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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"A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes."

-- Gandhi

This quote from Gandhi is very powerful and most of us have consciously experienced it in our own lives. Yet we so often get trapped in our own labelling or self-talk which, if we are completely honest, is definitely not serving us.

I have been missioning with my eldest child to change a self-belief or label he has adopted, and damn it it has been hard work. I suppose partly because he does not really see his mom's issue/motivation and partly because he thinks: "If others (not my mom) says so, it must be true".

I had a similar 'moment' earlier this week - getting isolated feedback from an individual at a client. It is so easy to create a perception that a momentarily flaky opinion is the reality and accurate experience by the collective. Which is not necessarily the case. We have to be so careful which opinions and perceptions we allow our minds to engrave.

Let me put it in another way: A once-off happening, whether it is a mistake/opinion/triumph does not have to mean anything. You do not have to claim the label of being bad or a looser or whatever.

Not too long ago I met with remote staff of a client. When the client took me back to the airport I shared my observations and concerns about some of the exclusions that I have noticed. I considered various prejudices, suspecting that the behaviour could likely be subconsciously etcetera etcetera. Not phased at all by my opinion, the client said: "You are over-estimating us, I guarantee you these guys are quite clueless about these things!" And he was probably right. It was probably the individuals' own issues/labels, and not the group's.

I see this often, if not daily, in group situations where individuals put themselves in a category and behave according to their self-chosen label - assuming the group also see them in that way. Most of the time the group is oblivious to the self-label.

So the question to ask is: What labels are you claiming for yourself?

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

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Empower yourself

When you go to bed very early just to get to the next day, you know you had a rough one. Or if you start wondering by Wednesday whether the Blue Monday will finally end today. Multiple challenging events in a short period of time.

I do not know if it is in the stars or the moon, or the stage of life, or the time of year, but I am finding people around me, and myself, are going through hectic stuff without a lot of energy to deal with it. Or even worse, the wrong kind of energy to deal with it. So now, reminiscing on how to empower yourself when things are not working for you, I find it quite challenging as I have recently been reminded how difficult it can be.

I have recently been exposed to and had head on collisions with two very disempowering situations: exclusion and abuse (emotional in this case). Both these behaviours are typical bullying behaviours, which indicates poor self-esteem. I know this, in my head, but my heart still feels the hurt when it happens to me or if I see it around me.

This is visible everywhere: with clients, where someone is excluded purposefully from meetings or teams (even though a very sensible reason may be presented at the time). It still hurts the excluded one. Or snappy comments, maybe coming from a place of frustration or insecurity. It is still abusive. With my kids I see it all the time, the two year old baby sister crying at the boys’ room – not allowed in. The hurt of exclusion.

I am not dissing any of the reasons for exclusion or the ‘excuses’ for the momentarily bad behaviours. I get them all. But what the disempowered person can do about it - that should be the focus. Throwing a super tantrum in front of the boardroom door to be let in might be, let’s say, “career limiting behaviour” (as appealing as it may sound!). Or swearing at or even slapping the abusive colleague or husband of a friend is also not ideal…

A line learnt from a retired business partner goes like this: “This is not working for me..” – realising the disempowerment or need to change the situation. And the second part: “… so what can I do?” Believe me, the answers will pop up. And more often than not one of the most empowering things to do, is simply to walk away.

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

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Making Rules Work

When people talk about rebels, or rebellious behaviour as a negative, I find it so amusing. This is of course because conforming has always been a personal challenge. I wish I knew why, then at least it could have been less painful growing up – struggling to conform, follow the rules, fit into the system.

I am very aware of the risk of how this could sound. In my view a rule, for the sake of having a rule, has just never been something that you have to follow. It is optional. As you can imagine this mindset leaves plenty of room for failure.

During the school holidays my Grade 1 child had a homework project that he had to complete. When I asked him on his plan to making this happen, his reply was: “Don’t worry mom, it is optional.” I think not.

Being able to manoeuvre rules and systems to work for us, is a skillset I often see (or the lack thereof) with clients. For some people it comes very naturally – spotting opportunities for creativity in spite of (or because of!) the rule or system limitations. Please note: I am not advocating doing illegal stuff, not at all. I am wondering how you get people to see the rule/box and then work with it to such an extent that it starts working for you.

My IT guy has figured this out. In database design, if the current rules are not serving the developer, they simply create a new rule that will do the trick. My kids have tried this with our family “rules” as well, creating addendums to the norm. This is in the form of very cleverly worded qualifying circumstances and subsequent consequences.

Some very successful businesses base their whole business model on the weakness of another’s rule, law, contract, system, etc. The limitations of the box we all so desperately try to fit into. I applaud these guys (or most of them at least.) A display of the creative human spirit at work, fantastic!

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

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