December 5, 2011

Grief as a Bridge to Living

This past week I was a keynote speaker for a living light ceremony put on by a local hospice organization.  The audience was made up of survivors who had lost loved ones.  The main message of my talk was "Grief is good, Loss stinks".  The intention was to invite people to consider the pain, sadness, anger, resentment, fear and lonliness that come with loss is an opportunity to express the dark emotions that are discouraged in our culture.  I invited the audience to consider that without feeling the full range of emotions that come with grief we deprive ourselves of feeling the full range of light emotions that we all seek.  Joy, happiness, love, gratitude and enthusiasm. 

As I drove home from the event I started to think about how true this is in our work lives.  Without the full range of emotions we miss out on the creative possibilities that come on the other side of loss due to organizational changes and downsizing, cancelled projects and reduced budgets.  Losses at work result in the same range of grief emotions that come from loss of a loved one.  Often much less intense, but never the less real.  The losses are similar.  Often, we don't see them coming.  We have little to no control over the outcome.  And boy does it stink! 

When leaders make some of the tough decisions to position the company for continued success the emotional fall out has to be considered and managed.  If ignored, the result is stuffed pain, anger, resentment, sadness and fear that sabotage creativity and invite mindless compliance.  The return on investment of managing the emotional aspect of change is a healthy, creative and highly contributing workforce.   

November 15, 2010

Failure Pattern Busting - Step 1

The first step in busting your failure patterns is aware.  What this means is you shift from automatically responding in the same way you always have to consciously choosing your response to a situation.  Here's the thing though.  It's the intense situations where this needs to be practiced the most.  This is for those times when you are tired, frustrated, not on top of your game or when you are triggered by something someone says or does.  These are the times you want to be on guard for automatic responses. 

For example,  manipulation triggers me.  If it seems like someone is trying to get something from me by tricking me with manipulation, I am likely to get short with them and get away as quickly as possible.  If I can't get away, I'm likely to cut them off with a terse response shutting them down.  This does damage to the relationship and it is highly possible I misread the intention.  This has happened with employees, clients, family members, and friends.  Heck, it's happened with perfect strangers! 

What I could do instead is stop and ask a question, "what is it that you are asking me to do?" or "let me make sure I understand what you are asking?" In the playback I can hold up the manipulation and the person can choose to back off or change the tone of their request.

How do you know when you have been triggered?  You know those moments when your react without thinking.  Maybe at a driver who just cut you off, with a co-working who helped himself to your lunch, or the kids who won't stop fighting.  Once the moment passes you realize you over-reacted.  That's being triggered.  It's a highjacking by your amygdala.  The part of your brain that develops emotional reactions early in life.  Well described by Daniel Goleman, author of emotional intelligence.

Becoming aware of your automatic responses is a process.  It will not happen all at once because you've been doing it since you were very young.  At first you won't catch it until after it has happened.  Then, soon, you will catch it while it is happening.  After a while you will be able to catch it just before it happens.  Eventually, you will develop the habit of consciously choosing your responses under pressure MOST of the time. 

Why MOST of the time.  Because you are human.  You will mess up.  And when you do, the recovery process is very simple.  Take responsibility, apoligize for any damage done to the relationship and go easy on yourself.  It happens.

Next step two. . .

November 1, 2010

Those Pesky Failure Patterns!

You know what I mean.  That waiting till the last minute to get things done, saying yes when you need to say no, underestimating what it takes to accomplish something, etc, etc.  Failure patterns.  Those habits that have been with you for longer than you can remember and seem harder and harder to disrupt.

Here's the thing you need to understand about failure patterns.  They developed for a good reason.  Somewhere along the line that failure pattern was a survival pattern.  It worked for you in some way and that's why you did it.  Waiting till the last minute provided the necessary pressure for creativity or motivation to kick in.  Always saying yes resulted in approval and accolades.  Doing the seemingly impossible was a rush unto itself, so the bar kept rising to provide the next great rush!

Survival strategies overused become failure patterns.  As some point in your career it no longer works.  Maybe you can't pull it off any longer because the challenges are more complex and involve more players.  Or suppose a competitor has a better strategy than yours and beats you out.  Regardless of why the failure pattern emerged, it is now getting in your way, stressing you out and you need to do something about it.

And you can.  By following a simple four step problems solving process.  Are you familiar with Plan, Do, Check, Act?  Let me introduce you to a five step habit breaking process:  1. Aware, 2. Act  3. Assess, 4 Adjust.

It's about waking up, taking action, paying attention and making adjustments.  It's simple and will dramatically improve your productivity, decrease your stress levels and create moe space for the things you really want to spend your energy on. 

Stay tuned as we explore these four steps over the next four weeks.