Inspiring Employees Through Your Story

Originally written for and published on ACHIEVE Centre for Leadership’s website

I have two teenage boys. In 2017, this means I watch a lot of superhero movies. 

The superhero movies I like best are the origin stories, like Batman Begins or Antman, where the protagonist goes from being a relatively normal guy to a stupendous fighting machine. It’s hard to relate to movies that are only crazy, high-powered action, but seeing a regular person become a super-duper-world-protector can be quite rousing. 

When I worked at Palliser Furniture, Human Resources had a Palliser origin story. They made it into a documentary, and it was also part of employee orientation. The documentary featured Abram DeFehr, who was dissatisfied with how he was treated at Safeway. As a result, he left his job to make wooden ladders in his basement. We saw worn B & W photographs of Abe in the first factory (a converted chicken barn), and heard a voiceover of the aging Abe himself tell us about the birth of the company. By the end of the documentary, us new recruits had watched a Russian immigrant progress from a beleaguered bottom-rung grocer to the founder of an organization with a mission. It was inspiring for us, because now, as new Palliser hires, it was our origin story.

Paul Zak, neuroeconomist at Claremont College, can explain why we identify with Abe’s narrative, and others like it. He has discovered that an engaging story – one that interests us in a hero’s tension and struggle – sparks a release of cortisol, the hormone that sustains attention in our brains. As we follow a story, our brains echo the emotions of the main characters. This is empathy. When there’s empathy, the brain creates oxytocin. The more oxytocin that’s created, the greater the chances we will mimic the behaviors of the hero after the story is finished. To put it more simply, organizational origin stories tie workers to the trajectory of the founder on a neuronal level.

Paul Smith, author of Lead with Story, and former director of market research at Procter & Gamble says, “I’m hard-pressed to think of a company that doesn’t have an interesting foundational story. But I suspect there are many that haven’t crafted and told theirs. And they’re important. People want to be part of something bigger than themselves. A nameless, faceless corporation with no real purpose, no story, is not an inspiring place to be.” 

How to Craft an Organizational Origin Story

In five years of helping people tell stories, I have found the STAR acronym, taken from behavioral interviewing, is the most practical way to help storytelling novices with the writing process. 

To use STAR, you must pick a hero, which is usually your organization’s founder. Then write about how they started the company:

S – stands for “Situation”: Describe a problem your founder faced that listeners canb relate to. Ideally, they will recognize it could happen to them or someone they know. For the Palliser story, the situation for Abram was that he worked his way into management at Safeway twice, only to be fired and then re-hired at an entry-level position. 

T – stands for “Task”: Tell your listeners what the hero’s goal was. Abram’s task was to find a career situation where he would be recognized for his hard work. 

A – stands for “Approach”: Describe how your protagonist approached the task. Abe had some experience with carpentry that he enjoyed, so he made a prototype of a stepping-stool in his basement and took it to a local department store to see if he could interest the purchasing department.

R – stands for “Result”: Explain the good things that transpired. For Abe, the quality of his work gave him so many orders that he had to leave Safeway. He soon needed to hire people to help fill those orders. Abe did not forget what it was like to be an immigrant, and now gives many newcomers to the country their first careers. 

These four elements form the basic plotline for your story, but you’ll want to add texture as well.

Add Texture

As Konstantin Stanislavski, the great Russian director states, “Generality is the enemy of all art.” The sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures of a story cause the parts of our brains responsible for sensing these things to activate, leading to a far more engaged audience. If you’re telling the story yourself, be ready to act out parts of the story. Find out what the hero would actually say, and what the reply would be as well. Also be sure to include pivotal quotes in your story. Allow your voice and body to experience the emotions of the story. This will give your story life.

What’s Your Organization’s Origin Story?

Try telling your organization’s origin story right now! Grab a writing instrument, and write out the STAR acronym. Complete the situation, task, approach, and result, and try telling it to someone. Be enthusiastic as you tell the story, and ask for feedback when you’re finished. You may have just discovered one of your best motivational tools.

How to Create a Culture Where Feedback Actually Helps

Originally written for and published on ACHIEVE Centre for Leadership’s website

Most of us struggle with giving and receiving honest and mutual feedback. In his book, “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team,” author Patrick Lencioni deftly describes how an inability or unwillingness to engage in Honest Mutual Feedback (which I’ll call “HMF”) leads to poor performance. Lencioni provides some solutions, and organizations such as Pixar, Intel and George Mason University have developed additional techniques. These tools move us beyond our normal relational efforts of connecting, affirming, and determining status. Creating a culture of HMF takes effort, but the pay-off is a motivated, self-managing, and continuously-improving team. Here are seven important steps for creating such a culture:

1. INCREASE FACE TIME – EVEN IF THE FACE IS ON PHOTOGRAPHIC PAPER 

This incredibly powerful fact about human relationships is also the simplest one. Face-to-face meetings, retreats, conferences, eating meals and drinking coffee together builds our trust in each other, leading to an increased fluency in HMF. When people aren’t in the same physical space, you can post staff member’s pictures in newsletters, on the website and around offices: People exposed to a picture of a person before meeting them rate that person as more likable upon meeting. It’s been shown that when people like each other more, they trust more, and when they trust more, they are more willing to engage in HMF.

2. MAKE HMF A PART OF YOUR COMPANY’S VALUES AND VISION

It’s a good idea to have Honest Mutual Feedback as part of your organization’s values and vision as HMF fosters a culture of adaptability and primes people to view feedback as constructive rather than negative. A commonly held vision for your organization will help unite your staff, giving them a reference point when practicing HMF.

The simplest way to get people to identify with your organization’s vision, including HMF, is to involve your team members in its creation. When this is not possible:

a. Remind people of the vision.

b. Demonstrate that those who created the vision are credible.

c. Tell success stories of people implementing values and vision (these will inspire).

d. Tell failure stories of people who didn’t adapt to the values and vision (these will teach).

When people believe in a commonly held vision, they don’t object to honest feedback – they believe it will help them achieve the goals they jointly hold. 

3. LEADERSHIP MUST MODEL

Leaders must demonstrate by inviting Honest Mutual Feedback from people of all ranks. Respond to their comments with gratitude and with questions of curiosity to help you understand them better.

4. HELP TEAMS CRAFT HMF AGREEMENTS 

Such agreements often include lines like:

a. We commit to being honest regarding our assessment of each other’s work, not overstating the problem or attacking the person.

b. We commit to not taking criticism of our work as a personal attack, rather seeing it as an opportunity for our own self-improvement.

c. We commit to being just as candid in the room as in the hallways.

d. We commit to regularly checking-in regarding the quality of our relationships with each other.

5. GIVE REGULAR, DATA-DRIVEN STATUS UPDATES. 

When people can hear and see how their actions get them closer to goals, they are energized to both work harder and exchange HMF.

6. HELP PEOPLE FEEL THAT HMF IS WORTH THE ICKY FEELINGS

Even when HMF is done perfectly, people can walk away wondering if it was worth the feelings that may still result. As a leader, you need to acknowledge these feelings and provide praise for engaging in tough but courageous conversations. It’s also helpful to remind your staff that this kind of honesty is what creates great teams. 

7. CREATE NO-AUTHORITY BRAIN TRUSTS

High ranking staff don’t always want to share everything they think with those under their direction. They know that their opinions, when combined with their authority, can stifling the thinking and expression of the staff members who hear them. High ranking staff often hold back on some of their thoughts, speaking only when they are sure there is a problem. Because of this, much of what experienced people know is lost. 

One solution is to create mentorships called Brain Trusts. A Brain Trust is a group of experienced people that staff can go to for HMF. Ensure each staff person can call together a Brain Trust where no one has any power over the person who called the meeting.

Most of us struggle with giving and receiving honest and mutual feedback. In his book, “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team,” author Patrick Lencioni deftly describes how an inability or unwillingness to engage in Honest Mutual Feedback (HMF) leads to poor performance. Lencioni provides some solutions, and organizations such as Pixar, Intel and George Mason University have developed additional techniques. These tools move us beyond our normal relational efforts of connecting, affirming, and determining status. Creating a culture of HMF takes effort, but the pay-off is a motivated, self-managing, and continuously-improving team. Here are seven important steps for creating such a culture:

1. INCREASE FACE TIME – EVEN IF THE FACE IS ON PHOTOGRAPHIC PAPER 

This incredibly powerful fact about human relationships is also the simplest one. Face-to-face meetings, retreats, conferences, eating meals and drinking coffee together builds our trust in each other, leading to an increased fluency in HMF. When people aren’t in the same physical space, you can post staff member’s pictures in newsletters, on the website and around offices: People exposed to a picture of a person before meeting them rate that person as more likable upon meeting. It’s been shown that when people like each other more, they trust more, and when they trust more, they are more willing to engage in HMF.

2. MAKE HMF A PART OF YOUR COMPANY’S VALUES AND VISION

It’s a good idea to have Honest Mutual Feedback as part of your organization’s values and vision as HMF fosters a culture of adaptability and primes people to view feedback as constructive rather than negative. A commonly held vision for your organization will help unite your staff, giving them a reference point when practicing HMF.

The simplest way to get people to identify with your organization’s vision, including HMF, is to involve your team members in its creation. When this is not possible:

a. Remind people of the vision.

b. Demonstrate that those who created the vision are credible.

c. Tell success stories of people implementing values and vision (these will inspire).

d. Tell failure stories of people who didn’t adapt to the values and vision (these will teach).

When people believe in a commonly held vision, they don’t object to honest feedback – they believe it will help them achieve the goals they jointly hold. 

3. LEADERSHIP MUST MODEL

Leaders must demonstrate by inviting Honest Mutual Feedback from people of all ranks. Respond to their comments with gratitude and with questions of curiosity to help you understand them better.

4. HELP TEAMS CRAFT HMF AGREEMENTS 

Such agreements often include lines like:

a. We commit to being honest regarding our assessment of each other’s work, not overstating the problem or attacking the person.

b. We commit to not taking criticism of our work as a personal attack, rather seeing it as an opportunity for our own self-improvement.

c. We commit to being just as candid in the room as in the hallways.

d. We commit to regularly checking-in regarding the quality of our relationships with each other.

5. GIVE REGULAR, DATA-DRIVEN STATUS UPDATES. 

When people can hear and see how their actions get them closer to goals, they are energized to both work harder and exchange HMF.

6. HELP PEOPLE FEEL THAT HMF IS WORTH THE ICKY FEELINGS

Even when HMF is done perfectly, people can walk away wondering if it was worth the feelings that may still result. As a leader, you need to acknowledge these feelings and provide praise for engaging in tough but courageous conversations. It’s also helpful to remind your staff that this kind of honesty is what creates great teams. 

7. CREATE NO-AUTHORITY BRAIN TRUSTS

High ranking staff don’t always want to share everything they think with those under their direction. They know that their opinions, when combined with their authority, can stifling the thinking and expression of the staff members who hear them. High ranking staff often hold back on some of their thoughts, speaking only when they are sure there is a problem. Because of this, much of what experienced people know is lost. 

One solution is to create mentorships called Brain Trusts. A Brain Trust is a group of experienced people that staff can go to for HMF. Ensure each staff person can call together a Brain Trust where no one has any power over the person who called the meeting.

Creating a culture of Honest Mutual Feedback is a challenging and worthwhile task. When people feel comfortable enough to practice HMF, they will help each other improve their work performance, and your organization will advance by leaps and bounds.

Leadership Strategies for Reducing Resistance

Originally written for and published as “Leadership Strategies for Taking Control,” on ACHIEVE Centre for Leadership’s website

When I started mediating, I found I was dealing with some very resistant people. I discovered firsthand that people who are angry, threatened, or scared will occasionally dig their heels in and hold on for dear life – sometimes to the point where they hurt themselves as much or more than they hurt the other party.

You’ve probably noticed that even when they’re not angry, people can be illogically resistant. You’re trying to get clients to follow instructions, those you supervise to follow your direction, and co-workers to help you, but they resist. Unless you’re a hypnotist, people simply don’t want to be told what to do.

In his book, Your Brain at Work, author David Rock says psychologists can tell us why we have such a desire for self-direction. Everyone wants their future in the hands of a trustworthy person; someone who is competent and who has their best interests at heart. Experience has taught us that there’s no one more trustworthy than ourselves. When we make a decision, it always makes sense to us.

When you tell people what to do, unless they already agree with you, questions arise for them: What if this doesn’t turn out well? Does this person have my best interests at heart? Are they competent? If this is such a good idea, why didn’t I think of it? That’s why, if they don’t fully trust you, they’ll resist you, even if they don’t have a better plan.

This drive to be self-directed manifests itself on a biological level. Paul A. Landsbergis and his research team from the SUNY Downstate Medical Centre found that people with more decision-making latitude in their jobs have lower blood pressure, even though those decisions are often more difficult. When you give someone more choice, you are improving their health.

Despite this concept, and no matter what your job is, you will always have to ask people to do things. As a mediator, however, I discovered that the more control I gave people, the less they resisted me. I soon discovered the same principle applied to my working life, particularly with co-workers, those I supervise, and clients. Here are my big tips for when you’re trying to get people to do something: first, you must ask them what they think should be done:

• If their solution isn’t great, but still permissible, let them do it. Their buy-in is usually worth it.
• If their solution is not allowed, explain why and lay out some options you can live with.
• If 90% of your message is that they have to do exactly what you say, begin by talking about the 10% where they do have choice.
• When you feel the way forward is obvious, still ask them what they think first. Most of the time they will give you the obvious answer, but feel they came upon the solution themselves.

GIVE OPTIONS, BUT DON’T CREATE OVERCHOICE

You can’t go overboard with giving choice. When the options seem to be equally appealing, the chooser doesn’t have a general preference, or if they are relatively unfamiliar with the choices, options can confuse them. 

In his classic, Future Shock, Alvin Toffler calls this concept overchoice. You experience overchoice when a sales person shows you so many vehicles that you end up buying nothing. You’re either confused, or end up making an emotional decision: you buy the one with the nicest label, the most buttons, or the red one. After all, you’ve always liked red. 

Overchoice happens because decision making is a complicated process – you know that to do it correctly, you should weigh each option against the others. Each additional option weighed against the others multiplies the work. It doesn’t take long before you are overwhelmed and you switch back to your default settings.

That’s why experts like Avni Shah, Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Toronto, plots choice vs. resistance on a u-shaped graph, with too many choices leading to almost as much resistance as when there is no choice.

Because of Shah’s findings, I try not to offer too many choices to whoever I may be dealing with. Rather, I try to offer two, three, or at most, five options.

I used to make sure these options were equal in my eyes, but I found that wasn’t necessary. Sometimes, the fact that the choices are not equal makes the chooser’s job easier, and they’re fine with this. At other times, what I perceive as a poor option for the chooser turns out to be the best one for them from their perspective. This also allows me to accomplish more of my agenda. When there’s an option that doesn’t work as well from my end, I leave it out. If it’s not as good an option for me, why complicate things by including it?
I have to be careful, however, because sometimes the omission of a certain option is a glaring one for the chooser, and they are left unsatisfied. If that’s the case and the omitted option is okay with me, I add it back in.

Giving people a few good options has significantly aided my conversations. When I do my homework by thinking of good options beforehand, conversations that used to be clunky are now fluid and quick.

Sometimes I worry that focusing on options that are better for me is manipulative, but I’ve found that it usually just makes life easier for everyone. If I’m worried about having too much influence in the conversation, I can present people with a broader array of options – but still limit the amount of options to three or five.

Guidance for Managing Your Team’s Emotional Climate

Originally written for and published on ACHIEVE Centre for Leadership’s website

Great teams start with great leaders who give their team clarity of purpose, use intrinsic motivation as a primary motivator, and consider people’s personal work styles. Great Leaders provide an atmosphere where people can build quality relationships and engage in meaningful work. They encourage fun, collaboration, honest mutual feedback, and hold people accountable to get stuff done.

The bedrock of these behaviours can be found in a team’s emotion norms: how team members expect each other to respond emotionally to various events. Emotion norms are so foundational that sometimes the best intervention is aimed directly at them, which is exactly what a gas plant division of Petro Canada did after a wave of accidents, some of which were fatal. Rather than remind people of their purpose, reinforce safety regulations, or provide feedback, they made a small tweak in the emotion norms of their team. They sent them to a training on feelings in the workplace where facilitators taught them to look out for each other, care for each other’s emotional state, and check in with each other. If someone was not having a good day they needed to be able to say, “I don’t think I can work with you today.” It worked. Accident rates at Petro Canada significantly decreased. 

While not every team experiences fatal accidents, they all have emotion norms. Emotion norms are determined by a complex set of variables: the organization’s history, management style, the industry the workplace is involved in, the type of people attracted to the work, and the emotion styles of the individuals working together. 

AT ACHIEVE, WE’VE NOTICED THAT EMOTION NORMS ANSWER THREE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS:

 
1. How do I increase emotional warmth? Emotion norms show workers how connected they’re supposed to be when they greet people at the beginning of a shift, and how revealing they’re supposed to be when asked how they’re doing. This was the emotion norm that Petro Canada adjusted by turning up their emotional warmth. 

To increase emotional warmth, you must regularly provide space for people to know how everyone’s doing. If you’re a leader, do this by simply asking, or by establishing a daily team ‘huddle’ that includes a check-in where everyone gives an update. If an update is too impersonal – the updater talks about their work, but nothing about how they are doing – follow up with a brief personal question.
On the other hand, some teams have too much warmth, causing employees to forget their tasks as they check in with each other. If that’s the case, ask your team, “How much do we need to know about each other to help out with work issues when needed? What structures should we set in place so we reduce the amount of time talking and get to work?”

2. Can I be grumpy? At the beginning of every workday at Wal-Mart, employees huddle and do the Wal-Mart cheer. My brothers-in-law own a couple of Fatburger restaurants where team members are taught to high-five each other. Positivity and friendliness are not just encouraged, they are institutionalized. On the other side of this spectrum, when facilitating my municipality’s foremanship training program, I was confronted by workers who looked on positive feelings at work as a complete betrayal of the truth that they had been pushed around by their employer. Positive, hopeful feelings were considered naive and not to be trusted. They reminded me of the American autoworkers who anonymously sabotage cars to express their feelings of dehumanization – and encourage others to do the same.

If you need to improve the positive emotions on your team, remember that emotions are infectious: smile more often, give more compliments, and celebrate successes more frequently. Post positive comment cards on the wall and bring in happy customers to have them share how your organization’s work has helped them. Do things together as a team, including working on projects together in open spaces. People are happier when they see others throughout the day. 

Although it’s good to incorporate friendliness into the workplace, requiring employees to express positive feelings without giving room for normal human experience can lead to something called emotion exhaustion. I’m reminded of a friend who quit her job as a waitress, not because she had to smile, but because she had to smile after being yelled at in the kitchen. It’s smart to ask your employees to smile at customers, but it’s difficult for them to do that if you haven’t given them a good reason to smile. Granted, they are getting paid to work, but if you give them a reason to smile, you’ll keep them longer.

3. If I’m unhappy with something, who can I tell? We’ve talked in this blog before about Honest Mutual Feedback (HMF) and how the ability to be honest with fellow staff – and your superiors – is crucial to the success of your mission. Unfortunately, there are many workplaces where it’s normal to express dissatisfaction with a co-worker, but not with a superior. As a result, supervisors, while expected to make the most important decisions, have less knowledge than the rest of the team about what is going well and what isn’t. As a result, the leader makes ill-informed decisions, the team grumbles even more, and the leader doesn’t know what the problem is.

Part of the issue is that on some teams, the way I’m expected to interact with the leader is similar to how I’m expected to interact with my customers: smiling and serving. While this doesn’t negate the possibility of HMF, it breeds an atmosphere where HMF is unlikely to happen.

Phil Geldart, CEO of the Eagle’s Flight training organization, has a simple solution: “I can tell you in five minutes how to be a better manager. Take each of your staff out for lunch once a month, and ask them, ‘How can I lead you better?’” In the relational atmosphere of lunch, people feel safe to provide HMF up the ladder.

Give some thought to the emotion norms of your team and consider whether you want people to be warmer or colder to each other. Do you want them to be happier when relating to customers? Do people feel free to express their concerns to leaders? As Petro Canada discovered, you may find that a few tweaks change your stats for the better.

10 Strategies for Detecting and Responding to Lying

Here’s the shocking news: We may not think of ourselves as liars, but we have all lied. Most of us lie just a little bit to make others feel better, simplify explanations by omitting details, or exaggerate to get a small reward such as admiration from our peers. Our own bending of the truth (lying) makes it difficult to spot and respond positively to more serious types of lying, such as compulsive lying.

Here are 10 strategies for detecting and responding to lying:

1. LOVE TRUTH.

You may enjoy or unconsciously benefit from the way people shade the truth for you, but lie detection weakens as a result. If you want to know the whole truth and you learn to respond to people non-defensively, you will be better at recognizing what is true and what isn’t.

2. FORGET BODY LANGUAGE – FOCUS ON THE WORDS.

While body language expresses genuine emotion, we often know so little about the reason for that emotion that body language becomes an unreliable approach to lie detection. For example, you may correctly discern that your colleague is stressed. However, do you know if they are stressed because they are lying to you, because you’re asking them questions, because they are busy and your conversation is taking too long, or because they just remembered they have to pick their child up from daycare in 20 minutes? You are better off focusing on the words the person says. After all, that is where the lie happens.

3. TELL THEM YOU VALUE HONESTY.

As simple as it sounds, getting people to reflect on the value of honesty at the beginning of a conversation can prime them to be honest later.

4. OBSERVE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN DETAILS ARE QUESTIONED.

When you casually ask someone who is comfortable with you about a detail that is inconsistent with their story, they will simply explain the inconsistency. A person caught in a lie will stumble over their words, particularly if they are not very good at lying.

5. ASK OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS.

People who tend to lie are less likely to say, “I don’t know,” but instead offer an answer. Asking questions is an effective way to unmask lying. Come across as curious, not confrontational or suspicious, so they give you more information. Questions could be about:

• Things you don’t know the answer to, but could research later
• Things you know the answer to, but they don’t know that you know
• Things both of you know the answer to, but you pretend you’ve forgotten the details
• Their more fantastic stories

6. DON’T LET ON THAT YOU KNOW THEY’RE LYING.

If you notice them saying something small that you know they did not do, do not let on that you know it is a fib. Continue to ask more questions and see if they embroider the story. If they do, this gives you something more substantial to ask them about later.

7. WATCH FOR THE EVIDENCE OF PATTERNS OF DISHONESTY.

Lies from people who lie compulsively are particularly difficult to detect because they have vivid imaginations and believe their own lies. Frequently, the first hints that a person lies compulsively are that the person has many broken promises, failed relationships, or is unable to complete important tasks on time.

8. RESEARCH THE BIG ONES.

For potential lies that have serious consequences, such as those about work history or competence, connect with coworkers to compare stories. Look up all researchable facts. Even if they have been at your workplace for a long time, pull their resume and call the schools and past workplaces they listed. Check their references; you may find they’ve never been at the places they listed on their resume.

9. DO NOT CALL SOMEONE A LIAR.

No one wants to be called a liar. If you call someone a liar, they will respond defensively. Rather, note your version of the facts, what they have said, and ask them to help you make sense of the differences.

10. CHANGE THE RELATIONSHIP.

If someone continues to lie about matters of significance, be prepared to change or end the relationship. To paraphrase Nietzsche, the worst part about discovering a lie is not the lie itself, but the fact that the lie destroys trust in the liar.

In conclusion, be principled and empathetic.

In all cases, remember that most people do not set out to be bad or hurtful. Most don’t see themselves as liars, and most don’t want to damage their relationships. So, ask yourself what positive intent this person may have, and remember that you too have shaded the truth. Draw on these principles as you deal with lying and you will be off to a good start.

5 Techniques to Help Fight Focus Fatigue

I gazed at the 30 expectant faces. I opened my mouth to speak but the words weren’t there. My sentences began with “Um,” or “Uuuh…”. I had written the presentation, but it was coming out as slowly as an 8-year-old goes to bed. When I finally found the words, they weren’t quite what I wanted to say. I tried to list the companies who had been my clients in the last year and struggled to remember more than 2 out of 4 of them. I would get an idea for a joke, but my timing was too hesitant.

I looked at my wife, who was recording the presentation so I could use the video to apply for my Certified Speaking Professional designation. I cast my eyes on a man in the audience who had the ability to hire me for considerably more work if I could impress him. But it wasn’t going to happen. Not today. What’s gone wrong? I wondered. What fuzzed-out my brain?

Two days before, I had been in the same room speaking on a different topic. That speech had been very different. The concepts flowed from my brain, through my mouth, into the ears of my listeners. There was learning and laughter. I think I even made a long-term friend in the crowd.

Whether you give presentations, pour concrete, counsel addicts or discipline children, mental sharpness is necessary for work and family. I sometimes wondered why I was speaking for a living, because when I got in front of everyone, I often couldn’t find the words. Or at least I never used to.

I’ve changed. Over 20 years I’ve discovered how to achieve mental clarity. The story above happened because I took a break from using the tools that follow. Here are my five favourite tools for fighting focus fatigue and achieving mental clarity.

1. Find Focusing Habits

The tool that explains all other tools is this: know that nothing important changes quickly – but in time, everything can change. Like other forms of health, brain health is formed by creating good long-term habits. What we do every day is who we become.

2. What’s Your Brain Like on Wheat?

The reason I stood up and fumbled for words that day was because I had eaten wheat. I hadn’t had much, but there had been some wheat in all of my last three meals. Deadly for me. Perhaps it’s the same for you but you don’t know it. Dr. Sarah Myhill, the British doctor of ecological medicine, says wheat is a common cause of brain fog for some people. Even if you don’t have a wheat allergy, Myhill says your brain thrives if you take in the foods humans would have ingested from our early days in East Africa while our amazing brains were being formed: water, coconuts and fish. Eating the oil of coconuts and fish is a fast track to mental sharpness.

You can find lots of blogs on what to eat for concentration. Read one over, and the next time it’s 11:30 and lunch time is coming, note how good your concentration is. At lunch, choose a particular food. Compare how you feel at 1:30 when you’re back at work. Try this with different foods for different days. Discover what works for you.

3. Our Chaotic World Wants to Destroy Your Focus: Don’t Let It!

Here’s what I do so I can keep my head straight at all times.

Lists
I have separate lists for what I need to do today, tomorrow, this week, this month, this year, in the next five years and someday. On days when I’m not leading workshops, I look at and update each of these lists so I have my immediate and big-picture goals in front of me.

Prioritize the biggest, most difficult and most important tasks 
You’re not going to complete big, difficult tasks if you start them mid-afternoon. You need to do them first thing, when your mental clarity is at its height.

Break it down
Break down a big difficult task into smaller chunks. You probably won’t feel like doing this when you start, especially if you know the task fairly well. But for bigger tasks, it’s invaluable for maintaining focus.

Destroy interruptions
The second thing to do is to destroy interruptions. Our brain fumbles every time we switch from one task to another. It may be a small thing, but for many of us, it happens over and over all day long. Here’s how to destroy interruptions.

Email interruptions
Determine how frequently you must respond to email, whether it is every day or every hour. Close your email program, turn off your Internet, leave the office if you have to, but do not answer your email more than that often. If you fall into the trap of answering emails at whim, pull yourself away and go back to your big tasks.

Co-worker interruptions
When colleagues come with requests, triage them with the compassion and unapologetic strictness of an emergency room nurse. Tell the interrupter when you’re available, for what and how long. In other words, unless a request is an emergency, you are not available until you have dealt with your biggest tasks. So that you don’t come across as a jerk, set aside time every day to deal with requests that come in. Plan for it and it won’t be an interruption.

Don’t look at junk on the Web! 
Enough said.

4. Harness the Power of the Phone

Two weeks ago while I was at the grocery store, I took out my phone, opened a writing app, clicked on the notebook I had created when I was asked to do this blog, which I called “Sharpening Your Mental Skills,” and typed: “Write down ideas as soon as you get them.”

Because I did that, and have been doing that for a year, when I went to write this blog, the note, along with another 12 ideas and articles I had captured over the month, were all in my notebook. The most important ideas are in this blog.

5. Meditate

I began meditation as part of my research when writing our safety and mindfulness course. I practice my own form of mindfulness meditation based on my faith tradition. After three months, I’m surprised at how powerful it is. The daily practice of working out my brain through setting aside 20 minutes a day to focus my thoughts has allowed me to regain focus, whether I’m thrown off by personal attack, conflict, deadlines or difficult problems to solve.

Try a Series Of Seven-Day Focus Challenges

If you want more focus, choose a habit from this article and practice it for seven days. Note your focus before and then during the challenge. If that habit doesn’t do much for you, discard it. Try another for seven days. If one works, keep it and add another habit. When you notice your own increased mental clarity, you’ll be addicted – and better at everything you do.

Everything you do is initiated by your mind. There’s no better way to enhance not only your productivity but your quality of life than by looking after your brain. Here’s to a better life!

How to Make Your Mission Meaningful

Originally written for and published on ACHIEVE Centre for Leadership’s website

Your organization’s mission and values should provide clarity for workers, helping everyone “row in the same direction.” But sometimes they don’t.

I once worked in a human resources office with a multi-national corporation of 3,500 employees. I’ll call the company “Big International.” While Big was built on a foundation of hard work and had some good products that were prominent in the North American marketplace for a while (until they were beat out by price), there were some things happening there that disheartened me. Interestingly, what discouraged me most involved Big’s mission and values statements. My first Christmas there, we each received a copy of the statements on a classy-looking bookmark. The next Christmas, they were printed on fridge magnets – they were even painted in four-foot-high letters on the north wall of the plant for everyone to see.

One day when my team and I were trying to discern what to do with an employee who was learning too slowly, it occurred to me that our mission and values should guide us. It seemed to me that the two statements, “We will be a leader in our industry,” and “We will treat all employees with respect,” should have illuminated our problem. After all, they basically described the tension we were wrestling with, but I needed clarity. What was “We will be a leader in our industry” supposed to mean? Did we want to be number one in our market? Number two? And at what cost? Or how far did we want to take respect when it seemed to have a negative impact on cost and efficiency (and therefore our ability to lead in the industry)? Twenty years ago, as a young HR professional, I didn’t know the answers to these questions. However, it seemed like the fridge magnets, bookmarks, and wall of our plant were trying to tell us something.

I went to my immediate supervisor who was the HR manager of the plant. She said she didn’t actually know what the mission and values meant – she told me to talk to the General Manager.

When I asked the GM what the statements meant, he chuckled and said, “I don’t think anyone knows what those statements mean. Talk to the CEO.”

The CEO’s assistant said, “I think the CEO would love to answer that question. I’ll have him call you.”

He never called.

I don’t know how much time and money the CEO and his executives had spent brainstorming, writing, printing, and painting those statements, but what I learned from the whole episode was, “When the company talks about mission and values, they mean nothing and will probably be ignored by those around you.”

I suspect it wasn’t their intention to create meaningless statements – I think they wanted me to be guided by them, which was what I wanted as well. However, despite their efforts to communicate their mission and values, the message didn’t make it to our plant.

In our book, The Culture Question: How to Create a Workplace Where People Like to Work, we encourage leaders to have a conversation about mission and values at all levels of the organization, engaging people in discussion regarding what the actual values are, and what the mission of the organization is and should be. Below is an abbreviated excerpt from the book:

If you’re in a leadership role, it’s your responsibility to get everyone else talking about purpose. You can use the following questions to start the conversation:

• How is your organization making the world a better place?
• Why does your particular organization exist?
• What are you trying to achieve in the big picture?

Rather than having values that no one understands or knows how to live out, we suggest you get people talking about the values the organization already possesses:

• When your organization is at its best, what behaviours do you see?
• Which behaviours are so important that you would ask an employee to leave if they didn’t live them out?
• What ways of acting are so important that you wouldn’t apologize for them, even if a potential client or customer didn’t like them?
• How could you describe those behaviours in short statements?

If you want a mission and set of values your people can understand and follow, engage with them during the creation process, and revisit them so that they’re both updated and reinforced. When you do this, people know what your mission and values mean, and are energized to live them out, resulting in company-wide alignment.

Develop Your Culture Through Conscious Onboarding

Think back to your first day at your current job. Were you greeted at the door with fanfare and taken for lunch? Or, were you shown to your workstation and given an employee handbook? How did the way people treated you make you feel about your new workplace? How did this affect your subsequent behaviour at work?

If you’re like most employees, the messages you received during your onboarding period have affected how you feel about your workplace today. Employees draw conclusions about an organization from their first impressions of it, which are often correct. They can see if and how the company’s values are demonstrated, as well as it’s perceived mission and purpose. New employees also ingest important information about how everyone relates with each other. In short, they get a decent read on the workplace culture by watching what is happening around them.

A few years ago, I joined a new a training organization. I remember the first interaction with my new supervisor. Our conversation was ostensibly about my first assignment, during which the following became obvious:

• My supervisor expected me to work hard.
• She was going to be affirming.
• We were going to have fun.

After some time working with this training company, I realized that these principles were not at all random – they were a direct result of the culture, which was intentionally fostered by the organization. I did my very best to meet their expectations – burning my candle at both ends, yet showing up as energized as I could so I could perform for the team. I did not want to let these cheerful, affirming, fun, and hard-working people down.

This experience and others have taught me that we all quickly absorb our workplace’s culture. As leaders, the culture we build matters, because it has a profound effect on everyone’s behaviour – even our own.

Leaders are always shaping culture. In our book, The Culture Question, my fellow writers, Randy Grieser, Eric Stutzman, Wendy Loewen, and I discuss what we’ve learned from our consulting practices, our 2,400-response survey, and our own experiences at ACHIEVE. While things like onboarding and hiring practices matter, you can only onboard employees correctly if you also have supervisors who model the culture you desire and speak about. If you want to take your organization’s culture seriously, you have to start with the employees who are already working for you. You need to communicate about the role employees have, model how they ought to work together, and discuss and live out the values and mission of the organization – and you must do so all day long. That way, when a new employee joins your team, your on boarding practices will have the power to bring them into your culture quickly because your words and your actions will be congruent.

High Stakes Civility

When stakes are high and your performance matters most, you and your team will likely get stressed. But how will you treat each other? Will you all take a deep breath, make sure communication is respectful and straightforward, and motivate each other by using language that acknowledges that you’re all in it together? Or, will you become short with each other, feeling that you have less time to be polite, and causing you to become more terse with your instructions? Will your colleagues notice that the tone of your voice has changed? Will you find yourself giving more negative feedback than you normally would? Your answers matter.

Here’s why: poor interaction leads to poor performance. In a study conducted by Arieh Riskin and his colleagues, medical teams participated in a training simulation in which they had to stabilize an infant whose situation was quickly worsening. An “expert” (really a research confederate) watched them using an internet connection. Half the teams had the “neutral” expert, who talked about the importance of training using simulations, but didn’t make any comments on performance. The other half had the “uncivil” expert, who made negative comments about their performance and their institution.

These simulations were filmed and later judged by outside evaluators. On all diagnostic and procedural performance measures, evaluators rated teams working under the rude expert as performing more poorly than the ones with the neutral expert (2015). Indeed, in a 2008 study of 4,500 doctors and nurses, 71 percent said that condescending, insulting, or rude behaviour leads to medical error, and 27 percent connected it to patient death (Rosenstein & O’Daniel). Other studies determined that teams who experience negative behaviour experiment less, seek less help and/or feedback from each other, and share less information with each other. They also speak up about potential problems less frequently (Porath, 2016; Thomas & Larkin, 2018). So, it’s no wonder that becoming less polite during stressful moments worsens team performance.

There’s a simple solution to this problem, which is to teach your people to be nice. In other words, tell them to be clear, open, and respectful. When possible, have them postpone longer, more intense chats for when storms have blown over. Make sure you model this behaviour with yourself and hold your people accountable to the standards you’ve set for yourself.

This is essential advice and, if you’re not already doing this, you should be. But I’m writing this blog because those of us who have tried it know that sometimes even this is not enough. For example, when people who have an occasional tendency to be rude get stressed, their rudeness gets worse, not better. Such workers should be taught to be more respectful, but you need to put something in place so it’s not catastrophic when they don’t comply.

The solution is to intentionally structure your workplace so that people can build strong relationships with each other. When people do this, it increases the frequency of constructive team behaviours, thus improving team performance (Zak & Barraza, 2013; Zak, 2017).

It’s actually a fair bit of work to structure your workplace in this way, but it’s also quite satisfying. In fact, better relationships not only help with team performance, but significantly improve morale and retention as well. However, this doesn’t happen automatically, and there are probably things you’re doing every day that contribute to the kinds of relationships employees have with each other. That’s why in our book, The Culture Question, my co-authors and I devote a chapter to explaining what we’ve learned from our survey and experiences as consultants about how leaders can create structures in which employees relationally connect in healthy ways. While it’s impossible to elaborate on them all here, here are seven quick thoughts from the book:

1. Hire employees who will clearly be supportive team members
2. Design your office space so people can both collaborate and work in privacy
3. Establish mobile phone etiquette not only for meetings, but hallways and lunchrooms as well
4. Develop a culture where people are more likely to deliver a message in person (or at least via phone) rather than email
5. Allow for chit-chat, but, so that everyone can relax, help people understand what is too much and how to draw it to a close
6. Volunteer for community events together
7. Put effort into team-building days and staff parties

With some work, you can build teams that are so well-connected that they remain productive, even in the most stressful of times. As one of our survey participants put it, “Working towards more meaningful connections with each other takes time, but when people relate to each other on a deeper level, things fall into place.”

RESOURCES

Porath, Christine Lynne. Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2016), 22-23.

Riskin, A., Erez, A., Foulk, T. A., Kugelman, A, Gover, A., Shoris, I.,…Bamberger, P. A. “The Impact of Rudeness on Medical Team Performance: A Randomized Trial.” Pediatrics 136, no. 3 (September 2015): 487-495. doi: 10.1542/peds.2015-1385d

Rosenstein, A. H., & O’Daniel, M. “A Survey of the Impact of Disruptive Behaviors and Communication Defects on Patient Safety.” The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, 34, no. 8 (August 2008): 464-471. doi: 10.1016/s1553-7250(08)34058-6

Thomas, S., & Larkin, T. “Plasma Cortisol and Oxytocin Levels Predict Help-Seeking Intentions for Depressive Symptoms.” Psychoneuroendocrinology, 87 (January 2018): 159-165.

doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2017.10.018

Walton, G., Carr, P. B., & Howe, L. C. “Cues of Working Together Fuel Intrinsic Motivation and Can Contribute to the Solution of Collective Action Problems.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 53 (March 2014): 169-184. doi: 10.1037/e578192014-274

Do You Have to Like Your Colleagues?

Originally written for and published on ACHIEVE Centre for Leadership’s website

As a workplace mediator I’m sometimes asked, “Do I have to like the people I work with?” I’m always tempted to tell them “No” – that they just have to do their jobs – but that wouldn’t quite be true. I say this because effective communication requires positive interactions among team members.

Imagine that Adrian and Bobby work for you, and they recently had a conflict with each other. Adrian feels like it’s been resolved, but Bobby doesn’t. As a result, Bobby’s negative feelings towards the whole thing turn into a dislike for Adrian. You discuss the conflict with them individually, but don’t seem to be getting anywhere. You even attempt to resolve it by telling Bobby, “Well, you don’t have to like Adrian, you just have to respect him.” In a way, that’s a good thing because at least you’re holding Bobby to a standard of respect. However, by doing this you’re giving permission for poor team performance. 

Here’s why: like most human beings, Adrian reads what Alex Pentland, Professor at MIT, calls honest signalling (as defined in his book, Honest Signals: How they shape our world). Honest signals are ancient primate signals we send to each other that form an unconscious channel of communication. For example, during their earlier interactions when they were getting along, Bobby automatically returned Adrian’s smiles and head nods with his own, copied Adrian’s speech patterns, and as they talked, they both became animated. Now that Adrian has started to dislike Bobby, he unconsciously and automatically reversed those signals. Even if Adrian consciously noticed these changes (which he probably didn’t), there’s a good chance Adrian wouldn’t be able to articulate what’s going on. He would just instinctively “feel” a coldness and/or disconnection between him and Bobby.

This breakdown of interactions greatly impacts the team. Pentland found that when honest signals are positive, they increase the chance that the signaller will be liked, and the chances that they will be 20-30% more successful in reaching their goals when they are problem-solving. In a 2010 study, Pentland and Daniel Olguín found honest signals to be a good predictor of team performance. That’s probably because people communicate less when they feel tension, which results in fewer problems being solved and less innovations being brainstormed. Tension also means people are less likely to ask for help or warn people about upcoming concerns that might be a problem. Rather, they save their energy for things that will be a problem, meaning problems are not caught ahead of time as a result.

For leaders, there are two solutions to these issues:

1. Stop telling employees they don’t have to like each other. Encourage people to shift their focus away from what they dislike about the person, and have them concentrate on the kind of person they want to be – a useful team member, a helpful resource, and a supportive co-worker.
2. Help staff resolve conflicts. Train your team in conflict resolution and coach your leaders on how to guide others through conflict without getting caught in conflict triangles. For more on this, see our blog articles on conflict resolution, or pick up a copy of our new book, The Culture Question: How to Create a Workplace Where People Like to Work.

Naturally, you can’t force people to feel a particular way about anything, and that includes their relationships at work. However, it’s important that you steer your people away from the attitude that it doesn’t matter how they feel about each other, and towards the attitude that team issues should be resolved whenever possible.

References

• Pentland, A. (2008). Honest Signals: How they shape our world. The MIT Press, (pp. 4).
• Pentland, A., Olguín Olguín, D. (2010). Assessing Group Performance from Collective Behavior. CSCW-2010 Workshop on Collective Intelligence in Organizations: Towards a Research Agenda. Savannah, GA, USA. Retrieved from http://hd.media.mit.edu/tech-reports/TR-634.pdf