Category Archives: Psychology

Focus your Emotional Energy Purposefully

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Focus your Emotional Energy Purposefully

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

When I exited my corporate career more than thirty-five years ago, I was privileged to be regarded and respected as the Fashion Direction Manager for the Grace Bros Department Store group, one of Australia’s most senior women in retail management. This launched my global reputation as a fashion and lifestyle marketing innovator. In this exciting role, I was responsible for designing and implementing a company-wide fashion information system for apparel, accessories, homeware, merchandising, and advertising.  This required me to focus my emotional energy on researching, analyzing, and conceptualizing global fashion and lifestyle trends and adapting them to suit the Australian consumer lifestyle.

It was a dream role before the invention of the Internet, the implosion of the mass media, and the dominance of fast fashion. It required our team to focus their emotional energy on intensively researching different global and diverse media sources, including yarn, textile, couture, designer, ready-to-wear shows, trade journals, magazines, and seasonal sales data. 

Generating creative thinking

Creativity is about connecting things, and in the fashion world, the best designers make the most unlikely connections to produce novel and wondrous creations. As my professional background included graphic and fashion design and marketing, I could further hone my associative (lateral and connective) thinking skills to think creatively and critically in this role. To focus my emotional energy and attention on guiding my intuition, values, and decisions on the needs and wants of buyers, merchandisers, marketers, and customers. To emerge, diverge and converge the key connections and patterns occurring globally in the fashion world and external complex fashion systems. I also learned the importance of being customer-focused and the value and role of being empathic with customers, manufacturers’ value chains and fashion information system users.

It was an incredibly emotional, physical, and stressful role, which required me to travel overseas four times a year to stay current on the different global fashion streams.

This caused my life to melt into being at work, the gym, or the airport.

Stress-induced exhaustion and burnout

This resulted in my first profound encounter with stress-induced exhaustion and burnout, which hit me right in the face one morning when my body refused to move, and I was unable to get out of bed.

I have also noticed that many of my global coaching clients have faced a similar challenge: stress-induced exhaustion and burnout. Fortunately, they can use the coaching partnership to unearth their particular pattern and unresourceful ways of being and learn how to focus their emotional energy to disrupt, dispute, and deviate from it into a more resourceful way of being and acting. However, it has shifted the coach’s role as a healer, making it even more critical in our current environment.

Focusing emotional energy on pursuing mattering, meaning and purposeful work

This ultimately manifests as a crisis and becomes a defining moment. In my case, I made a fundamental choice to focus emotional energy on pursuing meaning, mattering, and purposeful work, which still focuses my full attention and drives me today.

It created a “crack, “or an opening and threshold for making two fundamental choices: to embark on a healing journey to become the kind of person I wanted to be and to find a way to focus my emotional energy on making the difference I wanted to make in the world. 

This enabled me to use my knowledge, experience, and skills to establish Australia’s first design management consultancy.

What is emotional energy?

Emotional energy is the catalyst that fuels creativity, invention, and innovation.

Understanding and harnessing this energy inspires and motivates individuals to explore and embrace creative and critical thinking strategies, now in partnership with AI.

When a person’s emotional energy has contracted, it results in constrained, negative, pessimistic, and even catastrophic thinking habits, which have a toxic impact on the person’s identity and emotional and physical well-being.

This means there is no space, doorway, or threshold to take on anything new, novel, or different. Nor can they imagine what might be possible to evolve, advance, or transform their personal or professional lives in an uncertain future.

Emotional energy catalyses and directs your intrinsic motivation, conviction, hope, positivity, and optimism to approach your world purposefully, meaningfully, and differently.

When you are true to your calling or purpose, you will make extra efforts to be healthier, positively impact your well-being, and improve your resilience.

How does this apply to leadership in uncertain times?

“I think leaders need to remember that they are in the energy management business,” says Halsey. “Their role is to keep people focused, energized, and positive about themselves and their work. They may be unable to change external circumstances, but they can create a safe, nurturing, and empowering work environment. By setting clear goals, diagnosing individual needs, and providing the right leadership style, leaders can help their teams thrive—even in uncertain times.”

People want work to be less of a job and more of a calling.

According to Martin Seligman and Gabriella Rosen Kellerman in their book Tomorrowmind, a US-based research study that included two thousand employees of all ages, industries, tenures, and incomes, revealed that people craved more meaning at work regardless of sector or position. Everyone wanted work to be less of a job and more of a calling and gave their current jobs a rating of 49, which suggests that their “meaning cups” are only half full.

This search for meaning, mattering, and being of service to humanity in a different and value-adding way enables innovators, entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs to cultivate the emotional energy and develop the agility required to drive their creativity, invention and innovation endeavors. 

It is the most critical ingredient that motivates, empowers, enables, fuels and sustains innovators, entrepreneurs, and intrapreneurs to adapt, survive and thrive on the innovation roller coaster.

Channeling emotional energy meaningfully and purposefully

From my leadership training and coaching experience, I have learned that most people desperately want their lives to make sense and be meaningful and to know that who they are and what they do matters. It is possible to link meaning and mattering to being intentionally motivated and directed by your core values to make a difference and a contribution that provides value and significance to someone, a community, or society.  

  • Being purposeful

Being purposeful focuses your emotional energy, guides your life decisions influences your behaviors, shapes your goals, offers a sense of direction, and creates meaning. Rather than engaging in shallow, empty, or pointless activities, it gives you agency.

In our uncertain, volatile and disruptive world, it is crucial to think about your “purpose in life.” Be like an Entrepreneur and link your purpose as a guidepost to help you deal with uncertainty, navigate it better, mitigate the damaging effects of long-term stress, and become psychologically resilient.

People with a strong sense of purpose direct and focus their emotional energy on what really matters to them. They tend to be more agile and adaptive, hardier and resilient, and more able to refocus and recover quickly from adverse and catastrophic events.

According to McKinsey & Co.’s article “Igniting individual purpose in times of crisis,” purposeful people also live longer and healthier lives and are essential to employee experience. This results in higher levels of employee engagement, more substantial organizational commitment, and increased feelings of well-being. Like many entrepreneurs, people who find their purpose congruent with their jobs tend to get more meaning from their roles, making them more productive and more likely to outperform their peers.

How can you add more meaning, mattering and purpose?

Meaning is an outcome of purpose, and many people, due to their experience of the pandemic and hybrid workplace in a chaotic and uncertain world, are seeking to re-engage with their work and workplaces by focusing their emotional energy on improving their well-being and creating more purposeful, balanced, and meaningful lives.

This is a short section from our new book, “Conscious Innovation – Activating the Heart, Mind and Soul of Innovation”, which will be published in 2025.

Please find out more about our work at ImagineNation™.

Please find out about our collective learning products and tools, including The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program, presented by Janet Sernack. It is a collaborative, intimate, and profoundly personalized innovation coaching and learning program supported by a global group of peers over 9-weeks. It can be customized as a bespoke corporate learning program.

It is a blended and transformational change and learning program that will give you a deep understanding of the language, principles, and applications of an ecosystem-focused, human-centric approach and emergent structure (Theory U) to innovation. It will also up-skill people and teams and develop their future fitness within your unique innovation context. Please find out more about our products and tools.

Image Credit: Unsplash

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Why Talent Drives Innovation

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Why Talent Drives Innovation

GUEST POST from Stefan Lindegaard

In any organization, having the right people in the right places at the right time is critical for success.

This is especially true for innovation, which doesn’t just depend on good ideas, projects, or technologies – it depends on the people who can bring these to life.

When resources are limited, every individual must perform well, as even one weak link can jeopardize a project. That’s why people – and the teams they form – are more important than ideas when it comes to driving innovation.

So, who are these key individuals?

They are those with the mindset, skills, and attributes needed to turn ideas into successful realities. These individuals may come in many forms, but they tend to share common traits such as:

  • Creativity: They think outside the box, solving problems in novel ways.
  • Problem-solving: They identify challenges and find practical solutions.
  • Growth mindset: They experiment and learn from both success and failures and they are life-long learners in many aspects of life.
  • Adaptability: They thrive in dynamic, ever-changing environments.
  • Collaboration: They work effectively with others, both inside and outside the organization.
  • Passion: They are deeply committed to their work and driven to succeed.
  • Persistence: They push through obstacles and stay focused on achieving their goals.
  • Communication: They clearly convey their ideas and inspire others.
  • Leadership: They motivate and guide their teams toward success.
  • Initiative: They take action without waiting for direction.
  • Strategic thinking: They see the bigger picture and consider the long-term impact of their decisions.

The reality is that having people – talent – like this in your organization is more valuable than having endless top-notch ideas or projects to choose from.

Stefan Lindegaard People Process Ideas

Why? Because talented people can take even a mediocre idea and turn it into something extraordinary, while average performers will struggle to execute even the best ideas.

This is true for organizations of all sizes. Whether you are a small business or a large corporation, success depends on your ability to attract, develop, and retain people who can turn ideas – whether they originate from themselves or others – into reality.

Large organizations might have the flexibility to move their top talent around, but for smaller companies, it’s even more crucial to identify and nurture individuals with these key traits.

Either way, before focusing on generating more ideas, make sure you have the people who can bring those ideas to life. Talent, not just ideas, is the driving force behind innovation.

Image Credits: 1 of 850+ FREE quote slides available at misterinnovation.com

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What Great Ideas Feel Like

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What Great Ideas Feel Like

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

If you have a reasonably good idea, someone will steal it, make it their own and take credit. No worries, this is what happens with reasonably good ideas.

If you have a really good idea, you’ll have to explain it several times before anyone understands it. Then, once they understand, you’ll have to help them figure out how to realize value from the idea. And after several failed attempts at implementation, you’ll have to help them adjust their approach so they can implement successfully. Then, after the success, someone will make it their own and take credit. No worries, this is what happens with really good ideas.

When you have an idea so good that it threatens the Status Quo, you’ll get ridiculed. You’ll have to present the idea once every three months for two years. The negativity will decrease slowly, and at the end of two years the threatening idea will get downgraded to a really good idea. Then it will follow the wandering path to success described above. Don’t feel special. This is how it goes with ideas good enough to threaten.

And then there’s the rarified category that few know about. This is the idea that’s so orthogonal it scares even you. This idea takes a year or two of festering before you can scratch the outer shell of it. Then it takes another year before you can describe it to yourself. And then it takes another year before you can bring yourself to speak of it. And then it takes another six months before you share it outside your trust network. And where the very best ideas get ridiculed, with this type of idea people don’t talk about the idea at all, they just think you’ve gone off the deep end and become unhinged. This class of idea is so heretical it makes people uncomfortable just to be near you. Needless to say, this class of idea makes for a wild ride.

Good ideas make people uncomfortable. That’s just the way it is. But don’t let this get in the way. More than that, I urge you to see the push-back and discomfort as measures of the idea’s goodness.

If there’s no discomfort, ridicule or fear, the idea simply isn’t good enough.

Image credits: misterinnovation.com (1 of 850+ free quote slides for download)

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People, Time and Money

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People, Time and Money

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

If you want the next job, figure out why.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting the job you have.
When you don’t care about the next job it’s because you fit the one you have.

A larger salary is good, but time with family is better.
Less time with family is a downward spiral into sadness.
When you decide you have enough, you don’t need things to be different.

A sense of belonging lasts longer than a big bonus.
A cohesive team is an oasis.
Who you work with makes all the difference.

More stress leads to less sleep and that leads to more stress.
If you’re not sleeping well, something’s wrong.
How much sleep do you get? How do you feel about that?

Leaders lead people.
Helping others grow IS leadership.
Every business is in the people business.

To create trust, treat people like they matter. It’s that simple.
When you do something for someone even though it comes at your own expense, they remember.
You know you’ve earned trust when your authority trumps the org chart.

Image credits: Unsplash

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Empathy is a Vital Tool for Stronger Teams

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Empathy is a Vital Tool for Stronger Teams

GUEST POST from Stefan Lindegaard

In the fast pace of today’s organizations, it’s easy for teams to focus solely on tasks, deadlines, and results. However, truly high-performance teams – and their leaders – understand that their strength lies not just in productivity but in the relationships they build.

Empathy plays a crucial role in this process, enabling teams to build trust, foster open communication, and maintain resilience, even in challenging times.

This is why empathy is not just a “soft skill” – it’s a powerful leadership tool that can elevate team dynamics to new levels. Whether you’re navigating tough decisions, managing conflicts, or trying to boost morale, applying empathy can enhance collaboration and performance.

This card is designed to guide you in bringing more empathy into your team’s dynamics.

As part of our Team Dynamics Cards, it belongs to a comprehensive suite of leadership growth and team dynamics tools aiming to boost team collaboration, performance, and communication. We develop such tools and approaches to ignite team discussions, inspire self-reflection and guide actionable steps.

Check it out below and get in touch if you would like some guidance on how to work with this for your team(s).

Today’s Card: Empathy in Team Dynamics

Stefan Lindegaard Empathy QuoteCategory: Culture & Mindset

We delve into the significant role of empathy in fostering positive team dynamics. Empathy, the ability to understand and share others’ feelings, can foster a team environment characterized by collaboration, understanding, and productivity. It’s a crucial ingredient for managing individual roles, decision-making, performance under pressure, and the creation of shared values and goals.

Principles:

  1. Promoting Understanding and Respect: Foster an environment where team members understand and respect each other’s perspectives and recognize each member’s unique contributions.
  2. Empathy in Conflict Resolution: Use empathy to address and resolve conflicts, helping teams navigate disagreements in a respectful, satisfactory manner.
  3. Fostering Psychological Safety through Empathy: Build a psychologically safe space where individuals comfortably express thoughts and emotions, assured of empathetic understanding.

Reflection Questions (10 mins):

  1. Reflect on a situation where empathy within your team led to a significant positive outcome. What was the situation, and how did empathy play a role?
  2. How would you rate the level of empathy within your current team? What impact does it have on your team’s dynamics?

Action Questions (30 mins):

  1. Identify specific ways your team can foster understanding, respect, and empathy in day-to-day interactions. How can these actions lead to improved team dynamics?
  2. Consider a recent or upcoming challenge your team is facing. How can empathy play a role in the decision-making process, conflict resolution, and maintaining morale under pressure?

Get in touch if you and your team would like to know more about our Team Dynamics Cards and how we can tailor this to your needs and interests. You can read more about our learning hub and community on https://www.stefanlindegaard.com

Image Credits: Pexels

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It is Okay to Feel Stuck

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It is Okay to Feel Stuck

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

When you’re stuck, it’s not because you don’t have good ideas. And it’s not because you’re not smart. You’re stuck because you’re trying to do something difficult. You’re stuck because you’re trying to triangulate on something that’s not quite fully formed. Simply put, you’re stuck because it’s not yet time to be unstuck.

Anyone can avoid being stuck by doing what was done last time. But that’s not unsticking yourself, that’s copping out. That’s giving in to something lesser. That’s dumbing yourself down. That’s letting yourself off the hook. That’s not believing in yourself. That’s not doing what you were born to do. That’s not unsticking, that’s avoiding the discomfort of being stuck.

Being stuck – not knowing what to do or what to write – is not a bad thing. Sure, it feels bad, but it’s a sign you’re trekking in uncharted territory. It may be a new design space or it may be new behavioral space, but make no mistake – you’re swimming in a new soup. If you’ve already mastered tomato soup, you won’t feel stuck until you jump into a pool filled with chicken noodle. And when you do, don’t beat yourself up because your lungs are half-filled with noodles. Instead, simply recognize that chicken soup is different than tomato. Pat yourself on the back for jumping in without a life preserver. And even as you tread water, congratulate yourself for not drowning.

Unsticking takes time and you can’t rush it. But that’s where most fail – they climb out of the soup too soon. The soup doesn’t feel good because it’s too hot, too salty, or too noodly, so they get out. They can’t stand the discomfort so they get out before the bodies can acclimate and figure out how to swim in a new way. The best way to avoid getting stuck is to stay out of the soup and the next best way is to get out too early. But it’s not best to avoid being stuck.

Life’s too short to avoid being stuck. Sure, you may prevent some discomfort, but you also prevent growth and learning. Do you want to get to your deathbed and realize you limited your personal growth because you were afraid to feel the discomfort of being stuck? Imagine getting to the end of your life and all you can think of is the see of things you didn’t experience because you were unwilling to feel stuck.

Stuck is not bad, it just feels bad. Instead of seeing the discomfort as discomfort, can you learn to see it as the precursor to growth? Can you learn to see the discomfort as an indicator of immanent learning? Can you learn to see it as the tell-tale sign of your quest for knowledge and understanding?

If you’re not yet ready to feel stuck, I get that. But to get yourself ready, keep your eye out for people around you who have dared to get stuck. Learn to recognize what it looks like. And when you do find someone who is stuck, tell them they are doing a brave thing. Tell them that it’s supposed to feel uncomfortable. Tell them that no one has ever died from the discomfort of being stuck. And tell them that staying with the discomfort is the best way to get unstuck. And thank them for demonstrating the right behavior.

Image credits: Unsplash

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A Tumultuous Decade of Generational Strife

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A Tumultuous Decade of Generational Strife

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

The physicist Max Planck made many historic breakthroughs, including a discovery that led to quantum theory. Still, he lamented that “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

Clearly, that’s not only true for scientific truths. Every generation rejects some notions of their elders, explores things on their own and adopts new ideas. Some of those ideas will survive, but others will ultimately be rejected, which always causes some acrimony. Even Aristotle complained about the “exalted notions” of the youth.

Yet this time is different. Because the Boomer generation was so large, and Generation X so small, those who came of age in the 1960s essentially ruled for two epochs. The rising Millennial generation, which is now the largest, holds starkly different values than Boomers. Over the next decade, as Millennials come to predominate, we can expect tensions to rise.

Revamping The Workplace

I still remember one incident early in my career. I had taken a job in national radio sales and the first few months were devoted to an intensive training course. One day that featured particularly nice weather, my fellow trainees and I decided that, instead of bringing our lunch back to the office, we would eat it in the park.

Our Boomer bosses were irate and insulted. The problem wasn’t that we took too much time for lunch, but rather that we took too much pleasure in it which, in their eyes at least, violated the social contract. As trainees, we were supposed to “pay our dues,” not to enjoy ourselves and our brief respite from the daily grind was seen as something akin to insubordination.

Millennials won’t stand for that kind of treatment. As this article in Harvard Business Review explains, they require a better work-life balance, more flexible schedules and constructive feedback. They demand to be respected and chafe at hierarchy. The younger generations of today don’t expect to “pay dues,” they seek a greater purpose.

Businesses that do not heed the Millennial’s demands are finding it difficult to compete. Millions of Boomers retired early during the pandemic, which led to severe labor shortage and the Great Resignation. Over the next few decades, as the younger generations take charge, we can expect a very different workplace.

Rethinking Economics

In 1970, the economist Milton Friedman proposed a radical idea. He argued that corporate CEOs should not take into account the interests of the communities they serve, but that their only social responsibility was to increase shareholder value. While ridiculed by many at the time, by the 1980s Friedman’s idea became accepted doctrine.

It wasn’t just Friedman, either. As the Boomer counterculture of the 60s and 70s gave way to the Yuppie culture of the 80s a new engineering mindset took hold. Much like the success of business was boiled down to its stock price, the success of a society was boiled down to GDP. “You manage what you measure” became an article of faith.

It has become clear that approach has failed. In fact, since Friedman’s essay the American economy has become markedly less productive. Our economy has become less competitive and less dynamic. Purchasing power for most people has stagnated. By just about every metric you can think of, our well-being has declined since the 1970s.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the younger generations have rebelled. While the Boomers remember the Reagan years of the 1980s fondly, Millennials and Zoomers only see a record of failure. From the Great Recession to the Great Resignation, they see a dire need to change course and will not be assuaged by rosy economic statistics. They want a better quality of life.

Reshaping Society

When the Boomers came of age in the 60s it was an era of rising prosperity. Perhaps not surprisingly, many prioritized self-actualization and sought to “find themselves.” The scandals of the 1970s made them suspicious of the establishment and the Reagan years, along with the fall of the Soviet Union, reinforced their faith in individual agency.

Millennials have seen this ideology fail. Besides the lack of productivity growth and stagnation in wages, they have seen 9/11 traumatize the nation and pave the path for an ill-considered war on terror that cost trillions and devastated America’s standing in the world. Many carry significant educational debt and had their careers derailed by the Great Recession.

Research from Pew finds other important differences. While the Millennial generation is the most educated in history, with almost 40% holding a 4-year degree, they are worse off financially than their predecessors. Many continued to live with their parents as adults and delayed getting married and starting families. They are also far more multicultural than previous generations.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Millennials have rejected the 1980s “greed is good” ethos of the Boomers and tend to focus on experiences rather than materialistic signaling. Also, while the younger generation’s passion for inclusivity is often overstated, they have grown up in a world far more accustomed to seeing marginalized groups in powerful positions.

Brace Yourself for a Tumultuous Decade

The almost seismic shift in values that the transition from Boomer to Millennial dominance represents would be enough to set the stage for conflict. What will make this decade even more difficult is that the demographic impact is hitting at the same time as other important shifts in technology, resources and migration patterns. The last time society has endured this much of a pressure cooker was the 1920s, and that ended badly.

We are already feeling the effects. The mismanaged “War of Terror,” the Great Recession and then the Covid pandemic undermined faith in institutions and paved the way for the rise of popular authoritarianism and the decline of democratic institutions. The battle for the liberal world order is being fought in, of all places, Ukraine, as I write this.

What I think should be most salient about our situation at this point in history is that we are here because of choices that were made. Yes, there were cultural and economic forces at play, but the Boomer generation chose to value the individual over the community, shareholders over other stakeholders and to embrace GDP as a proxy for the overall health of society.

We can, as Ukraine has been doing for the past twenty years, make different choices. We can choose our communities over ourselves, resilience over optimization, and to nurture rather than to dominate. Most of all, we need to invest to increase the productive, environmental and human potentials of our society so that we can better face the challenges ahead.

Make no mistake. This will be a struggle, as all worthy things are.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credits: Pixabay

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Four Deadly Business Myths

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Four Deadly Business Myths

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

The unicorn is perhaps unique among myths in that the creature doesn’t appear in the mythology of any culture. The ancient Greeks, for all of their centaurs, hydras and medusae, never had any stories of unicorns, they simply thought that some existed somewhere. Of course, nobody had ever seen one, but they believed others had.

Beliefs are amazing things. We don’t need any evidence or rational basis to believe something to be true. In fact, research has shown that, when confronted with scientific evidence which conflicts with preexisting views, people tend to question the objectivity of the research rather than revisit their beliefs. Also, as Sam Arbesman has explained, our notions of the facts themselves change over time.

George Soros and others have noted that information has a reflexive quality. We can’t possibly verify every proposition, so we tend to take cues from those around us, especially when they are reinforced by authority figures, like consultants and media personalities. Over time, the zeitgeist diverges further from reality and myths evolve into established doctrine.

Myth #1: We Live In A VUCA Business Environment

Today it seems that every business pundit is talking about how we operate in a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) world. It’s not hard to see the attraction. Conjuring almost apocalyptic images of continuous industrial disruption creates demand for consulting and advisory services. It’s easier to sell aspirin than vitamins.

The data, however, tell a different story. In fact, a report from the OECD found that markets, especially in the United States, have become more concentrated and less competitive, with less churn among industry leaders. The number of young firms have decreased markedly as well, falling from roughly half of the total number of companies in 1982 to one third in 2013.

Today, in part because of lax antitrust enforcement over the past few decades, businesses have become less disruptive, less competitive and less dynamic, while our economy has become less innovative and less productive. The fact that the reality is in such stark contrast to the rhetoric, is more than worrying, it should be a flashing red light.

The truth is that we don’t really disrupt industries anymore. We disrupt people. Economic data shows that for most Americans, real wages have hardly budged since 1964. Income and wealth inequality remain at historic highs. Anxiety and depression, already at epidemic levels, worsened during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The recent great resignation, when people began leaving their jobs in droves, helps tell this story. Should anyone be surprised? We’ve been working longer hours, constantly tethered to the office even as we work remotely, under increasing levels of stress. Yes, things change. They always have and always will. We need to adapt, but all of the VUCA talk is killing us.

Myth #2: Empathy Is Absolution

Another favorite buzzword today is empathy. It is often paired with compassion in the context of creating a more beneficial workplace. That is, of course, a reasonable and worthy objective. As noted above, there’s far too much talk about disruption and uncertainty and not nearly enough about stability and well-being.

Still, the one-dimensional use of empathy is misleading. When seen only through the lens of making others more comfortable, it seems like a “nice to have,” rather than a valuable competency and an important source of competitive advantage. It’s much easier to see the advantage of imposing your will, rather than internalizing the perspectives of others.

One thing I learned living overseas for 15 years is that it is incredibly important to understand how people around you think, especially if you don’t agree with them and, as is sometimes the case, find their point of view morally reprehensible. In fact, learning more about how others think can make you a more effective leader, negotiator and manager.

Empathy is not absolution. You can internalize the ideas of others and still vehemently disagree. There is a reason that Special Forces are trained to understand the cultures in which they will operate and it isn’t because it makes them nicer people. It’s because it makes them more lethal operators.

Learning that not everyone thinks alike is one of life’s most valuable lessons. Yes, coercion is often a viable strategy in the short-term. But to build something that lasts, it’s much better if people do things for their own reasons, even if those reasons are different than yours. To achieve that, you have to understand their motivations.

Myth #3: Diversity Equity And Inclusion Is About Enforcing Rules

In recent years corporate America has pushed to implement policies for diversity, equity and inclusion. The Society for Human Resource Management even offers a diversity toolkit on its website firms can adopt, complete with guidelines, best practices and even form letters.

Many organizations have incorporated diversity awareness training for employees to learn about things like unconscious bias, microaggressions and cultural awareness. There are often strict codes of conduct with serious repercussions for violations. Those who step out of line can be terminated and see their careers derailed.

Unfortunately, these efforts can backfire, especially if diversity efforts rely to heavily on a disciplinary regime. As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out long ago, strict rules-based approaches are problematic because they inevitably lead to logical contradictions. What starts out as a well-meaning effort can quickly become a capricious workplace dominated by fear.

Cultural competency is much better understood as a set of skills than a set of rules. While the prospect of getting fired for saying the wrong thing can be chilling, who wouldn’t want to be a more effective communicator, able to collaborate more effectively with colleagues who have different viewpoints, skills and perspectives?

To bring about real transformation, you need to attract. You can’t bully or overpower. Promoting inclusion should be about understanding, not intimidation.

Myth #4: People Are Best Motivated Through Carrots And Sticks

One of the things we’ve noticed when we advise organizations on transformation initiatives is that executives tend to default towards incentive structures. They quickly conjure up a Rube Goldberg-like system of bonuses and penalties designed to incentivize people to exhibit the desired behaviors. This is almost always a mistake.

If you feel the need to bribe and bully people to get what you want, you are signaling from the outset that there is something undesirable about what you’re asking for. In fact, we’ve known for decades that financial incentives often prove to be problematic.

Instead of trying to get people to do what you want, you’re much better off identifying people who want what you want and empowering them to succeed. As they prosper, they can bring others in who can attract others still. That’s how you build a movement that people feel a sense of ownership of, rather than mandate that they feel subjugated by.

The trick is that you always want to start with a majority, even if it’s three people in a room of five. The biggest influence on what we do and think is what the people around us do and think. That’s why it’s always easy to expand a majority out, but as soon as you are in the minority, you will feel immediate pushback.

We need to stop trying to engineer behavior, as if humans are assemblages of buttons and levers that we push and pull to get the results we want. Effective leaders are more like gardeners, nurturing, growing and shaping the ecosystems in which they operate, uniting others with a sense of shared identity and shared purpose.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credits: Unsplash

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Is it Time to ReLearn to Work?

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Is it Time to ReLearn to Work?

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

In white-collar industries where remote work is not only viable but often highly productive, we are still struggling to find a post-pandemic formula for integrating office attendance into our weekly routine. Continuing to waffle, however, does no one any good, so we need to get on with things. Part of what has been holding us back is that we have been talking about getting back to the office as an end. It is not. It is a means. The question it begs is, what is the end we have in mind? Why should we get back to the office?

Let’s start by eliminating one reason which gets frequent mention—we can manage better. This is not a good why. Supervision is an artifact of a prior era. Digitally enabled work logs itself, and we can hold each other accountable for all our KPIs, OKRs, and MBOs without having to be collocated. Managers may feel more in control with people in sight, but that is a poor return on the overall commute investment entailed.

A far better reason to return to the office is to reactivate learning. The biggest problem with remote work is that we do not learn. Specifically, we do not:

  • Learn anything new about ourselves, because we need the input of others to do so.
  • Learn new soft skills, because online courses don’t cut it.
  • Learn about our teammates, because video calls lack the needed intimacy.
  • Learn about our customers, because we need to go to their offices to do so (going to our offices would at least let us share the ride)
  • Learn about the current state of our company, because that kind of thing never gets published.

In short, just as our children experienced a learning gap at school, so we inherit the same dynamics with remote work. We consume the skills we have, but we do not develop the ones we need next. We are harvesting, but we are not seeding, and there will be a reckoning if we do not alter our course.

So, there is a good why for returning to the office, but that in turn begs the question of how? Here we need to be clear. We do not know how. We do not know what is the right formula. Unfortunately, waiting won’t help either, so now what?

Let me suggest that the best course of action is to implement a clear policy effective immediately with the following provisos.

  1. We publicly acknowledge that we suspect this policy is wrong.
  2. We are putting it in place for 90 days.
  3. We want everyone to abide by it religiously so that we get the right signals.
  4. We will review the policy publicly and transparently after 90 days and implement a new policy at that time.
  5. We will put that policy in place for 90 days, following the same protocols as before.
  6. We will rinse and repeat until no longer necessary.

The point is, we have to get on with getting on, and running the experiment is the fastest way to get there.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Profiting From Fear and Mistrust

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Profiting From Fear and Mistrust

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

When I lived and worked in Ukraine, it was commonplace to see men in camouflage fatigues and Uzi’s in the waiting rooms of offices around town. They weren’t there as security, or to rob the place, but to help transfer money between businesses. It was cumbersome and inefficient, but in an atmosphere of mistrust, it was a necessity.

In most countries, we’re still a long way from armed couriers as a daily routine, but according to Edelman’s recent Trust Barometer, we’re headed in that direction. Entitled “Innovation in Peril,” it details an overall collapse of confidence, finding that roughly two thirds believe that journalists, government leaders, and business executives, are “purposely trying to mislead.”

That’s a problem for all of us. Mistrust is corrosive to the norms that help our society run efficiently and the costs are very real. Our lack of trust in government prevents us from making needed investments. Suspicions about law enforcement undermine public safety. Mistrust in the workplace undermines performance. We desperately need to rebuild trust.

The Value Of Trust

Trust isn’t our natural state. Economists have developed a number of models to show how fragile it can be. For example, in a prisoner’s dilemma, two suspects are brought in for questioning. If they both stay true to each other, they get the best collective outcome, but if each follows his or her own self-interest, both will confess and get the worst overall outcome.

Related concepts are the tragedy of the commons, in which everybody has access to a common field to graze their livestock, depleting the resource so that everybody’s herd suffers, and the free rider problem which often occurs with respect to public goods. These situations are known as Nash equilibriums because nobody can change their preference without making themselves worse off.

When you take a moment to think, it’s kind of amazing that we operate with as much trust as we do. Local businesses faithfully serve communities for years, even decades. Corporations spend billions to build brands and governments work to earn legitimacy. That is what allows us to easily transact business throughout the day. When trust collapses, we get Uzis in waiting rooms.

Yet it doesn’t have to be that dramatic. Research by Accenture found that “trust events” cost businesses billions of dollars every year. For example, a consumer-focused company that had a sustainability-oriented publicity event backfire lost an estimated $400 million in future revenues. Another company that was named in a money laundering scandal lost $1 billion.

Profiting From Our Mistrust

Our brains are geared for mistrust in a number of ways. The first is a bias for loss aversion. We will do more to avoid a loss than we will for an equivalent gain. That makes trust hard to build and easy to lose, which is why the “trust events,” like those cited in the Accenture study, are so costly.

Another contributing factor is availability bias, our tendency to overweight easily accessible examples, such as a specific trust event, and ignore vague concepts, like years of good service. Once we accept a belief, our confirmation bias will lead us to seek out information that supports our prior beliefs and reject contrary evidence.

These effects are multiplied by tribal tendencies. We form group identities easily, and groups tend to develop into echo chambers, which amplify common beliefs and minimize contrary information. We also tend to share more actively with people who agree with us and, with little fear of rebuke, we are less likely to check that information for accuracy.

That, essentially, is the economics of disinformation. Fear breeds mistrust, which makes us feel insecure and leads us to seek out people we identify with to reinforce our beliefs. Research suggests media companies, especially social media companies, profit from the passions that the most polarizing information unleash in the form of greater engagement with their platforms.

Facts, Identity and Fear

We tend to think of truth as a simple matter of knowledge and understanding. We see the world as a set number of facts and believe that any disagreements arise from a lack of clarity about what the true facts are. In this view, mistrust can be corrected by better access to good information. Once people are informed, how could there be any disagreement?

Unfortunately, the world doesn’t work that way. In fact, a study at Ohio State found that, when confronted with scientific evidence that conflicted with their views, people would question the objectivity of the science. Another thing to consider is that, as Sam Arbesman explained in The Half-Life of Facts, our ideas about what’s true changes over time.

We can’t rigorously test every proposition, which is why we adopt the views of those around us, a phenomenon that psychologists call social proof. What makes the effect even more insidious, is that the relationship is reciprocal. We internalize the ideas of the tribes we join and then propagate those same ideas to others, intensifying the echo chamber.

Our beliefs are far more than mere acceptance of sets of facts, but become inherently part of our identity. Wars are not fought over ideologies because people disagree about empirical evidence, but because they see their sense of selves under attack. If truth is a force for good, then those who refuse to accept our version of it are, in the most basic sense of the word, evil.

From Victimization To Empowerment Through Purpose

Our ability to trust others is, to a great extent, a function of how we see ourselves and our situation. If we see ourselves as secure and in tune with our environment, it’s relatively easy for us to build bonds of trust. If we feel those around us share our values, it’s easier to feel a shared sense of identity and purpose.

However, if we see our surroundings as hostile, we will take steps to protect ourselves and that, to a great extent, is where we are at today. First the Internet, and then social media have tended to promote and juxtapose the most extreme elements, creating an atmosphere of heightened conflict among tribes, which further undermines our sense of security and trust.

This is what Marshall McLuhan meant when he wrote that the global village would result in a “release of human power and aggressive violence” greater than ever in human history. When we are confronted with ideas and values that are different from our own, it can feel more more like an assault and an affront than a refreshing interaction with the variety of life.

Here Ukraine offers a lesson. Over the past decade it has built a new identity and found a new purpose. Today most Ukrainians, especially the younger generations, feel a stronger affinity for European values than for their post-Soviet past. In fact, they have so internalized their European ambitions that they are willing to risk a war to maintain them.

We have a similar challenge before us. If a common identity is forged from shared values and shared purpose, on what foundation will we build our future? To what common project can we devote our energies? What are our ambitions and how best might we fulfill them? These are the questions that we need to answer if we are ever to rebuild the bonds of trust.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credits: Pixabay

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