Great people are hard to find. And can be harder to keep. I recently came across a terrific book, Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em: Getting Good People to Stay, by Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans. I highly recommend it.

As a leadership and culture coach I very often work through personnel matters. So when I witnessed the clear and concise thinking from Kaye and Jordan-Evans, I knew I had to share it.

Why Employees Stay

Kaye and Jordan-Evans surveyed over 17,000 employees to learn what conditions will keep an employee with an organization. They call these conditions “stay factors”. Note that these are neither industry-specific nor role-specific, they are universal.

1. Exciting work and challenge

2. Career growth, learning, and development

3. Working with great people

4. Fair pay

6. Being recognized, valued, and respected

7. Benefits

8. Meaningful work and making a difference

9. Pride in the organization, its mission, and its product

10. Great work environment and culture

Interesting tidbit: 91 percent of survey respondents listed at least one of the first two items among the top reasons they stay. I love that challenge and learning is at the top. This is one reason I harp on Individual Development Plans to our clients!

How To Do A Stay Interview

How to do a Stay Interview? You simply ask the employee. Some leaders fear that discussing this topic will open a proverbial can of worms and get the employee thinking about leaving. I disagree heartily. The employee is already thinking of leaving at times, possibly on hard days, when they feel overwhelmed or discouraged, if they’re experiencing tremendous stress in their personal lives. It’s likely only a fantasy about leaving, but why not simply communicate directly about it? It’s refreshing, builds trust, and shows you care.

There’s no ideal time to do a stay interview. The goal is to do it before an employee has one foot out the door. You can do it during a development conversation, when checking in on their development plan, you can do it at year end or at the new year, any time is fine. If you don’t know what their answers might be to the below questions, then it’s time to do now!

Recommended “Stay Interview” Questions From Kaye and Jordan-Evans:

·     What about your job makes you jump out of bed in the morning?

·     What makes you hit the snooze button?

·     If you were to win the lottery and resign, what would you miss the most?

·     What one thing that if changed in your current role, would make you consider moving on?

·     If you had a magic wand, what would be the one thing you would change about this department?

·     If you had to go back to a position in your past and stay for an extended period of time, which one would it be and why?

·     What makes for a great day?

·     What can we do to make your job more satisfying?

·     What can we do to support your career goals?

·     Do you get enough recognition?

·     What will keep you here? What might entice you away?

·     What do you want to learn this year? How might you learn it?

Be sure to ask “anything else I might have missed?” and use effective listening (ask “what specifically?” and the other questions in the linked blog). And be careful with your responses: don’t dismiss their ideas/input/answers, be curious as to what it’s like to be them. You don’t know, so be an anthropologist studying a fascinating creature. If done this way the interview will deepen connection, loyalty, trust, and ultimately, boost retention.

What You Can Do Now

1.    Implement Individual Development Plans – people need to know they are growing and learning. This helps us feel achievement and empowerment at work—which is key. Keep it simple: have the employee and their leader develop it together. If you make it too complex no one will do it!

2.    Do regular Employee Engagement surveys so you know how people are feeling.

3.    Create a Cultural GAME (Growth, Appreciation, Measurement, Engagement) Plan based on the results from your survey in #2 above. Here’s an infographic.

4.    Give Frequent Bi-Directional Feedback so everyone is connected and clear on what’s working and what they’d like to see more of. Here’s an infographic.

The Net-Net

·     Stay interviews help you understand how your team members are feeling about their work—it’s essential to stop guessing and start knowing what will keep your stars happy

·     Do stay interviews across your organization as needed, during development conversations is a good time

Put the recommended programs place to maintain and grow the good feelings in your organization. Happy = will stay!

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here. 

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Great employees are harder to find than ever before—and if you’re hiring, chances are really good that you’re raiding another organization’s rock stars.  

So once you get great hires on board, you need to keep them. In past blogs I’ve shared proven tools and techniques our clients use to recruit rock stars, to onboard them, to engage them and to identify the signs that they’re considering quitting. Now let’s focus on what’s happening in their brain when the honeymoon phase is over after being a new hire. 

Honeymoons End—Then Your New Hire “Goes Native” 

Based on an informal poll of my leadership and culture coaching clients, reality sets in, and the new job honeymoon is over in the first 60-90 days, depending on the role. This is when a new hire, then, is most at risk of buyer’s remorse, of regretting that they accepted a role at your organization. This is also when a new hire has “gone native”—they are now a part of the tribe and no longer have the fresh unbiased perspective of an outsider. Going native isn’t a bad thing—it happens out of our deep need to belong with the tribe we’ve selected. But if the tribe is in a tricky state, buyer’s remorse could become an epidemic. We’ve all seen influencers that leave the tribe—and take some of the top performers with them. Here’s how to prevent this. 

Six Questions That Reveal Buyer’s Remorse 

Think back to your dating history. Most of us have met someone we thought was really cool--until we got to know them better. Then disappointment set in because what was advertised, and what was reality, were different.  

Gallup recently released research on the six questions employers can ask to uncover remorse. The primary finding is that when certain policies are promised, but not honored or followed by the organization’s leaders, remorse sets in. 

Ask yourself the following questions: 

#1 - Is flexibility consistent or dependent on the team manager? 

Per Gallup, 51% of employees say they would change jobs for flextime, and 35% say they would change jobs for a flexible working location. 

In today’s workplace, flexibility matters. Flexibility for hours worked, location worked from, even flexibility in reporting and collaboration. Is it easy to duck out of work for a personal appointment? Does this apply to everyone in the organization? 

#2 - Are remote workers treated as equals?

Remote workers are 30% less likely to strongly agree that they have discussed their development with their leader in the past six months. 

Are your remote workers treated the same as your onsite workers? Are they included in development and performance motivation programs? Are they included in recognition programs? Does their leader have the same number of one-on-one meetings with them (via webcam) as with onsite workers? 

#3 - Do leaders know how to manage in a matrixed environment? 

Per Gallup, 84% of U.S. employees today participate in matrixed teams. And the biggest challenges for workers are prioritizing work and excessive amounts of time in meetings (up to 1/3 of their day!). How are you helping your workers to prioritize? See a prior blog for a tool on this. See the meetings link above too for a technique our clients love to reduce meetings and those that attend. 

#4 - Do leaders understand gig workers? 

Per Gallup's recent gig economy perspective paper, 36% of all U.S. workers participate in a gig work arrangement in some capacity.  

With freelance workers its essential to ensure they click with your culture quickly. This is where a compelling and clear mission/purpose, vision and set of core values make all the difference. Gig workers must be brought into your tribe quickly and emotionally engage quickly too.  And last, as a leader it’s your job to ensure they are welcomed into the team and experience safety, belonging, mattering from the get-go. 

#5 - Are development programs personalized in a meaningful way? 

In a past blog on performance motivation and Individual Development Plans (IDPs) I provided a template to ensure your team feels that their growth is important to the organization.  Are your leaders helping to co-create IDPs with their workers? Are they then having quarterly or worst case annual development check ins? Are they allocating time for workers to develop? 

#6 - Are employees offered and encouraged to participate in well-being programs and other benefits? 

A 2016 Society for Human Resource Management survey found a significant gap between the benefits companies actually offer and the benefits employees think their company offers. Why? I find two reasons in my executive coaching work. One: the onboarding process isn’t effectively communicating the actual benefits, and two: annual benefits summaries are not being offered to refresh everyone’s memory. 

The Net-Net  

• Buyer’s Remorse occurs when an employee experiences a disconnect and disappointment between what they understood a culture would be and what it actually is. 
• Leaders can tackle and prevent this problem by ensuring the culture is clear, the policies are clear, the above six questions are addressed and the employee experience is consistent. 

How consistent is your employee experience? 

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Does your work environment enable this?

Here are 3 ways to create more meaning in your workplace now.

1-Your Leaders Create Meaning

It all starts with our leader, with the culture they put in place and continue reinforcing. Let’s unpack this. When we experience trust in our leader Serotonin and Dopamine are released, which makes us feel good because the result is:

• Oxytocin (a human bonding hormone) levels increase 
• Cortisol (a stress-related hormone) levels decrease

The result? Increased resilience and emotional agility in stressful times due to trust of our leader, and ultimately trust of our tribe. This then supports self-regulation, which is our ability to manage our emotional state. Self-regulation occurs in our prefrontal cortex and is only possible when we’re in our Smart State - where high engagement, collaboration, communication, innovation reign—versus being in our Critter State where we’re snared in fight/flight/freeze.

2-Your Environment Creates Meaning

There are two qualities of an optimal work environment that helps a tribe become and stay agile: an enriched environment and a reliable environment.

An enriched environment is an interactive, stimulating environment which leads to increased surface area of brain cells. The result? Team members making more connections, solving problems faster, figuring things out faster and innovating better.

Enriched cultures create a more meaningful and purpose-driven workplace. A more meaningful and purpose-driven workplace yields countless benefits:

Two Basic Modes For The Human BrainSMARTTRIBES INSTITUTE

Trust also creates reliable environments. 

A brain in a more reliable (trust their leader) and enriched (stimulating) environment will have more branches. So the overall team will have more neural branches too. More branches = more surface area = more connections = more positive meaning is made.

More positive meaning results in:

• More fulfillment
• More contribution
• More innovation
• More loyalty
• More emotional agility
• More retention
• More engagement

And to boost meaning we turn to a Tribal Identity rich in purpose. This helps us to feel powerful together, understand where we fit in and how to belong to the tribe, gives us shared beliefs, and increases the potency and power of our individual identity (because we belong to such a cool tribe). 

3-Tribal Identity Creates Meaning

Tribal identity is how we describe ourselves. At Google they are Googlers and are collaborative innovators. In the early days of Microsoft the engineers were awarded lab coats for great achievements, as they were seen as brilliant scientists inventing the future. Some sales teams see themselves as cowboys and cowgirls out on the range rounding up customers. Our team at SmartTribes Institute sees themselves as providing Ritz Carlton-level 5 star client service. What is your tribal identity? Is it compelling? Aspirational? Playful? Engaging?

In my book Power Your Tribe we talk about a Cultural GAME (Growth, Appreciation, Measurement, Engagement) Plan and how to harness its power to transform your tribe into a highly engaged, thank-God-it’s-Monday group of high performing, healthy, happy people—to make sure your tribal identity sticks.

Yet a GAME plan is only as effective as the emotional experience that surrounds it and is reinforced by it. To boost the emotional experience you’ll want to:

• Bring profound meaning to your workplace
• Craft a cultural identity and employee experience rich in trust 
• Use neuroscience-based techniques that will increase human performance, cohesiveness, innovation

You probably have pieces of your Cultural GAME Plan already in place. Now you can craft or edit (if need be) your organization’s tribal identity and reinforce it with your cultural rituals. Note the lab coats above as an example. Fundamental to a solid GAME plan is a foundation of profound meaning.

Let’s check in…

Profound Meaning check in:

• Are your mission, vision, values working as well as they could be? 
• Mission - Our emotional (“we believe”) purpose, why we get up in the morning
• Vision - Where we’re going together (aspirational), and why it matters
• Values - Who we are/how we behave as we fulfill our Mission and drive toward our Vision—these must be alive, celebrated, modeled by all

You can’t change a person’s values very easily. Which is why we need to recruit for them. Here’s a link to our values-based recruiting process that our clients love.

Tribal Identity check in:

• Does your culture have a clear identity? If so, what is it?
• Does everyone throughout your organization agree with it and feel inspired by the identity?
• Does your identity reinforce safety, belonging, mattering?
• Does your team have high trust and transparency around performance expectations?

Tribal Rituals check in:

• How do your cultural rituals support your identity and values? Are they enough to motivate belonging and mattering? 
• Example: some of our clients have annual mini golf tournaments in the office where each “hole” is a plastic cup for a given value. Once you get the ball in the hole you share with all present who models this value powerfully and how, and how you’d like to model it more powerfully. 
• Another client celebrates the “super powers” of each employee as their tribal identity is of super heroes. Outside of each cubicle or on their Zoom background you see the person’s “super powers”. Now you know who to come to if you want to cultivate yours.
• Is it safe to fail in your culture? Do you see “failure” as simply feedback as to what didn’t totally work, or is failure condemned?

The Net-Net

• Leaders, environment, shared tribal identity help us create more meaning at work
• With more meaning we are more productive, creative, engaged, collaborative, happy
• Any organization can create more meaning!

Let me know how the above helps you create more meaning for your tribe.

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Why?

Most likely it’s because we’re not emotionally engaged at an optimum level. And when it comes to group meetings, it’s often due to the Ringelmann Effect. Ringelmann proved that there’s an inverse relationship between the size of the group and the size of each group members’ individual contribution. So if we feel we aren’t, or can’t, truly make a difference, why emotionally engage?

And if we don’t have “skin in the game” it’s easy to slide into checking our email, web surfing, or planning our weekend.

Get The Most From Your Zoom Meetings Now

I recently led a full day workshop on Zoom, with super high engagement—actually, it was even higher that I had hoped! When my client gave rave reviews, I realized it was essential that I share what worked.

Here’s what I did:

1 – Start (And End) With An Emotion Check. Have everyone say how they’re feeling by using the Emotion Wheel

graphic showing a wheel with emotion names

Emotion Wheel, Smart Tribes Institute

This will help the meeting leader “read” the room, and address any proverbial elephants or issues up front. When the air is cleared, people can be present instead of ruminating on what is unsaid or being avoided. Remember to use the Meta Model when someone tells you their emotional experience. If they say they’re feeling __(their emotion here)__ ask what specifically they are ____(their emotion here)____about. Never assume you know what a person is feeling, and why! Compare everyone’s emotional states before the meeting and at the end… this will be helpful feedback for moving forward.

2- Have A Role For Everyone. This will help you counteract the Ringelmann Effect and keep the oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin flowing . I had a list of all the leaders in my workshop, the departments they worked in, and their roles. So I could easily call out to individuals and ask their opinion on a given topic, relevant to their expertise. Likewise in a meeting, everyone needs a role. If they don’t have one, why are they present? See the effective meeting process our clients love here to help you clarify:

· who needs to be in the meeting, and why. If they can’t add value, they shouldn’t be there

· how to time box a meeting for optimal results

· how to let everyone feel heard without wasting time

· and more!

3- 10 Minute Breaks, 10-15 Minute Labs, Frequent Questions Increase Blood Flow To The Decision-Making Center Of The Brain. A 10 minute break every hour will work wonders for engagement. Make sure you ask everyone to get up and move. Give them a question or topic to ponder to keep their prefrontal cortex in visionary/problem-solving mode. Likewise, having people move into breakout rooms to brainstorm solutions or solve problems keeps everyone on their toes. Then their findings are reported out to the larger group when the lab is over. I had 11 labs during 6 hours of content in my workshop. The labs were either solo, large group, 2 person, or teams of 4. Labs were every 10-15 minutes, so everyone knew they had to pay attention.

4 – Summarize Topics To Refocus Everyone, Add Due Diligence To Decisions. Since many of us are working from home, distractions like kids and pets will happen. Be sure to recap what was just covered with a quick summary to bring everyone back. Do the same with decisions made, agreements/accountability/follow up items so all understand who owns what post-meeting and when the deadline is. Remember the brain likes specific deadlines with a date and time (Thursday, 4pm) and also watch out for cognitive bias, so your team doesn’t make unrealistic commitments.

The Net-Net

· Use the above tools to keep the brains of your team engaged during Zoom meetings

· Honor the brain by paying attention to breaks and emotions

· Engage everyone by ensuring the right people are present and an effective meeting process is followed

Christine Comaford is a leadership and culture coach. She hosts the podcast, Crack the Behavior Code, and would love to offer you access to her free mini-course, the Emotional Resilience Mini-Course

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It lies in the brain, and knowing how to guide our sales people out of their Critter State, where they are overwhelmed, stressed, in fight/flight/freeze, and into

their Smart State where they have fresh insights, are ready to tackle the day, are motivated and psyched to succeed.

Here are the top 3 reasons you aren’t getting the sales results you want:

CLICK TO TWEET

1-You Aren’t Asking the Right Questions

Some of these are harder than others. But you need to ask them. Often, like quarterly at a minimum.

• What percentage of your sales people are performing at quota?
• How many stages are in the sales process? What happens at each stage? In which stage(s) do sales get stuck/slow down?
• What’s your current sales cycle? How long would you like it to be and by when?
• What percentage of your pipeline do you close? What percentage would you like to and by when?
• What percentage of sales do you lose to competitors? What are the most common reasons? What percentage would you be willing to tolerate and by when?
• What are your clients’ and prospective clients’ 5 greatest pain points?
• What’s your current client retention rate? What would we like it to be and by when?
• What are your current margins? What would you like them to be and by when?
• How many qualified leads are generated each month? Through what channels? How many would you like and when?
• What marketing channels are you currently using (trade shows, direct mail, social, webinars, blogs, infographics, Slide Shares, ads, etc)? Which are most effective?
• What is the profile of your clients (SBM Trigger, MP Profile, Customer Journey, VAK preference)? How many profiles do we have?

2-You Don’t Have Visibility On Progress and Performance

Many clients ask me for help in streamlining their weekly sales meetings. Here are some effective methods.

Weekly Salesperson Status Report – Set a specific date/time that weekly status is due so the Flash Report below is complete. Make it super easy for the salesperson to submit their weekly status, like by editing a Google Doc or some such, and also ensure it is clear that to be on the sales team this is what you require weekly:

• # new client orders and details ($ amount, product/services, etc.)
• # new existing client orders and details ($ amount, product/services, etc.)
• # new prospects and details (expected $ amount, sales stage, next steps)
• [whatever else you require to track performance and uncover potential problems]

Weekly Sales Flash Report – Here’s what to cover each week with the sales team during a group huddle. Be sure to recap on email post-meeting so everyone remembers what was covered.

• Summary sales activity per salesperson: how many orders at what stage of sales process, total $ per salesperson per stage, total velocity (movement from one stage to the next each week)
• Winners for the weekly contest (whatever behavior you are currently incenting: new orders, upsells/down sells/cross-sells, specific product/service sales, fastest to report sales status in the CRM, etc.)

Weekly CRM Update – Make sure all salespeople know what data needs to be entered in the CRM after each sales call. For example: sales stage movement for the week, notes per call/communication with prospect, proposal info and all sales activity info above. Some clients have their customer service reps do CRM data entry for salespeople as a reward once a certain sales performance level is achieved.

Some of our clients like to set up a Google doc or other repository to help celebrate sales people (as well as all other team members). On the doc each employee fills in their section listing what treats (under $200) they’d like to receive for terrific performance. Make this public so all can see and use, and you’ll find leaders have a much easier time providing fun and meaningful incentive gifts.

3-Your Compensation System Isn’t Working

The below plan is a super simple way to compensate sales people to incent them to:

• Sell more new business
• Hand off recurring business to account management
• Team-sell where appropriate and know they’ll be compensated

Edit this, make it your own, and see how well it works for you.

Base Commission

• New sales from new clients at x% (see “Levels of sales people” below)
• Repeat sales from existing clients at y% (shared between sales person and CSR/account manager)

1. Year 2 commission at ½ of y%
2. Year 3 commission at 1/3 of y%
3. Year 4 commission at ¼ of y% (sales person should be out of commission sharing here or sooner)

• Gross margin expectation at z% — see “Accelerators” section below
• Levels of sales people:

1. Entry level person and entry level quota of $ __________. Base: $ _____ Model salesperson: [name here]
2. Mid-level person (reaches quota 75%+ of time), has quota of $_________. Base: $ _____ Model salesperson: [name here]
3. Senior level person (reaches quota all the time), has quota of $_________. Base: $ _____ Model salesperson: [name here]

• Levels of CSRs/Account Managers:

1. Entry level and entry level quota of $__________. Model: [name here]
2. Mid-level (reaches quota 75%+ of time), has quota of $_________. Model: [name here]
3. Senior level (reaches quota all the time), has quota of $_________. Model: [name here]

Accelerators

• 2 accelerators on increases in gross sales above quota – at ­­__% over quota gets __% commission, __% over quota gets __% commission
• 2 accelerators on increases in gross margin – at ­­__% over quota gets __% commission, __% over quota gets __% commission

Team Selling – per sale

• Effort Allocation must be defined clearly in CRM and entered formally:
• Partner (shares ½ of all selling work) = 50-50% commission split?
• Consultant (advisor, stops by client if in town, answers occasional client questions and encourages future communication to be with sales person– gets far less commission but still helpful) = 10-30% ??? of total commission (varies based on specific consultant levels)

Doing the above will help get and keep your sales team in their Smart State—which means greater performance, happier people, less stress for you!”

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Here is a bonus for you!

Get an exclusive look at one of the documents from our Culture and Talent Playbook:

https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:a5c5d1b8-15b8-42d2-a4c8-0adbd81d16bd

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Here We Grow!

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Please take a moment and rate the Customer Experience (CX) that you believe you deliver:

• Better than all companies in any industry
• The best in our industry
• Considerably above average in our industry
• Slightly above average in our industry
• Average for our industry
• Slightly below average in our industry
• Considerably below average in our industry

Now, what CX would you like to deliver within 3 years?

[Credit: Temkin Group Q1 2017 CX Management Survey]

Data: Q1 2017 CX Management Survey of 180 organizations with $500 million or more in annual revenues

According to Aimee Lucas, Customer Experience Transformist and VP at Temkin Group, 55% of all the companies surveyed want to be best in their industry or better than all companies in any industry when it comes to the level of CX they deliver they deliver within three years. That’s a big crowd wanting to get into a small, small slot.

As Aimee and I caught up at the recent North American Employee Engagement Awards it became crystal clear: it’s time to stress the connection between Employee Engagement (EE) and CX. Now.

Customers today have a louder voice (think Yelp and other rating sites), have access to more information on you and your competitors, and as a result expect an increasingly awesome experience. And they should.

Meanwhile your competitors are launching new products and services faster than ever before, and are consistently raising the bar on CX. And they should.

So what’s an organization to do?

Arm yourself with these 3 CX-Boosting Strategies!

3 CX-Boosting Strategies

1) Become A CX Leader — By Focusing First On Employees

CX leaders (companies whose CX is significantly better than their competitors) have more engaged employees. Here’s what Temkin Group found:

[Credit: Temkin Group Employee Engagement Benchmark Study, 2017]

Base:  5,552 U.S. consumers employed in for-profit organizations

How exactly does engagement work? What happens in the brain when we are engaged?

Engagement comes from feeling good, from passion for the company, from meaningful work, from attaching part of one’s identity with their job. And this comes down to some neurotransmitters and a hormone. As leaders when we intentionally help the brains of our employees to generate dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin we create good feelings for the organization. Dopamine (anticipation of reward) and serotonin (feeling good, well-being) and oxytocin (bonding, feeling connected to others) can be created via a number of programs in your Cultural GAME Plan.

So how do you become a CX leader and get engaged employees? This is where HR comes in…

2) Get HR To Connect EE And CX

HR owns the cultural programs, so it’s key that they are first looped into Employee Engagement (EE) so they can help support CX. First a strong mission, vision, values sets the tone for your tribal purpose and code of conduct (oxytocin). Next, acknowledging employees for being models of your values creates social validation (dopamine and serotonin). There are many more ways that you can read about in my many blogs on employee engagement and in #3 below.

Next, when HR runs regular SBM Indexes, you can easily diagnose and cure and engagement dis-eases so you can continuously raise your engagement bar.

 It matters, it’s a reflection of them and what they believe in, who they are, how they show up in the world.

According to Temkin Group’s research when HR is significantly involved in CX the organization is 50% more likely to be a CX leader. Wow.

Is HR involved in CX at your organization?

Credit: [Temkin Group 2016 HR Professionals Survey]

Which brings us to the next item to check on our list, specifics for creating EE and CX.

3) Clarify Exactly How/Where HR Can Support EE And CX

Here are some ways that HR can forge the EE-CX link…

• Employee communications – rich in safety, belonging, mattering and boosting positive feelings
• Employee training & new hire onboarding – see my blog on how to ensure key emotional touchpoints in the onboarding process
• Performance motivation – learn how to create intrinsic motivation in this blog
• Awards, celebrations, incentives – learn how to celebrate and incent in these blogs
• Employee listening programs – learn how to be a better listener in this blog
• Middle manager engagement efforts – learn how to engage leaders and the cost of low leader engagement in this blog
• Recruiting & hiring processes – learn the latest way to recruit with self-revealing questions here

All of the above examples and blogs will help you keep the brains of your employees in their Smart State, which will in turn help your customers spend more time there too!

Smart State = Engaged, Aligned, Tribal, Together.

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Perhaps there was a reorganization and the company didn’t want to lose them, so they were reallocated without consultation or training. Maybe they were promoted beyond their capability without a training plan. Or maybe they were hired to do a project that’s now irrelevant and they’ve not been redeployed to produce meaningful results elsewhere. And then there’s our all-time favorite, the Untouchables.

Do you have Untouchables? Also, known as Sacred Cows? These are people who were hired because they are related to (or friends with) the CEO or other powerful team members. Even though their performance is sub-par, they get promoted or allowed to stay on for emotional reasons.

[Shutterstock]

Case Study: Company X

Company X was a tech consulting firm with a $37 million in annual revenue and approximately 270 employees, about two-thirds of whom were consultants. They were tracking at $137,000 in revenue per employee… ouch! The company was run by a married couple, John and Sarah, who initially contacted us about perfecting their sales process. They felt that their salespeople could be performing much better. What we found was a much bigger issue.

Assess: What We Found

The findings were grim: a fear-driven culture with 53% employee turnover each year. Company X did an exceptional job of technical training for new hires, only to see them leave for higher pay within a year.

The two owners of the company had virtually opposite Meta Programs, and this was causing chaos. Sarah (Active, Toward, Options, Difference) would proactively start an initiative, rally the troops to move toward the new goal, then jump to the next option/project. John (Reflective, Away, Procedures, Sameness) would want to analyze before launching the new initiative, so he would kill it or block it, minimize exposure, and set up a procedure to handle the proposal through testing, no matter how much or little, the cost associated risk. The resulting chaos was confusing to the team and sending them deep into Critter State.

The glaring gap in the consultant’s training curriculum was in sales. Even though their role was heavily client-facing, the consultants weren’t trained in the basic selling skills and had no incentive to do anything but fix technical problems. They also had no interaction with the sales team — which was sequestered in a different area of the building. The consultants were the right people in the right role — but with no support to perform their best.

Harry, the new sales manager, had been with the firm for three months. Shortly after hiring Harry, the company had reorganized to close a failing business unit.

Sarah and John had moved their niece, Toni, the VP of the failed unit, into a new role as the VP of sales and marketing — wait a sec! What? Did we read that right?

Yep, the niece was given one of the most important roles in the firm after killing an entire business unit. Sounds like a sacred cow to me.

There were three problems with this scenario:

• Harry (who now was sales manager) had no sales expertise — his entire background was in Internet marketing)
• Toni was an experienced sales manager but wasn’t strategic and had no marketing expertise
• The two disliked each other — Toni was threatened by Harry and Harry thought Toni should have been fired for her lackluster leadership of the failed business unit

To make matters even more fun, Toni’s boyfriend, Taylor, had been hired as director of client care. He had solid experience, but a perpetual mocking smirk when interacting with anyone but Toni.

Act: What They Did

The first thing we had John and Sarah do was to create a clear and compelling mission, vision, and value statements. This would help everyone know why they were coming to work, and where they were going together, and how they agreed to behave. They posted these statements in the lobby, and the managers worked with smaller teams until everyone was on board.

Next, we established Needle Movers together (first for the executive team and later for everyone) in line with the new mission, vision, and values, and radically increased accountability using weekly reporting and the Accountability Equation. We created a reporting process for the sales pipeline and marketing effectiveness metrics and set up an incentive plan for the consultants to source future sales.

We also redefined the roles and responsibilities throughout sales and marketing to get the right people in the right roles. Some people were reallocated, and one or two were let go respectfully. Since the company had a history of high employee turnover it was key to minimize Critter State via thoughtful communication.

John, Sarah, Toni, and Harry worked on their on key challenges. Toni got the tools to turn her department around. Harry was moved out of sales management and into the right role — marketing — where he is brilliant and a perpetual learner. He still reports to Toni, who now manages the sales team directly. Harry’s initiatives have made Company X top of mind in their target market. Now that John and Sarah communicate more explicitly, they are no longer creating chaos, and Toni and

Harry have developed a mutual respect for each other. Taylor had to be let go. He didn’t want to uphold the company values and had burned too many bridges to be salvageable.

ROI: What They Got

About six months into the change process, things got pretty scary. The consultants became resistant and didn’t want to work on internal projects for which they had no billable hours, and John and Sarah almost pulled the plug and reverted to chaos. Instead, they applied energy management tools, worked through their own resistance, recommitted, and held their team accountable to the direction they had chosen together. The results were not all immediate — patterns occasionally resurfaced and to be readdressed — but overall the results have been phenomenal. They zoomed through the $50 million inflection point and are preparing for $100 million. Their employee retention is now normal for their industry, and employee surveys show that engagement and satisfaction continue to improve.

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Cheryl Farr, Founder & Chief Brand Officer of Signal.CSK, is our special guest for this insightful episode of the Crack the Behavior Code podcast where we discuss the importance of finding opportunity in times of crisis and much more.

Who is Cheryl?

Cheryl builds accessible, exciting, audience-engaging brands and brand-driven marketing programs that strengthen brand power and drive real marketplace results. She founded SIGNAL.csk in 2009 to help organizations of all kinds realize and exercise their true brand power. She empowers organizations that value fresh creative thinking, purpose, alignment, and the strategic pursuit of excellence to be strong stewards of their own brands — and their people to be passionate brand leaders and evangelists. Cheryl and her Denver-based team work side-by-side with their clients to expertly align visual and verbal identity, products and services, organizational decision making, and marketing initiatives to meet brand and business goals. Their proven True, Meaningful, DifferentTM and Brand SignalsTM methodologies build brand value by illuminating what their clients can uniquely own in the hearts and minds of their target audiences and reinforcing it across all touchpoints. Hundreds of successful client engagements include Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, where Cheryl helped positon the then-fledgling brand for expansive worldwide growth; Taylor Morrison, the nation’s largest regional homebuilder, for whom she developed its first award-winning active adult brand; and PetSmart, where she led the sensory branding work that innovated the total in-store experience.

Find Out More About Her Work Here:

LinkedIn: Cheryl Farr | LinkedIn

Website: Home - SIGNAL.csk (signalcsk.com)

Facebook: SIGNAL.csk Brand Partners

Twitter: SIGNAL.csk (@SIGNALcsk)

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We make what we think is a rational decision. And then seconds, minutes, or days later we wonder “What was I thinking?!” Was it a temporary lapse of sanity?

Were we just distracted and decided anyway?

We knew it wasn’t the right decision or the best decision, but in that moment, we made a decision anyway. And it ended up being a stupid one. Why?

[Shutterstock]

The Science Behind “Stupid”

Does this mean that we are indeed stupid? Nope. It simply means that not every decision we make is actually rational. We see what we want to see filtered through our inherent biases, and then we make decisions based on those biases. These biases are called cognitive biases and we all have them.

A cognitive bias refers to the systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. These biases cause conclusions, inferences, assumptions about people and situations to be drawn in a less than logical fashion. We all create our own “subjective social reality” from our perception of the input we receive — both from outside of us and inside of us.

How can we stop making stupid decisions and start making smart ones? By spending time understanding our cognitive biases.

Understanding and checking our biases leads to better decisions and more accurate cognition.

When we understand, we make better decisions.

Check out this graphic, then in a few minutes, I’ll walk you through how I used it to help a client make a smart hire instead of a stupid one.

What’s Your Bias? Or How Bias Impacts Business

Neil Jacobstein, an expert in artificial intelligence, notes that we all use AI and algorithms to mitigate and compensate for many of the following heuristics in human cognition (thinking):

Anchoring bias: Tendency to rely too heavily, or “anchor,” on one trait or piece of information when making decisions.

Availability bias: Tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events with greater “availability” in memory, which can be over-optimistic, overestimating favorable and pleasing outcomes.

Bandwagon effect: Tendency to do (or believe) things because many people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink and herd behavior.

Hindsight bias: Sometimes called the “I knew it all along” effect, the tendency to see past events as being predictable at the time those events happened.

Normalcy bias: Refusal to plan for, or react to, a disaster which has never happened before.

Optimism bias: Tendency to be over-optimistic, overestimating favorable and pleasing outcomes. 

Planning fallacy bias: Tendency to overestimate benefits and underestimate costs and task-completion times.

Sunk-cost or loss-aversion bias: Disutility of giving up an object is greater than the utility associated with acquiring it.

Click here for a complete list of all cognitive biases.

Jacobstein is fond of pointing out that your neocortex has not had a major upgrade in 50,000 years. It is the size, shape, and thickness of a dinner napkin. “What if,” he asks, “it was the size of a table cloth? Or California?”

The Benefits Of Bias—And How To Optimize Yours

Biases can be helpful. They filter through information overwhelm, they help make sense of the world, they allow us to make quick decisions in a fast-paced world. Check out this recent challenge an executive coaching client of mine had.

My client needed to hire a VP of marketing to take the company to the next level. He had four candidates that had made it to the interview stage and one had even made it onsite to meet with four different key stakeholders in the organization. I asked him why he favored this one candidate by such a long shot. As I listened I heard the following biases.

He was showing:

• Planning fallacy bias: Underestimating how long the process would take and what a great hire would cost.

• Anchoring bias: Focusing on one piece of information (the candidate’s current job accomplishments but not his entire career—his resume had two decades of one to two-year roles).

• Availability bias: Because the candidate was successful (in a huge company with tons of resources available) he assumed he’d be successful in a much smaller company (with about 1/6 of the resources the candidate was accustomed to).

• Optimism bias: Some of this too…thinking we’d have a solid candidate identified, screened, hired within six weeks.

I expressed these concerns, and how cognitive biases can be busted when you:

• Take Your Time: You will make better decisions when you aren’t hungry, tired, or stressed. Taking time before making a decision allows you to have to think about the future and the impact of your decision.

• Get An Outside View: Ask a trusted advisor or peer for their opinion.

• Consider Options: What else could you do?

Then he asked me to interview the candidate. I deeply questioned the candidate in each of the bias areas our client had. The result? They’re not the right fit for the company. Not by a long shot. The excellent news is our client avoided a costly hiring mistake and the super excellent news is that he still has three candidates that might fit the bill once they are interviewed by carefully avoiding cognitive bias.

While we’ll all still make stupid decisions now and then (welcome to being human!), once you understand cognitive biases you’ll mitigate risk by implementing the tools above.

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Often it’s because we’re rushed, we don’t have a process that has been proven to be successful, or we don’t have a clear profile of who we truly need in a specific role.

But also it’s because we don’t leverage neuroscience.

The Proven 3 Step Process To Get The Right Person In The Right Role Every Time

So how do you get the right person in the right role? It’s actually easier than you think. It requires a proven process, and that you don’t cut corners.

Credit: Getty

1.   Figure out where you are on the Inflection Point chart. See the chart below so you know the main people, money, model challenges, and opportunities your organization is in the midst of—and are around the corner. Look 1-2 years out and sketch out the org chart you’ll need. Some of our coaching clients prefer a 1 year and 3-year org chart. We help them develop the plan for the immediate hires (so they can achieve the 1-year org chart with everyone at solid performance), then we help them create the organizational infrastructure to support their next inflection point of growth.

2.   Once you have clarified the roles you need, dive into who the right person truly is. For this you’ll need:

a.   The leadership level appropriate for the role (how much ownership do you want them to take?) What makes sense for this role? Check here:

b.   An impact description to ensure we know exactly what a great fit will be and what they’ll own. Here’s an example.

c.    If the role is senior, map out their decision space (what exactly will they have decision authority over). Here are some examples.

All of the above will cause emotional engagement in the candidate’s brain: oxytocin (yes! These are my people! I’ve found them), serotonin (wow, does it feel good to know I’ve found my tribe), dopamine (I can’t wait to see what we create together!).

3.   Make sure that your recruiting process is working. The following makes all the difference (and see the proof below):

a.   Post the Impact Description I mentioned above – you’ll get fewer candidates, but they’ll be the right fit.

“From May 9 through July 8 we ran an ad online. We had 14 applicants, two people were interviewed, and zero people were hired.

Then we used STI‘s Impact Description format. Within *one week* we had 25 applicants, nine interviews, and seven very solid candidates. STI’s Impact Description format made all the difference!”

~ Justin Rodriguez

Talent Acquisition Manager, Principle Auto

b.   Screen for Value Alignment digitally – if they aren’t aligned with your values, they won’t fit in with your culture. You can simply set up an auto-reply with 3-5 values questions and direct candidates to send the answers to a 2nd email address. When you read their answers to the values questions, you’ll know who’s aligned with you and who isn’t.

“We integrated your strategy for recruiting for value alignment and high accountability into our process. It worked out very well.  

We had 70 applicants for the position. Each applicant received an email from us and requested that they answer some values questions. 25 out of 70 responded! 7 were contacted and brought in for interviews. 2 were brought back for more than 2 interviews and we just selected the candidate today. 

I think this approach took 30 or more days off the process plus we calculate that the process saved us 60 team member-hours per candidate. 

The process also gives you more insight into the individual and you feel you know them a lot better which takes the risk-off.”

~Steve Ostanek

President, Neundorfer, Inc.

c.    Screen for safety, belonging, mattering, and meta programs. You’ll learn more by following the links I just mentioned, and here’s a quick summary:

To discover the SBM Trigger of your candidate:

Ask: What is most important to you at work—please list in order of importance:

• You’re in a team that has a plan, people have your back (this shows safety is important)
• You’re part of the team, you have an equal value to others (this shows belonging is important)
• You’re acknowledged and appreciated for your unique contributions; you are making a difference (this shows mattering is important)

To discover the Meta Program profile of your candidate:

There are many Meta Programs —about 60—per Leslie Cameron-Bandler. Think of each Meta Program as a color and each person a unique artwork formed by the combination of those colors.

Here are the Meta Programs our clients find most impactful when recruiting:

• Direction: Toward-Away. Are you motivated to go toward a goal or away from pain? Think salesperson versus accountant: what criteria do they assess situations with?
• Reason: Options-Procedures. Do you like to have many options and choices, or prefer a proven step-by-step process? What feels right to you?
• Scope: General-Specific. Do you feel comfortable with a high-level overview, or do you want specific details? When describing something, do you start with the details or the summary?
• Orientation: Active-Reflective. Do you have short sentence structure and high action, or do you want to think about things first, using longer sentence structure with many clauses?
• Source: Internal-External. How do you know you’ve done a good job? Through external feedback or internal monitoring?

So during the interview…

Ask: What do you enjoy most at work/what makes work fulfilling? Why?

Listen for achieving goals/accomplishment [Toward] OR solving problems/mitigating risk [Away]

Ask: Think of a recent large purchase (like a car, home, etc.) or a big decision you made recently. Why did you choose the specific item you chose?

Listen for having lots of options, choice, possibility [Options] OR having a proven process OR a story that had a number of steps that ended with the choice being made [Procedures]

Ask: Tell me about your weekend.

Listen for high level, net-net, executive summary [General] OR details and specificity [Specific]

Ask: What’s your approach when solving problems? How do you decide what to do? How do you do it?

Listen for take action, charge forward, do it now, high bias to action [Active] OR consider, ponder, understand, analyze, THEN take action [Reflective]

Ask: How do you know you’ve done a good job?

Listen for external proof: achieve quota, win the contest, get praise from boss [External] OR “it’s a feeling, I know I’ve done my best” [Internal]

For more on all the above please see our Recruiting Process.

Here come more good feelings and firing of hormones and neurotransmitters in the candidates and even the hiring manager’s brains. Woo hoo!

d.   Use whatever tests you like best. Our clients like Caliper, Kolbe, Predictive Index, Achiever, Topgrading, More Than A Gut Feel among others.

Tests are a good idea to check ourselves so we don’t get too excited—let the prefrontal cortex (the analytical part of the brain) take over here and ensure the data backs up all the good feelings.

The Net-Net

• Using some basic brain-based tools can help you screen candidates more effectively
• It’s essential to move beyond the “rock star moment” of the interview and ask self-revealing questions to find out who the person truly is
• Using these tools will save you time and heartache

How’s your recruiting going?

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Having a growth mindset? Being a visionary? Being born into the ‘right’ family?

These may help, but a healthy brain is foundational. Without it, success is going to be far harder to come by. So what is a healthy brain, a successful brain? It’s one that has high blood flow and high activity.

The Amen Clinics perform brain imaging called single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), which assesses at blood flow and activity patterns in the brain. Since 1991, they have performed over 135,000 brain SPECT scans on patients from 120 countries. The data from SPECT teaches us the four crucial aspects of a person’s brain-based success.

Daniel Amen

Here are the 4 crucial aspects of ensuring your brain stays strong and doesn’t ‘dumb down’:

1) Protect your prefrontal cortex (PFC). You’ve heard me talk about this key region of the brain before. It’s behind your forehead and it governs the development of your personality as well as complex behaviors. In humans, it accounts for 30% of the brain’s volume. That’s a lot. Cats weigh in at 3%, dogs at 7%, chimpanzees at 11% of their brain’s volume. The PFC is involved with executive functions, such as strategy, visioning the future, planning, focus, judgment, impulse control, and empathy. It’s your internal CEO. Low PFC activity = bad decision making. That’s why protecting it is crucial. In a study, Amen published they found that 91% of traumatic brain injuries involve the PFC.

Preventing brain injuries is easy (phew!):

• Wear a helmet when doing any type of sport where a head injury could occur. Avoid tackle football, hitting soccer balls with your head, any sports that often result in your head being hit.
• Sleep 7+ hours a night. You’ll see in one of my blogs that less than that decreases PFC function, which compromises a host of executive function behaviors from decision making even to thinking clearly.
• Reduce alcohol and marijuana use as they too decrease PFC function.

Daniel Amen

2) Protect your brain’s pleasure centers. The nucleus accumbens (NA), in both the right and left hemispheres of your brain, are involved in pleasure and motivation. You’ll remember blogs I’ve written about the neurotransmitter dopamine. Well the NA is lit up by the dopamine your brain releases from sex, chocolate, video games, cocaine, stimulants like coffee, high fat and high sugar foods, and fame. Most of us are familiar with the connection between dopamine and addiction, which we’ve been seeing with excessive video gaming for many years now. Not to bum your high, but intense pleasure actually results in substantial drops in your levels of dopamine. When repeated over time (like with heroin addiction, for instance) the NA becomes less responsive, which leads to needing more of these behaviors. That’s how addiction happens, be it to chocolate or methamphetamines.

Protect your pleasure centers by:

• Reduce or limit thrill-seeking activities like racing, excessive video games, pornography, scary movies, drugs that could wear your NA out.
• Increase the behaviors that protect your brain, such as exercise (ideally outdoors), meditation, listening to music you find pleasing, enjoying the company of friends, hobbies, doing things you are passionate about. All these and more help activate— and not overload—your pleasure centers in healthy ways.

3) You can make your brain better. Amen Clinics is well-known for running the first and largest brain imaging and rehabilitation study on active and retired NFL players. Needless to say, they witnessed high levels of brain damage to players, many of which had been hit in the head thousands of times. They were thrilled—and surprised—to see that 80% of the players showed improvement in as little as two months on their Memory Rescue program. Since most of us have (thankfully) not been repeatedly hit in the head, there is hope for all of us to have better brains—and better lives.

The Net-Net

• Protect your prefrontal cortex by protecting your skull, getting 7+ hours of sleep each night, reducing alcohol and marijuana use
• Protect your nucleus accumbens—your pleasure centers—by dialing down addictions (we all have them—even to coffee or chocolate) and over-stimulating forms of entertainment (watch excessive video gaming)
• You can indeed make your brain better by getting help if you need it. Amen has helped pro football players

How does a person become successful? That’s a long answer. For starters, you can stack the deck in your favor by having a healthy brain!

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We know that 2020 brought many businesses to their knees, requiring profound pivots, workforce and workplace changes, policy changes, and how it significantly altered how humans work.

As an executive coach for mid-sized to large organizations, I was in the thick of these changes every day (and still am). It wasn’t uncommon to receive texts after hours and on weekends as my clients scrambled to find their footing in a brave, new, uncertain and constantly changing world.

Based on my work with over a dozen diverse organizations over the past year, below you’ll find my predictions for what I believe The Future Of Work will look like.

#1 The Human Experience (HX) Will Replace The Employee Experience (EX)

Net-Net: Seeing employees as humans and helping them grow in all areas of their lives

Focus on: Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, financial health

Infographic: Learning together and how it benefits our brains

It’s ok to be human at work now. We’ve seen the inside of one another’s homes, heard our colleagues’ children crying, dogs barking, and more. Thank goodness. Now we can connect to one another without the veneer of stilted professionalism.

Employee Experience (EX) was a 2-dimensional way of looking at humans. Now we care about the entire Human Experience (HX) and support our people to have more fulfilling lives, which of course helps them bring a more productive version of themselves to their work. Thanks to Gartner’s 2020 Reimagine HR Employee Survey, employers that support their peoples’ lives overall enjoy a 23% increase in the number of employees reporting better mental health, plus a 17% increase in the number of employees reporting better physical health. Additionally, employers benefit from a 21% increase in the number of high performers (compared to firms that don’t provide the same degree of support to their employees).

#2 Personal And Corporate Value Alignment Will Support More Purpose-Driven Work

Net-Net: Truly living corporate values, not just hanging them on the wall

Focus on: Being authentic, walking your walk, talking your talk

Infographic: Employee engagement has a recipe… follow it!

We all want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We all want to know we’re making a difference. We all want to work with (note I don’t say “for”) organizations whose values align with our own. According to some 2020 Gartner research, 74% of employees expect their organization to become more actively involved in current cultural debates of the day. How did you feel about some of the more public displays of CEO support of their values, such as certain social media companies unplugging accounts of hate groups and other malevolent social forces?

The more a CEO models the organization’s values, invests in addressing challenging or even uncomfortable social issues, the more engaged their employees are. The same Gartner survey found a leap in employee engagement—from 40% to 60%— when their organization acted on today’s key social issues. Wow. If you need some help setting/refreshing your values, here’s a kit to help you.

#3 Hybrid Work Will Be The Norm—So Build A Virtual Culture

Net-Net: Release control over the work environment

Focus on: Where your people feel most productive and connected to their team/the organization overall

Infographic: You need a GAME Plan to make this work

Hybrid workforces are already becoming common, with employees working in their home, a quiet coffee shop, or the office (or some variation). What I’m curious about is the varying interest in a hybrid that I’m seeing across my clients. Some employees are itching to get back to the physical office as much/as soon as possible. Others are ok coming in 1-3x per week, based on what’s needed. What do your employees want? Find out. Regardless, you’re going to need to have a GAME (Growth, Appreciation, Measurement, Engagement) plan to keep everyone “together” as a tribe. See the infographic above.

A recent Gartner survey found that 64% of managers believe that employees working in the office are higher performers than remote workers. And they said they’d be more likely to give in-office workers a higher raise than remote workers. This isn’t the experience of my clients, though, who have found that remote workers are often higher performers. Gartner’s data showed the same: for full-time workers from both 2019 (pre-pandemic) and 2020 (during the pandemic) remote workers are 5% more likely to be high performers than those who work from the office.

And be aware of gender disparity here too: many of my clients are finding that men are more interested in returning to the office versus women. If some managers believe the in-office employees are more productive, this could affect salary increases and promotions, which again could reinforce salary disparity between genders. No Bueno.

#4 Employee Monitoring Will Be Replaced By Performance Monitoring—And Trust 

Net-Net: If you don’t trust them, why do you employ them?

Focus on: Monitor performance and results, not hours clocked

Infographic: Motivation can be crushed by leadership—make sure you don’t mess this up!

Did you know that as a result of the pandemic, more than 1 in 4 companies installed technology to passively track and monitor their employees? Wow. Imagine the privacy issues that come from this, as well as the trust issues. Now imagine if this happened to you—would you feel like your employer was looking over your shoulder all day? Spying on you? It’s a sticky topic, and according to Gartner's research, less than 50% of employees trust their organization with their data. This is not surprising, since 44% didn’t receive any information regarding the data collected about them and how it would be used. Whoa. A little respect, please.

Expect to see a bevy of state and local regulations this year that will establish limits on what employers can track about their employees. If you choose to monitor your employees digitally, be sure to over-communicate and be super transparent about the details. Regardless, you’ll get the best results (and highest morale) by simply establishing clear KPIs, success metrics, goals, OKRs, whatever you prefer to call them, and monitor individual performance instead.

#5 Flexible Working Hours Will Become The Norm 

Net-Net: Ensure overlap that’s essential, let go of control for the rest

Focus on: Letting people bring their best self, according to their work rhythm

Infographic: the Feedback Frame will help you give effective feedback

Are you a morning person? Or an evening person? What would it be like to work at your peak time each day? How much more productive and fulfilled could you be?

My clients are becoming increasingly flexible re: when to let their employees work. Some are requiring availability (not continuous though) between 9-5 pm, meaning the employee can take gap time during this range as long as they check email at regular intervals and attend key meetings. Others are setting up split shifts (a mom for instance could work from 7-8 am, then once the kids are set, from 10 am-2 pm, and again a check-in on email/etc from 7-8 pm). Get creative with exploring what your people need and what serves the business. This will require us to become better at giving feedback and often doing it digitally. See the infographic above.

Gartner’s 2020 Reimagine HR Employee Survey revealed that organizations offering employees flexibility over when, where, and how much they work saw 55% of their workforce as high performers. Yet at an organization with a standard 40-hour workweek, only 36% of employees were considered high performers. Again, it’s time to measure results, as I mentioned in #4 above, versus time clocked.

#6 Freelance, Temporary Help Will Be Welcomed To Optimize Resource Allocation

Net-Net: Stay lean and get extra help as needed

Focus on: You’ll need better communication and more Standard Operating Procedures to ensure quality and consistency with temp help

Infographic: Be sure to include your temp help in your tribe

We all need more diverse capabilities and skills from our teams than ever before. And Gartner’s analysis shows that organizations are now listing about 33% more skills on job ads in 2020 than they did in 2017. Why? Because the world is moving faster, technology is moving faster, we have more diversity in the work we do, so we all have to level up to meet ever-changing needs.

Many of my clients are looking for temp help, using UpWork, Fiverr, and other sites to get the specific (often narrow) help them need at the moment. We’ll need great communication to make this work, to help onboard everyone faster, and ensure consistent quality work.

#7 Neurodiversity And Mental Health Support Will Be Destigmatized. 

Net-Net: We all have our struggles, so let’s support instead of judge

Key Focus: Create a Neurodiversity [link to neurodiversity blog] policy (if you don’t have one yet) and internal support groups

Infographic: Stress, change, isolation are devastating to us all… learn what these do to the brain so you can sidestep this risk

I was very happy to learn that even before the pandemic, Gartner's research showed that 45% of well-being budget increases were being allocated to mental and emotional well-being programs. And now in the midst of the pandemic (and let’s be realistic—for the ongoing future) we’ve seen mental and emotional well-being brought to the forefront for all organizations.

Per Gartner, by late March 2020, 68% of organizations had introduced at least one new wellness benefit to help their employees navigate the pandemic. And in 2021, we’ll see organizations join my clients in widely offering “mental health days”, support groups, compassion around ADHD, OCD, Bipolar, GAD employees. Just like some of us have a bad back and can’t sit long in a given position, these mental and emotional challenges will be viewed the same way—with acceptance and non-judgment.

We’ve still got a way to go to whatever the new normal is going to be. With the above tools you’ll be better positioned to capitalize on it, and with a happier, healthier, more productive workforce.

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As an executive coach, I invest a great deal of time in helping people get unstuck. And I repeatedly see 3 key areas where they are ensnared. We all want to be happy, to get along, to have great lives. The tricky part is we don’t live in a vacuum, so for better or worse, we must interact with others. This can be the best part of life, as well as the most challenging. Here are my top 3 neuroscience-based strategies to help you get unstuck fast:

1. Catch Trouble Before You’re Entangled

You’re bopping along, having a great day, then you get blindsided by someone’s unpleasant behavior. Why? It’s their thing—not yours. Why take on their negativity, get fearful/avoid conflict/get angry/judgmental? It’s all about energy. Emotions have energy, and you have a choice as to whether you absorb that energy or not.

Here’s how we absorb it and let it burn our high:

• Fear: you fear the person or fear they have power over you, your finances, your future, your happiness, or so on. You get the idea.
• Judgment: you judge the person or situation
• Attachment: you think something needs to be a certain way or must occur on a certain timeline, and you’re attached to getting what you want.

All 3 reactions cause you to become emotionally entangled, and then you’re in trouble. Let’s be conscious of this as leaders, as solving problems is often a part of our job. The next time a buzz kill comes your way—stop, pause, and notice your response. Are you reacting with fear? Judging the person? Feeling attached to a certain outcome/how things should be? Stop. Feel it. Then choose differently. Choose to let them have their experience, but do not make it yours!

2. Realize Your Ego-Mind Wants To Make You Unhappy

Have you ever noticed that your mind is always talking? Blah blah blah – all the time. We know from both Wayne Dyer’s research and the NSA that a human has about 60,000 thought per day. 90% of them are repetitive. Whoa. That’s nuts!

What would happen if you didn’t think so much? Have you ever had the experience of stopping the relentless dialog in your mind? Try it.

Focus on your breath: inhale for a count of 7 through your nose, hold for a count of 7, exhale for a count of 7 through your mouth. Do this at least 7 times in a row and you’ll start to get still. The mind needs a project. It’s ok to give it the task of counting to get still as you do a parasympathetic nervous system reset.

Next, when you return to thinking, step back and witness what your mind says. Does it complain? Pout? Rage? Thoughts generate energy. You can always stop, or at least slow, down your thoughts. Be careful what energy you fill your life with.

Mike Dooley of Tut says “A young soul learns to take responsibility for their actions, a mature soul learns to take responsibility for their thoughts, and a wise soul learns to take responsibility for their happiness.” Why not be a wise soul?

3. Consciously Develop Your Emotional Intelligence

To be a conscious leader, we eventually will embrace neuroscience-based strategies for emotional intelligence. Let’s talk about the two elements of doing so. There is personal competence, which is our self-awareness and ability to regulate our emotions, and social competence, which is our awareness of the emotional experience of others and our ability to navigate the emotions of others.

How aware are you of your emotions? Do you know how you’re feeling at any given time? Our feelings are how we navigate our experiences. Grab our emotion wheel to check in on yourself.

Next, are you able to witness your emotions and not get swept up in them? This is where mindfulness and meditation really help. As we learn to slow our thoughts down, we gain the ability to be less wrapped up in our own emotional dramas.

As we deepen our awareness of ourselves, we can then have more compassion for the emotional experiences of others, which enables us to navigate conflict more easily, give others a break when they’re stuck, and help them get unstuck. We start to notice that we don’t take another person’s emotional outburst personally. We can witness it without being wrapped up in it.

Net-Net

Humans take on the emotions of others when they fear, judge or get attached to what the person is to them, or what that person represents. It’s essential to use neuroscience-based strategies to manage the relentless chatter of our ego mind in order to have both inner peace and behavioral choice

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I’m fine.

Of course, I love you.

I’ll call you.

No, you don’t look fat in those jeans.

We are liars.

All of us.

We lie to save face, to avoid hurting other people’s feelings, to impress others, to shirk responsibility, to hide misdeeds, as a social lubricant, to prevent conflict, to get out of work, and many more reasons.

And we lie a lot.

Deception costs businesses and government billions, ruins relationships, undermines what we care about, and even takes lives. The more white matter (see my blog The Truth About How Your Brain Gets Smarter)--or some might even say the more intelligent the neocortex—the greater potential a person has to lie.

Bella DePaulo, Ph.D., a psychologist at the University of Virginia, has confirmed that lying is simply a condition of life. In her research, she found that both men and women lie in approximately one-fifth of their social exchanges lasting 10 or more minutes. Wow. And over the course of a week, we deceive about 30 percent of people we have 1:1 interactions with. Wow—wow!!

Women are more likely to tell altruistic lies to avoid hurting other people’s feelings, and men are more likely to lie about themselves. De Paulo found that men lie more often to impress. A typical conversation between two guys contains about eight times as many self-oriented lies as it does lies about others.

Your Brain On Lies

Three key parts of our brain are stimulated when we lie. First, the frontal lobe (of the neocortex), which has the ability to suppress the truth—yes, it’s capable of dishonesty due to its intellectual role. Second, the limbic system due to the anxiety that comes with deception (hi, amygdala!)—and yes, when we’re lied to, our “Spiderman sense” here can perk up, just as we can feel guilty/stressed when we’re doing the lying. And third, the temporal lobe is involved because it’s responsible for retrieving memories and creating mental imagery. Just for fun, add the anterior cingulate cortex because it helps in monitoring errors, and the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex because it is trying all the while to control our behavior. Our brain is busy, busy, busy when we lie.

And it’s far more peaceful when we tell the truth because our limbic systems aren’t stressed about lying and our frontal lobe isn’t inhibiting the truth.

Lies At Work

Where do we see a prevalence of lies? At work, or more specifically, to get out of work.

According to Zety’s recent 2020 research, of over 1,000 Americans, they found 96% confessed to lying to get out of work. Here’s the net-net:

• The most common lies include feeling sick (84%), family emergencies (65%), doctor’s appointments (60%), or lying about a family member’s death (31%)!
• On average, one person has used 7 different excuses to get out of work on different occasions.
• Only 27% of respondents who lied to get out of work regretted it, and 41% of respondents would lie again.
• 91% of people making up excuses to get out of the office were never caught!

More men than women were caught lying, and only 27% of respondents who lied to get out of work regretted it. For those caught, 70% regretted lying. But despite not feeling bad about themselves for lying, 59% of respondents said they wouldn’t do it again.

Here’s a silver lining: the older we get, the less compelled we are to lie to avoid work.

Are we all pathological liars? Or do we need to look at why we feel compelled to make up stories instead of just telling the truth? Is lying to avoid work a cultural problem, at least in part? And what about people that don’t experience regret when they lie? The stance of perpetual innocence or extreme entitlement (and thus reality distortion) is a topic I addressed in my blogs on Borderline Personalities [Kelcie: link to my 2 blogs on this please].

Lying Rx

To reduce the amount of lying in your workplace, you’ll want to first look at how safe people feel. Is it ok to tell the truth? Is it ok to fail? Is it ok to be human and not a superhero/work robot/cog in a wheel? Is it ok to have feelings and need a break now and then? Find out.

·      Do regular employee engagement surveys – see our fave one here [show either SBM Index sample heat map or link to blog that explains it]

·      Use the emotion wheel at the beginning of each meeting to check in on how everyone is doing

·      Create support groups [Kelcie link to this blog] if people need a little extra help

So why do we lie? Because it works for us. Temporarily, at least. For fun, you might want to join me in telling the five types of truth [Kelcie please link to this blog]. And you’ll notice not only how good it feels, but how much simpler it makes your life.

How often do you lie? Why?

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Alignment, communication, collaboration, energy management, leverage, trust, and what else?

Google did some comprehensive multi-year research on this topic. I’ll refer to it below and map it to my work during the past 30 years in the areas of safety, belonging, and mattering.

I’ve found it all comes back to safety, belonging and mattering, no matter what structure you want to wrap around the idea of optimal teaming. Let’s look at what Google learned in its extensive research on the topic.

Over the course of two years (ending in November 2015), Google conducted more than 200 interviews where it assessed more than 250 attributes of what makes an optimal team. The findings from the 180 teams studied were surprising.

While they had hoped to find a recipe for an optimal team (for instance, take one Ivy League MBA, one extrovert, one expert engineer), Google actually found that who was on the team mattered far less than how team members interacted, structured their work, experienced their contributions. The answer was in behavior and emotional resilience. The results echoed some of what Carnegie Mellon researchers found back in 2010 with their collective intelligence work.

They learned that five key dynamics resulted in optimal teams:

1. Psychological safety: Can we take risks on this team without feeling insecure or embarrassed?
2. Dependability: Can we count on each other to do high-quality work on time?
3. Structure & clarity: Are goals, roles, and execution plans on our team clear?
4. Meaning of work: Are we working on something that is personally important for each of us?
5. Impact of work: Do we fundamentally believe that the work we’re doing matters?

Google found that psychological safety was by far the most important dynamic. Without this people don’t feel comfortable speaking up, asking questions, checking in. There’s too much risk of being labeled as “out of it” or “clueless.” All humans want to belong to a group, and we’ll take tremendous risks (such as not speaking out even if we feel it’s very important) if we feel we may become an outcast, lose status in our tribe, or be ostracized somehow.

Googlers now use a tool they call teams. It’s a 10-minute check-in on the five dynamics. A modified check-in is below, one that our clients find works very well. During the past year, more than 3,000 Googlers across 300 teams have used teams and focused on the five factors above. They often will kick off team meetings with each team member sharing a risk they took in the past week. The net is that they’ve seen psychological safety ratings increase by 6% and structure/clarity increase by 10%. But the best part is the increased connection in the team due to increased communication.

Rate Your Team Per Google’s Five Dynamics

Consider the five factors from Google:

• Psychological Safety
• Dependability
• Structure & Clarity
• Meaning of Work
• Impact of Work

On a scale of 1-5 where 5 is excellent, rate your experience of each factor in your team. Now total up your score. Here’s our rating format. If your total score is:

Up to 10: High Risk. There’s a lot of work to do. Use the table below to map to safety, belonging, mattering. Get a neuroscience-based coach, and get to work healing your culture.

11-18: Risky. Your team is not performing nearly as well as it could. Let’s get everyone more connected and collaborative. Time for team training and coaching.

19-25: Solid. Congrats! You’re on a high-performing team. Time to raise the bar!

Below is a shortcut to help you figure out where to focus, how to get better, and a way to talk about this concept with your teammates in a structured way.

Let’s now map frameworks:

Easy, yes?

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Virginia Satir, a world-renowned family therapist, is famous for saying “We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth.”

How many hugs are you getting each day?

With social distancing, dramatically reduced human contact, and more digital than physical interactions, many of us are running short on hugs. These extra measures to keep ourselves healthy is causing mental and emotional health problems, lost productivity at work, reduced intimacy and trust, increased anger and aggression, and that’s just a start. As leaders, it’s essential that we take this seriously—the more emotionally and mentally balanced we are, the more we can help our teams to become so.

So, let’s look at why humans need hugs, and then we’ll look at strategies to get more.

4 Reasons Why Humans Need Hugs

1. Hugs strengthen your immune system and balance your body. A hug results in some pressure on your sternum, which then stimulates the thymus gland, which then regulates and balances the body’s production of white blood cells, which keeps you healthy. Hugs help increase circulation and help balance our sympathetic (fight/flight/freeze) and parasympathetic (rest and digest) nervous systems. All good.

2. Hugs increase your feelings of safety. Hugs emotionally “feed” us, help us remember that we’re not alone, help us feel more trust with others. Ever notice how relaxed you feel after a juicy hug? Hugs remind us that we’re with others. And together we can face any challenge.

3. Hugs increase your feelings of belonging. Hugs boost oxytocin levels, which heal feelings of loneliness, isolation, and anger. Hugging is a shared experience: you’re both giving and receiving affection. Nice!

4. Hugs increase your feelings of mattering/self-esteem, being seen, and self-love. Extended hugging (20 seconds or more) boosts your serotonin levels, causing you to feel happy and more positive emotions overall. When you see another person look at you with kindness and affection you remember that you’re loved, just like you did as a child when your parents looked at you and acknowledged you were here and they were happy you were.

How to Get More Hugs

Ask Others, Get a Hug Buddy. If you live with others, this is easy. Start keeping a daily tally and find out what number of hugs makes you feel most at peace. If you live alone, get a Hug Buddy. This is a buddy that observes the same social-distancing and pandemic protocols that you do. It’s essential to be able to relax into a delicious hug. Set times when you’ll get together for hugs. You can also sit back to back on the ground and lean against one another for an extended period of time. You could be reading or talking during this time.

Hug and/or Sleep with Your Pet. Yes, this is not the same as hugging a human, but still, it’s contact with another living thing, so go for it! Many people I know are “breaking the rules” and letting their dog sleep on the bed now. Throw a special dog blanket on top to protect your bedding and snuggle up!

Hug Yourself. This may sound silly but it works. Remember the goal is oxytocin and serotonin release, so you may want to turbo-charge this experience by listing all the things you love about yourself. This is about mental and emotional health, friends, and yours is more important than ever with the extended pandemic and continued uncertainty.

The Net-Net

Hugs are good for our mental, emotional, physical and even spiritual health

Now, more than ever, people need more hugs

We can get creative to get more hugs, and also get proactive by getting hug buddies and tracking how many hugs we need daily to feel good

How will you get more hugs per day?

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Caroline Cory is an award-winning filmmaker and the visionary author of best-selling books on Consciousness and Energy Medicine, topping the charts of Consciousness Science and mystical literature. As a child and throughout her life, Cory has had numerous E.S.P (extra-sensory) and pre-cognition experiences, which led her to become deeply connected to existential topics, the study of Consciousness and the mechanics of the universe. After teaching Energy Medicine and consciousness work for over a decade, Cory founded Omnium Media, an entertainment and media platform that tackles various thought-provoking topics on the human condition and the nature of reality.  In  addition to writing and producing,  Cory continues to lecture and coach  internationally  on  various  mind  over  matter subjects and appears regularly as a guest expert on supernatural phenomena at major conferences and television shows including The UnXplained with William Shatner and History Channel's popular series the Ancient Aliens.

INKS

Film “Superhuman: The Invisible Made Visible”

www.SuperhumanFilm.com

Consciousness / Energy Medicine work: www.CarolineCory.com

Books / Products

https://www.omniumuniverse.com/Products/

Classes

https://www.omniumuniverse.com/Classes/#Online-Classes

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Company Z, a financial services firm with nearly $100 million in annual revenue, was changing their business model. It was a big change—they were dumping one entire business unit and launching a new one. The team was none too happy about it. Some were fearful because they were employed in the now defunct business unit, and they’d have to learn new skills. The change was essential though, as due to market conditions the former unit would never become profitable.

As you’ve heard in my past podcasts on change, not everyone in your organization is going to totally psyched and eager to celebrate change. And the biggest challenge with change is--drum roll please--resistance. But what most leaders miss is that resistance is simply the first stop on the quest for the holy grail: a new standard.

From my work with hundreds of successful entrepreneurs, top executives, and political leaders, I’ve learned that organizational change is a continuum. It’s predictable, it can be guided, and here is how it works.

First people start with resistance. Why? Because thanks to Rodger Bailey’s terrific research on Meta Programs, we know that 65% of Americans can only tolerate change if it is couched in a specific context. The context is “Sameness with Exception.” This means the “change” is really just an improvement to what we are already doing: the bad stuff is being removed, and good stuff is being increased. Seriously--this is the best way to package a change message. And don’t use the “c” (change) word—say “growth” instead.

Back to CEO Jessica, who did a masterful job managing Company Z’s organizational change. Here’s how she did it.

First, we trained the entire company on how change works and how to expect their brains and emotions to react. Jessica’s assistant used our Organizational Change Adoption Path graphic. She had it expanded, printed and posted in the conference room so everyone could openly acknowledge where they were in the process.

Next, we laid out a plan to help the team navigate the five phases.

Phase 1: Resistance: This phase can pass fairly quickly when the leader stresses the “same with exception” nature of the change. That’s exactly what she did.

Phase 2: Mockery: I love this phase! It means people now have some emotional investment. They are past disinterest and resistance and we can engage them in telling us what they object to. We acknowledged their concerns and asked for their help in fixing what in the CEO’s growth plan was so “lame”. We asked for their agreement to follow the plan once their fixes were made. This led to…

Phase 3: Usefulness: The “Mockers” worked through the revised plan with Jessica and us and some even--gasp--acknowledged what parts of it were useful. A few “Mockers” insisted on a few more edits, and the CEO agreed to about half of them with again the agreement of their support.

This is the most important step, because when something is truly useful, the vast majority of people will use it again, leading to…

Phase 4: Habitual: Now we’ve got the team members using something repeatedly, almost without thinking. Which leads us to…

The final Phase. Phase 5: the New Standard: The behavior is becoming integrated into how they behave, and setting a new behavioral standard.

This process can take months to years, based on how the leader manages the Organizational Change Adoption Path. With our client above, the change took 7 months to filter through all remote offices. Impressive.

Jessica did a formidable job in managing, and capitalizing, on the social change that was happening throughout the business change. Brilliant leadership. Period.

What organizational, and thus emotional, changes is your company going through? Try the above process and let me know how it works for you.

Show Notes:

• Organizational Change Adoption Path
• How to Connect More Deeply With Others

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But there’s no storefront, no website, no vendors or purchase orders required. And the wealth isn’t wired—but it is transferred.

If you want happiness for an hour—take a nap.

If you want happiness for a day—go fishing.

If you want happiness for a month—get married.

If you want happiness for a year—inherit a fortune.

If you want happiness for a lifetime—help others.

-- Chinese proverb

Here’s how to get both rich and happy, guaranteed.

• Find a cause that feeds your soul. You’ll know it when you find it, because you’ll feel excited and uplifted at the thought of being involved. It’s okay if you find multiple causes, even rotate them. I’ve been involved with civil rights, abused kids, homelessness, women’s halfway houses, meal delivery programs and AIDS—each experience has stretched me in ways I could never have imagined. Learn about causes via Google or go to www.volunteermatch.org.
• Commit to “one a week.” This means giving an hour a week to a cause or an hour’s worth of salary. (Or give whatever amount feels right—just give something!). You can batch up your time and/or money and give in chunks, too.
• After you make a commitment to yourself, schedule your service time to ensure it happens. Write it on your calendar, book it in your phone, or write it on your hand—whatever it takes to make this an unbreakable date for giving. If you don’t set the time aside, life will intrude and you’ll lose the opportunity.
• Remember, you have a lot to give. You have time, talent, and treasure. Figure out which one feels right to give. Are you an expert in public relations, and could donate an hour a week helping a nonprofit with PR? That’s donating time and talent. Would you rather write a check? That’s donating treasure. It’s all good.
• Get others involved. In my companies I like to match the donations given by staff members (up to a specific amount). This is fun, gets the company and the team involved in giving, and boosts morale.

April is National Volunteer Month. If you don’t volunteer regularly yet, now is a great time to start.

When you start to give your precious time, energy or even funds to a cool cause you resonate with, you’ll learn one of the greatest lessons in life: giving is actually receiving. They are the same. You give and you get at the same time.

I am a hospice volunteer. For 14 years I’ve helped people with 6 months or less to die with peace, dignity, and as little physical discomfort as possible. Each of the 19 people I’ve had the honor of supporting through the death process has been a remarkable teacher to me. Imagine being brought into someone’s life at such a challenging time. Now imagine what their loved ones are going through.

Timing Is… Nothing

Many people tell me they are seeking their purpose in life; they’re waiting for that divine epiphany where their mission becomes blindingly clear. Then they’ll volunteer, become a philanthropist, really commit to a cause. Until then they’re in the grand “waiting room” of life—and let me tell you, there’s a huge crowd in there. And all are waiting. Are you?

I don’t receive divine messages that are complete and clear. I receive divine sticky notes. You’ve received these too. Maybe you had an insight as you were walking in nature, meditating when your mind was still. Did you follow that message? Did you implement it in your life? I’ve found that when I do, it leads to more messages. Then months later I look back and marvel at what has come of that one tiny insight.

It’s funny, everyone spends so much time talking about work-life balance, and so little time talking about the need for service, for giving back to humanity. I find those are the best ways for me to stay balanced. We’re all busy, sure, but everyone can find one hour per week or a few hours per month to volunteer. Volunteering can bring you experiences that will shape your life in ways you couldn’t possibly imagine.

I hope you’ll try volunteering—whenever you’re ready--because I know it will make you rich inside, and it will make you happy, and it will put a spring in your step.

Yes, happiness can be bought. It comes from being of service to others, and often when it’s hard or uncomfortable. But the discomfort is temporary. And the happiness and inner wealth just grows and grows.

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He’s been stating this goal for the past 3 years and still hasn’t achieved it. Why?

Because it’s not ecologically safe for him to have this outcome.

There is a subconscious tug o’war we all experience between our desires and our ecology. Our ecology formed our belief system, our frame of reference, our identity, our capabilities—and it also prevents us from getting what we want.

Until we know how to change it.

Change the Present…

Let’s find out why George isn’t getting the doubled revenue he wants. Here’s what we learned when we worked through a basic Outcome Frame with him:

• Question: What would you like? He answered: To double revenue this year.
• Question: What will having that do for you? Answer: I’ll feel secure, be happy, have peace of mind, have less stress and a cash cushion, feel confident that we got to the next level and the business is scalable, work less, know my team can step up. (Note: What he really wants is to feel safe—to let go of control and know it’ll be ok)
• Question: How will you know when you have it (specifically)? Answer: Doubled revenue from last year.
• Question: So there you are in the future and you have what you want. What risk might you take to ensure this change is going to happen? His answer: I might have to let go of some control--delegate more, promote some high performers and let a few low performers go, let my VP Sales run with our plan, stop micro-managing our VP Operations. (Here comes the good stuff!)
• Question: What will likely happen if you don’t solve this the way you want? What will be the impact on your business and life? His answer: We’ll be stuck in the same rut we’ve been in for 3 years, we won’t be able to grow the business and sell it for the $70mil+ that we want to, my family members and I won’t get to cash out and we’ll one day have to wind the business down—without securing our and our children’s financial future.
• Question: What might someone have to believe about the world or company or situation to get this? Answer: That this is possible, that they have the team to achieve this outcome, that more clients want what we have, that we can find these clients.
• Question: What might you have to believe about yourself? His answer: That I can let go and things won’t fall apart, that my team wants to rise up.
• Question: What can you appreciate about the current situation prior to change? (What’s great about holding onto control?) He answered: I know what the outcome will be—even if it isn’t what I want, I trust myself and don’t have to rely on others.

From this process, George realized that his key issue was fear of letting go of control, yet he would have to do this (to a degree) in order to let his team help him double revenue. But knowing this intellectually isn’t enough—in the thick of battle, George will still default to controlling behavior, because it is rooted in his subconscious mind. So we need to change this.

… Change the Past…

After we completed the Outcome Frame, it was time to excavate. Where did George’s controlling behavior begin? Why was relying on others so threatening? We had to find out by asking the following questions:

Can you recall a time when you didn’t feel you had to control things?

Was there a major life trauma when your level of controlling increased?

Is there a trigger event you experience regularly when your controlling kicks into high gear?

The life trauma was the answer. When his parents divorced, George was 7 years old. He then became the man of the house, and his father all but disappeared. Little George decided then that he would never be at the mercy of others, and such a life-altering experience, again. He’d shape his world and keep it in check.

Except that strategy no longer works for him.

So he asked me to help him change it. We did a process we call Movie Theatre, where we guided George through observing this childhood trauma from a distance and then de-fusing the beliefs he formed then. We helped him edit his identity and belief system, which is one of the deepest levels of change we mentioned in an earlier podcast this season. It was key to set structures in place to help him change his capabilities and behavior as a leader of his company.

We continued coaching George and began working with his executive team to shift too. The executive team had supported the command-and-control culture that George had created—they were now part of the System that everyone wanted to change.

… Change the Future

Fast forward 9 months: George is nearing his fiscal year end. Revenue will double this year, wrapping up at a healthy $22mil. What’s next? Now we’re going to double the bottom line and increase the asset base in our continuing plan to strengthen George’s company for acquisition. I’d like to see him get $95mil+ for his company instead of his $70mil goal.

Isn’t it fascinating that our company and its performance is directly tied to who we are and what behaviors limit us? We self-sabotage and don't even know it! The key is to root out the true reason we aren't getting what we want and clear it. My preference is to use neuroscience techniques to do this.

What do you want that you aren't getting? Let's root out the reason together.

Show Notes:

• STI Outcome Frame Infographic
• Power Your Tribe Graphic – The Structure of Human Behavior

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Here’s the reality: companies make mistakes all the time. In an economic downturn, however, avoiding the big slip ups becomes all the more crucial. When the heat is on, some CEOs will react impulsively, and while this may earn them some points for courage and speed, in a rough economy one needs to take the long view and pace themselves.

To get funded, stay funded, and even out stretch your day-to-day cash flow, you’ll need to avoid some key mistakes. And if you’ve made them already, it’s time for a strong course-correction. Please know that I’ve made every single one of the following… which is why I am so passionate about helping to prevent these energy- and time-suckers.

Here are my top four mistakes to avoid during a downturn.

#1 Hasty Hiring. The result: Bad hires who are costly and time consuming.

It’s better to try out new staff members as independent contractors first. Then, after you’re confident that they work well with your team and share your values, bring them on as permanent hires.

When you’re overwhelmed and overworked, it’s easy to make hiring mistakes. That’s why relying on contractors is a great policy. Check out sites like TaskRabbit, Marketing Sherpa, Upwork, or NoonDalton for administrative, virtual marketing, bookkeeping and other help. Rates can be surprisingly low. And don’t make the mistake of staffing up fully, only to discover that your business operates in waves. Have a lean team, and hire extra hands for the heavier times. Try out your team members before making them permanent.

The Second Mistake to avoid: Pausing Your Profit. The result: Financial pressure due to propping up ailing products, divisions, accounts.

Sometimes you can sell your way out of a recession, yet at all times you need to streamline expenses and adjust your financial strategy. One of our clients recently outsourced an entire division of their company. It hadn’t been profitable, and the other divisions were supporting it financially. Yes, the decision was painful and resulted in a lay off. Yet it had to happen for the health of the company. The outsourced division now generates a healthy profit.

Another client pays increased commission for selling higher margin products. We laid out a super compelling plan and the sales force is now focused on the products that are best for the company’s bottom line, and coincidentally, best for the customer.

Now is the time to course-correct if you’ve under charged clients too. This often happens when we’re desperate to close a sale without keeping an eye on generating enough profit. We’re helping two of our clients to rightsize some of their clients. With a stronger, more resonant value proposition, this is doable. Craft the message, collaborate with the client on key success metrics, report on the metrics monthly, and get the account to the level that is fair and profitable for you. Resenting a client because you under charged them is something you never want to do. Ever.

Mistake #3: Skipping the Six-Month Plan. The result: “Strategy of the Second” – and very little accomplished.

It’s better to map out the next six months, and if a new project comes up, swap it out with one of equal complexity that is already on your plan. Entrepreneurial CEOs can be excessive idea generators. With a six-month plan, you will have mapped out the projects for the immediate, foreseeable future and can skillfully avoid manic distractions with poor results.

Consider the perils of one company, with the painful “strategy of the second” plan. Each time its mercurial CEO returned from a conference, he’d have a new idea. Were they good ones? Often. But his already stretched staff had no spare energy. Since they had not learned to communicate clearly with one another, they would take on the new project, but all sorts of key tasks would (of course) get dropped or delayed, and no one was happy.

Ultimately, you need a gatekeeper for the six-month plan if you want your company to run efficiently. This is someone who will ensure the new projects are either scheduled later or will replace existing project(s) of equal size. Someone who will constantly see the big picture, tackle the small details, and facilitate real results every step of the way is key.

By the way, once the CEO in question put a six-month plan in place, his staff was happier, fewer tasks were dropped, and their revenue ramped up considerably.

Mistake #4: Chasing All Sales Leads. The result: Wasting time on “prospects” who will not become clients.

A CEO of a consulting company complained recently that she had chased a key account for four months. Four months! She finally lost hope that they would ever become a client. When asked if she had a disqualification process, she hesitated. Here’s the net-net: you only want to spend time with real prospects. Create a disqualification process so you can quickly remove contacts from your sales pipeline that will most likely never buy your product or service or have no intention to buy it in the near term. In tough economic times especially, you must focus your energies on productive revenue streams.

We have all made mistakes in business. The point is to course-correct constantly. Spot a mistake and take action to correct it. What are you grappling with right now? What mistakes did I miss mentioning?

Learn more by downloading our whitepaper on the Five Mistakes That Halt High Performance CEOs by clicking here.

Show Notes:

• Links to hiring sites: Upwork, Task Rabbit, Marketing Sherpa,
• Whitepaper on the Five Mistakes That Halt High Performance CEOs click here.
• Marketing Optimization
• Streamlining Your Sales Funnel

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75%. That’s huge.

So what exactly is workplace bullying?

The Workplace Bullying Institute defines it thusly: “Workplace Bullying is repeated, health-harming mistreatment of one or more persons (the targets) by one or more perpetrators. It is abusive conduct that is: threatening, humiliating, or intimidating, or work-interference, i.e. sabotage, which prevents work from getting done.”

One of the main differences between schoolyard bullying and workplace bullying is that it tends to be less physically harmful and more psychological and verbal in nature. It’s subtler than schoolyard bullying but is quite distinctive from normal workplace stress.

According to Wikipedia, “Bullying is characterized by:

• Repetition (occurs regularly)

• Duration (is enduring)

• Escalation (increasing aggression)

• Power disparity (the target lacks the power to successfully defend his or her self)

• Attributed intent”

According to the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI), bullying is four times more common than either sexual harassment or racial discrimination on the job.

Who The Bullies Are

Here is what you have to understand, the targets of workplace bullying are not the weakest players—they are often the strongest.

Let’s say that again. The common misconception is that, like schoolyard bullying, the targets of workplace bullying are loners, or “weird” or the people who “don’t fit.” In fact, the reverse is true.

People become targets because something about them is threatening to the bully. Often, they are more skilled, more technically proficient, have a higher EQ or people just like them better. They are often workplace veterans who mentor new hires.

A quote from the Workplace Bullying Institute: “WBI research findings and conversations with thousands of targets have confirmed that targets appear to be the veteran and most skilled person in the workgroup.”

Now the bully tends to be someone who is skilled at manipulating and controlling, but while they see everything as a competition, they do not feel skilled/competent enough to compete on their own merits. Hence, they bully as a futile attempt to feel more powerful.

The bully often works hard to create the perception that they are strong by putting down and blaming others. Often the boss of the bully knows the bully is “disliked” but thinks that the organization cannot do without them and makes “allowances.” The bullying is framed as “personality conflict.”

What Bullying Is Costing Your Company

When you, as the leader of an organization, allow bullying to occur, you create at least five problems:

Problem 1. The target of the bullying will experience a loss of confidence and an increase in stress that often shows up in health problems. Their performance will decline. They may need more time off to recover. So you have lower performance by at least one person, the target.

Problem 2. By allowing the bullying to continue, you are accepting a toxic culture, prevalent Critter State, and reduced performance and morale. The people witnessing the bullying will have to choose to side with the bully, leave, risk retribution by speaking out, or remain passive and try to stay under the bully’s radar. To be non-threatening to the bully, they may lower their performance in some way.

The 3rd problem created by tolerating bullying: Eventually the target will have no recourse but to leave. Research has shown that the vast majority of targets eventually leave. You now have lost a good employee and have all the costs of a new hire.

Problem 4. You have the almost certain guarantee that the cycle will repeat itself. I find that organizations which condone bullying, which have prevalent Critter State, also have high employee turnover rates, far less revenue per employee, increased absences, and the list goes on and on.

Finally, the 5th problem. You are opening yourself up to potential litigation. While bullying is not, strictly speaking, illegal, it may be connected to a form of harassment or discrimination which can be subject to litigation. At the least, attention will be taken up in tracking and “proving” a case.

All this from denying bullying—oh, and let’s add the personal guilt of not protecting one’s tribe.

How To Stop Bullying—And Start Boosting Smart State

Workplace bullies can be hard to detect because they work within the rules of the organization. That means that the solutions lie within the organizational structure.

I have been asked to coach several workplace bullies because someone, usually their boss, wanted them to change. The problem with this sort of coaching is that the person themselves doesn’t want to change. The coaching is seen as a punishment rather than as a reward and a path to greater leadership.

The reality is that the leadership team is responsible. Bullying cannot happen without approval (example: “oh that’s just how so-and-so is!”). It’s up to you to create an environment that is safe and healthy for the entire team—the Smart State. The biggest problem with bullies is usually that someone higher up likes them – I’m sure you’ve heard it: “oh, so-and-so is great at a party!” - or some other nonsense.

The first step is to confront the bully. Use my formal feedback steps to outline the specific behaviors that must change. Agree on objective performance measurements. Make sure that the bully transfers their feeling of threat from their target to the organization. Give them specific ways to manipulate and control their own outcomes—turn their skills into assets if possible. If not possible, they have to go. If you are serious about creating the culture of your dreams, you have to be willing to hire and fire based on your values.

I have found that what works best, culturally, is to focus on creating structures that reward “Smart State” behaviors and discourage/punish bullying behaviors. This starts with ensuring the confidentiality of anyone reporting bullying behavior and ensuring that there are no reprisals.

Organizational structures which put the focus on problem solving and which create clear and fair performance markers work to reduce bullying. Some examples include:

• reward ideas and innovations

• reward people for bringing safety or other problems to leaders’ attention

• use structures, like Kanban boards, which isolate bottlenecks as work flow issues only, and therefore reduce finger-pointing and blame

• implement an intranet system where team members can give each other high fives and recognize contribution

• make sure any performance measuring systems you are using are fair and objective, and reward what you are actually interested in achieving (for example, one client was rewarding employees for quantity but not measuring quality, and our assessment found that their “high performers” were actually the ones creating problems).

Remember, stopping bullying begins with you. To what are you really committed?

Show Notes:

• Workplace violence PDF from Dr. Judy Blando: Research
• Workplace Bullying Institute: https://workplacebullying.org
• STI Feedback Frame infographic

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• Our ability to navigate change is directly correlated to the meaning that we make about what happens to us.
• The power that we have is in choice. What meaning would you like to make?

According to Harvard Business Review’s Management Tip Of The Day: A leader sets the emotional tone and the example both in good times and, perhaps more importantly, in bad.

I agree.

As a leader, how do you help your team deal with and move through a time of crisis? Before we go any further, let’s reframe the word crisis to change. That one step will help de-escalate the negative power of the word “crisis”.

Here are five tips to help people navigate change scenarios:

1. Be Present. Let people express their emotions – make it safe for them to say what’s really going on for them. Their voice matters.

2. Be Connected. State that you’re here for them, you’re in this together, you’ll move through it together, everyone belongs together.

3. Explain Meaning Making. Once everyone understands the stories they make about their experiences, they can choose new ones.

4. Choose A Positive Future. Talk about how everyone would like to feel once the grieving is over, the pain is lessened.

5. Forge A Path Together. Then we’ll know how to get where we want to go.

Our ability to navigate change is directly correlated to the meaning that we make about what happens to us. And the way that we make meaning is based on the stories that we tell ourselves about what happens to us. Now the meaning that we make will determine whether our experience is positive or negative, empowering or devastating.

Example: Lots of things are changing, lots of short notice client requests and deadlines.

Meaning making option #1: OMG! This is so stressful! I am emotionally exhausted by this, it’s all too much!

Result of this meaning: missed deadlines, incomplete work, stress for self and those that have to deal with the missed deadlines or incomplete or low quality work, no fun for anyone and certainly no ease-grace-joy.

Alternatively, Meaning making option #2: Yippee! Change means movement and growth and a chance to really shine and pace myself. I will show up fully to serve our awesome tribe. How great that I get to tap my awesome brain to become even more clear, find even more solutions as I focus on the outcomes I want to create.

Result of this meaning: empowerment, choice of how to respond vs compulsively react, ease-grace-joy, support of self and others, shine my light, honor our company values, choose my reality.

Whatever is happening outside or inside of us is still going to happen. The power that we have is in choice. What meaning would you like to make?

Making “Good” Meaning

What helps us to make positive and empowering meaning?

In addition to our internal choice, external tools can come in handy. Check out the Four Factors of Sustainable SmartTribes.

Let’s dive into each of the factors.

Behavior

Our behavior depends primarily on beliefs and our sense of safety, belonging, and mattering plays a big part too. Behavior is also affected by whether we’re in our Critter State or our Smart State and governed by our beliefs, identity, resources and all of the other goodies on our Map of the world. It’s important to note the nature of behavior. More and more, we’re realizing that behavior is quite predictable. We need to constantly distinguish what is driving our behavior out of alignment and how to shift back into alignment.

Leadership Effectiveness

Desire is the first step towards leadership effectiveness. That fantastic intangible drive and passion for excellence, for being all that you can be is what makes a remarkable leader.

There are five factors, that I call SmartTribe Accelerators, which will help you assess your leadership effectiveness when you interact with others. These help you channel your drive and passion toward results: 

1. Focus: The single most important practice in ensuring you are leading effectively is focus.

2. Clarity: Being truly clear means we need to take the time to discover what we need, to articulate it clearly, and to be sure the other party understood our communication.

3. Accountability: Accountability starts at the top, and this is where many companies struggle.

4. Influence: Real influence is about empowering others.

5. Sustainable Results: Sustainability is about creating win-win agreements with ourselves and others. 

Organizational Effectiveness

First of all, if an organization is to be truly effective, it must at heart be a learning organization, a term that was coined by Peter Senge. A learning organization is a company that facilitates the ongoing education and development of its members and continuously transforms itself.

A learning organization has five main features:

1. Systems thinking: An understanding that all parts affect the whole and changes in any one part will likewise affect the whole. The best way to solve problems is to understand each problem in relation to the overall ecosystem and whole of the company.

2. Personal mastery: The commitment by the individuals at the company to the process of ongoing learning and development.

3. Mental models: Willingness to challenge internal theories, norms, behaviors, and values.

4. Shared vision: A shared vision motivates the team to learn, as it creates a common identity that creates focus and energy for learning. The most successful visions build on the individual visions of the team members overall.

5. Team learning: Teams that share their learning processes openly see the problem-solving capacity of the organization improve greatly. Open, communicative cultures will help ongoing dialogue and discussion grow faster.

A SmartTribe can exist only in a flexible culture where learning and communication are consistent.

Mission, Vision and Values

Too often we walk into a company and find wordy mission statements moldering on the wall.

When the mission, vision and values are stale, or not aligned, or not communicated in an enticing way, it not only does not activate the reward network, it activates the pain network. People feel a lack of belonging, they feel low social status in comparison with others who work for organizations that are alive and aligned, they may feel betrayed if there is a conflict between what they signed up for and what is happening or between a stated value and reality.

Flat or misaligned mission, vision and values don’t just fail to inspire. They hurt. This becomes extremely apparent when there is a crisis. If the individuals aren’t compelled and vested in the mission of the company, when a crisis occurs, they won’t feel compelled to push through.

It’s essential that our team lives our company’s mission, vision, and values, which means leadership must model them and reinforce them constantly. If the behaviors of an organization’s leaders are not aligned with its values, you’ll often first see anger and resentment, and then apathy in team members.

We find some people may not be able to become profoundly aligned with other people, but they can and will become profoundly aligned with a potent mission, vision, and values.

Crises aren’t always inevitable. Leaders must empower our teams to push through each crisis and this empowerment is based on trust. If the team trusts you as their leader, have been provided the tools, and they trust themselves to push through, the crisis that may not have been avoidable won’t be crippling.

How are you empowering your team to move through times of crisis?

Show Notes:

1.    Harvard Business Review: Help Your Team Through Times of Crisis: https://hbr.org/tip/2016/09/help-your-team-through-times-of-crisis

2.    Power Your Tribe graphic – How Humans Experience the World and Make Meaning

3.    SmartTribes graphic: Four Factors of Sustainable SmartTribes

4.    SmartTribes graphic: The Five SmartTribe Accelerators

5.    Peter Senge, Learning Organization Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Senge

6.    Take our SmartTribes Leadership Assessment

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You may be familiar with the Chinese finger trap. It’s a toy that traps the victim’s fingers (often the index fingers) in both ends of a small cylinder woven from bamboo. The initial reaction of the victim is to pull their fingers outward, but this only tightens the trap.

Resisting our experience has the same effect. We resist things, situations and people we perceive as hurtful, painful, or threatening to our safety, belonging, or mattering. Without these three key emotional experiences, we can’t shift to our Smart State and we can’t navigate our constantly changing landscape to reach self-actualization. Also, we are wired to resist what we believe will create a worse feeling for us.

Resistance is the First Step Towards Change

The origin and etymology of resist (Late Middle English) is from the Latin resistere: re- (expressing opposition) + sistere (to stand). Aha! So resistance really means to stand in opposition. What are you taking a stand against?

Let’s also take a look at the word reject, which is what we’re doing when we are resisting our Present State. The origin and etymology of reject (Late Middle English) is from the Latin verb rejacere: re- (meaning back) + jacere (to throw). Reject means to throw back or throw against. This stance isn’t just in opposition, it is opposing by attack. Yikes, this is even worse than resisting.

Resistance isn’t necessarily bad. It’s often simply the first step of navigating change. The goal is to move forward rather than get stuck resisting. Resistance shows that someone is engaged to a degree, which is much better than being disengaged. Don’t be surprised if resistance turns to mockery, as some people express their upset that way. As leaders, it’s essential to move your team through this stage by asking what they are resisting.

To help them identify what’s being resisted, ask them to contemplate what’s:

• Annoying about the particular change or initiative
• Dumb about the particular change or initiative
• Unreasonable about the particular change or initiative

Then we address what we can, with the agreement that they’ll try the new initiative or plan. Ultimately, they’ll find some aspect of it to be useful. Over time this process will become habitual and eventually a new standard is established. Voilà! Enjoy the afterglow, until the next change comes along.

Embrace Change and Gain Energy

The trouble with resistance is that it takes a tremendous amount of energy in the form of pushing back and rejecting. When we direct energy toward what we don’t want, it actually helps draw it toward us. For example, the more you try to pull your fingers out of the Chinese finger trap, the tighter it becomes.

You’ve likely heard the expression “what we resist persists.” Look at what you’ve resisted. Did they stick around in your life longer than you would’ve liked?

Resistance merely stabilizes your Present State. Whatever we focus on, we fuel. When we resist the emotion, we make it stronger.

Let’s consider the resistance vs consent path...

Once we consent to resistance, we are ready to transform resistance.

Show Notes:

1.    Image of Resistance vs Consent path

2.    Infographic: Safety, Belonging, Mattering

3.    SmartTribes graphic – Critter State, Smart State

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Are your team members highly accountable? 

Do they have a “Thank God It’s Monday” attitude? 

Do they take tons of initiative? 

If not, you’ve likely got Crushed Culture. 

It’s a disease. And it’s going to become an epidemic if we don’t do something about it. Evidence: three companies I used to love now have Crushed Culture: Lenscrafters, Hilton hotels, and even at times (gasp) JetBlue. 

It’s spreading. 

According to the recent Gallup poll on employee engagement: 

“Seventy-one percent of American workers are ‘not engaged’ or ‘actively disengaged’ in their work, meaning they are emotionally disconnected from their workplaces and are less likely to be productive. This trend remained relatively stable throughout 2011.” 

What? This trend has remained relatively stable. Wow. 

Does this concern you? 

A lot? 

And don’t think Crushed Culture symptoms are in the rank and file alone. 

“Our team is full of order takers.” 

“Why do we have so little accountability around here?” 

“We’re going through a lot of change. Why don’t our people embrace it?” 

These are but a few of the most common complaints and concerns I often hear from the C Suite. And I’ve been listening for a long time—almost 30 years. Employee disengagement, or Crushed Culture, has spread to the C Suite too. 

Four Steps to Cure Crushed Culture: 

Step 1: Emotional Equity is greater than Financial Equity. We all know what financial equity is—money—stock, comp packages, golden handcuffs. All the things we think will make people loyal to a company and keep them engaged. But this no longer works, as Gallup proves, and especially with Millennials. Nope, they, like the rest of us, want to feel like we’re part of something bigger, like we’re on a glorious mission, like our work matters, like we’ll leave the world just a little better than we found it, and we want to achieve that (in part) during our work hours. 

Here’s the formula: 

Put energy into someone by explaining why your company is doing what it is doing, what your mission, vision, and values really mean, mentor them, talk challenges out with them, pay attention to them and you’ll start to build emotional equity. That equity will now give you access to their heart, mind, Rolodex, idle thought cycles. Now they’re thinking about how to help the company innovate better, solve a specific problem, etc. as they shower and commute and whatever. That access to a person’s additional resources will enable you to influence outcomes more effectively. Now you have a shared cause, you’re on the same team, you’re safe and you belong together. It’s emotional. 

Step 2: Stop The Whining. The C suite, management, staff, everyone needs to get off what I call the Tension Triangle. This is where people bounce from victim to rescuer to persecutor. Stephen Karpman, MD, first created this as the Dreaded Drama Triangle or DDT. The DDT is comprised of three roles: Victim (the role where someone is “doing” something to them), Rescuer (who tries to remove the Victim’s suffering, often without being asked), and Persecutor (which the Victim blames for their suffering, yet the Persecutor is often feeling victimized too). David Emerald has extended this triangle, and I have extended it further. The net-net is Victims are complaining because they want something—so we help them shift to be an Outcome Creator. The Rescuer is just trying to end the suffering, so we help them become an Insight Creator by asking the right questions so the Victim can get what they need by themselves. The Persecutor is usually frustrated by trying to make things happen, so we help them become an Action Creator. Once everyone is trained in shifting their most prevalent role to a healthy alternative, the whining ends. Now that’s empowerment. 

Victim becomes Outcome Creator 

Rescuer becomes Insight Creator 

Persecutor becomes Action Creator 

Step 3: Invest ONLY for ROI. Training your team is expensive. So only do what matters. Every person in your company needs to be trained in Problem to Outcome (to stop the Whining), Leadership Effectiveness (so they become leaders in their own right), Influencing Outcomes and Others, Accountability, Communication, and Execution. All these be neuroscience-based to get far more bang for your buck. This training will cost you about $750-1,000 per person. If your people aren’t worth that amount, then embrace Crushed Culture. Because that’s the risk we’re talking about. 

Step 4: Career Path—or Exit Strategy. Dave Peacock, President of Anheuser-Busch recently shared their refreshing approach to team member reviews. Each team member knows exactly where they stand based on the number plus letter they receive through their on-going review process. If you’re a 4A, you are such a corporate asset that your boss is obligated to promote you in a year. 4Bs must be promoted within 2 years. 3As need to be tested in a different role before they’re moved up. 3B means you’re in the right job at the right time. 2s are new in a position—it’s too early to judge. 1As are put on a recovery plan, 1Bs need to exit the company. We recommend to our clients that a team member should know their next 2 potential promotions, and what exactly they need to do to earn them. Are they loyal and engaged? Oh yes. 

So the harsh reality is that we, the leaders, created Crushed Culture. Now we need to fix it. Here is what I’ll do to help: 

Number 1) I’ll lay out the neuroscience processes you need to do to help cure your Crushed Culture in record time. Keep listening to this podcast so you don’t miss any. 

Number 2) I’ll give a 30-minute strategy session (gratis, of course) to 3 of you. We’ll work on curing your Crushed Culture. Go to my website, www.smarttribesinstitute.com to request a session. 

Together we'll cure Crushed Culture... one company at a time. 

Show Notes

• DDT (Dreaded Drama Triangle): http://www.karpmandramatriangle.com/pdf/thenewdramatriangles.pdf  
• Tension to Empowerment chart  
• SmartTribes Institute Strategy Session Request Form: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/strategy-session/  

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So I sent a FedEx letter.

Then I sent another.

Then I started calling.

Then I sent another FedEx, and called some more. Finally, after 7 FedExs and 12 phone calls, Steve’s assistant said he wanted to talk with me.

“You keep sending FedExs and calling. So let’s end it. What do you want?” Steve said, with his characteristic charm.

“Five minutes of your time. I really admire your accomplishments and as a young CEO I have a few questions no one else can answer.”

“Bring a timer.”

“I will. Oh—and thanks.”

He had already hung up.

My surface agenda was to get 5 minutes of advice, watch how Steve’s mind worked, bask in his brilliance, then have a breakthrough.

My subterranean agenda was to find hope again. It was the early 1990’s and I’d left my engineering post at Microsoft. I was depressed and wanted to know why we weren’t really changing the world as fast and as well as we could. Windows hadn’t deeply changed people, hadn’t deeply helped. Wasn’t technology supposed to do that? All I saw were the limitations of software, hardware, peripherals. I’d left feeling frustrated after years of 12-14 hour days pounding code that refused to become bug free.

Remember those chunky white metal kitchen timers from your childhood? The ones with the dial and the ticka ticka ticka sound and the “bing!” ringer? Two weeks later, timer in hand, I shaked Steve’s hand and set the dial for 5 minutes. We’re at a dark conference table at NeXT. He is slouching at the head of the table, to my right. Ticka ticka ticka.

I won’t bore you with the questions I asked, they were mere prompts to get Steve talking. What I do want you to know is that during this conversation, which was almost 18 years ago, Steve shared his vision of the future.

And it was glorious. He described a world where our computers were so seamlessly integrated into our lives that everything we needed was easily accessible. He described the iPod, iPad, iPhone nearly 2 decades before they hit the market. I watched how his brain moved—without limitation—from what might enhance a customer’s life, to what that would mean to them and how they would benefit, to how this would change the world.

He didn’t question that whatever he envisioned could, and would, be created. He didn’t agonize over whether current limitations would hold him back.

I could feel my brain expanding, it felt so big around Steve, so open and limitless. I was tracking him, following his twists, turns, expansions. I felt so smart around him, and it was glorious and freeing and…

Ticka ticka ticka ding! My five minutes was up. I rose to leave, bowing a little as I backed away.

“I’m not done with you yet. Sit down.”

And zoom! We were back in brain expansion mode immediately, flying into the future, the wind blowing our hair, everything possible, everything important. And we needed to create it. It was our destiny.

Forty five minutes later Steve released me. Sitting in my overheated car in the sunny Redwood City parking lot, my head bursting with the remarkable, complex, complete vision of Steve Jobs in my head, I made a commitment.

I would no longer see barricades. Stumbling blocks would now be seen as stepping stones to something better, or something to crawl over or walk around. Previous limitations would now be a mere triviality, at worst a slight inconvenience. There were insanely great things to create and we were here to create them and that’s all there was to it. All thoughts to the contrary were irrelevant.

That’s how I still live today.

Want to meet your “Steve”?

3 Steps To Get A Meeting With Any VIP:

1) Find out what causes they care about. Write a ½ to 1 page genuine letter about their specific accomplishments you admire. Offer five hours donation of your time to their favorite non-profit for five minutes of their time (request a meeting in person versus via phone).

2) Send your letter via FedEx. Call to ensure it was received and bond with their Executive Assistant. Only call first thing in AM or last thing in PM. They’re more likely to answer then.

3) Repeat step 2 until you get a meeting. If for some reason this doesn’t work, give the letter to them by hand at an event they are speaking at. Then repeat step 2 until you get a meeting.

In 30 years in business the approach above has always worked for me. The key is the letter. Be authentic, heartfelt, compelling. Care. Make it a work of art.

Years later after my father had died from pancreatic cancer and my uncle Ed then had it, my mother asked me to call Steve’s office to compare his treatment to my uncle’s—perhaps we could improve Ed’s odds. The woman who answered in Steve’s office hesitated for a moment, looking up my name, I suppose. Then we talked through Steve’s versus Ed’s situation. Unfortunately the news wasn’t good—Ed’s cancer was more aggressive. He died six months later.

Thanks Steve for bringing back my faith in technology, in innovation, in possibility.

Oh—and sorry I stalked you.

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In my coaching practice, I constantly help clients navigate change. And to navigate change successfully, we need to understand all the levels in which changes occur in humans. Otherwise, your change efforts will either fail, or be superficial—and you’ll miss the awesome transformative experience you were aiming for. 

The 6 Levels Where Change Happens In Humans 

Let’s start by exploring the different levels where change happens and how you can maximize your change success and agility. This will help you understand what’s really at stake in change scenarios, and why you may not be getting change as fast as you’d like. 

The first outside level is Environment; the physical space, the emotional environment. Environment changes can be permanent: you can change offices, move offices or temporary chnages: you can take a walk, change rooms, turn the lights on or off. 

Have you ever experienced a big change: new home, new office, new organization chart…but it didn’t change anything? 

For many years, one of my friends kept moving. He’d wake up in a new city, with a new job and yet everything would still be the same, because he didn’t change himself, how he was being in life. In my leadership and culture coaching work, I often am brought in after re-organizations that didn’t fundamentally change anything… because the organization only changed at one level. 

Environment is the easiest level of change—that’s why it’s so tempting--but it doesn’t complete the story. If you are not conscious of the other levels, environmental change is not going to give you the organization or the team of your dreams. 

The next level is Behavior – maybe as a New Year’s resolution you decide to go to the gym. How long does that last? Maybe you stop eating dessert for a few weeks. That’s a behavior change. Then… a few weeks later, that tiramisu or cheesecake looks really good…. And there you go.  

Let’s say you want meetings to be run differently, or workflow to happen differently, and you make a big push, and send out a bunch of emails…and people temporarily adopt a new approach. Within a short time, though, they start slipping back to the old way of doing things because it’s safer, more familiar, that way. So we need to go deeper into the levels of change. 

The next level is Capability – groups of behaviors. Standing is one behavior, speaking is one behavior, standing and speaking in front of a room full of people is public speaking, which is a capability. We often train our team to acquire new capabilities, but without attention to the next two levels, these changes don’t stick, or they don’t help us to change the culture, the way we are being together. We must go deeper still. 

The next level is Belief – Rules, rights and wrongs, shoulds and shouldn’ts, goods and bads, cans and can’ts about the world or other people. For an organization, this means our standards, the things we hold as normal. Is it normal in your company to gossip, to complain, to engage in any kind of negativity? When we believe that our safety depends on connecting with people in these kinds of negative ways, then no matter how many communication classes we go to, no matter how many different org charts or desk configurations we try out, ultimately we’re still going to spiral into negativity. Which leads us to… 

The next level, which is Identity – For a person these are just like beliefs—except they are about oneself. “I AM _blank_” (a good person, hard-working….).  For an organization, these are the values that really exist…which may or may not be the values posted on the wall. 

And finally, we reach the Core -- This is the nucleus of change. The heart and soul level of what you exist to accomplish, your purpose, it stems from your mission and your values but it’s really about how people engage together on that mission. 

How To Succeed At Organizational Change 

One of our clients had struggled with accountability in their culture. With a little digging, it became clear their past initiatives in this area had been incomplete—they hadn’t touched all six levels. Here’s what we did that worked. 

At the Core level: First we coached the CEO to communicate how accountability was key to help the organization fulfill its massive transformative purpose. 

Beliefs: He talked about how this is who we are here, together we are making a huge positive difference in the world. 

Identity: And each individual was key to fulfill this awesome purpose. We needed everyone to be a part of this, because each person contributed something unique and essential. 

Behavior: So we’ll be using some new structures to clarify, track and report on our work status to boost clarity of communication and to ensure all dependencies and contingencies were clear. 

Capability: We’d also have accountability partners to support, navigate and celebrate our wins with in this cool initiative. Along with the tools and short check-in meetings, we’d make it happen. Everyone was trained in the new approaches. 

Environment: We posted fun thematic tracking charts (racing to the finish line with a number of pit stops for check ins and laps completed for each milestone) around the various office locations so all could have visual, kinesthetic, auditory anchors. 

The result? Accountability is now considered, fun, collaborative and key to fulfilling the organization’s awesome purpose! 

The Net-Net: 

• Change happens on 6 levels—be sure to tap all of them to ensure change initiatives succeed! 
• Beliefs about the world around us, and beliefs about ourselves (our identity) must be boosted or expanded to support change. 
• Any change initiative must have a powerful positive emotional component to engage others in lasting behavioral change.

Show Notes/Resources:

The Logical Levels of Change - download the infographic

Take our free Emotional Resilience Mini-Course

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1 - Become a More Emotionally Intelligent Leader in 3 Simple Steps

2 - What Being Excluded Does to Your Brain

3 - 12 Stress Busters Happy Health People Know

4 - Reframing: A Tool That Will Empower Your Team Every Day

5 - Guarantee Work-Life Balance With These 3 Daily Actions

Resources mentioned:

VAK Anchoring

Energetic Weight

Beyond Your Brain - ROI of Mindfulness

Reframing

Distorted Thinking Decoder

Neuro Storytelling

What Being Excluded Does to Your Brain

Bradberry on Emotional Intelligence

The Emotion Wheel

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Christine is an award-winning expert in customer experience optimization and B2B marketing strategy who has helped over 100 companies across the globe generate an average of 40-50% increase in revenue and ROI.

Connect with Christine and New Business Strategies here:

Twitter: @chriscrandell

http://newbizs.com/

SmartTribesInstitute:

https://smarttribesinstitute.com/

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The VP of Finance constantly interrupts and actively prevents others from speaking in meetings. He scoffs when they share ideas or make suggestions.

A Managing Director at a financial services firm publicly trashes another Director’s new strategy, tearing it apart, without having the domain expertise to truly understand what she is saying.

The lead software engineer makes snide remarks about the product development process during team meetings. He publicly denounces the marketing team too.

What do these three have in common? They’re bullies.

Bullies are scary, shocking, embarrassing and far too often tolerated in the workplace. Why? Because we don’t want to have to deal with them, we don’t want the attack, the conflict, the discomfort. So we either pretend they aren’t wreaking havoc, or we grit our teeth and tolerate them.

It’s time to stop.

How We Let Bullies Thrive

"Paul," the COO of a consumer-packaged goods company manages the VP of Finance bully I mentioned earlier. During coaching, Paul realized how he tolerates, and even allows, this unacceptable behavior.

Here’s how Paul is enabling the bully:

• He lets inappropriate conduct occur in meetings – when Paul could stop the bully from constantly interrupting and preventing others from speaking. Paul must clarify what appropriate meeting etiquette specifically is, and ensure it is honored.
• He acts as a go-between when the bully refuses to interact with people he thinks are “stupid”– when Paul could make it clear to both parties that they need to work things out together.
• He holds his anger in and compromises his integrity – when Paul could just deal with this issue directly, modeling leadership for his team and showing them a safe, respectful, collaborative work environment is required at the company.
• He lets others vent to him about the bully — instead of creating an opportunity to let disgruntled parties communicate their grievances directly and interface with HR.

We all avoid uncomfortable human relations issues sometimes… but what is the cost? Exorbitant--as we daily give our power away, compromise our integrity, and inadvertently teach our team that bullying is acceptable.

The Surprising Truth About What Bullies Want

I have talked before about how we all crave safety, belonging and mattering. Often one of these is exactly what the bully wants – he or she is just trying to get it in an ineffective and inappropriate way. Take a guess at what each of the following bullies wants:

• Person X puts others down, makes them feel small, condescends… because inside they don’t feel they …what?
• Person Y spreads fear, rumors, negative gossip… because inside they don’t feel …what?
• Person Z talks about inequality, unfairness, how others get special treatment because inside they feel they don’t …what?

The answers are mattering, safety, and belonging. Once you uncover what a bully wants, you can start to give it to them, to begin reducing what Seth Godin calls the tantrum cycle. We can also then help shift the bully from tension to empowerment. More on this in a minute.

The Three-Step Bully Rehab Plan

There are three steps to stop bullying:

1. Identify how you are enabling it, like Paul, the COO in our example earlier.

2. End the enabling system

The bully is generally playing the persecutor role, which creates the need for a rescuer to protect the victim. Then the train has left the proverbial station and we’re zooming ahead on a ride to a place we don’t want to go. We want to shift from Problem-Focused to Outcome-Focused.

We want to quickly interrupt the pattern of persecutor-victim-rescuer and step out of the system by using an Outcome Frame. Ask the bully:

1. What would you like? (the outcome they desire that they can create and maintain)
2. What will having that do for you? (how they’ll feel and the benefits they’ll get)
3. How will you know when you have it? (proof or criteria that will be present)
4. Where, when, with whom do you want this? (timing, who else, scope)
5. What might of value you have to risk to get this? (is it ok for them to have this outcome?)
6. What are the next steps?

Ask the question “What will having that do for you” a few times, as often this is where what they really want is revealed. The Outcome Frame is a potent tool to get a person to focus on the outcome, and not the problem—it helps them get unstuck. Then you can shift to an outcome-focused pattern, where the victim/rescuer/persecutor have shifted to their positive alternative.

The Third Step in the Bully Rehab Plan is to:

-Set up a new system with healthy boundaries and behaviors (rich with safety, belonging, mattering and shifting from tension to empowerment.)

Note that if the bully is above you on the org chart, you’ll need a mentor equal or greater in stature to the bully to do the following.

Our clients love our conflict resolution process (bullies or not).

1. Set the stage – explain why you’re meeting and the outcome you want (to form a collaborative turnaround plan)
2. State observable data/behavior – this is where you describe specific behaviors that must change and examples so the bully can “step into” the past scenarios
3. Describe impact – the damage that these behaviors are doing to others/the company/the bully themselves
4. Check problem acknowledgement – do they agree that there is a problem? Do they agree this problem now must end?
5. Co-create a plan – set a time period (of 30 to 60 days) where you’ll meet weekly for 15-30 minutes to track their progress on releasing the challenging. Make the plan very specific in terms of what you need to see and when you’ll know you got the outcome you wanted (use the Outcome Frame tool to help). If the turnaround doesn’t occur, state clearly what the consequences will be (such as losing their job).
6. Check understanding – is everything clear? Anything else we need to cover? Reiterate desire for a positive resolution so the consequences can become irrelevant.
7. Build small agreements – launch the plan and commit to ending the conflict once and for all. Be sure to track it frequently and make sure all concerned see the behavior change too.

I’m thrilled to report that the Managing Director and software engineer now play well with colleagues, and the VP of Finance is in the turnaround process with positive momentum.

Try this process and let me know how it goes!

Show Notes

1.    Safety, Belonging, Mattering infographic

2.    Tantrum cycle: Seth’s Blog: https://seths.blog/2013/11/extinguishing-the-tantrum-cycle/

3.    Power Your Tribe graphic: Shifting from Problem-Focused to Outcome-Focused

4.    Outcome Frame infographic

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What do new or incoming CEOs need to know? Three key things.

1-    Secure Acceptance From The Team Overall

Successful CEOs frequently take the pulse of their culture. When you’re just starting out, it’s crucial to establish a baseline in order to:

• Gain insights into how to grow the company in a healthy, optimal way supporting core company objectives
• Improve and expand a unified company culture—and discover any silos or warring factions
• Effectively motivate team members—what truly motivates them may surprise you
• Identify the next generation of leaders—and determine who is your best investment

When we’re brought in to help a current or new CEO take the pulse of their culture, we’ll look at the company’s org chart. We’ll pick a sampling of 5% of the employee base or 15-20 people (whichever # is smaller) to interview across different departments, roles (up and down the org chart) and tenures with the company.

We’ll then ask them a series of questions including:

What is it like to work here now?

What frustrates you the most?

What motivates you the most?

How do you feel about your role and responsibilities?

If you could wave a magic wand and have the culture be any way you want, what would that be like?

How would you describe the executive team’s leadership style?

Be sure to add a number of additional questions based on what you learn from the above. When we do a Cultural Assessment, we gain tremendously valuable info that helps us:

1-    Reduce CEO direct reports by up to 50%

2-    Increase CEO and key executive strategic/high value time by 5-15 hours per week

3-    Increase annual profit per employee by up to 40%

4-    Increase gross revenue by up to 60%

5-    Shorten the sales cycle by up to 50%

6-    Increase accountability and team performance by up to 35%

Whether you do it yourself or get outside help, be sure to keep your eye on this information. Simply interviewing the team won’t move the needle. Interviewing, assessing, creating and executing a plan, and generating results is key to turn the tide to your favor.

One of the top new CEO team mistakes includes:

• Avoiding the “regular people” and only spending time with the exec team and Board. This makes them feel they aren’t safe and you don’t care. How to remedy this:

1.    Institute Town Hall meetings, where a brief company update is provided, a vision for the year and quarter is reinforced, team members are celebrated, and a 20-minute educational session is provided. Then, end with a Q&A session where anonymous questions may be submitted in advance… no topic is off limits. A culture of candor with kindness is key. Use social technologies to create increased communication and collaboration too.

2.    Remember your team needs to feel safety, belonging, mattering… continually foster this.

The other top CEO team mistake is:

• Not having a key team member assess and enroll outside help in performing a complete Cultural Assessment and then following it with a People Plan to optimize your culture.

The 2nd Key Thing a new CEO Needs to do is:

-Secure Acceptance from the Executive Team (will they follow you?)

Next, a new CEO (or existing leader wanting to optimize their impact) needs to gain acceptance from their executive team.

How: Inquiry vs Advocacy.

Ask tons of questions—focus on 5 inquiries (questions) per each tendency to advocate (give orders). You must show the executive team from the start that you don’t support a culture of order takers. You support a culture of leadership, and you create them and grow them via inquiry. Ask your executive team members individually (or get outside help if you think you’ll get more pure answers) the following questions:

What frustrates you the most? Have you tried to change this? If so, what happened?

What motivates you the most? What motivates your team the most?

If you could wave a magic wand and have the culture be any way you want, what would that be like?

What is the company’s vision? Do you feel aligned with it? Do you think the entire exec team is aligned with it and executing toward it?

What are our top 3 business priorities? What should they be?

Then, lay out or enhance the People Plan I mentioned above. You will win the hearts and minds of your team post haste. To summarize the People Plan, you’ll need:

• Individual Development Plans
• Leadership Development Programs
• Lean Training
• Accountability Structures and Rewards/Consequences

Top new CEO exec team mistakes include:

• Not getting everyone aligned and focused on the fresh new priorities asap
• Not setting up communication and accountability structures immediately
• Not focusing on culture immediately

The Third Key Thing a New CEO Needs to do is

-Secure Acceptance from the Board

How: In my Boardroom Ninja blog, I outline exactly how to manage your Board of Directors to avoid a rip tide.

Here are some tips:  Provide a format for Board reporting. You need to make your brand equal results immediately. Provide a 90-day plan with tangible deliverables, and monitor and communicate your progress every 2 weeks. Find out who the tribal leader of the Board is and establish deep rapport---and run all potentially challenging situations past them way in advance.

Top new CEO board mistakes:

• Not meeting with each board member one-on-one to find out what their biases are, their past challenges with the prior CEO, their past challenges with one another, their top issues with the current company performance

• Not communicating to the entire board in a structured manner every 2 weeks for the first 90 days. This is the make it or break it time. Overcommunicate so the Board sees you’re on top of things. Highlight concerns so they don’t feel blindsided later.

Being a new CEO, or even a CEO in a growing company can be super stressful at times. Pressure is reduced considerably when a CEO gets clear on his/her areas of strength and improvement. Every CEO must assess their degree of Focus, Directness, Accountability, Influence, Sustainability. To do so, take 5 minutes by taking the SmartTribes Leadership Assessment. Your confidential results will be emailed to you immediately.

Are you a new leader? What are your top priorities?

SHOW NOTES

1.    STI’s Culture Quick Win (see our website and link to it) or reach out to us for a Cultural Assessment

2.    Safety, Belonging, Mattering infographic

3.    IDP sample from STP 4.0

4.    #1 CEO Mistake Blog with People Plan: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinecomaford/2012/05/08/the-1-ceo-mistake-that-will-kill-your-company/#3d7dcefa18f5

5.    Boardroom Ninja Blog: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinecomaford/2012/06/04/leo-apotheker-jack-griffin-michael-woodford-beware-the-boardroom-ninja-and-prevent-being-blindsided/#6f409065c422

6.    Leadership Assessment: http://app.keysurvey.com/f/402861/2c73/

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Andy Grove: Be Gracious

Andy Grove always tried to feed me. He was that kind of man, making sure others were comfortable. He was the most gracious billionaire of the dozen or so I’ve met, and the one I’ve most wanted to emulate. When I first pitched him to invest in my venture capital fund he told me my presentation was “lucid.” That to me was a huge compliment. Later, when he introduced me to his wife, he said “this is the woman that is managing our money”—which was too generous as I managed an infinitesimal amount of his staggering net worth.

The more wealth and power he acquired, the more gracious, considerate, kind he was to me. He always met me “where I was” intellectually and asked questions that were simple, straightforward and effective. His assistant always worked with my calendar to find a mutually appropriate meeting time so I felt respected and like we were equals. That equality was a remarkable and rare experience.

Bill Gates: Be Certain

It was 1985 and Windows was being trashed in the press. It had recently been launched and was full of bugs, was a commercial disaster, and was nearly unanimously ridiculed. Bill was unfazed. He said Windows was going to be the world standard, it was just a matter of time. We just had to keep plugging away at it, people would come to embrace it, they just didn’t “get it” quite yet.

Society often implies that we need to succeed to then be confident. But Bill taught me the exact opposite: you start with certainty, with confidence and then the proof shows up. It took until 1990 for Windows to become the desktop standard. Bill kept believing and moving through all the criticism for five years. Why? Because Windows was going to be the world standard. It was just a matter of time. He was certain of it.

Larry Ellison: Be Bold

Back in the day before Oracle was the market leader, their competitor Sybase regularly ate Oracle’s proverbial lunch. Head to head on sales calls Sybase was technically superior… and yet Larry told the world he’d eat their lunch. As his team marketed and sold with bold claims of superiority Oracle got lucky: Sybase had some problems, their stock price crashed, and things started to fall apart. Larry seized the day and put Oracle on top. When one of my startups needed Oracle licenses and we couldn’t afford them I decided to be bold with him. I offered Larry stock options in my company in exchange for Oracle software. He told me I had guts to try that. I said I learned the behavior by observing him. He laughed, signed the stock document, and had his people give me six-digits worth of software. And he never even executed the stock options.

Stephen Hawking: Be Warm

I met Stephen at a White House lecture he was giving. This excerpt from my book Rules for Renegades says it all:

“Hi,” I say crouching before the seated man. He’s alone, slumped over the little desk attached to his wheelchair. “Your speech was terrific,” I tell him. “You make physics so . . . accessible. Thanks.” He smiles and shifts a little, preparing to type a reply into his speech synthesizer. Aware of the effort I say, “You needn’t respond.”

He looked up at me, into me, with deep dark eyes—no black holes here. His eyes embraced me in a down-duvet hug. And there it was: connection. I could feel his anguish, his giant, potent mind trapped in a tiny, twisted body. And right then my insecurity evaporates: I no longer care that I’m not a player, that I’ll probably never be all that important. Because my quest for success had been about being seen, about banishing the perpetual feeling of invisibility and inconsequence, about making sure I mattered. And right then, I did. I felt seen all the way through.

And I realized that this...this is a moment that I’ll remember, this very real, better-than-a-handshake moment: the touchless shake, the soulshake, of Professor Stephen Hawking.

Be Gracious. Be Certain. Be Bold. Be Warm.

Great leaders choose to lead, and they work hard to be the person that others choose to follow. They provide a vision for the future and a mission that their team believes in. They cultivate the desire to improve. Are you cultivating that intangible drive and passion for excellence, for being all that you can be? How can you cultivate the traits discussed above, not only for you but for your team members?

Show Notes:

Energetic Weight and Say What You Mean infographics

5 Ways Great Leaders Make Work Meaningful: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinecomaford/2016/04/30/5-ways-great-leaders-make-work-meaningful-for-employees/#41bc52275742

Link to RFR: https://www.amazon.com/Rules-Renegades-Money-Career-Individuality/dp/0071489754

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The results are surprising.

1-Make Better Decisions—Faster

40 = the number of hours per week that companies expect people to be strong decision-makers

3-5 = the actual number of peak decision-making hours that people report

You make better decisions when you have a chance to reflect on all aspects of what needs to be considered—and not when you have the proverbial gun to your head. As we know from meta programs (see the Show Notes for more on this topic, they are essentially the lens through which a person experiences the world), if you’re on the reflective end of the Active (take fast action)-Reflective (consider, ponder, analyze THEN decide) continuum, this is even more crucial. When you are insulated from interruptions and can control your environment you make better decisions, because your brain experiences less stress.

Speaking of stress, let’s consider the massive amount of uncertainty that exists in today’s workplace. Thanks to Harvard Medical School research we now know that 75% of people in uncertain scenarios will make decisions based on fearful assumptions—they are expecting something bad to happen. The result is decisions that are risk-mitigation and pain avoiding, with little or no strategic vision in mind. Vision isn’t possible because fear shuts down the prefrontal cortex, so we have no access to our innovative, problem solving, planning parts of our brain.

Client result:

●    300% increase in hours of peak decision-making time each week- based on training their brain in managing their emotional state.

2-Design Better Strategies and Solutions--Faster

10% share of people who do their best thinking at work

39% share of people who do their best thinking at home

In the relentless pursuit to be strategic, extract and demonstrate value, and provide optimal solutions all the time, the workplace is a continuous pressure cooker. This means the brain is often in fear and disaster prevention instead of in analysis and designing the outcomes we want. What happens on our best day? How did Einstein form strategies and solutions? When asked how he created his theory of relativity he said first he felt it, then he saw it, then he could articulate it. He let his mind wander, have visions, form connections, then he formulated the visions into something he could tangibly communicate.

Einstein also said “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of coming attractions.” We need to engage the emotional brain by seeing, hearing, feeling ourselves standing in the future when the strategy is being executed. How is it going? How are people feeling? Are they embracing it? What’s working? What’s not? Now take this learning and ask yourself what you need to adjust right now, before you lock in and launch the strategy.

As leaders the more we balance the logical (prefrontal cortex) planning part of the brain with the emotional (mammalian) area of the brain the more effective our strategies will be.

Client result:

●    200-400% increase in the quality of strategies - by giving their brains space to feel into the future before a strategy is deployed.

●    73-97% increase in ability to influence outcomes/others – due to more time to thoughtfully craft communications.

3-Increase Focus and Have More New Ideas

Ever had the feeling that something isn’t quite right, but you can’t quite put your finger on it? That’s the intuitive part of our brain, the insula, at work. This is why we often have great ideas when on vacation, or when shooting hoops or hiking in nature. Our brain is wandering, forming connections, resolving incongruencies, testing out theories. Working from home enables more vision time. Many of our most successful clients allocate one half to one full day per week (Fridays are best) for Vision Time. This is where they let their brains wander, and countless new products, strategies, alliances have resulted.

Our clients that allow Vision Time or even Vision Retreats (solo time in nature for a weekend) consistently crank out market-leading products, ideas competitors haven’t had, and innovative approaches to leverage assets and efficiencies. Give your brain a break and see the great insights that come from it.

Client results:

●    300-500% increase in innovation across the company when they first followed this process themselves, then taught their teams.

●    20-47% weekly increase in time on high value activities – due to reduced distractions and drama of the workplace

So working at home makes us faster and better!

Harvard Medical School Research: https://hbr.org/2013/09/nice-or-tough-what-engages-emp

Meta Programs blog https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinecomaford/2013/06/26/how-to-influence-anyone-any-time-anywhere-4-subconscious-secrets/#109a5cb61ec8

Make Your Team Smarter Overnight - 5 Brain-based tools: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinecomaford/2014/01/06/make-your-team-smarter-overnight-5-brain-based-tools-in-pictures-infographics/#4aa8350e460a

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Bob is the CEO of a thriving construction company. The only trouble is he works 75-hour weeks, because he “picks up the pieces” when his key leaders drop the ball. Yet he hasn’t made it clear they need to own their work. 

Sharon is the SVP Sales at a mid-sized software company. Her salespeople are highly compensated, yet continue to miss their numbers. And their compensation hasn’t been reduced. 

What do both leaders have in common? 

They’re avoiding conflict.  

How Your Brain Handles Conflict 

Many of us have been socialized or learned as adults that conflict is “bad” and in order to succeed, we should appear optimistic and positive at all times. Yet while this avoidance of conflict leads to superficial harmony, it denies what is really going on, and undermines genuine trust. 

When conflict occurs, many leaders (like Bob and Sharon) have a tendency to participate in it versus lead through it. It’s comfortable to do this, because our brains are wired to want to belong. Fear of ostracism leads to fear of conflict… but when we avoid conflict, it has a tendency to escalate . 

The state of conflict or friction in the workplace (or life) is something I call the Critter State. [explain Critter State] We dive into Critter State when we feel threatened. Any time there’s conflict, the animalistic instincts in our limbic and survival systems kick into gear. This undermines communication and teamwork — and fuels aggression. All of this leads to even more issues.  

Here’s what to do:

1. Unpack How Your Culture Creates Conflict, And Address It. 

Chances are good you’ll find:  

• Recurring low/incomplete communication, leading to mis-matched expectations and misunderstandings in general, so make sure communication is actionable, accurate (have the communication “receiver” echo back what they heard) and complete (ensure dependencies and contingencies are being considered) 
• Infrequent or incomplete feedback, leading to people not knowing if they are on or off track 
• No consequences for dropped accountability, so the pattern repeats. 

Follow the above links for brain-based tools to help in each scenario. 

2. Know Your Conflict Avoidance Strategy. 

Avoiding conflict comes in three flavors:  

• Passivity—doing nothing and hoping the problem will go away, or waiting for the actions of others to fail,  
• Overly compliant and trying not to rock the harmony boat of the relationship versus trusting that the relationship will be stronger when ideas and opinions are discussed honestly,  
• Overly controlling without including time for discussion and connection.  

While each of these strategies has a time and a place where they are effective, they will damage results, morale, and sustainability if they aren’t stopped. Through coaching Bob and Sharon came to understand their conflict avoidance pattern. Next, I needed to give them some tools to move through conflict more comfortably… 

3. Ask Open-Ended Questions to Design A Shared Outcome.

This will enable you and the other person(s) to move from the Critter State and into the prefrontal cortex (woo hoo! Now you’re in your Smart State). To design the better-feeling reality that you all want you’ll use an Outcome Frame. An Outcome Frame helps you create a strong vision of the state you want to be in. Here are the basic questions:  

• What would you like? 
• What will having that do for you? 
• How will you know when you have it? 
• When, where, and with whom would you like it? 
• What of value might you risk or lose? 
• What are your next steps? 

Use this tool to discover how your team can move forward in conflict. Have them answer these questions in order to assess where they really want to be. The Outcome Frame is a terrific conflict prevention tool as well.   

4. To Stir Up Healthy Conflict, Use A Pinata.  

Consider yourself the “Pinata Maker.” Offer potential solutions as if you were hanging up a Pinata and expecting everyone to take a hit at it. No whacks to the idea, no candy comes out. This mindset may help your team to not get too attached to an idea or solution before others have had their say. And at the same time, it’ll allow you a way to offer ideas for discussion before they are fully formed in your own mind. Work with your coach to make this collaborative solution-forming style feel safe and productive. 

Recognize that when you are willing to have direct, non-judgmental conversations about topics like low accountability, blaming behavior and boundaries, you are able to create powerful learning opportunities for your team and for yourself. Scan your relationships and identify with whom you are holding resentments, festering worries about some of their behaviors, or withholding some other information out of worry they may not like what you have to say or because you have written them off. 

Net-Net 

• Learn why your culture has conflict avoidance, and put the tools mentioned above in place to reduce it.
• Understand your conflict avoidance strategy. With this awareness you can “catch” it, become conscious of it, and choose to use our conflict navigation tools.  
• Use an Outcome Frame to set a plan for the future, and understand where your team wants to be. 
• Use a Pinata when you need to mix it up! 

How will you overcome workplace conflict by using these tools? Let’s discuss!  

SHOW NOTES

Tools to unpack cultural conflict: communication, feedback, accountability

Feedback Frame infographic

Outcome Frame infographic

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Show notes:

https://smarttribesinstitute.com/outcome-frame/

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Sue, CMO at a Midwest insurance company, receives a litany of excuses from her VP Marketing when deadlines are missed. And he continues to miss them.

Dan, VP Sales at a Silicon Valley software company, runs ragged tracking the performance of his sales people and cajoling them into using the CRM. He often donates time from his own assistant to do the sales people’s CRM data entry.

Karen, VP Talent at an East coast professional services firm, has frequent challenges with one of the firm’s top consultants. He changes agreements constantly, says he doesn’t remember promises made, and even bullies her and her team.

What do all these leaders have in common?

They’re not owning their role and the power and authority it brings. They’re not standing in their energetic weight. They're being "inappropriately small" and letting their direct reports become "inappropriately big" by default. Nature abhors a vacuum. If you don't stand in your energetic weight either someone else will, or if you're the leader, anarchy will result.

The Art Of Showing Up: Standing In Your Role And Its Weight

Energetic weight is the energy, the power, the authority that comes with a given role. Now the role has it, sure, but does the individual with that role choose to use it? Standing in one’s energetic weight is about standing up for what you believe is right, it’s about doing the right thing, it’s about treating others with respect and also drawing the line when others are not honoring who you are and what your role represents.

Too many leaders, in an attempt to “be nice,” to fit in, to be popular miss the opportunity to stand in their energetic weight. Then they wonder why they are mired in low value activities, when their team doesn't perform, when it’s hard to just get things done through other people.

Think of energetic weight like a mantle you wear, or even a crown. When you accept the responsibility of a given role, you “take on” or wear an energetic mantle of sorts. You agree to hold yourself to a higher standard than your prior role perhaps, because this new role may convey more authority, carry more responsibility (financial, larger team, etc.). This does require you to ensure your team honors your "weight".

A while back one of our junior team members made a mistake. It was a big one, and she didn't have the capacity to clean it up. So her leader had to dive in to fix things at a level she shouldn't have had to work at. This reduced the leader's energetic weight. Next, since the leader's weight had been reduced and she was now doing more Low Value Activities than she should've had to, this impacted her leader. Which is me. So now my energetic weight was reduced because I wasn't getting the support I need. Make sure your direct reports and their direct reports understand energetic weight!

What’s Your Weight?

Here’s a quick quiz to provide some insight into your energetic weight. Answer Yes or No to each:

1. I spend 70% or more of my time on High Value Activities.

2. I hold others accountable to their commitments even if they go into victim or persecutor behavior  and try to make me “the bad guy.”

3. My team knows what is expected of them and they come forth when they drop the ball—rarely do I have to mention it.

4. My peers know what to expect in our interactions, what’s OK and what’s not, and where the line is that they shouldn’t cross.

5. My supervisor/boss/leader wouldn’t dream of delegating work to me that could be given to someone more junior.

6. My team wouldn’t dream of bouncing delegated work back to me, their leader.

7. I am known as fair, direct, collaborative and a straight shooter. This is why people trust me—I don’t play games, I give others credit when due, and continuously elevate and cultivate others.

8. I see my role as a privilege and not an entitlement. I am here to serve my company’s mission, fulfill its vision, and honor its values, and make a positive contribution to its clients, partners, and team.

9. I complete the work I am able to complete that is appropriate for my role and the amount of time I dedicate to work. I don’t self-sacrifice and work excessive hours--that would reduce my work quality and also mean I either am not delegating enough or am taking on more work than is healthy or appropriate.

10. I am OK with conflict and stress. If I disagree with something I say so, in a respectful way, with the reasons why. If others try to shoot down my ideas I get curious and find out what I may have missed. If under stress I stay calm and move through it. We’re all works in progress and that’s OK. We’ll get through this together.

If you have:

0-3 Yes Answers: It’s time to get a coach or work solo on building your energetic weight. Start to uncover the stories you’re telling yourself about being seen, having power, claiming your rightful place. It may be time to rewrite them.

4-6 Yes Answers: You’re on your way. Hone your skills, expand your heart, ground your energy into the earth and be the glorious human being you are. Now comes the best part: You get to help others understand this too.

7+ Yes Answers: Optimization is your adventure now. Let’s see how mentally clear, how inwardly still, how authentic and transparent you can be. It will be of great benefit to those you have the great good fortune to work with.

So what happened to the three leaders I mentioned earlier?

Once I coached them in their energetic weight and they began to stand in it, the results were fantastic.

Sue no longer receives a litany of excuses from her VP Marketing when deadlines are missed. Because he doesn’t miss them. He understands now that this isn’t OK.

Dan no longer runs ragged tracking the performance of his sales people and cajoling them into using the CRM. They now understand that if they don’t enter the CRM data timely, they can find a job elsewhere. And his assistant now has time to implement cool sales contests to increase revenue.

Karen let the consultant prima donna go. Her team is much happier now.

How is your energetic weight? Where would you like to grow?

Show Notes:

Energetic Weight and Say What You Mean infographic

ERA Assessment: http://smarttribesinstitute.com/era 

Podcast Episode - Emotions Have Energy https://shows.acast.com/crack-the-behavior-code/episodes/emotions-have-energy

HVA/LVA tutorial

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What creates passion, loyalty, drive, peak performance and even love for one’s organization?

Motivation.

And what creates motivation?

Well, it’s not a quick answer. In this podcast, you’ll learn how to unpack the motivators beneath human behavior, to understand why we do what we do, and how to offer alternative behaviors that feel even better than the behaviors a person is currently choosing.

Before we get into tools, here’s a quick refresher on emotional intelligence. This is key because most people could use some work on one--or both--of the below paths.

For example, if a person isn’t very self-aware they may not be receptive to participating in using the below tools—you’ll need to use them on your own, then over time invite them in. If a person isn’t very socially aware, they may struggle with reading social cues or may be too wrapped up in their own experience to notice the impact their behavior has on others. So again, you’ll use the below tools on your own initially.

But first, let’s look at some research.

What Kills Motivation

Richard Clark of USC Center for Cognitive Thinking recently did some research on motivation. Here’s a high level of his findings, and I’ll help you implement them with our brain-based tools.

The net-net is people lose motivation when they fall into what Clark calls motivation traps. The 4 motivation traps are:

1) Values Mismatch: “I don’t care enough to do this” – if the project isn’t tied to something that the person values, they won’t be motivated to do it. Key is to find out what they value (hopefully your projects can be tied to your organization’s emotionally engaging core values that everyone is inspired by!), ensure the project is interesting, help them expand their identity via the project and check in on what they are believing about it.   

Humans experience change in the above 6 “levels”. Might your Environment be affecting their motivation? It is conducive to collaboration and communication, as well as bonding and connection? How are the Behaviors of others: are they helpful, supportive, goal-oriented? Do they have the Capabilities, the skills, and tools they need? I’ll jump next to Core, because if the organization’s purpose isn’t compelling you’ll want to tune it up. In my coaching work, I’ve helped hundreds of organizations create an emotionally engaging mission/purpose and vision in even the most challenging industries. Identity and Beliefs are deeply connected to Core.

2) Lack of Self-Efficacy: “I don’t think I’m able to do this” – If an employee doesn’t feel they have the capability (either skill set or available time) they will lose motivation. Often confidence is the key factor here, and clarity on the project will help a lot. With a clear spec as to what success will look like, what resources the person has access to, who they can get mentoring/have check-ins with, you can often move past this de-motivator. Also making priorities and energy allocation clear with a High Value/Low-Value process will help a great deal. These tools will help:

• HVA (High Value Activities) = tasks you are energized by, tap into your strengths, may be challenging but feel good to do, are how you add the most leverage to the company
• LVA (Low Value Activities) = tasks you know you should ditch, delegate, defer as they don’t bring great value to your organization (and they are draining, boring, something you’re not good at) or tasks you must do but need to move through them effectively
• Notice the total for both columns equals 100% (this represents their time at work).

Then help the person to prioritize or ditch, delegate, defer or reframe tasks/projects to get them re-motivated.

Next, you may have some identity work to do. Again, go back to the Logical Levels graphic and note in our book Power Your Tribe we unpack identity in great detail. See number 4 below for another tool to help here.

3) Disruptive Emotions: “I’m too upset to do this” – This is where emotional resilience comes in. Since humans are highly emotional beings it’s essential that we all become more aware of our own and the emotions of others. If someone is snared by anxiety or depression or even good old fight/flight/freeze, it’s essential that we use these tools:

Emotion Wheel – find out how they’re feeling

Meta Model – ask “what specifically is [the emotion they named] about this?”

Outcome Frame – and now ask them what they’d like, and if a lengthy Outcome Frame is inappropriate or would take too long (you’ll need 15 mins), do some quick Reframing. 

The goal is to help the person get back into their Smart State so they have more behavioral choice and emotional resilience.

4) Attribution Errors: “I don’t know what went wrong with this” – When something goes wrong and we can’t figure out why it’s deeply unsettling. This is where Quarterly or Monthly Business Reviews, project post mortems, and feedback help us understand the people, process, tools challenges that may have occurred. Also when we feel we can’t complete a task or succeed, due to an outside force. This is when it’s key to unpack what the person is believing (there we go again with beliefs!) so we can help the person get back in motion. I find attribution errors often are connected to Organismic Rights.

Here’s a quick summary:

We all have 5 basic rights as human beings:

1-The Right to Exist

2-The Right to Have Needs

3-The Right to Take Action

4-The Right to Have Consequences for Our Actions

5-The Right to Love and Be Loved

For an infographic on Org Rights, see the STI Organismic Rights graphic in the show notes., I also did a podcast on this topic.

Once we understand which Organismic Right(s) the person is struggling with, we can help them increase it to build more confidence in themselves, to feel better, to have more self-awareness and self-compassion.

The Net-Net:

• Clark found there are 4 “Motivation Traps” in the workplace
• The great news is there are brain-based tools that will help you and your team get out of these traps
• Use the above tools to re-boot motivation for yourself and others
• Key to helping someone exit these traps is to understand their emotional experience and beliefs

What will you do to motivate someone today?

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EQ = money, according to Drs. Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves (see resources below).

“The link between EQ and earnings is so direct that every point increase in EQ equals $1,300 to an annual salary. If that’s not enough, EQ accounts for 58% of performance in all types of jobs”.

Here’s how to start becoming more emotionally intelligent:

1. Figure out what you’re feeling. It’s essential to be in tune with your emotions—this is Self-Awareness.

2. Take a breather. Holding off on sending a nasty-gram until you cool down is Self-Management.

3. Consider the recipient. While you are practicing #1 or #2 above, consider what the recipient might feel upon receiving your communication. This is Social Awareness.

4. Focus on the outcome. What is the outcome you’d actually like to achieve? How would you like to make someone feel in order to empower them and move the ball forward? It’s time to craft a message that will get the result you want and make the person feel powerful, effective, enrolled, engaged, whatever positive emotion you want. This is Relationship Management.

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Disconnection possibly from yourself, from others, your purpose, your place in the grand scheme of things, and even your relationship with nature. Today we see increasing chaos, distrust, aggressiveness, and many other behavioral challenges in our world due to disconnection caused by excessive stress.

3 Ways To Cure Stress-Based Isolation

1. Come Together. 
2. Practice Compassion. 
3. Manage Your Energy During Change and Stress. 

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In every communication, in every conflict, we are subconsciously either reinforcing or begging for safety, belonging, mattering or a combination.

As a leader, and as a human, you must identify whether it is safety and or belonging and or mattering that is most important to the people in your life… and then do everything you can to satisfy that subterranean subconscious need.

Safety + belonging + mattering = TRUST.

How do you boost the experience of safety, belonging, mattering within your company? Do what my super successful clients do--deliver safety, belonging, mattering through your behavior and communication. Here are behavior examples:

• Engaging Mission, Vision, Values – draws people together for a greater cause, helps us see where we’re headed together, sets our “code of conduct” as a tribe
• Individual Development Plans – shows how we matter and belong here, how our company sees us as a long term investment (we’re safe)
• Cultural Rituals: Rock Star, High Fives, Shout Outs, Public Appreciation – reinforces mattering and tribal customs (safety, belonging)
• Transparency: Accountability Structures, Open Communication, Fairness – we’re safe, belong, matter since we know where the performance “bar” is and how to jump over it

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Here’s the counterintuitive secret of developing more executive presence: Focus, it’s that simple. You know what’s great about this secret? It’s skill based. And that means anyone can learn it. The first step - seek first to understand.

Clarity of purpose is the embodied state that allows you to effectively stay in inquiry mode and be present. Clarity of purpose is the most effective criteria for deciding what is an HVA and what is an LVA. Clarity of purpose creates focus, and focus creates executive presence.

Go to it!

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Some Resources Mentioned This Season:

• EQ Research: https://www.talentsmart.com/about/emotional-intelligence.php
• Emotion Wheel: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/emotion-wheel/
• Stress, Change, Isolation infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/stress-change-isolation/
• SBM Decoder Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/sbm-decoder/
• STI Maslow pyramid: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5lmh2lrfh2ezzgw/STI%20Maslow.jpg?dl=0
• STI Feedback Frame Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/the-feedback-frame/
• HVA/LVA Tutorial: https://www.dropbox.com/s/l8vf7300q09vhi9/HVA%20and%20LVA%20Tutorial.pdf?dl=0
• 15 Phrases That Make Leaders Look Weak infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/15-phrases-that-make-leaders-look-weak/
• Energetic Weight infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/energetic-weight/

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You’re busy growing. Let’s have a strategy session when it makes sense, which means you are…

· Committed to getting better results and finding out how awesome your performance can truly be

· Ready to make this a priority and get started in the next few months

· Allocating budget to improving the leadership, culture and results of you and your company

· Able to make the decision to move forward (or can convince the person who can)

Ready? Great! Please fill out the form here. If not, check out our resources and subscribe to receive news and more tools as they become available, and we’ll work together when the time is right.

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Since behavior is driven by beliefs and identity, how do we change--or upgrade--both?

As a neuroscience-based executive coach I’ve invested 30 years of my life studying this, and helping leaders at all levels to modify their behavior in order to get what they want, grow their businesses, have happier more productive teams and more fulfilling lives.

How do you understand your experiences?

First, we need to understand how humans have experiences, and how human experience is structured. Here’s how it works:

What we call “thinking” is actually a series of pictures, sounds, and feelings that go by at light speed in our brains and create meaning.

We see the world around us as we experience it and then we internally store these pictures, or images, to craft our experience. Think of your favorite place in your home. Chances are good you just called up a picture. We’ll call these Visuals, or Vs, in neuro-shorthand. Sometimes our brain distorts the stored picture (V) to give it a different meaning. Maybe we don’t want the intensity of a stored picture so we store it in black and white rather than color, or our brain wants to scare us from repeating a dangerous situation so we store it in lurid color.

Additionally when we have or recall an experience our brains hear sounds, which can be tones or words and can be either outside of ourselves (existing in the environment) or inside of ourselves (talking to ourselves, hearing an old soundtrack…). Think of the last time you made a mistake and internally said “I can’t believe I did that! Sheesh!” That’s an internal soundtrack. Think of the sound of a rotary phone ringing, that’s a tonal memory. We’ll call these sounds Auditory input, or As, in neuro-shorthand.

The visual and auditory experiences lead to feelings, or kinesthetic (Ks in neuro-shorthand) responses. From these Vs, As, and the generated Ks, we make meaning about the world, other people, situations and about ourselves. The decisions we make about these experiences formulate beliefs. Beliefs about ourselves are called identity.

How Does Behavior Happen?

Our beliefs about the world, others, situations and ourselves drive our behavior.

Let’s say you walk into a conference room you’ve never been in before to do a high stakes presentation, and the phone on the table rings. Your brain already probably has conference room pictures and you instantly associate that ring tone (trigger) with a stored picture of another conference room (different time, different place) where you totally rocked a presentation and your boss happened to call midway through (the ring tone) and was thrilled to hear about it. The external trigger (hearing the telephone in the conference room) created a whole series of stored internal Vs and As that lead to a whopping great positive K and the belief “My boss is awesome! I am awesome too!” So you’ve never been in that room before, and you were a little nervous, but all you know is now you feel great and you really like that phone.

The sound of the telephone in that setting is an “anchor” for you to experience confidence and create positive meaning for yourself.

Vs (image of phone in conference room) + As (ring tone) = Ks (confidence)

Leads to -> Beliefs (“My boss is awesome!”) -> Identity (“I am awesome” is a belief about self so leads to an overall confident and competent professional identity.)

What makes this really interesting is that we can create those reference experiences and associate them with something (anchor them to something—a space, a sound, a touch…) and create the meaning we would like to create.

Cool huh?

Why  Do We Repeat Behaviors--Both Bad and Good?

Every day, all day, we are having experiences, creating meaning and forming new or reinforcing old beliefs, forging a new or reinforcing our current identity. And we are doing this with the people in our lives too.

Let’s experience this. In a moment I want you to close your eyes and recall a positive memory, a time when you had a positive experience. Do this now, and open your eyes when the experience is super clear…

In your positive memory what did you see? Hear (outside or inside yourself—like yourself saying “This is awesome!”)? Feel? What did you decide (believe) about the world/others/situation? What did you decide about yourself (your identity--beliefs about yourself)?

Example: perhaps you recalled a recent team meeting:

• In it you saw [Vs] everyone gathered around the table, excited, alert, ready to roll.
• You heard people [As] making suggestions, brainstorming, making commitments. Inside you said “this is great—I love meetings like this. We’re making progress.”
• You felt [Ks] powerful, optimistic, positive.
• You believed these are the right people in the right roles.
• Your identity that you were successful, you were a good leader, you were adding value was reinforced.

Note that the Behavior can also start first—for example an external trigger (flame email, etc.) happens then you launch into a behavior routine (getting irritated OR choosing to feel compassion for the angry person) and a reward follows (feeling self-righteous OR feeling proud of your ability to not get sucked into their anger).

For the next week please start to notice what associations you have with places and people. What feelings (Ks) do you get from certain sounds (As) and certain visuals (Vs). What meaning do you make from the experience of the resulting positive or negative feeling (K+ or K-) and what does that cause you to do?

Resources Mentioned:

• VAK Anchoring Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/vak-anchoring/

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As you probably know, once we have food and shelter, but before we can seek self-actualization—the Smart State—we must feel safety, belonging and mattering. Without these three essential keys a person cannot get in their Smart State—they cannot perform, innovate, feel emotionally engaged, agree, move forward.

What Do You Crave?

Safety, belonging, and mattering are essential to your brain and your ability to perform at work, at home, and in life overall. The greater the feeling of safety, both emotional and physical so we can take risks; the greater the feeling of connection with others, or the feeling that we’re in this together and we belong together; the greater the feeling that we personally matter and make a difference and are contributing to the greater good; then the greater the success of the company, the relationship, the family, the team, the individual.

In every communication, in every conflict, we are subconsciously either reinforcing or begging for safety, belonging, mattering or a combination.

It’s neurological… it’s primal… there is nothing you can do to override or change this subterranean subconscious programming as much as you may try.

Safety means creating an environment where we can take risks and stretch and grow. Is it safe to take risks at your company?

Belonging means creating an environment where we all feel like a tight-knit tribe, we’re all equal and we’re rowing in the same direction to reach our goals. Think about gangs—where people will literally kill to stay in the tribe. That’s how powerful this stuff is.

Mattering means each of us contributes individually in a unique way. We all make a difference. We’re appreciated and publicly acknowledged. Does your company culture work this way?

As a leader, and as a human, you must identify whether it is safety and or belonging and or mattering that is most important to the people in your life… and then do everything you can to satisfy that subterranean subconscious need.

Safety + belonging + mattering = TRUST.

This means leaders must behave in ways that make employees feel that they are safe, that they belong, and that they matter. Doing so will help shift them out of their fear-driven Critter State (where all decisions are based on what they perceive will help them survive) and into their Smart State (where they can innovate, collaborate, feel emotionally engaged, and move the company forward).

This isn’t just true of employees. It’s true of clients, associates, spouses, friends, children.  At our emotional core, we all want safety, belonging and mattering. To influence anyone, we must influence emotionally.

The art (and science) of influence is more complex than can be fully explained here. However, I can share a few insights that may help you better open people up to their Smart State.

How can you get it?

How do you boost the experience of safety, belonging, mattering within your company? Do what my super successful clients do--deliver safety, belonging, mattering through your behavior and communication. Here are behavior examples:

• Engaging Mission, Vision, Values – draws people together for a greater cause, helps us see where we’re headed together, sets our “code of conduct” as a tribe
• Individual Development Plans – shows how we matter and belong here, how our company sees us as a long term investment (we’re safe)
• Cultural Rituals: Rock Star, High Fives, Shout Outs, Public Appreciation – reinforces mattering and tribal customs (safety, belonging)
• Transparency: Accountability Structures, Open Communication, Fairness – we’re safe, belong, matter since we know where the performance “bar” is and how to jump over it

Here are communication examples. These are especially helpful when a person is in their Critter State and we want to help them feel safe enough to shift out of it. For this we use three influencing phrases:

1.   “What if”: When you use this preface to an idea/suggestion, you remove ego and reduce emotion. You’re curious—not forcing a position, but scratching your head and pondering. This enables someone to brainstorm more easily with you.

2.   “I need your help”: We call this a dom-sub swap, because when the dominant person uses it, they are enrolling the subordinate person and asking them to rise up and swap roles. This is an especially effective phrase when you want a person to change their behavior or take on more responsibility.

3.   “Would it be helpful if”: When someone is stuck in their Critter State and spinning or unable to move forward, offering up a solution will help them see a possible course of action or positive outcome.

Do you see how all three reinforce safety, belonging, mattering?

Every employee, every family member, can be happier and more effective if you simply identify which of these three needs are programmed into their subconscious so powerfully that they literally crave them. Which do you crave? Which do the most important people in your life crave?

Resources Mentioned:

• SBM Decoder Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/sbm-decoder/
• STI Maslow pyramid: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5lmh2lrfh2ezzgw/STI%20Maslow.jpg?dl=0
• STI Feedback Frame Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/the-feedback-frame/

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Focus, it’s that simple. You know what’s great about this secret? It’s skill based. And that means anyone can learn it. The first step - seek first to understand.

Think about being with the worst teacher you ever had. Most likely they stood at the front of the room and lectured. One of the worst teachers I had used to spend the class time writing her outline notes on the blackboard and reading them as she wrote in a monotone voice. Seriously. She spent the entire class with her back to us. Influential? I think not. Unless you count having the class learn to hate history.

Now think of the best teacher you had. Chances are they engaged you in the subject. They asked you questions and made you think. One of my best high school teachers used to act out passages from the novels we were reading and engaged us in his mini-dramas. He risked looking like an idiot and ended up looking like a genius. We all vied to participate in his class and students who hadn’t liked English Literature before that year suddenly blossomed into literati.

Who had more executive presence, your worst teacher or your best?

I’m guessing it was the best teacher. Executive presence is not a term I would normally ascribe to teachers, but a teacher who does seriously dorky things to get their students fired up about a topic is going to be exuding purpose and passion. Their focus is on their students, calibrating their learning and understanding by the questions they ask. The worst teachers are too afraid of how they’ll appear to do anything risky. They focus on their own need to feel smart and they focus on their own content output rather than how the information is received and where the student is.

The principle is the same in leading a business.

The key is to getting on other people’s maps. It turns out that taking the time to listen and build rapport by meeting people where they are is the most influential thing you can do.

Your executive presence will increase dramatically when you focus on staying in inquiry mode even, or especially, when you think you know the answer. And no leading questions either, stay curious.

How Can You Start Leading On Purpose?

Who do you know that’s on fire? Who do you know that really embodies your ideal of leadership?

What do they stand for? I’ll bet you know immediately or can take a pretty accurate guess.

Prioritizing is a lot easier when you know what you stand for and are excited about your purpose. It’s easier to delegate when you know that you’re freeing your time for something that only you can do, your High Value-added Activities (HVAs). It’s easier to delegate also when you’re clear on the HVAs of your team. Remember, your Low Value-added Activity (LVA) is someone else’s HVA.

• What do you stand for?
• Where do you draw boundaries of what you will and will not do–how you spend your time and with whom?
• How does that contribute to fulfilling your organization’s mission, vision, and values?

Take a few moments to really answer those questions.

Clarity of purpose is the embodied state that allows you to effectively stay in inquiry mode and be present. Clarity of purpose is the most effective criteria for deciding what is an HVA and what is an LVA. Clarity of purpose creates focus, and focus creates executive presence.

Go to it!

Resources Mentioned:

• HVA/LVA Tutorial: https://www.dropbox.com/s/l8vf7300q09vhi9/HVA%20and%20LVA%20Tutorial.pdf?dl=0
• 15 Phrases That Make Leaders Look Weak infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/15-phrases-that-make-leaders-look-weak/
• Energetic Weight infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/energetic-weight/

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Respect is often defined as a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements. The key word is elicited. Our actions and the outcomes we create are directly proportional to the amount of respect we think we should have and the amount of respect we think we should receive. While you can’t control or make your boss respect you, you do have the power to work towards earning that respect based on the outcomes you achieve, your attitude and other elements that I will discuss here shortly.

When working with my executive coaching clients, the subject of respect comes up frequently. Either they are challenged with not feeling respected or they feel that they have been disrespected by an individual higher up on the organizational chart. We discuss what respect means to them, how they feel it should be demonstrated and break down what meaning they are making around their boss’ words and actions. If they are looking to stand up, stand out and earn the respect of their boss, I walk them through six proven ways that will ensure they gain and keep respect in their organization.

1. Communicate Effectively And Often: Communication ensures alignment and connection. Any challenge can be resolved with authentic heart-felt communication. When in doubt, over-communicate so that your boss knows what’s going on and everyone knows what is expected and what is needed. Concise communication raises your status, saves everyone time, and moves the ball forward. Communication creates visibility and transparency—both of which help your boss make better decisions.

2. Model Integrity: Make your word your bond. Honor confidentiality. Keep your commitments, communicate in advance if you are going to be late and always be a reliable trusted team member. Ensure that your boss doesn’t need to check in on you by consistently delivering on time and per your commitment. Walk your walk and talk your talk. Focus on details and deliver accurate work.

3. Reflect Consistently: Make time to reflect on yourself, the clients, the company so that you learn how to improve and serve others best. Identify behaviors you want to shift and seek the support you need. If things aren’t going as you want, look into how you created the breakdown. Then fix it. Lessons are when we learn once. Mistakes are when we continuously repeat the same blunder. Avoid this at all costs.

4. Be An Active Contributor: You are here to make a difference, to be of service to all you interact with, both inside and outside of your company . Be proactive, take initiative, bring solutions and never wait for someone to tell you what to do – anticipate and make a difference. Add value far beyond the scope of what you are paid for. The result? You’ll be a valued tribe member and get promoted. Again and again.

5. Continuously Learn And Raise Your Bar: Be a continuous learner. Be committed to growing and stretching into new definitions of yourself and your capabilities. Accept feedback as an opportunity to grow, and then implement the learning you have received. Get excited about what you could do and become with new skills that you take action to cultivate.

6. Be Optimistic And Energetic: Bring great energy and passion to your work. Don’t think of your position as a job, think of it as a mission, an opportunity to transform and support people who support and transform others. The result of your passion is a better world/company/experience for all. If you continuously demonstrate that making a difference in the lives of others is important and meaningful to you you’ll go far.

The key is to model the above behaviors consistently, this isn’t a “one and done” formula. Your values and your efforts will be recognized in your organization and by your boss. Remember, you can’t make someone respect you. You can make consistent effort to earn respect and at the end of the day, the person whose respect you need the most, is your own.

Resources Mentioned:

• Outcome Frame Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/outcome-frame/
• 6 Phrases For Better Communication Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/the-6-phrases-for-better-communication-skills/
• 15 Phrases That Make Leaders Look Weak: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/15-phrases-that-make-leaders-look-weak/
• STI How To Build Your SmartTribe Roadmap Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/the-smarttribe-roadmap/

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“Easy—not getting smarter.”

Bill then laid out his plan to ensure he’d always be surrounded by super smart people.

Maybe he didn’t know about myelin. 

What’s The Smarter Secret?

Let’s assume “smarter” means making better choices, getting more of what you want and less of what you don’t. Let’s assume “smarter” means learning things faster, having more “ah ha” moments, breaking through mental barriers swiftly and with deep fulfillment.

Here’s how it works.

Roughly half of your brain is made of grey matter (where neural pathways are forged and reside) and the other half is made of white matter. More on this in a moment. First it’s key to know that neurons that fire together, wire together. This means to learn something new, to set a new habit in place, repetition is required. When you practice something deeply, intentionally, and with some element struggle a neural pathway is formed. Neurons are now firing together in a new sequence, and thus are wiring together as a collective. Repeated firing signals that this neural pathway is important. Repeated firing with deep practice and either struggle or ecstasy, alerts oligodendrocytes and astrocytes that this pathway needs to be upgraded, or insulated, and the process of myelination begins.

The newly forged and repeatedly fired neural pathway is then insulated like an electrical wire wrapped in a protective coating. This pathway (grey matter) is strengthened via the myelin (white matter) insulation and it is transformed from the equivalent of dial up to broadband. Heavily myelinated neural pathways are up to 300 times faster—they’ve been optimized for speed and efficiency. They’ve also become the default behavior, as the brain will choose the most highly myelinated pathways (because clearly they are the most important). This is how we form new automatic behaviors, also known as habits or habitual behavior choices.

What Einstein Did

When Einstein’s brain was autopsied in 1984 record amounts of myelin were found. Does it mean he was smarter than most? Not necessarily. Does it mean he persevered, failed, keep pushing forward with deep focused practice? Yes.

I’ve been using the understanding of myelin and the myelination process with my executive coaching clients for the past year. The results have been remarkable:

Anxiety Removal: The COO of a $500mil consumer packaged goods company did 3 neuro-coaching sessions over a period of 6 weeks. Then I gave her myelination homework. One month later she no longer suffered debilitating anxiety. It’s still gone 6 months later. This high-functioning CEO had suffered in silence for 47 years.

Managing Emotions: A senior partner at a Fortune 100 financial services firm regularly got triggered by backstabbing and political maneuvers when dealing with some difficult partners that he couldn’t avoid. He would get highly irritated, affecting his ability to be present, collaborative, and to lead the team to the best outcome. We did 4 neuro coaching sessions on this topic, plus myelination homework. He now navigates shark-infested waters with ease, diplomacy and even a little humor.

Increased Vision and Innovation: The head of an R&D lab was stuck. He hadn’t had a good idea in ages and the pressure was on, which only made matters worse. Three months of coaching and a few weeks of myelination practice and he has now designed three new products, with one already having pre-orders exceeding $100mil.

Now you know the secret: let’s start myelinating. To myelinate properly you must do 3 things:

1. Persevere through the uncomfortable part of learning/stretching to try a new behavior

2. Do it repeatedly in intense (and short is ok) bursts. Repetition is key—myelin is living tissue: if you stop firing a pathway for 30 days the myelin will start to break down.

3. See, hear, feel yourself doing the new behavior. Really get into it. Feel the good feelings, be totally in that desired state. Remember what Einstein said: “Imagination is everything—it is the preview of coming attractions.”

Imagination results in firing, repeated firing results in myelination. Observing someone who is excellent at a behavior you want to acquire/grow also helps myelination.

Innovators and thought leaders refuse to be socialized into reasonableness—don’t you cave either!

Neuroscientists worldwide are increasingly studying myelin and its amazing impact on rapid learning, mastery, neuroplasticity.

Keep your circuits strong with deep focused practice—myelination requires quality vs quantity. I ask clients to do the myelination practice I design for them for 5 days in a row, 5 times per day, for only a few minutes each. For a gold star they can do it for 10 days. What I find in coaching some of the top performers on the planet is that forging new—or turbo charging existing—pathways that are heavily insulated (myelinated) and which then become the default behavior pathway is what matters.

What new behaviors would you like?

Resources Mentioned:

• Myelination Graphic found here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinecomaford/2014/11/07/the-truth-about-how-your-brain-gets-smarter/#3cd5aa4719bc
• Guarantee Growth: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinecomaford/2013/12/04/pleasure-profit-thrill-your-team-and-guarantee-growth-infographic/#623033eb5395
• Myelination Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/myelination-practice/

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According to the research of Dr. Fred Luskin of Stanford University, a human being has approximately 60,000 thoughts per day—and 90% of these are repetitive!

60,000. Wow.

90% repetitive. Wow. Wow. Wow.

All that mental noise... if even 10% of it were stopped, what could you create, understand, see, more clearly?

Let’s find out.

We have repetitive thoughts because we haven’t trained our minds to be still. When we do we’ll see results quickly, and when you stop your thoughts you will find all of the answers you seek.

Here are some practices I’ve shared with countless executives over the past three decades. To date, one of them has resonated with every person I’ve met. If you are the exception, let me know, and I’ll offer more practices.

All of these practices are helpful for insomnia too. Simply do them in bed, instead of staring at the ceiling, as you are lying awake.

Pre-Practice Prep

Turn off all phones/noise makers. Ensure your family/colleagues/etc. cannot disturb you. Sit up straight, whether in a chair or cross-legged. You may want to set a timer for 5 minutes. If you simply do silence practice daily for only 5 minutes you will see and feel a difference in mere days.

Practice #1: News Feed

Imagine a news feed across the bottom of a TV screen. There’s a bit of news, then some white space, then more news, and so on. Your thoughts are like the news. There’s always more! Now consider the white space between the thoughts. In Japanese, the word ma is loosely translated to mean pause--the pause between notes, the pause between breaths, the pause between sentences, the pause between thoughts.

Close your eyes. Place your inner focus on the constant stream of thoughts scrolling across the TV of your mind. See the scrolling thoughts floating in space or across a TV screen, whatever image works for you.

Don’t pay attention to the thoughts in detail. Let them scroll by. Do not cling to them or reject them. Now focus on the space between the thoughts, the ma, the pause. As you focus on the white space between the thoughts you’ll find it getting wider, longer, bigger. In time you’ll see mostly emptiness, with few if any thoughts.

Focusing on ma, pause, emptiness, is a nice practice during the day, too. Stop and notice open space as conversations pause, as music pauses. We are surrounded by pauses. That’s where some of the best stuff is. We often fill our minds and schedules out of fear of emptiness. Yet emptiness is where true peace and connectedness and happiness and love can always be found.

Practice #2: Light Shower

Close your eyes. See yourself with your inner vision. You’re sitting exactly where you are, dressed as you are. You are watching yourself. Move your focus to the top of your head. See a shower of white light pouring down over your head, covering your body gradually. Keep watching it pour over you as it covers you entirely, covers your outfit, your fingers, your face, your shoes or toes. It covers your front and back sides.

You can no longer distinguish your features, you simply see an image of you made of white light. This is the light of the Divine, the Universe, whatever term or energy resonates with you. This light is always available to you, all you need to do is remember to tune in to the light shower.

When thoughts arise, let them pass, do not cling to them or reject them. Simply focus on the light shower covering you completely. Now see it soak into every cell of your body.

This is a terrific technique to do midday if you feel tired or upset.

Practice #3: Heart Opening

Say “me” and touch your chest. If you do this a few times you’ll notice you always touch the same area. This is the position of your spiritual heart, or your heart center (or chakra).

Close your eyes. Place your inner focus on your heart center. See a rose bud there, choose whatever color you like. Now see the petals slowly unfolding in your heart center. This rose bud has an infinite amount of petals. See them unfolding as the rose gets bigger and bigger, filling up your chest. Keep focusing on the rose unfolding.

When thoughts arise, let them pass, do not cling to them or reject them. Simply focus on the rose unfolding.

Practice #4: Brain Dump

Back in the mainframe computing days a “core dump” was when the memory and all buffers were “dumped” or emptied. The result was pages and pages of gibberish as the buffers were flushed.

Doing a “core dump” of your mind can be helpful when you have a constant swirl of thoughts. Here’s how to do it:

1) Get in a quiet place where you will not be disturbed. Turn off phones/etc. Have a piece of paper and pen ready.

2) Light a candle and ask for the highest good for yourself and all beings.

3) Set a timer for 20 minutes.

4) Now start writing about any issue you are obsessing about, want to clear from your mind, want to understand or be free from, have a question about. Just write, unedited and unpunctuated. When the sheet is full, turn it over, then on upside down, on its side, etc. You will not be reading this later, so there’s no point in using more than 1 sheet of paper. The only purpose is to keep writing until the timer sounds.

5) When the time is up, either burn the paper or tear it up and flush it down the toilet. Wash your hands and change your physiology (jump up and down for a moment, roll shoulders, etc.).

Practice #5: Watch Kung Fu Panda 2

Seriously, sometimes you just need a movie to learn about the value of inner peace. Watch this one. It's fun, colorful, and teaches the importance of inner peace!

Every highly accomplished leader I know learns to stop the world and to stop their thoughts, on command. This is one of the best ways to make key decisions, to determine if a competitive action is truly a threat, to see future products, to assess the current state of a person who is struggling.

How do you stop the world?

Resources Mentioned:

• Beyond Your Brain Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/beyond-your-brain-infographic/
• Dr. Fred Luskin: https://vpge.stanford.edu/people/fred-luskin
• Link to previous podcast episode: Why Mindfulness & Meditation Matter In Leadership: https://shows.acast.com/crack-the-behavior-code/episodes/mindfulness-meditation-leadership

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Would you get it?

Everywhere I go people tell me they’re not getting enough sleep. As an executive coach it’s key that I help my clients perform at their peak—sleep deprived or not. Recently I met with Dr. Jessica Payne, Cognitive Neuroscientist & Assistant Professor at Notre Dame. Payne specializes in sleep and how it affects stamina and our ability to perform. Here’s what I learned.

The amount of sleep you need is highly personal, and ranges between 4 and 12 hours per night, although the average is 8. Most of us fall asleep within about 20 minutes. During the first part of the nightly sleep cycle is where, we get most of our Slow Wave Sleep, which is deep, physically rejuvenating, and hard to wake up from.

We need both SWS and REM for the proverbial “good night’s sleep.” Yet our REM state gets short-changed when we have to wake up too soon—and what I call REM Rip Off occurs. And this, my friends, is where the trouble begins.

What Happens When Your REM is Ripped Off?

Here are the signs of REM Rip Off: irritability, excessive focus on the negative/inability to see the positive/glass half empty/general crabbiness and less ability to enjoy life.

Why? Because your Hippocampus and Anterior Cingulate Cortex (part of the Prefrontal Cortex where creativity, planning, problem solving, innovation reside) are more active during REM. These essential parts of your brain put the brakes on, and regulate, emotions. So in REM Rip Off, these parts of the brain can’t do their job very well. The result is your Amygdala becomes overactive (since the emotional brakes aren’t on) and you’re more grumpy, unhappy and prone to only remembering the negative.

A full night’s sleep improves your ability to regulate emotions. Period.

The Solution = Stamina Boosters

Here are three strategies:

1-Get 20 More Minutes Sleep

Payne suggests that adding a mere 20 minutes more sleep per night can boost performance at work 2-3 times. Wow. How can you get 20 more minutes? Go to bed earlier, sleep later, take a 20 minute power nap, or perhaps even use what she calls a “sleep proxy” (mindfulness practice/meditation, reflective walking or another offline period during restful wakefulness). A 10-20 minute nap is tremendously effective too--just be sure to stop at 20 minutes to avoid sliding into Slow Wave Sleep (where you’re in deep sleep and will feel groggy upon waking).

2-Moderate Stress

Chronic stress results in your body cranking out cortisol, which is toxic to brain cells. Excessive stress may also shrink your Hippocampus and make your Amygdala hyperactive (grrrrrr). In escalated stress we focus on negative memories too. One solution is to activate your parasympathetic system with a 5 minute visualization (check out the link in the show notes to see one our favorites) or relaxation exercise, short walk, burst of exercise, or breathing exercises. All are likely to build neural tissue.

3-Boost Positive Emotions

More positive emotions will boost your stamina too. Watching funny movies, frequent laughter, doing nice things for others, all help. Here’s a quick way to forge a positive neural pathway around gratitude through our Gratitude Process. 

Close your eyes. Focus on a blessing in your life… something you are thankful for. See an image of this blessing in your mind’s eye. Offer a silent “thank you” to the person or object of your blessing. Relax into the feeling of gratitude. Take a deep breath. Feel more gratitude.

Brain research (from UCLA) shows that six doses of feeling 30 seconds of gratitude daily (a whopping 3 minutes!) will enable your neurons to fire together and wire together around gratitude within a mere 2 weeks. This means you’ll more easily and frequently access the feeling of gratitude.

I did this process for 2 weeks and found I was internally saying “thank you” as I awoke each morning. So if you must be sleep deprived, use one of Payne’s strategies above, and bask in the benefits.

Resources Mentioned:

Vision+ Gratitude Process combined video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BPjPLWNfHk

Got Inner Peace? https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinecomaford/2012/04/04/got-inner-peace-5-ways-to-get-it-now

Beyond Your Brain Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/beyond-your-brain-infographic/

Get Horizontal Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/get-horizontal/

Dr. Jessica Payne: https://psychology.nd.edu/faculty/jessica-payne/

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…It’s also incredibly lonely.

CEOs claim the biggest leadership challenge they face in their roles is not having anyone to confide in. Given the overwhelming responsibility and pressure to appear calm for employees, to consistently deliver results and to be where the proverbial buck stops, it’s no wonder CEOs have a tendency to isolate themselves.

And it’s a problem.

The Loneliness Dilemma

According to the Harvard Business Review, half of CEOs express feelings of loneliness, 61% of which believe loneliness hinders their job performance. The office environment is intense enough… But then there’s the media.

CEOs are now seen as public figures, more so than they ever used to be. In 2015, Fast Company published an article comparing the best and worst leaders, with CEOs making both sides of the list. Then Business Insider joined the conversation and detailed the worst American CEOs of all time.

Unfortunately, technology has blurred the lines between private and public life. Feeling a strong lack of privacy contributes to deeper feelings of isolation… And that’s not good for the brain. 

Loneliness can make you sick. How? It’s been proven that social isolation affects behavior and brain operation. Isolation and loneliness trigger that fight-or-flight response, which can lead to ill health and even death. Loneliness can affect your sleep patterns, stress hormones, and even the production of white blood cells. It’s crucial to learn how to overcome these feelings of loneliness at work so you can be healthier and work more efficiently.

Here are my top 3 tips for overcoming the leadership challenge of loneliness as a CEO.

1. Join A Support Group

Support groups for CEOs are on the rise. Many of our clients find Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) and Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) to be terrific networking communities as well as support systems, as many of them are facing the same leadership challenge of loneliness.

Joining a support group will give you the safety, belonging, mattering you crave in a community of those who are similar to you, and aren’t afraid to give you some tough love and honest feedback. Forming connections with others also strongly alleviates stress. People with strong social ties live longer and have better mental health than those who feel isolated and lonely.

2. Balance Work And Home Life

As a CEO, it can be impossible to ever feel ‘done’ with work. When work begins taking over all aspects of your life, it can be difficult to have time to form crucial social connections. There are a few ways you can cultivate a balance between your work and personal life.

Leave the Office Before Dark: Leaders like Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook), Spencer Rascoff (Zillow), and Hiroshi Lockheimer (Google) all make an effort to be home for dinner. They say it gives them more time to spend with their families and allows them to create boundaries between work and home life.

Stay Present: Do you ever find yourself not entirely present in the moment? Your mind can wander anywhere, from a business meeting to the family dinner table. Sometimes, creating a necessary balance can be as simple as staying in the moment.

3. Vulnerability Is Actually Strength

What would it look like to allow yourself to be vulnerable? To Swiss Life’s Patrick Frost, the ability to be vulnerable means not being afraid to show weakness. In fact, Frost believes weakness is important in a business setting because it fosters discussion about key problems. CEOs lead by example… Letting your team know you’re open to discussing important issues will make them feel more comfortable coming to you.

Start by being in touch with how you feel at any given time.

Allowing others into your personal world cultivates trust and respect, and is the perfect solution to loneliness. If you’re confiding in others, and letting them really see you, you’re breaking that barrier of isolation that comes with the job title.

The Net-net

It’s lonely at the top — but it doesn’t have to be. Let people in, confide in support groups, and take time to yourself to reconnect with those most important to you.

Resources mentioned:

• Harvard Business Review research: https://hbr.org/2012/02/its-time-to-acknowledge-ceo-lo
• Science Daily research: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090215151800.htm
• Emotion Wheel: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/emotion-wheel/
• Stress/Change/Isolation Infographic:https://smarttribesinstitute.com/stress-change-isolation/
• Excluded Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/what-being-excluded-does-to-your-brain/

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• “You just don’t understand.”
• “How many times do I have to repeat myself?”
• “I can’t tell if you’re distracted, or you just don’t care.”
• 
  

Whether you’re hearing these phrases or saying them, they’re all signs of ineffective listening. And ineffective listening can lead to damaged relationships, inefficient use of time and energy, and silos between key people in an organization.

The conventional advice to improving your listening skills ranges from practicing active listening, walking in someone else’s shoes, echoing back what the other person says, and paying attention to nonverbal communication (body language, facial expressions etc.).

Here are three steps to being a better listener.

Step 1: Build Rapport

By building rapport, we make the other person feel safe by giving them the experience that we are the “same as” them. The more safety you provide to another person, the more safety you provide for yourself when interacting with them.

This frees up your attention and energy to listen to what the other party is communicating. It also frees up their attention and energy to express what they are truly thinking. Rapport is about caring, not controlling or manipulating.

There are many ways to build rapport. Here are the two we suggest everyone start with:

• Physical Body Mirroring. By mirroring a person’s posture full body position you step into what it feels like to be them. So for example if someone is leaning back and has his arms crossed, you do the same. Always pause before mirroring so that changing your position isn’t rushed or abrasive.
• Keyword And Gesture Backtracking. Mirroring the words a person uses to describe their experience, and the gestures they use too furthers “same as.” If someone says, “I’d like to go the extra mile!”, while slicing the air with their hand—you can respond by gesturing similarly, and backtracking their keywords, “Yes! Let’s go the extra mile.”

(Note: this does not mean paraphrasing—which does not build rapport. Using their keywords is important.)

Step 2: Use the Meta Model

You’ll often hear people use non-specific phrases such as, “I find this task too difficult”. Often, we assume we understand what the person means by “too difficult.”

For a software programmer, “too difficult” might mean they have been asked to develop a better version of Microsoft Word by themselves. For you, “too difficult” might mean you need more time to complete a specific task. We all have our biases. Without clarifying what someone means, we can’t be effective in supporting them.

Key to clarifying what someone means, is to use what’s called the Meta Model in neurolinguistics. The Meta Model helps us see the world from the other person’s perspective, rather than our own.

The most useful Meta Model questions you can use include:

• “What specifically?”
• “How specifically?”, and
•  “In comparison to who/what, specifically?”

Given the example we discussed, you could ask the person any of the following questions:

•  “What specifically is this task, that you find too difficult?”
• “How is this task too difficult, specifically?”
•  “Too difficult in comparison to what, specifically?”

Step 3: Make It Easier For Them To Express Themselves

Listening is a two-way street.

What we say to someone can make it easier for them to express themselves and feel heard. Key is to first understand the root causes of why ineffective listening and communicating occurs: a lack of the three key emotional experiences of safety, belonging, and mattering.

1. Lack of safety. If the persons in communication do not feel safe, they’ll likely be in Critter State. This can lead to defensive behavior, aggressive interactions, and conflict avoidance. Rather than telling each other openly what they mean—a lot of their attention is directed to making sure they aren’t being harmed emotionally (or physically).

2. Lack of belonging. Without sufficient belonging, people will not care to share what they want to say. And they won’t care to listen to what others want to share either. People want to feel connected to and supported by the people they belong with (colleagues, industry peers, friends, and family).

3. Lack of mattering. If two people communicating don’t make each other feel they are important, and they matter—it’s difficult to feel heard, understood, and respected. People want to know they count, that they make a difference, and are contributing to the greater good.

Safety, belonging, and mattering are essential to your brain and your ability to perform at work, at home, and in life overall. In every communication, we are subconsciously reinforcing or reaching out for more safety, belonging, and mattering.

To truly be a great listener, we attempt to step into what it’s like to be the other person.

Try the three above steps and you’ll find your interactions will be more fun and more fulfilling too!

Resources mentioned:

• SBM Decoder Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/sbm-decoder/
• 6 Phrases For Better Communication Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/the-6-phrases-for-better-communication-skills/ 
• Connection Infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/connection-infographic/

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Who’s Special--And Thus Included?

I’m not going to talk about diversity here, as I’ve done so before. Instead, I want to urge you to look at your organization, and to notice who is being excluded and why. Sometimes it’s easiest to first look at who is included, or who’s in the “in group” (yes, just like in High School!). Ask yourself:

• Who receives the high profile assignments/projects?
• Who receives frequent public praise/is held up as an example of positive performance, attitude, etc?
• Who receives promotions?
• Who has lunch/is invited to play golf with the key leaders?

Chances are really good that you thought of a smallish group of people. And I’ll bet they all have things in common with the leaders that offer them the above benefits. We’ll call them the “in group”. That’s the “like me” cognitive bias at work, and beneath it, we’re subconsciously just trying to mitigate risk. Everyone else is the “out-group”.

Your brain has three to four times as much real estate devoted to identifying threats versus identifying opportunities and rewards. Since we are all naturally biased, there’s no need to feel ashamed of it. However, there’s a very profound business case for becoming more aware of exclusion and how it damages our performance, emotional engagement, health and happiness at work and in life overall.

Your Brain On Exclusion

You’ve been left out of a group before (think back to Junior High or High School, or the last round of promotions you weren’t part of or the special meeting/project you weren’t included in, you get the idea). You know how emotionally painful it feels. Our belonging is threatened when we are ostracized or excluded, and we dive into Critter State (fight, flight, freeze). Now our brain literally cannot function the way it does when it feels safe and is in Smart State.

When we’re excluded, our brain will release an enzyme that attacks the hippocampus, which is responsible for regulating synapses. As a result, our brain does the following:

• Reduces the field of view and focuses only on a narrow span of what it must do to survive. Myelin sheathing increases on existing neural pathways, and we are less likely to consider or try new solutions.
• Shrinks its working memory, so that it is not distracted by other ideas, bits of information, or stray thoughts. This means we can’t problem solve optimally. Think of students panicked by a pop quiz: the information is there, but they cannot access it.
• Is less creative. With less gray matter and modified synapses, we experience fewer ideas, thoughts, and information available to “bump into each other,” so our capacity to create is reduced.
• Increases cell density in the amygdala, the area of the brain responsible for fear processing and threat perception, making us more likely to be reactive rather than self-controlled.
• Is less likely to connect with others. Fight, flight, freeze, or faint is not a “sharing” type of activity. When the synapses have been modified in this way, we appear grumpy and unsociable.

Bring The “Out” Group “In”

What would change if you started including the “out-group” members more? You’d witness:

• Increased safety, belonging, and mattering
• Increased collective intelligence
• Greater innovation from diverse points of view
• Easier and more diverse recruiting
• A culture of meritocracy that creates empowerment

As leaders, we must promote everyone’s Smart State by not just hiring diverse team members but including them. If your not-like-you team members don’t feel included, they’ll end up in Critter State, where no one wins.

The Net-Net

• The brain is profoundly impacted when a person feels excluded—and the person, their performance, their emotional engagement, and the organization overall suffers as a result
• Leaders must raise their awareness to identify who’s being excluded and why---then include them
• The ROI of inclusion is high

Resources mentioned:

• What Being Excluded Does To Your Brain infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/what-being-excluded-does-to-your-brain/
• Cognitive Bias/Decision Making infographic: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/decision-making/
• Ways To Bring More Diversity To Your Organization: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinecomaford/2018/08/11/5-ways-to-bring-more-diversity-into-your-organization

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Why? Because all that change has caused your system to be overloaded with stress. And excessive stress often causes us to withdraw in order to self-soothe, to try to cope, to try to slow things down and remove further stimulus since we’re already overloaded.

But then we get new stress: the stress of disconnection.

Disconnection possibly from yourself, from others, your purpose, your place in the grand scheme of things, and even your relationship with nature. Today we see increasing chaos, distrust, aggressiveness, and many other behavioral challenges in our world due to disconnection caused by excessive stress.

And in stressful times, more than peaceful ones, we ache to be seen, heard, acknowledged in the midst of all this isolation. We ache to belong. In my leadership and culture coaching work I am seeing tremendous amounts of isolation caused by the stress of change.

What’s Happening Inside When Stress Is Happening Outside

Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that is fired when we anticipate reward or receive an unexpected reward, pleasure, or praise. But dopamine in excess is a problem. It inhibits our prefrontal cortex (PFC), which affects our ability to make good decisions, focus, solve problems, regulate our emotions and behavior and much more.

We get excess amounts of dopamine from constantly checking email, text and other alerts—and in fear and change scenarios we will often constantly check to see if we’re safe. When the PFC is inhibited we see greater irrational risk taking, obesity, aggression, addiction, schizophrenia because increased sensory stimulation and decreased cognitive stimulation (in the PFC) has occurred. It’s a big deal.

FOMO (fear of missing out) is not necessarily a bad thing. Yes, it causes us often to have that addictive response to constantly check our messages, our emails, social media, etc. However, what’s beneath it is the desire to connect. It’s the desire for warmth. It’s the desire to be seen, to be safe, to belong, and to matter. We’re actually craving oxytocin, the bonding hormone, to help us know we’re not alone.

3 Ways To Cure Stress-Based Isolation

1. Come Together. Humans are tribal. Being together with other humans is how we have survived for centuries. And yet, technology, in an attempt to bring us together has actually brought us apart. We all want to be in the ‘in-crowd’ and not in the ‘out-crowd’. Yet we are seeing more and more separation. This makes change even harder, because when times are uncertain we need one another more than ever. Here’s a tool to connect with yourself and others more effectively. We help our clients launch a number of cultural programs to bring people together.
2. Practice Compassion. When we encounter people who are angry, there is no point in judging someone who can’t reach out to others. Better to reach out and give them as much as an experience of *same as* as possible to help them re-establish their ability to connect, to bring them safety belonging and mattering, and to give them a positive experience of connection. Which just might help them choose to learn to reconnect to themselves and others throughout their life.
3. Manage Your Energy During Change and Stress. And where does your energy go in times of change? Check out this cool image. Do you see why how the stories we tell about change can affect a person’s experience? How we as leaders can actually affect a person’s physiology, neurotransmitter firing, hormones released? How awesome is this responsibility?