One of the books on my shelf is The Power of TED (again, thank you Ken Abrams for turning me onto that), which is where I first learned of “The Dreaded Drama Triangle.”  As a human effectiveness expert, the description of the drama triangle quoted from their book’s website made perfect sense to me:

“Victim (the primary reactive role that is at the heart of the triangle); Persecutor (who or what the Victim blames for their suffering); and Rescuer (who or what intervenes to try and take away the Victim’s suffering).”

Do we not hear these stories all the time?  Listen for it.

Here’s what tends to bite in the butt.  We tell ourselves these DDT stories.  Recall that our memories are our perceptions, the stories we create for ourselves as we are distilling, distorting and generalizing incoming data.

Most people understand what doesn’t work about being in the victim role.  Victim = powerless to take positive action.

I get more questions about the persecutor, because after all, there are have and have nots.  The animal kingdom is set up on the basis of hierarchy.  There is a distinction between hierarchy and persecution.  One contruct describes a balance of power or authority.  The other requires subjugation and necessitates a powerless party.  Seems un-ecological to me.  It also implies that power comes from an external source.  Where is the persecutor without his victim?

So, what’s wrong with being a rescuer?  Again, it requires a victim.  It also requires resources.  What happens to the rescuer when there aren’t enough resources to rescue?  Being the rescuer seems romantic, but it requires a destructive, reactive cycle, especially for the victim who never learns the resources to manage their life.

TED, then, is a different triangle.  It stands for “The Empowerment Dynamic.”  The roles in that dynamic are:

“Creator (the central role in The Empowerment Dyanmic that is the antidote to “Victim”); Challenger (who or what provides the necessary impetus for the Creator take action and make positive changes);  and Coach (who supports the Creator as they define their current reality and take Baby Steps toward the achievement of goals)”

This is a great description of the model I’ve used with my clients for years.  Creators are focused on outcomes and results…. what they want.  Remember how the thinking that got you problem gets your more problem?  Remember how we get more of what we focus on?  I want you to be a creator!

Challengers are creators in their own right, and they also see out other Creators to provoke and evoke growth and development.  The intent of the Challenger is to spark learning, growth and change. (That’s who I want to be in the world, in case you haven’t yet noticed!)

Coaches see others as capable and resourceful (we learn that very early at CoachU) and to support them in the creating process by asking questions and facilitating their own clarification of envisioned outcomes, the current realities they face, and possible Baby Steps (small sequential actions that bring you ever closer to your goal) for moving forward.  The Coach sees the other as able to find their own solutions and act on them.  (That’s what I do, for all of you who still had questions!)

Come join me in this model.  Create this model in your own organizations.  Dump the drama triangle!  Contact me to set up your complimentary consultation, so that we can discuss how you create a TED in your life.

Be Your Best You Today,

Carolann Jacobs

p.s. – I used a lot of the same verbiage from www.powerofted.com.  It’s well-written and worth a visit.

Photo by Nur Hussein - find the pic on Flickr, the story is hilarious!

We hear a lot about being results-focused and results-driven.  Results are important, and somewhere along the way, we’ve lost sight of the importance of the journey.

Case and point.  In 1959, Cuba had an illiteracy rate of 23%.  Post Castro revolution, in 1961, it was reduced to 4%.   Let’s just say, this wasn’t the kindest of processes, and yet, if the focus was on the result to wipe out illiteracy, they were astoundingly successful.

We do this in our organizations, albeit in less stark ways (most of the time).  In many organizations, when there is a particular result required, the company values, the work/life balance, attention to detail, good decision making, etc. go right out the window. 

This becomes a real issue when we are engaging in activities that by their nature are processes.  We’ve become so used to getting a result that if we don’t get a result or we don’t get the result we want right out of the gate, we call it a failure and quit.  Change course. 

(Now that I think about it, some corporate change initiatives look an awful lot like what I’m describing.  We do it until the first set-back and then it’s scrapped.)

Learning new behaviors is a process.  Sometimes we get the results we want, sometimes we don’t.  The point is that if we don’t acknowledge and reflect on the process itself, we can’t make lasting behavioral change.

Consider this.  10,000 seems to be the magic number for learning how to be an expert.  Daniel Coyle talks about this in his book “The Talent Code.”   Jose Bowen, the Dean of Southern Methodist University’s school of music, said in an interview on Kris Boyd’s radio show “Think” that until a kid has logged 10,000 of good practice time, they don’t know whether they’ll have the talent to be a professional. 

Brain science backs this up.  The concept of practicing often and correctly is important in making the distinction between good and great.  So, here, the focus on a good process is what ensures the good result.

So, back to the results focus at work.  If we’re not paying attention to doing things in the way that we want to do them in the future… the process… and rewarding the process successes along the way, how do we ever get out of fire fighting?  By focusing solely on the result, we accept inefficiencies and poor practice in the path.

Be Your Best You Today,

Carolann Jacobs

Photo by Thana Thaweeskulchai

Career Management groups are filled with people who haven’t progressed in their careers, and those are the folks who are having the toughest time landing new positions.   Many of those fall into the category of being happy that they had a job, and so they did whatever was necessary to keep it.   This is fear-based decision-making at it’s finest, and I say at it’s finest because the decision probably wasn’t that conscious for most of them.

Many of us have gotten into the habit of scarcity thinking and fear-based decision-making, and it didn’t start in the last 18 months.  I think it’s been going on since the economy tanked in 2001.   If you don’t know what I am talking about when I say “scarcity thinking” and “fear-based decision-making,” here are some examples of self-talk:

• “It’s hard to find a job.”
• “If I don’t [fill in the blank here], I’ll lose my job.”
• “It isn’t any better anywhere else.”

What’s your roadblock?

Assuming that you like what you do and you’re doing the right thing in the right place, here are some fundamental career management you should be asking yourself at the start of any new assignment:

• Does this take me closer to or farther away from my ultimate vision?  And, if the answer is farther away, is this a stepping stone for something better?
• Will the process of accomplishing this [whatever this is] be an addition to my resume?
• And, the Seinfeld question,  the Career Management version of Elaine’s “Is he sponge-worthy?)…  Is this opportunity worth expending a limited and valuable resource (e.g. your time)?

If you’re in a career that requires thinking and growing, and that would be most of you in the white collar world, take a good look at your accomplishments over the last five years.  What would someone say about the trend of your career or your progress?  If the answer is, “OMG, it’s a flat line!” what support structures are you going to put in place to get you moving upward and onward?

What happens if you do end up in a roll that isn’t resume worthy?

One- start looking for something else.  Contrary to what that nay-saying voice keeps telling you about unemployment numbers, the top talent are still getting jobs, and many of them are doing it without losing their previous jobs first.  It doesn’t hurt to explore your options.  So, do it.

Two- negotiate this with your management.  You don’t have to do this in a way that implies that this [whatever it is] is beneath you or that you’re unwilling to do it in the short term.  There are points to be made about the benefits to them for growing you.  And, it doesn’t hurt for there to be a little discomfort in the air that you’re one of the ones who will take action should your situation not improve.

Be Your Best You Today,

Carolann Jacobs

First, she has to fully understand how the ad hoc report or spreadsheet will be used.  This forces Hoover to be clear about what he wants, and it also allows Breeze some input into how it’s produced.  This minimized rework when Hoover has asked for something that actually won’t give him what he wants, and sometimes Hoover realizes that he doesn’t need the work done at all.

Second, Breeze must let Hoover know how the other work her group is doing will be impacted.  Hoover’s ad hoc requests are always necessary and urgent, so Breeze had been dropping everything to accomodate him.  This wasn’t working well for Breeze, her team or Hoover.

Now we get to the third circumstance.  There comes a point at which Hoover makes a decision, and it’s time to act, whether Breeze or the team agrees with it.  It becomes insubordinate to continue to state the case after the decision’s been made (not that one can’t revisit it with a little passage of time).

Here is where Breeze now manages down.  Before, this would have been an argument in which her staff didn’t understand why they had to do it, resentment, pouting, etc.  Now, she has a few tools in her aresenal.

Breeze has already set the stage.  She had a meeting with her team a few weeks ago in which she expressed what she wanted in terms of how the team worked.  This was the vision piece I mentioned a few posts ago.  In that conversation, she made a commitment to do her best to reduce the distractions that these ad hoc requests were creating.  And, she reiterated that there would still be times when that wasn’t possible.   Hoover, too, works in an environment that’s managed by reaction, and sometimes that has to be the priority.   She gave her group the permission to do the same things she was going – asking to understand how the work product would be used and prioritization – so that she could manage better.

No, it isn’t perfect.  But, it is better from the standpoint that they don’t feel like useless work is constantly being dumped on them.  More often than not, they can see where this work contributes to the overall strategy, which makes it a lot more tolerable when there really isn’t any value being added.  (After all, we still call it work.)  There are some benefits to a more collaborative approach, and Breeze doesn’t feel like she’s always having to make a choice about displeasing her staff and displeasing her boss.

Managing up or down…. it isn’t always an “or.”  What are the possibilities for you?

Be Your Best You Today,

Carolann

Photo By Brian

Where we left off last post is that our Managewich, Breeze, gets urgent requests from her manager, Hoover, and Breeze habitually has managed down, meaning that she’s generally accepted the work and the consequences of doing it for herself and her team and has muddled through by either directing her team to do the work or doing it herself.  I made a request of Breeze that she not accept work until one of three things has happened, the first being that she understands fully and completely how these reports and spreadsheets are going to be used and how they add value.  So far, this has resulted in some relationship building with Hoover, and it’s reduced some of the distracting work.  And, we’re not done yet.

I hope you realize by now that even though I have framed this as an “or” argument, Breeze has more than two mutually exclusive options to choose from.   Here is another way for her to go.

Sometimes, Hoover really does need the report he’s asking for.  Sometimes, he’s really not in the mood to answer questions.  So, Breeze has to find another approach.

The second circumstance that has to occur before Breeze can accept these ad hoc requests is that she needs to be able to clarify the consequences of accepting that work.   For whatever reason, Hoover seems to think that Breeze and her team are just sitting around waiting to serve his every whim.  Well, I exaggerate.  Really, what he thinks is that if Breeze accepts the work, than she and her team have the bandwidth to do it along with the work they already have.  This is why Hoover gets so mad at her when she misses deadlines and uses his ad hoc requests as an excuse.  (This is actionable for Breeze, and it boggles the mind why he doesn’t communicate this to her more directly!)

Anyway, Hoover isn’t mired in the day-to-day activities of Breeze’s group, so he doesn’t know what it means to him in the long run when he asks for a new spreadsheet.  This has required that Breeze step up her game.  She has to be able to know in short order how long a request is going to take and how it will impact the other things her group is doing.   Her team, understanding the benefits to them, was very effective in helping her set up a system.

So now, Breeze can present the alternatives to Hoover, and now Hoover gets to decide on what the priorities are.  What a deal for Breeze, because she isn’t the bad guy anymore!  Breeze’s team may still not be thrilled with the outcome, but they have more respect for the management team in that at least some thought was given to sometime past tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow….. we move onto the third circumstance for Breeze to accept work for her team.

Be Your Best You Today,

Carolann

Photo by Tamer Shabaneh

My hubby and I  just got back from an awesome trip to Cancun.   I bought the trip somewhat last minute from Sams Club of all places.  It was a surprise for Russ’s birthday, so I wanted it below the radar.  The trip was almost too good to be true price-wise, and even though I did my research, my biggest concern was that the hotel was going to be awful.

The trip included transfers to and from the airport.  If you’ve ever been to Cancun, then you know what that gauntlet of people trying to trick you into a free van ride looks like.  The service was flawless.  Our plane was 2 hours late, and they were still right there to meet us in a nice, air-conditioned, reasonable late model van.

When we got to the hotel, the lobby was clean and cool.  We had welcome drinks.  We met with the concierge so that he could share with us what was going on in town, at the hotel, and the amenities that were available at their sister resorts.  Never once were we pressured into taking the “3 hour tour.”

Then, they took us up to our room.  It wasn’t quite what I was expecting.  From the looks of it, the hotel’s being remodeled, and our room, while habitable, was not finished.  The floor was still the old brick, not the marble tile that was in the other rooms we’d seen.  There were no pictures on the walls.   Some of the fixtures were new.  Some needed replacing.

What does this have to do with you, the managewich?

I was thinking back to my experiences in IT.  Most of the time, I was brought in to “turn around” failing projects, products or systems, and there were times that it was really frustrating.  There were times that I was tired of trying to fix a crap product that I didn’t have the resources to fix.  I bet a lot of you are stuck in that boat in an economy where companies aren’t spending.

We used the phrase “Putting lipstick on a pig” a lot in IT.  There was a school of thought that if we made pretty screens, no one would notice that the program behind it sucked as much as our attitudes.

So, thinking about lipstick on a pig….  I was amused that the cleaning staff made towel animals, toilet paper flowers, and fans out of the bedspread in a room that looked like a low end Motel 6.  Still, the room was spotless.  We had nice toiletries.  Good TV.  Decent bed.  Ample air-conditioning.  The product wasn’t that bad.  It just needed some lipstick.

And, the lipstick was in the experience.  Everything in working order. Kindness.  Flawless service.

In the past, I too was prone to throw in the towel when I worked on a product that I felt was substandard.  I think I would have been better off had I learned to make towel animals.

Be Your Best You Today,

Carolann

Why is it so hard to know what someone else really wants or believes, and yet, how is it that we know others’ intentions just by looking at their body language or actions?

Paradoxical, yes?

For those of you who are saying that you don’t judge people…. you do.  We all do.  In fact, there is a region of our brain called the  “RPTJ” that is dedicated to understanding what’s going on in other people’s minds and forms our thoughts about it.

Rebecca Saxe, a cognitive neuroscientist from MIT, talks about how this region develops.  (This is a really cool video, especially the experiment at the end.)

I’ve talked about the pitfalls of “mindreading” and its effect on communication and understanding many times on this blog.  Today we’re going to look at it from the opposite angle – the advantages.

Clearly, some people are better able to put themselves in other people’s shoes than others.  This is an advantage, especially in the area of belief systems or moral judgments.  Why?  We don’t all believe the same things, and ability to see how someone can believe something different than we do can help us achieve a better understanding and to grow ourselves.

For the absolutists out there, can we all agree that I am not talking about  murder, genocide or other like ills?

What does this mean for the managewich?

Sometimes people act because they have a different belief systems.  For instance, executive management has announced a private meeting for management in which they announce that a reduction in force is forthcoming, and it is to be kept from the employees at large.   Pollyanna, a director of IT, doesn’t believe that information that affects people’s livelihood and well-being should be kept from them.   Later that week, one of her managers asks her point blank whether their jobs are at risk.  While not disclosing the nature of the meeting with the executives, she does indicate that jobs are at risk.

Fast forward to Pollyanna’s meeting with her VP.

How might this go if Pollyanna’s VP shares her belief that the interests of the individuals working for the organization outweigh the obligations to the ownership?

What if he doesn’t share her belief, and he can see how she could believe this?

What if he doesn’t share her belief, and he can’t understand how she could possibly think that?

That last is where we get into trouble because in the extreme, we unknowingly create intractable, rigid environments in which there is no room for other opinions or divergent thought.  Ever worked with that guy?  How fun is that?

There’s good news and bad news.  The good news is that we’ve identified that the more developed this “RPTJ” area of the brain is, the more likely it is that people can be more open minded regarding moral judgments and belief systems.  The bad news is that this is a relatively new area of neuroscience, and so far the one way we do know how to make that part of the brain more active is to magnetically stimulate it.

You’re not going to “shock the boss.”

Here’s a prediction…. my educated guess is that the physiology of this part of the brain can be changed through awareness and focus, much like other parts of the brain.   This is how coaching creates lasting change.

Be Your Best You Today,

Carolann Jacobs

eWomwn Ottawa Canada

I just returned from the eWomen Network International Conference, and as usual, I’ve come back with energy to spare.  This was my 2nd trip to the eWN conference.  Last year, I didn’t know anyone, so I just plopped down at whatever table and met people.  I connected with several people.  This year, I was gratified to see some of the same women I sat next to last year up on stage as experts this year.  And, it wasn’t done in a self-congratulatory way; these women had really grown over the last year.

Cherie and Carrie had published their books.  Robyn’s new book is a New York Times Best Seller.

So what made the difference for them and the women like them who grew exponentially over the last year? I knew you’d want to know, so I asked.  And here were the common themes:

• Set the right goal. Yes, I know this one shocks you because we never talk about goal setting on this blog.  The point that these ladies made was that it was the “right goal,”  meaning that they had passion and desire around it.  If what you’re striving for makes you feel defeated every time you think about it, you’re going down the wrong path.
• Take action every day toward that goal.  Another shocker!  This is what I call “The Compounding Effect of Action” (adapted from Mary Allen’s Compounding Effect of Choice).   Small steps every day get you closer than standing still.
• Ask for help. This is not the most obvious.  In western society, we place a lot of emphasis on doing it ourselves, pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.  Folks, none of these women achieved their goals alone.
• Build yourself a Board of Directors. In fact, each of these women created a team of advisers to help them overcome obstacles and find creative solutions.
• Get a coach. Almost all of them had hired a coach.  eWomen Network has a ton of coaches as members and provides coaching assistance as a part of the membership benefit.  Coaches help clients achieve goals faster because they provide clarity, focus and accountability for their clients.

So, we’re a little over halfway through 2009.  How are you doing?  Are you moving forward or does August 2009 look a lot like August 2008?  August 2007?  How about August 2004?

Be Your Best You Today,

Carolann

Photo By Martin Stelbrink

Q:  I have grown to hate my job.  I feel the dread coming on sometime around 6:00pm on Sunday night.  I don’t want to get out of bed in the morning.  As hard as I try, I am not doing a very good job (lord knows neither the people I report to nor the ones who report to me look satisfied).  There are probably some things I could do to change things, but I don’t know if I want to or if I even have the energy.  I am so sick of corporate culture. Maybe I should start my own business.  You’re always saying that I can improve my situation by improving my leadership and communication skills, but when is it time just to leave?

A:   Every so often, I have an individual client who has started the Improve Performance NOW! program (that’s the one that helps middle managers increase their productivity by managing more effectively, improve the bottom line, and create 180 degree opportunities for advancement) who realizes in the Vision and Confidence section that maybe they don’t want to advance, that maybe they want to start their own business instead.

This is a good ah-ha, because their unconscious ambivalence was the likely culprit in creating that experience they’ve labeled as “stuck.” It’s actually a crossroads that they hadn’t yet recognized, and now they that they see it, they have a before-unrealized opportunity to create the work life that they really want.

What we want is a process to think through this so that we don’t end up in a new form of stuck, the “OMG WHAT DO I DO NOW!” version.

What is your gut telling you?  I don’t mean intuition in the pure sense.  I mean, how does it feel?  Your body processes thought and emotion, especially around stress and anger.  Not to be too Freudian, but chronic stress can come about because there are emotions that just aren’t “acceptable” for successful people to exhibit, so we hide them.  Feelings of failure come right to mind.  These feelings can manifest as back pain.  Many times, you can feel them in your gut.  So, think about the tasks you have to do, the people you work with, the meetings you go to.  What is your gut telling you?

Are you done?  There comes a point when it isn’t worth the energy to try to salvage the situation.  You know you’re done when the pain points aren’t short term, like when the culture is so antithetical to your core beliefs that you just can’t reconcile them anymore.

How did you get here?  There must have been something about your work that you find or found rewarding.  Is it still there?  What’s changed to make that not enough?

Be cognizant that we tend to attract similar situations over and over again.  Familiarity breeds comfort.  Awareness is what’s going to keep you from getting that same unwanted result/

Once you’ve analyzed whether it is time to go, you can move onto the question about being an entrepreneur.  The fallacy in this example is that it was posed as an either/or option.  Whether you it’s time to leave and whether it’s a good idea to start a business are very separate questions.

I’m not going to address the business question in this post, except to say that many people tend to get an undesirable result when they make decisions based on what they don’t want (like their current job) as opposed to what they do want.  Also, many people who leave jobs to strike out on their own create a job, not a business, and find themselves in trouble shortly down the road.  Do your research and figure out the whole business, not just the part that you’re already good at.

I’m interesting in hearing your stories on this subject.  Please feel free to post below.

Be Your Best You Today,

Carolann

Photo By Pedro Simões

Part of the resentment Baby Boomers have towards the younger generations in the workforce is the ease in which they express “What’s In It For Me?”

It stems from the remnants of company loyalty and fealty that were drummed into their heads when they were starting out; even though our boomers mostly know intellectually that there is very little reciprocity of loyalty, old habits die hard.  The “rules” say that it is unseemly to always be asking that question.

Part of the resentment Gen X has towards the younger generations is that they view the “What’s In It For Me?” as entitlement.  After all, most of Gen X stifled it just like the boomers, and now perhaps after two or three jobs where they didn’t feel appreciated, didn’t have the stability they wanted, and didn’t have the opportunities they wanted, they too are asking “What’s In It For Me?”  The difference is the Gen X feels like they’ve paid their dues, and it really pisses them off to see younger workers getting perks without having run the gauntlet.

Part of the resentment that Gen X and Boomers have towards the younger generation is that Gen Y doesn’t respect the rules, and to them, it means that the younger generation doesn’t respect them.

Gen Y just wants to make a contribution and resent the old hierarchies that make progress nearly impossible.  It doesn’t mean that they don’t respect those who came before them.

To solve this problem, leaders have to examine what the rules are (e.g. what’s our culture?), who makes the rules and do these rules make sense?

So, here are some quick things leaders can do starting today.

Recognize the signs that things aren’t going well.  Are there cliques forming?  Is there a lot of conversation about how work should be done (micromanaging, especially peer-to-peer)?  Is there a lot of complaining about other employees? Eyerolling? Sneers?

There are several common denominators amongst the generations and leaders can create environments that appeal to everyone.  First and foremost, everyone wants to be respected both for themselves and their ideas.  As leaders, we must insist that people are treated with respect.  Everyone wants to make a contribution.  Let them.  Everyone wants to feel appreciated.  (This one gets more tricky, because how each person feels appreciation will vary with the individual.)

As leaders, it is up to us to evolve an engage.

Be Your Best You Today,

Carolann

P.s.- The long term solution to creating an effective multi-generational workplace involves leadership and conversation.  Honest conversation.  Feedback.  The question becomes, are the leaders in our organizations sufficiently skilled to host and foster this sort of open dialogue?  In most cases, the answer is no, they aren’t.  Unfortunately, this also tends to be a blind spot.  Improve Performance NOW! adresses this gap. Please visit the website for more information about upcoming preview calls.