Vedere Consulting

This blog has moved

2010-04-12T07:29:00.001-07:00

This blog is now located at http://leadership-coach.vedereconsulting.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://leadership-coach.vedereconsulting.com/feeds/posts/default.

The Perils of Pay for Performance

2010-04-05T09:34:00.000-07:00

In the early 1960’s, a psychologist named Sam Glucksberg conducted an experiment testing the effects of extrinsic rewards on creativity. He divided his subjects into two groups and gave them a puzzle to solve that required identifying a new function for a common object (in this case a box with tacks in it). Half the group was told that they were being timed to determine a benchmark for how long it took to solve the puzzle. The other half was told that they would receive a cash award if they finished in the top 25% of the group and a higher cash award if they finished first. Which group do you think finished the puzzle faster?

If you guessed the group with the cash incentive, you guessed wrong. It took them an average of 3 ½ minutes longer to get the puzzle. Yes, that’s right. 3 ½ minutes longer. Why? Because extrinsic rewards tend to narrow our focus. We look toward the goal, which makes it more difficult to see the wider implications. Solving the problem in the experiment required a wide focus, an openness to new solutions.

Other psychologists have done similar studies that have tested this effect on creativity. What they have found is radically changing our idea of what motivates exceptional performance. It is not, according to Daniel Pink in his new book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, (http://www.danpink.com/) the cash bonuses, the commissions, the high salaries, the pay for performance many companies use to incent employees. He says these types of rewards work fine if the task follows a set of guidelines or rules and is repetitive. But for creative work, for solving problems that haven’t been solved before, for dealing with complex issues where guidelines don’t work, science is showing us that rewards and punishments not only don’t work, they sometimes actually do harm by lowering performance or incenting unethical behavior.

In a second experiment cited by Pink, economists Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini studied the effects of punishment on parents whose children attended 20 day care centers in Haifa, Israel. The closing time for the centers was 4:00 p.m. If parents were late, a teacher would have to stay with the child until the parents arrived. Gneezy and Rustichini began the study by recording the number of times parents were late picking up their children. At the end of four weeks, the researchers were allowed to charge a fine for late parents. Because a punishment had been imposed, the researchers expected the number of late parents to decrease, but to their astonishment, the opposite happened. After the fine was imposed, the number of late parents actually increased, eventually climbing to a level twice as high as the pre-fine level. What Pink concluded is that the threat of punishment crowded out the motivation parents once had to treat their children’s teacher fairly. “The fine,” he says, “shifted the parents’ decision from a partly moral obligation (be fair to my kids’ teacher), to a pure transaction (I can buy extra time). There wasn’t room for both. The punishment didn’t promote good behavior; it crowded it out.”

Pink says our organizations, for the most part, still operate under the assumption that the way to increase desirable behavior is to reward it and the way to decrease undesirable behavior is to punish it. Our pay systems are built on this foundation. But science is telling us that there’s a cost, and the cost is diminished performance, less creativity, lowered intrinsic reward, more short-term thinking, and organizations where good behavior can get crowded out and shortcuts, even cheating, are encouraged. This doesn't mean that equitable pay is unimportant. Unequal or unfair pay creates a distraction. But for creative work, extrinsic rewards often backfire.

Plum Cluverius, PCC is an executive coach with over 30 years experience in leadership development. She lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.

Getting Through a Job Transition Successfully

2010-03-20T04:08:00.000-07:00

“I can’t seem to focus—it’s taking me three times as long to get anything done.” “One day I feel fine, the next I’m in a panic.” “It’s strange, the day just seems to go by and at the end of it I haven’t accomplished anything I set out to do.” “No one will hire me, I’m too old.”

A number of my clients are going through a career transition. Sometimes they are the ones making the decision, other times someone made the decision for them. What all of them have needed is a clear understanding of what happens to them emotionally when they make this kind of significant change.

Why is that important? Emotions are the drivers of our behavior. We move and act based on how we feel. Any kind of change produces all kinds of emotions, and some of those emotions make it difficult to do anything. When we enter the unknown, as we must when changing a job or a career, most people don’t know what to expect emotionally. They don’t know that there are predictable patterns of emotional states that are a natural part of the transition process. They believe they are alone, that no one else is experiencing what they are going through. Worse still, they may believe that something is wrong with them.

William Bridges (http://www.wmbridges.com/ )has written several books about the emotional stages of transition and his work has helped my clients and many others make sense of the myriad of emotions they experience as they move from the old to the new. He first distinguished the transition process (the emotional response to change) from the change process (the actual change that is triggering the emotional response) and divided the transition process into three phases: ending, chaos or the neutral zone, and new beginning.

In the ending stage of transition, one has to come to grips with the fact that with change something has to go away. People experience a sense of loss and all the emotions that go with it—denial, anger, bargaining, sadness and resignation, acceptance. In the chaos stage (Bridges now calls it the neutral zone) people have accepted that something has ended but they don’t know what the new job or career will look like. This middle period is full of ups and downs—at times it seems like there is nothing to hold onto. People are upbeat one day and depressed the next. It becomes difficult to focus as familiar markers go away. It’s sometimes hard to get up in the morning or to get motivated.

It sounds pretty miserable, doesn’t it? But there’s an upside to the chaos. It’s an incredibly creative period. The old blinders are off and people can see their situation in new ways and develop solutions that were unthinkable before. I have watched clients come up with innovative ideas for networking and marketing themselves or their businesses—things that would never have been on their radar screens under normal circumstances.

The third period is called the new beginning. This is the stage where the future starts to take shape and people can see where they are headed. It has some challenges too, as people struggle with developing the confidence that they can take on this new role. But the path is much clearer and in general the emotional roller coaster has smoothed out.

I have found four things to be of tremendous help in moving through the stages of transition. The first is to recognize that the ups and downs of the transition period are normal and usually temporary. You are not alone—and you aren’t crazy! The second is to question your negative assumptions. If you think your age is an issue, consider this. Research has shown that energy and vigor are more important than age to employers. Pay attention to what you accept about yourself and your situation as true. Is it really? Experiment with alternative, more hopeful, assumptions. Third, focus on what you do well rather than your shortcomings. Creativity is expanded in a positive frame of mind. Fourth, create a schedule or routine to replace the old one you had while working. Include satisfying and fun activities as part of the mix. Bring some things into your life you couldn’t fit in while you were working.

Understanding and working with the emotional side of change helps make positive change possible. It makes it easier to navigate the unknown.

Plum Cluverius, PCC is an executive coach with over 30 years experience in leadership development. She lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.

How to Build Your Emotional Intelligence

2010-03-06T07:39:00.000-08:00

“Emotions . . . are at the root of everything we do, the unquenchable origin of every act more complicated that a reflex. . . In all cases, emotions are humanity’s motivator and its omnipresent guide.”

--Thomas Lewis,MD, Fari Amini, MD and Richard Lannon, MD, A General Theory of Love

If you want to motivate people to give you their best every day and inspire them to keep moving forward despite the inevitable obstacles that get in the way of achieving a goal, you have to know how to touch them on an emotional level. That requires emotional intelligence, the capacity to identify and understand one’s own and others emotions, and to manage oneself in relationships. There is a plethora of information on emotional intelligence, but when it comes to developing emotional intelligence, the material that appeals most to me comes from Learning in Action Technologies, www.learninginaction.com, a Seattle-based company specializing in EQ related assessments, workshops, teleclasses, and coaching.

Learning in Action focuses on the basic building blocks of emotional intelligence. The competencies and skills Daniel Goleman and others use to predict leadership performance flow from these capacities. If you want to improve your ability to use your emotions intelligently, it makes sense to work on these foundational capacities first. These are:

Self Reflection is the ability to recognize your own experience—your thoughts, feelings, wants, bodily sensations and actions. Self reflection is the capacity to observe yourself in the moment and to use your internal experience to inform what you do. Much of our internal experience is so automatic that we remain unconscious of it. As we build our capacity to observe our own reactions to a situation, we can consciously choose how to act instead of responding automatically (and often ineffectively).

Self Regulation and Self Soothing is the capacity to calm ourselves when we experience tension and to soothe ourselves when we experience emotional pain. By calming ourselves in healthy ways, we clear our brains so we can assess the situation more accurately, identify more possibilities for action, and choose more wisely. With this capacity, we are able to regain a sense of balance on our own, without requiring others to change.

Empathy is the ability to recognize what someone else is experiencing, to see something from their perspective, and to accept that perspective even if you don’t agree with it. It is being able to put yourself in someone’s shoes. Empathy is both the ability to accurately assess what someone else is feeling and to feel for them—to care about their experience.

Learning in Action has developed an assessment to measure these capacities, the EQ in Action Profile, and a handbook of practices for strengthening each area. The EQ in Action Profile uses videotaped scenarios to measure how you respond to stressful situations rather than self report or a 360 assessment. The handbook offers 150 suggestions for strengthening your EQ fitness, and is available to individuals who have taken the assessment.

Plum Cluverius, PCC is an executive coach with over 30 years experience in leadership development. She lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.

What Every Leader Should Know About How Teams Work

2010-02-16T07:38:00.000-08:00

In the mid-1990’s, researcher and business consultant Marcial Losada built a board room where corporate teams met to conduct typical meetings—planning and strategy sessions, etc. But there was a twist. The room was equipped with one-way mirrors where Losada and his assistants tracked every behavior that occurred in those meetings. As a result, Losada was able to build a mathematical model that delineates the factors that create a high performing vs. a low performing team with unusual precision.

Losada used three criteria to determine the performance level of the teams he was studying: profitability, customer satisfaction and evaluations by peers, superiors and subordinates. Using these indicators, Losada found that 25% of the teams he studied were high performing, 30% were low performing and the remainder had mixed success.

Losada plotted the moment by moment data he had collected on all the teams, and when he compared the high performing and low performing teams, there were striking differences. First, the high performing teams had a much higher percentage of positive statements to negative statements—or positivity ratio—than the low performing teams. High performing teams had a positivity ratio of 6:1, compared to below 1:1 for low performing teams. Mixed performance teams had a positivity ratio of around 2:1. In addition, high performing team members connected to each other more frequently, they were attuned to each others’ mood and thoughts, than the other two teams. High performing teams balanced advocacy (defending your point of view) and inquiry (asking questions) and the number of statements that were self focused or other focused. The low performing teams asked almost no questions and showed very little outward focus and had much lower levels of connectivity.

What was even more telling is that teams that maintained a positivity ratio of at least 3:1 (three positive statements for every one negative statement) were able to sustain the characteristics of high performance and top level results over long periods of time. They continued to flourish even in difficult times. They remained open to new ideas, they were flexible and creative, and they were resilient in tough times. The results were very different for the other types of teams. They floundered under pressure. The mixed success teams were able to be creative and open, but when faced with difficult challenges they tended to regress to a lower level of functioning—they became inflexible and stuck in a rut. Team members stopped asking questions and focused on defending their positions. The low performing teams spiraled downward to a stalemate, where nothing got done.

What every team leader needs to know is that there is a tipping point, a precise point where teams head in different directions—either toward openness, flexibility, creativity, resilience and success, or toward closed, internal thinking, stalemate and failure. A tipping point is the point at which an entity changes dramatically, like ice changing to water at precisely 32 0F. Losada calculated that the tipping point for teams is a positivity ratio of 3:1. Any positivity ratio between 3:1 and 11:1 will produce the characteristics of a high performing, self correcting team. Below that ratio and teams will flounder, especially in tough times.

There is more about Losada’s research in Positivity by Barbara Fredrickson, www.positivityratio.com .

Plum Cluverius is an executive coach with over 30 years experience in leadership development. She lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.

The Leader's Toolkit: Situational Leadership

2010-02-03T08:33:00.000-08:00

One of the questions my clients ask most frequently is how to develop their people more effectively. Often they ask it because they are stuck solving problems for employees for the better part of the work day—and then are forced to work extra hours to get their own work done. I always recommend the Situational Leadership Model, a tool I have shared with leaders for over 30 years. Clients tell me it is the most practical model they ever learned.

Developed by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard in the late 1960’s, Situational Leadership provides a roadmap for effective employee development, delegation and performance management. It identifies two key leadership behaviors, giving direction and providing emotional support, which followers need in varying amounts if they are to successfully learn or complete a task. It then demonstrates how the two leader behaviors are combined to create a variety of leadership styles. What makes the model so practical is that it shows leaders when to use the different styles for maximum impact. If, for example, you have an employee who turns in sloppy work that you have to review and correct before it goes out, the model will help you diagnose the leader behaviors you are currently using that aren’t working and identify the leader behaviors that will probably be more effective.

The key to successful diagnosis is to identify what leader behaviors the follower needs in order to be productive. This is determined by identifying the follower’s development or readiness level—that is, how competent (do they have the requisite knowledge and skills) and committed (are they confident they can be successful and do they think the task is important) the follower is. Blanchard labeled four development or readiness levels: the eager beginner (little knowledge and skills but some level of commitment), the disillusioned learner (some knowledge and skills but somewhat discouraged or uninterested), the capable, but cautious performer (significant knowledge and skills but lacks confidence or commitment) and the self reliant achiever (high levels of competence and commitment). Click here for images of the model: http://images.google.com/images?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=s&hl=en&source=hp&q=situational+leadership&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=YqFpS5izO4aelAf7oKyRCA&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CCoQsAQwAw

Each of these four development levels requires different leader behavior. The eager beginner needs a lot of clear direction, the disillusioned learner needs direction and emotional support. The capable, but cautious performer (often an underachiever) frequently gets, but does not need, a lot of direction. Instead, they require supportive leader behavior to determine what will help them recognize the importance of the task or develop more confidence in themselves. The self reliant achiever needs little direction or support from the leader.

Strong leaders match their leadership styles to the needs of the follower they are trying to influence. Dysfunctional leadership occurs when leaders use more directive or supportive behavior than needed (overleading) or less directive or supportive behavior than needed (underleading).

Going back to our employee who turns in the sloppy work, the leader should first assess—either alone or by talking with the employee—if the problem is a lack of skill, a lack of confidence or commitment, or both. If the problem is a lack of skill, the leader needs to give clearer direction, guidance and feedback. If the problem is a lack of confidence or commitment, the leader needs to give more emotional support by asking questions, giving praise and encouragement, and explaining how the task fits into the big picture.

To learn more about how this works and for a free diagnostic tool, contact Plum at www.vedereconsulting.com or go to the source: Paul Hersey at http://www.situational.com/?_kk=situational%20leadership&_kt=800c4946-eeed-432e-a65c-1ea085df15ff&gclid=CPP98eHH1p8CFR6dnAod-WIvaQ or Ken Blanchard at http://www.kenblanchard.com/Issues_Organizational_Development/Effective_Leadership_Solutions/One_to_One_Talent_Management/Management_Situational_Leadership_Training/ .

What Is Your Positivity Ratio

2010-01-19T07:49:00.000-08:00

Have you ever gotten up in the morning and things just seemed to go wrong from the time you woke up until you went to bed? It’s almost like one thing cascades into another making you more and more frustrated and irritable. You’re drowning in a sea of negativity.

You don’t have to live this way, says psychologist and researcher Barbara Fredrickson, PhD. You can change your mood, and when you do, you change your life. She’s done the research to prove it. For years, Fredrickson has investigated the value of positive emotions—joy, serenity, gratitude, curiosity, amusement, etc. in both controlled laboratory experiments and in field studies. She’s measured the effects of positive emotions on the way people think and catalogued their impact on people’s skills, traits and well being. What she’s found is that positive emotions have a purpose beyond just feeling good for a moment. Positive emotions expand our ability to respond to daily crises and problems with creativity and resilience. Basically she says that fear closes down our minds and hearts, it makes us dumber and less able to respond to a crisis. Positive emotions open them, so that we see our problems more clearly, and are able to make more creative and nourishing choices about what to do next.

In addition, the more we experience positive emotions, the more we change and grow, becoming better people and developing the tools we need to make a better life. That is, over the long term, we become more satisfied and fulfilled.

A fascinating part of Fredrickson’s work is the positivity ratio, the number of positive emotions compared to the number of negative emotions we experience each day. If our positivity ratio is 3:1 (3 positive emotions to one negative emotion), we reach a tipping point where we receive all the nourishing benefits of positive thinking. Below that ratio, we tend to descend into negativity. Most of us have a positivity ratio of 2:1 or worse. (If you want to find yours, you can take a free quiz at www.positivityratio.com).

We can improve the ratio by experimenting with ways to inject positivity into our days. And this isn’t something you can fake. In fact, you can pressure yourself to be positive and that just adds to the negativity! Instead, look for sources of beauty and pleasure. Look for small opportunities to engage in nourishing activities. Notice your negative interpretations of events and find a more positive perspective. There are a number of tools on Fredrickson’s website. Take advantage, and let yourself flourish.

Develop a Healthy Relationship with Your Money

2010-01-10T09:11:00.000-08:00

We all have a relationship with money. We either care for it, nurture it or we abuse it. Many of us are anxious about our finances. It’s a relationship we can’t escape—and it’s complicated, if not sometimes dysfunctional.

So what constitutes a healthy relationship with money? Interestingly, it’s not about having a lot. Research indicates that more money increases happiness when people move from poverty to the middle class, but falls off after that. Real satisfaction with money comes when we spend, save and acquire money in a way that is consistent with our deepest, most fundamental desires and values. It happens when we are able to be grateful for what we have, when we learn to be satisfied now rather than believing happiness will come when we move to a bigger house or buy the latest gadget. It comes from taking control of our finances instead of letting them control us.

This kind of satisfaction and gratitude is hard to sustain because our relationship with money is influenced by attitudes about money, our money “scripts,” that we have developed over many years. Money scripts are patterns of thought about money that are so habitual we are usually completely unaware of them. We develop our scripts from the way our parents dealt with money, cultural messages, and our own interpretations of events in our lives. One woman who always wore hand-me-downs is now determined to have “the best of everything.” A colleague whose parents taught him that being successful meant earning lots of money measures his success by how much money he makes. A woman learned from her parents that “the money will come when you need it,” used a credit card when she couldn’t afford something until she was in deep financial trouble. And all of us are bombarded by a culture that tells us every day that what we have and who we are is not enough.

The first step in developing a healthy relationship to money is to do some soul searching, to reflect deeply on what is most important to you. The second step is to identify the unconscious money scripts that create dysfunction in your relationship with money. The third step is to create healthier beliefs that will enable you to do the financial research and take grounded action that will move you toward a relationship with money that serves your deepest self. These three steps are vital because without them, your unconscious patterns will repeat themselves no matter how much planning you do.

When It’s Important, Put Yourself First

2009-08-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

When I was growing up, my mother was the only woman in our neighborhood who worked. And I resented it. I wanted her to be like all the other mothers who stayed home. She didn’t have to work, my father made enough money to support us. She did it because she wanted to. In 1950’s suburbia, that was almost unheard of.

My mother did what many people fail to do. When it was important, she put herself first. I have worked with hundreds of people over the years as an executive coach and workshop facilitator, and many of those people find it very difficult to put themselves first even when they need to. It may be the unreasonable demands of a difficult boss, it may be failing to find time to renew oneself when faced with the multiple responsibilities of work and family, it may be limiting oneself to a job that is unsatisfying and boring, it may be avoiding an employee whose personal problems have affected their work performance. I see this behavior in successful executives as well as first line supervisors. I see it in men as well as women.

In our culture, despite the “me” generation labels, there is still a strong undercurrent of belief that it is selfish and egotistical to consider our own needs, to be clear about what we want and to make requests of others that would enrich our lives. And so we don’t. But when we consistently fail to put ourselves first, the unmet need manifests itself in dysfunctional ways. We may become resentful or angry, we may put unreasonable expectations on others that we’ve sacrificed for, we may become depressed or unproductive, or we may become sick.

So how do we buck this current? And how do we balance our needs with the legitimate needs of others? There are a number of books that have tackled this subject. I highly recommend Marshall Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication: a Language of Life, Patterson, Grenny, McMillan and Switzler’s Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When the Stakes Are High, William Ury’s The Power of a Positive No, and Ron Short’s Learning in Relationships.

Each of these books tells us that a primary task is to become observers of ourselves. To pay attention to our feelings, to name them without explaining why or judging whether they are right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable. And then to identify what we want and need. To accept that want or need as legitimate. This is easily said, but very hard to do. I met with a group of trainers and coaches recently and we acknowledged we still struggle with naming needs and accepting them as legitimate. It requires conscious effort and acceptance.

It also means that our needs are as important as other’s needs. Not more important. Not less important. Equally important. That means that we may have to negotiate with someone else to get a need met. We may have to help them identify what their need is. We may have to resist their demands. And we have to resist making demands on others.

We can put ourselves first. We need to.

Plum Cluverius is an executive and leadership coaching practicing in Richmond, Virginia.

What to Do When You Can’t Solve the Problem

2009-07-02T14:00:00.000-07:00

Many of the executives I work with are terrific problem solvers. They are inventive, determined, intelligent. It’s one of the main reasons they got to where they are today. But what happens when the problem isn’t one that can be solved—like death or a terminal illness? Or someone doesn’t want you to solve the problem for them? Or you don’t have the experience or skills or resources and don’t know where to turn? How can an inveterate problem solver be effective?

The answer is simple, really. Stop talking. Give the person your full attention. Listen with all your heart. Tell the truth about your experience. Trust that resolution will come without you and that your caring and presence is enough. Lao Tsu called this experience “non-doing.” Non-doing doesn’t mean doing nothing, it means paying attention to your experience and to what another person is experiencing without doing anything to “fix” it. It is also recognizing that paying attention is often enough.

All of us have heard the jokes about married couples experiencing the frustration of problem solving gone wrong when one of them (often the woman) discusses a problem she’s having. Her husband, with a sincere desire to help, gets out the proverbial toolkit and starts troubleshooting. “Did you try x,” he’ll say. She, a little frustrated because of course she tried x, will continue on but with an edge to her voice. “How about y,” her husband says. Now his wife is getting really frustrated and maybe a bit insulted. Because she doesn’t want his advice. She just wants him to listen. If he listens she can figure out the problem herself. Or she just needs to know someone cares and understands.

The same thing happens between parents and children or bosses and subordinates. It happens sometimes in really difficult situations when we want to help someone we love through all illness or the death of a loved one. We give advice, or we try to problem solve. And sometimes that’s the worst thing we can do.

Experts, as well as people who have experienced great tragedy, tell us that the people who were most helpful were the people who gave support through being there to listen when the sufferer wanted to talk. It is non-doing. It is not interfering with the flow of life but supporting it.

This is a tough stance for a chronic doer. I recommend acquiring the gift of non-doing in small steps. First, simply pay attention to your reactions to problems. What does your body do? Does your heart rate increase? Do you feel tension or release anywhere in your body? What are your thoughts? What emotions are you experiencing? By observing yourself, you delay doing. You have some time to think. Second, ask yourself if the person wants—or needs-- your help. Is non-doing going to be more productive than doing? Third, breathe deeply and into your belly. It will relax you and help you respond more slowly. Fourth, lean back and down (you are probably leaning forward and up—that’s a common problem solving stance). Allow yourself to relax into the conversation. Notice when your mind starts to wander and repeat the steps.

When you practice non-doing you are giving the other person a tremendous gift. And perhaps you’ll find that you’re giving one to yourself as well.

Plum Cluverius is a leadership and executive coach practicing in Richmond, Virginia.

Focus on the Opening, Not the Wall

2009-06-26T15:32:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered how NASCAR drivers manage to squeeze between two cars at 200 mph? or keep from hitting the wall through all those turns? They focus on where they want to go, not on what they don’t want to do. As one NASCAR driver in an interview said, if you drive thinking you don’t want to run into the wall, then you’re going to run into the wall. When you’re passing cars or weaving between them, you don’t focus on the cars, you drive for the opening you want to go through.

It’s the opposite of what we often do when we’re faced with a tough situation—whether the danger is physical or it’s a difficult conversation or decision. We focus our attention on what could go wrong—the boss will get angry, the employee will file a complaint. We become more tense, and our ability to think clearly diminishes. Because we’re obsessing about not running into the wall, we make it more likely that’s exactly what will happen. But focusing on what we want to happen, on where we want to go frees up our minds to think creatively and to act wisely. We see the opening between the cars and we go for it.

Because this behavior is unnatural to most of us, we have to practice it. We have to be aware of ourselves and our tendency to focus on the danger. And when we notice that our attention is turned to what we don’t want, we have to shift our attention to what we do want. For example, one of my executive clients had an employee who wanted a plum assignment. In other projects, however, this employee had alienated other members of the team by taking on most of the responsibility and then complaining about the team’s lack of participation. My client was concerned that the employee would become de-motivated if he didn’t get the assignment and she wasn’t sure how to approach him. But when she turned her attention to what she did want, which was to help her employee learn how to delegate effectively, she quickly decided to give him a portion of the assignment on the condition that he work with a mentor who was good at delegating. Once my client had her eye on the prize she was able to create viable solutions—and to communicate them more effectively.

It was another client of mine who discovered the information about the NASCAR driver. He uses a computer wallpaper featuring a race car to remind him that he’s much more effective when he looks for the open space instead of focusing on the cars. It’s a reminder most of us could use.

Plum Cluverius is an executive and leadership coach located in Richmond, Virginia.

To Be Truly Respectful, Start With Yourself

2009-05-23T13:08:00.000-07:00

“You are a complete idiot.” “How could you make such a stupid mistake.” “You’re always messing up!” You probably wouldn’t say any of these things—at least out loud—to someone else, but how many times have you said them to yourself? This type of language is violent and damaging, yet when we do something that causes us to feel guilty, ashamed or embarrassed, this is often the language we turn to. We don’t even think about it, it’s automatic.

Why do we do it? Because we’ve been conditioned to believe that guilt and shame provide the impetus for learning and positive behavior. Parents often use this tactic as a learning tool. I know I did. But shame and guilt often produce the opposite result. Instead of prompting action, they prompt resistance. How many people have you heard say, “I really should start working out” or “I really should lose weight” or “I really should control my temper better,” and then nothing ever happens.

I agree with Marshall Rosenberg, who in his book Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life (Puddledancer Press, 2003) says that when we use the word “should” with ourselves, we resist learning because “should” implies we don’t have a choice. He goes on to say that human beings have a strong need to control their own destiny, to freely choose, so we resist attempts, even internal ones, to force us to change against our wills.

What can we do differently? Rosenberg says that a more productive response is to ask ourselves what unmet need is behind our punishing language. For example, I often get angry with myself when I wait until the last minute to get something done. I’m feeling a lot of pressure and I keep asking myself, “when will you ever learn to plan ahead!” In this instance, my unmet need is for calm and composure.

After identifying the unmet need, the next step is to examine the needs we were trying to address with the actions that produced our guilt or self-punishment. If we also identify our unmet needs there, we can see that there was a positive intent for those actions. Then it’s easier for us to truly forgive ourselves for that mistake and to examine how we can better meet our needs the next time.

When I’m doing something at the last minute, I’m usually doing it because I’ve made too many commitments and I’m running behind. I made those commitments because I wanted to help someone or get something done that was important to me or I wanted to be seen as a competent professional or I wanted to continue building my practice. All those things are important to me. When I remember why I made those commitments, I understand how I got into such a bind and I lose my anger.

Interestingly, forgiving myself this way frees up energy for rebalancing priorities or using the time management techniques I know so well. Perhaps I think of someone to delegate to or I decide something can wait or I renegotiate with a client. Punishing myself just makes me feel guilty. Nothing changes.

I firmly believe that if we are ever to build organizations that are truly respectful and affirming, we must begin with ourselves. By learning to change the way we talk to ourselves, by turning violent language into the language of learning, we can see ourselves and consequently everything else in new and more productive ways.

Plum Cluverius is an executive and leadership coach in Richmond, Virginia. Contact her at plum@vedereconsulting.com for a free half hour consultation.

Carpe Diem

2009-05-12T11:54:00.000-07:00

You’ve probably been inundated with advice about how to weather economic turmoil. My friend and mentor, John Scherer (www.scherercenter.com), gave some of the best I’ve heard. He said that in tough times, we need to carpe diem, seize the day. That is, use the uncertainty to re-examine and re-invent. To think differently about old problems. John calls it breakthrough thinking. In his March 19 newsletter, The Scherer Report, he gave a great example of what this means. I’m going to let him tell you about it.

Recently a client company’s ‘Help Desk’ was falling far behind, taking 15 to 20 minutes to even answer the phone. The Breakthrough Action Team working on the problem was trying to figure out how to justify the cost of doubling the number of people answering the phones. They had tables of research and estimates of how many calls a person could handle in an hour, multiplied by the number of calls coming in each day, etc. I was consulting with the team and I suggested they were working very hard at ‘First Order Change’—that is change within the existing paradigm that doesn’t fundamentally change anything.

‘The way you SEE the problem is the problem,’ I said, quoting the ancient Yogic tradition.

What would happen, I challenged them, if they shifted to a breakthrough mindset? I asked them, ‘What would be the ideal number of calls coming into the Help Desk?’ They again started calculating the number of calls that could be handled by six people, then 12 people. I stopped them and asked again, ‘What would be the ideal number of calls coming into the Help Desk?’ Some team members started getting irritated with me. ‘We’re working on it, John!”

Finally one person said, ‘Well, the ideal number would be zero! But that could never happen.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘For one thing the sales team would have to do a much better job of selling, letting people know certain things they are reluctant to tell clients.’

‘OK,’ I said, ‘someone write this stuff down.’

Another person chimed in, ‘Then the installation team that goes in to build the system would need to do a much better job of listening to the client and their needs. Oh, and the training team would need to take the time to make sure the participants actually understand the system. They just come in, do their program and leave.’

‘Ok,’ I said, ‘there’s your focus, not on the number of people you have in the Call Center Help Desk.

They went to work, invited people from sales, installation and training to be part of a special cross-functional breakthrough thinking team and came up with a set of innovative action recommendations for consideration by the key decision makers.

The result? Three months later I was there for a follow up meeting and I wandered downstairs to the Help Desk to see how many people they had hired. There sat a lone telephone operator at her desk, reading a book! I said, ‘How’s it going?’ She replied, ‘It’s a little boring sometimes . . . but I can’t say I miss those days when six of us were here, frantic and overstressed. I get about ten calls a day now, and they’re usually pretty easy problems to solve. I don’t know what you did, but it worked!’

Now, that’s finding the opportunity in a crisis. Whether you’re a CEO, a small business owner or someone who’s lost a job, this kind of thinking makes lemonade out of whatever lemon you were handed.

John has just published a great new book, Five Questions That Change Everything: Life Lessons at Work. Click here to learn about it (http://www.amazon.com/Five-Questions-That-Change-Everything/dp/0979531527/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242068594&sr=8-1 ). I’ll be reviewing it in a later post.

Plum Cluverius is an executive and leadership coach located in Richmond, Virginia.

Don't Spread the Suffering

2009-03-27T07:38:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite clients is Celes Glover. As an administrative assistant to a vice president, Celes is in a unique position, as she puts it, to “spread something.” She literally sits in the middle of the department. People come to her all day long, usually because they want her help. She has to stop what she’s doing and take care of them. One of her insights, she told me, is that she can choose what she spreads. If she’s having a bad day, she can choose the spread the suffering by being short with people or ignoring them. Or she can decide to spread good will. She can listen, she can respond respectfully--even when she’s feeling irritated at an unreasonable request.

Celes has learned something every boss needs to know. Each person who supervises someone else is in a position to “spread something.” Their responses to the people around them are contagious. If they choose to spread the suffering by being short-fused, critical or ignoring others, their behavior will set the tone for the whole office. Their people will shut down, will be less creative. If they choose to spread good will, the office mood is more relaxed and supportive and creativity can flourish.

Let me hasten to add that supportive doesn’t mean soft. There are still too many bosses out there who confuse the two. Soft means you don’t rock the boat. You don’t confront when you need to. You sweep problems under the rug. Reacting with good will means you control your temper, you respond respectfully, you wait until you calm down to act. When President Obama said he wouldn’t “govern out of anger” he was paying attention to what he was spreading.

Right now, there’s plenty of suffering going around. There’s no need to add to it if you can help it. Calm yourself, then act. Say you’re sorry if you make a mistake. Listen. Managing your emotions is good for business.

Plum Cluverius is an executive and leadership coach located in Richmond, Virginia.

One Bad Apple

2009-03-15T05:00:00.000-07:00

Got a bad apple on your team? Read on to find out what you can do about it.

In one of my first jobs out of college, I had a co-worker who was the classic drama queen. She complained—about management, about clients, about her co-workers. She was chronically late and often absent so that others were stuck doing her work. She gossiped and was usually mad at someone or taking up their time with her tales of woe.

Three things make her interesting. First, she did all this in such a way that she was able to skate right below the surface of actionable offense. She drove management crazy, but it took them forever to address her issues because her excuses were good enough or she managed to do enough to get by. Second, she had a huge effect on morale. She managed to keep the office stirred up—when she was around someone was always upset about something or people weren’t speaking to each other. We all started complaining and gossiping. Third, there are far too many people like her in offices around the country. Maybe there’s one in yours.

The American Public Radio program, This American Life (www.thisamericanlife.org ) chronicled an experiment that offers hope to any office stuck with a dysfunctional drama queen. In the show, host Ira Glass interviewed Will Phelps, currently an assistant professor of management at the Rotterdam School of Management. Dr. Phelps wanted to know if one person could destroy the productivity of a group. He set up a series of experiments where he paid an actor to engage in one of three “bad apple” behaviors in a group. The “bad apple” behaviors were attacking or insulting others, doing less than they could, or acting depressed and pessimistic.

The results. Every group—but one—where the actor was present performed 30-40% worse than the control groups. Even more surprising, people in the group—initially enthusiastic and engaged—started taking on the actor’s behaviors. If he was insulting and attacking, they began attacking each other. If he slacked off, they did too. All this took place within the 45 minute time allotment for each group.

That’s powerful stuff, isn’t it? But if you’ve ever been in an office with a drama queen or a bad apple, the results of this study aren’t surprising. Bad apples can spoil the whole bunch.

But wait. One group managed to resist. What happened there? Dr. Phelps said that in this group, one person, a natural leader, turned the whole thing around. During the group exercise, he asked questions, listened, engaged others. He was able to diffuse the conflicts that arose. That group performed well, despite the bad apple behavior.

So what could this mean? It means that listening to each other, making sure everyone is heard, soliciting opinions, trying to understand each other is powerful too. It means that it’s as possible to reach our better selves as it is to appeal to our baser instincts. And it takes leadership. Someone willing to step up to the plate to help the group perform.

Plum Cluverius is an executive and leadership coach in Richmond, Virginia. Contact her at plum@vedereconsulting.com for a free half hour consultation.

How to Change a Habit

2009-02-25T13:46:00.000-08:00

This is the ninth and final post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

Did you know that up to 95% of what we do during the day is done automatically? Our brains work hard to create habits because it takes a lot less energy to function that way. As we know intuitively, exercising self control is much more draining! Since so much of our behavior is habitual, the more our habits serve our deepest values and our life’s purpose, the more satisfied and fulfilled we’ll be.

I wrote earlier about the importance of creating new habits if you want to manage your energy more effectively. Today, I’d like to expand on that a bit. Creating a new habit is hard, but the sooner the new behavior becomes automatic and effortless, the more likely it will become permanent.

Many of us have negative energy habits, automatic behaviors that drain us of the energy we need to perform at our best. Here are some examples of common ones:
• Skipping lunch or other meals
• Checking e-mail throughout the day
• Working long hours without a break
• Staying up late and then relying on caffeinated beverages to get us going

You will be most successful in changing your negative energy habits if you create a positive habit to replace it. And you will be more successful in creating and maintaining a positive habit if you:

• Make sure the new habit is precise and specific—that is, you decide on a specific time of day and a very clear behavior. For example, when I wanted to change my eating habits to maintain my energy, my dietitian recommended I eat small meals or snacks at 6:00 a.m., 8:00 am, 10:00 a.m., noon, 3:00 p.m. 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. Eating at those specific times (or close to them) kept me from getting hungry and kept me on track. A couple trying to find time to talk about their deepest thoughts to each other were unsuccessful until they agreed to start at 8:00 a.m. on Saturday morning.

• Make the sure the new habit you create is about something you want to do rather than about something you don’t want to do. One of my clients found that checking e-mail all day long was interfering with her concentration. She made her day much more productive by scheduling 3 times a day when she responded to e-mail. Because she created a new habit for checking e-mail, she was able to let go of checking it constantly.

• Revisit the reason you’re creating the new habit regularly and occasionally change it up so it doesn’t get boring.

• Make your changes incremental. You can overwhelm yourself with too many changes at once. Try one or two, gain some success, and then try something else. One of my clients felt she was unproductive because she didn’t get enough sleep. She was a night owl and sometimes stayed up until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning and then got up at 7:00 a.m. She first created a bedtime ritual that would end at midnight and then gradually moved it backwards until she was able to go to sleep regularly at 11:00.

• Monitor your progress. It’s important that you know how well you’re doing. Many people find using a simple tick sheet or a brief journal entry at night is enough to track progress. After all, although it’s great to know what you want to do, it’s much better if you’re actually doing it! Monitoring yourself is not about beating yourself up if you’re falling short of your goal. It’s about looking for hidden barriers to your success. Perhaps your goal was too ambitious and you need to scale back. Perhaps the new behavior isn’t tied to what’s truly important to you. Or perhaps the old behavior has benefits you don’t want to let go of. In any case, recording your progress is intended to be instructive.

The goal of creating a new habit is the embodiment of what you hold most dear. Cultivating the habits you want is key to a satisfying life.

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your performance:
contact Plum for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.
or
read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:
Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .
Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

Change Happens When You Face the Truth

2009-02-09T12:37:00.001-08:00

This is the eighth post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

As noted in my last post, change is driven by a purpose so powerful it overcomes our inertia. Yet purpose alone isn’t enough. You also have to recognize the truth of the present. You have to take a hard look at your current behavior and how it falls short of your values. You have to recognize it’s you who are creating the gap. You have to acknowledge the consequences of your actions. When you do that, the gap between reality and the ideal creates the impetus to act.

This happened to me recently. Although my family, my friends and my colleagues are very important to me, I am chronically late—to everything. Family gatherings. Meetings. Movies. I have driven my husband crazy with my lateness for the 33 years we’ve been married. One day, I asked a friend who is always on time how she did it. She said it was hard, but she believed keeping people waiting is disrespectful so she made a conscious effort to be on time. She also said, in a very gentle way, that she had learned to expect that I’d be late when we were getting together.

Well, that got my attention. I had to acknowledge how my behavior communicated a lack of respect to the people who matter most to me. I felt ashamed. The gap between my values and my behavior couldn’t have been clearer. And I decided right then that I would be on time from now on. And so far—at least six weeks into it, I’ve been fairly successful although not perfect. To achieve this, I had to take a hard look at my behavior. I learned that I tried to squeeze in one more task when it was time to go. I learned that I hated to wait so I would leave at the last possible minute and get caught in traffic. I learned that I would let what was in front of me take priority over my commitment to a friend. This scrutiny helped me clarify what I had to do differently to change my behavior.

Loehr and Schwartz identified typical executive dysfunctional behaviors and their consequences (as well as the short term benefits that reinforce the behavior). I’ve listed three of them here. To see the whole list, look on pps. 154-155 of The Power of Full Engagement.

Expedient Adaptation	Benefit Now	Cost	Long Term Consequences
Poor Work/Life Balance	Accomplish more at work, less emotional risk, avoid responsibilities outside work	Lack of time for intimate connection, resentment of family and friends	Unfulfilling relationships; tendency to impatience and anger; burnout; regret; guilt; and loss of passion
Multi-tasking	Get more tasks accomplished; feel productive; high excitement	Divided attention; less fully engaged with people; lower quality of work	Shallowness of connection to others; less capacity for absorbed attention; lower quality of work
No Exercise	More time for work and other obligations	Less energy, strength, general well-being; lost source of recovdery from mental activities; more susceptibility to sickness	Undermines health; lowers concentration and access to high positive energy; increases chance of early death

Are any of these behaviors familiar to you? Finding your gaps pays off. Ask people for feedback. Pay attention to yourself. Where do you fall short of your ideal? What are the consequences? What actions are contributing?

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your performance:

contact Plum for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.

read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:

Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .

Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

Change is Driven by Purpose

2008-12-16T04:12:00.000-08:00

“He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.”
--Friedrich Nietzsche

This is the seventh post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

In my November 12 post, I discussed how difficult it is to change a habit—even one that no longer serves us. Our brains are wired to resist change. Without sufficient energy and focus to move in a new direction, we remain inert. What gives us the strength to change—to exercise more, become more organized, to listen to others more carefully, to run more efficient meetings—is the power of purpose. Purpose is connecting deeply to the values that are driving us to change, recognizing what we are doing now that is disconnected from that value and creating a clear picture of where we want to go.

Purpose creates resolve and gives us the motivation and energy we need overcome inertia. Loehr and Schwartz write about an overworked executive who was overweight, flabby and irritable because of the long hours and weekends he put in at the office. It was only when he was able to reconnect to the deep love he had for his wife and children and recognized how he was failing them by his constant absences that he was able to change his ingrained work habits. In essence, he found something important to say yes to that enabled him to say no to his old habit.

According to Schwartz and Loehr, purpose becomes a more powerful and enduring source of energy when it is positive rather than negative—it moves toward something you want rather than something you fear, it is internal rather than external, and it is focused on others rather than on yourself. In another example from Schwartz and Loehr, a lifelong smoker was only able to quit when she recognized the harm she was doing to her children by smoking and she became clear about how she wanted to be there for them as they matured. It was her love for her children that was strong enough to overcome her addiction. No external motivation, not even her own health, was as powerful.

Purpose is more motivating when we see for ourselves how the old habit or behavior is no longer serving us. No habit is created in a vacuum. The behavior served a purpose and that’s why we did it often enough to create a habit. Once we recognize the original purpose and decide it’s less important than our new goal, or that we can achieve the original purpose in a different, more nourishing way, we can make a more conscious choice about our behavior in the future. Sometimes this takes a while, and it requires honest introspection and evaluation, but it makes a permanent behavior change possible.

Finally, purpose is more powerful when we have a clear picture of where we want to go. A question I often ask my clients is “what will be different when you make this change.” The more specific and clear that picture is, the more motivating it becomes. Visualizing success over and over, as elite athletes do in competition, actually anchors that picture in our brains. We rehearse the new behavior in our minds, we can see, hear and feel the results, and it actually becomes easier to do in reality.

So yes, we can change even ingrained habits when we recognize them for what they are and decide the purpose they serve is not worth the cost. We can change when we create a powerful new purpose that gives us the energy, focus and resolve to stick with it, even when we temporarily revert back to our old ways. We can change when we focus on that purpose, visualize our success and practice the new behavior one day at a time.

Good luck!

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your performance:
contact Plum for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.
or
read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:
Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .
Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

To Solve Problems, Go With the Flow

2008-11-30T19:17:00.000-08:00

The Master acts without doing anything and teaches without saying anything. Things arise and he lets them come; things disappear and he lets them go.
--Lao Tsu

A client of mine—a physician with a thriving practice-- was feeling overwhelmed. She was struggling to meet the demands of her work, a husband and two active children, a large network of friends, and service on a non-profit board. On top of this, she was planning a 50th wedding anniversary for her parents. She was sacrificing her exercise and meditation routines in an effort to get everything done and she still felt important things were falling through the cracks.

My client is, like many of us, is trying to juggle a multitude of priorities. Her job, her family, her friends, community service, her parents are all important to her. Exercise and meditation had been keeping her sane. What was she to do?

The typical response to such a dilemma is to either keep putting one foot in front of the other or to start problem solving. I find neither response works well. As Albert Einstein famously said, “The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.” Instead, I encouraged my client to pay attention to her current experience. What emotion does being overwhelmed evoke? What does she feel in her body when she experiences being overwhelmed? What does that feeling tell her about what she needs to feel less anxious?

These questions might sound strange at first, but they help a person observe their current experience rather than becoming stuck in it. The person is able to get some distance from the experience while still staying connected to it in an immediate way. Attention is focused on the experience rather than the myriad of theories our minds create to explain our dilemmas. And because our experience is more closely connected to the core of who we are, it becomes easier to let go of preconceived notions and allow our creative core to suggest new ways to solve the problem.

My client’s creative solution was to hire a stay-at-home mom who wanted a few hours of work to help her organize her home office. She felt her current system of sticky notes and piles of bills on the foyer table was contributing to her sense of chaos and that if she could get that organized and a system in place it would be easier for her to stay on top of things. She also decided to look at all she had on her plate to see if there were tasks she could let go of, delegate to others, delay, or diminish in some way.

Lao Tsu calls this process of problem solving “non-doing.” Non-doing doesn’t mean doing nothing, it means becoming fully aware of one’s current experience, accepting it and seeing what it has to offer, in other words, going with the flow of life rather than trying to change it. It is counter-intuitive to those of us taught that the best way to solve problems is through effort and hard work. Yet non-doing unleashes a creative force that promotes better “problem solving” simply from paying attention and remaining curious about our experience. I invite you to try it and see for yourself.

I'm Convinced. I'll Change. Now What?

2008-11-12T10:50:00.000-08:00

This is the sixth post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

When I coach people who want to manage their energy more effectively, I am often shoulded upon. As in, “I know I should exercise,” “I know I should spend more time with my family,” or “I know I should take more time to develop my staff.” Of course, we all recognize that knowing we should often doesn’t equate to doing what we should or even doing what we want.

There’s a good reason for this. We form habits consciously or unconsciously. According to David Rock (http://www.davidrock.net/ )in his interview with neuroscientist Jeffrey Schwartz, our brains are responsible. When we first start doing something (like learning to drive) that activity is controlled by our “working memory,” which is responsible for new activities. There isn’t a lot of storage in our working memory and it’s easily fatigued, so once we start doing something over and over and we get used to it, that activity gets stored in the basal ganglia, which is located near the brain’s core. The basal ganglia functions a bit like automatic transmission, it works without our conscious thought. Once an action gets to the basal ganglia, it becomes a habit. It’s comfortable and we just do it without thinking. The same thing happens when we begin a new behavior, like turning on the TV as soon as we get home or checking voice mail on the way to work—do it often enough and it becomes an unconscious habit.

Two other brain functions make habitual behavior stronger. First, as actions and thoughts occur, they form connections between the brain’s neurons. The more frequently the action and thought occurs, the thicker and stronger the connection. Habits form really strong connections. Secondly, the brain is built to detect anything unusual in the environment and to alert us to the change. This alert is closely connected to the emotional brain, so a feeling, often anxiety or uncertainty, accompanies the alert.

What all this means is that once we form a habit, like checking e-mail before going to work, we start doing it without thinking, we have a strong tendency to keep doing it, and our brain sends out an alert when we do something different! No wonder change is so hard. We know we “should” do something, but just knowing we should isn’t enough to break past the brain’s reliance on the habits we’ve already formed.

So are we doomed to follow the same old behaviors forever? Of course not! We add and subtract habits many times in our lives. But it isn’t easy. First, we have to wake up to the habits that are no longer serving us. We have to become conscious we have a habit. We then have to recognize what we truly want, what is really important to us and why we want do something badly enough to get past the brain’s alert system. Next, we have to create a new habit—a ritual that can quickly become automatic itself, so we don’t have to continue relying on our working memory to get us going.

The next two blog posts will go into successfully changing your habits in more detail.

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your performance:
contact Plum for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.
or
read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:
Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html

Going to the Source: Spiritual Energy

2008-10-31T09:11:00.000-07:00

This is the fifth post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

In earlier posts, I’ve discussed the physical, mental and emotional wellsprings of our energy and the importance of balancing and developing each source to maximize performance. The fourth wellspring, our spiritual energy, flows from our deepest values and purpose. This energy is the most powerful source of our motivation and perseverance. Without it, we run the risk of living expedient, dissatisfied and, paradoxically, less productive lives. To tap it, we must be connected to the things we hold most dear—giving them our time and attention, and to a purpose that extends beyond ourselves.

In his Harvard Business Review article, Tony Schwartz identified three important sources of spiritual energy: doing what you do best and enjoy most at work, allocating enough time to the areas of your life you think are most important, and living in accord with your deepest values. In each of these areas it’s important to become conscious of what matters most to you and to align your life in a way that nourishes those areas.

In the work I do with executives at the Federal Executive Institute, one of my favorite exercises is to ask participants to look at how they spend their time in a typical week and to determine if they are spending it in a way that’s consistent with what they value most. It’s a pretty sobering experience to identify something like your family as the most important thing in your life and then to see how little time you devote to them. But it’s an important realization. For some, it’s discouraging. For others, it’s life changing, because they realize that the way they spend their time matters deeply. Newly conscious of their unconscious choices, they have more control over what they do in the future.

As with the other wellsprings of energy, it is making small, incremental changes and forming new rituals that are most successful in boosting your spiritual energy and making higher performance possible. To spend more time at work on things you do well and enjoy most, you first have to find your “sweet spots”—the areas of work that are almost effortless, inspiring and productive for you. You then design ways to do more of these things and less of the work that bores and tires you. For example, a former colleague of mine enjoyed public speaking so much that he began conducting workshops for Dale Carnegie. That led to increased opportunities to do training in his regular job and finally to a role that was much more aligned with his passions.

Other rituals support connecting yourself to the things you care about most and your deepest values. One of my clients, a busy executive who wanted to devote more time to making pottery, a source of great satisfaction for him, worked two hours later one night and left work two hours early the next afternoon so he could have several hours of concentrated time in his studio at least one day during the work week. A client who deeply valued her relationship with God took 20 minutes each night to read the Bible before going to bed.

Because it is more intangible, we don’t realize what an important source of energy the spirit is to us. Even if we do, it is easy in our fast-paced lives to let external demands rather than internal callings dictate our actions. However, cutting ourselves off from this energy source is ultimately debilitating. The deep, spiritual part of our being is our connection to the Divine, to something greater than ourselves, to all life. What Schwartz and Loehr tell us is that tending to our spiritual selves is also practical. We become more productive.

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your mental energy:
contact Plum for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.
or
read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:
Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .
Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

Mental Energy: Focus on Focusing

2008-10-21T17:11:00.000-07:00

This is the fourth post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

If there’s one thing that gets my clients (and most of the rest of us) in trouble, it’s the myth of multi-tasking. We believe that if we do several things at once, we’ll get more done. It simply isn’t true. Our brains are wired to focus on one thing at a time. When we switch from task to task, for example when we interrupt writing a report to answer the telephone or read an e-mail, it takes time for the brain to refocus and we lose concentration. Tasks take up to 25% longer to complete.

Concentration and focus are the key components of mental energy, the third energy wellspring Loehr and Schwartz describe in The Power of Full Engagement. Like physical and emotional energy, mental energy relies on exercise mixed with intermittent recovery. We are better off concentrating on one task at a time, taking a break when we complete it and then switching to the next task. Following this strategy allows us to get far more done in less time.

If that seems impossible in today’s world, think again. Tony Schwartz, in a Harvard Business Review article, talked about a group in a national accounting consulting firm, whose boss, Michael Henke, announced at the beginning of the winter busy season that he was turning off his instant messaging system for periods of time during the day so he could concentrate on his work. During those times he would be unavailable to his staff, unless it was a true emergency.
He also encouraged his staff to take regular breaks throughout the day and eat more regularly. According to Schwartz, the group finished the busy season, “under budget and more profitable” than other teams who didn’t follow the same program. They got more done in less time.

Many people begin the work day checking phone messages and answering e-mail. That’s a recipe for inefficiency because it’s so easy to get caught up in other people’s deadlines and emergencies. Julie Morgenstern, in Making Work Work, tells clients to block off the first hour of the day to concentrate on the most important thing they need to get done. Making progress on or completing that task produces a feeling of accomplishment that powers the rest of the day. Morgenstern also recommends setting aside regular, concentrated times to do e-mail, maybe 2-3 times during the day. The duration depends on the volume and urgency of one’s inbox, but clients find that they can empty their in-box at each session.

Mental energy is also impacted by oscillation. As I stated in an earlier post, we can concentrate fully for up to 90-120 minutes. After that point, we begin to lose focus and tasks take longer. Regular breaks, even if they are brief, can do much to restore our mental energy. A brisk walk, listening to music, deep breathing, stretching, eating away from your desk, a conversation with a friend—anything you find refreshing—will restore your mental energy and concentration.

Physical, emotional and mental energy all impact each other. Research shows that exercise sends more blood to the brain, which enhances our capacity to think. Negative emotions can interfere with concentration. Eating small, healthy meals at regular intervals fuels the brain’s capacity to work.

If you want to get more done in less time, it pays to focus on how you’re focusing! Take a break. Eat right. Do the most important thing first. Resist being sucked in by e-mail. You’ll be glad you did.

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your mental energy:

contact Plum for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.
or
read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:

Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .

Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

Emotional Energy: It's the Quality That Counts

2008-10-14T15:52:00.000-07:00

This is the third post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

You’ve got an important deadline. You try to work on it but you keep getting interrupted. You’re finding it hard to concentrate. The pressure is starting to build. You’re getting anxious. You may not be aware of it, but your breathing is getting shallower, your muscles are starting to contract. Your system is getting flooded with adrenaline and cortisol. Blood is being diverted from your brain and you no longer can think clearly. You are under too much stress.

Ladies and gentlemen, your negative emotions have taken over and your performance will suffer. Emotions are the key to the quality of our energy just as our physical state is key to the quantity of our energy. If we are to manage energy to maximize performance, we must learn to manage our emotions—to turn from negative emotions like fear, depression, anger and impatience to positive emotions like joy, excitement and challenge.

According to Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, optimum performance requires high amounts of positive energy. This is not about being naïve or unrealistic, it is about recognizing we have more control over our emotions than we realize. It means looking at any reality—even a harsh one—honestly, and then choosing your reaction to it. A successful sales manager I know didn’t get a job promotion he wanted. He was given a training assignment instead. He found an aspect of the new job that played to his passions and strengths and turned it into an award winning program. He looked for the hidden opportunity in the hand he’d been dealt, found it and then exploited it. That's realistic optimism.

Schwartz and Loehr point out that we can run down our emotional energy just like we can exhaust ourselves physically if we constantly spend emotional energy without recovery. Negative emotions are more costly to our energy levels than positive ones just as a gas guzzling car uses more gas than a hybrid.

We build our capacity to respond optimistically and confidently to challenges when we seek out and maintain sources of emotional renewal. Spending time with people who are important to us, building friendships that are truly give and take, and engaging in activities that are enjoyable, affirming and/or fulfilling are important sources of emotional renewal. Because they are more that a pleasant activity, we must treat the time we devote to them as sacrosanct if we are to perform at our best.

Another way to build our emotional capacity is to develop ways to build optimism. Tony Schwartz, in an article in the Harvard Business Review, suggests developing rituals such as taking time to express gratitude for what you have, taking time to express appreciation to others, and reframing. Reframing means examining your interpretation of an event and determining if another interpretation is plausible and more “hopeful and personally empowering.” For example, if I contact a client and they don’t call me back I can easily interpret their silence to mean they are uninterested in my services. I get discouraged and maybe write them off. On the other hand, it is just as plausible and more empowering to interpret their silence as they are busy and/or out of town. If I wait, they will probably call me back, or I may choose to follow up in a week or two. In either case, I’m going to be more confident when I talk with them and if I’m more confident, I’m more likely to respond in a way that will win business now or in the future.

As always, the key to building emotional capacity is to make small incremental changes. For example, one client of Loehr and Schwartz’s decided to call his parents at least one time a week during his commute home. Another client made it a habit to take a bike ride with his son every Saturday. Another took a report to lunch once a week and told them something about them she appreciated. Still another asked himself when faced with a tough situation “how will I see this in 6 months?” Another started taking a dance class once a week.

Take a look at your emotional energy. Do you need to build it?

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your emotional energy:
contact me for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.
or
read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, go to these websites:

Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .

Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

Physical Energy: The Foundation of Energy Management

2008-10-03T13:44:00.000-07:00

Physical energy is the foundational energy source. Without it, we have difficulty maintaining focus, positive emotional energy, creativity or even a sense of mission. It literally fuels everything we do. Because we work primarily in sedentary jobs that require mental capacity, we forget that our capacity to think and act is rooted in our bodies—in our brains and circulatory systems, our muscles and our respiratory systems. How we care for our physical selves either creates or depletes the energy we depend on.

We don’t have to be marathoners to work at our best, but we do have to bear in mind the principles of full engagement discussed in last week’s post (and based on Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr’s book, The Power of Full Engagement): oscillation, overuse and underuse, change in one energy source produces change in all, and small changes produce the best results. The point of paying attention to our energy sources (of which physical energy is one) is that we ultimately can do more in less time—much more so than if we focus solely on managing our time.

The first challenge in developing our physical energy is to pay attention to our bodies’ physical needs:
· A steady source of high quality energy
· Oxygen
· Sufficient balance between work and rest
· A sufficient level of cardiovascular fitness
· A sufficient level of strength

A steady energy supply comes from eating several small meals a day (i.e. breakfast, lunch and dinner with a small, 100-150 calorie snack between each meal) and from eating foods low in simple sugars and with high nutritional value like proteins, whole grains, fruits and vegetables.

The idea is to keep your blood sugar at a steady level and to avoid the spike and drop pattern that comes from eating sugary foods and skipping meals. Another important factor is eating the right amount—to little and we are starving ourselves, too much and we are sluggish.
We all take oxygen for granted. Who goes about their day thinking about breathing? Yet controlling our breath helps us calm ourselves in tense situations and brings us energy when we exert ourselves. A yoga practice first begins with a focus on the breath-- learning to pay attention to this life force and use different breathing to serve different purposes.

The balance between work and recovery encompasses two key dimensions. We are rhythmic beings—that is our bodies have several rhythms we must support if we are to perform at our best. The first is our circadian rhythm—the balance between the time we sleep and the time we are awake. Research shows that most adults need between seven and eight hours of sleep a night, although many of us don’t get anywhere near that much. Over time, sleep deprivation affects our moods, our ability to concentrate, etc. The best habit is to go to bed early and wake up early. However, we can increase our performance with a short nap (10-20 minutes) or two when a full night’s sleep is impossible.

A second rhythm is the ultradian rhythm, where our energy level oscillates every 1 ½ to 2 hours from high to low. If we try to work longer than 2 hours without some form of recovery, our energy level suffers. That’s why those 3 and 4 hour meetings are such a challenge. It’s impossible for people to retain a high level of concentration over such a long period of time. However, a short break, even if it’s only 5-10 minutes, will produce sufficient recovery to restore energy if one truly disengages from the work at hand. It doesn’t do any good to take a walk around the block if you’re still thinking about the problem you need to solve!

Put these dimensions together and you see the need to balance work with recovery—working long hours with no time for rest ultimately reduces productivity and effectiveness. In addition, our fitness level impacts our ability to manage stress. Our bodies need exercise to handle daily and long term pressures—both cardiovascular and strength training. Again, at least 20-30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise 3 days a week and 2 days of strength training are optimal, but research has shown that any exercise improves our capacity to handle stress, even if it is a short amounts of exercise spread throughout the day.

The second challenge is to increase our physical energy if this is one area we tend to under use. Fortunately, small, incremental changes work best and if we develop new habits that enhance our physical energy, we will see enhanced capacity in the other energy sources (emotional, mental and spiritual) as well. The important thing is to make a small change that you enjoy. For example, if you normally skip lunch or eat at your desk, think of something simple you’d enjoy doing that would get you out of the office for a few minutes. You might bring your lunch and eat it at a nearby park, you might bring a protein smoothie and sip it while you window shop for half an hour, you might take a half hour at lunch to read a favorite book. The idea is to do something enjoyable that allows you to completely disengage from work for a little while. Instead of reducing the amount of work you get done, you’ll actually increase it because you can be more focused.

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your physical energy, read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+
or
Contact me for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:

Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .

Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

You Can Work Less and Do More!

2008-09-29T08:54:00.000-07:00

The year is 1999. I’m working for a health insurance company as an internal OD consultant and trainer. I’m supposed to work a 32 hour workweek so I can spend more time with my family. But I’m working five days a week instead of four, and putting in many late nights and weekends in an effort to keep up with everything I have on my plate. I’m tired and depressed. I often can’t sleep and I have a difficult time unwinding when I am at home. My husband is complaining about my long hours. I’m missing my children. I’m getting desperate but I don’t see any way out.

Does any of this sound familiar? If so, you, like me, have fallen into the trap of working longer and longer hours in an effort to be more productive. The result? We get so tired and unfocused that work takes longer and so we have to spend even more hours at work and then we’re even more tired and unfocused—well, you get the picture.

The solution, according to Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr in their book, The Power of Full Engagement, is to learn how to manage your energy rather than trying to manage your time. Energy is “the capacity to do work.” Schwartz and Loehr contend that by managing your energy you become more productive because you can do more and higher quality work in less time. Energy is expansive while time is finite. The secret is creating the optimum balance between expending and recovering energy.

You see, when you work longer and longer hours, you expend energy that is never recovered. Without recovery, your energy becomes depleted and you lose the ability to concentrate, your emotions become more negative (irritation, depression, etc.) and the quality of your decisions deteriorate. Your productivity suffers because you can’t focus.

Optimum energy (or engagement) is achieved when energy is high and positive. There are four “wellsprings” of energy—sources of renewal and places where energy is expended: your body (physical energy), your mind (mental energy), your emotions (emotional energy), and your core self or soul (spiritual energy). In subsequent blog posts, we’ll explore how understanding and building strength in each of these wellsprings contributes to your energy capacity and therefore to your productivity. The result is a greater capacity to do more and higher quality work, and to stay focused, motivated, and balanced.

Loehr and Schwartz identified four principles that are critical to energy management. First, as I stated earlier, energy relies on a balance between stress and recovery. After a period of work, we must rest and recover. This is true whether the work is physical, mental (as is most of the work we do today) or emotional. Work and recovery are cyclical—they oscillate between each other. Too much work or too much recovery causes a loss of energy.

We have to build in recovery periods if we are to work at our best. We also have to work each of the four areas of energy. This leads to the second principle, overuse or underuse of any of the four wellsprings reduces our energy capacity. Most modern Americans overuse their mental and emotional energy and underuse their physical and spiritual dimensions.

Third, a shift in one dimension produces a shift in all of them. If we decide that we need to strengthen our physical capacity, this will impact our mental, emotional and spiritual well being. For example, regular exercise often gives us more mental energy, a more positive outlook and often leads to a deeper commitment.

Finally, small, incremental changes work best. Schwartz and Loehr suggest developing “positive energy rituals.” These rituals (or specific routines) are new habits you develop to increase your energy. They are carefully designed to fit easily into your current routine and to provide enough enjoyment to keep doing until it becomes a habit. For example, one of my clients spends the first hour on Monday morning reviewing her to do list, estimating how long her tasks will take, and scheduling them into her calendar. Because of this, she approaches her week with a greater sense of control and calm. To improve her mood, another client thinks of 10 things she is grateful for when she first wakes up in the morning. These rituals, which are developed using the principles outlined above, have produced dramatic productivity improvements in Loehr’s and Schwartz’ clients.

More next week!

Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .

Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

The Power of Full Engagement is published by The Free Press: http://www.simonsays.com/content/destination.cfm?tab=1&pid=427723 .