How Leaders Stay Positive – Part III

Leaders who execute with passion understand that while managing time is important, managing energy is mandatory. Listed below are 12 additional tips I gleaned from interviewing dozens of leaders who maintain their vitality and positive attitude when they encounter obstacles.

· Eat well. Forget all the fad diets. If you go on a diet, you’ll go off it. The first three letters of the word “diet” tell you all you need to know. My favorite scientific, yet very practical, resource for health advice is The UC Berkeley Wellness Newsletter. (www.WellnessLetter.com) They offer these general guidelines:

• Eat high-fiber foods, such as fruits, vegetables, beans and whole grains
• Consume more fish and nuts
• Decrease your intake of sugary foods, like white bread and junk food
• Cut back on animal fats, meats and fast food

· Exercise regularly. A little daily exercise will do wonders for your attitude and weight. You don’t have to become an Olympian. Top performers stay fit by exercising aerobically every day, even if it’s a quick power walk. One mile burns about 100 - 125 calories, whether you walk it in 20 minutes or run it in ten. There are 3,500 calories in one pound. You do the math. A mile a day melts the pounds away.

· Keep Good Company. Limit the time you spend with those who are “optimistically challenged” or “Negaholics.” Spend more time with people who make you feel good about who you are.

· Be a Life-long Learner. The best leaders are lifelong learners. Zig Ziglar told me that he was not a good student in school, but that he became a great one after he graduated. Take courses, read books, go to association meetings, and so forth. Your customers, products, and environment are constantly changing. Spend at least one half-hour per day soaking up new information to stay current and positive. One leader told me that she and her team have a book of the month club. They spend 10 minutes at their meetings discussing how to apply what they are learning. She says that they don’t have time to moan about what they cannot influence because they’re always working on issues they can influence.

· Enjoy Hobbies. Get away from work on a regular basis. When you’re at home, be at home. The word recreation comes from re-create. You’ll be more motivated and creative if you engage in active leisure during your down time.

· Get Rest. Make sure you get the rest you need. Experts tell us we need 7 – 8 hours of sleep per night. Few of us get it. Take a 20-minute power nap or meditation mid-day. The late, great Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi was right when he said, “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.”

· Turn off the TV. Go for a 20-minute pep walk and talk with a loved one, instead of watching television the entire evening. Focus on positive events of the day during your walk.

· Tell Stories. Start meetings or dinner at home by reading a humorous and uplifting story.

· Express appreciation. Make a list of things you are thankful. When things are not going well, focus on what you do have. Let others know how much you appreciate who they are and what they do.

· Review goals daily. We move in the direction of the dominant images we place, or let others place, in our minds. A goal is our North Star. Focusing on a goal also decreases the sting of those little pinpricks we all experience every day.

· Write positive affirmations. Write a few of your favorite, positive affirmations or quotations on 3x5 index cards. Keep them with you and repeat them aloud to yourself throughout the day.

· Listen to uplifting audio-programs in the car. Do you spend or invest time in your car? Top-performing leaders invest the time and money to turn their car into a “Rolling University.”

How surprised will you be when you and your team strengthen your belief in achieving your goal because maintained your energy and positive mood using these tools? What's working for you?

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

How Leaders Stay Positive – Part II

Mood is the final “M” (after Modeling and Mastery) to building the strong belief that a team can reach their goal. Many leaders don’t reach their goals because they let obstacles bring the team down. The top leaders I have studied choose to stay positive when things seem negative. Listed below are three more techniques to help you maintain a positive mood at work. Adapt them to suit you and your team.

1. Walk tall, feel better

How you move affects how you feel. Your motion influences your e-motion. Don’t believe me? Try the following exercise:

Sit down and start thinking about something that is bothering you. It might be a difficult employee, a problem at home, a health-related issue... As you think about this problem, create the clear sounds, pictures, and feelings that accompany this problem. Let your whole body feel the burden and pain of this situation. Please put this book down for minute and use your imagination to feel this exercise emotionally.

Now, how would you describe the position of your shoulders, head, and eyes? If you’re like most people, your shoulders are slumped, your head is tilted forward, and your eyes are looking down.

Next step: Please stand up. (Come on, humor me for a second and stand up.) Now, shake your legs and arms. Look up, walk across the room with your head up, shoulders back, and smile. Pretend there's a cape blowing in the wind behind you and that you’re listening to the theme song from Rocky, Superman, or Wonderwoman. How does that feel? Are you as down as you were before?

Act as if it were impossible to fail.

Dorthea Brande

Long before Dorthea Brande etched these words in her 1936 classic, Wake Up and Live, two giants of science observed that how we move affects how we feel. (1) In 1872 Charles Darwin wrote, “The free expression of an emotion intensifies it.” (2) In 1890 William James, the father of modern psychology, presented the flip side when he penned these words, “Refuse to express a passion and it dies.” (3) Recent research confirms that your motion affects your emotion.

Professor Carroll Izard, from the Department of Psychology at the University of Delaware, reviewed the large body of research on what is called “emotion activation.” (4) Her three key conclusions are:

1. More than 30 studies confirm that facial muscles play a role in mood alteration.

2. Facial muscle contractions change cerebral blood flow and neuro-chemical activity.

3. Specific body postures elicit specific emotions.

If you want to feel better throughout the day, move better. Put a smile on your face, head up, shoulders back, and march confidently. Stride as if you are unstoppable. Positive posture produces positive performance. Don’t take my word for it. Try it and see if you feel better when you move better. The proof is in your action, not my words.

2. Ask positive questions

Leaders who find themselves in a negative mood usually ask themselves and others negative questions, such as: Why does this always happen to us? Who screwed up this time? When are they ever going to get it right? These questions are legitimate and negative because they lead to negative thoughts.

As I told a Wells Fargo executive, there is no failure, only feedback. Think of a setback as feedback waiting for meaning. Remember, it's only failure if you don’t learn anything. To learn lessons from difficult situations or setbacks, ask positive questions like these:

• What was supposed to happen?
• What did happen?
• Why?
• What went well?
• What could I do differently next time?
• How can I grow from this?
• What are some possible next steps?

3. Reward yourself and the team

Positive reinforcement is a great way to keep yourself and your team in a positive mood as you execute your plan to achieve your goal. Invite your team to create fun methods to apply the power of rewards to each other. You may also want to pat your team members on the back using these steps:

1. Have each team member give you a list of little things they enjoy as rewards (i.e., favorite ice cream, soda, candy, local restaurant...)

2. Pick one of these items as a reward whenever that team member makes significant progress towards the goal.

3. Give the reward to the team member at a team meeting.

For example, a few of my favorite things include: reading inspiring books, biking in the mountains, taking an afternoon nap, walking our dogs, eating yogurt, seeing great movies... So, when a client called a few days ago confirming a large contract, I celebrated by biking in the mountains and taking a mid-afternoon nap. Very simple and rewarding.

When you provide rewards, you need to be careful not to over-focus on the reward and under-focus on the work. So, apply the five I’s of effective positive reinforcement to maintain a good balance:

- Immediate: Give the reward as closely to the behavior as possible

- Intermittent: Reward randomly, not every time

- Important: Make sure the reward has motivational impact

- Interesting: Brainstorm fun, little ways to reward others

- Involvement: Include team members in the process

How surprised will you be when you and your team strengthen your belief in achieving your goal because stayed in a more positive mood using these tools? Let me know what works for you!

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

1. Brande D: Wake Up and Live. Cornerstone Library: New York, 1936.

2. Darwin C: The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1965. (Original manuscript published in 1872.

3. James W: Principles of Psychology (Vol. 2). Dover: New York, 1950. (Original manuscript published in 1890.

4. Izard C: Four Systems for Emotion Activation: Cognitive and Non-cognitive Process. Psychological Review 100: 68-90, 1993

How Leaders Stay Positive When Things Seem Negative

I shadowed Madeleine for two days as part of my coaching process last year. She had invited me to help her discover why there was a fog of negativity enveloping her department and hindering their goal achievement. I watched her conduct meetings, interact with her staff, and collaborate with colleagues. At the end of the second day, I explained that she needed to establish and maintain a more positive mood if she wanted to reach her goals. The same is true for most leaders.

Mood is the final “M” (after Modeling and Mastery) to building the strong belief that a team can reach their goal. Many leaders don’t reach their goals because they let obstacles or negativity bring the team down. The top leaders I have studied choose to stay positive when things seem negative. Here is one of several techniques I shared with Madeleine to help her establish a positive mood at work.

Place your attention on your intention

Our thoughts are previews of coming attractions. How we think about what is about to happen influences what actually happens. One of the reasons there was so much negativity in Madeleine’s department was that her interactions with her staff were often preceded by a cascade of negative thoughts. I heard her grumbling about one direct report who “never follows through” before talking to this person about a project. Another interaction was preceded by grumbling about “hoping she gets it right this time.” Madeleine was broadcasting negativity prior to and during interactions with her direct reports... without even knowing it.

The good news was that her negativity was not present when dealing with her colleagues. So, when we discussed the difference between the interactions (direct reports versus colleagues), it became clear to her that she needed to set a more positive intention/expectation prior to interacting with her direct reports.

She decided to write and review a few positive affirmations prior to conversations with her direct reports. These included:

• I am helping this person...
• We will both benefit from our conversation because...
• I see an open exchange of ideas and opinions…
• I hear this person fully engaged in a positive conversation…

If you want to establish or maintain a positive mood, I urge you to place your attention on your intention. It worked for Madeleine. It should work for you... because as our minister says, “Your description is your prescription.”

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

How Highly Successful Leaders Develop Habits

The flock of squatting seagulls seemed increasingly agitated at the prospect of having their early morning, beach breakfast interrupted by my power walk. As I marched within ten yards, they all took flight, squawking… except Goliath (not his real name). Goliath’s eyes warned me to back off as he continued pecking at the scraps of food left by careless beachgoers. But I kept my stride, puffed out my chest, and stared back, reminding him that I was king of this beach. When I came with a few yards, this lion of the beach protested loudly and finally took flight. That's when I thought about the critical role habits play in leaders’ efforts to take flight.

"First we make our habits, then they make us," wrote the English poet John Dryden. How much of your day is spent operating according to habits? Do you have unconscious routines as you get ready every morning, drive to work, interact with colleagues, prepare your paperwork, or conduct meetings? Of course, everyone has habits. However, the real question is, do your habits have YOU?

Many of our habits begin as newly learned skills that evolve over the years into unconscious routines (i.e., habits). Moreover, many of these habits serve us well, allowing us to focus on important tasks and relegating the unimportant to the background of our minds. But have you thought about how to create new habits consciously in order to become a better leader? That’s what got me thinking about the seagulls and the big one I named Goliath. Goliath had created a habit of being the last to take flight. How much extra food do you think Goliath has eaten because he created a habit of staying longer than others?

The analogy may not be perfect; nevertheless, the point is that highly successful leaders discipline themselves to turn daily actions into life-long habits. They know that knowledge is not power, only applied knowledge is power.

Instead of just letting your habits dictate your behaviors, put desired habits to work for you. I discovered long ago that the secret to implementing new habits into everyday life is to link the new skill you want to become a habit to something you are already doing. In other words, connect what you want to become a habit to an existing habit. Figure 9.2 expresses this concept in a simple, yet powerful equation.

A Formula to Create Habits

Old Habit + New Skill = New Habit

I recently coached a senior executive to share a little more of his inner life with his team in order to improve his empowering style (via integrity). I told him to write the words “share self” at the top of his notepad because he had a habit of taking notes during meetings, telephone conversations, and one-on-one interactions. Every time he looked down to write in his notepad (his old habit), he was reminded to consider, if appropriate, sharing something personal by the words “share self” (new skill). This prompted him to practice the new skill. After several weeks, he told me that opening up a little more to his team was becoming a habit. He had combined an existing habit (taking notes during conversations) with the new leadership skill (sharing self) to implement the new habit of sharing his inner life.

This concept is as old as tying a string around your finger. The only question is, how will you use this old principle to help you practice the new skills you need to achieve your goals? Listed below are several examples of how to combine old habits with new skills. Adapt them to create the habits for those critical skills you need to master to reach your goals.

1. Index cards. Write a skill on a 3 x 5 index card. Put the card in your pocket. Whenever you put your hand in your pocket, read the card. You may also want to place a check mark on the card every time you practice the skill.

2. Pocket change. Put seven coins in the right pocket of your slacks. Every time you put your hand in your right pocket, move one coin from the right pocket to the left pocket and remind yourself to practice your new skill. Let the coins be a metaphor about the importance of making small change over time. (Thanks to my friend and professional speaker Bonnie Dean for this suggestion.)

3. Watch. Program your watch to beep on the hour. Use the beep as reminder to practice the new skill.

4. Cross your fingers. Visualize yourself using your new tool as you cross your little finger (pinky) with the ring finger next to it. Visualize the new sales skill when you review your morning goals. Create the rich mental images, sounds, and feelings as you imagine yourself successfully using the new tool. When you're actually in your new environment, cross your fingers as the reminder to practice what you imagined. I’m convinced this approach was instrumental in helping me turn my questioning strategy into habit when I was in sales.

5. Mirror. Slightly tilt the rearview mirror in your car. Every time you look in the mirror, tell yourself aloud how you are applying your skill today.

6. Notepad. Write a “reminder word” at the top of the notepad you use during the day. Just as in the “sharing self” example, every time you looked down to scratch a note, you will be prompted to use your new tool.

7. Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). As you review your daily appointments in the morning, write a word or two to remind yourself to practice your new skill.

8. Computer. How can you change your screensaver or scheduling software to inspire you to practice your skill? How about placing a post-it-note on your computer?

9. Colleague. Whom can you count on to encourage you to take daily action toward your long-term goal?

10. Meetings. How can you add the new skill as an agenda item to your meetings? For example, one leader e-mailed me after our leadership training that she had added “systems thinking” as an agenda item for their meetings. She said it was helping her and her team create the habit of thinking systemically about the issues they were addressing.

We operate according to habits that have evolved over many years. Yet few leaders use the power of habits to help them achieve difficult goals. I urge you to use the method described here to build the belief in your plan to reach your destination. As you do so, you will master the one habit of huge seagulls and high-flying leaders – the habit of making habits.

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

How Leaders Develop Expertise

In previous blogs, we discussed that in order to achieve difficult goal, you might need to help your team develop the expertise required. The seven steps of mastery described below show you how to develop and practice any new skill you need to learn in order to build the belief that you can achieve your goal.

1. Select a critical skill or competency you want to improve that will help you reach your long-term goal. Then write a goal for this skill. Focus on a small, relatively simple, stretch goal. For example, if you want to improve your listening skills, your S.M.A.R.T. goal could be: During all meetings this month, I will improve my listening skills by asking at least one question before giving my opinion.

2. Learn as much as possible about this skill from the many models available to you. Whom could you call who does it well? What books or audio programs can you digest? Are there seminars or workshops you can take? What if you simply search “improve listening skills” on the internet? You might also choose to observe or interview a few of the best listeners in your unit/company.

3. Decide how to measure your progress. British scientist Lord Kelvin asserted, “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it." Therefore, you must choose a method (or person) to provide feedback as you test the new skill. For example, you might simply place a check mark on a notepad every time you ask a question during all one-on-one and team meetings for a month. One leader I coached shared his “listening practice goal” with his virtual team. He then invited them to count his questions during their one-on-one phone conversations and virtual meetings. That which gets recorded gets repeated. He was promoted during our coaching agreement.

4. Practice deliberately. Begin practicing the skill in a safe environment. Safe environments are the training wheels of new skills. Olympic gymnasts practice new skills in safety harnesses. When you try the new skill, do so where you feel safe and where the consequences of poor performance are minimal. Practice the skill in your car, at home, with a friend. For example, leaders who have improved their listening skills, often begin at home were they are more comfortable taking their training wheels off in front of loved ones.

As your comfort level increases, increase the difficulty of the skill. The essence of deliberate practice is continually stretching just beyond your current abilities. On the basketball court, at the driving range, or in a business setting, most of us do what we've always done before without progressively increasing the difficulty. As your improve your listening competency, for example, you could try your growing skills in a variety of different or complex environments (e.g., with key customers, in executive meetings, during difficult negotiations…). If you want to achieve difficult goals, you must practice what you don't do well.

5. Record feedback after using the skill. We don't learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on our experience. It’s important to analyze performance immediately after trying the new skill. (In the military, these are called after action reviews.) Begin your evaluation process by describing what went well. Make a quick list of things that you felt good about when you attempted this new skill. Next, write a few thoughts about what did not go as planned. Why didn’t it? What can you learn from the trial that will help next time? Be gentle with yourself and others. Complete this step by refocusing on the positive and what went well.

6. Reward yourself for taking action. Using positive feedback can keep you motivated and on track throughout the day. When a baby learns to walk, the smiling faces of cheering adults spur the child on as it gains mastery over its environment. Employ the power of immediate rewards to reinforce the baby steps toward long-term success. These pat-on-the-back rewards increase the probability that you will try, try, try again, especially if at first day don’t succeed. Of course, do not reward every practice a session. The classic studies on conditioning teach us that intermittent reinforcement is best.

7. Make this new skill a habit. Incorporate this skill into your everyday routine.

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

How Leaders Build Belief In Their Goal - Part 2

What do Tiger Woods, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates have in common? If you guessed money or fame, you’re right. But if you guessed they have “achieved extraordinary results,” you’re spot on as my friends in the UK might say.

How did they and other peak performers achieve these extraordinary results? For many years, outstanding achievement in any endeavor was thought to be the result of outstanding genes. However, recent research has shed considerable light on the nature versus nurture controversy. Nurture has come out on top. Innate talent or natural gifts, once thought to be the key driver of amazing accomplishments, have been relegated to a secondary role. Something as simple as practice (yes, we're talking about practice) seems to be the major contributor to outstanding goal achievement. While modeling (discussed in a previous blog) is about learning from the best, mastery – the second step in building self-efficacy - is the process of practicing what your models teach you.

In a review of more than 300 scientific studies entitled, The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance, Professor K. Anders Ericsson of Florida State University and his colleagues concluded, "Many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 years." (1)

As Fortune magazine senior editor Geoffrey Calvin points out, Tiger Woods’ father introduced him to golf at the age of 18 months, and encouraged him to practice. (2) Tiger went on to become the youngest Winner of the US Amateur Championship, at age 18… after 15 years of intense practice. Warren Buffett is well known for investing long hours studying financial statements of investment targets. Bill Gates had more than 10 years of concentrated programming practice before he ever cofounded Microsoft.

The importance of practice small steps in reaching goals is also illustrated in the movie What About Bob. In this comedy, Richard Dreyfuss portrays a psychiatrist/author who has a dysfunctional patient named Bob, played by Bill Murray. Throughout the movie, Dreyfus is trying to help Bob take small steps to improve his psychological health. In fact, the title of Dreyfuss’s book is called Baby Steps. Practicing increasingly difficult "baby" steps to achieve a goal, based on what is learned from models, is what this movie and mastery all about.

If you or your team members need to learn new skills or practice old ones in order to achieve your long-term goal, then you need to practice the art of mastery, the second key to building self-efficacy. Mastery states that your belief in your ability to reach your goal will increase as you deliberately and progressively practice the actions that you learn from your models.

As in modeling, you have already practiced mastery in other parts of your life. Have you ever trained for an athletic event or any sport? If your answer is yes, how did you prepare? What did they call the sessions that prepared you for the race or the competition? (If you answered practice, you get a gold star.) Remember learning how to drive? Did you start out driving on the highway? Of course not. You probably started in some deserted parking lot with a driving instructor telling you what to do. You then gradually increased the complexity of environments that you drove in. Eventually, you worked your way to the highway. You built your belief that you could achieve your goal step-by-step until you became a highway star.

The importance of progressive or deliberate practice was also emphasized by the extraordinary work by Professor Bloom at the University of Chicago. (3) He investigated the lives of 120 of the America’s very high achievers in six diverse professions (concert pianists, research mathematicians, neurologists, sculptors, Olympic swimmers, and tennis champions). He interviewed these peak performers, along with their coaches, parents, and other family members in an effort to uncover the common elements of their exceptional accomplishments. His key findings tell us how to practice mastery in order to reach our long-term goals:

• View early practice and performance activities as play
• Maintain a strong commitment to excellence
• Receive strong, on-going encouragement from coaches
• Develop high commitment to increasingly complex learning and growing

Practice does not make perfect, progressive practice makes perfect.

All four of these keys are related to taking small steps over time. Dr. Bloom’s 557-page encyclopedia of achievement is reminding us that if we need to learn or practice new skills to achieve our goal, we must develop the discipline of mastery.

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

1. K. Anders Ericsson and colleagues; The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance, Psychological Review, 1993, Vol. 100. No. 3, 363-406.

2. Geoffrey Colvin; What it takes to be great, Fortune Magazine, October 19, 2006.

3. Bloom B: Developing Talent in Young People. Random House: New York, 1985.

Seven Tools Leaders Use to Build Belief In Their Goal

In previous blogs, I’ve written about the first two keys to goal achieving; namely write a SMART goal and strengthen commitment that you can reach your goal. The third step to achieving any goal is to strengthen the belief that you and your team can reach the goal.

The belief we are talking is the most powerful, new belief dominating cognitive psychology called self-efficacy – "your belief in your ability to take the action needed to reach your goal.” (1) Research shows you can dramatically increase the probability of achieving your goal when your self-efficacy is high. The three major tools to increase your belief that you can reach your goals are:

• Modeling
• Mastery
• Mood

In this blog, we’ll discuss the power of modeling. Modeling is the study of those who are achieving the results you want, and adapting their approach to construct your plan. Aristotle said that children learn by imitation; so do adults. The process of modeling is so powerful that the beliefs you absorb during your formative years play out throughout your lifetime, like formatted CDs that were burned into your brain. These ingrained beliefs cover all facets of your life (e.g., your intelligence, performance skills, general biases, leadership ability…) and become the filters or mental models through which you see situations and process information. Beliefs are the periscopes of life.

Professor Haslam and his colleagues have found that ingrained beliefs can also become stereotypes that affect our performance. (2) Let’s say, for example, I “remind” you that men generally have greater mathematical ability than women do do and you then take a difficult math test. Research shows that you would probably perform better if you were a man and worse if you were a woman (compared to not being aware of this “math ability stereotype”). Similarly, if you have an ambitious sales goal, but your team has a stereotypical belief that they can't sell to this market or a particular product, your sales team will perform poorly. As Professor Haslam concluded, "what we think we are determines both how we perform and what we are capable of becoming." Show me what a leader believes and I'll tell you what she can achieve.

To build your team’s belief that they can reach your difficult goal, you must eliminate any remnants of negative, subconscious, stereotypical beliefs. You need to reformat their CDs. Philosophers, creative geniuses, and business leaders have been doing it for centuries.

• Poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson met once a month for over 20 years with an elite crowd known as the Saturday Club. Members included Longfellow, Hawthorne, Holmes, Whitman...
• Professor Howard Gardner reviewed the lives of creative geniuses such as Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, and Gandhi. He concluded that models of success were instrumental in shaping their lives. (3)
• In his study of 500 industrial giants, Napoleon Hill reminds us that Henry Ford had his most outstanding achievements when he began associating with Edison, Burroughs, and Firestone. (4)
• When Jeff Immelt became CEO of GE, he identified the sharing of best practices across GE's businesses as one of the keys to increasing productivity. (5) Modeling what works is really another name for best practices.

At my first national sales meeting as a rookie salesperson, I remember asking Jack, the top salesperson, who had helped him the most. He said he listened to Zig Ziglar's audio-programs. That day, Zig and Jack became my first models of sales success. Based on what I learned from them, I built a step-by-step plan that strengthened my belief that I could become the top salesperson, which I did.

If you want to strengthen your and your team's self-efficacy, apply the power of modeling by learning from those who have been (and are presently) where you want go. Call them models, mentors, or coaches. But please call them! Listed below are several ways to make modeling work for you. Adapt these ideas to help you construct your systematic plan to reach your goal.

1. Become active in associations to discover your industry’s best practices.

2. Dedicate a small portion of your regular meetings to learning from each other.

3. Start an evidenced-based book of the month club at work. Select books that have solid research to back up their recommendations. Research is really modeling based on the scientific method.

4. Call the authors who have written books to customize their ideas to your situation.

5. Involve your team members in the creation of a plan based on successful models.

6. Invite team member to create a task list to fulfill their individual responsibilities.

7. Find a coach or mentor, who has been there and done that, to review your plan.

Use these keys to build your (and your team’s) belief that you can take the actions to reach your goal. How surprised will you be when you overcome these tough times and reach your destination? Let me know how you’re doing.

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

1. Berry J and West R: Cognitive Self-Efficacy in Relation to Personal Mastery and Goal Setting Across the Life Span. International Journal of Behavioral Development 16(2): 351-379, 1993.

2. Haslam A, Salvatore J., Kessler T, and Reicher S. The Social Psychology of Success, Scientific American Mind, April/May 2008, pages 24 -- 31.

3. Gardner H: Creating Minds. HarperCollins: New York, 385, 1993..

4. Hill N: Think and Grow Rich. Fawcett Crest Book: New York, 1937.

5. Thomas Stewart; Growth as a Process, Harvard Business Review, June 2006, 62 - 70.

How Leaders Gain and Maintain Commitment in Tough Times

To achieve a goal during difficult times, leaders need employees committed to reaching the goal. The word commit actually comes from the word Latin committere, “to connect.” Where there is no commitment there is no connection to the goal.

How do you know when someone is committed? (I said it is committed, not should be committed!) Here’s a clue: psychologists measure commitment by the steps taken in the face of adversity. Because achieving goals is filled with many obstacles these days, the true measure of your leadership is what is done when your team encounters obstacles. Listed below are four of the many ways to gain and maintain commitment to your goals during tough times.

Four Ways to Gain and Maintain Commitment

I. Involvement

II. Authority

III. Competition

IV. Expectancy

I. Increase Involvement

I used to think that I needed to have all the answers when I was an executive at UCLA. My perception began to change when I was asked to be course director for an international symposia. This ambitious goal required involvement of many of our over-worked staff and faculty. It became clear from the very start that the more I involved people, the more excited they became about the symposia. The meeting turned out to be a huge success and provided a valuable lesson about leadership - increasing involvement increases commitment.

This was also the conclusion of Professors Alex Bryson and Michael White from the London School of Economics and Political Science. (1) They surveyed 22,451 employees in 2,295 organizations on a wide variety of high-performance workplace practices. They found that the most effective approach to increasing commitment was increasing an employee involvement, especially in decision-making.

II. Demonstrate authority

The trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann began in the spring of 1961 in Jerusalem. Three months later, Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram devised the experiments to answer this question: How could Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust say that they were “just following orders?”

Milgram set up a simple experiment to see how much pain a person would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an authority figure, in this case, an experimental scientist. The answer: A LOT! The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of a perceived authority constitutes the chief finding of this classic study. (2)

Notice that the person must be perceived as a legitimate authority. Your followers will perceive you as a legitimate authority when you are supportive, trustworthy, likable, knowledgeable, and provide convincing rationale for the goal.

III. Create competition

Comparing your team’s performance to others’ is another way of increasing commitment to a goal. One of the reasons competition increases commitment is that our brain is wired to compare our successes and failures to those of the people around us. (3) Researchers at the University of Minnesota used skin conductance to measure the emotional arousal of volunteers as they played a lottery game either alone or with a partner. The investigators discovered that the subjects’ emotions were much more intense when they compared their winnings or losses with those of the peer, as compared to their emotions when they played alone.

You can promote competition as a form of motivation by giving the team feedback in relation to group norms, posting scores so everyone can compare their performance with others, reminding the team what the competition in the market is up to, and so forth. Your team will be more committed because they’ll be trying to “keep up with the Joneses?”

IV. Expect the best

Pygmalion was a sculptor in Greek mythology who carved a lifelike ivory statue of a beautiful woman. He came to love his statue and treated it as if it were alive. During a festival, the Greek god Venus heard Pygmalion's heartfelt prayers, and turned his statue into a living woman. His expectations were fulfilled.

Professors Rosenthal and Rubin reviewed 345 separate studies on this Pygmalion effect (also referred to as the self-fulfilling prophecy). They concluded that “the reality of the phenomenon is beyond doubt.” (4) People tend to perform to the level expected of them.

The professors reported on a study of elementary school children who were all administered a test that supposedly predicted intellectual "blooming." At the start of the school year, 20% of the children were chosen at random to constitute the experimental group. Each teacher (grade 1 -6) was given the names of the children from her class who were in the experimental group and told that these children had scores on the intellectual "blooming" test, indicating that they would show remarkable gains in intellectual competence during the next eight months of school. In reality, the only difference between the experimental group and the control group children was in the minds of the teachers (i.e., their expectations).

The same IQ test was administered to all the children in the school eight months later. Those children whom the teacher had been led to expect greater intellectual progress showed significantly greater gains in IQ than did the children of the control group. The teachers expected more from these children and the children rose to their expectations. Your team will too. Great expectations fuel great accomplishments.

Use these four keys to gain and maintain your (and your team’s) commitment to your goals during these tough times. How surprised will you be when you overcome tough times and reach your destination? Let me know how you’re doing.

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

1. Alex Bryson and Michael White; Organizational Commitment: Do Workplace Practices Matter? Centre for Economic Performance Discussion Paper No 881, July 2008.

2. Milgram, S.; Obedience To Authority. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1974.

3. Karen Frenkel; Even Better Than a Personal Best, Scientific American Mind, April/May 2008, page 17.

4. Rosenthal, R and Rubin, D; Interpersonal Expectancy Effects: The First 345 Studies. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3: 377-415, 1978.

Great Leaders Reward Effort, Not Just Achievement

Do you ever feel like a loser when you miss a goal? Research from Professor Lambert says you shouldn’t IF you learn the "lesson of effort." (1) Her recent rat experiment affirms that when you applaud effort (i.e., commitment to the goal) and not just achievement, you are well on your way to leadership success.

Professor Lambert examined effort by studying two groups of rats. One group was put in a cage with mounds of dirt in it. Buried beneath these mounds were Froot Loops -- the treat of choice for hungry rats. Over a five-week period, these ‘worker’ rats learned to dig for their treats. In an identical cage, a second group of rats received their Froot Loops free. These ‘trust-fund’ rats didn't have to dig or work for their food. After the five weeks, researchers placed a screen ball, with Froot Loops in the middle of the ball, into each cage. The rats could see and smell, but they couldn't reach, the Froot Loops.

Which group do you think worked hardest to obtain the food? The worker group spent 60% more time and made 30% more novel attempts to get the Froot Loops. Moral of this story: rewarding effort, not just goal achievement, is crucial to increasing commitment. How often do you praise your team’s effort?

Just as the media spends a disproportionate amount of time praising only Olympic gold medal winners, Professor Lambert and other scientists, remind us that most leaders (and parents) spend too much time rewarding only achievement and not enough applauding effort. (2)

Praising only goal achievement teaches employees not to try or experiment unless they are sure of success. Can you imagine a gymnast refusing to try a new routine because she feared failure? You don’t become an Olympian unless you have a coach who helps you develop a ‘growth mindset.’ Professor Carroll Dweck’s summarized 30 years of scientific investigation by declaring we should “teach people to have a growth mindset, which encourages a focus on effort rather than intelligence or talent.” (3)

Here is what praising effort and a growth mindset sounds like:

- Thanks for working so hard on this project. I like the way you are collaborating with those difficult, silo-oriented departments.

- I value how you tried to work it out with that demanding customer. Your desire to handle conflict productively is very admirable.

- These protocols are complex, and I appreciate your effort. What can I do to help?

- I know your assignment didn't go as planned. Let's focus on what you learned and will do differently next time.

- "Please fail very quickly, so that you can try again." Eric Schmidt, Google CEO (4)

Do you see the intention here? You're praising effort and experimentation now because you want more of it in the future. What you appreciate appreciates. This does not mean you don't reward achievement, it means you don't reward ONLY achievement. How can you increase effort by celebrating it more frequently?

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

1. Kelly Lambert; Depressingly Easy, Scientific American Mind, August/September 2008.

2. Carol Dweck; The Secret to Raising Smart Kids; Scientific American Mind, December 2007/January 2008.

3. Ibid, page 38.

4. Bala Iyer and Thomas Davenport; Reverse Engineering Google's Innovation Machine, Harvard Business Review, April 2008, pages 59 – 68.

How Leaders Gain Commitment to Difficult Goals

Last week, a leader (Len) told me that one of his veteran middle managers (Mark) had mishandled another customer complaint. This time, a customer had criticized the poor service she received. Mark defended his team and showed little empathy for the customer. The customer then wrote a scathing editorial in the local paper.

When Len questioned Mark about his approach, Mark said he cared so much about the company that he didn’t like his team being criticized. How would you motivate Mark to achieve a better customer service outcome?

I coached Len to focus on what Mark had already told him was of high value to Mark. That’s when Len got it. He understood that the best way to obtain Mark’s commitment to better service was to communicate how Mark’s current approach was actually hurting the company. Len told Mark that if he really cared about the company, he and his team would finally come up with a plan to manage customer complaints better.

Len’s approach to gaining commitment to the service goal is working. The plan is in place. Service has improved. Mark has moved from compliance to commitment, based on what Mark values. That’s the power of value.

As you embark on your journey to achieve any goal, the first key to an effective plan is to make sure those who need to execute are fully committed to reaching the destination. That's what the story is about.

The word commit comes from the word Latin committere, “to connect.” Where there is no commitment there is no connection to the goal. How do you know when someone is committed? (I said it is committed, not should be committed!) Here’s a clue: psychologists measure commitment by the steps taken in the face of adversity. Because achieving difficult goals is filled with many obstacles, the true measure of your leadership is how connected your team stays when they encounter these barriers.

In their comprehensive goal-setting book, Professors Locke and Latham identify the numerous factors that affect commitment. (1) Seven are listed below. The opening story, and this entire blog, focuses on the valence.

The Seven Secrets of Gaining Commitment

A. Valence

B. Rewards

C. Involvement

D. Authority

E. Competition

F. Publicness

G. Expectancy

A. Valence - The Value of Value

Valence is defined as, “the value placed on achievement.” Thus, value is first on the list because it reveals the why beneath what we do. It is the steam behind the “MOTORvation” engine. Have you seen the consequences of leaders who do not communicate the value - the why - of a difficult goal? If not, it’s because under normal circumstances you seldom see the negative consequences of low commitment. Lack of commitment only surface when a storm hits. Those who don’t see the value of a goal point fingers and blame others in the face of adversity. Employees who highly value the goal find a way to “get er done” despite difficulty. One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is confusing commitment and compliance. Committed employees give their heart and soul as they pursue a difficult goal; those who comply merely put in their time.

When the Corporate Leadership Council surveyed more than 50,000 employees in 59 organizations worldwide, they found that the employees performed at a 20% higher level when they valued their jobs. (2) Leaders communicated value by: telling employees how important they were to the success of the business, giving them numerous opportunities to contribute, and helping them believe in the worth and credibility of the organization.

Another way to help others see their value in your goal is to brainstorm the benefits they will receive when the goal is achieved. Here's how I did it with 100 executives at their leadership retreat: I gave each leader a blank sheet of paper and told them that I would give a prize to the person who wrote the most answers, in 59 seconds, to this question: If we achieve this new goal, what benefits might you personally receive?

At the end of 59 seconds, I gave a prize to the leader who had the most answers (I wanted quantity, not quality). They then shared some of their answers as I wrote them on a flipchart. Within minutes, they had sold themselves and each other on their leader’s new goal. They had found their value in his goal. How can your team find what they value in your goal?

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

1. Locke E and Latham G: A Theory of Goal Setting & Task Performance. Prentice Hall: Englewood Cliffs, 1990.

2. Leigh Buchman: The Things They Do for Love, Harvard Business Review, December 2004, 19 -- 20.