptions, shares and tweets are much appreciated.

Louise Altman, Partner, Intentional Communication Consultants

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Filed under change management, Coaching & Mentoring, emotions, employee engagement, feelings, Human Resources, mindfulness, Neuroscience, organizational psychology, personal development, Training * Development

Tagged as awareness, body-mind, embodied cognition, emotional intelligence, emotional triggers, EQ, Fear, mindfulness, Psychology, well-being

December 1, 2011

Your Business Needs are Not the Same as Your Personal Needs

“People who are in touch with their needs do not make good slaves.”

Marshall Rosenberg, Ph.D

Needs are basic to life. Everything we feel and do is in service to our needs. In the moment to moment biological imperative to meet our needs we make choices – thousands of choices. Every choice we make is an attempt to satisfy the need that is most deeply calling us at the moment. Mostly unconscious, this process never stops.

Our needs fall into two categories – physiological and psychological and we are in a relentless drive to meet them.

The physiologic basics: air, water, food, shelter, safety, sleep and touch are non-negotiable. When we need air or water, all other needs are relinquished until we satisfy those essential needs. While there is, inexplicably, relatively little written about our basic human needs, there is agreement among academics on the universality of these needs.

Probably the most well-known categorization of needs, Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory classifies psychological needs as:

Belonging and Love (affection, relationships, family, work)
Esteem (self-esteem, achievement, mastery, autonomy, status, recognition)
Self-Actualization (purpose, meaning, fulfillment).

While many descriptions of needs have been identified in the category of psychological needs – everything from beauty to variety – these fall more in the category of wants that may be means we use in pursuit of satisfying needs.

Why Aren’t We Better at Satisfying Our Needs?

Working with needs is fundamental to all the work I do as an organizational consultant. I can’t work with an individual, or a group, unless I understand what they need. Often I find it is difficult to get real needs clarified. Our needs literacy is even more obscure than our emotional repertoire. We aren’t taught the language of needs. Consequently most of us reach adulthood laden down with “strategies” developed to try to meet our needs. This is particularly true when it comes to our psychological needs.

Unaware of our psychological needs, we commonly pursue ineffective substitutes. Often our strategies involve manipulating our environment in some way to get what we think we need. We aren’t skilled in being direct and clear about what we need and how we feel when our needs are not met. The costs of manipulating, compensating and suppressing our unexpressed real needs are high. It takes vital neural energy to push down our real needs and seek superficial satisfaction.

Lack of understanding of our own needs can also take a big toll on our relationships with others. Conflict is the direct result of unmet and competing needs. This process can happen inside and outside of relationships, especially when we are out of touch with our real needs.

My need to be a great parent and my need to work to make money do not have to be competing needs, but they often are. This needs conflict can be an entirely internal process – the war that is waged within, but often with external fallout.

Interpersonal conflict is common. Life partners, colleagues and friends will inevitably come up against differing needs and the strong feelings attached to those needs. Because of our lack of needs awareness, we typically try to resolve differences at the level of “positions.” I want this and you want that – and that’s that.

In their work, Harvard Negotiation Project pioneers and co-authors of Getting to Yes, Roger Fisher and William Ury spoke about the importance of focusing on the human needs at the core of the positional stances usually taken in conflicts. The intransigent positions we take tend to keep us locked in conflict – and we rarely get near real needs in the process.

There is a purpose behind every position, and without knowing the purpose or reason that is the real motivator, it then becomes virtually impossible to identify the real problem which actually needs to be addressed.

Fisher and Ury realized that our most powerful interests (often mutual) relate to fundamental human needs. They point out that these basic needs do not just relate to individuals but also to groups, corporate entities, organizations and even nations.

“I Need That Information by Friday”

When I ask employees, especially those in conflict, to identify their needs, I typically get these kinds of responses, “We have to get the data to corporate by the 15^th of the month,” “We need more productive meetings with full attendance,” “I need a colleague who takes initiative,” “Our team needs to make decisions faster.” Buried inside of all these diagnoses and interpretations are needs – organizational needs and personal individual needs.

The person who says she needs a colleague to take more initiative may really need help so that she can accomplish her business obligations and personally satisfy her own goals. The employee who says he needs more productive meetings with everyone attending may really need to feel as if his effort to reliably show up for the meetings is recognized and rewarded.

If we don’t speak the language of needs and feelings, we can just keep going around in circles.

Marshall Rosenberg, internationally recognized conflict resolution expert and founder of the Center for Nonviolent Communication talks about the obstacles of dealing with needs in business settings, “In many of the organizations I work with, people can’t talk about their feelings. Nobody cares about what they feel and need. But when you don’t express your feelings and needs, when you just keep going into intellectual discussions, you end up like this company; unproductive use of time by not getting to the root of the problem.”

Since most organizations still run on a model of compliance with authority, we’re not likely to be able to influence our work cultures to rise to the level of open discussions with room for the expression of feelings and needs. But we can take responsibility for articulating our own needs. To do that, we’ve got to begin the process of learning to identify what we need, what we feel and how we behave in response.

Learning to Get to the Core of What You Need at Work

First and foremost begin to separate out what you need and what your boss, job, team and organization needs. Of course there will be compatibility in some areas, but while the organization may need you to be reliable to advance its profits, your need may not be the same. It’s important to understand why you do what you do and what individual need it serves. The goal here is to recognize and satisfy your own need.
Use your feelings as a guide to unearthing your needs. Your emotional literacy will be a valuable tool to help you to understand your needs. Emotions act like a barometer for our needs. If you are feeling content, satisfied, enthusiastic, or confident, chances are you’re meeting your needs. If you’re feeling angry, resentful, overwhelmed and frustrated – the flashing red light is on telling you that your needs are not being met.
Understand that the more you understand your own needs – the more you will begin to see that other people’s needs are also driving their feelings and behavior. Recognizing mutual needs is the great humanizer – often capable of producing real breakthroughs in communication. When people feel understood, it’s easier for them to open to other possibilities. Understanding and respecting the needs of others requires empathy and produces more empathy in kind.

You can change what you want, but you cannot change what you need. If you identify that you have a real need for autonomy – and you work for an intrusive, micro-managing boss, you can’t rationalize away your need. While you may not be able to change your situation immediately, you can begin to align your future wants and goals with that need.

Needs are powerful because they represent what is most alive and unique within us. Your well-being is based not only on the satisfaction of your physiological needs – but on your psycho-social needs as well. The fulfillment of those needs is what defines your humanity. Your work will only truly prosper when you experience the empowerment of realizing your own needs.

Author and theologian Howard Thurman spoke to the deep and enduring power of our needs when he said, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go and do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive.”

As always, I am grateful for your readership, comments, tweets and shares.

Louise Altman, Intentional Communication Partners