One of the top selling books in Australia recently was “The brain that changes itself”; which is all about how the brain can alter its structure. Up until a couple of years ago it was thought that the brain was set and we could not alter how it was configured. What we now know is that the brain is very plastic and is constantly remodeling itself. The key to changing how your brain is wired is to change how you use it.
The brain is made up of a series of neural connections, which are simply a group of brains cells that work together. Every action, feeling and thought has a specific neural connection that makes that action, feeling and thought possible. As I sit here typing this article a series of neural connections fire to make my fingers select the right keys in the right order. When we feel anger and act inappropriately it is once again due to the triggering of a set number of brain cells acting as a team. Similarly, the way the brain stores information is that when we learn something new, say a word in French, a number of neurons are dedicated to that one piece of information and they are encoded with it. If you never revisit that word, over time those neurons split up and go off and fulfill other jobs. However if you regularly go over the word, that pattern will be re-enforced and the neural connection will be cemented down.
Think about when you were learning how to drive. If you started in a manual car chances are you would have been terrible – bunny hopping and crunching gears. The reason is that there was no neural pattern in your brain for driving; your brain simply wasn’t set up for it. You would also notice that it took a lot of effort and concentration to drive. Now, reflect on the last time you drove home? Did you think about it? No, you just drove home. Why? Because the neural pattern of driving is so engrained you don’t even have to think about it.
Strong neural patterns are like freeways in your brain, solid, deep, wide and easy to travel on. Weak neural patterns are like dirt roads narrow, shaky and difficult to travel down. It is simply easier for our brain to use the freeways and because of this they tend to direct the traffic down that route.
We are all born with certain talents and skills as well as a thinking style and an emotional bias. Some people are good at sports; some people are great at music; others are optimistic; some handle stress easily, while others fly off the handle when the slightest thing goes wrong. Think of these natural tendencies as freeways. Unfortunately humans tend to focus on the things they are good at and shy away from things that they struggle with. If we take music lessons and we don’t pick it up easily we will quit after a short period of time. All this does is reinforce our natural abilities or put another way, the freeways in our brain get all the traffic. The good news is that we can develop the dirt roads, it just takes time and effort.
Back to the driving analogy, driving starts out as a dirt road but with consistent practice and time it turns into a freeway. Neural plasticity does not only apply to motor skills. Studies have shown that pessimists (people who have a lot of freeways for negative thoughts) can alter their brain so that it begins to have a tendency for optimism. How did they do this? Normally when an event occurred they naturally thought a pessimist thought, however this time they recognised that thought, challenged it and then chose to think of it in an optimistic light. In other words they put a detour sign on their freeway and directed the traffic down the dirt road. After enough time of doing this, the dirt road starts to get wider, smoother and easier to drive on. In the meantime the freeways starts to get cracks in it and it loses its structure.
Martin Seligman took children who had a natural style of pessimism. Each evening he got their parents to ask the children 3 questions:
What did you do really well today?
What did you really enjoy today?
What are you looking forward to tomorrow?
Over a period to time they found that the children started to have a bias for optimism. They simply changed their dirt roads into freeways.
How do we do this?
Choose a behaviour, belief or thinking style that you want to change.
Start to recognize when you do this behaviour, belief or thinking style.
Challenge it and introduce a new behaviour, belief or thinking style.
Reinforce this pattern, over and over.
The difficulty with this is that it takes effort, but when was the last time that something worthwhile was easy?
Case study
Gordon Cairns was the CEO of Lion Nathan. In 1997 the company was losing market share and the share price was dropping. The HR department did a 360-degree feedback (where people at different levels give feedback on your behaviour) on the leadership team.
The results of the feedback showed that Cairns had a very aggressive/defensive style, he wielded power, was a perfectionist, demanding, task orientated and did not see value in staff development or culture. This attitude seeped down into his leadership team who mimicked his behaviour.
The HR manager Bob Barbour called them on their behaviour and said, “Your behaviour needs to change.” Can you imagine what he would have faced? However he stood his ground and this was obviously very confronting for the leadership team. Over time they realised that in order for the organization to change, they had to change. They took personal responsibility and accountability for their behaviour. With coaching, they started to instill a new culture around a style of education and encouragement. The result was a shift in their constructive styles, an increase of 53%. Cairns went from a tyrant to an empathetic and thoughtful leader.
When asked how he made this leap, Gordon Cairns gave the following advice.
Step 1: Get feedback on your behaviour
Step 2: Park your ego and take that feedback on board without being offended
Step 3: Have a clear idea of what behaviours you want.
Step 4: Get help – coaches, consultants, books etc.
Step 5: Keep measuring
Step 6: Understand that relapse is normal.
A great example of neural plasticity!
Dr Adam's Blog
Watch this space for Dr Adams latest research findings and presentation topics
Neutral Plasticity: Can we change poor behaviour patterns?
Adam Fraser - Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Intention vs. Behaviour
Adam Fraser - Thursday, March 31, 2011
Why do I offend people with my behaviour when my intention is good?
I have never met a CEO whose intention was to drive down share prices, create a bad culture, or lose market shares. However, I have met many who have done this unintentionally!
I have never met a manager who wanted to disengage their staff, destroy team cohesion, and ‘drop the ball’ on projects. However, I have met many who have done this by consequence.
I have never met an employee whose intention was to create trouble in their team, undermine their manager, and bitch about their co-workers. However I have met many who have fallen into this trap.
I recently spoke at a conference for a large organisation that was implementing a new strategy whilst moving into a very bold and exciting new area of business. In fact, I was very excited to talk to the employees of this organisation because what the company was trying to achieve was ground breaking. Before I presented, the GM of that area got up and spoke to the team about this new venture.
It was a disaster! He came off bullish, gruff, and his sentiment was, “We are going in this direction and you better get on-board or else”. After he finished I asked him (very carefully) what his intention was for that presentation. He replied, “I wanted to show them how important this move is for the company and how I am 100% on-board, as they should be. They are such a great bunch of people, and I wanted to motivate them and show them how passionate I am about this”. I was amazed that his intention was so pure, yet his behaviour conveyed anything but.
From this, I realised that intention is very different to behaviour. This is a problem because we judge our own behaviour on our intent, yet we judge others on their behaviour. We find that if we say something with good intentions to someone and they get offended, our internal response is, “Why did that person become offended? I was just trying to help!”
Perhaps someone in our team is curt with us and we think, “Why are they being so horrible to me?” when really they just have a lot on their minds and their intention is only to be efficient in their response. Why does this mismatch happen? Because we know our intent, yet all others see is our behaviour.
I brought this up during a workshop I was running with a leadership team. It had a profound impact on the mood of the room and you could see them take a collective sigh of relief. Following this people were far more open to talk about some of the behaviours they were displaying that may have a detrimental impact on the team. In addition, the atmosphere lightened and they didn’t take offense when other people mentioned some of their personal behaviours that were challenging for the team. It was one of the most non-judgemental interactions I have ever seen.
There are two things to learn from this:
1. We need to be more self aware about our behaviour because it may not be aligned to our intent. How do we do this?
a. Have greater consciousness about your behaviour and its possible impact – think about how you ‘show up’.
b. Ask for feedback from people about your behaviour.
c. When they give you feedback on your behaviour, put your ego to the side and don’t take offense. Remember that behaviour is different to intent.
d. Set up a culture around yourself where others find it ok to give you feedback on your behaviour. Don’t create an internal ‘black book’ whenever someone feeds back anything that you don’t like.
2. That we shouldn’t be so quick to judge peoples’ behaviour because their intent may be pure.
a. Be honest and ask people what their intent was.
b. Tell them what the impact of their behaviour was on you and ask yourself if matched their intent.
c. Cut the people around you some slack and realise their intent may be good.
I have never met a CEO whose intention was to drive down share prices, create a bad culture, or lose market shares. However, I have met many who have done this unintentionally!
I have never met a manager who wanted to disengage their staff, destroy team cohesion, and ‘drop the ball’ on projects. However, I have met many who have done this by consequence.
I have never met an employee whose intention was to create trouble in their team, undermine their manager, and bitch about their co-workers. However I have met many who have fallen into this trap.
I recently spoke at a conference for a large organisation that was implementing a new strategy whilst moving into a very bold and exciting new area of business. In fact, I was very excited to talk to the employees of this organisation because what the company was trying to achieve was ground breaking. Before I presented, the GM of that area got up and spoke to the team about this new venture.
It was a disaster! He came off bullish, gruff, and his sentiment was, “We are going in this direction and you better get on-board or else”. After he finished I asked him (very carefully) what his intention was for that presentation. He replied, “I wanted to show them how important this move is for the company and how I am 100% on-board, as they should be. They are such a great bunch of people, and I wanted to motivate them and show them how passionate I am about this”. I was amazed that his intention was so pure, yet his behaviour conveyed anything but.
From this, I realised that intention is very different to behaviour. This is a problem because we judge our own behaviour on our intent, yet we judge others on their behaviour. We find that if we say something with good intentions to someone and they get offended, our internal response is, “Why did that person become offended? I was just trying to help!”
Perhaps someone in our team is curt with us and we think, “Why are they being so horrible to me?” when really they just have a lot on their minds and their intention is only to be efficient in their response. Why does this mismatch happen? Because we know our intent, yet all others see is our behaviour.
I brought this up during a workshop I was running with a leadership team. It had a profound impact on the mood of the room and you could see them take a collective sigh of relief. Following this people were far more open to talk about some of the behaviours they were displaying that may have a detrimental impact on the team. In addition, the atmosphere lightened and they didn’t take offense when other people mentioned some of their personal behaviours that were challenging for the team. It was one of the most non-judgemental interactions I have ever seen.
There are two things to learn from this:
1. We need to be more self aware about our behaviour because it may not be aligned to our intent. How do we do this?
a. Have greater consciousness about your behaviour and its possible impact – think about how you ‘show up’.
b. Ask for feedback from people about your behaviour.
c. When they give you feedback on your behaviour, put your ego to the side and don’t take offense. Remember that behaviour is different to intent.
d. Set up a culture around yourself where others find it ok to give you feedback on your behaviour. Don’t create an internal ‘black book’ whenever someone feeds back anything that you don’t like.
2. That we shouldn’t be so quick to judge peoples’ behaviour because their intent may be pure.
a. Be honest and ask people what their intent was.
b. Tell them what the impact of their behaviour was on you and ask yourself if matched their intent.
c. Cut the people around you some slack and realise their intent may be good.
Embrace Your Dysfunction
Adam Fraser - Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Recently I was talking to an executive about their leadership strategies. They rated themselves very highly, saying things like, “I am really empathetic and I create an environment where people can express things to me without retribution. Also I see myself as a coach who fosters my team’s development and have a strong relationship with each and every one of them”. Then I spoke to the team to get feedback their leadership style. I heard things like, “they are an ego maniac who’s only focus is to better their career; they are a tyrant who uses fear to get people to engage.” I was gobsmacked at this leader’s lack of self-awareness. Then that night I came across the following quote:
“If you’re pretty crazy then you’re in good company because the human race as a whole is out of it's goddam head. Now all of you, of course, know this about others – about your mother and father and sister and brothers and friends and wives and husbands. You know how nutty they are. Now the problem is to admit this about yourself, and then do something about it.”
Who made such a confronting and hard-hitting statement? It was none other than Albert Ellis, one of the most well respected clinical psychologists to draw breath and pioneer of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. Then it dawned on me that he is right!
The most common thing I hear when people come up to me after I finish a presentation is, “If only my partner were here, they need this stuff” or “If only my team were here, they are so negative and dysfunctional”. No one has ever said “Wow I just realised that I am the dysfunctional pain in the ass in my team. I have been stirring up trouble and undermining my manager for years, I need to fix this.”
We seem to chronically lack self-awareness. Being self-aware is an immense skill that is needed by all of us whether we are a leader or a team member.
I recently conducted a workshop called “It’s not me, it’s you!” which talked about the dysfunctions of teams. One of the greatest dysfunctions we can have in a team is that its members have a low level of self-awareness and a high level of judgement. We often think that our behaviour is reasonable and are quick to judge the people who lead/manage us; our team members; and the people we lead. The question is why? Well that is the $64,000 dollar question! It comes down to a number of reasons:
1. It is easier to blame others than look at our own behaviour.
2. It feels good to judge others, because we feel so right.
3. When we publically blame/judge/persecute others we elevate ourselves in the social hierarchy.
4. We are simply ignorant to our behaviour at times.
5. We simply can’t entertain the thought that we are not perfect.
Halfway through the workshop we talked about how it is ok to admit that we get things wrong and we are never going to act perfectly all the time. Also we looked at how we can exhibit some dysfunctional behaviour and still be a good person. Following this there seemed to be a collective sigh of relief, people started to open up and they talked about how they thought that getting negative feedback on their behaviour was a personal attack. It started a conversation that we rarely have yet so desperately need to. It opened up dialogue and made it ok to have these often challenging conversations.
Then someone in the group said that they had a great leader in their organisation. She said that what made them great was that they asked for feedback on their behaviour and took it on board without taking offence and making the team pay for it later. “One day I told my manager that when things are very busy and we have tight deadlines, they become aggressive and curt. This really unsettles the team and reduces our productivity and shoots up our stress levels. The great thing was his response to this. He said he had no idea he acted like this, then apologised and said “I will really work on this and when we have our monthly catch ups can you let me know how I am going?”
My challenge to you is make a concerted effort to improve your self-awareness.
Step 1: Start to objectively observe your behaviour. Is it reasonable? Do you get involved in office gossip? Are you overly sensitive? Do you persecute people in the organisation without talking to them about issues?
Step 2: Start to examine how your behaviour impacts on other people around you. In my seminars I talk about a concept called “Showing Up”, it looks at how we show up for each part of our life. In a sense it is about taking personal responsibility for the state we “show up in”. Can we show up more enthusiastic, more empathetic, more engaged?
Step 3: Allow people to give you honest feedback on your behaviour. When was the last time you allowed someone to tell us how it is?
Step 4: Can you park your ego and take the feedback on board, rather than take offense and keep it in your black book to use against them later on? To do this we have to be comfortable and secure in who we are. The best leaders/team members are the ones that don’t have to prove anything and aren’t driven by their ego.
Go forth and embrace your dysfunction!
“If you’re pretty crazy then you’re in good company because the human race as a whole is out of it's goddam head. Now all of you, of course, know this about others – about your mother and father and sister and brothers and friends and wives and husbands. You know how nutty they are. Now the problem is to admit this about yourself, and then do something about it.”
Who made such a confronting and hard-hitting statement? It was none other than Albert Ellis, one of the most well respected clinical psychologists to draw breath and pioneer of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. Then it dawned on me that he is right!
The most common thing I hear when people come up to me after I finish a presentation is, “If only my partner were here, they need this stuff” or “If only my team were here, they are so negative and dysfunctional”. No one has ever said “Wow I just realised that I am the dysfunctional pain in the ass in my team. I have been stirring up trouble and undermining my manager for years, I need to fix this.”
We seem to chronically lack self-awareness. Being self-aware is an immense skill that is needed by all of us whether we are a leader or a team member.
I recently conducted a workshop called “It’s not me, it’s you!” which talked about the dysfunctions of teams. One of the greatest dysfunctions we can have in a team is that its members have a low level of self-awareness and a high level of judgement. We often think that our behaviour is reasonable and are quick to judge the people who lead/manage us; our team members; and the people we lead. The question is why? Well that is the $64,000 dollar question! It comes down to a number of reasons:
1. It is easier to blame others than look at our own behaviour.
2. It feels good to judge others, because we feel so right.
3. When we publically blame/judge/persecute others we elevate ourselves in the social hierarchy.
4. We are simply ignorant to our behaviour at times.
5. We simply can’t entertain the thought that we are not perfect.
Halfway through the workshop we talked about how it is ok to admit that we get things wrong and we are never going to act perfectly all the time. Also we looked at how we can exhibit some dysfunctional behaviour and still be a good person. Following this there seemed to be a collective sigh of relief, people started to open up and they talked about how they thought that getting negative feedback on their behaviour was a personal attack. It started a conversation that we rarely have yet so desperately need to. It opened up dialogue and made it ok to have these often challenging conversations.
Then someone in the group said that they had a great leader in their organisation. She said that what made them great was that they asked for feedback on their behaviour and took it on board without taking offence and making the team pay for it later. “One day I told my manager that when things are very busy and we have tight deadlines, they become aggressive and curt. This really unsettles the team and reduces our productivity and shoots up our stress levels. The great thing was his response to this. He said he had no idea he acted like this, then apologised and said “I will really work on this and when we have our monthly catch ups can you let me know how I am going?”
My challenge to you is make a concerted effort to improve your self-awareness.
Step 1: Start to objectively observe your behaviour. Is it reasonable? Do you get involved in office gossip? Are you overly sensitive? Do you persecute people in the organisation without talking to them about issues?
Step 2: Start to examine how your behaviour impacts on other people around you. In my seminars I talk about a concept called “Showing Up”, it looks at how we show up for each part of our life. In a sense it is about taking personal responsibility for the state we “show up in”. Can we show up more enthusiastic, more empathetic, more engaged?
Step 3: Allow people to give you honest feedback on your behaviour. When was the last time you allowed someone to tell us how it is?
Step 4: Can you park your ego and take the feedback on board, rather than take offense and keep it in your black book to use against them later on? To do this we have to be comfortable and secure in who we are. The best leaders/team members are the ones that don’t have to prove anything and aren’t driven by their ego.
Go forth and embrace your dysfunction!
Celebrating in relationships
Adam Fraser - Wednesday, March 23, 2011
What is the key to a great relationship?
You only have to look at the climbing divorce rates to realise that our romantic relationships are suffering. Recently I had the pleasure of spending the day with Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology and the author of “Learned Optimism” and “Authentic Happiness” (basically this guy is a serious legend and one of the most respected psychologists on the planet). His view of marriage counselling was that it simply taught people how to argue better. In other words, the psychologist just shows them how to argue their point more effectively. Seligman’s view is that we should not focus on the pathology (the problem) in relationships and start working on the positive side of the relationship. His theory is that if you work on the positives the pathology seems to disappear. Rather than working on what is broken, build on what is already working.
His research shows that the key to successful relationships is celebrating. Specifically, the key to a good relationship is not how you respond when they come home with a complaint, rather, how do you respond to them when they come home with a victory? We can respond to someone on two levels.
1. The energy you bring – which can be either active or passive.
2. The impact you have – constructive or destructive.
For example your partner comes home and announces that they got a promotion at work.
Passive/destructive – “That’s good, did you manage to pick up my dry cleaning on the way home?” Obviously not good, you are not involved (passive) and that is a destructive statement.
Active/destructive - “What tax bracket will that put us in?” Once again not good, this time you are involved, meaning you are engaging in the event (active) but that is a destructive statement.
Passive/constructive – “That’s great Hun, you really deserve it, well done.” Even though this is a constructive thing to say, it is passive you are just praising not getting involved in what they have done. Seligman’s research shows us that this statement does nothing to deepen the relationship.
What you want to aim for is active/constructive – this means getting involved in the experience, helping them relive it and analyse it and learn from it. For example “Wow that is amazing! Tell me about what happened? How did that make you feel? What does that mean for your role now? Why did you think you got the promotion? What did you do well that enabled you to get it? How can you use those skills to other parts of your life”.
In effect you are helping them relive the experience and think about it deeply, taking that positivity and applying it to other parts of their life. People often make the mistake of thinking that we only bond over tragedy; we think we build relationships only when we counsel someone in bad times. However, a stronger bond is built when we help people celebrate a victory. I see this first hand in my workshops when I get people to reflect on a time when they have had FLOW (being in the zone where they are completely immersed in a task and do it successfully), the other person coaches them to describe how it felt, the emotion they experienced, why they think they achieved FLOW, how they felt afterwards. When this occurs you feel the energy in the room change, people bond and people are almost friends by the end of it.
You have to ask yourself do I help people in my personal life celebrate victory? What about at work? If you are a leader or manager do you just point out what people need to do better or do you reflect and focus on what they have done well. Do you get them to analyse it and relive it with them? With your team can you introduce WWW into your team? WWW stands for What Went Well? The cynics hear this and think it is far too fluffy and wet. However if you look at any piece of research on this and it will tell you that reflecting on success gives you optimistic thoughts and puts you in a state of positive emotion.
Conclusively we know that positive emotion and optimistic thoughts, accelerate learning, broadens attention and increases creativity. Also over our lifetime if we consistently feel positive emotion and optimistic thoughts we have better health, earn more money, have better relationships, live longer, and have a better quality of life. The best thing about WWW is that it is an addictive habit. So many of the new habits we try to install in our life are not self-perpetuating (don’t build on themselves), for example cutting out junk food. This is not difficult to make routine – the more you do WWW the more you want to do it. The more you do this with your team the more they will want to do it.
Personally my wife and I started this habit at the end of the day and we are definitely noticing the benefits. Furthermore, the more we do it the more it builds on itself. Do you “show up” ready to celebrate or criticise?
You only have to look at the climbing divorce rates to realise that our romantic relationships are suffering. Recently I had the pleasure of spending the day with Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology and the author of “Learned Optimism” and “Authentic Happiness” (basically this guy is a serious legend and one of the most respected psychologists on the planet). His view of marriage counselling was that it simply taught people how to argue better. In other words, the psychologist just shows them how to argue their point more effectively. Seligman’s view is that we should not focus on the pathology (the problem) in relationships and start working on the positive side of the relationship. His theory is that if you work on the positives the pathology seems to disappear. Rather than working on what is broken, build on what is already working.
His research shows that the key to successful relationships is celebrating. Specifically, the key to a good relationship is not how you respond when they come home with a complaint, rather, how do you respond to them when they come home with a victory? We can respond to someone on two levels.
1. The energy you bring – which can be either active or passive.
2. The impact you have – constructive or destructive.
For example your partner comes home and announces that they got a promotion at work.
Passive/destructive – “That’s good, did you manage to pick up my dry cleaning on the way home?” Obviously not good, you are not involved (passive) and that is a destructive statement.
Active/destructive - “What tax bracket will that put us in?” Once again not good, this time you are involved, meaning you are engaging in the event (active) but that is a destructive statement.
Passive/constructive – “That’s great Hun, you really deserve it, well done.” Even though this is a constructive thing to say, it is passive you are just praising not getting involved in what they have done. Seligman’s research shows us that this statement does nothing to deepen the relationship.
What you want to aim for is active/constructive – this means getting involved in the experience, helping them relive it and analyse it and learn from it. For example “Wow that is amazing! Tell me about what happened? How did that make you feel? What does that mean for your role now? Why did you think you got the promotion? What did you do well that enabled you to get it? How can you use those skills to other parts of your life”.
In effect you are helping them relive the experience and think about it deeply, taking that positivity and applying it to other parts of their life. People often make the mistake of thinking that we only bond over tragedy; we think we build relationships only when we counsel someone in bad times. However, a stronger bond is built when we help people celebrate a victory. I see this first hand in my workshops when I get people to reflect on a time when they have had FLOW (being in the zone where they are completely immersed in a task and do it successfully), the other person coaches them to describe how it felt, the emotion they experienced, why they think they achieved FLOW, how they felt afterwards. When this occurs you feel the energy in the room change, people bond and people are almost friends by the end of it.
You have to ask yourself do I help people in my personal life celebrate victory? What about at work? If you are a leader or manager do you just point out what people need to do better or do you reflect and focus on what they have done well. Do you get them to analyse it and relive it with them? With your team can you introduce WWW into your team? WWW stands for What Went Well? The cynics hear this and think it is far too fluffy and wet. However if you look at any piece of research on this and it will tell you that reflecting on success gives you optimistic thoughts and puts you in a state of positive emotion.
Conclusively we know that positive emotion and optimistic thoughts, accelerate learning, broadens attention and increases creativity. Also over our lifetime if we consistently feel positive emotion and optimistic thoughts we have better health, earn more money, have better relationships, live longer, and have a better quality of life. The best thing about WWW is that it is an addictive habit. So many of the new habits we try to install in our life are not self-perpetuating (don’t build on themselves), for example cutting out junk food. This is not difficult to make routine – the more you do WWW the more you want to do it. The more you do this with your team the more they will want to do it.
Personally my wife and I started this habit at the end of the day and we are definitely noticing the benefits. Furthermore, the more we do it the more it builds on itself. Do you “show up” ready to celebrate or criticise?
How good are you at forgiveness?
Adam Fraser - Thursday, March 03, 2011
I recently presented at a conference for a group of school business managers. At the end of the conference a woman came up to me and said, “You know that 3rd Space concept? I love that idea!” I said, “Thank you”. She then went on to say “Yes, I attended a workshop the other day where the presenter showed us that concept.” “What!?” I replied. “What presenter?” “At this workshop they presented that concept and told the exact same stories you told today. They even used the exact same model that you did.”
To say I was ropable was an understatement. I don’t mind if people borrow a stat, or a line. But to take an entire concept, repeat it word for word, and pass it off as your own, is a bit over the top. It really hit me hard emotionally – I thought of all the time and effort I put into developing the concept, only to have someone use it without even acknowledging me.
It was interesting to view my response, which was to sulk all the way to the airport (made even worse by the fact that I found out who it was and they were not answering their phone). After allowing myself a good 2 hours to be a self-indulgent victim (a complete pratt was probably a more accurate description!). I decided I needed to get over myself. I thought: What are the positives out of this?
1. If people are stealing the idea, I must be onto something so it validates the quality of the idea.
2. I got into this business to provide value to people and help improve their quality of life. The 3rd Space is a great idea that helps people, and the more people who hear it the better.
3. Can I improve how I recognise other peoples’ content that I reference in my presentations?
4. Being angry with someone else doesn’t help me at all; it’s just a waste of my mental time and energy.
5. When you present ideas in an open forum you are delusional to think people won’t use them.
6. You just have to focus on constantly coming up with new and innovative ideas.
I once saw Amanda Gore present (one of the greatest keynote speakers I have ever seen). She said a brilliant line around anger and resentment: “Holding on to anger and resentment for someone is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” How true!
What we know is that when we feel negative emotions like anger, hate and resentment we release chemicals in our brain that:
• Shut down the creative parts of our brain
• Destroy brain cells
• Make us put on body fat around our organs, putting us at risk of diabetes, heart disease and syndrome X
• Lead to dysfunctional behaviour
How good are you at forgiveness? Are you holding onto things that don’t help you?
Like this article? Find a copy of it here!
To say I was ropable was an understatement. I don’t mind if people borrow a stat, or a line. But to take an entire concept, repeat it word for word, and pass it off as your own, is a bit over the top. It really hit me hard emotionally – I thought of all the time and effort I put into developing the concept, only to have someone use it without even acknowledging me.
It was interesting to view my response, which was to sulk all the way to the airport (made even worse by the fact that I found out who it was and they were not answering their phone). After allowing myself a good 2 hours to be a self-indulgent victim (a complete pratt was probably a more accurate description!). I decided I needed to get over myself. I thought: What are the positives out of this?
1. If people are stealing the idea, I must be onto something so it validates the quality of the idea.
2. I got into this business to provide value to people and help improve their quality of life. The 3rd Space is a great idea that helps people, and the more people who hear it the better.
3. Can I improve how I recognise other peoples’ content that I reference in my presentations?
4. Being angry with someone else doesn’t help me at all; it’s just a waste of my mental time and energy.
5. When you present ideas in an open forum you are delusional to think people won’t use them.
6. You just have to focus on constantly coming up with new and innovative ideas.
I once saw Amanda Gore present (one of the greatest keynote speakers I have ever seen). She said a brilliant line around anger and resentment: “Holding on to anger and resentment for someone is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” How true!
What we know is that when we feel negative emotions like anger, hate and resentment we release chemicals in our brain that:
• Shut down the creative parts of our brain
• Destroy brain cells
• Make us put on body fat around our organs, putting us at risk of diabetes, heart disease and syndrome X
• Lead to dysfunctional behaviour
How good are you at forgiveness? Are you holding onto things that don’t help you?
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Why Change is so hard to do!
Adam Fraser - Thursday, February 17, 2011
When I was an academic (in a previous life) I noticed that people in this environment were drawn to complexity. They would always find the most complicated way to explain something and always gravitated towards the most complex solution to a problem. My take on the driver for this behaviour was two things:
1. It formed an intellectual barrier that did not allow the average person to access that world. Intellectual snobbery at its highest level
2. They saw simplicity as a sign of intellectual laziness and this work was of poorer quality.
The problem was that this attitude made the material mind numbingly boring. I must have sat through over 300 academic presentations and never stayed awake in any of them. However most importantly it hampered their ability to teach and pass on concepts. I never had a lecturer help me learn and understand concepts - they just threw information at me.
However when I moved into the business world as an educator, I discovered the amazing power simplicity has. In a meeting with Ralph Norris the CEO of the Commonwealth Bank, I asked him what the biggest mistake we make in business was? His reply was - “We overcomplicate it. I run this bank on five simple principals. Simple principals allow people to learn them fast, remember them and have clarity about what behaviours they have to exhibit”.
My obsession with understanding how people change recently led to a psychologist from the University of Virginia, Jonathan Haidt. He has a change model that I think is one of the best that I have ever come across, because of its simplicity. The model consists of three parts, a rider on an elephant walking along a path. Sounds weird? Let me explain.
The rider is our logic, our rational side.
The elephant is our emotional side.
The path is the environment in which we are changing.
Within this model you can see that the logical side has very little control. The rider can pull on the reins as hard as they like, but if the elephant wants to go in another direction the rider can do little to stop it. An example is that you know you shouldn’t text your ex at 3am but you still do. The elephant has the most power in this model.
According to Jonathan, to facilitate change you have to do 3 things:
1. You must give the rider clear instructions about what change needs to occur. What are the exact behaviours you need them to exhibit? If the rider does not know exactly what they need to do they can wander off all over the place.
2. You must appeal to the elephant. You have to make it so that the elephant has a desire to go in that direction.
3. Lastly you have to clear the path. You need to make it easy for the elephant to go there. Ensure that there are no roadblocks.
I have been using this model in my work with companies with amazing results.
Guide the rider
I was with a department of a bank. As a group they came up with a goal to become number one in customer service. While that is a great goal what I pointed out is that there is no clear behaviours attached to that goal. How will people change their behaviour to achieve that goal? Upon reflection they then came up with a clear behaviour. ‘Never pass a customer on, do not transfer them to another department and you must solve their problem on the spot’. Since the introduction of this clear behaviour they have seen a sharp rise in their client satisfaction.
Motivate the elephant
I was working with a manufacturing group who were having problems getting people to stick to safety policy. The problem was that the employees saw safety as unnecessary because they thought they were bullet proof and would never get hurt. In my research on the company I found out that the major accidents people had in the company were due to another person cutting corners. In other words when an individual did not stick to the safety policy they put their co-workers at risk. Then I presented to them and talked about how they would feel if their actions lead to a mate being injured or even killed. How would they feel if they took away their livelihood and left their family struggling to survive. I then had a guy in the group talk about when he did not follow policy, which led to a co-worker being seriously injured.
They went from thinking that not paying attention to safety was a cool/brave thing to do. To my actions could hurt my mates. Their elephant was seriously motivated.
Clear the path
A number of years ago I was engaged by a law firm to put in place a work life balance strategy for the senior associates and lawyers. I presented the strategy to the partners and they were on board. Six months later when we reviewed the project it had had little impact. Why? Well the strategy was simple and they knew the exact behaviours they had to do, so it wasn’t that. The elephant was engaged because they all wanted to see their families more and to reduce their stress. The reason it failed was that the partners penalised them when they exhibited those behaviours. The problem was that the partners put barriers on the path.
From now on when you are trying to change anything in your life or leading others through a change process ensure that you:
1. Guide the rider with crystal clear behaviours.
2. Appeal to their elephant.
3. Clear the path.
For a copy of this article, go to Why change is so hard to do
1. It formed an intellectual barrier that did not allow the average person to access that world. Intellectual snobbery at its highest level
2. They saw simplicity as a sign of intellectual laziness and this work was of poorer quality.
The problem was that this attitude made the material mind numbingly boring. I must have sat through over 300 academic presentations and never stayed awake in any of them. However most importantly it hampered their ability to teach and pass on concepts. I never had a lecturer help me learn and understand concepts - they just threw information at me.
However when I moved into the business world as an educator, I discovered the amazing power simplicity has. In a meeting with Ralph Norris the CEO of the Commonwealth Bank, I asked him what the biggest mistake we make in business was? His reply was - “We overcomplicate it. I run this bank on five simple principals. Simple principals allow people to learn them fast, remember them and have clarity about what behaviours they have to exhibit”.
My obsession with understanding how people change recently led to a psychologist from the University of Virginia, Jonathan Haidt. He has a change model that I think is one of the best that I have ever come across, because of its simplicity. The model consists of three parts, a rider on an elephant walking along a path. Sounds weird? Let me explain.
The rider is our logic, our rational side.
The elephant is our emotional side.
The path is the environment in which we are changing.
Within this model you can see that the logical side has very little control. The rider can pull on the reins as hard as they like, but if the elephant wants to go in another direction the rider can do little to stop it. An example is that you know you shouldn’t text your ex at 3am but you still do. The elephant has the most power in this model.
According to Jonathan, to facilitate change you have to do 3 things:
1. You must give the rider clear instructions about what change needs to occur. What are the exact behaviours you need them to exhibit? If the rider does not know exactly what they need to do they can wander off all over the place.
2. You must appeal to the elephant. You have to make it so that the elephant has a desire to go in that direction.
3. Lastly you have to clear the path. You need to make it easy for the elephant to go there. Ensure that there are no roadblocks.
I have been using this model in my work with companies with amazing results.
Guide the rider
I was with a department of a bank. As a group they came up with a goal to become number one in customer service. While that is a great goal what I pointed out is that there is no clear behaviours attached to that goal. How will people change their behaviour to achieve that goal? Upon reflection they then came up with a clear behaviour. ‘Never pass a customer on, do not transfer them to another department and you must solve their problem on the spot’. Since the introduction of this clear behaviour they have seen a sharp rise in their client satisfaction.
Motivate the elephant
I was working with a manufacturing group who were having problems getting people to stick to safety policy. The problem was that the employees saw safety as unnecessary because they thought they were bullet proof and would never get hurt. In my research on the company I found out that the major accidents people had in the company were due to another person cutting corners. In other words when an individual did not stick to the safety policy they put their co-workers at risk. Then I presented to them and talked about how they would feel if their actions lead to a mate being injured or even killed. How would they feel if they took away their livelihood and left their family struggling to survive. I then had a guy in the group talk about when he did not follow policy, which led to a co-worker being seriously injured.
They went from thinking that not paying attention to safety was a cool/brave thing to do. To my actions could hurt my mates. Their elephant was seriously motivated.
Clear the path
A number of years ago I was engaged by a law firm to put in place a work life balance strategy for the senior associates and lawyers. I presented the strategy to the partners and they were on board. Six months later when we reviewed the project it had had little impact. Why? Well the strategy was simple and they knew the exact behaviours they had to do, so it wasn’t that. The elephant was engaged because they all wanted to see their families more and to reduce their stress. The reason it failed was that the partners penalised them when they exhibited those behaviours. The problem was that the partners put barriers on the path.
From now on when you are trying to change anything in your life or leading others through a change process ensure that you:
1. Guide the rider with crystal clear behaviours.
2. Appeal to their elephant.
3. Clear the path.
For a copy of this article, go to Why change is so hard to do
Positive Messages help smokers quit
Adam Fraser - Saturday, January 30, 2010
Taken from
http://www.medpagetoday.com/PrimaryCare/Smoking/17860
Positive Messages may be the key to getting smokers to start Behaviour Change
Telling people about the benefits of quitting is more likely to help smokers break the habit than scaring them with the dangers of continuing, researchers found.
Callers to a tobacco quitline were nearly twice as likely to stop in the short term when they got positive messages rather than negative ones in a randomized trial led by Benjamin A. Toll, PhD, of Yale University School of Medicine.
The effect lasted less than three months, Toll's group reported online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Still, that's a good start, although one or two years is the ultimate test of cessation, said Thomas J. Glynn, PhD, of the American Cancer Society.
"It's a taste for what we might be able to do with positive encouragement," Glynn told MedPage Today. "It's like a lot of other therapies, we get the hint at the beginning that there is some germ of effectiveness and then . . . tweak that to try and make it last longer."
The notion that positive messages are more motivating shouldn't be a surprise, considering findings from other branches of medicine, Glynn said.
Furthermore, the very fact that people call the quitline suggests that they are already aware of the risks of smoking and may not need them reiterated, he said.
His organization and agencies in all 50 states have some type of free, telephone-based counseling program to help smokers quit, but the call centers typically employ a mix of positive and negative messages -- determined by the individual counselor, Glynn noted.
These results suggest that "going right into positive mode may be best," he said, a strategy that physicians should also consider adopting when faced with a patient who's thinking about quitting.
Quitlines reach only about 1% of the nation's smokers, but the technology is fairly new, Glynn said: "They've really only come into their own in the last decade."
Research has been far outpaced by rapidly evolving programs, which now may include Internet and even text messaging components, added Robert T. Croyle, PhD, of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md.
In an accompanying editorial, Croyle cautioned that the study results were weakened by confounding since the duration of the positive messages was longer.
The trial included 28 counselors working at the New York State Smokers' Quitline who were randomly assigned to provide standard or "gain-framed" counseling and print materials to the 2,032 callers between March 10 and June 13, 2008.
All medically-eligible callers were mailed a two-week starter pack of a nicotine replacement system.
Standard messages included both a discussion of the costs of smoking and the benefits of quitting whereas the gain-framed version focused on positive effects of quitting.
For example, "If you quit smoking you will be more likely to resist colds and flu" was the gain-framed variation of "Smokers are more likely to get colds and flu."
The training for counselors appeared effective, as those who were to provide gain-framed statements actually did so significantly more often than the control group counselors (3.9 versus 1.4 mean messages on achieving benefits and 1.5 versus 1.0 mean gain-framed messages for avoiding negative consequences, both P<0.001).
Callers appeared to benefit as well.
When surveyed two weeks after their initial call, 23.3% who got the positive messages had been tobacco-free for the prior 24 hours compared with just 12.6% in the standard message group (odds ratio 2.1, P<0.001).
Quit attempts, whether successful or not, were more common as well at two weeks (31.1% versus 16.7%, P<0.001).
However, the effect of positive messaging was short-lived.
By the three-month follow-up, abstinence rates over the prior seven days was similar between groups (28.4% gain-framed versus 26.6% standard messages, P=0.48). Use of nicotine replacement therapy was likewise no different between groups at three months (P=0.25).
"Multiple messages may be necessary for longer-term impact," Toll's group wrote.
The researchers noted that the results would need to be replicated by other quitlines.
They cautioned, too, that the gain-framed group got an extra 2.5 minutes with the counselor (mean call length 14 minutes and 37 seconds versus 12 minutes and 8 seconds, P=0.001).
Other limitations included the low intensity of the intervention due to the brief contact, low follow-up rates, and potentially limited generalizability.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/PrimaryCare/Smoking/17860
Positive Messages may be the key to getting smokers to start Behaviour Change
Telling people about the benefits of quitting is more likely to help smokers break the habit than scaring them with the dangers of continuing, researchers found.
Callers to a tobacco quitline were nearly twice as likely to stop in the short term when they got positive messages rather than negative ones in a randomized trial led by Benjamin A. Toll, PhD, of Yale University School of Medicine.
The effect lasted less than three months, Toll's group reported online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Still, that's a good start, although one or two years is the ultimate test of cessation, said Thomas J. Glynn, PhD, of the American Cancer Society.
"It's a taste for what we might be able to do with positive encouragement," Glynn told MedPage Today. "It's like a lot of other therapies, we get the hint at the beginning that there is some germ of effectiveness and then . . . tweak that to try and make it last longer."
The notion that positive messages are more motivating shouldn't be a surprise, considering findings from other branches of medicine, Glynn said.
Furthermore, the very fact that people call the quitline suggests that they are already aware of the risks of smoking and may not need them reiterated, he said.
His organization and agencies in all 50 states have some type of free, telephone-based counseling program to help smokers quit, but the call centers typically employ a mix of positive and negative messages -- determined by the individual counselor, Glynn noted.
These results suggest that "going right into positive mode may be best," he said, a strategy that physicians should also consider adopting when faced with a patient who's thinking about quitting.
Quitlines reach only about 1% of the nation's smokers, but the technology is fairly new, Glynn said: "They've really only come into their own in the last decade."
Research has been far outpaced by rapidly evolving programs, which now may include Internet and even text messaging components, added Robert T. Croyle, PhD, of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md.
In an accompanying editorial, Croyle cautioned that the study results were weakened by confounding since the duration of the positive messages was longer.
The trial included 28 counselors working at the New York State Smokers' Quitline who were randomly assigned to provide standard or "gain-framed" counseling and print materials to the 2,032 callers between March 10 and June 13, 2008.
All medically-eligible callers were mailed a two-week starter pack of a nicotine replacement system.
Standard messages included both a discussion of the costs of smoking and the benefits of quitting whereas the gain-framed version focused on positive effects of quitting.
For example, "If you quit smoking you will be more likely to resist colds and flu" was the gain-framed variation of "Smokers are more likely to get colds and flu."
The training for counselors appeared effective, as those who were to provide gain-framed statements actually did so significantly more often than the control group counselors (3.9 versus 1.4 mean messages on achieving benefits and 1.5 versus 1.0 mean gain-framed messages for avoiding negative consequences, both P<0.001).
Callers appeared to benefit as well.
When surveyed two weeks after their initial call, 23.3% who got the positive messages had been tobacco-free for the prior 24 hours compared with just 12.6% in the standard message group (odds ratio 2.1, P<0.001).
Quit attempts, whether successful or not, were more common as well at two weeks (31.1% versus 16.7%, P<0.001).
However, the effect of positive messaging was short-lived.
By the three-month follow-up, abstinence rates over the prior seven days was similar between groups (28.4% gain-framed versus 26.6% standard messages, P=0.48). Use of nicotine replacement therapy was likewise no different between groups at three months (P=0.25).
"Multiple messages may be necessary for longer-term impact," Toll's group wrote.
The researchers noted that the results would need to be replicated by other quitlines.
They cautioned, too, that the gain-framed group got an extra 2.5 minutes with the counselor (mean call length 14 minutes and 37 seconds versus 12 minutes and 8 seconds, P=0.001).
Other limitations included the low intensity of the intervention due to the brief contact, low follow-up rates, and potentially limited generalizability.
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