Dan Ariely experiments on people to understand what is truly motivating

Dan is a Behavioural economist at Duke Univeristy  were hee, he’s aligned with three departments (business, economics and cognitive neuroscience); he’s also a visiting professor in MIT’s Program in Media Arts and Sciences and a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight. His hope that studying and understanding the decision-making process can help people lead better, more sensible daily lives.

Dan has written two best selling books, Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality.

Nigel Marsh gave and excellent talk at TEDx Sydney recently on Work Life Balance.

Marsh is currently Regional Group CEO of Young and Rubicam Brands for Australia & New Zealand. Nigel has worked with an enormous variety of businesses including a number of the world’s top companies  -Virgin, McDonald’s, Pepsi, British Airways, Philip Morris, Proctor & Gamble and Mars.  He has written the book Fat, Forty and Fired.

Srikumar  was an executive at Warner Communications and McGraw-Hill before he created his celebrated MBA course, “Creativity and Personal Mastery.” The course — the only business school course that has its own alumni association — shows students how to discover their unique purpose, creativity and happiness, through group work and a philosophical perspective

Rao is also an adviser to senior business executives, whom he helps find deeper meaning and engagement in their work. He’s the author of Are You Ready to Succeed: Unconventional Strategies for Achieving Personal Mastery in Business and Life

Dr Rao’s work was one of the inspirations of the post Stop Hating your Job.

These ideas  sound simple, but  breaking old paradigms is hard work. This is especially true the old habits are linked to  perceived  success. Your current habits got you to here but they will not likely get you to the top.
Over the next 6 weeks I will outline the steps that will assist you in achieving growth in leadership. Maintain a focus on each step  for one week ; it takes time for the concepts to imbed into your unconscious mind. Yes  patience is a virtue.

Step 1 –STOP!

Most senior leaders are on mental auto-pilot. You are fully engaged in managing day-to-day activities;  your mind is constantly running by responding to the stimulus shot at it. In order to remodel your behaviour your first step is to create mental stops.
Many of us understand this concept…count to 10 before you say anything in anger… but rarely do we extend this principle.

Stop is the first step to allow you to build considerations for your behaviours:

• How should I react?
• Why is this how I am thinking?
• Is this truly the only option on this?

But this is getting ahead of the first step – STOP

Break free of the river of thoughts and behaviours;  simply notice your minds ability to pause. This will create awareness in both  the conscious and unconscious mind that you are still in control. As your awareness grows absorb the empty space, the freedom created by your awareness.  This stop is the first step in allowing you to reconnect with yourself and turn off the auto pilot. The key is not to replace your stopped moment with anything simply recongize  you  have the ability to pull out of autopilot.

Try to break free as many times as you can for this week.
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This article is the first of 6 weeks toward improved leadership presence other articles are here.

Below is a recent post written by Tom Peters at www.tompeters.com

The Washington Post reports that Representative Peter Roskam (R-IL), during last week’s hearings, asked automaker CEOs if they’d work for a dollar a year. Chrysler’s Nardelli said yes, GM’s Wagoner said “I don’t have a position on that today,” and Ford’s Alan Mulally, who made $21,700,000 last year, said, “I think I’m okay where I am.”

In the immortal words of Dave Barry, “I’m not making this up.”

Meanwhile CNN’s Kyung Lah reported that the CEO of JAL rides public transit to work, eats in the company cafeteria, and cut his salary below that of his pilots as a personal response to layoffs and forced early retirements that JAL felt necessary to make.

A Financial Times headline on Citicorp reads: “Bank loses over half its value in past three days” “[CEO] Pandit moves to shore up his position as chief.”

As disgusting [DIS-GUST-ING] as Mulally’s “I’m okay” comment was-is, the Pandit headline in its own fashion affected me even more. Citi’s performance is awful—and there’s little or no doubt that Pandit is a major part of the problem. And hence his primary response, following an announced 50,000 plus layoff, is to try and save his own skin? (TP’s considered response: “You miserable, ego-maniacal S.O.B.”)

Have these guys (and they’re almost all guys) no sense of shame? No sense of service? No sense of honor? No sense of sacrifice? No sense of equity?

A little online research Cathy and I did shows that none of the Big Three CEOs had any military service. I do not believe that such service is a generic answer to any particular problem. But I do believe that the uniform absence thereof is perhaps indicative of a lack of a life-as-service, servant leader ethos in general among these three? (The “no military service” piece is almost amusing, in a perverse way, in the case of Nardelli, who is a fanatic believer in some twisted notion of the “military model” of doing business—his willy nilly application of his abominable interpretation of military leadership was one of his many screwups at Home Depot. Part of Nardelli’s, yes, admirable willingness to work for a buck at Chrysler may be the $200 million he took home as a prize for being fired from Home Depot.)

In summary:

Have they no shame?
Have they no sense of service?
Have they no conception of servant leadership?
Have they no soul?
Have they no honor?
Have they no ethos of sacrifice?
Have they no conception of-perception of equity?
(Did any of them go to Sunday School?)

Does it sound like I’m in a pissy mood, maybe still suffering from jetlag following my Middle East trip? Well, I am in a pissy mood, and part of it may indeed be 66-year-old-body-meets-jetlag. But part of it derives directly from Pandit and Mulally and the association of their flavor attitudes to our unfolding economic catastrophe. I’ve spent 40 plus years directly or indirectly on, effectively, one topic: profit through people-centered, people-obsessed leadership. Mulally and Pandit and their not insignificant ilk make me wonder if I pissed away my life in pursuit of an improbable, or even impossible, ideal?

Video

Her book on Lincoln is one of my favourite books on leadership. It is worth a read.

This is a great video on authenticity and driving to what is important

check it out.

Upwards of 70% of employee’s are very dissatisfied with their jobs.  Like this silent majority  many of us feel under appreciated and exploited. Surprisingly these are common emotions at all levels of an organization. We generally ascribe this sentiment to cubicle dwelling middle management-like the Scranton crew – but I have witnessed this sentiment among all levels of management, including other senior executives.

It would likely take a several PhD’s to fully outline why people hate their employment, but some simple principles might assist you in understanding your circumstance.

Leadership is imperfect

Leadership is no science, rather an art. Leadership skills are the most significant capabilities gap in organizations today. Today, employee’s expectations of leaders is very high, thankfully the commitment of senior management is also high. Management’s emotional commitment to leadership development is often not realized given the clinical realities of revenue and profit growth. Most companies have various commitment statements on the importance of leadership; however most don’t have management metrics that reward this. In the quarterly parade of earnings I never heard a single analyst question the state of leadership. Management bonuses are aligned to the perceived underpinnings of stock valuation, revenue growth balanced against cost management. The desire to develop great leadership is simply not supported by current governance.

No one will come down from on high to resolve the leadership imperfections around you; employees and managers must accept that leadership will come down to the skills in your immediate team.

Resolution 1: Be an agent of leadership you want.

Act in the leadership style consistent with your ideals. You have surely developed opinions about team work, coaching, mentorship and training – demonstrate this style. (Caution don’t use this advice as an excuse usurp your manager)

Moving away for cultural norms will take courage; but allows you to determine, express and maintain your authentic style. One member of a team can completely change the leadership approach around them. Leadership is recognized as a unique skill and exercising your authentic style increases the likelihood of being positively regarded.

Living in a ‘I’ Centred universe

Most of the frustrations with a job or career are a matter of perspective; and, well…one’s perspective generally revolves around themselves. Unfortunately not all matters of the world, country or your company revolve around you – while this seems obvious – most of us are programmed not to recognize the personal centricity of our daily judgements.

Your world view is generated by the great adjudicator ‘your mind’- the mind is very accomplished in its role as the judger of perspective. The more significant the ego need of the decision the more ego centric the mind becomes. Unfortunately we do not live in a ‘I’ centred universe.

Work is a big ego driver, so the natural instinct is to define what happens at work at as ‘me centric’. This strong ego centric thinking and ego driven protection leads to misjudging both colleagues and organizational motives. The result is unnecessary interpersonal and inner personal conflicts.

Resolution 2: Two: move away from ego driven thinking or actions.

Start improving your awareness :

✓ How you are processing the world around you?

✓ How often do you say ‘I’? – ‘I’ did …, I know…. , I am responsible for…. etc.

✓ How often do you interpret a discussion or email as directly linked to something you did or said?

✓ Do you find yourself getting defensive/territorial?

✓ Do you often find the need to aggressively defend yourself?

Spend at least one week improving your self awareness. Pay careful attention to your mood/emotions and your natural reactions. Make notes in meetings or afterwards to explore what is behind your actions.

Once you have a greater self understanding to pay attention to your reactions. Modify your behaviour with the recognition that most items in life are not me centric.

If you have trouble and fall into habitual behaviour, simply stay silent for a minute or two. It is surprising how legitimate concerns will quickly be picked up by someone else and resolved, and non- issues have a tendency to float way as the regular flow of the meeting/discussion moves on.

Work is your key learning mechanism

People have great expectations for jobs. A job should be your key passion, were you gain sustenance and show success to the world. Often a man’s self worth is completely wrapped up in a career.  This perspective leads to great personal dissatisfaction. To create a parallel, marriage is often portrayed as bliss on earth – sunshine champagne and roses. If you expect marriage to provide this paradise, you will quickly become depressed as the regular discourse of life carries on.

Your expectations for work need to align to its realities; to prevent the inevitable routine of work from sucking the life out of you. The routine of work is marked by interpersonal challenges, expectation issues, and stress management. All can cause to low level anxiety.

Reframe work, it is not something that gives to you but is a platform for learning.

Resolution 3: What am I here to learn?

Commit  that your work will be the key place of learning in your life.

Conceptually, this seems straightforward we often start new roles learning new information or approaches to the business. These skills or competencies are considered functional expertise, (eg. strategic analysis or cash flow management strategies) We need to consider leadership development in this same context.

Your job is were you will learn things about your self, how you react, how others deal with issues and more. Building  on resolutions 1 and 2 , increase your self awareness and model your behaviour to affect the style you choose.  Use the various power struggles, interpersonal conflicts, team failures as fodder to  understand  your  style  and how it  supports (or detracts) from achievement. 

You are the goal

Don’t complain   your job is not giving you enough; focus on how you will use it to develop strong leadership skills and self understanding.

Your work is an important input to your life, not an output. The key output to your life is  you – money, toys and prestigious are the competitive playing field, but victory is determined not by the prize but the quality of play.

I knew it and so did they.

I was always uncomfortable with praise, it felt somehow false and often obvious--

"These guys were great and who was I to state the obvious."

 Clearly I was their boss, and needed to acknowledge their contribution authentically.

Reflect on this story from the Canadian Entrepeneur Blog,

"I've been browsing an interesting book, Patrick Watson’s autobiography, 

This Hour has Seven Decades. Watson is a groundbreaking TV journalist 

(still best remembered for This Hour has Seven Days), who later became chair of the CBC.

       

But what I wanted to share with you is this particular gem, 

which relates to a key responsibility of management: walking around.
  


  

Here’s the scene: In the mid-1970s, a former president of the CBC, Alphonse Ouimet,   

was writing his memoirs. He asked to speak with Watson, then a   

freelance journalist, to sort out some of the issues around his   

controversial cancellation of Seven Days in 1966 - a move in which   

Watson was fired. Somewhat to Watson's surprise, the meeting went well.   

But after dinner and a bottle of Bordeaux, Watson realized he still harboured a grievance   

 against Ouimet.
  


  

“I said ‘Al, you never came to see us, the producers. Or if you did it was always to   

tell us to pull our horns in, to not spend too much.’
  


  

‘You never came to the studios, you never came to pat us on the back and tell us   

 what a great job we were doing. You were the father figure, you know, and we needed   

 that from you.’”
  


  

Ouimet’s response? “He said he found that an astonishing thing for me to say.   

We must have known we were doing a good job and  
that management thought so, too, since we were given our budgets and
our airtime, and we were all such confident and self-sufficient people;
how could I say such nonsense about the father figure and needing to be
patted on the back?”
  


  

Today, similar dramas play out every day in workplaces Canada.   

Staff, even managers, desperate for attention and praise; and bosses   

unaware that that’s part of their job – perhaps the most important."  

There is a pretty good setup for the discussion on the podcast linked below from Harvard Business. It is about 12 minutes on the topic

http://cdn.libsyn.com/hbsp2/HBR_IdeaCast_Episode_75-Managing_B_Players.mp3

In my career I have always gotten more out of B players than most. Recognize their value and validate them, give them as much time as you can.

B players are great mentors to rising stars

B players are less threatening to their highflying colleagues; and can provide insights to rising stars that they may be obvious to. B players know their organizations very well, and can help managers and A players navigate through their political blind spots. B players can provide perspective to their A player colleagues on how to interact with people like them –ie the majority of the organization. This will be a valuable tool to develop into better leaders.

B players take great pride in helping rising stars; it helps them feel better connected to the top of the organization.

How to make it work

Team up your highflyers with your B players – don’t allow a hierarchy to develop — and watch both people achieve more. To make this work well, stay out of the way… but reinforce to the B player the need to coach and mentor the highflyer and ensure the A player knows not only how much you value him but his colleague.

If you liked the podcast, Tom De Long’s book is noted below. I have not read it.