December 2006

An excerpt from: Thresholds of the Mind by Bill Harris

The association between what we perceive to be a problem and the strategy that helps us cope with it is very strong.  For example, a grown daughter might find herself drinking more during a visit from her mother.  A man might withdraw from social contact in the face of mounting financial pressures.  A student might seek escape in romance novels instead of facing the challenge of her calculus homework.  The problem with these ways of coping is that they take on lives of their own.  Once they become common behavior patterns, you have the additional problems generated by the way you've chosen to cope with the first problem.

At Centerpointe, we've identified three common dysfunctional strategies for dealing with being pushed over threshold. 

Dissipating Energy:  This is the frantic attempt to dissipate the extra input your system can't handle.  What's coming at you exceeds your current ability to dissipate the necessary entropy, and as this entropy builds up inside you, you frantically try to push it out, as if bailing a sinking boat.  Common examples of dissipating energy are strenuous physical exercise, sexual activity, and even talking.  More extreme forms are crying, compulsive behaviors, and anger.  Anything that pushes energy out of the system fits this general category.  This strategy turns frustration outward.

Blocking Energy:  The second category of coping mechanisms are behaviors that try to block additional energy from entering an overloaded system.  They include a desire to isolate or, in more extreme cases, as depression.  In depression, we shut down metabolically, we breathe less, and we even unconsciously constrict the pupils of our eyes so as to take in less light.  We want to be alone and to get away from any kind of input.  Other behaviors that attempt to block additional incoming energy include loss of appetite and some forms of illness. With this strategy, frustration turns inward.

Distraction:  The third strategy is to indulge in anything that draws attention away from the problem.  Excessive use of drugs, alcohol, sex, television, spacing out, eating, and perhaps even more severe strategies such as personality disorders and psychosis-all of these distract or deaden you to what's happening, and our attempts to ignore the feeling of overwhelm.  You feel the growing internal chaos as your system approaches the evolutionary moment of truth, and it's uncomfortable.  Distraction is one way to mitigate the discomfort.  It's also the least effective of the three strategies because it doesn't even give the old, in adequate system a chance to regroup.

Harris  Thresholds of the Mind: Your Personal Roadmap to Success, Happiness, and Contentment © 2002

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I’m interested in your thoughts on this one…  Bob

November 2006

Several years ago I was in a small farming community in Iowa.  In the morning I spent three hours doing a workshop for the elementary teachers.  The afternoon session was with the middle school and high school teachers.  That evening I did a 90 minute session for parents.  As always, one of my primary themes was the importance of self-evaluation.

With about five minutes left, a man in the very back of the auditorium stood up and said, "Bob, may I ask a question?"  I said, "Sure."  He said, "I like what you're saying about self-evaluation, but my daughter is a Junior in high school and she'll be leaving this community to go off to college.  When she gets to college and into the job market, she's going to be externally evaluated constantly.  So how will all this self-evaluation make a difference when she’s going to be externally evaluate the rest of her life?"

I had never been asked this question so directly.  And yet, it was a question that needed to be answered.

I was tired.  The day before I had flown to Minneapolis and driven three hours to get to this town.  The time zone was two hours ahead of Arizona.  I had worked with over 150 people over the past eight hours and was ready to go back to my hotel, relax and go to sleep.

But now I had to answer one of the most important questions I've ever been asked as a professional.  I said, "My experience is that people who know how to self-evaluate and do so, get the best external evaluations."  I had never been able to explain that concept so clearly or definitively.

Most importantly, “What do you think of my answer?”

Bob Hoglund

October 2006

In the past few months I have been asked many times about the expectations of a counseling session or conference.  The underlying message is that others judge your effectiveness by whether the person changes (and does so immediately).  Logically we know that no one can make anyone else change.

So, what do you have control of when you work with a client, student or employee?

Your part of the environment:

•   The conference or session set-up.

•   What you say and how you say it.

•   Your overall relationship with the person.

Your part of the content:

•   The questions you ask and how you ask them.

  •   Do the questions help the person think seriously about the situation?

  •   Do the questions help the person clarify their current behavior?

  •   Do the questions help the person evaluate the effectiveness of their choices?

•   The information or data that you give/share.

•   Your helpfulness in developing a plan of action.

Remember, significant change takes time and perseverance.  Just as one workout with a personal trainer is unlikely to spur you to change ALL of your exercise habits overnight, one conference with a student or client is unlikely to result in an immediate long-lasting change.  Each encounter should be considered as another step toward the desired outcome.

Bob Hoglund

September 2006

Teamwork an excerpt from the June 12, 2006 issue of FORTUNE

The fact is, most of what you've read about teamwork is bunk. So here's a place to start: Tear down those treacly motivational posters of rowers rowing and pipers piping. Gather every recorded instance of John Madden calling someone a "team player." Cram it all into a dumpster and light the thing on fire. Then settle in to really think about what it means to be a team.

We're certainly not against the concept of teamwork. But that's the point: All the happy-sounding twaddle obscures the actual practice of it. And teamwork is a practice. Great teamwork is an outcome; you can only create the conditions for it to flourish. Like getting rich or falling in love, you cannot simply will it to happen.

We will go further and say: Teamwork is an individual skill. That happens to be the title of a book. Christopher Avery writes, "Becoming skilled at doing more with others may be the single most important thing you can do" to increase your value - regardless of your level of authority.

As work is increasingly broken down into team-sized increments, Avery's argument goes, blaming a "bad team" for one's difficulties is, by definition, a personal failure, since the very notion of teamwork implies a shared responsibility. You can't control other people's behavior, but you can control your own. Which means that there is an "I" in team after all. (Especially in France, where they spell it equipe.)

Yet this is not the selfish "I" that got so much attention during the "me" decade; it's the affiliatory "I" that built America's churches and fought its wars. Neil Armstrong didn't get to the moon through rugged individualism; there is no such thing as a self-made astronaut. "Men work together," wrote Robert Frost, "whether they work together or apart."

Here's both the problem and the promise of cooperation. Humans aren't hard-wired to succeed or fail at it. We can go either way. In her study of group work in school classrooms, the late Stanford sociologist Elizabeth Cohen found that if kids are simply put into teams and told to solve a problem, the typical result is one kid dominating and others looking totally disengaged.

But if teachers take the time to establish norms - roles, goals, etc. - "not only will [the children] behave according to the new norms, but they will enforce rules on other group members." Perhaps to a fault. "Even very young students," Cohen wrote, "can be heard lecturing to other members of the group on how they ought to be behaving."

Economists have long assumed that success boils down to personal incentives. We'll cooperate if it's in our self-interest, and we won't if it's not. Then a team of researchers led by Linnda Caporael thought to ask: Would people cooperate without any incentives? The answer was - gasp! - Yes, under the right conditions. Participants often cited "group welfare" as motivation.

To economists, shocking. To anyone who's been part of a successful team, not shocking at all. Life's richest experiences often happen in concert with others - your garage band, your wedding, tobogganing. The boss who assumes that workers' interests are purely mercenary will end up with a group of mercenaries.

From the June 12, 2006 issue of FORTUNE

August 2006

Have you created YOUR focus for the new school year? 

Those of you that aren’t educators, you can still ask yourself these questions.

How do you treat people?

What are your accomplishments?

What do you do without being asked or told to do?

What do you do to enjoy your work and purpose?

A year from now, what would you like your friends and colleagues to say about you?

Bob Hoglund

July 2006

An excerpt from an interview with Frances Hasselbein, CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA.

Facing a complex governance structure composed of hundreds of local Girl Scout councils (each with its own governing board) and a volunteer force of 650,000, Hasselbein simply did not have the full power of decision.  Even so, she moved people to confront brutal facts facing girls in modern America, such as teen pregnancy and alcohol use, by creating materials on sensitive issues.  Proficiency badges sprouted up in topics like math, technology and computer science, to reinforce the idea that girls are - and should think of themselves as - capable individuals who can take control of their own lives.  Hasselbein did not force this change down people's throats, but simply gave the independent counsels the opportunity to make changes at their own discretion.  Most did.

When asked how she got all this done without concentrated executive power, she said, "Oh, you always have power, if you just know where to find it.  There is the power of inclusion, and the power of language, and the power of shared interest, and the power of coalition.  Power is all around you to draw upon, but it is rarely raw, rarely visible."

Collins, Jim  Good to Great and the Social Sectors © 2005

June 2006

Myth

Top Management is supposed to make these changes work.

“Top management cooked up this plan.  Now we’ll see if they can pull it off.”

“The big shots are going to have a tough time with this brainchild of theirs.  It will be interesting to sit back and watch them wrestle with it.”

Reality

IF YOU WORK HERE, THIS IS YOUR PLAN.

It's a mistake to call this "the President's plan," or "top management's baby,"
or "the organization's problem."  So long as you accept a paycheck and come to work,
it's your plan, your program, your baby.

Top management is responsible for laying the overall game plan and calling the plays. That's what they're supposed to do.  You're supposed to run the plays and make them work.  You don't have to like the changes . . . you don't have to believe they were a
good idea . . . you don't even have to want them to succeed. But you are supposed to do
everything you can, in your particular job, to make the changes a success story.

If you're going to remain a part of the team, you need to play for the team.  Imagine how long a football player would last if he said something like this:  "That sounds like a mighty dumb play to me.  The coach is stupid. Why should I help run it?  I'm not gonna run and block on a play like this one.  I'm gonna wander over to the sideline, get me a few sips of Gatorade, take a breather, and watch these other dummies try to score.  I'll go back in when they're running a play I like.  They never told me when they signed me up they d be running this play! "

Sounds absurd, right?  But you'll see fellow employees quit trying and "move to the sidelines" because they don't like top management's call.  Makes it tough to run an organization.

Frankly, top managers aren't good enough to make it work by themselves.  This is too big a job. All people, from senior executives to first-line employees,
need to be aligned and working in concert with one another.

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“Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.”   Aldous Huxley

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The Employee Handbook for Organizational Change by Price Pritchett and Ron Pound

May 2006     The Professional Choice

PROFESSIONALS CHOOSE TO BE PROFESSIONAL.  They make a conscious decision to hold themselves to higher standards of performance and a more demanding code  of conduct than most people use to guide their thoughts and actions.

When you choose to be professional, you are making a commitment to be the best you can be and do the best you can do in all aspects of your job, your relationships with others and your personal development.

When you choose to be professional, you are leaving mediocrity and apathy behind.  You are embarking on a lifelong journey of continual growth and the pursuit of excellence.

When you choose to be professional, you are raising the bar on the ideals you set for yourself and the demands you place on yourself.

When you choose to be professional, you are making the best choice you can possibly make to assure your self-esteem, success and happiness.

Jim Ball  Professionalism is for Everyone © 2001

April 2006

Expect the situation to get worse before it gets better.

The whole point of addressing cultural issues rests on the idea that we can make improvements. Early on, though, the effects look more like damage than progress. Companies often back off in alarm, frightened by all the conflict, chaos, and confusion that are a normal part of the change process. The culture initiative usually gets watered down, sometimes killed, on the grounds that it isn't working.

But it is.   We just need to realize that negative effects show up before there's any hard evidence that the culture initiative has made things better.

It's sort of like remodeling a house while you're living in it. You have to tear out stuff... scrape off old paint ...cut holes in the walls. Soon wires are dangling and there's all kinds of clutter. Naturally, this disturbs your routine and complicates life. Some people wish they'd never started the redo. But all the noise, clutter, and confusion should be interpreted as good signs —work is underway, you're making real progress. This is a normal pattern. It's the way things always look on the renovation pathway.

Likewise, a certain amount of demolition work should be expected on the front end of any program designed to change culture. Nobody likes this ragged, troublesome phase. But let's recognize it for what it is. This isn't a sign that we should slow down, redesign, or maybe even abort the change effort. It's just a necessary step on the path to cultural renovation.

So hang in there. The organization needs to keep the faith through this dark hour. Crazy as it may sound; the problems are proof that the culture program is progressing.

Price Pritchett Shaping Corporate Culture © 2002

March 2006     Promise Problems

The best move is to give everyone an accurate sense of what’s coming.    This amounts to a balancing act, where you mix the good news with the bad.   If you level with them, then at least they can steel themselves for the struggle ahead.

Resistance: Moving Beyond the Barriers to Change Paul Pritchett © 2005

February 2006      Only after you become uncomfortable will you ever begin to change.

Feeling good does not create change.  Feeling uncomfortable creates change.  Why do you change your position in your chair?  Because the position you are in is uncomfortable and you are changing it to get more comfortable.  If you were not uncomfortable in your current position then you would not move.  You would just stay where you are.

Larry Winget  Shut Up, Stop Whining & Get a Life

January 2006    Being aware of “how” you perceive information.

Do you think it’s more important to be positive, or not to be negative? Sounds like a trick question. But it turns out we accomplish more for ourselves by reducing pessimism than by trying to pump up optimism. Just like in the newspaper business – good news doesn’t get much attention if there’s a lot of bad news going around.

Next question.  Where do you think most of the bad news comes from that's floating around in your head?  Here's a clue:  You talk more to yourself than to anybody else in the world.  You're the one responsible for allowing toxic self-talk to occupy your mind.  And whenever you allow pessimism into your stream of consciousness, the lights go out for optimism.

Notice how your critical inner voice focuses on limitations, mistakes, shortcomings, what might go wrong.  It also discounts your strengths and discredits the good things you do.  Even it's warnings will be offered up in ways that aren't actually helpful, but instead weaken you for potential challenges.
 

  Hard Optimism   Paul Pritchett © 2004