The Business End of Gratitude

“There are two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

— Albert Einstein

Gratitude is not a new idea. Many religions and positive psychology practices have gratitude as a central theme.

Even in the realm of science, leading thinkers regularly point to gratitude as an important concept.

Expressing gratitude daily for the both the big and little things in life helps us to maintain perspective and positivity regardless of the circumstances we are experiencing.

It is a simple act, requiring only a willingness to find something to be grateful for, and expressing that gratitude.

Research tracking people who expressed gratitude daily in a journal for just 10 weeks, showed they experienced a 25% increase in their happiness.

They became more:

• joyful
• enthusiastic
• interested
• attentive
• energetic
• excited
• determined
• strong.

Now to the business end! The list of qualities above is compelling from a business point of view.

What would the impact on your business be if you showed up with some or all of those qualities? People would certainly notice. Would a client or customer appreciate contact with your business if you were more energetic, attentive and interested?

If you manage a team, how would they respond to those qualities in you? In the competitive market place, these attributes in a boss, or fellow team members have a direct impact on staff satisfaction, retention, and productivity.

Imagine then the impact of creating a culture of grattitude across your whole business! The attributes above would become synonymous with your business, including its products and services.

The simple act of gratitude can and does equate to increased team effectiveness, increased customer satisfaction, increased well-being and therefore productivity of staff, increased reputation and ultimately increased revenue.

Gratitude makes good business sense!

Gratitude is just one of the strategies I teach in my business coaching sessions for leaders.  If you'd like a complimentary session call me on 0423 193 196 . Alternatively, you might like to pass the offer on to one of your customers or a member of your team as an expression of gratitude.

I'm grateful for your time - thank you.

Psychological Safety - Creating safety with staff and your customers

“To create a psychologically safe environment requires at a minimum that you establish trust, boundaries, and a sense of control in the team or social environment.”

— Robert J. Marshak

We have been there before, you and I. We have stood in that place of uncertainty. That place where we feel uncertain and therefore unsafe. 

The uncertainty can be created in many ways - attempting to learn or master a new skill, meeting someone for the first time, public speaking, a follow up call or a sales meeting, being in a new place or team, expectations not being met...

We all react differently to these situations.  Our past experience, knowledge and how we perceive risk, drive our response. But for most of us uncertainty leads to feeling unsafe.

It's called psychological safety because the actual risk and danger may be non existent.

Regardless of the actual risk we perceive risk and danger and interpret it as real.

Part of my work as a survival instructor was designing scenarios with a high level of uncertainty built in. I'd deliberately push people into feeling unsafe and uncertain - after all, they have came to learn how they react and respond, how to master their emotional turmoil and create a sense of control within the uncertainty they face.

Their reactions, just like yours and mine are interesting and often surprising.

In a business setting, staff and customers may feel unsafe for many reasons. The results are distraction, loss of trade, down time, confusion, defensiveness and/or aggression, people making their own rules, lack of vision and direction, poorly made decisions etc...

There are many actions you can take to create a sense of psychological safety for anyone in any situation.

These are my top three. Why not try them with your team and customers.

1. Be clear about your vision. How do you see this situation or interaction working out? Visualise the outcome. Get as specific and detailed as you can.
2. Clarify expectations. What is it that you and they expect? Be diligent in understanding their perspective and be prepared to meet or exceed expectations whenever you can. If that's not possible, be prepared to clarify further and negotiate some agreed expectations.
3. Communicate often. Keep people in the loop. One of the biggest complaints within teams and from customers is that they just don't know what's going on. People have different preferences and expectations about how you should keep them informed. Be a student of this and meet or exceed their expectations. This is especially important in times of change or uncertainty. 

These key actions go a long way towards achieving the trust, boundaries, and sense of control  mentioned in the opening quote.

Curiosity and Awareness

Curiosity and Awareness temper our need to be right!

Over the last 2 weeks we have explored the power of expectations. While it is undoubtedly true that our expectations create our reality, at least in part, it's also true that sometimes our expectations are not met, or something really unexpected happens. It's way too simplistic to say all you need is a good set of expectations and everything will go well for you. 

Curiosity and Awareness are key tools to ensure that we are able to deal with unexpected events, or unexpected results.

Research in areas as diverse as business, survival, sport, military, and neuroscience has highlighted and clearly documented the human ability to create mental models. If you would like to know more about this some great books on the topic are Deep Survival, Iconoclast, 5th Discipline and Blink.

Mental models present a two edged sword.

On the upside, they are one of the most amazing functions of the human mind. They transform us from a purely reactive entity responding to opportunities and threats at a primal level. Mental models give us the ability to rapidly assimilate and generalise information across a range of settings and contexts.

Mental models help us learn, make judgments, develop wisdom, create new ideas and transfer learning between seemingly unrelated areas and events in our lives.

On the down side they lull us into a sense of certainty about "the way things are", often creating unconscious or inflexible expectations. These are precisely the type of expectations that lead to the problems discussed in the first article of this series.

A mental model at its worst becomes like a giant set of blinkers, creating a myopic view of the world. In this condition we are only able to perceive the things that confirm our mental model, even if there is ample evidence that it may be flawed.

In business this can result in decisions being made, and then a dogged determination to see it through despite ample evidence that the decision was an ineffective one. The same can be true in our personal lives as well - You may have even experienced it yourself.

When we look back with the 20:20 vision of hindsight we can often see these patterns clearly, but it takes discipline to pick up on them "in the moment".

Once the brain picks a mental model, it expends less and less energy, increasingly assuming the model to be true, and only paying attention to information that confirms this assumption.

Enter Curiosity and Awareness. They are the most powerful tools of the survivalist mind and the only remedy to falling into the trap of inflexible mental models. 

Awareness is a discipline. It is a commitment to scan widely for new or different information. There are a range of skills and tools that can be learnt and mastered to increase awareness.

Curiosity has a lightness and wondering about it, not taking itself too seriously.  Curiosity will notice small inconsistencies and ask "now why is that?" Curiosity will seek the novel, even in the mundane and familiar. Curiosity wonders at the links and relationships between all things. Again there are skills and tools that can be learnt to enhance curiosity and its effectiveness. 

Cultivate these 2 gems!!

Expectations alter Reality

Last week we explored how expectations kill people.

But expectations have another, perhaps more powerful function. They bend reality to meet us. Humans have always been able to imagine a different reality and then bring it into being. It's the source of every innovation we have ever made.

Research and anecdotal evidence shows that many people in survival situations stay alive against incredible odds, sometimes even defying medical science. It would be reasonable to think that they are people who are physically tough, or better trained for the situation that they face. The reality is far more interesting – the one thing they have in common is that they expect to survive.
 

There's a great example of this in  “Unbroken”, Laura Hillenbrand’s biography of Louie Zamparini. Louie was lost at sea on a life raft for 47 days having been shot down over the Pacific in 1943. The on the raft were two of Louie's  crew mates - the only survivors of the crash. The book and subsequent movie are well worth a look.

“Though all three men faced the same hardship, their differing perceptions of it appeared to be shaping their fates. Louie and Phil’s hope displaced their fear and inspired them to work toward their survival, and each success renewed their physical and emotional vigour. Mac’s resignation seemed to paralyse him and the less he participated in their efforts to survive, the more he slipped. Though he did the least, as the days passed, it was he who faded the most. Louie and Phil’s optimism, and Mac’s hopelessness, were becoming self-fulfilling.”

— Unbroken - Laura Hillenbrand

Ultimately, Mac passed away, while the other two survived their ordeal.

There's a powerful link between what we expect, what we intend and where we put our attention.
Zamparini intended to survive. He expected events to unfold to support his intention. He gave his attention to the evidence that suggested he was right, and to the actions that supported his intention.

You and I have intentions and expectations everyday, in every area of our lives, whether we are aware of them or not. They guide and focus our attention. For the greatest likelihood of success, all three factors need to be conscious and work in harmony with each other.

Asking yourself these questions will assist in bringing them into your conscious mind. 

What is my intention? Am I clear about my intention? If not, how can I make my intention clearer to myself and the people around me? Is my intention aligned to my personal values?

What do I expect in this situation?

Now give your attention to the actions and mindsets that serve you best in this moment, and watch as reality begins to take shape around you according to your expectations.

Expectations kill people!

In every survival situation I can think of it’s the expectations that did it.

The pilot expected to make it through lowering cloud… and flew into a mountain.

The prospector expected to find his way back to his vehicle… and was lost for days.

The lost man expected to find water… and perished from dehydration.

Reality! - No one in their right mind would continue into a situation they expect will kill them. 

In a survival situation the feedback is rapid. When you make a mistake the consequences are quickly experienced, sometimes in a matter of hours.

In our fast paced modern life, consequences may take days, or even years to arrive, but they are just as inevitable:

They expected the boom to go on and on...

He expected his staff to care as much about his business as he did…

So how can expectations lead us so far astray?
The fact is that our amazing brain treats memories of actual events and expectations of the future in exactly the same way.

“[Expectations] are stored in memory just as past events are. To the brain the future is as real as the past.”
L. Gonzales in ‘Deep Survival’ (2003).

The impact is that we tend to become fixated on our expectations, and then continue to blunder forward with a kind of blind optimism that believes the expectation will come to pass. That serves us well until there is a conflict – either between our expectations and those of another; or when reality begins to diverge from what we expect. At that point we have the choice of reformulating our expectations. If we don’t we are destined to encounter disappointment, conflict and friction.

The biggest challenge is being aware of what your expectations actually are. Most are formed without any conscious thought. for more on that see recent post http://goo.gl/dHZydF

I use a couple of great questions to clarify my own expectations:

1. What do I expect in this situation?
2. What is the impact on myself and others if this expectation is not met?

Once you are clear about your own expectations, one of the greatest gifts you can give to others is to clearly communicate your expectations with them, and seek to understand theirs.

The beginning of a new financial year is a great time to intentionally discuss your expectations in business. Are your strategies sound in the current reality? Are you tuned in to the expectations of your clients or customers? Does your team have a clear picture of what is expected of them, including how success will be measured or judged? Have you spent some time exploring the plausible "what if" scenarios for your business? 

Beauty, Sandflies and Friction

Last week I took a short break with a good mate. We spent a few days camped on a beautiful and remote freshwater lake. These lakes only fill on occasional years in the arid outback, and they dry up fairly quickly, so the opportunity was fleeting. The photo captured part of a 100 strong flock swans relocating for the night.

We were surrounded by ephemeral beauty, far from the distractions of everyday life, and yet there was a real risk of missing it all. We were distracted by agents of torment - millions of sandflies making the most of ideal breeding conditions. 

A sandfly bite is not initially painful and the insect is tiny enough to go almost unnoticed, even in their droves. But there's a catch. After a while the bites itch beyond belief, the kind of itching that has you lying awake at night, tearing at your own flesh and teetering on the edge of madness. The level of discomfort steadily builds over multiple days.

The key is to notice the sandfly early. If you pay attention to the first minor bites, and get some good quality repellant on, the later torment can be minimised and almost avoided. The trouble is, at the moment of most effective action, the issue doesn't seem big enough to bother with.

Many issues in life and business are like that - starting small and insignificant, and building in intensity. One of my Thrive and Adapt principles is "Treat the Hotspots". It's about the discipline to notice and deal with issues while they are still small. 

The indicators of a potentially building issue are tension, friction or conflict either within yourself, or between you and/or others. This short (just under 4 min) video talks about how to deal with friction effectively.

What are the minor niggles you need to get onto this week?

What's holding us back?

Over the last couple of years I've facilitated a number of conversations with not for profit organisations who provide care services to people. Many of them have a long history, being among the oldest charities in Western Australia. They provide services to people who are marginalised in our community. People with disability, folks who are ageing, others who have a mental illness. 

Across Australia, in all three sectors there is major reform - some of the most significant changes we have seen in 100 years. The primary thrust of reforms are that people will have more choice and say in the services they receive, and they will have some control over how their service funding is spent. For the first time, they will be genuine customers, rather than simply consumers of service.

It's no small change. It's taken years to arrive. It's major disruption. There is both excitement and trepidation in the industry.

In the past human services organisations have operated using block funding. Each year a "block" of funding was paid to the organisation to run its services. Measures of success were things like hours provided, or number of beds. People using services had choices, but they were limited to homogenous services that were mostly unresponsive to their voice. It's not that agencies didn't care. Most organisations and people in them are set up specifically to make the world a better place in some way. The nature of funding simply meant that they were more answerable to funding bodies, than the people they served.

Over the last 10 years or so, there has been an increasing move to individual funding. People were assigned an amount of money based on need. Funding was still paid to organisations and service offerings were in a fairly narrow band.

The new reforms actually place money in the hands of the people needing the service. They get to choose who they spend it with. Organisations are needing to be more efficient, more customer responsive and more commercially minded.

So what has this got to do with expectations that keep us here? Historically, many people who have worked in human services have done so precisely because it is not a commercial environment. Many feel that a commercial element is more likely to be cut throat and uncaring. Most of the organisations I have worked with have expressed an expectation that looks something like this.

“If we do what it takes to survive in an environment of margins, cash flow and economies of scale we will be less caring to the people who need us the most. It will detract and distract us from our core purpose.”

With this expectation, participation in the new models of funding is unappealing and feels like selling out. But as with many expectations, it's not a binary choice. It's not either/or. The best way around expectations that constrain forward movement is to ask better questions. "What would it take to exceed our expectations about caring, and be more commercially smart?" " What are some great examples of large, profitable businesses whose customers love their services, and the way they are cared for?" "How can we ensure that our commercial models have people at the centre, rather than costs?"

Providing a great service = happy customers. Caring about them deeply = connection. If the recipe is right you will have more customers than you can provide a service to, and business is likely to be pretty good too.

Resistance?

The time loomed close. At first light just before dawn, the group was to set off into unknown territory. Yesterday was a long day. Walking across a harsh and rugged landscape with minimal supplies and uncertain access to water. Their bed had been scraped out among rocks and sticks. Sleep had been elusive, caught in short bursts of an hour or two and punctuated by the need to stoke the fire for warmth or ease the pressure of sleeping on the ground.

In the pre dawn stillness, I heard someone throw up. Not a good start to the day! As the team medic, it was my job to investigate and assess. I was surprised by what I found. The young man who was ill was by far the fittest member of the group. Well trained, confident and competent. He'd been talking about taking this trip for over 2 years, and was planning to take on an even greater challenge immediately afterwards. As we talked about what was going on for him, it turned out that he wasn't ill as such. But he was stressed. 

His stress had him literally tied in knots, bunched and spasming muscle, a headache and waves of nausea. Debilitated by fear and anxiety. Despite our collective efforts, he was unable to stake it off, and ended up pulling out of the exercise.

His reaction was at the extreme end of a continuum of stress - the other end being so unstressed that we are bored. Somewhere in the middle is peak performance where we are stressed enough to be motivated, but not so much that we are overwhelmed (If you want to know more about that, check out the Yerkes Dobson Curve). You may well have experienced some form of being overwhelmed during your life. In that state, it's very difficult to access your ability and rationale. Even simple decisions can seem impossible. Operating at that level takes an enormous amount of energy and is not sustainable.

When I'm speaking to people who are managing change programs, they often talk about resistance. Resistance sometimes shows up in spite of what people are saying. A person might have agreed to the change, and have even been enthusiastic about it, only to appear resistant later on. The typical response to resistance is to shove harder. More force rarely works and is usually matched with even greater resistance. 

Our pre dawn bloke was stressed and torn between a part of himself that really wanted to take on the challenge, and another that was unable to face it in that moment. He was concerned about appearing out of control, and incompetent in front of peers and mentors. This is often at the heart of resistance, and often is more to do with hard wired survival instinct than ego. For the vast majority of human history, we have lived in small tribes, or communities, reliant on each other's skill and competence for our very existence. in this context, incompetence was literally life threatening. When people are called upon to adopt something new, there's an inevitable period of uncertainly often accompanied by the need to learn new ways of doing. People will retreat to the familiar, especially if they are nearing their personal capacity of stress. It's not a conscious choice - they may not even be aware that they are doing it.

Rather than shoving harder, work on creating environments where the "new" can be engaged safely and playfully. Have explicit conversations about the unspoken expectations that create the resistance. - More on that next week. 

What can survival situations and scenarios teach us?

Many people are fascinated by survival and the two most common questions I get asked are:

"How did you get into teaching survival?" closely followed by, "Well that’s interesting Mike, but what’s it got to do with the real challenges and issues I face in my everyday life?"

Lets face it, it’s unlikely that most of us will face a genuine survival situation, where actual life of limb are at threat anytime soon. 

Over the years I’ve observed myself and many others in survival scenarios, and actual, life threatening situations. They are a great observation platform for human behaviour.

A survival situation is cleaner, clearer and less complex than the lives we typically live. There are straight, uncluttered lines between what people do, and the results of their actions. And, the feedback loops are rapid and aggressive. It’s possible to observe the outcome of a particular way of thinking or acting a short time after it has been used. Sometimes you get to see whether what you did was effective or ineffective in a matter of minutes or hours. At most it will be a few days. 

This combination of simplicity and rapid feedback make it possible to directly observe your habitual patterns of behaviour. How the survivalist makes decisions, leads, resolves conflict, deals with uncertainty, handles changes to plan, works under pressure, builds rapport, deals with disappointment, manages expectations, and their other patterns of behaviour are thrown into sharp relief against the backdrop of rapid feedback. Some patterns are more effective than others. Some people have a great toolbox of effective patterns. They handle uncertainty and difficulty with seeming ease. Others have patterns that make it more likely that things won’t go well for them, or the people around them.

Over the years I have seen the same patterns of behaviour I observe in the field show up in workplaces. They are present all the time, and get magnified when people are under pressure. In contrast to survival, work situations are much more complex. The feedback loops can be slow and indirect. At work, and in our relationships, it may be weeks, years, or even decades before we recognise the results of particular patterns. Even then, they may be so clouded in the complexity of projects, the patterns of other people, and the passage of time, that we may never gaze directly and clearly at the link between our patterns and our results.

Survival situations have much to teach us about the hard wired, ancient survival mechanisms we all have. They give great insights into the advantages and disadvantages of this incredible entity called a human being.

Having straddled the worlds of survival and organisational change for 20 years, I'm interested in giving people a bit of a user manual, helping them get the best out of themselves and the people around them when the pressure is on and the chips are down. 

Effective Expectations

Expectations are powerful. They are uniquely human. As I work with individuals and businesses engaged in change, I often hear people say “Change is hard” or “people are not good at change”. I reckon this is a recent and not particularly useful myth. Humans have always been great at change. It’s the main reason we have achieved so much as a species. Stop for a moment and consider the incredible advances in every area of human endeavour. What we are capable of verges on miraculous sometimes. If we were not good at change we would still be living in caves. 

From the dawn of humanity we have been driven by 3 things that mean we are constantly looking to improve and evolve. We want to make things easier. We want to achieve more with less. We want to make things better. Da Vinci's inventions are great examples. He could see possibilities long before the technology existed to bring them to life.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him. The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself. All progress therefore depends on the unreasonable man”

— George Bernard Shaw

We create an (often unreasonable) expectation that things can be better than their current state, and then we use those expectations to bend reality to meet us. For expectations to bend reality, they have to be crystal clear.

Action: Invest some regular time in clarifying your expectations. If others are involved communicate your expectations clearly to them. Allow time for exploration. Don’t expect people to automatically understand your expectations. 

That’s the powerful up-side to expectations. The down side comes when we hold them too tightly. Expectations cause us problems when:

• Reality is sending a clear message that what we expect is not currently possible.
• We persist with an unrealistic expectation.
• We hold them too tightly, causing blindspots, frustration, judgemental attitudes, defensiveness, conflict and anxiety.

Expectations held too tightly are the root cause of death in every survival situation. Nobody leaves town for a trip expecting to die. They expect to arrive at their destination. When they become lost or stranded, they still do not expect to die - they leave the vehicle expecting to walk to help. It is neither the expectation, nor the circumstance that is at fault; it is the fact that the expectation becomes immovable in the face of evidence that suggest a different tack.

Pursuing an expectation when reality dictates a change is a short road to frustration at best, and heavy losses at worst. These three elements are all present in Shackleton's expedition.

Action: Take regular opportunities for feedback about your expectations from the environment, circumstances your face, yourself and the people around you. Be prepared to modify or discard expectations if they are not serving you.

Expectations - Friction, Tension, and Conflict

Expectations and assumptions are the root cause of most tension, friction and conflict in all areas of human relationship. Both at work and at home. Part of the challenge of human performance and effectiveness is to articulate expectations and arrive at a shared understanding of what is important. It's a collective and individual process.

Even when we choose to have explicit conversations about expectations, the territory can be muddy. We frequently use language that in itself is laden with expectations and underlying assumptions. Words like 'respect', 'integrity' and 'accountability' usually draw easy agreement. There are few of us who would argue that these are not important. But the detail of what we mean by a term like respect can be difficult to articulate for ourselves and discover in others.

This morning at 4am, I joined a lecture at the University of North Dakota, Space Studies Program. I didn't even have to leave home. The lecture was delivered by Dr Sheryl Bishop who has spent the last 25 years researching human performance and team dynamics in isolated and hostile environments. She has spent time at the poles, deep cave diving, and simulation of space habitats. She also conducted some research in conjunction with Bob Cooper on one of his Advanced Survival Exercises in the Pilbara.

Dr Bishop made an interesting point about how challenging it is to get people to even acknowledge that there is an underlying expectation or assumption at play.

She showed this photo of the crew dining table on the old Skylab Space Station. When it is not in use, the table folds down, leaving just the central pillar. Crew were moving through this room all day, and the Earth based control team noticed that they all pulled themselves around the pillar. It was so much more effort than simply flying over the top. 

When asked, the crew were unable to explain why they did it, especially when there were such obviously easier ways. After a few days of reflection they came back with this explanation. "It just doesn't seem right or polite to fly right over the top of our dining table." The crew had unanimously adopted a practice that took more effort and was based on expectations. They had never discussed it, and even when asked directly about it, took a while to identify why.

Dr Bishop's quote of the day for me was, "Often our expectations and assumptions are completely invisible, even to ourselves."

Had there been a crew member onboard who took the direct, and easier route through the dining room, this would have been a source of possible friction or conflict for the crew. In situations like that people often say things like, "He doesn't respect us." They are not even consciously aware of what the person is specifically doing to create the friction.

As leaders, subtle friction or tension is an early indicator that there are unmet expectations in play. Time spent exploring, and clarifying your expectations and those around you is never wasted. Greater clarity results in better performance, cohesion and dynamics, all of which are better for business.

Finding the Right Focus

Each year I like to try at least one thing I have never done before. I find that it helps to keep my mind sharp. I'm exposed to an area of knowledge I haven't been exposed to before, and the new practice forces me out of my well worn, and habitual grooves. From a leadership point of view, it also reminds me what it feels like to be in unfamiliar territory. We often ask others to step up, but if we continually operate within known territory ourselves, we can forget how unsettling a new space can be to the people around us. 

This year, I've been doing some work with Bradley Hunter at The Shed Functional Fitness. Brad is a master of kettle bells, and a seriously good personal trainer. The end of last year for me was hectic, and I found myself adding kilos and stress. I needed a new physical routine.

I've found myself in possession of a couple of shiny new kettle bells. They don't yet have the knocks and scrapes of Brad's set. Aside from the physical benefits, the bells quickly schooled me in being present, paying attention, and finding the right focus. It's worth finding at least one thing in your life that demands being present in the here and now. 

Kettle bells work in part because they force you into dynamic and unstable movements which switch on core and stabilising muscles. If you are not mentally switched on as well, they bite! Safety is a big part of the training, and Brad had briefed me really clearly on how to safely enter and exit each move.

During my first workout at home, I dropped my focus for less than a second. As I rolled over to complete the sequence, I forgot to focus on the bell. It literally took off. A quick but awkward roll managed to get the thing back on the ground without it doing damage to me, or turning into a wrecking ball. All up it was a better outcome than what could have been.

After that initial wakeup call, I find myself instantly present as soon as I touch a kettle bell now. It's almost like meditation!

I like to find activities that demand that kind of presence. It's what I strive to bring to all aspects of my life and work. When I manage that level of presence, I deliver better results, listen more, learn more, and both my business and personal relationships flourish.

Now the heady days of New Years resolutions are well behind us, if you were going to try one new thing this year - something fun, motivating and beneficial - what would that something be? The menu is endless. Will you choose a one off experience like diving with sharks or visiting a new country? Perhaps a course to develop a new skill set? Maybe a dance class? Build a new habit? Join a book club? Or try something new in business like a partnership or new offering? 

What will you do this year that's new and different? What will that new space teach you?