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Tag: Leadership
Emotion: What I Learned From Chasing Mom with a Plastic Bug
Emotion: What I Learned From Chasing Mom with a Plastic Bug
I chased mom around the house with a plastic bug when I was young and foolish. I laughed. She screamed. It was a short-term strategy.
Emotion can’t tell truth from fantasy.
Emotion, reality, and perception:
Emotion reflects perception.
A horror movie isn’t real, but it’s real scary. After the movie you can’t sleep because aliens might take control of your mind.
Expectation creates emotion.
You expect a raise. The boss invites you to the office. You’re excited. You expect to get fired. The boss invites you to the office and your heart races. Actually, your heart races in both instances.
Want creates emotion.
You don’t get the promotion you wanted. You feel sad, frustrated, even vengeful.
Experience impacts emotion.
The first time you lead a meeting, you sweat like a pig. The hundredth time, you lean back with your hands behind your head.
Your relationship with emotion matters more than the things you feel.
I enjoy being scared at a movie. I even like the cheap thrills. (Although The Grudge scares the crap out of me! I can’t watch it.)
Managing emotion:
A person controlled by emotion is unstable, unpredictable, unreliable, and eventually unhappy.
We make emotions.
Keeping a gratitude journal generates positive emotion. Reality doesn’t change, but your relationship with it does.
Make your passion instead of following your passion.
Logic doesn’t resolve emotion.
It didn’t help to tell mom it was a fake bug. You can tell yourself it’s just a movie but you’re still afraid. Just accept it.
You may need to contradict emotion.
Examine your bank account when buying a car, not your feelings.
Emotion isn’t the judge of reality.
Use performance metrics when evaluating employees, not whether you like them or not.
How is emotion helpful/harmful to effective leadership?
How might leaders manage their emotions?
4 Questions You Should Ask Your Direct Reports Weekly
Scale your business. Find your freedom.
With proven systems, frameworks, and guidance, you can join other successful business owners as you scale your business, reap the fruits of high-performance, and spend more time on the things that matter most.
Five Ways to Fight the FUD Factor (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt)
Five Ways to Fight the FUD Factor (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt)
NEW BOOK GIVEAWAY!!
20 copies available!!
Leave a comment on this guest post by Sabrina Horn to become eligible for one of 20 complimentary copies of her new book, Make It, Don’t Fake It: Leading with Authenticity for Real Business Success.
(Deadline for eligibility is 06/27/2021. International winners will receive electronic versions.)
As the saying goes, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Here are five basic actions every leader can take to run their businesses through the fear, uncertainty, and doubt of challenging times.
1. Values – In times of crisis, reaffirm your company’s core values, as well as your value proposition. It is both grounding and inspiring for employees and customers to be reminded of what you stand for and how you remain steadfast in your mission.
2. Planning on Steroids– In turbulent times, reality may be changing every week, day, and hour.
Now is the time to flex those short-term planning muscles. Develop multiple contingencies you can use in any number of scenarios. They may be very tactical in nature, but each one is actually a strategic move to finding your way to the clear.
3. Overcommunicate – In times of uncertainty, plan to reach stakeholders more frequently than you otherwise might. When doing so, communicate with certainty and candor. It’s ok to be repetitive and reconfirm the situation. Doing so eases anxiety and provides comfort. Never say anything you do not absolutely, positively know to be true.
Bad information, like squeezed toothpaste, is impossible to put back into the tube.
4. Humility – The best leaders are secure in knowing that they don’t know everything, and they have no problem asking for help, learning from others, listening to complaints, even apologizing for their mistakes. That level of confidence and open-mindedness draws people in, demonstrates strength, and builds trust.
5. Self-Care – It can be very lonely at the top, especially during times of uncertainty.
It’s important to have people you trust to talk with. Cultivate a small personal network of mentors – the handful of people you can talk to about anything.
How might leaders fight fear, uncertainty, and doubt? FUD
Sabrina Horn is an award-winning CEO, C-suite advisor, communications expert, and author. She founded Horn Group (acquired by Finn Partners), a national public relations firm that for a quarter century, advised thousands of tech executives and their companies. Her new book, Make It, Don’t Fake It: Leading with Authenticity for Real Business Success(foreword by Geoffrey Moore), launches June 2021.
Sabrina talks about how to win customers when you’re company is looking for it’s first customer.
You Don’t Have to Choose: Win at Work and Succeed in Life
Scale your business. Find your freedom.
With proven systems, frameworks, and guidance, you can join other successful business owners as you scale your business, reap the fruits of high-performance, and spend more time on the things that matter most.
The Gift of Negativity: What We Gain By Faultfinding, Nitpicking, and Naysaying
The Gift of Negativity: What We Gain By Faultfinding, Nitpicking, and Naysaying
Painful experiences teach you to protect yourself. The tools of self-protection are faultfinding, nitpicking, naysaying, and quibbling.
Experience gives birth to protective negativity.
The birth of negativity:
“If a cat sits on a hot stove, that cat won’t sit on a hot stove again. That cat won’t sit on a cold stove either. That cat just don’t like stoves.” Mark Twain
A painful experience with a hot stove makes you critical, skeptical, cantankerous and disagreeable.
Negativity bias:
The gift of negativity is about NOT DOING. But ‘not doing’ doesn’t get much done.
There are a few people who think of how something might work, but in my experience, they are the dodo birds in the crowd. Faultfinding is an Olympic Sport on average teams.
Avoiding is stronger than pursuing.
People have a stronger negative reaction to losing $20 than the positive feelings they have from gaining $20. (Kahneman – Thinking, Fast and Slow)
5 ‘advantages’ of faultfinding, nitpicking, and naysaying:
- Admiration: You seem wise when you explain why something won’t work.
- Time: You don’t waste energy on things that probably won’t work.
- Stability: You don’t need to change when you kill ideas before they grow legs.
- Power: You empower yourself by blocking other people’s ideas.
- Security: You protect the status quo, even if you complain about it.
Beyond negativity:
It’s natural to say, “That won’t work.” It’s leadership to ask, “What’s useful?”
- Define your goal.
- Engage in open conversation.
- Don’t silence reason givers – people who give reasons why something won’t work.
- Evaluate suggestions, reasons, and ideas by asking, “With our goal in mind, what’s useful about that?”
The “Usefulness” lens:
“How is this useful?” empowers people to explore, adapt, or eliminate suggestions or ideas.
“What’s useful?” treats all ideas equally.
Apart from “What’s useful?”, negative bias wins.
Bonus: The ‘useful’ lens enables learning. Nitpicking blocks learning.
What ‘advantages’ do you see in faultfinding, naysaying, and nitpicking?
How might leaders create future-building conversations?
Using the Double Win to Beat Back Work That’s Out of Control
Scale your business. Find your freedom.
With proven systems, frameworks, and guidance, you can join other successful business owners as you scale your business, reap the fruits of high-performance, and spend more time on the things that matter most.
How to Procrastinate Successfully and Defeat Pointless Procrastination
How to Procrastinate Successfully and Defeat Pointless Procrastination
“In a prosperous society most misery is self-inflicted.” George Ainslie*
Squirrel chasing, avoiding discomfort, perfectionism, and waiting to the last minute are symptoms self-inflicted misery.
Procrastinators make on average $15,000 less than non-procrastinators. Nguyen, Steel, & Ferrari**
Procrastinate successfully:
Put off creative activities. Many people who come up with original ideas let them ruminate. Adam Grant
Put off low impact activities so you can do what matters.
The person who does a few quick things before beginning an important thing spends their best energy on low impact activities.
It takes courage to stop doing the next thing so you can focus on important things.
Defeat pointless procrastination:
#1. Accept it.
Procrastination is normal. Most people procrastinate from time to time. College students are the best procrastinators.
Guilt creates avoidance.
Don’t beat yourself up for procrastinating. You’re less likely to solve a problem when guilt and shame dominate your thinking.
#2. Begin strong.
Do the hard thing first. Brian Tracy says, “Eat That Frog.”
#3. Boost accessibility.
Make it easy to do things you put off. I recently put some dumbbells near the door of my office. I pump a little iron before I sit at my desk, very little.
#4. Say good enough.
Something done imperfectly is better than something not done at all. You can always improve something after you do it imperfectly.
The future is built one imperfect step at a time.
Procrastinators think, why begin if you don’t have time to finish.
#5. Improve calendar management.
The ability to manage your calendar is the ability to manage your life.
Place important items on next week’s calendar before it fills up.
Schedule free time. The procrastinator in you loves to see free time on your calendar.
Evaluate your calendar. What’s on your calendar that others might do?
Tip: Never procrastinate on bedtime.
What suggestions do you have for chronic procrastinators?
What low impact activities are better left undone or postponed?
*Ainsile, G. (2005). Precis of Breakdown of Will. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 635-673.
Dear Dan: I Put Stuff Off and Work All Weekend
15 Ways to Learn from Someone You Disagree With
The person next to me on the flight was slightly abrasive and borderline obnoxious. I had only tried to be polite and say “Hello” when I sat down but he took the opportunity to launch into a what’s-wrong-with-the-world tirade. Repeated attempts to work on my computer failed to dissuade my fellow traveler.
I admit I didn’t see this as an opportunity to learn anything. At best I was hoping to endure until this guy ran out of steam. But I got lucky when he said something particularly disagreeable. I didn’t argue. I just asked, “Why do you feel that way?”
He paused and considered his response. “That’s a good question. I hadn’t thought about it much.” With that, the conversation turned less oppressive.
The background and experiences he shared helped me understand why he was wound up. It didn’t make his point of view right or wrong, only different. When I took a genuine interest in what he was saying, he became less unpleasant and more relatable.
Learning from people I disagree with isn’t easy but it is almost always worthwhile. If you only converse with those who share the same point of view for the same reasons, you’ll feel validated and maybe vindicated but you won’t learn anything.
Choosing to learn from those who think differently challenges your thinking, identifies blind spots, broadens your perspective, creates connection and maybe builds a bridge to a relationship.
So how do mere mortals like us do that?
- Jordan Peterson says it well, “Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.”
- A close second: remember that nobody is always right or always wrong. We all have a mix of informed, uninformed and ill-informed opinions. Dropping the belief that you are always more right than others is an exercise in humility, and a reality check.
- Understand why someone thinks differently than you, not just what they think differently about. You’ll learn much more from why they feel a certain way than just what they disagree about.
- Treat the exchange like an inquiry, not an inquisition. When people feel challenged they usually get defensive.
- Look for what you agree about and use that as a foundation. Build from whatever you can and do agree about.
- Validate the other by expressing you hadn’t considered their point of view.
- Ask them to explain why they disagree with what you are saying.
- Appreciate that a difference of experience can easily create a difference of perspective.
- Acknowledge that people draw different conclusions from the same experiences.
- If you disagree, do it politely.
- Don’t just disagree, but explain why.
- Recap what you think the other person is saying to make sure you understand correctly.
- Admit when you don’t have enough information to know if something is true or not.
- Use the phrase, “In my experience.” Others can disagree with your conclusion but not what happened to you.
- Thank the person for expanding your perspective (if you are truly appreciative).
I hope you don’t…
The Most Neglected and Misunderstood Tool of Leadership
The Most Neglected and Misunderstood Tool of Leadership
Your most powerful tool of influence isn’t a strategy or technique. It’s a person.
Your most powerful tool of influence is you.
Brene’ Brown, author of, Daring Greatly, writes, “We must dare to show up and let ourselves be seen.”
Hiding behind position, title, and image weakens influence and dilutes relationships.
You don’t have to put your worst foot forward, but “best-foot leaders” give false impressions and create unrealistic expectations.
Frailty and failure:
Why hide the shaping influences on your life?
Begin your next team meeting by asking everyone to complete this sentence. “One of the things I learned from failure is….” (Answer it yourself, first.)
Healthy vulnerability strengthens connection and amplifies influence.
Advantages of letting yourself be seen:
#1. Growth. You grow and others develop when people see the real you.
Life’s most powerful lessons come to us through the vulnerability of others.
#2. Charm. Forward-facing vulnerability invites people to connect.
#3. Validation. Vulnerability is permission for others to be human.
#4. Challenge. Challenging yourself makes challenging others authentic.
#5. Humility. You develop humility when you take off your fake face and lead with your real foot.
#6. Confidence. People feel less like idiots when you share what you learned from screwing up.
#7. Friendship. You develop relationships with the “right” people when you let people see the real you.
7 ways to let yourself be seen:
- Declare beliefs.
- Share values and intentions.
- Expose motivations.
- Tell your story. (Life Story Exercise)
- Reveal lessons from mistakes.
- Discuss learnings. Say, “I hadn’t thought of that,” instead of pretending you knew all along.
- Share influences. What are you reading? Who are your mentors, coaches, and teachers?
Tip: Novices – with a growth mindset – exert powerful influence when they let themselves be seen.
The most neglected and misunderstood tool of leadership is letting yourself be seen.
What is healthy transparency and vulnerability? Unhealthy?
What have you learned from screwing up?