Some men fish all their lives without knowing it is not really the fish they are after.  ~Henry David Thoreau

I first published this post in 2012 and I’ve been thinking about this idea lately. How leaders can become so obsessed with achievement that they might actually be causing harm rather than doing something good. Two speakers, back in 2012, influenced my thinking.

One speaker (Peter Rollins) focused on what’s referred to in psychoanalysis as our “death drive.” My own paraphrase of this concept goes something like this. We become fixated on something (many times our personal visualization of success). But there’s a glass wall between us and what we see as success. We are so fixated that we keep banging ourselves against that glass wall trying to reach “success” even to the extent that we inflict harm on ourselves.

The other speaker (Shawn Achor) approached the same concept from the perspective of positive psychology and our desire for happiness. The basic premise is this. If I work harder, I’ll be more successful, and if I’m more successful, then I’ll be happier. However, every time we have a success we move the goalpost as to what success looks like a little farther down the field. So, you got good grades, now you have to get better grades. You got a good job, now you have to get a better job. But, if happiness is on the opposite side of success, we never get there. As a society, we’ve pushed happiness over the cognitive horizon. We think we have to be successful, then we’ll be happier, but our brains work in the opposite order.

If we can learn to become positive in the present, then our brains actually work more successfully. Research supports this idea. It’s been proven that if we can get the order right and become positive in the present and stop banging ourselves against that glass wall, we will experience significantly better productivity, creativity, and energy. In fact, they’ve measured it. We could be 31% more productive and 37% better at sales. Doctors who’ve learned to become positive in the present are 19% faster and more accurate in determining a diagnosis.

Shawn Achor states, “It’s not reality that shapes us, but the lens through which your brain views the world that shapes reality. Ninety percent (90%!) of long-term happiness is predicated by how your brain processes the world.”

Eugene Peterson says that the book of Philippians is Apostle Paul’s “happiest letter.” He also says that Paul doesn’t tell us how to be happy. He simply and unmistakably is happy. None of his circumstances contribute to his joy. It’s the lens through which Paul views the world that has shaped his reality.  Paul says, “I’ve learned to be content in whatever situation I’m in. I know how to live in poverty or prosperity. No matter what the situation, I’ve learned the secret of how to live when I’m full or when I’m hungry, when I have too much or when I have too little.”

As leaders, let’s not spend all our lives fishing without knowing it’s not really fish we’re after. If we let go of our “death drive” and become positive in the present we could transform our organizations into something far beyond what we could even imagine.

In today’s environment, the key to productivity is not to get more things done, but to get the right things done – the important things – with the highest quality you can achieve.  ~Kory Kogon, Adam Merrill, Leena Rinne, authors of The Five Choices

Participants walk into the training room, laptops are quickly opened, and they feverishly begin sifting through a barrage of emails until I instruct them to put their laptops away. This is a typical scene for me with one particular client. Unfortunately, I think it’s become a common scene as more jobs are dominated by electronic communication with the expectation of an instantaneous response.

We all face three major challenges in today’s workplace. 1) We make more decisions in one day than ever before. 2) Our attention is under attack by constant pings and dings from our electronic devices. 3) We’re exhausted by trying to manage the pace of communication.

It’s our natural tendency to simply react to all of the incoming communication, requests, and demands. In fact, that’s how we’re wired — to react. But there’s hope! We can rewire our brains to respond in a way that lessens the stress and increases our odds for higher productivity. FranklinCovey’s 5 Choices to Extraordinary Productivity suggests three steps to rewire our brains for increased productivity.

1) Pause    2) Clarify    3) Decide

Pause.  This may be the hardest of the three steps because we want to react. Before we say “yes” or “no” to that request, email, or voicemail, pause and then seek clarification.

Clarify.  Ask questions to clarify the real importance. What is really being asked for or requested? When does it really need to be done? What are the consequences if it’s not done by that time? Is it urgent or is it important? Are there other options for getting it done?

Decide.  Then, and only then, decide how to respond. Is it something that needs your immediate attention; and if so how will it fit into your other priorities? Decide how you will prioritize the task or request.

Sounds simple, right? Three easy steps: 1) Pause, 2) Clarify, and 3) Decide.

If you’re someone who’s been managing your time and productivity by reacting as opposed to clarifying and deciding, these simple steps may sound not only difficult but next to impossible. It may take more discipline for some, than others, to make the shift and rewire their brains from reacting to responding. The outcome of making the shift can be significant, if not transformative.

And leaders should be modeling the way. If leaders aren’t practicing the pause, clarify, decide process, neither will those they are trying to lead. Do you want to be more productive? Then pause, clarify, and decide.

When people’s brains are in defensive mode, it becomes harder to see common sense. Small disagreements can end up holding back progress beyond reason. ~Caroline Webb

Manage your own baggage. That’s the header author Caroline Webb used to introduce this section of her book How to Have a Good Day, which combines the sciences of behavioral economics, psychology, and neuroscience. I believe that the most effective leaders have the emotional intelligence to “manage their own baggage.”

We all have triggers. Those things that consistently set us off. We feel our blood pressure rise, our palms may sweat, our breathing changes, a sense of anger begins to form deep in our gut, etc. Our brains move into defensive mode and if we are not careful, we will likely regret what we say next.

So what do you do in the heat of the moment? Hit the reset button. We can each develop our own personal reset routine. It only takes two steps and a few seconds. But they can be very critical seconds that will significantly impact how a conversation continues and the ultimate outcome of that conversation. Here are the two simple steps Webb suggests to deploy when you feel your temperature rising.

1. Step back. What small, personal routine or action can help you to stop and take a deep breath. It might be a specific breathing technique (breath in for a count of three and out for a count of three, etc.). Or maybe what works for you is doing something physical like taking a pen and roll it between your fingers while examining it. Another example could be a phrase you say to yourself like, “Easy does it.” Whatever you do, it will likely only take a few seconds, but it’s the action you will always take in order to force yourself to mentally take a step back.
2. Reset. Ask yourself a curious question that will be your go-to question when you begin to feel your blood boil. Examples could be: “What is my real intention for this conversation?” “When I look back on this conversation what will I feel good about having done?” “What really matters?”

Leaders, just like everyone, have their own baggage, the triggers that set them off. But effective leaders manage their own baggage by quickly, and instinctively, hitting the reset button. They first have some way of “stepping back,” followed by the “reset” question they ask themselves.

In a new frame of mind with a calmer physical presence, these leaders shift their tone and perspective as they re-engage in the conversation.

We likely all know people who seem to be unflappable. They are calm and cool even when conversations get heated. I believe that they too have triggers, and those triggers are set off periodically. They haven’t eliminated their triggers, but they have learned how to “manage their own baggage” because they have a reset routine that has become instinctive.

What’s your reset button?

Dialogue starts with the willingness to challenge our own thinking, to recognize that any certainty we have is, at best, a hypothesis about the world. ~Peter Senge

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about dialogue and what it really means. Mostly because it feels like we’ve drifted, far, from dialogue being a virtue of effective leadership.

Peter Senge (author of The Fifth Discipline) was the first thought leader who caused me to think differently about dialogue. What dialogue really means; how it differs from a discussion or a debate. Last week while finishing my read of Presence and Encounter by David G. Benner, I discovered yet another intriguing view of dialogue. I highlighted on nearly every page of Benner’s chapter on dialogue. I’ll share with you a sample of my highlights.

• A good discussion may include sharing opinions and knowledge, but it involves much less risk and requires lower levels of trust than dialogue. Debates—which are about winning or losing, not about discovery and exploration—are, of course, even more distant from genuine dialogue.
• In dialogue, each says to the other, “This is how I experience the world. Tell me how you experience it.”
• The price of admission to genuine dialogue is high, and there are no scalpers to sell you admission tickets that are cheaper than the going price. That price is the willingness to be changed by the experience. Authentic dialogue demands consent to the possibility of being changed by the encounter.
• Thich Nhat Hanh suggests that for true dialogue to occur, “We have to appreciate that truth can be received from outside—not only within—our own group. If we do not believe that, entering into dialogue would be a waste of time.”
• In relation to discussion and debate, dialogue is more about exploring than proving, more about discovery than making points. In dialogue, knowledge is employed as a gift, which in debate it is used as a weapon.
• Dialogue is always a win-win encounter. It strives for the engagement of two or more persons in ways that honors both their separateness and their connectedness.
• Meeting someone in dialogue always involves at least a temporary suspension of our presuppositions about ourselves and the world. This means it always involves a degree of vulnerability to truth.
• Finally, dialogue is impaired by a need for control. One can control interviews and conversations, but one must surrender to genuine dialogue. Much like moving into a flowing stream of water, one must enter dialogue ready to let go and be carried along on a journey.

This doesn’t mean that all of our communication should be dialogue. But are we engaging in any dialogue, at all? Are we willing to explore and discover as we talk with others? Do we suspend our own assumptions or beliefs and really listen to hear how someone else experiences the world? Are we willing to enter into conversations with others with the mindset that we could be wrong?

Dialogue, a virtue of effective leadership.

An inflection point is a time in the life of an organization [or leader] when its fundamentals are about to change. That change can mean an opportunity to rise to new heights; but it may just as likely signal the beginning of the end. ~Unknown

At some point in the life of an organization [or leader] you discover that what used to work perfectly before, no longer does. This inflection point demands a shift—maybe in working style, decision, strategy, execution—everything on which it [or they] survived in the past.

Christine Comaford, contributing author on Forbes.com, suggests three reasons/solutions to shift upwards when faced with an inflection point. Comaford focuses on companies, but I believe that the same principles can apply to an organization of one, or even to an individual leader. I believe that leaders, too, find themselves at inflection points.

At each inflection point, an organization [or leader] must reinvent itself in order to reach that point and move through it. If it doesn’t, it will become stuck and ultimately decline into an upside-down curve, rather than back into growth mode. To continue to grow, to shift upwards at an inflection point, an organization [or leader] needs to make changes in each of the following areas: people, money & time, and model. Comaford suggested people, money, and model. I added “time” to the second area.

People. Leaders must work on themselves—on their own beliefs and behaviors. Some of your team members [or you] may need to develop profound new skill sets, behaviors, capabilities, beliefs, or identities. A phrase I heard from someone who recently retired gives perspective to this idea. Instead of calling it “retirement” he calls it “rewirement.” What “rewirement” do you and others in your organization need to experience?

Money and Time. To grow to the next inflection point, your systems must be aligned and your funding model must be appropriate. In organizations funding models may be required to shift because of a number of factors: consumer trends, competition, innovation, etc. On an individual level for a leader, I think what also changes is the balance of money and time. Ways to acquire more time may have far more value than more money, or vice versa depending upon the inflection point. I think it’s critical for leaders to wrestle with the balance of money and time at each inflection point.

Model. As an organization [or leader] grows, core competencies shift, markets (customers, competitors, environment, distribution channels and technology) evolve, and some opportunities are more leverage-able than others. One example that always comes to mind for me is Blockbuster. I was a Blockbuster member (they had my personal information!) and frequent movie renter. Blockbuster peaked in 2004 with more than 9,000 stores. Only six years later, in 2010, they filed for bankruptcy. Again, I emphasize, they had my personal information! They could have done what Netflix did. They reached an inflection point, did not make adjustments when the market shifted; and consequently experienced a very sharp decline that became their demise.

I also see the same phenomenon happen with leaders. As an example, in the not-so-distant past, command and control was a frequently practiced leadership style. Many leaders were really good at command and control. However, the type of work and workplace culture that dominates the workforce today is quite different. Today’s workforce requires much more of a coaching leadership style. Consequently, I see leaders who were very effective ten or 20 years ago struggle to be effective today. They haven’t shifted their model to current conditions.

Have you reached an inflection point? If so, what can you change so it becomes an opportunity to reach new heights?