The Strength of Making Decisions in Teams (Decision Series 8/8)

Every organization consists of teams that face grave challenges – how to innovate faster, build better relationships with clients, respond to competitive threats, decide which products to invest time into and which ones to abandon. How do you decide the best direction?

Here are some tips that help teams make the best decisions together:  

1. Get on the same page.  In 1999 NASA had a mission to study the climate on the planet Mars.  After 10 months of travel and 125 million, the spacecraft burned due to a navigational mistake, which was entirely preventable.  It turns out, multiple teams were working on the project, one group used the metric system, while the other used inches, feet, and pounds.  Some of the smartest people forget to check that both teams were using the same unit of measurement, and the consequences were catastrophic.  Before you embark on the decision-making process, take some time to cover the basics, get the small details right, and properly understand the problem before deciding on something and be sure to level set on the expectations, processes, and tactics.

2. Take time for independent thinking.  Spend some time individually to consider the problem and solutions so your ideas are not heavily influenced by anybody else’s.  This will allow for more variety in creativity and innovation because there will be an even larger pool of plans in which to choose. A common mistake that many people make is that they may share their idea with their teammate and then ask for their opinion, but they have already tainted the person’s thinking and may create an environment where the person does not want to disagree with you, especially if you are the boss. This is why as a leader it is important to go last so you can hear as many raw ideas as possible for you to share your perspective.

3. Share in small groups.  Form a series of small groups of 4-6 people within the larger team so all opinions can be put on the table and a consensus can be reached on the best way that the team can solve the problem.  According to a Ted Talk by Mariano Sigman, a leading figure in the neuroscience on decision-making space, he shows how crowds are wiser when they can talk to other people in small groups.  He ran an experiment where people provided an answer to a question about how tall the Eiffel Tower was and then they had a chance to discuss and debate.   The result was that the average of the group was more accurate than the average of the individuals.

4. Share in big groups.  Have a big group discussion where each team presents their ideas and then gets outside perspectives.  It allows you to go for a “robust average”  which gives a rough estimate of all the members’ answers while discrediting outliers. The old saying, “Two heads are better than one” is most true when you can extract each person’s untainted thinking first and then combine it with others to form even deeper insights.

5. Time for thoughtful disagreements.  If three groups within the team put forth their ideas, they can exchange in the thoughtful back and forth, while others can ask questions for clarity and provide a challenge to the ideas.   When you engage in quality discussions, people’s thinking can evolve and the best collective decision can be reached.   Ray Dalio uses a technique like this.  His goal is to attain an idea meritocracy, where the best ideas win out and have nothing to do with politics, personalities, status, or other influencers. 

6. Decide on a tiebreaker. You may have strong ideas, energy, and evidence for two dominant positions, but in the end, you need to decide once you have carefully considered all sides of the discussion. Usually, when there is a deadlock in ideas, the leader should weigh in and break the tie. However, use the approach that works best for your team, if it is strictly by consensus, you can opt for that method.

7. Disagree and commit. Used widely by Andy Grove and Jeff Bezos, they believed that once a decision has been made, regardless if it was yours or not, as a team player, you need to be behind it and hope for its success rather than being indifferent or worse, aiming to sabotage the idea.

8. Use timeframes. To facilitate the decision-making process, it is helpful to use timeframes. For example, maybe you allocate a week for the first phase which is about gathering information and discussing openly. For the second phase, you can allocate the necessary time to make the decision. Without timelines, you could get stuck in endless discussions and fail to move to the execution phase.

There are many techniques that you can use to make the best group decisions. By having clear processes that allow each person to contribute their best input, hard decisions become a little less hard.

Quote of the day: "My opinion, my conviction, gains immensely in strength and sureness the minute a second mind has adopted it." -Novalis, German Author and Philosopher

Q:  How do your teams make decisions?  What processes do you use?  Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to help them make hard decisions, contact me to explore this topic further.

What’s the best way to make group decisions?

What Comes After You Have Made a Decision? (Decision Series 7/8)

Congratulations, you have taken careful steps to make the decision that is right for you.  You got clear on your values, utilized effective informational and creative strategies, followed systems, and took action.  Now what?

Depending on your goal, whether it is about improving your decision-making skills, enhancing your current situation by reversing the decision, or just enjoying your peace of mind, you may consider the following:                                                                                                     

1. Reflect.  If you are interested in improving your decision-making abilities, carve out the necessary time to reflect.  After the choice, monitor it.  What is working?  What approaches, criteria, metrics, and systems did you use that were successful?  What did you overlook and may want to include next time you choose?  Mark Twain described the complicated nature of decision-making as follows: “Good decisions come from experience, but experience comes from making bad decisions.”  This is not to say that the only way to become a great decision-maker is to make a ton of mistakes; it just means that it is important to keep past decisions in the front of your mind to capitalize on the learning moment.

You can also do long-term reflection. You can do an annual review by asking - what was your best and worst decision you made last year? How do you know they were your best or worst? To answer these questions, most people follow a concept that Annie Duke describes as “resulting” - a decision was good if the outcome was good, but that is an incomplete way to evaluate. Just because you got home safely after drunk driving does not mean you made a good choice to jeopardize your life and the lives of others. Instead, what you can do is map out a few other choices you could have made and then evaluate them against the choice that you actually made. What did you wish you would have known at the time, how could you have found out that information, what will you do differently next time? Asking these kinds of questions will improve your decision-making processes.

2. Choose to reverse a big decision.  We think that when we make a selection, we have lost all agency, but we can always choose to course-correct if we have given it enough time and decided with all our minds and hearts that it is not right for us at this time.  Decisions are not permanent sentences and when we can get creative about having the confidence to tweak our choices or even reverse them, we can attain more happiness.

3. Enjoy the peace of mind of making a small, lasting decision.  Making some irrevocable determinations can bring more happiness.  Daniel Gilbert ran a study where at the end of his photography course, students had to choose which photo of the many to keep.  Group A was told that if they changed their mind later, they could swap the photo.  Group B was told their choice was final.  You would think that many people were happy in the first group because they preserved their options, knowing they could always trade their photo.  The study found that when people made an irrevocable decision, they rationalized it easily move forward.  Once something is gone forever, the mind gets to work, figuring out why what it has is better than what it lost.  But when a decision is irrevocable, you ruminate and think, do I like this photograph, maybe the other one goes better in my living room, I should take it back and upgrade.  When it comes to smaller decisions, set yourself up for ones that do not leave you with an out, at the end of the day, it is just a picture.

Depending on your goal, there are things you can do after a decision is made.  If you are trying to be a better decision-maker, you can reflect on your choice and monitor how it works out and what you did well in the process leading up to the decision.  If you are aiming for happiness, you may choose to alter or reverse the selection.  If you are interested in attaining peace of mind relating to small decisions, you may want to make irrevocable ones.

Quote of the day: “All life is an experiment.  The more experiments you make, the better.”  -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Q: How do you reflect on your decisions once you made them to improve your future decisions?  What was your best and worst decision of last year? Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

[The next blog in this series 8/8 will focus on decision-making in teams.] 

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to help them make hard decisions and reflect on their process, contact me to explore this topic further.

How do you make decisions that make you proud?

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to help them make hard decisions, contact me to explore this topic further.

Systems For Better Decision-Making (Decision Series 6/8)

To what degree do you think our decisions determine our lives?  Should we stay in a city we have known and enjoyed for a decade-plus or move elsewhere to shake things up? Take a high visibility job with additional responsibilities or focus more on enjoying a balanced and relaxed life? Know when it is time to quit our side hustle or persist? To be human is to be jostled by choice.  I have found that to have an edge in decision-making, we want to have a few systems in place to better guide us.

Here are some helpful systems to consider when we are contemplating making big decisions:

1. Expand your time horizons.   Suzy Welch, a former editor at the Harvard Business Review recommends conducting a 10-10-10 analysis.  For every choice we’re considering, ask ourselves: how will I feel about having done this 10 minutes, 10 months, 10 years from now?   This tool helps create psychological distance when you expand the time horizon and imagine how we would feel in the future.  A challenge we have when making a decision is the emphasis we place on immediate emotions so we avoid doing unpleasant things like asking for a promotion or breaking up with our partner because we may be blinded by the short-term fallout.  By considering how we will feel in the future, we can reduce the intensity of our current emotions and make sounder decisions.  You only have to deal with the short-term once, but the long run for the rest of your life.

A similar idea is to think about 2nd and 3rd order consequences or the downstream ramifications of your actions, which are not always obvious at first. You can decide to take up running and endure the initial pain of working out for the medium-term benefits of getting in shape and feeling great. You may also look further ahead to consider the joint pains you might incur from running on the pavement so perhaps you will want to have a plan to switch to a less impactful exercise such as yoga or swimming at some point since it will be lighter on your body but still help you attain your goal of healthy living. It is about being mindful of the long game.

Ask yourself, what advice would I give my friend.  Another way to gain distance from the problem is to imagine that your friend told you the same dilemma, what would you tell them to do?  This approach can help because when you picture yourself not involved, those highly charged emotions reduce their intensity.  You can see the problem more clearly for what it is minus the strong feelings.  Andy Grove, the former Intel CEO had a similar technique he used, which was to ask the question, “If I were replaced tomorrow, what would my successor do”?

2. Run an experiment.  In Stumbling Upon Happiness, Daniel Gilbert asserts that when we are thinking about making a decision and factoring in our happiness, we tend to be pretty lousy at predicting what will make us happy.  We may think to ourselves, “once I move out of the city and to the suburbs, it will be quieter, I will not hear the ambulance sirens, trucks, and unrelenting construction disturbances.”  But when we do it, we realize it is boring, we do not like it, and in fact, those background noises provided the occasional rushes. So, the best thing to do is to conduct small experiments.  Spend weekends or months simulating how we would be living.  If moving also means a job change, testing the assumption while we have a paycheck is most helpful because we will have an exit plan.

3. Do a pre-mortem.  It is human nature to strategize an approach and formulate all the ways we will be successful, but few people talk about what could go wrong.  The pre-mortem considers what failure would look like before even beginning the project.  This approach could have come in handy during the British colonization of India when officials were concerned with the number of venomous cobra snakes in Delhi.  To solve the problem, the government gave cash for every dead cobra.  While the plan was initially successful, ultimately it was a failure because they did not think about all the entrepreneurs who got into the business of breeding snakes to generate additional income.  When the government scrapped the idea, the cobra breeders let the snakes loose, and the population blossomed.  The solution was worse than the problem, and with a proper pre-mortem, maybe this could have been prevented.  It could be helpful to invest in the upfront time to generate a list of the ways a solution can fail.  A good question to ask to kick off this inquiry is: If this decision was a debacle one week, one month, or one year from now, what would be the causes of the failure?

4. Take a break.  When we find ourselves mulling over a decision and we feel like we have expended all our energy, hit pause.   Either do something else you enjoy like going for a run or playing catch with your kids or simply allow yourself to be bored so you can review the problem in new ways.  Einstein turned to his violin whenever stuck.  Woody Allen changed rooms and took multiple showers.  Beethoven took hour-long strolls.  When you get distance from the problem and do something completely different, you broaden your focus.  Author Ron Friedman says, “It’s only then, when you have some distance, that loose connections suddenly appear, making creative insights more likely.”  Our brain continues to mull over unresolved problems, even when we turn our attention elsewhere, and we can bring that additional insight into making better decisions.

5. Time-box your decisions.  Once you have gathered your information, instead of waiting for the moons to align, give yourself a window of time to make up your mind and set a date because then you will be more motivated to act.  In an article in the Harvard Business Review, Mark Chussil, Founder of Advanced Competitive Strategies, recounts wise words from his friend who said, “you should not spend your life making up your mind because things change, values change, and dreams change.  What broke your heart or made your day at age 25 is inconsequential at age 45.”  If the issue on the table has been reasonably vetted and the choices are equally attractive, it is time to decide, take action, and break the impasse. That dreaded feeling of being stuck could be corroding other areas of your life and draining your energy.

6. Avoid decision fatigue by automating.  Some decisions are minor, like what to eat and what to wear.  Others are more difficult, like deciding between two job offers; if you should move to a new country for someone you love; if you should cut a toxic friend out of your life, even though you share a rich history.  With so many decisions taking up your day, when you can turn the small ones into a routine, you can save your mental resources for the complex decisions.  It is the reason why Steve Jobs wore black turtlenecks, and Mark Zuckerberg dons hoodies.  Both men have stated that these decisions are the simple result of daily routines intended to cut down on decision fatigue.  Barack Obama said, "You'll see I wear only gray or blue suits. I'm trying to pare down decisions. I don't want to make decisions about what I'm eating or wearing, because I have too many other decisions to make."  Routines can prime your mental state for the best decision-making.

7. Make one big decision at a time.  Some people try to make 2-3 decisions at once.  How about just making one, waiting, and then seeing how the landscape changes.  You do not need to solve everything before you take action.  Similar to riding a bike, it is easier to steer and make turns once you are moving.  We cannot plan life just from the sidelines; we need to participate and adjust on the go.  Is there one decision you can make that can be a lead domino for three others?

8. Make decisions in advance.  When you decide now how you will act in the future, you set yourself up for success.  For example, if you want to go for a run in the morning, you can lay out your clothes in advance and be mentally prepared to know that you are going first thing in the morning.  You do not have to think about it at the moment when you may be sleepy and unmotivated.  With advanced planning, you can even anticipate the fatigue that you may feel, and how you will overcome it.

9. Aim for 80% or a good enough choice.  Many things we can be deciding on could relate to wicked problems with changing requirements that are often hard to recognize and numerous unintended consequences. Even with all the best research and strategies, there will always be information that eludes us.  Steven Covey says that trying to be perfect prevents action.  If you feel about 80% confident in your decision, go for it.  Any difficult decision may not be ideal, but we can go for a good enough choice. Choices are made depending on the estimation of how things will be in the future, but the future is ever-changing so decisions made today can be based on faulty information. In that case, it could be helpful to choose a direction rather than a destination because you become open to the possibility of adjusting as you go to better match the realities you will be given.

10. Examine tradeoffs.  Ray Dalio, Author of Principles said, “I learned that if you work hard and creatively, you can have just about anything you want, but not everything you want.  Maturity is the ability to reject good alternatives to pursue even better ones.”  When faced with a choice between two things that you need and that are seemingly at odds, try and figure out how much of each you can get and know when you say no to one thing, you can say yes to another in which you are more enthusiastic.

11. Avoid indecision.  When we are in the deliberation stage, we have stress and anxiety, but when we move into phase two of pulling the trigger, our mind moves into action mode; it convinces us that the thing we have is better than the thing we left behind.  We sometimes wonder, after the fact, how we were even having a tough time deciding in the first place.  The energy you save by not deliberating pointlessly will be useful for other things, so put a timer on your decision and go for it.

Hard decisions are hard when we are in the process of making them, but after that, it is just life.  When we have systems in place to help us with decision-making, we can find ways to make the process a little less strenuous on ourselves, so we can spend more time in action with the things we love, and less time stuck in deciding.

Quote of the day: “[People are] born to live and not to prepare to live” - Boris Pasternak, Russian Poet

Q: What is your favorite system that you rely on for good decision-making? Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

[The next blog in this series 7/8 will focus on the aftermath of a decision.]

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to help them make hard decisions, contact me to explore this topic further.

What’s your system for making decisions?

Use Your Head and Heart for the Best Decision-Making (Decision Series 5/8)

How wise are you at making decisions?  In choosing, do you rely more on cognition or intuition?  While some people would advocate for the evidence-based, logical approach, others would endorse the way of emotions and gut instinct.  Who’s right?

Let’s take a closer look at each:

For some people, rationality is the easy answer.  When entangled in a decision, they may make a long list of pros and cons, weigh their choices against a pre-determined set of criteria, evaluate their options objectively, step back, and decide.  After all, isn’t the Prometheus gift of reason precisely what separates humans from other animals, so shouldn’t we rely on that?

Plato has a great metaphor of the mind; he compares it to a charioteer controlling horses, which are representative of our emotions.  The best people or the Philosopher Kings in his time were the ones who kept the tightest reigns on their emotional horses, which can be impulsive and impetuous beasts that lead us astray.  Simply distilled, reason is good, emotions not so much.

The problem with rationality is that it can be faulty.  In Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman discovered cognitive biases, showing that humans systematically make choices that defy clear logic. He explains, “When humans are left to their own devices, they are apt to engage in several fallacies and systematic errors.”  To be better at decision-making, we need to be aware of these biases and seek workarounds.

In Favor of Emotions 

Those who love to be steered by their emotions in deciding would say that it is the superior method.  Our emotions are wise, especially when we have a good relationship with them.  We can recognize when we are in a bad mood and might lash out at others who are simply trying to help, or when we are feeling overconfident and might take more risks.  We have gut instincts, and when we listen to them, they can guide us carefully and diligently.  We already know the answer or at least one version of it because it is the accumulation of our memories and experiences, revealed unconsciously at speed.  So much of what we believe and do is driven by the unconscious; it is rooted in emotions that we sometimes cannot articulate, yet strongly feel.

In Johan Lehrer’s How We Decide, he recounts a story of Michael Riley, a radar operator in the British Navy during the Persian Gulf War.  On his second day, he picked up a blip on his screen, which could have been an incoming Iraqi missile or an American Fighter Jet, even though the two signals looked identical.  In seconds, he had to decide to receive a potential strike or destroy his fellow brothers.  He fired two missiles and single-handedly saved the battleship.  Initially, he could not explain why he felt confident that it was enemy fire.  It was not until years later that he discovered how he did it – that he unconsciously picked up a subtle discrepancy in the timing of the radar signal.  When we listen to our gut, we are rightly guided.  As explained by John-Dylan Haynes, a Cognitive Neuroscientist at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, “the unconscious brain is intelligent enough to select the best options.” 

While our emotions can be inexplicably powerful, there is a problem when we solely rely on them to guide our decisions.  This old saying rings true: “Don’t make permanent decisions based on temporary emotions.”  When we are overwhelmed by passions, it can cloud our abilities to make clear decisions.  Believe it or not, most managers are not good at even recognizing their emotions, let alone not being consumed by them.  TalentSmart has tested more than a million people and found that only 36% of us can accurately identify our emotions as they happen.  If we are unaware of our feelings or cannot properly label them, we may not be able to use them to our advantage.

Reaching the nexus of thought and feeling

The secret to good decision-making is to harness the power of both our cognitive and instinctual forces.  The world is a complex place, especially for any one-purpose solution, so how we decide should depend on what we are thinking about and in what context.  

You can cycle back and forth between cognition and emotions.  For example, we may start with cognition to analyze data, make a pro and con list, assign weight to each aspect, analyze charts and patterns, and then use the emotional and intuitive side to see what feels right.  After the passage of some time, we can step back into the rational mode and see how those feelings impact the way we are looking at the decision.  Finally, after some more thinking, we can check back in with our hearts. This neurological see-sawing can be most effective because usually when one side of the brain is activated, the other side is turned off so it forces us to have a more comprehensive consideration. For example, you may just be thinking logically when you want to fire your employee because sales are down dramatically and you need to cut costs. But how can you tap into the emotional side and be thinking about the person’s livelihood? If you decide the layoff is the right way to go, you can be sure to let the person go with grace and compassion and provide support as the person journeys to their next endeavor.

We have wisdom deep inside of us that we can access to guide our decisions when it most counts. 

Quotes of the day: "The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions." -Donald Calne, Canadian Neurologist

"Emotions have taught mankind to reason." -Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues, French Moralist and Writer

Q: In making a decision, do you allow more of your emotions or reasoning to guide you?  What process do you put in place to cycle between the two to get all their benefits?  Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

[The next blog in this series 6/8 will focus on exploring systems for better decision-making]

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to help them make hard decisions, contact me to explore this topic further.

How do you utilize both sides of the brain for the best decision-making?

The Art Of Using Creativity In Your Decision-Making (Decision Series 4/8)

We make thousands of decisions each day, and we are always looking for an edge, a specific way to improve our decision-making abilities so we can have more life satisfaction.  

One way to improve our information strategy for better decision-making is to get creative about the problem.  Here’s how:

A. Challenge the limitations.  Matthew Confer, VP of Strategy at Abilitie offers a tip before deciding to challenge the constraints.  He argues that too many teams jump into solving a problem without first considering it.  He recommends starting by thinking about what barriers are holding you back and then see what is possible. At Sandford, students in an entrepreneur class were given $5 and a challenge to turn it into the most money possible and then present their ideas in the following class.  The winning team did not even use 1 cent; they sold the rights to their presentation to a company in town who were happy to pitch to Stanford students to recruit them post-graduation.  They challenged the constraints of that 5 bucks and maximized the real opportunity, the presentation.  Next time you are deciding, how can you question the limitations before you even begin?

B. Reframe the decision.  Sometimes a tweak in the wording of the question can jolt a new way of thinking.  Going from, “What can I do to cause the outcome I want,” to “What are the best and worst outcomes I can expect” can lead you down a more creative path.  You can also think “AND” not “OR.”  If you are contemplating a career shift, you might keep your current job AND volunteer a few hours somewhere else to gather more data before pivoting too hastily.

C. Consider the opposite.  This approach helps you think about the problem differently.  For example, if you are struggling to decide who to hire and are leaning toward one candidate, consider why that person is not the most appealing option.  If you are thinking about Iceland as your next place to visit, make a quick list of why this will be a bad idea and this step will lead you to more research in addressing those concerns, and ultimately more confidence in your decision.  

Another way to employ creativity for better decision-making is to find the sweet spot between widening and contracting your options.

A challenge with decision-making is that sometimes we can think in binary terms, especially when we are overwhelmed with emotion, our thinking becomes more rigid.  I get married or a breakup; I move to NYC or I stay in the suburbs.  When we expand our options to a manageable amount, it changes the problem and can enable us to decide more confidently.  To reach this end, we can think about the following: 

A. Create a Top 10 list of your best options.  Once generated, you can compare and contrast to spot patterns.  You can then narrow your choices to 2-3 by cobbling together the best features from the alternatives.

B. Crowdsource.  If you are trying to expand your choices, tap into the power of the collective.  In 2008, Starbucks created “mystarbucksidea.com,” a submission website where anybody could send their ideas.  About 10,000 ideas were submitted and 100 implemented, including a free beverage for every pound of coffee, unlimited brewed coffee, and free coffee on birthdays.  Sometimes when we are so close to the problem, we can be blinded by love and emotion, but when we invite outside views, we get ideas we could have never imagined.

C. Scrap your options.  You can throw out the current set of selections and create a new list.  Maybe you have an employee who is excellent with administration work but not socially friendly; binary thinking would be – fire her or deal with the mountain of paperwork, or keep her and deal with her social challenges.  You can throw those options out and come up with new ones.  What if we moved her away from interacting with others and just had her doing administration work and allowed the rest of the team to contribute one day at the front desk so they can be closer to the work by interacting with the customers?  What if you partnered her with somebody skilled with social interactions so she can learn from excellent examples. What other options are there to consider?

D. Contract options.  As the Paradox of Choice goes, the more alternatives we are given, the less satisfied we become with what we choose because we are aware of all the other opportunities we are forfeiting.  Once we have gone wide, we want to narrow down our options to a manageable amount – usually 3-5. 

To help with decision-making, you want to get creative about your strategy.  This may include challenging the constraints, reframing your options, or finding the sweet spot between widening and contracting your decisions. 

Quote of the day: “We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals” —Stephen Covey.

Q: How do you apply creativity in your decision-making? Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

The next blog in this series 5/8 will focus on the role of the mind and the heart in decision-making.

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to help them make hard decisions, contact me to explore this topic further.

How do you apply creativity to decision-making?

Enhance your decision-making with strategy (decision series 3/8)

When you are thinking about a big decision, how do you decide?  What information strategy do you use?  Once you have done all the work in clarifying your values, style, and optimal energy state, how do you utilize your external resources to be in a better position to choose? 

Here are tips to strengthen your information strategy:

1. Learn more about the things you do not know by tapping into the collective intelligence of others.

A. Talk to people in your network who made that exact decision.  If you are thinking about leaving a big corporate job to start your practice, find somebody who traveled that path, and learn those lessons.  People do some version of this all the time, think about right before you go to a restaurant, you will check the Yelp reviews and see how satisfied people were with the meals.  Approach it with humility, do not rely on what you think something will be like, ask a range of questions, such as what are my blindspots around this decision so you can get the information you have not considered.

In an interview, Harvard Professor Daniel Gilbert shared with Shankar Vedantam of Hidden Brain that some people might dismiss this approach due to the “illusion of diversity,” which is the idea that we think we are utterly unique, that other people's experiences might tell us a little bit about ourselves, but not very much.  Gilbert disagrees with this assertion because we are more similar than we think.  This concept of surrogation, seeing how others like something, and allowing that to guide us can be a constructive way to decide.  Even spending time on internet searches can yield powerful results.  According to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, 58% of tricky clinical diagnostic cases could be solved using internet search and surrogation.  If your dilemma is more common, the chances increase. It could be good to aggregate the opinions of people who have made the decision you are pondering as a guide for what is right for you.

B. Tap extended networks.  Chip and Dan Heath offer this method - send an email to 5 people in your circle who are not close friends or colleagues.  Describe your dilemma and ask if they know anyone who might have some insights.  The goal is to enter different systems since most of your friends and close colleagues probably know each other and have linked associations.  Plus, you probably already know what they know through your conversations so you want to explore those weak ties for fresh ideas.

C. Seek contrarian perspectives.  When approaching a decision, we tend to pick something and then find additional information to support it, which is known as confirmation bias.  Based on one study in the book Decisive, when doctors were sure of their diagnosis, they were wrong 40% of the time.  In another study, when university students believed that they had a 1% chance of being wrong, they were wrong 27% of the time.  We have a false sense of certainty because we avoid evidence that challenges our entrenched beliefs. 

A great way to avoid confirmation bias is to seek outside opinions from people who bring different perspectives to weigh your options more objectively and spot your subjective or irrational tendencies.  Who do you know that you trust and is an entirely different thinker than you or somebody who could occupy a devil’s advocate role to tell you why your leading decision is wrong?  In her study of Silicon Valley firms, Kathy Eisenhardt found that the CEOs who made the quickest, most effective strategic decisions had a senior counselor who knew the industry well and could provide trustworthy guidance.  When asking those experts for advice on your choices, do not just ask them, “What do you think?” or “Do you like my idea?” How about asking disconfirming questions: “What’s the biggest obstacle you see to what I’m trying to do?” “If I fail, what would be the cause?”

D. Triangulate responses.  A chief enemy of good decisions is the lack of sufficient perspectives on a problem. 

Maybe you are considering taking your business into the European markets, how about getting three area experts committed to their right answers, and having them make their case.  You can listen to the discussion, triangulate their responses, glean lessons, and make more comprehensive decisions.  The quality of your synthesis can determine the quality of your decision-making. 

When it comes to decision-making, there are things we do not know (known unknowns), and then there are things that we do not know what we do not know (unknown unknowns).  When we can spend some time seeking out other resources, both in and out of our network, it can help us learn more about the challenge and make decisions more easily.

Quote of the day: "Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach." -Tony Robbins 

Q: When was the last time you sought out people in and out of your network to help with a big decision?  How did it go?  Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

[The next blog 4/8 will focus on utilizing creative strategies for better decision-making.]

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to help them make hard decisions, contact me to explore this topic further.

What’s your strategy for making sound decisions?

To Make Better Decisions, Start With Knowing Yourself (Decision Series 2/8)

How confident are you in your decision-making skills?  Which principles guide you most when choosing?

Part of the struggle that we have in making decisions is that we do not know much about ourselves.  By taking time to explore our values, decision-making style, and optimal state for making choices, we will be much better at deciding with satisfaction. 

Getting clarity about ourselves in these areas can make decisions easier:

1. Know your values.  What is your vision for life?  Have you put in the work to carefully articulate your value system?  How can those decisions get you closer to what you want more of and away from what you want less of?  For example, if you know you value having a career and are planning to start a family, how can you still be able to work part of the time because that will fulfill you and make you an even better parent?  The best decisions reflect our values, and when they are aligned, choices are more comfortable.  When we are caught up in a decision, we may have our emotions pulling us in multiple directions.  Successful people know how to stick to their values and trust their guidance during stressful events fraught with fear and doubt.

If it aligns with your values and creates excitement, go for it!  If it does not, do not do it.  When deciding to do an event or to put something in his calendar, Derek Sivers has a simple rule – it is either hell yes or no, nothing in between.  Is there a rule you can use to make this type of decision easier?

2. Know your style.  When it comes to decision-making, are you a maximizer or satisficer?  Maximizers seek the ultimate benefit or highest utility; they aim to make the most intelligent decisions possible.  Satisficers, on the other hand, are looking to make choices that they are minimally comfortable with, perhaps determined by more modest criteria.  The concept was first proposed by U.S. Nobel Prize-winning economist Herbert Simon who combined satisfying and sufficing as a way of describing this form of decision-making.  For example, suppose you are looking to purchase a TV, you might spend significant time reviewing many other TVs, comparing price and quality until you find the absolute best one on the market, determined by a set of criteria.  In contrast, satisficers will review a few options within a given time and then decide because they got something they can enjoy, and that’s enough.

It may seem like maximizers are the way to go because they aim for the absolute best option, but the research points to the opposite.  Satisficers will be more content with their decision, even if it is not the best they could have hoped.  In contrast, maximizers experience pressure from the high expectations they impose; they are more prone to doubt because they fear that a better choice is always out there.  They envision their life if they had chosen a different path.  Using this framework, which style are you, and how is it serving you to bring peace to your decisions?

3. Know your optimal state for decision-making.  Our mood, energy, and willpower significantly impact decision-making and are heavily influenced by these crucial factors: sleep, exercise, and diet.

A. Sleep.  When you experience deep restorative sleep, you can tackle a problem with fresh eyes and have the clarity to make sound decisions; otherwise, if you are sleep-deprived, you could be moody, emotional, and reactive.  When making a decision, Jeff Bezos talked about prioritizing 8 hours of sleep to make better executive decisions otherwise he will be tired and grouchy.

B. Exercise.  The stress of a significant decision naturally produces cortisol, the chemical that triggers the fight-or-flight response.  Cortisol clouds our ability to think clearly and rationally.  When we find ourselves stressing about a decision, we can exercise to recharge and refresh the mind.  As little as 30 minutes is all it takes to get an excellent endorphin-fueled buzz and return to mental clarity.  Exercise also helps you get past that fight-or-flight state by putting the cortisol to practical use.  Research shows that long-term exercise improves the overall functioning of the brain regions responsible for decision-making.

C. Diet.  Similarly, your decisions are likely to be sounder after a meal.  In a study led by psychologists at Columbia Business School, researchers found that judges were significantly more likely to issue favorable rulings when they made their decisions first thing in the morning or right after lunch.  But the longer they waited to decide after they ate, the more likely the judges were to deny prisoners parole.  The reason is because the more decisions we have to make over the day, the worse we get at making decisions.  We are prone to taking shortcuts when we are tired or hungry.  For a judge, it’s easier to deny parole than to do the mental work of having to think about whether bail is justified, so they took the easy route, which was to default to a denial.  

If we want to make sensible decisions, we want to be at our best, but that time of day differs for everybody.  In the book, When by Daniel Pink, he argues that our energy levels and cognitive abilities are not the same throughout the day but change in dramatic and unpredictable ways.  Some people feel their best in the morning and should choose that time slot to tackle complex decisions while others’ energy levels dip in the afternoon, and that slot should be used to make small decisions when fatigue is greatest.  When our willpower is low, we fall back to our default setting; it is why we go for chips over carrots and why the judges denied parole.  You can manage your willpower better by sleeping well, exercising, and eating healthy.

Part of being an excellent decision-maker is knowing yourself, which can include your values, style of decision-making, and optimal state for choosing.

Quotes of the day: “When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier.” -Roy E. Disney

"The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it." General Norman Schwarzkopf

Q: When do you make your best decisions?  Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

[The next blog in this series 3/8 will focus on enhancing your decision-making with strategy] 

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to help them make hard decisions, contact me to explore this topic further.

You can get clear with how you decide

Why are some decisions just so hard? (Decision Series 1/8)

Throughout our lives, we will make our fair share of difficult decisions - what school to attend, career to pursue, who to marry, where to live, how many children to have? And there will be infinitely more smaller daily decisions – what takeout to order, what to wear to an important event, which gym to attend, how much time should be spent on watching tv or reading and so on.

Indeed, our days can sometimes seem like they are filled with a constant stream of decisions.  A Columbia University survey conducted by Sheena Iyengar, a Professor of Business at Columbia found that we are bogged down by 70 conscious decisions a day. 

How do we handle all of those decisions, and more importantly, how satisfied will we be with our choices?  According to Dan and Chip Heath in their book Decisive, it is common for people to make decisions they regret.  When people decide to go to law school, there is a 44% chance that they will not recommend becoming lawyers.  When the Philadelphia school system examined teacher retention rates, they found that teachers were twice as likely as students to drop out.  Knowing that a lot of people regret their decisions speaks even more to the challenge of deciding well.    

Let’s explore 3 key reasons why decision-making is just so hard:

1. We lack a strong understanding of ourselves.  Believe it or not, many of us walk through life not knowing what is most important to us - is it love, money, family, learning, fun, exploration, or something else.  What are our core values?  Where do they come from?  Do we have those values because it is what we feel we SHOULD or MUST be emphasizing or it is because of what we genuinely want?

When we know our values, it becomes so much easier to make a decision that aligns with them. For example, you value family so when you are presented with a new position that involves a two-hour commute each way, you realize that your quality family time will drop significantly.  If your family value is non-negotiable, the decision becomes clear on whether to take the job.  When we make decisions that support our values, we experience less stress and more happiness. 

2. We have a faulty information strategy.  When you feel like you do not have enough information or are still really confused about a problem, what methods do you pursue to gather more data and broaden your horizons?  Believe it or not, people rarely consider more than two options when making a decision.  In a study led by Ohio State University Professor Paul Nutt, he examined 168 decisions of big organizations and found that 69% only had one alternative.  Two-option decisions lead to unfavorable results 52% of the time.  But when they considered more than two options, they had a favorable outcome of more than 66%.  When our information strategy includes only two choices, we feel trapped and fail to see all the possibilities genuinely available to us, and that can create struggle, stress, and lead to decisions in which we are not proud. 

We also do not want to overload ourselves with too many choices because then we would suffer from what Barry Schwartz labels a Paradox of Choice.  The more alternatives we are given, the less satisfied we become with what we choose because we are aware of all the other opportunities we are forfeiting.  For example, the American Scientist Sheena Iyengar looked at behavior in supermarkets and found that if there are too few choices, we do not like to shop there because we wonder if another place has more items.  If we have too many selections, we look but do not buy because we experience choice overload.  When it comes to low-level decisions like which cereal to buy, the right amount of items that the human mind likes to choose between is 3 and 6.  Of course, life is not a supermarket, especially when it comes to the monumental decisions we need to make so when do we know when we know enough? This question will be covered later in the series.

3. We lack decision-making systems to guide us.  Some people make decisions out of gut instinct, and while emotions can give strong direction, it may be an incomplete way of pulling the trigger because we could be blinded by short-term satisfaction over long-term value attainment.  Having processes and systems in place can help us take a more comprehensive approach.  Methods such as gaining psychological distance, conducting experiments, and running a pre-mortem will be explored later in the series to make better decisions.

Decisions are hard, and for a good reason; some of them can significantly alter our lives and happiness.  I must confess, I struggled with deciding how to organize this blog series, but once I took action, got clear in my values, utilized an effective information strategy, and relied on some of my trusty systems, things seemed to fall into place.  Here’s hoping that a little regret does not seep in later on.

Quote of the day: “Most of the problems in life are because of two reasons: we act without thinking, or we keep thinking without acting.” -anonymous

Q: What are some other challenges you notice with decision-making?  Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

[The next blog in this series 2/8 will focus on knowing yourself to make the best decisions.] 

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to help them make hard decisions, contact me to explore this topic further.

How do you make tough decisions?

How does your company prevent difficult workers from getting hired? (Workplace Conflict Series 3/3)

How you treat people matters more than anything.  Companies should create a culture of respect, and every leader should have an obligation to uphold a no-jerk environment because it allows for great work to be done and it is simply the right thing to do.

The impact of a toxic worker is quite significant.  Experts say, when a team member procrastinates or displays a bad attitude, there is a real risk of social contagion, which drives down the morale and productivity of those around them. Susan Davis, author of Emotional Agility contends, “we all pick up on settle cues from others, and that affects our behavior and actions.” This behavior can lead to poor team efficiency, lower levels of commitment, and less of a focus on the shared goals.  Furthermore, ignoring the issue makes the problem more acute.  According to Allan Cohen, Babson Professor of Global Leadership, when people do not carry their weight, frustration grows because others need to do more.

Knowing this negative impact, here are some things a company can do to protect the culture from toxic workers:

1. Screen them out in the hiring process.  If you determine that somebody could exhibit toxic behavior, perhaps they care only about individual results at the expense of others, do not hire them, no matter how capable and brilliant they may be.  Professor of Management Science at Stanford University Bob Sutton said that toxic people make us less productive.  Maybe you cannot be certain if somebody has a lot of jerk behaviors during the interview, but you can do everything you can to find out more in the hiring process.  Luis Von Ahn, CEO and Cofounder of Duolingo offers this advice.  When you contact their reference, you can ask, “Did he/she work well with others?”  You are looking for a more definitive and enthusiastic response like “absolutely” over a more wishy-washy one – “yeah, for most people.”  Maybe you detect the reference is being coy, you can frame your questions to elicit specific choices.  For example, “what’s more likely - that this person will be a total pushover or a little manipulative?”  “Work more by themselves or inclined to work with others?”  Listen closely to these responses because they can contain the exact answers you are seeking. 

2. Align stated company values with practiced behaviors. If you ask a set of random employees, who are the superstars in the organization and you find out that they are the top producers who also happen to be toxic at times, it seems as if the company is rewarding bad behavior.  So how can you practice what you preach? If you care about teamwork, how are you building that in your incentive and promotion strategy to reward that kind of behavior?  For example, the stated values of Enron in the 90s were communication, respect, integrity, and excellence. They claimed they valued good behavior, but they actually rewarded ruthlessness and selfishness. When you incentivize individual achievement rather than promoting people based on how they elevate others, it contributes to a toxic culture. How about a mixed approach? Part of their compensation can be directly related to how much they have helped others, exhibited through observation and peer feedback, and part can be from their individual contributions.

3. Make the offenders aware of how they are treating people. You can offer “360 reviews” where leaders can receive valuable data from their peers, subordinates, direct reports, and others.  Sometimes it is just that awareness that their behavior is problematic which can be enough to course correct. When Cindy Hess, Partner at a law firm learned of some selfish behaviors she had which were revealed through reviews, she was stunned and took steps to make adjustments. Companies can offer management training programs to help build the cadre of soft skills that help leaders invest in others.  

Another way to raise awareness is for companies to provide a free-market approach where their subordinates have some say in choosing their boss or team lead. At Fenwick and West, Partners choose their associates to service their clients but Associates have every right to say no if they feel it is not a right fit.  They obviously prefer to pick Partners who they enjoy working with, who they can learn from, and who will take an interest in their development and career trajectory.  If none of the Associates are picking you, that exposes a hard truth.  Similarly, if there is a mentorship program and mentees get to pick who they want to work with based on reputation, and again you keep getting passed up, this needs to be explored and addressed.  To make sure leaders know how they are being viewed, the company does anonymous upward reviews were Junior Associates rate Senior Partners.  According to Glassdoor, Fenwick and West is one of the top Silicon Valley law firms to work for in terms of cultural excellence. 

4. Have a Zero Tolerance Policy. You cannot allow demeaning or disrespectful behavior from anybody, including upper management.  When companies act swiftly, it sends a message that this conduct will not be tolerated and employees will be protected.  This does not mean that there will be no hard conversations or people will not get upset from time to time, but that there will be consequences for repeated poor behavior.  If somebody is getting frequent complaints and they refuse to acknowledge the problem or change their behavior, they should be let go.  Studies show the presence of one person exhibiting toxic behavior can bring down a whole team, that it is better to have a hole in the team than to have an additional person that is not helpful. Studies also show that it is actually much more profitable to replace a worker displaying poor behavior with an average performer, as opposed to upgrading an average performer to star status, it is because the one who is showing negativity has a much more damaging impact.

There is no such thing as a perfect culture, but companies can do their best to create an environment that values support, respect, and positive interactions.  We spend so much of our time at work that it is only right to expect that we are treated with dignity so we can give our best performance.

Quote of the day: “I am thankful to all those difficult people in my life, they have shown me exactly who I do not want to be!” – Unknown

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with people to have difficult conversations, contact me to explore this topic further.

Q: How does your company protect you from toxic workers and maintain an amazing culture?  Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

Getting rid of a toxic culture begins with removing a toxic person

How Do You Deal With A Difficult Boss? (Workplace Conflict Series 2/3)

Steve Jobs has had a complicated legacy.  While few would doubt his visionary abilities, many would call into question his leadership style and weak interpersonal skills.  He has been described as deceitful and cruel, even by his friends.  It is known that he cheated his co-founder out of a big bonus and lied about it. While Walter Isaacson was conducting research when writing the biography of Jobs, Apple Engineer Johnny Ives told Isaacson that when Jobs got frustrated, his way to achieve catharsis was to hurt someone.  According to Ives, Jobs felt he had the liberty and license to do it.

Like Jobs, there are hundreds of other leaders who treat their employees poorly.  Research shows that leaders who demean their workers have rationalized their aggression because, at times, they can get short-term results so they feel vindicated in their unsavory behavior to achieve their goals. This problem is compounded when the long-term damage they are causing to others is invisible to them.  Bad bosses may also see the situation in black and white terms, thinking – “I have to use this behavior or I will not get these outcomes.” But there is a big difference between being demanding (having high expectations for others) and demeaning (devaluing other people, even treating them disrespectfully and making them feel worthless).  This tradeoff does not need to exist because it is possible to show respect and set a high bar.  Kim Scott’s Radical Candor uses this exact leadership approach – caring for somebody personally and challenging them professionally.

The impact of toxic bosses can be quite detrimental.  Here are some company consequences: 

1. Negatively affects performance and reduces worker productivity. The presence of a bad boss can cause team members to make mistakes and doubt themselves. In one experiment with a medical team in Israel, a doctor berated his team and said he was not impressed with their medical care and that they would not last in the department for more than a week.  In the ensuing days, the percentage of an accurate diagnosis by the team went down by 20% and the procedures they did were 15% less effective.  When we work with somebody who has abused us mentally, our cognitive abilities decline.  Essentially, working with an angry boss makes us dumber.  In another experiment, students were instructed to walk into a testing room, but instead accidentally walked into the professor’s office.  Immediately, the professor berated the students and said, “Are you not smart enough to see the do-not-disturb sign?” They then took a math test and solved a quarter fewer anagrams correctly compared to the students who were not just lambasted.

2. Less likely to help others.  In that same experiment, people who were just scolded by the professor opted not to help others when they had the opportunity to do so.  In another experiment, as students were leaving the school building after enduring some harsh words, they saw a few classmates drop a bunch of books and choose to keep walking instead of helping to pick them up.  The best teams are collaborative ones so if people are holding back with their assistance, teams cannot reach peak performance.

3. Creates silence and shutdown.  Toxic bosses create an environment where people stay quiet because they want to avoid rocking the boat.  They are trying to stay under the radar because they do not want to be a target for any abuse. This significantly hurts teams and organizations because there is no feeling of psychological safety for people to contribute their ideas, especially when half-formed. Having that environment where you can comfortably share and be supported is a necessary component to reach collective intelligence and do great work.

Responses to Avoid

When you are feeling abused and wanting immediate reconciliation, it can be tempting to opt for less helpful responses that may feel good in the short-term but carry severe negative long-term consequences.  Here are some to avoid: 

1. Do nothing and endure. This decision can eat you up inside and cause resentment.  The discontent cannot only manifest at the workplace but also at home and create an unhappy disposition with the people you care for the most.  When we continuously repress our feelings, it comes out in other ways, often when we least expect it or cannot afford for it to leak out.

2. Fight back at the moment.  It is not the best idea if you have not collected your thoughts, yet choose to unleash them spontaneously for the sake of justice.  After all, you believe that this person simply cannot go around rebuking people the way they do, and you are going to be the person to change their behavior.  The problem with this savior mentality is that it is immediately going to put the person on the defensive and they have been playing the angry-and-public-ridicule game for much longer than you have so picking a fight on their turf may be gratifying at the moment, but most likely does not lead to a productive resolution.

Responses to Consider

Here are some helpful steps you can take to confront your boss thoughtfully and productively so you can decide your next move:

1. Focus on personal impact.  See if you can find a respectful way of letting them know the impact they are having on you.  People sometimes do not see how upsetting, demeaning, and unprofessional their actions are to you, your team, or the organization.   Other people's intentions only exist in their hearts and minds so we cannot assume that we know them. We feel hurt so we think that they intended to hurt us, but when we can disentangle intent from impact and apply curiosity, we can get more information on how best to respond and understand why this is occurring.  The best-case scenario is that they understand just how much you have been affected and take steps to change their behavior.

2. Change teams. If you believe in your company’s purpose and vision but are having a hard time with the manager, see if you can change teams so you are no longer reporting to your boss. If enough people are requesting a transfer, it will become obvious where the source of the problem exists.

3. Change jobs.  If you conclude that the other person had intentions to hurt you or does not plan on changing, and this is typical of what goes on in different parts of the organization, you may want to consider leaving your job.  What is all this heartache and pain costing you?  Find that leader in a people-first company who will not only treat you with dignity but will inspire you and bring out your very best.

The big question that people always ask about Steve Jobs is - did he have to be so mean?  Walter Isaacson would argue that he succeeded in spite of his cruelty, not because of it. The kindness routes are always the better paths to travel down because you will get better results and create stronger relationships along the way.

Quote of the day:  “Having a bad boss isn't your fault. Staying with one is.” -Nora Denzel 

Q: How have you handled a difficult boss? Comment and share with us, we would love to hear your opinions.

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with people to have courageous conversations, contact me to explore this topic further.

[The next blog in this series 3/3 will focus on what organizations can do to prevent difficult people from tanking the culture]

How do you handle a difficult boss?

Have you mastered the art of working with a difficult Teammate? (Workplace Conflict Series 1/3)

There is always that one person you work with whose job is to make everybody’s life just a little more difficult.  They show nuanced passive-aggressiveness by hinting at what they dislike instead of having clear communication, they take credit for wins they have not contributed to, they dole out blame unfairly, they provide misleading or incomplete information to make your work more cumbersome than it has to be.  They can also display their difficulty in more obvious ways – raising their voices, ridiculing, complaining, and showing an overall foul attitude.  This person may behave this way either because they are unaware of their actions or because they know exactly what they are doing and simply do not care or cannot control it.  Do you know who I am talking about? 

If you find yourself working with somebody who is making your job more stressful and you do not have the power to separate from that person, there are still actions you can take to ameliorate the situation.

It all begins with a clear conversation to increase understanding.  Here are helpful tips when approaching your discussion:

1. Assume you do not know instead of jumping to conclusions.  Management Professor at Babson College Allan Cohen says that it is human nature to make assumptions about other people’s motives, even when we lack real evidence.  It is how our brains work, but this shortcut does not always lead to the right conclusions. Instead of assuming that somebody is trying to make your life more arduous, you can ask: “I don’t know what is going on, but whatever it is, would you like to figure it out together?” “I noticed when I share my opinion, you talk over me, and I’m unable to finish my thoughts, I’d love to learn more about that behavior and how we can work together more effectively.”  When you are curious and sincere, you can uncover information for the best resolution.

2. Give the other person the benefit of the doubt.  It is usually true that each person will think the other is being a jerk and that they are trying to hurt, embarrass, or upset one another. But what if this was not true?  In that case, it is best to apply curiosity and turn the discussion into a learning conversation so you can get to the root of the behavior.  When you assume the best intentions, you are more likely to approach the situation with an open mind and be receptive to the information for real change to occur. There is something important about entering a conversation and putting aside your frustrations and emotions at the moment to think about how you can serve the other person while also handling yourself well.

3. Understand the person’s motives. Asking empowering questions can help you understand your teammates’ motives so you know how to work best with them.  Questions such as, what else is going on for you right now or what is motivating you, can be illuminating.  When you inquire about their interests, motivations, and priorities, you get a better sense of their perspective and can learn about what causes their behavior and how you can work with their style and intentions.

4. Label the person’s behavior.  Neil Rackman, President of Huthwaite Inc. examined the difference between an expert and an average negotiator and found that experts are more likely to label other people’s behavior and confirm their understanding.  If somebody starts yelling during the conversation, you can take a step back and call out their behavior. “It seems like yelling is one of your favorite motivational strategies.  Do you think that is going to be effective here?”  This approach puts them in a logical frame of mind so they can recognize the behavior and adjust.  You can also take a break by saying, “It seems like we may need a minute (in a calm, monotone voice), I’m going to get a cup of coffee, would you like one?” Taking those few minutes will allow each of you to regroup and reenter the conversation in a more productive way.

5. Adjust your expectations.  It can be helpful to know that sometimes people are not going to behave well either because they are having a bad day or maybe they have never been given the tools to learn how to handle themselves well in a professional context or as human begins in general.  For whatever reason people do not show up as their best selves or maybe their best is not good enough, it is helpful to adjust your expectations.  You cannot assume that somebody has the same experience, tools, training to handle situations well or in the way that you would. 

6. Provide choice.  If you find yourself in a tough conflict, you can offer a choice by saying the following, “We arrived at this moment because we may have had different expectations, and now that we have run into the issue, here are some options I can think of to resolve the dilemma, which one do you think is best?”  When you present them with a series of options that you are comfortable with, you give them some control over the process and it makes a difference because people love choices. 

The key to dealing with conflict on the team is to retrace the steps to see how you got here, see each other’s perspective, build understanding, and move forward together on a more productive note.  When you are curious and approach people positively, you may be pleasantly surprised.

Quote of the day: “Show respect even to people that don’t deserve it; not as a reflection of their character, but as a reflection of yours.” – Author Dave Willis

Q: How have you handled a tough teammate?  What’s your favorite strategy for achieving peace with them? Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with people to have difficult conversations, contact me to explore this topic further.

[The next blog in this series 2/3 will focus on dealing with a difficult boss]

How do you handle a difficult teammate?

The fiercest opponent we have is ourselves

Some of our best accomplishments come from our sheer belief in our ability to get the job done.  But what happens when we do not believe in ourselves or blindly follow behavioral patterns which consistently hold us back?  As a Leadership Coach, I work with people to remove common internal blocks, which could come in the form of pesky GAILS – Gremlins, Assumptions, Interpretations, and Limiting Beliefs. 

The first step to breaking through these constraints we place on ourselves is raising awareness around their existence and labeling what is happening so we can shatter their power.  The second step is to employ strategies to surmount them. 

Let’s look at four typical constraints and explores steps to address them:

1. GREMLINS - You may know Gremlins as the popular 1984 comedy horror film about a pet creature who spawns other animals, some cute and some evil monsters, but the term traces back to the ww1 era to describe mischievous folklore creatures who caused malfunctions in aircraft or other machinery. Jumping off that notion, gremlins are the inner self-critics or saboteurs that pop up and tell us old stories, negative messages, and worst-case scenarios.  We all have them,  they may sound like this: “you are not good enough, you are not worthy, you are not smart enough, you do not matter, what you say is not important, why try when you just fail anyway.” When the voice within frequently whispers these thoughts, we wither, we doubt, we perform less than we can.  We do this because our Gremlins want us to stay safe by playing small, so we do not have to worry about exposing ourselves to new situations and possibly feeling embarrassed or ashamed at possibly failing. The inner critic is also related to imposter syndrome; I’ve recently devoted a 3-part series to this topic, you can explore more here.

Here are some strategies to combat the Gremlins or Inner Critics:

A. Become curious.  Where do these Gremlins come from?  Go deeper by pondering what is at the root - your anxieties, ego attachment, insecurities, patterns of self-defense? What is the profound message the Gremlin is trying to convey? Consider naming it so we create awareness around its existence. When you can shine the light on it, there is an increased chance that it will scatter.  It grows strongest when it is hidden in the dark and unaddressed because its power builds and unleashes in unexpected times. 

B. Repurpose the Gremlin.  While the Gremlin is trying to hold you back from taking chances, perhaps it can be used for a better purpose, such as prompting you to act. Every time that voice shows up and says you should not do something, it can also be viewed as a powerful reminder to do the opposite of what it is saying.  From that perspective, we should thank the Gremlin for delivering a timely message to spur us to action. So, the next time you are thinking about approaching somebody to start a conversation and your Gremlins try to yield you, filter the message to read – “keep going, this is what you should be doing!” Discomfort is quite natural, it is about feeling the fear and acting anyway.

C. Regain control and take action.  Remind yourself that it is just a voice and that you can decide what you will do with that message.  You have the power to choose your response, to take action even when fear is holding you back.  Joseph Campbell famously wrote, “the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”  The best surprises are found in action and not in theory.

2. ASSUMPTIONS - are expectations that because something has happened in the past, it will automatically happen again. Every time I have given up junk food, I have gone back to it so what’s the point.  My history keeps repeating itself and here is the evidence to show that since it did not work in the past, it is not going to play well in the future. Assumptions are based on fear and are a problem because the beliefs can stop us from striving if we are convinced we will fail.  If we have internalized the outcome negatively, we can quickly lose hope.  In Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements, the third one is “Don’t Make Assumptions.” Ruiz quite clearly tells us, “All the sadness and drama you have lived in your life was rooted in making assumptions and taking things personally.” When we treat these mental constructions as absolute truths, we allow them to rule our actions and shape our words. What would it feel like to break these destructive thought patterns?

Here are some strategies to combat the assumptions:

A. Challenge them.  Do not take anything at face value, answer the questions - How true is that thought?  What’s another way to look at the situation?  Gather evidence for and against so you can expand your awareness. Knowing you have more options available to you will increase your control.

B. Problem Solve. Think about what we can do this time to get a different approach.  As Einstein said, the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”   Who we are now is not who we were in the past so it is vital to think about how we can take new information and apply it to this new context. We are constantly evolving so need to utilize the most updated information in our life equations.

C. Know that failure can be the path to success.  It is said that Thomas Edison failed 1,000 times before developing the lightbulb.  When a reporter asked how it felt to fail that many times, he replied, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times.  The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”  Clearly, the past does not dictate the future and progress is not linear. When you fail, it means that you are bold enough to take risks and in those courageous acts, you will derive your most valuable lessons.

3. INTERPRETATIONS - are opinions or judgments that we create about an event, situation, person, or experience and believe them to be true.  When our friend does not call us back or a coworker cancels lunch at the last minute, we draw conclusions… perhaps this person is upset with me; maybe she is just selfish or inconsiderate or does not care about spending time together.  It is about the stories that people make up because they may not have access to all the information, so our brain yearns to fill in the gaps. It also speaks to our failure to recognize personality differences and styles. For example, when my extroverted friend is not making eye contact with me because they are looking around a lot, it may have more to do with how they relate to the world in getting their energy externally, instead of my perception of thinking they are rude and dismissive.

Another reason we make interpretations is to protect ourselves.  Melinda Gates shared how she used to sit in a room with experts and felt ignored and that people were condescending to her since she was not the intellectual giant that is her husband, but after years, she knew it was something else.  She realized that she did not know enough science to lead world-renowned experts in global health and that Imposter syndrome kept her from asking questions and thoroughly engaging.  Once she faced her insecurity, she could chip away at it, and begin to ask various kinds of questions to make progress.

Strategies for Interpretations:

A. Anticipate the opposite view to counteract the prevailing negative.  Then name at least 5-10 possible interpretations.  This gets us out of binary thinking and onto more possibilities.

B. Do not assign meaning or take things personally.  Events just are, so it is not until we ascribe meaning do we get upset.  As Shakespeare offered, “Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so.” When we learn to not take things personally, we avoid a lot of headaches and it is just a lighter approach to move through life assuming positive intent.

4. LIMITING BELIEFS  - are commonly held beliefs you accept about life, yourself, the world, or the people in it which diminishes you in some way. You may think you cannot be a great leader because you do not have enough experience. That thought can stop you from moving forward and can minimize your potential.

Strategies for combating limiting beliefs:

Challenge the belief. You can ask questions such as - How is this belief true today?  How is it true for you? What is an idea that would help you feel differently?  Roger Banister taught us an essential lesson about breaking limiting beliefs when he became the first runner at age 25 in 1954 to break the 4-minute mark.  Before then, it was believed impossible, but once he did it, he gave hope to other runners.  Just two months later, two more competitors broke the barrier.  Over the years, thousands of male runners have continued to shatter the record, even getting it down to 3:43.

Internal blocks have the potential to prevent us from moving forward.   Once you understand their power and raise your awareness, you will know how to defeat their attacks. A simple shift in perspective can change our day, week, life, and general disposition.  Start small and be ready for significant results.

Thought of the day: “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Dr. Wayne Dyer.

Q: What is your most common internal block? How do you usually overcome it?  Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

What’s possible when you manage your beliefs?

Top 11 Ways To Fight Imposter Syndrome (Imposter Syndrome Series 3/3)

We all experience feelings of insecurity, but when we suffer from imposter syndrome, or the belief that we do not deserve our accomplishments, our best energy is zapped.  Yet, we do not have to remain a victim to those feelings; in fact, there are many ways we can healthily deal with this widespread affliction.

Here are some strategies for addressing imposter syndrome:

1. Raise your awareness.  When we notice we are having these feelings, we want to write them down so we can explore further.  How would I describe these feelings?  When do they emerge?  The more we are aware of our anxieties, the smarter we can become about how they operate, and the easier it will be to either shrug them off next time they pop up, or have a planned approach to deal with them.

2. Normalize imposter feelings.  Guess who said these lines – “You think, why would anyone want to see me again in a movie?” “I don’t know how to act anymore, so why am I doing this?”  None other than Meryl Streep.  If somebody as successful and skilled as Meryl can feel these limiting beliefs, we all can.  In fact, some surveys show that more than half the people we know feel like imposters at some point in their careers but they succeed despite their doubts.  Effortless success is a myth, if we have advanced without real striving, it may be a sign that our goals are too small. It is helpful to normalize the initial difficulty and discomfort because achieving hard things becomes easier over time.

3. Flip your script.  You can rewrite your mental programs to serve you.  Instead of being debilitated by imposter thoughts, you can say, “it is common to have these feelings when I am doing something outside my comfort zone, that’s where all the possibility lies.”  Mistakes and self-doubt come with the territory.  If I was not feeling this, then I would be worried because I could possibly be a robot.  When we try something for the first time or are learning a new skill, looking foolish is part of the job.  Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Do something every day that scares you.”  Most of us are rarely feel we are as qualified as we should be because if we were, then we are likely not aiming high enough. 

4. Be kind to yourself.  When you do well, celebrate and reward yourself, do not just keep trucking along.  When you make a mistake, be patient and compassionate with yourself as errors come with the territory.  What can you say to make yourself feel better and move on? Also, be sure to take pride in your achievements. You can reconnect with your younger self. Compare your current success with your past expectations. If you knew 5 or 10 years ago that you would go on and accomplish all of this, how proud would that version of you be? Knowing that you have gotten to this point doing what you are doing, could you have imagined that in the past? It helps us recognize just how far we have come.

5. Reframe failure.  Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final; failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts.”  What would it be like if you celebrated failure because it meant that you tried, and that is where all the learning occurs?  That’s the approach taken by CEO of Spanx Sarah Blakey.  She shared an experience about when she was growing up at the dinner table, how her dad used to ask her and her brother what they failed at, and then they would celebrate it.  To encourage her team to take risks and fail, Blakey calls failures “oops” and wants her team to learn and laugh about them.

6. Experiment with vulnerability & seeking support.  It is natural to want to keep those feelings of insecurity a secret.  But when you can reveal your doubts to trusted partners, whether it be a friend, mentor, or professional coach, you break its power when you realize you are not alone and get to learn how others tackle the same challenge.  I usually find that there are many more people out there who are eager to help and that can be quite reassuring as there is strength in numbers.

7. Know your strengths.  When I work with clients who experience imposter syndrome, I help them discover their best selves.  Many of us were built to have negative orientations because it is what kept us alive in ancient times because we needed to spot threats.  That’s why now we can easily find our weaknesses while overlooking our most endearing qualities, especially if they come easy to us.  Getting in touch with our strengths can serve as an incredible source of power.

8. Know your life purpose.  Ok, maybe a tall order, but it is nice to spend time pondering.  Mark Twain reminds us, “the two most important days in your life are the day you’re born, and the day you find out why.”  Knowing our purpose and values serves as a stable foundation in those moments when we are simply unsure about ourselves, the situation, and the ever-changing, rapidly-moving world.

9. Challenge it.  When we throw around these assertions, how often do we question them?  Is this true, logical, constructive?  What is the evidence against it?  Do not blindly take those internal scripts as truths. When you parse fact from fiction, you can regain control and question assumptions that are simply false or that are likely not serving you.

10. Recognize the benefits of imposter syndrome and use them as fuel.  An upside of imposter syndrome is that it can motivate us to work harder so we feel we are on par with others. We will rehearse our work for hours to make sure we are prepared and then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy – because we are working harder, we are getting better, and building more confidence.  It makes us better learners because our humility and lack of confidence drive us to seek others out to learn.  Impostor syndrome can foster a beginner mindset, that is because we want to make sure we are doing great, we are more likely to question assumptions that others have taken for granted and we rethink our strategy to offer fresh perspectives.

A good way to motivate ourselves is to talk to ourselves in the 2nd person.  In a series of experiments, people gave better speeches and made better first impressions when they were randomly assigned to talk to themselves in the second person instead of the first.  Rather than say, “I got this,” you can say, “You got this”. It creates some distance from your insecurities, and it seems as if you are talking to a friend or a coach and leads you to be less nervous and see stressful situations as a challenge instead of a threat. 

11. Recognize the journey. Some people think that when they get to a certain point in their careers, imposter syndrome will disappear, but it doesn’t go away, it just shapeshifts as the bar is always rising.  For example, writing a book was an incredible target for you, but for the next one, you will naturally aim for it to be a New York Times bestseller and will feel those accompanying doubts.  Author Rich Litvin said, “The solution to imposter syndrome is the rather liberating decision to stop trying to get rid of it and instead to get good at it.”  When you are on a lifelong journey, you will always have doubts that will have to be managed.

We all experience imposter syndrome at various times.  While there is no one right approach to begin to combat the feeling, the most important action we can take is to experiment with different methods that can be beneficial for us to perform at our best.

Quote of the day: “What's talent but the ability to get away with something?” —Tennessee Williams

Q: What is the best way you have found to deal with feelings of self-doubt?  Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

As a leadership development coach, I work with people to deal more powerfully with these experiences, contact me to explore this topic further.

Take control of your doubts

How Does Imposter Syndrome Show Up For You? (Imposter Syndrome Series 2/3)

In the last article, we talked about what imposter syndrome is and some negative impacts on work and life.  This article will focus on who experiences imposter syndrome, where it comes from, and how it may manifest so we can raise awareness on this issue and take action for positive changes. 

Who Experiences Imposter Syndrome?

When the concept was first published in an academic paper in 1978 by Dr. Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, it was described as a mental health issue, a sort of neurosis found in high achieving women from white middle-class backgrounds.  The reason why it was initially thought to be a unique woman challenge is because females were the ones who talked about it.  As it turns out, women and men experience it to an equal degree. 

According to Amy Cuddy, who spoke about this phenomenon in her popular Ted Talk, she received a series of emails from people who had the familiarity, and half were from men.  She concluded that it was not initially captured because men were not discussing it with their family and friends; they were hiding it due to shame, stereotype backlash, or harassment for deviating from social norms.  In one study, when she gave a survey where people had to put their names on it, it seemed like women were experiencing imposter syndrome more, but then when the surveys were anonymous, men were expressing these feelings at the same rate as women, which means men were carrying it around secretly and painfully.  Even celebrities cannot escape the feeling; Denzel Washington, Tina Fey, Maya Angelo, and Neil Gayman have talked about it openly. 

So, where do these feelings come from? Here are some leading theories:

1. Link to Perfectionism.  Some researchers have tied it to perfectionism.  When you are driven to produce flawless behaviors and results, the standard is so high that there is a tendency to be overcritical so unless it is perfect, it is inadequate and always will be.

2. Parental influence.  When parents tell us how great we are, it makes us want to maintain that high expectation bestowed on us.  If we underperform, we think we do not deserve the greatness title.  This can also be supported by Carol Dweck’s research on mindset and the complications that arise when we praise people, rather than their actions.  By saying -  “you are smart,” it fosters a fixed mindset, you either are smart or not;  you only have a certain amount of intelligence so if you struggle with something, you feel like if you were smart, you would not find it difficult.  You think, smart people do not struggle.  In contrast, when you praise the process, you foster a growth mindset, which is the idea that you can improve on the process and grow your abilities.  When you say, “you worked really hard to accomplish this goal,” the person knows it is not something innate, but something they can have more control over because it is based on the effort they apply and not simply their traits.

3. Connected to High Achievers.  When you have accomplished, you feel like there is something to lose and you become even more frightened of failing, especially if you are not used to it, so you may take fewer risks and spend more time on your work.  You think high achievers do not flop so even if you have a remarkable streak of successes, that one stumble can make you question your long record of accomplishments.  For you, it is the feeling that the gig is up and that failure is more representative of who you are, and now others are just learning this information for the first time.

4. Tied to a feeling of not belonging.  People who feel like they exist on the margins in a certain group setting due to their age, gender, race or, sexual orientation can exhibit feelings of insecurity and low self-esteem if they do not think they are included in the crowd.

How does imposture syndrome manifest?

1. Using negative self-talk.  You can be abusive to yourself with your words.  “You are a failure, you are stupid, you never get anything right.”  If you say this to yourself enough, you start to believe it, and it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle; what you say influences directly how you feel and how you behave.

2. Failing to take action.  When your inner critic is saying you are not good enough, it prevents you from taking action.  It’s the voice that stops you from speaking up in meetings or at conferences because you feel a spike of anxiety at the thought that maybe you will ask a dumb question.  You feel stressed rather than energized when you get a new challenging assignment so you refuse the opportunity.

3. Difficulty accepting praise.  You have a hard time receiving praise for your accomplishments because you feel like you do not deserve what you have achieved.   You attribute success to externals – being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right people - instead of acknowledging your unique skills and abilities.  You also think that because something comes naturally to you, it must be easy for others so you downplay your contributions because you believe anybody can do it.

4. Comparing to others.  You often contrast your ability to those around you and think that they may be more intelligent.  When you see the world through competitive eyes, instead of through an abundant mindset, it may make you less willing to share with others and less likely to build stronger relationships.

5. Negatively impacting your leadership.  If we are always seeking validation, we are less trusting of our gut in making decisions. Also, since we think we should know everything, we are less likely to ask for help.  This can leave us in stuck mode. Excellent leadership is about listening to those around you and asking questions for strong learning opportunities.

6. Isolating yourself & increasing feelings of loneliness.  You may not want anyone to know your feelings of inadequacy so you create distance from others for fear of being discovered and you carry around this big secret, thinking that it only pertains to you.  Even when you learn that others have it, you think, their feeling is just a distortion, while your fear is actually real.

We all may feel like we are punching above our weight class at times, that’s natural, the key is to understand where the feelings come from so it does not completely steal our power and suffocate our presence.  Then, we can take action for positive changes. 

Quote of the day: “Don’t compare yourself with other people; compare yourself with who you were yesterday.” -Jordan Peterson, Author

Q:  Have you ever personally thought about the origins of your imposter syndrome?  If you have felt it, where do you imagine its source?  Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

[The next blog in this series 3/3 will focus on leading tips to fight imposture syndrome]

As a Leadership Coach, I partner with others to shatter their limiting beliefs and build confidence, contact me to learn more.

What’s your self-doubt message?

Why Do I Feel Like An Intellectual Fake? (Imposter Syndrome Series 1/3)

You have just been told the fantastic news that you have been promoted to lead a team for the first time and while you thought you would have an immediate rush of euphoria, you pause to pay attention to your actual feeling, and notice that you have an overflow of doubt and negativity.  Your mind spins a series of aggressive questions - what if I cannot do this?  What if they find out that I am not that talented?  What if I mess up so badly that I become the first person in company history to get fired on the first day, perhaps even before lunchtime?

Do these worries torment you?  If you are like 70% of the population, you are not alone in this particular type of feeling known as imposter syndrome.  In their study, researchers James Alexander and Jaruwan Sakulku described it as “a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist despite evident success.”  We have this sense that other people think that we are more skilled and competent than we are, and at any moment, we are going to be exposed as intellectual frauds.

How does Imposter Syndrome differ from good old fashion performance anxiety?

Sure, we all may experience moments of stage freight – right before stepping into the spotlight to deliver an important speech or conducting a high-stakes meeting, we deal with performance interference thoughts that can push us off our game.  And then there is imposter syndrome, which is self-doubt on steroids.  According to Researchers Joan Harvey and Cynthia Katz, there are three core characteristics of imposter syndrome: 1. The belief that you have fooled other people 2. Fear of being exposed 3. The inability to attribute your achievement to internal qualities such as ability, intelligence, or skill.  Instead, you think you got to your position through luck and do not deserve any of your previous accomplishments, you are just living this big fat lie.  Nervousness and some stage fright before big events are different than the perennial feeling of not earning any of your successes.

When we explore the negative impacts of imposter syndrome, we can work towards managing this feeling more effectively.  Here are some of the most detrimental effects:

1. Decreased satisfaction with work.  While some self-doubt can keep us on our toes, push us to take chances, and check our egos as we are reminded of our fallibility, too much of it can diminish our ability to find satisfaction at work.  If we are always feeling an excess of anxiety with every task we do, it will be hard to derive joy.  Even when we have an accomplishment, new situations arise and continue to be proving grounds.  It can also lead to increased workaholism.  If we are driven by this fear of failure and feelings of not possessing the capabilities, we will work harder, overdo things, and burnout.

2. Diminished happiness.  Imposter syndrome does not only hurt our career, but also our health, well-being, and personal relationships.  When work dominates, we neglect our self-care and our connections with others.  Resentment grows and dissatisfaction becomes the pervasive norm. 

3. Prevents presence.  If achieving presence requires us to be in tune with our truest feelings, beliefs, abilities, values, then how can we be ourselves in the moment, if we feel like a fraud?  Imposter syndrome causes us to overthink and second-guess, and it makes us over-fixate on how others are judging us.  Our thoughts are scattered and we find ourselves mentally reviewing our previous few steps and what our rewrite would look like.  This self-monitoring can prevent us from listening to others because we are distracted by our inner monologue, which makes it more challenging to build trust and connections for the highest quality relationships.

4. Keeps us playing small. A chronic sense of unworthiness can breed misery and crush our motivation, thereby holding us back from pursuing our ambitions. We reject ourselves before even granting a chance to succeed. We start to question our personality and wonder if we are even cut out for this job. That leads us to only take on tasks that we know we can succeed in and we do not put ourselves in positions of feeling stretched so our growth potential is heavily capped.

While imposter syndrome is a normal feeling, there are things we can do so it does not unleash a torrent of adverse effects on us and get in the way of our goals and dreams. The next blogs will jump into how imposter syndrome shows up and ways we can fight against it.

Quote of the day: "Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant."  -Cary Grant

Q: In what areas of your life do you experience imposter syndrome?  Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

[The next blog in this series 2/3 will focus on the origins and manifestations of imposture syndrome]

As a Leadership Coach, I partner with others to shatter their limiting beliefs and build confidence, contact me to learn more.

The untold damage of Imposter Syndrome

A Better Way To Handle stress in the Workplace (Stress Series 4/4)

We spend an inordinate amount of time being stressed at work.  While some frustrations may be driven by the “do more with less” approach, the struggle to keep up with rapid changes, and a general avalanche of problems, one of our top sources of stress relates to the conflict we have with other people.  The typical responses of complaining, avoiding, or fighting can be absolutely draining.  Recent studies show that in the US, work-related stress is costing the economy over 300 billion per year and can be blamed for 120,000 deaths per year.

How we deal with stress related to coworkers can determine our health, happiness, and productivity. While it is tempting to blame the other person, there is usually not one culprit so an excellent place to start is understanding our role in the situation.

Here are some suggestions for dealing with stress-related conflicts at work.

1. Assume positive intent. In social psychology, the fundamental attribution error or over attribution bias refers to our tendency to judge others by their behavior and assign it to their character but to judge ourselves based on our intent.  When we see someone doing something, we tend to think it relates to their personality rather than the situation that the person might be in. For example, if someone cuts in front of you in line, your immediate reaction could be, "What a jerk!" But in reality, maybe he never cuts lines and is doing it this one time because he is about to miss his plane and hence his brother’s wedding and of course he has the rings! Yet, when we do seemingly obnoxious things, we always have a good reason. It is other people we see as defective, but not us. When making these judgments about others, we increase our levels of stress. Instead, when we focus our attention on their possible positive intentions, we start to see things differently, not only do our stress levels reduce, but we can be surprised by how much more optimistic we can feel.

2. Activate your self-awareness. To interpret the frustration you are experiencing towards the other person, you need to be aware of your emotions which are causing you to feel thwarted or threatened.  When was the last time you made time in your busy schedule to list the ways which others can send you into mad mode?  The more you know about your triggers, the better you can control your temperament.  Sometimes, all it takes is a small discovery that we did not perform well on a presentation to touch our larger insecurity around public speaking, and in that case, it has more to do with us than the comments of others who are just trying to be helpful.

3. Consciously manage your emotions.  Once aware, channel your emotions to be a thoughtful responder rather than an emotional reactor. Lashing out can seem like an easier action, but it is not the more productive one.  One way to be more mindful is to incorporate reflective practices in your life – deep breathing, meditation, yoga, solitary walks, and other activities can go a long way in increasing your self-awareness so you will be able to plan and be strategic on how we will respond. It’s about intentionally choosing how you want to show up, instead of blurting out words that you could later regret.

4. See people as people, not threats.  Building friendships at work can increase our happiness level and provide additional perspectives to check our opinions.  Adopting a collaborative mindset over a competitive one can also create untapped joy.  Try out these words – “we, us, ours” instead of “me, I, mine.”  Ask yourself, “what can I do for the team,” instead of thinking “what can the team do for me?” Consult close friends at work to get another perspective or work with a coach to learn more about your blindspots.

5. Lean into your natural empathy and compassion. Find out how the other person came to their point of view.  How is it different than yours? How is it the same?  The more you learn about somebody else, the more you may discover that you have more in common than you may have thought.  Or perhaps there is a new appreciation for what the person is trying to do which has nothing to do with singlehandedly, or in a larger conspiracy, taking you down!

Instead of just enduring the toxicity and associated stress that we may experience at work, we have a multitude of options to explore, which will create more internal and external joy.  Life is too short to spend time brooding about unnecessary drama.  Take steps to control what you can and not worry about what you cannot. 

Quote of the day: "Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude." -William James

Q: What strategy do you use to handle a stress-conflict at work? Comment and share with us, we would love to hear your thoughts!

As a Leadership Coach, I partner with others to resolve conflicts in the workplace and create agreements for success, contact me to learn more.

Handle your workplace stress for a healthier and happier life.

How Well Do You Know Your Stress? (Stress Series 3/4)

When stress strikes and impacts your body and mind, how do you handle it?  Learning about your reactions can help you manage it and build resilience in its presence.

Here are 3 leading ways to get to the root of stress:

1. Explore your stress through questioning. Ask yourself:

A. How do I respond under pressure? Maybe you confront, avoid, break down, become irrational.

B. What does stress do to me physically? Beating heart, tightness in your chest or shoulders, sweating, knots in your stomach, or headaches.

C. How does it affect me emotionally? Do I get sad, angry, worried, or have a pervasive out-of-control feeling?

D. What are my go-to distresses? Are they positive: Laughing, meditating, practicing yoga, reading, socializing, or negative: excessive eating, drinking, procrastinating, watching tv, overworking, being rude to others?

E. Do I have a different reaction or destresser for a different trigger or context? Perhaps when it is dealing with family, you engage in emotional eating, but when dealing with a work event, you get angry and condescending.

It is ok to not have all the answers, but embarking on a journey of self-discovery can be the most important expedition you go on.  You can start by prioritizing your self-reflection by journaling daily, thinking regularly on these questions especially during mundane activities like brushing your teeth, or by reading about how other people handle the causes and effects of stress so you can provide a comprehensive solution.

2. Know your values.  Stress can occur when one of our values is being violated so knowing your values can help with an adequate response.  For example, you may be anxious about giving feedback to your team member.  Upon further scrutiny of the situation, you realize that the value that is being tested is your concern with fairness, so you want to make sure you are doing right by your teammate. You ask yourself, “by prolonging the conversation, am I being fair?”  You may realize that when you frame the situation through the fairness value you are much quicker to provide feedback so she can improve and help the team.  Or perhaps, you criticize yourself harshly and are stressed because it is violating your value of self-compassion.  When you can identify the principles that are being tested, you know how to put strategies in place that allow you to use your emotions wisely under stress.

3. Increase your response range. When we are stressed, our brain is wired to be more reactionary and our decision-making faculties are impaired.   We can resort to binary choice-making which limits the options available to us.  In tough decisions, we can reach premature conclusions rather than opening ourselves up to more and better options. A good way to combat this problem is to force yourself to generate several responses, even when you think you only have a few, challenge yourself to have at least 10 and then you can winnow down to a realistic and empowering three. Knowing that you have more options will reduce your stress. 

When confronted with a stressful situation, carefully appraise your core strengths and resources rather than panicking or disconnecting from reality.  Identify the source of the stress, think about the values that are being tested, and increase your range of responses so you can defeat anything that comes your way.

Quote of the day: “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” – Mark Twain

Q: Which value, when violated, causes you the most stress?  What’s your best distressing technique?  Comment and share with us, we would love to hear!

[The next blog in this series 4/4 will focus on dealing with stress in the workplace]

As a Leadership Coach, I partner with others to understand their sources of stress and have a game plan for working with it for increased performance, contact me to learn more.

What do you know about your stress?

Top 8 Ways To Deal With Stress (Stress Series 2/4)

In the last article, we talked about different kinds of stress and associated positive and negative impacts.  The focus of this article will be on ways to manage worry effectively.

Let’s Jump Into Leading Techniques to Deal with Stress:

1. View it positively. How you see it makes all the difference.  A study tracked 30,000 adults in the US for eight years and began by asking people, "How much stress have you experienced in the last year?" and "Do you believe that stress is harmful to your health?" Researchers then used public death records to find out who died.  The results showed that people who experienced a lot of stress in the previous year and viewed it as harmful to their health had a 43% increased risk of dying.  People who experienced a lot of anxiety but did not see it as harmful were no more likely to die.  In fact, they had the lowest risk of dying of anyone in the study, including people who had relatively little strain. Changing how you view stress can literally mean the difference between life and death. 

Furthermore, when you tell yourself, this is my body helping me rise to the challenge, you channel that energy to work for you and not against; you turn stress from debilitating to enhancing. Reframing it can provide a different look and open up an array of healthy possibilities to stare down the tension from an empowering position.

2. Get help. When you share with somebody how you are feeling instead of bottling it up, you can relieve some of the effects. When life is difficult, your stress response wants you to be surrounded by people who care about you, there is a built-in mechanism for resilience found through human connection.   When you reach out to others to seek support, you can bounce back more easily than if you choose to isolate yourself. You may be surprised that the very worry that you are convinced only relates to you is shared by others and more common than you think.

3. Play and laugh.  The best antidotes to stress are play and laugher.  It is hard for the human brain to think about more than one thing at any given time.  You cannot be both pepped up and driven down at the exact same moment so when you find ways to laugh, you are reducing the stress emotion.

4. Get busy. Winston Churchill famously said, “I have no time for worry.”  If you are doing something that involves planning and thinking, it is hard to fit in worry. Sometimes, taking your mind off the nagging worry will allow you to return to the problem on your own terms. What kind of project or task can you work on that will occupy your full attention?

5. Rehearse the worst-case scenario.  Instead of having these uninformed nebulous catastrophic thoughts bounce around in your skull, you can think through the worst-case scenario which can shed new light.  Perhaps we realize that it is not as bad as we are portraying it, or we discover the power we need to get through the toughest times. When we visualize, more information can surface to assuage our concerns and we can plan to mitigate those circumstances.

6. Know it will pass. Believing in the idea that the stress is temporary and that there is nothing life could bring to you that is beyond your strength to endure.  You can also ask yourself… how much is this thing that I’m worrying about really matter in the grand scheme of things?  How much am I willing to pay for this worry, how much have I already paid? 

7. Engage in future think. Picture yourself in the future, perhaps 1-3 years from now, and how you will not care about this trivial matter.  It helps us visualize not being in this painful moment but in a more joyous time. When we are so ensconced in the short-term, we are filled with all kinds of emotions, but when we can shift our mind to the long-term, the more rational side can balance the emotional side.

8. System design. If there is a problem that is causing you stress, you can address it by designing a system to combat the problem.  This can involve the following:

A. Have a process: When people panic they make mistakes, they override systems and disregard rules.  If you have a familiar process, you will be less stressed because you have prepared for this before and know exactly what to do. 

B. Get started: Maybe the first thing you do is write down what is causing the problem. You do not even need to devise a solution, you just need to begin. You can even pretend you are somebody else objectively collecting facts for the problem.  When you devote your time to research, worries tend to evaporate in light of knowledge and clarity.

C. Break down the stress:  When you can dismantle something or look at it from a new angle, it loses its force over you.  Don’t focus on the big goal, break it down into small pieces, and pay attention to taking the first step. 

Other techniques can include: getting adequate sleep, regular exercise, mental downtime, taking vacations, doing controlled breathing, practicing yoga, mindfulness meditation, getting acupuncture treatments, walking in nature, journaling, being of service to others, and practicing loving-kindness to name a few.

The main takeaway is that we are not powerless to stress.  When we proactively manage it, we will regain control and find more ways to be happy and fewer ways to worry.

Quote of the day:  “It is not stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it.” -Hans Selye, Father of Stress Research

Question of the day:  What technique do you use that is not on this list? Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

[The next blog in this series 3/4 will focus on ways you can learn about the sources of your stress]

As a Leadership Coach, I partner with others to understand their sources of stress and have a gameplan for working with it for increased performance, contact me to learn more.

Reduce your stress with these techniques

Making Sense of Stress (Stress Series 1/4)

There are no shortages of common sources of stress including work, children, finances, relationships, illness, overcommitment, loneliness, family dynamics, lack of work-life balance, and uncertainty, all exacerbated during these quarantine times.  While stress is a ubiquitous part of life, its negative effects do not have to be. The very way we look at stress can completely change its hold over us.

Stress, or this agitation in the body, usually happens when demands exceed capacity. It can come in many different forms. There is the type of stress which you bring onto yourself such as showing up for a meeting unprepared or skipping out on a commitment.  This is pointless stress because it can be avoided or minimized with advance planning and prioritization before the situation turns problematic. There is the stress that hits you like a bolt from the blue and even having done everything right, you could not have anticipated or controlled its arrival.  There is high-level stress that can be debilitating to your performance and there is low-level stress that can be enhancing. There is short-lived stress that provides the accelerating force for you to accomplish a task and there is long-lasting stress that chips away at your health and happiness each day.  The intensity and duration of stress matters, and when both are present, it is a recipe for disaster.

Stress: The Destroyer

The one thing for sure is that too much stress, especially of the acute variety can have deleterious effects.  It can muddle our thinking by crippling our abilities to think long-term, and it can compel poor decision making. University of Pennsylvania Professor and Author Annie McKee says, with chronic stress, “we have more difficulty being flexible or open to new ideas, we start seeing things in simplistic ways and we overreact to minor irritants; everything and everyone starts looking like a threat.” In this state, we are more likely to cause problems rather than solve them.  It is an endless loop – we do not think straight and we pick fights; we lash out, hide out, or opt-out. It gives us tunnel vision, the more stressed we are, the more focused we tend to be and are unable to see the periphery.  Neurologist Robert Sapolsky spent more than three decades studying the physiological effects of stress on health.  He concluded that long-term stress suppresses the immune system, making us more susceptible to infectious diseases and can even shut down reproduction by causing erectile dysfunction and disrupting menstrual cycles. Being chronically overwhelmed and fatigued can negatively impact our performance and can lead to mental health issues such as burnout and depression.

Stress: The Builder

Not all stress is bad, however.  A little bit of stress or a lot for a very short period of time can be a good thing.  Our stress hormones keep us alive!  If something was intent on eating us, our stress reactors would kick in and encourage us to run away. Sapolsky explains, stress hormones are brilliantly adapted to help us survive an unexpected threat. "You mobilize energy in your thigh muscles, you increase your blood pressure and you turn off everything that's not essential to surviving, such as digestion, growth, and reproduction.”  You think more clearly, and certain aspects of learning and memory are enhanced. All of that is spectacularly adapted if we are dealing with an acute physical stressor. Other than keeping us alive, moderate stress can help us develop coping skills and even kick us in the butt to boost our output.  Being unproductive can cause a feeling of stress and sway us in the direction of aiming to get work done. Having that deadline that is tight, but not too tight can spur creativity and motivation. Additionally, those stress states help us appreciate the periods of tranquility and the proactive steps we can take to spend more time in those peace zones.

It is important to notice the difference between stress that causes us chaos and stress that brings great results.  Fostering the good kind of stress and using techniques to minimize and avoid the bad type of stress will take you far. Regardless of the approach, we should never allow the stress termites to eat away at our lives. We have more power available to us than we realize and there is always some type of strong response we can offer.

Quote of the day: “Stress is caused by being here but wanting to be there” -Eckhart Tolle

Q: How have you used stress to achieve peak performance?

[The next blog in this series 2/4 will focus on 8 ways to deal with stress]

As a Leadership Coach, I partner with others to understand their sources of stress and have a gameplan for working with it for increased performance, contact me to learn more.

Embrace the good kind of stress while mitigating the bad type.

Top 10 Tips for Prioritization (Priority Series 5/5)

One of the biggest struggles in the modern workplace is knowing how to prioritize work.  Workloads are ballooning and everything feels important.  However, the truth is that a lot of the work we do every day does not really need to be done.  At least not right away.

Here are some additional helpful tips for tackling prioritization:

1. Apply the Pareto Principle or 80-20 rule to everything you do.  It says that 20% of your activities will account for 80% of your results.  So from a list of 10, two of those items will be worth the other eight combined.   On any given day, do you know your top two valued activities?  Spending 100% of your time on 20% of the activities will make a big difference.

2. Set Deadlines.  It is important to have deadlines for every task; otherwise, according to Parkinson’s Law, work will expand to fill the time available for its completion.  Coined by British scholar C. Northcote Parkinson, he points out that people usually take all the time allotted (and frequently more) to accomplish any task.  When you set an appropriate deadline, you can generally find ways to finish in that time frame. 

However, there might be times when you are unsure how long a task will take.  Do your best to plan and think on paper so you can give yourself a time range.  You can even build in extra time since you are not sure of the exact end time, and if you do not use it, you will be happy with the bonus time. Having an incentive to complete the task by the deadline and not infringe on your free time can be motivating.

3. Go From big to small.  It is good to start with a macro picture - what you want for the year - then go small by thinking about what you need to do today.  The smaller you get, the more energy you can devote to those items.  Mark Twain said, “the secret to getting ahead is getting started, the secret to getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks and then starting on the first one.”  Each day, you can begin by asking – what is the one thing I can achieve today? 

4. Assess the value and estimated effort.  You can order your tasks by value.  There will always be some tasks that will have a much higher value.  For example, completing a client’s high-revenue project before doing internal work such as designing a presentation template for yourself for the next time you give a speech. Ask yourself how many people would be impacted by your completed work.  The more people involved, the higher the stakes.  

You can also order tasks by estimated effort.  If you have competing items that are equal in value, you can further divide them by the estimated time of completion.  Generally, productivity experts usually suggest the tactic of starting on the lengthier task first.  However, if your style is to complete a series of smaller tasks to free up the mental energy to dedicate all your power to the bigger tasks, you can choose the process that best supports your style.  It can also be motivating to check off a few things from your list before moving on to the weightier items.

5. Be flexible and adaptable.  Uncertainty and change are givens.  Know that your priorities will change, and often when you least expect them.  Since we cannot know the future, new information can force us to tweak our plans.  While that is true that you want to stay focused on the tasks that are important to you, you also want to be aware of the sunk cost fallacy.  In this psychological effect, we feel compelled to continue doing something just because we have already put time and effort into it.  Spending time on the wrong items that will not move the needle will be detrimental in the long run because you will never get that time back.  Life can remind us that there will be times when we have to stop what we are doing and switch tactics to get back on a better and faster track.  Bestselling Author Jim Collins reminds us that a “stop-doing list” is even more important than a to-do list.  We simply cannot do it all, even though we all know many people who try.

What’s your favorite tip for prioritization?

6. Make a decision on priorities.  A big problem that some leaders have is that they do not make any decisions, thereby failing to signal to others what is truly important.  This lack of prioritization is a problem.  Steve Jobs said, “what I don't do, is just as important as what I do.”  Take a couple of minutes in the morning to set your intentions to get what you want from the day instead of somebody else setting your agenda.

A. Actively choose what not to do.  Warren Buffet decided that he would invest only in the business that was absolutely sure of and then bet heavily on them.  He owes 90% of his wealth to just 10 investments.  All the decisions he made not to invest are just as important as deciding on what to invest.  He said, “for every 100 great opportunities that are brought to me, I say no to 99 of them.”  To be one of the best investors of all time, you need to be selective.  So, when in doubt, cut!

B. Choose One.  Having one significant priority will help to add structure in your life.  In the early 2010s, Mark Zuckerberg had a single focus to grow Facebook.  So anytime somebody went to him to pitch an idea, he would respond, “does it help us grow?”  Even if the answers were attractive such as this will make a lot of money or this will help the business, he would ask the same question about growth until he got the answer he wanted.  He had a main goal to focus on growth and made it very clear to all his employees so they were able to filter their requests first before going to him because they knew clearly what he cared about; they knew about his main objective of growth.  He only wanted to discuss one initiative at a time and refused to talk about anything else. 

Similarly, Billionaire Peter Thiel gave everybody one objective to focus on and when his employees wanted to have a meeting with Peter to pitch a new idea, he would ask how the new idea impacted that goal.  They had to connect all their work to that one priority.

C. Choose the “Hell Yes” option or it is a No.  The things that yield a “hell yes” response should get priority.  Derek Sivers uses this approach when making a decision, he only says yes to the things that he is really excited about.  Everything else, including the lukewarm commitments are a no.  So, if you think of activities on a scale from 1-10 (10 being really excited), the activities with a ranking of a 10  would be an easy yes, and any task from 1-9 would be a hard No. Check out my blog on Saying Yes for more.

D. Go for quality over quantity.  You do not have to do 100 things, you just have to do a few things right.  Get clear on your first principles, which are the things you love.  Distinguishing between the trivial many and the vital few is important.  Greg McKewon defines being an essentialist as “the relentless pursuit of less but better.”  Cross something off of your to-do list by not doing it and feel the relief.  

7. Get comfortable saying No.  Once you know your top goals, you want to say no to time killers and non-aligned requests.  Saying no does not mean a rejection of the person, but a way to honor your own commitments to yourself.  You can say, “This is something that I would love to help with and I’m grateful for the opportunity, but I need to focus on other pressing commitments right now.  The good news is I have already lined up a great replacement.” 

The script can be written in many different ways, the important piece of information is that there are a multitude of ways to say no politely, while also protecting your most important time.  Feel free to check out my earlier blog on Saying No which contains more scripts. 

8. Get comfortable with tradeoffs.  In making priorities, you have to make tradeoffs.  When you say no, it means you get to say yes to something else. Herb Kelleher, CEO of Southwest Airlines, always made these strategic tradeoffs.  He treated every “no” as a yes for his company.  Saying no to one thing allowed him to say yes to something else, such as developing an amazing company culture.  These tradeoffs were not made by default, but by design!  Herb said in an interview, “You have to look at every opportunity and say, well, no … I’m sorry.  We’re not going to do a thousand different things that really don’t contribute much to the end result we are trying to achieve.”  He made Southwest the dominant airline because he said no to destinations that were not point to point, no to serving meals, and no to first-class because they would have all been at the expense of offering cheap seats, which was his main priority.

It is important to be clear in your priorities because if two conflict, you want to know exactly what to do.  For example –being called into the office to work on a project and having a family event to go to, you can decide in advance what you are going to do based on what’s most important to you.  This way, when the decision comes up, it is not as difficult since you already did the advanced decision-making.  

9. Stick to your agreements and beware of boundary creep.  Let’s say you and your boss have agreed that your main priority is to build the website so all other aspects would be taken off your plate.  The beginning of the agreement feels great because you finally have the time for a single focus and you are making significant progress.  Then, a few months later, you notice that additional work keeps creeping in so your normal workload is the way it used to be before the discussion.  When that happens, be sure to correct it immediately.  Your priorities will always be tested, but when you are crystal clear with your boundaries, you can prevent any additional work encroachment.

10.  Choose an outbox over an inbox strategy.  How easy is it for us to lose precious hours of our day swallowed up by emails, wondering where the time went and why we did not accomplish anything? Living with an inbox strategy means that we respond to every request and interruption, we are at the mercy of other people‘s needs and agendas. In contrast, living with an outbox strategy means taking control of our day by setting clear and focused goals and then following that roadmap to get the job done.  Successful leaders know how to get clear on the essentials. 

Prioritization is a necessary skill to learn because sometimes it can feel like information is coming at us like a hose that has no off switch.  The approach of keeping up with the amount of data coming our way is a full-proof fail strategy.  Instead, we have to find ways to be selective in how much we are going to accept, when we will receive it, and how we can discard the excess. 

Quotes of the day: “ It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”  -J. K. Rowling

“Theory is good for the intellect, action is good for the soul” - Robert Reiner 

Q: What is your favorite prioritization tip?  Comment and share with us, we would love to hear what works for you! 

As an Executive and Leadership Coach, I partner with people who want to get clarity on their priorities, contact me to learn more.