The Second Biggest Lie of All Time

In my work with leaders and teams, the first thing I address is emotional triggers. We all feel negative feelings from time to time, especially when we work with other human beings. Differences in personality, style, role, position, status, etc. can play a part in why we get emotionally upset by others. This is natural. Through self-awareness of what triggers you and why, you can begin to evoke different strategies to deal more effectively with them, thus becoming more of a master of your energy and a constructive force in the workplace. In pondering my work with others (and with myself as I am constantly practicing as well) I realize it is a possibility to fall into the blame game. When we blame others we feel a little bit better because “they made me feel upset”. In my estimation however, this is the second biggest hoax of all time. If I ask you to raise your hand, and you do it, does that mean that I made you do it? No. I simply asked and you cooperated. You could easily have said no. When others do things that are not ideal for you, are they making you feel a certain way? Or are you reacting to something that has happened? There is a difference. In the first scenario you are at the whim of others’ actions and feel as if the reaction you have is out of your control. You, in essence become a victim of circumstance. In the second scene you realize that you are having a reaction, and you own it fully. The situation may still not be ideal but there is a self-awareness that for some reason you are having a reaction. This is a more powerful position. When you hear yourself saying either out loud or to yourself that someone is making you feel a certain way, this is the time to stop the lie. The jig is up. You are still feeling what you feel, but there is more creative potential in owning your reaction. Unfortunately, patterns of triggers and reactions develop over time and have solid roots. By beginning to own more our reactions, such as “I am feeling this in relation to that” instead of “she is making me feel this way” you can start to cut the roots away. By understanding that you are responsible for your well-being you can start to ask yourself why this person or situation upsets you and what would be ideal in the future. Sometimes others remind us of the unwanted aspects of ourselves, what psychology calls our shadow. This has nothing to do with the other person, and everything to do with the unresolved emotional energy and beliefs locked inside. Secondly, you can begin to envision what you really want in a situation and use skillfulness in communication to potentially get your needs or vision met. But don’t take my word for it, test this theory out. The next time you feel an adverse emotion in a situation with another person, say to yourself “I am feeling this in relation to that. Why does it bother me so much? What’s the learning here? Who do they remind me of? What do I want to happen in the future?” These question will help you release the victim and look to a more generative and creative position. This can be a truly powerful stance. Oh, and the first biggest lie of all time? That you shouldn’t lie. I will explore this next time.

The Anatomy of Organizational Culture Change: A Small Toolbox for Big Change

As most business leaders and managers know, organization culture is real, yet it is hard to put a finger on exactly what it is, and thus how to engender it in the workplace day to day. It has always been my premise that culture happens whether we are intentional about it or not, so why not be strategic about the practices that set the conditions for a positive, collaborative and innovative culture? In past articles I have exposed the various skills and practices that are paramount to developing a strong and vibrant culture. In this article I will put them all together in a top level view so you can see the trajectory and method that I use in my work, what I call the anatomy of organizational culture change.

I view progress as both linear and concurrent. The linear piece means that my main concepts are broken out and discussed week after week, one after another. The concurrent piece is that even though I parse the skills out, they all work together, in tandem, like pieces of cloth working together to make a quilt. In the beginning you need to work on each square of fabric. We begin week after week to sew the concepts and skills together to make a portion of a quilt in real time. But when they are put together they make something very useful, a whole that is a sum of its parts. In my estimation, it even goes beyond the sum of the parts, because when all of the pieces of culture change are working together, they forge an energy that taps into the collective wisdom of the group. The group itself becomes more intelligent because of each person’s commitment and practice of the attitudes and skills that make a culture highly functional. The World Famous Pike Place Fish Market is a great example of a real-time illustration of this concept.

The skills can be taught one-on-one or with a group, or both. You need to figure out the frequency of meetings that you can have and make a commitment to see them through. In the age of busy-ness, it’s my view that we need to resist being in the weeds and spend some time together learning and thinking strategically about how a team or group can function better, more optimally. So let’s say you decide on weekly or bi-weekly meetings, this method will fit into any time period, although I like to not go longer than monthly just for memory sake. Each meeting will then have an agenda, which includes a new concept or skill (content piece). Each agenda will begin with a check-in to how the past concept has been implemented. I also build in time in every agenda for appreciation (specific articulated ways we positively impact each other) and relationship building (getting to know each other as humans beyond roles) because they are the practices that engender trust, the glue that binds our commitment to each other to stay the course. So in a nutshell each agenda has a check-in, appreciations, relationship building, a new content piece or two, and then a closing question (such as “what are you taking away from today’s meeting?).

The first content piece to focus on is trigger management. When people work together there is propensity for negativity and dysfunction for a variety of reasons. We need to help people understand their ‘negative’ emotions and learn how to manage them more effectively for the result they are trying to achieve. This is not a case of just thinking positively. It validates that negative times happen, and one of our strategies for dealing with our negativity is to perpetuate negativity into the culture. This is understandable because energy has to go somewhere, but it can lead to poison all around. I call these reactions ‘negative team behaviors’, and they don’t actually solve the problem. It may feel good to give someone a dose of negativity, and you may even feel justified or vindicated for it, but it rarely leads to high morale and sustained change.

The next component I move into is feedback skills. The second meeting will be devoted to giving feedback and the third about receiving feedback and defensiveness that can happen. Feedback is the premier communication tool for collaboration and innovation in a business. I teach what feedback is, why it’s important and then how to do it. I offer a roadmap to give people a template to plug their own unique situations in to take some of the mystique out of how to do it. Of course intention is paramount to feedback. I talk about our intention to care about our fellow employee’s (or manager, owner) success and growth. 99% of the people that I have worked with have reported caring about each other, even if there is a struggle happening. This is important to remember and belies my perspective that feedback is a gift. We get to deliver it to build someone up rather than tear down, and we get to receive it well, hearing the nuggets of our growth and not taking it personally.

In the fourth session I bring awareness to intention and impact. I use a matrix to illuminate the different possibilities of positive and negative intention which could lead to positive and negative impacts. We are always impacting people, hopefully for the positive. When challenges happen in the workplace sometimes there is a mismatch between positive intention and negative impact. One example could be honestly wanting to give someone feedback to help them grow, and the person taking offense to it and taking it personally.

In the fifth session I explore listening skills, namely body language, paraphrasing and our ability to be curious and ask questions. True listening means that we are not of two minds, such as when we are multi-tasking or distracted. It is a gift to give someone our un-abided attention. It feels good and the other person feels valued. I also talk about upholding boundaries when you truly can’t take the time to listen. Saying something like “can you come back in 15 minutes so I can finish this report?” is much better than continuing typing, saying ‘uh-huh’, only getting snippets of information and being somewhat tuned out.

The last three sessions are devoted to team building exercises and concepts. I rarely start off my work with teams with team building games/exercises, because a team needs to learn the aforementioned skills and get some traction with practice so they can communicate better and feel more like a team. Then team building activities help them to have fun and integrate the skills in a tactile way. Some exercises I use are build-a-word, toxic waste dump, synergy, puzzling puzzles, helium stick and back-to-back drawing game. You can Google these or contact me for more information.

So that’s it in a nutshell. I use specific worksheets and models for most of the content pieces, which I can share in a different post. Just remember that someone needs to champion this work. It could be an owner, another executive, a manager or a coach. Whoever takes up the torch of building a positive culture needs to make sure to be diligent and stay the course. This approach will take time, but the payoffs can be amazing for the people and the business success.

Taking Things Personally

We all experience adverse emotions from time to time, some more than others. Sometimes when others present us information that we don’t want to hear, such as feedback for our attitude or performance, we take it personally. What does it mean to take something personally? To me, whenever we feel offended, embarrassed, insulted, defensive or upset there is a reason behind the scenes that is motivating these emotions. Say, for instance your co-worker gives you some feedback about a process that you are following that isn’t quite right. When this person comes to you and delivers the feedback, you may feel ‘less than’ or even ‘the worst employee ever’. Now the co-worker didn’t say these words at all, they merely gave you some constructive pushback. You in essence have taken the feedback personally, instead of what it was intended to do. We all sit with negative feelings about ourselves at times, most likely based on unresolved experiences from our past conditioning personally and culturally. There are many ideals and expectations that are placed on us growing up, many we couldn’t live up to. Also, some parents and teachers were not so nice at times and created within us our own ideal of how we should be. We take these ideals into adulthood and they become unconsciously part of our identity.

We all sit with negative feelings about ourselves at times, most likely based on unresolved experiences from our past conditioning personally and culturally.

One client I support had a stepfather who reinforced over time that her voice didn’t matter, to be quiet because that is what good girls do. You can imagine that this energy is still alive as an adult, creating part of her identity. In short, her unresolved identity from childhood is still alive and well. So when some situations occur to have her speak her mind and truth, say to her male supervisor, she clams up. Or when she perceives that someone isn’t valuing her perspective, she takes it personally because that is what dad did. I want to posit that even when people do have a negative intention to insult us, for instance, we don’t have to take anything personally. If you get upset by someone’s insult, that has nothing to do with the other person. In my opinion you are making a choice to get upset because of what the insult reminds you of, your unresolved identity. Most of us don’t look at this subterranean level of our experience, instead we fight against the surface, the other person, and blame them for our distressed emotions. This simply is the biggest hoax of all time. I personally grew up with a stepfather that was hard to deal with; he was ornery and condescending at times. I moved into my 20’s with a ‘chip on my shoulder’, an identity that I was less than to some degree. I felt depressed about it many times, but didn’t realize what was motivating it. I am fortunate to have gotten into coaching so I could understand this part of me more fully so it doesn’t drive my behavior as much.

Not too long ago, a man I was doing some team building with got very upset and raised his voice to me in front of the whole group. I could have taken this personally and fought back. But I understood in that moment that he was reminding me of my stepfather and that I wanted to fight back. But he isn’t my stepfather. In that moment I was able to calm my impulse to fight against my (unresolved) stepfather and just be curious as to this other person’s unease. I didn’t have to take it personally and I didn’t. It was a defining moment of my coaching career and humanity. So any time that you feel less then, worthless, bad, unlovable, etc., take stock in these moments. They are stemming from something you haven’t dealt with yet. What you can do is just calm yourself down and realize that these thoughts and feelings are fleeting and stem from old stuff. If someone is being abusive or rude, you can ask or demand them to stop, but it doesn’t have to stem from taking it personally, rather it can stem from your values of connection and love. With the employee who was raising his voice at me, at some point I asked him if he could calm down a little bit so we could talk it through because yelling wasn’t going to get him very far. I was able to calm him down gently and glean some really good feedback from him, as well as engender self-awareness on his part. Why did he get triggered by me and yell? He took something I did personally. Even though my intention was to have a good team building experience he had a reaction that had little to do with me and a lot to do with his own unresolved issues that I was triggering up in that moment.

There is great power in choosing your reactions and attitude. You can rise above your past and create a different present, and thus future.

What is going on here? Why are you reacting to a situation in that way? Does this remind you of anything of old? What thoughts and emotions are present? Enlist someone you trust to talk these instances through and you may be surprised what you find.

“Get to” versus “Have to”

Obligation is an interesting topic, those things that require us to show up and do them: pay the mortgage, go to work, take the kids to school, monogamy, paying bills, you get the gist. We all know well the ‘have to’s’ in life. These obligations can weigh on us, pressuring us, cause us stress. Does anyone want stress? I’m not talking about the stress (eustress) one feels before a performance or deep Crossfit workout, for instance. That’s a good kind of stress, helps you perform at your peak because you want to do those things. What I mean is the distress, those times that leave us frazzled, uptight, demoralized. I call this the ‘get to’ vs. ‘have to’ mentality and duality. Upon further inspection of our ‘have to’s’, they don’t really hold up. Do you have to do anything? Really, follow the logic here. Are you free to do absolutely nothing in life? Some people get this right away, while others buck this concept. Now I am not trying to obligate you to look at your obligations, but it might be a good practice to engage in. After all, any negative energy you feel in life is a drain, a piece of you that isn’t whole, isn’t free.

Don’t we all want freedom? It may be time to inspect your ‘have to’s’ and inquire why you have to do these things. In fact, pick one thing in your life that is a ‘have to’ and follow it through. Why do you have to do it? Are you free not to? Why or why not? This all comes to down to choices we make from our values. For instance, I am free not to pay my mortgage, this is true. But, I actually get to pay it because I value where I live, value my daughter growing up in it, and love it. There is no stress, no ‘have to’. I get to do it. Words convey energy. Often times just changing a ‘have to’ to a ‘get to’ creates a subtle shift in your psychology, your emotions, even in your body, only if you believe it that is. You can relate to a ‘have to’ while saying ‘get to’ but still believing ‘have to’; in essence you are trying to manipulate your mind. Your mind is very smart however and it won’t hold up for long. This goes beyond semantics. Just think about a time, say, you wanted to go to the gym, maybe around New Year’s. You start going, but it feels like a should, a have to, so it doesn’t last very long because your mind is smarter than your will. Willpower is a ‘have to’ with a nice word attached to it. Start scanning the words you use. Do you use should, must, need, have to and other words or phrases that convey obligation? Inspect them as to why, you may be enlightened.

Some of my clients have a solid case of the ‘have-to’s’. They give people what I call a ‘dishonest yes’ and take things on because they think they should or must. When I challenge them to see this, things begin to change. They get to either keep doing it because of some higher value they have or they get to stop the behavior. It is amazing when you can clear up your own energy and turn the dial to more positivity and connection. It really is pretty simple. Wrapped in every obligation is a precious opportunity. Just today I was sitting with a manager at a non-profit who was feeling obligated to hold a supervisee accountable. As we talked through his negative lens on it, we emerged with a ‘get to’ attitude, that holding another person accountable for their role or attitude is a precious opportunity to make things right from his perspective. We essentially went from a drag to feeling auspicious in 15 minutes. It was quite cool to see the obligation unthaw and give way to a new path, a new vision, a potential new way.

Synchronicity

These amazing experiences fly through the window over and over again, availing themselves for me to partake in their mystery.

For a long time now I have had very interesting experiences happen in my life. These experiences range from very dramatic to very subtle, but nonetheless they seem to be here to stay. I call them synchronicity. Case in point: A few weeks ago I went to another city nearby to talk to a prospective client. Upon getting to the business, we agreed that since it was a beautiful day that we go outside and talk at a picnic table across a field. As we arrived at the picnic table we all sat down, and upon sitting down inscribed right in front of me on the top of the table was Jeff S. in big letters.

What is going on here? I can almost bank on something cool like this happening weekly. I told my chiropractor/kinesiologist about this, and he got. In fact he experiences it frequently as well. On one recent appointment he brought me a book, appropriately named “Synchronicity”, and I started reading it a few nights ago. It documents the work of Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli, psychologist and physicist, on their journey to figure out just what synchronicity is. After I read the first chapter, pretty heady stuff by the way, I put the book down and meditated for awhile. Then I drifted off to sleep. While sleeping I had a dream about Wisconsin for some reason, I won’t give you the details but there it is. So I woke up the next day had the day off with my daughter. I knew that Wisconsin had some part to play in my day, so I just relaxed and waited for it to come.

So here is my crazy story: My daughter wanted to go to Target to get a book, so we went and in the parking lot I asked to hold her hand. I mentioned to her that the Beatles sang a song by the same title. A half hour later when we walked into Party City, that same Beatles song was on the radio. I said to my daughter: “Oh my gosh, listen, isn’t that weird? It’s synchronicity!”

Well, a young man at the counter looked at me and told me that it happens to him all the time too. He then proceeded to tell me about quantum theories, exactly the ones that I was reading about the night before in the book! But…it gets weirder. I called my wife to tell her about this as it was happening and also mentioned that Wisconsin was in my dream. She called me back a little later to tell me she just saw a guy (she was at the beach) with a Wisconsin shirt on. The way I take these uncanny experiences is that I am in the right place, in the right person, at the right time on my journey as a human being in a vast universe. I don’t understand it, but I relish it.

My own theory as to why synchronicity happens, and is happening for a lot of my clients recently, is that I am open to it. I try to live a mindful life, mindful of my thoughts, feelings, actions, relationships, body, and work. I try to keep my senses open, and to notice the world around me. To be free of my judgmental mind, push it aside and see the tapestry of life unfolding before me at any given moment. I try to remain in the flow. And by doing so, I think my window of consciousness for the mysteries of life is open to some degree. These amazing experiences fly through the window over and over again, availing themselves for me to partake in their mystery.

Did I cause them? Are they pure chance? Hard telling not knowing. So I invite you to start to pay attention to these major and minor episodes of your day. Remember your dreams and see if any connections happen from them. Pay attention to life at any given moment, resisting the temptation to be so self-absorbed and self-focused. There is a big unseen world out there that we get privy to for some reason. Keep the vessel open and reap the rewards. Post comments on the FB page too if you want to share any of your experiences.

Zero Reaction July

This past month I undertook an experiment: To sufficiently and consistently manage my actions on the face of ‘negative’ triggered emotional states. I originally wanted to call it Zero Stress July, but upon further reflection I realized that I can’t necessarily control or foresee situations that may pop up that I might feel stress. Case in point: My only major reaction all month was to being stuck in traffic on the ride up to vacation in Maine. We got off the highway for lunch and in downtown Kittery and the traffic was gridlocked. Being on the road for two hours already and ready to have a break, I felt stressed and reacted by raising my voice, being judgmental, and getting short with my family. This all lasted for about 5 or 10 minutes, when I realized what was going on, that I was having a knee jerk reaction to something I couldn’t control. My whole intention for Zero Reaction July was to take a month and be hyper focused on breathing in the face of any stressful feelings that came up from life situations. My hypothesis was that if I could breath and calm myself down in the face of my triggers, then I could actually keep my well-being intact and choose consciously what action I would take to remediate the stressful feeling. I forgot this in traffic and I had a minor meltdown.

What I teach and coach in my work is that negative actions or behaviors are not usually what support our highest values and aspirations for great relationships at home and at work. I call actions such as sarcasm, gossip, avoidance, eye rolling, and yelling negative because they don’t usually get us a desired result that we really want. How is gossiping about a co-worker’s tardiness going to resolve the issue? How is sarcasm about someone’s personal style going to change it? These actions are understandable because they are seeking to release the unease we feel in a situation, but they usually aren’t too helpful. And for that matter if we are in control of our own well-being, then we wouldn’t consciously choose to be negative. I haven’t met anyone yet in my work who wants to have negative reactions to others. But sometimes we feel that we are at our wits end and that yelling, for instance, is the only thing that will work (it does get results but also creates fear or frustration on those being yelled at).

One really interesting insight that came up for me in July was that if I feel hungry, agitated at all, or tired, then I will have the propensity to get triggered and react negatively more easily, as was the case on the highway (tired). I also realized that we have many expectations in life, such as having your child listen to you, that sometimes aren’t met. When our expectations are breeched we can have a tendency to have a knee-jerk reaction as well.

So all of July, I focused on breathing in the face of any negative feeling, such as anxiety, frustration, anger, loneliness, sadness, etc. When a negative feeling would pop in it was if an alarm went off in my head to take some deep breaths. What tends to happen to me is when I get frustrated I let out a deep sigh, like I have been burdened. I must admit that I caught myself sigh a few times, but the sigh would actually point me to deeper breathing instead of my head full of judgment and blame. Then when sufficiently calm, I could take an action that support my values. One action was to let go of whatever is bothering me, not in a denial way, but a self-coaching “this isn’t a big deal” sort of way, you know, sort of letting go of control. That worked sometimes. Another action was to state the feeling that I felt, such as “I am feeling frustrated that you are listening to daddy,” for instance. One other was to give feedback about a situation, which is similar to the last action, just a bit more formal. And yet one other one was to just change the setting or subject (like going outside for a walk, or turning some music on). Lastly, used sparingly, another action could be to be pointed, not mean, but straight in no uncertain terms with the person that you mean business. These are all more positive strategic actions that you can choose, the operative word being choose, when under duress, if you slow down enough to remember them and not fall prey to negativity.

I read a bumper sticker recently that said “Be calm, and Carry on”. This is the gist of what I am saying. Unfortunately it’s not that easy and I wonder if the person who’s car has this sticker remembers this under duress. My guess is probably not. It is an empty platitude until you put the rubber on the road and practice, practice, practice. This is what Zero Reaction July was all about. As a consequence of the positive outcomes of this practice, I am happy to report that I have moved into Zero Reaction August. I throw the gauntlet out to you and would love to hear comments about how it goes for you and what you find on this journey of lessening stress in your life.