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What’s the drill: May 3 – Back to the basics

3 May

Ah, just when you think you’ve become an Improvisation Jedi  a challenge emerges to test your will, your word, and the ability to make the conscious unconscious.

Enter, the group project.

Time and time again I’m reminded just how important the skills of an Improviser are, how much practice it takes to apply these behaviors on and off-stage and the reward for doing so.

Sometimes, we need a re-set or a re-boot to wake us up and remind us that these behaviors sometimes hide off-stage when things like stress, the need for control, deadlines, and “being right” want the spotlight for the quick ego boost they may provide.

Ah, silly person. No. These aren’t the rewards that count. It’s the reward that comes from being a team player that we desire most.

Be the kind of Improviser/group project member people want on their team… because you make them better.

So, how do we do that?

1. Notice More it is my obligation to notice, accept, and use every offer/idea that comes my way. We only notice the offers if we are listening and paying attention

2. Start with agreement – Because I believe everything my partner says is fascinating and even, genius — it is my obligation to notice their offer and start with a place of “yes”. To do this well, I need to withhold judgement and blocking in favor of more acceptance.

3. Build instead of tear down - “yes, and” the heck out of their idea.  Two heads are better than one. By building on their initial idea instead of simply sticking to my own I help make my partner look good…great, even!

What truly happens when we enact these guidelines and put them into practice every day is that we allow ourselves and our team-mates to be changed. It’s what happens when we notice, accept, and build more often. We’re in our own head less, and experiencing more.

And if we fail at this today, there is always tomorrow.

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The Secret to Getting Ahead, via the NY Times

31 Mar

It would be easy to read yesterday’s NY Times profile of Professor Adam Grant and his book “Give and Take” and conclude the secret to success is to give more and take less.

We could come to similar, easily digestible conclusions with other, recent management development offerings. We could “lean in” more, “be more mindful”, or say yes or say no more often. But would this stick, or just make us more resentful, anxious, paranoid, or busy?

One thing is certain, I completely agree and appreciate Grant’s work and his message:

“The greatest untapped source of motivation, he argues, is a sense of service to others; focusing on the contribution of our work to other peoples’ lives has the potential to make us more productive than thinking about helping ourselves.”

As I see it, the key to encouraging more giving is by focusing on the feeling it brings.  In essence, we follow the feeling. Sometimes it is indescribable, but it sticks with us. 

If giving more, leaning in, taking more time for yourself, or saying no more often makes you feel better, more whole, more on purpose, then that is reason enough to do more of it. Perhaps it will allow you to give with more gusto, to listen in a way that offers the support your friend or co-worker needs.

We can save the quantity vs. quality of giving debate for another time. I feel better when I give help, advice, support, encouragement, and that is a powerful, potent, push to do more of it.

Mixing motivation and giving isn’t easy. If we view giving as a means to an end, (“matchers”, as Grant calls them in his research) than we’re missing the point.

Improvisers give in the form of making their partner look good. We give because it is the Improvisers credo. It builds trust. And it fuels creativity by opening us up to more possibilities and points of view.

But we are also good at saying no when we need to, when it feels instinctively wrong.  We are skilled at the polite, “NOPE!”. Guilt or pushing doesn’t motivate giving, that is certain.

“The most successful givers, Grant explains, are those who rate high in concern for others but also in self-interest. And they are strategic in their giving — they give to other givers and matchers, so that their work has the maximum desired effect; they are cautious about giving to takers; they give in ways that reinforce their social ties; and they consolidate their giving into chunks, so that the impact is intense enough to be gratifying.”

The impact of this work is profound if we give it and share it with others. It is the foundation of a learning organization, of a company of shared social capital and support. And it is sustained not because your boss told you to give more, or because you read about it in an article in the NY Times, but because you know how it feels when someone gave selflessly to you, and you want to pay it forward.

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When failure is part of the rules

19 Mar

A few weeks ago, a woman in one of my workshops raised her hand and asked a very important question: “Are you telling us that it’s okay to fail?”

A group of incredibly smart, focused, and skilled future leaders was confused. No one had ever given them permission to fail before.

I told her what one of my mentors, Randy Nelson told me: life is not about error avoidance, it’s about error recovery.

I wasn’t actually encouraging them to fail, I simply encouraged this group to change their reaction to failure.

Most of us fail inward – meaning, our bodies tense up, we get smaller and we let the world know that we are ashamed.

Improvisers practice what same may see as a silly exercise called the “Failure Bow” – we turn failure from an inward defeat to an outward celebration. This small practice helps us act the way we want to feel.

Seth Godin speaks brilliantly about failure, here in this interview. Some of the highlights:

  • those who fail more often, win – The people who don’t win are the ones that don’t fail at all and get stuck, or the ones that fail so big that they don’t get to play again.
  • What are the risks that you can take that keep you in the game even if you fail?
  •  Following the rules can lead to a fear of initiation and a fear of failure. Where can you work where failing is part of the rules?

The concept of embracing failure is broad and confusing for some – depending on your profession, and your past experience. This concept is also juicy and full of connection to vulnerability, innovation, creativity, you name it.

Simply put…error recovery builds resilience, it provides a new kind of reward…perhaps one that we aren’t teaching or recognizing enough.

 

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Why Our Brains are Hooked on Being Right – via HBR

14 Mar

I’m preparing for my “Summer O’ Conflict”, which basically means 5 weeks of Conflict Resolution training.

Conflict is fascinating, but as someone who watches and coaches Improvisers I have to say that the choice to start a scene with conflict is all too common. Some know it’s an Improv Pet Peeve of mine –  and I try to get at the root of why this is a common choice for so many of us.

I believe there is something about choosing conflict that keeps us safe. It gives us a problem to solve, but also keeps us from truly connecting and playing in the unknown. We can snap into ‘conflict mode’ quicker than ‘connection mode’.

This article from HBR sheds light on the neurological responses involved in conflict:

“In situations of high stress, fear or distrust, the hormone and neurotransmitter cortisol floods the brain. Executive functions that help us with advanced thought processes like strategy, trust building, and compassion shut down. And the amygdala, our instinctive brain, takes over. The body makes a chemical choice about how best to protect itself — in this case from the shame and loss of power associated with being wrong — and as a result is unable to regulate its emotions or handle the gaps between expectations and reality. So we default to one of four responses: fight (keep arguing the point), flight (revert to, and hide behind, group consensus), freeze (disengage from the argument by shutting up) or appease (make nice with your adversary by simply agreeing with him).”

More More More…

Further more, when we argue, and we win, we want to keep winning and keep arguing.

“That’s partly due to another neurochemical process. When you argue and win, your brain floods with different hormones: adrenaline and dopamine, which makes you feel good, dominant, even invincible. It’s a the feeling any of us would want to replicate. So the next time we’re in a tense situation, we fight again. We get addicted to being right.”

We run the risk of conflict not only being a choice, but a habit…one that we are neurologically rewarded for doing well in.

When Improvisers introduce conflict just for the sake of having something to do on stage, I stop and ask them to tell me what the conflict is really about. Often times they don’t know.

From competition to conversation

Improv is a team sport, just like so many businesses. Similarly, conflict is not necessarily a bad thing, it can be productive and important.

What worries me is the instinctual choice to fight instead of doing the harder work…listening.

If we can view conflict as a conversation instead of a competition, remove the idea of winner versus loser, right versus wrong and instead push towards agreement and the notion of being changed by the other person, then I’m more interested in your dynamics, and your scene. Our brains would like that too:

“Luckily, there’s another hormone that can feel just as good as adrenaline: oxytocin. It’s activated by human connection and it opens up the networks in our executive brain, or prefrontal cortex, further increasing our ability to trust and open ourselves to sharing. Your goal as a leader should be to spur the production of oxytocin in yourself and others, while avoiding (at least in the context of communication) those spikes of cortisol and adrenaline.”

 

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I Have a Great Idea – via Harvard Business Review

8 Mar

Bear with me for a couple hundred words, can you? I have a “great idea”.

There is an HBR Article floating around that got me fired up. Really fired up.

It was sent over by my friend Phil O’ Brien of Climbing Fish.

The article, written by Umair Haque, argues that the rise of “TED-style thinking” is one cause for our broken relationship with great ideas. He argues that the rise of bite-sized, easily digestible, talks, blogs, learning opportunities are…easy solutions. Here:

We’ve come to look at these quick, easy “solutions” as the very point of “ideas worth spreading. But this seems to me to miss the point and power of ideas entirely. Einstein’s great equation is not a “solution”; it is a theory — whose explanations unravel only greater mysteries and questions. It offers no immediate easy, quick “application” in the “real world,” but challenges us to reimagine what the “real world” is; it is a Great Idea because it offers us something bigger, more lasting, and more vital than a painless, disposable “solution.”

It’s true – audiences (especially adult audiences) want to know: how can I utilize this information now, how is this relevant to me, and what is the ANSWER?! I’ve seen it in the workshops I teach, the consultants I work with, and in my own experience.

I am not unlike the audiences of today. As I sit through each Graduate school class in my Master’s program I find myself struggling with classes that don’t provide immediate utility, relevance and answers. I worry about the cost, both opportunity and financial.

But what Haque is arguing, is for these learning experiences to encourage more questions than answers. To give us space to reflect and the time to transform these great ideas into more great ideas of our own. The learning I receive in graduate school makes me uncomfortable, far more than I’d argue a TED talk ever could. It is me at my most vulnerable self.

Why? It’s because I’m not given the simple, quick solution and immediate utility. But, I have the space to ruminate on it, share with my learning community and make the process relevant and meaningful for myself.

It’s a hard lesson to learn – especially when you are impatient, passionate, excited, and anxious.

“That is precisely how Great Ideas change us: not merely by pleasing us, but by challenging us. That is precisely how they elevate us: not merely by pandering to us, or by provoking us, but by enlightening the whole of us. That is precisely what makes Great Ideas truly worthy — not just easily palatable, and commercially profitable.”

I think of this often as I design and deliver corporate workshops and engage in many others. I remember that when I was first learning how to Improvise (which, I consider the “Great Idea” that changed my life), it wasn’t boiled down into one class or one 18-minute talk. Improv teaches you there is no right answer, or one solution. Sure, it’s also relevant and applicable, but not just in one clear way.

This “Great Idea” keeps me constantly off-center. This sort of learning helps a person truly come into their own, the learning isn’t spoon-fed, it’s up to them to grab the spoon. And, it’s stuck with me longer than any TED Talk, blog post, article ever could. It didn’t just spew knowledge, it fueled reflection and a desire for more experience.

Not all great ideas are intended for the masses or for digestible consumption, but that also means the ideas don’t have to be perfect or fully-formed to start to spread.

Learning is personal. Learning is meaningful. Learning is powerful. How can we as educators help keep this alive with the boundaries that technology, time, money, have set? I want to hear your great ideas.

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Saying Yes to the Mess – The Improvisational Mindset of Frank J. Barrett

9 Sep

In the midst of change (large or small), our natural instinct is often to try to control the chaos and the mess.

What if instead of fighting it, we said yes to this mess?

This question and more is one posed by author and professor Frank Barrett in his new book, “Yes to the Mess: Surprising Leadership Lessons from Jazz.”

His approach is one we might recognize, as the author of “Appreciative Inquiry – a Positive Approach to Building Cooperative Capacity.

We can safely say he is a fan of the tenants of Improvisation and Positive Psychology and their application to leadership and management.

This Improvisational mindset is one we’ve discussed:

  1. Face the mess
  2. Learn to take action with incomplete information – you can’t always stop and problem solve
  3. Build affirmative competence by learning how to respond in the moment
  4. Solo and Support – Learn to play both roles, let others shine, while following your instincts.

Learn more from Barrett in this insightful interview here!

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Leadership as Jazz: Becoming an Improvisational Leader

19 Aug

Sometimes articles pass through your news feed that, when you read them, make you nod your head so consistently you fear you’ll give yourself a headache.

If Miles Davis Taught your Company to Improvise

“Nurturing spontaneity, creativity, experimentation, and dynamic synchronization is no longer an optional approach to leadership. It’s the only approach. The current velocity of change demands nothing less. It demands paying attention to the mental models, the cultural beliefs and values, the practices and structures that support improvisation.”

How do we as individuals, leaders and organizations prepare to Improvise? It can be done. In fact, here are 5 tips.

It’s why Improvisers rehearse, warm-up, and spend a lot of time building trust. We learn the structure first, and then find the freedom within the safety we’ve created.

1.  Approach leadership tasks as experiments – Be open to what emerges by suspending a defensive attitude. Improvisers are skilled at withholding judgement – with both our own ideas and the ideas of others.

“An experimental approach favors testing and learning as you go. It means presenting ideas, then observing how others pick up and build on them. This is leadership with a mind-set of discovery”

Being more open and receptive to the ideas of those around you also helps to break up a routine or automatic habits that may be weighing you, and your team down.

2. Expand the vocabulary of yes to overcome the glamour of no - Saying “no” is a habit for many of us, for many different reasons. To use what’s in the room, and accept all offers is to heighten and find the positive in what is already available to us. In improvisation, wishing things were different is truly a useless game.

“Too often, in established cultures, cynicism is a way to attain status, and cynical responses to ideas seem justified because they are more “realistic.” It is much easier to critique than to build. Yet equating cynicism with realism shrinks the imagination.”

3. Everyone gets a chance to solo - Learn the give and take. And, at the same time, if you’re passionate about an idea, do you have the freedom to go solo and experiment beyond your comfort zone?

4. Encourage serious play. Too much control inhibits flow.

5. Cultivate provocative competence: create expansive promises as occasions for stretching out into unfamiliar territory. - Competence versus a learning and growth mindset? Is there a happy medium?

“The need of leadership in a distributed age has never been greater. Instead of imposing competence–a virtual impossibility–leaders provoke it by designing the conditions that nurture strategic improvisation and continuous learning, and thus help their organizations break out of competency traps. Great leaders like Miles Davis are able to see people’s potential, disrupt their habits, and demand that they pay attention in new ways.”

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The top five qualities of innovative companies, via HBR

14 Aug

Companies that know how to innovate have something in common — they make it a priority. The companies listed in Hay Group’s seventh annual Best Companies for Leadership (BCL) ranking recognize the value of  innovation and put it at the heart of their corporate culture.

How do they do they do it? Well, you may recognize some of these best practices. The theme remains one of openness, flexibility, agility, and growth via learning:

1. Create a safe space for innovation

  • Idea – allow calculated risks
  • Example – build a lab environment into part of the culture

2. Enable organizational agility.

  • Idea – allow job definitions to be more flexible and fluid — if you want an organization to be adaptable, and flexible,  and changing to the needs of the marketplace, take a look at the job structure.
  • Give employees room to grow and explore their range of interests within a company, for example, Google is great at this.
  • Example – build empathy across organization, independent thinking and problem solving by allowing others to join a new department for a month/quarter, etc.

3. Broaden perspectives. 

  • Idea – new ideas can come from anywhere – an innovative company knows this and is an expert at “staying open”.
  • Example – Solicit feedback on ideas from the community and company as a whole.

4. Promote and reward collaboration.

  • Idea – the majority of innovations are born from collaborative efforts.
  • Create an environment that encourages collaboration
  • Ideas can be those of the individual, and “yes, anded” by the group as a whole.  Reward dependence, not just independence.

5. Celebrate success and learn from setbacks.

  • Idea – fail forward
  • Innovative companies see problems and failures as learning experiences. By reacting this way, companies encourage risk taking and keep the innovation engine running. An employee who feels they can never mess up, will never try to be anything other than average.
  • Encourage “what if’s” and “why not’s”

 

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What makes people more creative on some days and not others…

7 Aug

The million, okay, billion-dollar question: How do you create a culture of creativity, and make it last?

Harvard University Professor Teresa Amabile wanted to find out.

Discussing her research into the topic with Bloomberg Television, Amabile and her team compiled over 12,000 individual daily diaries over 5 months, from professionals who were working on creative projects within their company.

What she found, “People do their most creative work on days when they’re feeling most positive emotions, most pleasant thoughts about their organization and their co-workers and strongest intrinsic motivation in their work”.

To put it simply: inner-work life drives performance, and allows teams and individuals to come up with better, creative ideas.

Every area in business requires coming up with creative solutions – and to foster that kind of creative thinking takes more than waving a magic wand:

  1. create an atmosphere of trust and collaboration
  2. tap into those favorite intrinsic motivators of autonomy, purpose, and mastery
  3. Remember that “small wins”, making progress on meaningful work (Amabile’s Progress Principle) matters.

For more: http://www.bloomberg.com/video/what-inspires-creativity-in-the-workplace-xLy2z9V~TGKtienzTsGryQ.html

 

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The genius of the “and”…

1 Aug

 

“Collaborative innovation involves the genius of the “and” versus the tyranny of the “or.” It’s not that brainstorming must always turn into “Groupthink” or that introverts or individuals have the best ideas. In good brainstorming, one feeds off the other and the end result is significantly more powerful than either approach alone.” – Harvard Business Review 

The need, space, and time for “Passionate Champions” to “and” an idea is the often missing step in the brainstorming process, says this latest article from HBR. 

Step One: Collaborate on ideas as a group. Make sure everyone is heard, help individuals improve their own thinking and be exposed to ideas they may not have thought of on their own.

Step Two: Open up the session to passionate, individual champions:

“Anyone, alone or with other people if they need or want help, can pick any idea and develop it further. Even if the idea has already been developed in one direction, a Passionate Champion may see it very differently and develop it in a totally different manner. Or, they can pick an idea that was not advocated by the group or selected by the client, and develop it as they see fit.

In our work, we find that Passionate Champion ideas often account for 50% of those that make it through internal and external vetting, and 20-30% of the ideas that make it into final concepts. What’s more, they are often the most breakthrough in terms of truly new, game-changing concepts.”

Create the safe environment for ideas to flow, allow those who want to “yes, and” an idea to do so. Who can say yes to an idea in your organization? 

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How to rev up the creativity engine at your workplace

23 Jul

Here’s what we know…. To rev up your creative engine:

  1. Expose your mind to a broad range of stimuli – expand your creative awareness by ingesting more remote associations in your brain. To think differently, your inspiration needs to come from different places. The more associations, and the wider the variety – the more possibilities!
  2. Don’t worry be happy – the more relaxed (and in a good mood) you are, the more likely you are to find insightful solutions to a problem.
  3. Create more opportunities for insight – direct your psychological experience inward

Inward attention + context of fresh ideas + relaxation ….  tell me more! But if it seems like these efforts cost too much money (or time) consider your competition. “Creativity in the workplace isn’t a “nice to have”—it’s what keeps companies in business”, says Fast Company magazine.

I couldn’t agree more.

Tickle the senses. Break up the routine. Encourage interaction, sharing. New experiences. Time for relaxation. A creativity room? Chalk board walls? More spontaneity.

Can you create a stimulating, and relaxing work environment that also promotes empathy across departments?

The first step towards promoting creativity at work is to make a conscious decision to devote effort and energy to it. I’d argue the only failure comes in sticking with the same old.

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What’s the drill – July 17: Put this brainstorming trick into action

17 Jul

Did you know, IBM’s 2010 Global CEO Study cited “creativity” as the most important leadership quality for the future.

Bolster your toolkit to include strategies for creative problem solving… like this one:

A two-minute brainstorming session… it might just be the efficient tool you’ve been looking for and a go-to trick when you’re stuck in a creative rut.

Here are the rules:

1. Two minutes

2. No judgement of ideas

3. Write down everything

4. Quantity over quality

Then, take a look at your results.

Pick 3 of your ideas (trust your instincts on this one) to do another 2 minute brainstorming session, extrapolating on each idea.

Dig deeper into your creative well by asking yourself questions like — what would happen if the opposite were true? What would this idea look like a year from now? How would our competition execute this idea?

Start with the phrase… “What if” and see where it takes you. By role-playing scenarios and ideas without any fear of judgement (and just a little bit of time and energy) you’re pumping up your creative muscle by asking the  curious questions that promote self-reflection, resilience, flexibility, empathy, and sometimes… more questions.

 

 

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What’s the drill – June 26: “Yes, and” instead of a “yes man”

26 Jun

What’s the drill for June 26th seeks to clear up a misconception about the phrase, “yes, and”.

When I first started improvising, I tried to apply the phrase, “yes, and” everywhere off-stage.

I can’t say no, I thought. I must “yes, and” everything. It pushed me to take more risks, to increase my learning and experiences and to learn more about myself. But it also made me feel a bit off-center and frankly…tired.

As one of my most favorite Improvisers and mentors likes to say, “saying YES, AND” to everything results in a messy life.

Instead, we as leaders, employees, friends, and people can see the phrase, “yes, and” as a mindset that allows us to more confidently trust our instincts and gut reactions. It allows us to withhold judgement, to be more accepting, open, patient, appreciative, collaborative, and even kinder.

We can practice the “yes, and” mindset to turn it into a habit – where we say yes to the things and ideas that fuel and inspire us, and become more accepting and supportive of the things that don’t. You get to choose.

 

 

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The Three Ingredients of a Successful Team

21 Jun

Is there a secret recipe for a successful team? A little of this, a little of that and BOOM! Can it be that easy?

The latest HBR post suggests these 3 must-have ingredients in your recipe for a successful team. And, well…how much you add of each gives something for leadership to chew on.

1. A big challenge: How big is the goal you are chasing? Is it big, a bit scary but abundantly clear what the mission is? Do you have the support you need?

2. People with a passion to perform: Do you have passion to find answers to the big problems and challenges? It’s the passion and excitement that keeps your team pushing through and keeps you engaged during the frustrating times.

3. Space to excel, space to create and innovate: The freedom to fail, room for experimentation to help ignite the power of passion and kick around the big problems.

These ingredients (challenge, passion, and space to create) nicely compliment Daniel Pink’s research on workplace motivation. His 3 ingredients: autonomy, mastery and purpose.

These food analogies are making me hungry. What is your recipe?

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How a willingness to change makes the impossible possible

18 Jun

Below is an excerpt from “If It’s Not Impossible, It’s Not Interesting—Leveraging Personal Experience to Create a High Performance Team” by Guy L. Smith IV, and the Diageo North America Corporate Relations Team. 

Mission Impossible | trainingmag.com.

“…..Is achieving the impossible just a mindset, a belief the football coach instills in his players during halftime in the locker room? Yes, that’s part of it. The impossible we are talking about here holds back successful companies, entire industries, sometimes even societies. In part, the impossible is defined by a fear of change. Being afraid of change stymies progress.

It won’t take you long to recall the last time at work somebody resisted changing something. From the mundane and unimportant like changing the stationery, the look of the bulletin board, the type of coffee in the coffee machine, or the traditional venue for the office holiday party to the much more serious like changing the company name, dropping a product line, merging to survive, or closing regional offices.

But we forget that change also brings about the impossible—a new life, a new family, a new career, a new person. Change can be a friend. Change can be harnessed to achieve beyond one’s wildest expectations. The impossible can only be achieved with change.”

Achieving the impossible requires openness to change. Achieving the impossible requires taking risks. Achieving the impossible requires a journey into the unknown. Ask Columbus. Was Columbus scared as he sailed into the unknown? You bet. Ask any astronaut. Ask Lincoln. Was

Lincoln scared when he set out from Springfield for Washington, the United States of America at war with itself? Certainly. But also ask the athletes who won the game against all odds. Ask those heroes who are celebrated in the news media everyday when they help the disadvantaged, the homeless, the single mom, the wounded soldier. For each one, the journey began without a final destination. The journey began with an objective, yet the final destination was unknown. And the unknown is inherently scary, at least when you are by yourself and on your own.

An open mind makes change a friend. It is exhilarating and exciting. It can make the hair on your neck stand up sometimes, but just like the rush of adrenaline the athlete feels course through her body, so can be taking on change and embarking on that journey into the unknown. But it takes a mind that is open to ideas, to looking at things from a different angle, to thinking thoughts that are different, heretical maybe, forgotten sometimes, foolhardy to less intrepid souls. But that is what it takes.

So let’s go back to that ever-repeated comment so often made in offices everywhere: “You can’t do that; it’s impossible.” Maybe you don’t want to try for the impossible because you will fail. And for sure you don’t want to be seen as a failure. There are myriad examples of not taking a risk at the office, as any regular viewer of The Office on TV knows. And there are certainly a zillion examples of someone who got promoted because he or she never took a risk, always took the safe path. These are the “successful” people we spoke of earlier. But it takes more than success to achieve the impossible.

What does the impossible look like? How does it feel? Impossible is different to each of us. It can mean many things. We have seen this with the personal stories of my colleagues. And we have seen how these experiences, each one deeply personal and unique to each individual, were incredibly empowering.

The next time somebody says to you “You can’t,” just smile and think to yourself, “Yes, I can. If it’s not impossible, it’s not interesting.”

Our corporate story has given voice to this remarkable team that repeatedly accomplishes the impossible. How do they do this? Why do they do this? These pages lay out seven simple guideposts for achieving the impossible. Remember them. Commit them to memory. Believe them. Practice them. And achieve things you never even dreamed! How hard could that be? It is not hard at all if you decide that it is not.

The Seven Guideposts to Achieving the Impossible

  1. Believe in yourself.
  2. Believe in the mission.
  3. Be willing to change the rules of the game to achieve your goal.
  4. Have the humility to ask for and use help from others.
  5. Focus all available assets against a single objective.
  6. Have the tenacity to relentlessly, tirelessly persist in the mission until it is accomplished.
  7. Use your own (and others’) knowledge, skills, experience, and training to confidently say, “I can handle whatever they throw at me today!”


Teaching is learning twice

13 Jun

To build and maintain a learning organization is to create and offer an atmosphere that encourages peer-to-peer teaching opportunities.

Formal or informal, virtual or stand-up in nature, providing opportunities for learning and development builds connection, can increase engagement, and develop empathy across teams.

Teaching is learning twice.

To understand a concept, is to explain it to someone else — and to not just explain it in your language, but to clearly and concisely teach for understanding and not just data dumping.

Take this article from Psychology Today as it applies to classroom learning:

Students enlisted to tutor others, these researchers have found, work harder to understand the material, recall it more accurately and apply it more effectively. In what scientists have dubbed “the protégé effect,” student teachers score higher on tests than pupils who are learning only for their own sake.

The questions posed by those we teach urge us to think through and explain material in different ways, and encourage deeper, evolved understanding.

How can you create opportunities for peer-to-peer learning? Consider starting small – with your internal communication platforms.

Do more with the people you have. And help those people grow in knowledge and confidence at the same time.

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Once upon a time…Integrating story tips into your organization

8 Jun

“But one day”… is what’s known in storytelling as the tilt. The moment everything changed and our characters, world, and story transformed.

It’s just one part of what’s known as The story spine, by Ken Adams.

As someone who studied screenwriting in college, I have always been fascinated by how the worlds of storytelling and human behavior collide — essentially, studying how screenwriters craft powerful narratives built on human emotion, connection and transformation, and using some of those same secrets to positively affect human and organizational development.

Today I came across this blog, which shares some story rules pulled directly from Pixar Animation. I’ve posted them below. Which ones resonate and connect most with you – whether it pertains to leadership, transformation, presentation skills, or more?

http://www.pixartouchbook.com/blog/2011/5/15/pixar-story-rules-one-version.html

#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.

#2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.

#3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.

#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.

#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?

#7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.

#8: Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.

#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.

#10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.

#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.

#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.

#13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.

#14: Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.

#15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.

#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.

#17: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.

#18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.

#19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.

#20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?

#21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?

#22: What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

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The five-word secret to building better connections

29 May

The secret to successful human interactions is hopefully not a secret, but a way of life.

On a stage, Improvisers drill and practice this “secret”, to form a new habit and a way of interacting on stage that builds support and trust amongst individuals and teams.

The secret?  Make your partner look good.

From customers to clients, friends, co-workers, hiring managers, and partners your job on stage and off is to make the other person look good – especially when you are interacting with someone new.

It’s a fundamental switch from ‘what’s in it for me’ to, ‘what can I do to help and support you’ because those who know this secret also realize that if I make you look good, we all look good, and that the efforts of a team are more important than the individual.

This post from Seth Godin skillfully highlights the hierarchy of business to business needs. Whether you are trying to help someone avoid risk, avoid hassle, or gain praise in business interactions, the focus remains on helping to make them look good.

To understand their needs is to empathize, listen, and help make them look not just good…but spectacular. For, when your number one job, on stage or off, is to support your fellow team members, well, you’ve got the secret to a winning team.

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The organization of the future – Cooperative, Collaborative, Considerate

23 May

The organization of the future may be one trying to be everything to everyone.

Seems a bit daunting, doesn’t it?

Discussions of the emerging workplace include considerations for wellness, innovation, collaboration, spontaneous interaction, open spaces vs. non open spaces, brainstorming or group think, room for extroverts, room for introverts, room for creatives, room for left-brain-ers, training and learning opportunities, and snacks. Must have snacks.

When we have so many factors to consider, can we keep our singular focus on decreasing internal competition and increasing cooperation? I hope so.

Call it positive psychology, or a hopeless fantasy, but I believe a workplace where we can only thrive at the expense of others is a tired model.

The organization of the future is one that promotes interaction and connectivity, that creates opportunities for learning from each other, where cooperation is not confined by ones job description.

The organization of the future is one where we borrow a phrase from Improvisation: “we make our partner look good”.

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(Updated) Two words that kill innovation and creativity

21 May

This past week, I had the privilege of guest blogging for online leadership think tank, LeaderLab. A re-posting of my updated post is below and here. I’d love to hear your thoughts. 

Every moment and in every interaction we are capable of choosing our “performances” and how we act, behave, and respond in a given situation.

Often our performances, and our reactions are habitual, instinctive, and we aren’t even aware of the mindset that’s ingrained in us or our companies.

But is this mindset decreasing your organizational capacity for innovation?

It’s possible these two little words are killing the innovation and creativity of your team:

“Yes, But”.

Reflect on how you and your company respond to new or untested ideas. Do you “but” ideas to death? And in doing so, do you cast a negative light on risk-taking, failure, and openness.

The unconscious performance might look like this:

“Yes, but it won’t work”

“Yes, but we don’t have the time”

“Yes, but we tried something similar before and it didn’t work”

Researcher Shawn Achor from Harvard tells us 75% of or job successes at work come from optimism, our ability to see stress as a challenge instead of a threat, and social support at work.

When we are met with a “yes, but” attitude to our ideas and innovations, it can be difficult maintain the motivation to do our best work and to feel support for our contributions.

I’m not advocating a company full of just “yes” men. Instead, we can choose a performance that involves less judgement, more open-mindedness, acceptance of others ideas, and a willingness to build on ideas instead of rejecting them.

Luckily, research from Achor (and others) tells us we can train our brain to become more positive. Through practice and habit building, we can learn to scan the world through a lens of positivity, instead of negativity and to create more conscious performances that involve the words “Yes, and”, instead of “Yes, but”.

Think about all of the performance choices you have every day. How can your performance increase and not block the flow of ideas, open communication and an open mind.

“But….” , just give it a try!

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