We’re going on a bear hunt…

There is a school of thought that believes you have to identify an individual’s weaknesses and try to fix this. Assist the person to become a ‘complete’/perfect individual. However, research shows that if you would focus on the individual’s strengths, the overall improvement in performance would be double what it would have been focussing on the weaknesses. The obvious choice would then be to…?

Not to sound patronising, it is like the response in those banking ads. The presenter asks: “Why are you choosing this bank?”. And the response: “Are you serious?! ”

Yet, we generally still have a societal focus on weaknesses, not strengths. I am not suggesting we deny the obvious development areas, especially if there are high risks linked to it. What I am saying is, we have to find ways to overcome our limitations, not deny them.

My dad comes from the insurance industry, so I grew up with ‘risk management’ as a theme. I know that if you focus on the risks, you can easily become anxious. This is often visible in performance when someone receives criticism. If the negative feedback is not positioned in a constructive way, the performance will be worse, not better.

When people become scared to admit their weaknesses, they hide them, lie about them, and blame others. In a team this could be disastrous. I find myself doing a lot of senior management team development work - assisting in creating a ‘safe space’ where team members can talk about their own limitations, and as a collective figure out ways to move around them.

Personally I was in denial of a technology related limitation for a long, long time. I was exceptionally creative in finding ways around this, compensating for this in, let’s just say interesting (read ‘really stupid’), ways. It was only when a client in a meeting looked at my black book with a thousand tags and just shook his head, that the penny dropped for me. What I would call a “Development Area” was not just to wake up to technological possibilities, but to move through the fear of the unknown, maybe to struggle initially. When I now look back at this, I cannot imagine not dealing with this limitation.

I love reading Going on a bear hunt to my kids. Michael Rosen has taken an old children's rhyme, and turned it into a picture book. The repetitive line when spotting an obstruction/limitation says it all: “We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. Oh no! We’ve got to go through it!”

Motto Model: http://goo.gl/cNnpy and Motto Individual Assessment: http://goo.gl/UhC7V

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Childlike

I am sure you will be able to share funny stories of where you really came up with interesting and very creative ways to solve a problem. As a child, a friend’s brilliant idea of drilling holes in a dry wall in their home (– to peek through when someone enters the door – obviously!) was not met with much appreciation from his dad.

Problem-solving in my view is the basis of being creative. There are lots of research out there that proves adults become worse at this, not better – which is actually ironic. As adults we are constantly faced with challenging situations – the perfect opportunity to become more and more creative – excel at problem-solving. And then (ironically) we hardly come up with new or creative ways to fix or better a situation. It is usually a ‘same old, same old’ approach.

This reminds me of one of Einstein’s (Mr. Super Creative) infamous quotes: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

So the next time I want to respond to some of my kids plans with: “You’re crazy!”, I will remember to rather say: “Please come up with a different solution.”

I heard an interesting story today (involving vuvuzelas) of a management team that found a very creative way to motivate staff in a production environment. This business had a massive backlog to catch up in a very short period of time, and the team were able to create a phenomenally successful motivation strategy to fix the problem.

Sometimes someone just have to be brave enough to share the outrageous idea. I heard another story of a unique publishing business that was established due to doors closing and markets changing. A group of impacted scientists (non-publishers) came together and out of pure passion created a thriving extraordinary publishing business – and at the same time saving their favorite publication.

I love stories like these, it restores my faith in humanity. Ordinary people coming up with extra-ordinary solutions, co-creating. What is not to celebrate?

Motto Model: http://goo.gl/cNnpy and Motto Individual Assessment: http://goo.gl/UhC7V
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Counting sheep … sleeps!

This time of the year is usually when we have a build-up or backlog of work, and not enough time – which generally causes stress. Coupled with that, most people I encounter are exhausted and counting the sleeps to their vacation break.

With this tiredness without resting time at the front of mind, I came across interesting information on how the brain functions in such taxing times. Two main things, the first: a research study with monkeys showed that the brain literally shrinks when it is put under stress. I am sure our human brain’s functionality are not too far removed from the monkeys, and we can safely assume a similar thing would happen to us. Our brains shrink, i.e. cannot think clearly or do creative problem solving when we are stressed.

Without the monkey study I am pretty sure you knew we (humans) do not think well when stressed. Just think of exam experiences – “hitting a blank”. The moment you opened the exam paper you could not even remember your own name, let alone all the stuff you studied for the exam you were taking.

The second interesting thing was that when we are tired, we tend to be more creative in comparison with when we are fresh. So the brain filters distractions when it is not exhausted, and these distractions are often part of the creative resources. Long story short, when you are tired you are more likely to come up with creative ideas. I suppose it makes sense, when you relax in the bath or shower after a long day, ideas and solutions come very easily.

Our current challenge would then be, how do we remove the stress so our brains do not shrink, and how do we allow the brain tiredness to give us bright ideas to deal with our year-end challenges?

These are some suggestions: Try not to own the stress. Breathe. Do something you love, be it fishing, painting, cycling or whatever – the thing that will give your brain a chance to give you the good stuff.

And of course, keep counting the sleeps…

Motto Model: http://goo.gl/cNnpy and Motto Individual Assessment: http://goo.gl/UhC7V

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Balancing act

‘Collaboration’ is such a buzz word. Everybody wants to or is collaborating with everybody else. The Spirit of Collaboration. It sounds very whole and healthy.

When people are thrown in the same pot to ‘collaborate’, it does not always feel (or function) very healthy. In fact, it can be tremendously painful. People bring different things, good and bad. The biggest challenge is possibly to figure out how we can create a space or an agreement where we can collaborate effectively: have win-win outcomes. I love working with other people – everybody bringing their own stuff to the party. However, it can be very difficult to get the ‘working together’ to actually work. For everybody. Equally.

I see it very often where different parties are not equally represented in a conversation or informal negotiation. The reason being not necessarily that the value add to the conversation is lopsided or even the ‘air time’ not shared, but rather the positioning of the contribution being poor. I know this sounds strange. Let me explain: Person A is super confident, clear on what the conversation outcomes should be, fluent in the language used, knows the related lingo. Person B is highly insecure for whatever reason, struggles to express thoughts, feelings, ideas clearly. It is obvious that regardless of the contribution of Person B, it will be much easier (and possibly faster) for Person A to create a ‘winning conversation’ for him/herself. Collaboration in essence implies win-win relationships, deals, conversations.  The challenge for Person A is therefore not only to (often unknowingly) not dominate the outcomes – by selling and positioning the outcomes in such a way that it suits him/her perfectly, but Person B is highly misrepresented. The challenge is also to get the strengths, contribution and value add out of Person B, in spite of him/herself.

During a workshop on a related topic last week, a delegate made the comment that it is not his (typical Person A persona) responsibility to ensure the ‘other insecure person’/Person B communicates properly. Really? So can you honestly say you are collaborating? I think not.

I know this is not easy, and it often creates a lot of frustration and resentment – this thing of people not expressing themselves in a way that it is easy to have win-win situations. There are many collaboration tools and techniques out there. I suppose all of them could help. What works for me is constantly checking-in, reflecting what was said/understood, asking for clarification, rechecking understanding again. Then we are collaborating.

Motto Model: http://goo.gl/cNnpy and Motto Individual Assessment: http://goo.gl/UhC7V 
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