Lazy Horses

Enjoying a ‘vulnerable’ conversation, over cocktails

8/3/2019

Adapted 'positively' from Patrick Lencioni

At a cocktail reception last week, I was asked what I do, to which I replied - "I set out to facilitate team success".
“So, which training models do you use most frequently when working with teams”, a young woman asked, obviously knowing something about the subject matter. After my standard reply – “it’s not so much the model, it’s the way that you use it which makes the difference" - I reflected further and went on to quote Patrick Lencioni’s model. My conversational partner showed interest so... having just finished a project with the management team in a banking group, I re-assured her that his model provided a thoroughly practical and useful approach, if and when applied correctly.

In a nutshell, Lencioni shows how building mutual trust among team members being encouraged to express their vulnerability, can lead you to a place where they can be completely open with each other. Without establishing that first, fundamental level of cooperation, people continue to hold their leader as the primary source of accountability. And “accountability must be delegated to achieve lasting success’” …in my opinion, I hastily added.

After checking out the correct spelling of his name, my conversation partner advised me that she would do what all enthusiastic people do and ‘google him’.

With a willing audience of one, the conversation continued, and I explained that, as a facilitator, my job in large part, is to create an atmosphere where people will open up to each other, even when there is a current trust deficit. That is why when using this model, even with well-established teams, most of our time gets spent in exercises which support the first two steps and, to be honest, these often get quite intertwined. On the one hand, how can you build trust without revealing emotional and vulnerable aspects of your persona? On the other, how can you engage in healthy conflict without trusting that you will not be judged or mocked by others? Even worse for some, how do you engage in conflict while being concerned about being too direct and offending feelings?

The answers to these questions are similar to that old joke about asking the way to Carnegie hall… practice, practice, practice. Work at it together. It’s about “continuous learning”, I said.

Team building needs to be worked at. So, this is my preferred model, one of a number I use; and Yes, the reason to work with someone like me (unless of course you can afford and get hold of the very busy Mr Lencioni) is that I can leverage the experience of running thirty plus sessions based on and around such models – adding a few sidesteps into my own leadership narratives. This is more or less what I told the young woman I found myself in conversation with, who turned out to be working in the sales department of a large sport and leisure business.

“Does it always work?” she asked.

“No”, I replied, observing her look of surprise at my answer. Admittedly, using this model brings a short-term boost to any team I work with, even if it’s just acting as an ice-breaker. But the truth is, leaders all too often think that one or two such sessions can fix things, and that’s that. Creating a safe, honest work atmosphere is part of a much longer-term programme. It is all too easy to see this kind of training as a one-off, and not part of an investment in continuous training. I’ve even heard it referred to by one client as a ‘management luxury’, a phrase which doesn’t seem to get thrown at more traditional skills-based education. My greatest successes, I revealed, are with those customers with whom I have enjoyed relationships that stood the test of time.

“Perhaps some cannot afford you”, she said boldly… to which I replied that ironically, the problem is almost never one of money, it is one of time.

“As you know”, I observed, thinking of her job working in a sales department, “citing time as the reason to not do something is hardly ever the real reason. It’s a smokescreen. Just as a parent may decide not to cook meals at home and blame it on a lack of time (yet still average an hour a day on Facebook), we don't like to admit that we are simply choosing to set our priorities elsewhere. Keeping up-to-date on Facebook is more entertaining and for some, simply more important than home cooking. Yet do you hear people say: “I’m getting a take-away for the kids because I prefer to spend my time on Facebook.” You’re much more likely to hear someone say that they just don’t have the time to cook.

And with that, our conversation came to a quick end. "Now you’re just trying to make me feel guilty," she said. "I have to go home and cook dinner." With which she thanked me for the conversation and then left. I like to think that we had developed a little mutual trust together with the nature of our conversation. I wonder if she considered it further.

Building trust, showing vulnerability, challenging without being threatening - most of us receive no training for such activities. Schools and university establish largely competitive environments where above all, solitary work is rewarded. Facilitating team success needs time and a relaxed environment. You cannot set aside 45 minutes between other meetings, you need at least a few hours, and I understand all too well - that is not easy. It is a question of how you set your priorities, but I have even heard CEOs of large companies complaining about a lack-of-time. All too often, they find themselves ‘doing stuff’ during much of the working day, rather than managing people – which, in my humble opinion, should be their number one objective.

Please note: Patrick Lencioni's model is based on correcting dysfunction. Although my adaptation is written up as the positive interpretation of that (I prefer to focus on the benefits), the stated goal is the same, namely to help create highly functional and successful teams.

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What's needed is a 'nudge' in the Gulf

4/8/2017

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This year, there's an unwanted record in the Gulf of Mexico: The so-called "dead zone," a largely human-caused phenomenon where there's too little oxygen to support marine life, is the biggest ever measured. Could a nudge in the right place provide a long-term remedy?
I am inspired by Nathan Hodson's recent great post combining that favourite of behavioural economists 'nudging' - epitomised by David Cameron's shady team of advisors - with the topic of 'ethics', published in last month's British Medical Journal. As he says:
"The term “nudge” is perhaps a misnomer. To fill out the concept a bit, it commonly denotes the use of behavioural economics and behavioural psychology to the construction of choice architecture through carefully designed trials. But every choice we face, in any context, already comes with a choice architecture: there are endless contextual factors that impact the decisions we make."

A link to the full BMJ article can be found below, but meanwhile, it's worth remembering that nudging with the addition of a budget, or the power of the law, usually wins out over the use of a gentle nudge by itself. A cynic might refer to 'nudging' as an attempt to create behavioural change on the cheap. But it undoubtedly does have its uses and does not always necessitate a financial investment.

Before 'nudging', there was 'lateral thinking'

Edward de Bono first used the term 'lateral thinking' in 1967. As opposed to Critical thinking (primarily concerned with judging the truth value of statements and seeking errors), lateral thinking is more concerned with the movement from one known idea to the creation of new ideas. In this famous example, Professor de Bono showed how to correct the behaviour of a polluting factory beside a river, and the 'nudge' took the form of a change in the law.

It's worth remembering that such examples of lateral thinking pre-dated the world of behavioural economics by decades. Yet in that context, I am reminded of a current story about terrible pollution in the gulf of Mexico. Is there some potential to combine a big nudge with a little legal enforcement I wonder?

A 'nudge' in the Gulf?

A low-oxygen, or hypoxic, dead-zone covering 22,720 square kilometers) - about the size of New Jersey - exists in the Gulf of Mexico.
Not surprisingly, in the Southern States, they're still looking for traditional solutions to this pollution:
"A national action plan calls for reducing such runoff so that the dead zone shrinks by two-thirds, to 1,950 square miles (5,000 square kilometers) by 2035."

But just imagine what would happen if all the farmers and industries upstream of the Gulf were given no choice but to source their irrigation water from a new pipeline which gave them direct access to water coming straight from the polluted Gulf of Mexico! Imagine the effect. Admittedly, constructing the pipeline would need a fair degree of capital investment but there again, it would be a lot cheaper than building a border wall (OK, cheap attempt at humour). But it would also make Edward de Bono, who is now 84 years of age, very proud.

More on the UK nudge team at: https://www.theguardian.com/public-leaders-network/2015/jul/23/rise-nudge-unit-politicians-human-behaviour
On nudging and ethics: http://blogs.bmj.com/medical-ethics/2017/07/19/re-nudges-in-a-post-truth-world/
More on the Gulf of Mexico catastrophe at: http://time.com/4885249/gulf-mexico-dead-zone-pollution/

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How management can prevent the downside of change

24/5/2017

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Perhaps not surprisingly, a series of studies within service industries found that staff cutbacks invariably have a negative impact on frontline employees' ability to interact successfully with customers.
But what they also found is that good management can at least attenuate this impact, particularly where there is an established basis of trust between management and employees.

"Where trust has been built between the management and the staff, the negativity associated with efficiency driven change can often be eased. This does not mean that trust in management will entirely prevent the negative consequences of cutback focused change, but it will definitely ease the consequences and, where that trust does not exist, cutback focused change will invariable result in worse outcomes than intended."

Using models such as Patrick Lencioni's 5 dysfunctions approach is a great way to get started in building trust, first in the senior management team.

There are many models that help build personal and inter-personal trust and all of them depend on a significant investment of time by senior management. This time investment clearly pays off in the good times but the new study shows that it can also help tide you through the more difficult experiences of a business turn-down or the impact that a significant technology change may have on your business.
Or maybe you just called the 'efficiency consultants' in and they over-promised? You wouldn't be the first who needs to cope with the aftermath effectively.

To access more on this topic, go to: https://www.oxford-review.com/prevent-the-downside-of-change/

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Does your ‘handedness’ affect your attitudes to life and learning?

17/5/2017

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By way of introduction, I work with individuals and teams to increase their inter-personal awareness and build trust – all designed to make them more effective as managers, and as private citizens too. The approach is strengths based and my starting point usually involves completion of the Benziger Thinking Styles Analysis (BTSA).
In many ways, the BTSA is like a conversation starter at a social gathering, with the twist that it creates heightened awareness of our similarities and differences. When it comes down to it, we all have unique brain strengths and inevitably with that, there also come related weaknesses.

The going-in position for many participants is that nurture has considerably more influence over us than nature. Psychologists and neuro-scientists have argued over this for years but it would be fair to say that the general consensus currently lies roughly equally between the two extremes. So when explaining to audiences that the ‘nurture-based’ natural strengths of one person’s brain can be quite different from another’s, I like to use the analogy of left and right-handedness. The easiest way of going about this is simply to ask those who are naturally right-handed to write a short phrase with their left hand. Usually… no surprise here; the result is a scrawly and rather illegible mess – and vice-versa of course, if you happen to be left-handed. In a similar yet admittedly more complex way, our brains are also laterally-gifted, but the direct link to handedness is now becoming more transparent.
Just a few decades ago, natural left-handers were taught at school to write and/or play games using their non-dominant hand. They were taught to conform, sometimes by having their ‘wrong hand’ tied behind their backs. With years of training, many got to be quite competent with both hands but what remained was at best, a residue of unpleasant memories. And yet there may have been a positive side to some of what happened to them back then, at least when it came to using their brains in later life. Just for the record; I am in no way advocating a return to such practices, but…

First, we need to be precise with our terminology. Most modern analyses of the subject matter now refer to ‘inconsistent handedness’; something which lies somewhere between the two extremes. To get on the scale, your ability to perform just one of ten tasks (manual activities) with your non-dominant hand demonstrates that at least to a certain extent, you are ‘inconsistent’ in your abilities. A little more than a third of women fall into this ‘inconsistent’ or ‘mixed’ category, but interestingly, a full half of all men do (see table).
Here's a quick way to assess your degree of mixed-handedness by simply staring at the spinning lady (see below). If you can see her spinning in both directions - in other words, if she switches direction - you can be sure that you are not 100% left or right-handed.

Why is this ‘inconsistency’ of interest?
Most people know that the brain is to a certain extent cross-wired. The left hemisphere controls movement on the right side of the body, the right hemisphere controls the left side, and this is true for most animals and birds too. But being at least a little ambidextrous, or showing a lack of clear one-sided handedness is linked to greater left/right brain communication. Results published in a 2013 study suggested that inconsistent (or using more neutral terminology, ‘mixed’ handedness) is associated with increased left/right brain interaction and also increased access to right-brained thinking processes. It works like this.
A central part of your brain known as the corpus callosum integrates motor, sensory and cognitive performance across both brain hemispheres by enabling communication between the two halves. More consistent hand preference is associated with a smaller corpus callosum and also with decreased right hemisphere activation.

Women have more hemispheric communication

In general, women are better at switching information left and right across the two brain hemispheres, while men usually make more connections from front to back. This heightens men’s visual perception skills and helps with hand-eye coordination such as understanding where objects are in a spatial context - throwing a ball or hammering in a nail. But let’s not forget that the concept of a male and a female brain belongs to life’s many over-used generalisations.
A 2015 study at Tel Aviv University examined the MRI scans from more than 1,400 people and found that only 2% of those studied fitted a clear-cut brain gender profile. That leaves the vast majority of us, namely 98%, as part-male and part-female, at least when it comes to brain gender terms.

Mixed handedness and memory
What gets interesting is when we look at handedness and memory. 'Episodic memory' retrieval, belief updating, cognitive flexibility and being prepared to accept change are all associated with right frontal brain areas. Evidence shows pretty clearly that those with mixed handedness have clearly superior episodic memory and can also consider and accept change more readily. This is aided by their ability to switch information more easily across the hemispheres. Whereas to many women, this hemispheric interchange comes naturally, for men in particular, it helps to be a little ambidextrous.
Just to be clear, episodic memory refers to an important aspect of short-term memory. If for example you give people with mixed-handedness a list of words, they can recall more than those who are strongly right-handed (the sample size for left-handers was too small). Mixed-handed people also have earlier memories of childhood than others and fewer general day-to-day memory issues.
In contrast, 'semantic memory' tasks such as general world knowledge that we have accumulated throughout our lives is lateralized to the left hemisphere and associated more closely with ‘strong handedness’.
Mixed-handedness is linked to cognitive flexibility, so those with more dominant left or right-handed patterns tend to be more stuck in their ways, being also more skeptical and less open to persuasion. The 2013 study also showed that mixed-handers tend to be more creative, while those with consistent handedness are more focused and to their possible advantage, less gullible.

Researcher Stephen Christman of the University of Toronto added these comments:

“As it turns out, handedness predicts certain kinds of aesthetic judgments, with ‘mixed’ handedness showing more appreciation for self-referential works by M.C. Escher, a wider variety of musical genres while, consistent-handers are less sensation seeking, exhibit greater consumer brand loyalty, have greater disgust sensitivity and score higher on measures of Right Wing Authoritarianism.”

Belief Updating, Cognitive Flexibility and Creationists

In earlier research carried out in 1995, Aparna Ramachandran hypothesized that the right hemisphere’s job is to look out for inconsistencies and communicate them to the left hemisphere. He particularly referred to belief updating and cognitive flexibility, adding weight to the current belief that greater corpus callosal connectivity demonstrates superior episodic, but not semantic memory.
Other research takes us deeper into the mind/handedness connection.

Left hand, right-hand... both to be encouraged

Niebauer et al. found that strong and consistent-handers are more likely to be creationists. The authors argued that, because children typically hold creationist views at some point, the retention of such beliefs is the result of a failure to update beliefs about human origins in light of new evidence. Interestingly, Niebauer found that mixed-handedness also correlates to being more prone to magical ideation such as beliefs in extra-sensory perception, UFOs and astrology! Could that be a doorway to heightened imagination?

So what?
Let’s bring this closer to home. Are there lessons for education and society in general? After all, given the incredible complexity of the brain, most of these findings refer to correlation rather direct causation. Can we trust the information?
One thing is clear. Knowing what we do now: mixed-handers will be more likely to consider the value of this information than those at the extremes of single-handedness, who are in general more convinced of their views.
I would argue that in today’s fast-changing world, we do not have time to wait for definitive, neurological proof. The job of schools is after all to prepare students for their future lives and we need to consider the clear link between greater use of both hands with creativity... and being able to accept change more easily. To cope with the modern world and have a chance of making it a better place, we need to encourage the development of both sides of the brain, and at least part of that academic recipe is in encouraging the use of both hands.
When it comes to the UK, the opposite seems to be true. The government has identified the need for more scientists and thinks that by simply encouraging the study of science subjects, they will achieve this goal. In late 2014, the UK’s then Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan said: “The subjects to keep young people’s options open are STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering and maths.” And last summer, Ofqual revealed a five-fold decline in the number of pupils taking GCSEs in arts subjects over the past year.
In my humble opinion as a non-educator, this is not the right way to go. An earlier, youthful focus on left-brained scientific subjects does not prepare students for the future world or help their thinking processes in the same way as a broader based curriculum. Those that succeed will do so ‘in spite of’ this constricted curriculum, rather than ‘because of it’. Schools need to focus more on stimulating different thought processes; preparing them for what used to be referred to as lateral thinking skills and that, again, is where we return to the concept of handedness.

What's to be done?
The greatest scientist of the 20th century Albert Einstein (1879-1955) loved and appreciated the Arts. We would do well to consider his words.

"After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in aesthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are always artists as well."

There is a popular myth that Einstein was left-handed but he was not. He was predominantly right-handed… but I wonder to what extent? Post-mortem anaysis of his brain showed that it was remarkably symmetrical which is often associated with being ambidextrous... but I digress. It is quite likely that he was mixed-handed, but I cannot prove this. Although I am reminded of this quote:

"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking."

We know Einstein was highly creative and could tolerate change. Now we know he was something of a fantasist too... all being clear indicators for a degree of mixed-handedness.
So meanwhile, before your school begins alternate hand training (sometime in the future?), suggest to your children that they try, just occasionally, to brush their teeth with the 'wrong' hand – the hand that comes less naturally to them, just as a challenge. If you believe what is written above, then by stimulating their left/right brained connectivity, you’ll be helping open their pathway to creativity. If not, then you will certainly be helping them think about how less-abled people cope with the world. And that's a double lesson in thinking.

Selected sources:
Mixed handedness research paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3560368/
On myths: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-myths/201303/three-myths-and-three-facts-about-left-handers
Why girls underperform at science:
http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.be/2009/07/understanding-why-girls-underperform-at.html
Mixed handedness as we age: http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.be/2007/01/we-become-more-ambidextrous-as-we-get.html
On brain differences: http://www.webmd.com/brain/features/how-male-female-brains-differ#1
For something more provocative - 'Magical ideation, creativity & handedness': https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21722656
Squeezing out arts for more ‘useful’ subjects will impoverish us all: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/25/squeezing-out-arts-for-commercially-useful-subjects-will-make-our-culture-poorer

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WHY THE FACTS WON'T CHANGE YOUR MIND

28/2/2017

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This blog-post is adapted and largely inspired by an excellent article in the New Yorker by Elizabeth Colbert – Feb 2017

Once impressions are formed, they are also remarkably perseverant - even when they are demonstrably illogical. So how do you go about influencing others successfully or potentially changing their minds?
No-one knows for sure how our ability to ‘reason’ developed, but it was probably not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems or help us draw conclusions from unfamiliar data. Most likely, ‘reason’ developed to help us resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups. After all, our key advantage over other species was and still is our ability to cooperate in simple and more complex alliances.
Habits of mind that may seem weird from an intellectual point of view can prove shrewd when seen from a social “interactionist” perspective. Take “confirmation bias,” the tendency people have to embrace information that supports their beliefs and reject contradictory information. It is a topic that is particularly relevant in view of increasingly divided political opinion within E.U. countries and the U.S.A.

"... Students who supported capital punishment rated the pro-deterrence data highly credible and found the anti-deterrence data unconvincing." And vice-versa.

Let’s see what researchers can tell us about confirmation bias.
At Stanford University a few years back, they rounded up a group of students with opposing opinions about capital punishment. Half were in favour and thought that it deterred crime; the other half against it.
All participants were given two specially written studies, one with data in support of the deterrence argument, the other calling it into question. Both were designed to present objective and equally compelling statistics, but what happened was that students who supported capital punishment rated the pro-deterrence data highly credible and found the anti-deterrence data unconvincing.

Students opposed to capital punishment did just the reverse. As a result, those who’d started out pro-capital punishment became even more supportive and those who’d opposed it became more hostile. A healthy attempt to present balanced information ended up heightening the differences.

News organizations such as Britain’s BBC strive for impartiality and have the stated aim of attempting to 'balance opposing viewpoints’. In their ethical guidelines, they state that ‘this does not require absolute neutrality on every issue’ but one might ask, why bother when the balanced facts simply give more credence to the audience's own pre-conceptions?
Why do we do that? One theory is that for our ancestors, hunter gatherers, being able to reason clearly and precisely was of no particular advantage, yet much was to be gained from actually winning arguments, however we went about it. Back then, life was of course much simpler and they certainly did not have to contend with fake news or Twitter feeds.

Most people think they know more than they do but cannot even explain how a toilet functions.

It’s worth also remembering that people also believe that they know way more than they actually do. Ask how a toilet works and most will say that they know. Ask them however to provide written step-by-step explanations describing how the toilet works and… most people fail. A zipper anyone?
Such everyday objects are often more complex than we realise but the thing is: we’ve been relying on each other’s expertise ever since we figured out how to hunt together.
In our day-to-day life, we can collaborate so well, that we don’t even think about where our own understanding ends and others’ begins.

Over the centuries, all those inventions have actually created new realms of ignorance, in the sense that if everyone had insisted on mastering the principles of metalworking before picking up a knife, the Bronze Age would never have got started! With new technologies, incomplete understanding is empowering. You don’t need to know everything about everything to develop your own new ideas... but that doesn't stop us having firm opinions concerning those things of which we know very little.

A survey conducted in 2014, not long after Russia annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, asked respondents to define how they thought the U.S. should react, and subsequently, whether they could identify Ukraine on a map.
Interestingly, the farther off base they were about the geography, the more likely they were to favour military intervention (the median guess was wrong by 2,500 kilometres).
This is just one of many studies that show how having strong feelings about issues does not necessarily come from having a deep and thorough understanding of those issues involved.

People with little idea where the Ukraine is located still have strong opinions about military intervention.

If your position on, say, Brexit is baseless and yet, I choose to rely on it, then my opinion is also baseless. And after talking to Tom, who also decides he agrees with me, his opinion too is also baseless. But now that the three of us concur we feel that much more smug and convinced about our views. If we then reject any information that contradicts our opinion, you get… arguably, the Trump Administration.
How about something more prosiac such as performance-based pay for teachers? Researchers at Yale asked participants to rate their positions depending on how strongly they agreed or disagreed with such a proposal. But when instructed to explain the impacts of implementation in as much detail as they could, most people ran into trouble. Here things got interesting; asked again to rate their views, they ratcheted down their intensity, either agreeing or disagreeing less vehemently. And here perhaps is a little candle for our dark world.

Processing information that supports pre-conceived notions gives you a small 'buzz' - much like nicotine.

If we - or CNN or the BBC for example – would spend less time pontificating and more time working through the implications of policy proposals, we might all realize how clueless we are and moderate our views.
But first a word of caution: such an approach won’t be easy. You see, research suggests that we experience genuine pleasure - a rush of dopamine - when processing information that supports our beliefs. So the problem is, it actually feels good to ‘stick to our guns’, even when we are wrong! Dale Carnegie, author of the perennial bestseller, 'How to win friends and influence people', told us back in his original 1936 edition that providing people with accurate information won’t change their minds; they simply discount it unless you also appeal to their emotions.

Those that use true, honest facts tinged with emotion are destined to be the best ‘influencers’. Yet if ‘alternative facts’ become the basis for emotive arguments, then the public is in danger of being manipulated and I guess that’s the real difference between populists like Nigel Farage and Donald Trump and peacemakers or visionaries like say, Martin Luther King or John F Kennedy.

When Farage used a poster featuring asylum seekers on the gates of Europe to symbolise the supposed ‘threat’ of economic migrants coming from Eastern European countries to the UK, he insisted that the poster was an "accurate, un-doctored picture showing the strains facing Europe”. And that is indeed part of the truth.
Because of the controversy, news channels and newspaper journalists gave much more exposure to the provocative poster than it might otherwise have received.

Brexit poster: Alternative facts, half-lies or pure manipulation?

And yet we now know that this emotional representation of what is at best a half-lie will have hardened up the views of many Brexiteers… because that’s simply how our brains work. Looking to the future, we must look to politicians and other leaders who are able to combine the communication of real facts with the necessary emotional overtones. The real facts do matter, but the ability to communicate them in a memorable way is just as important. Otherwise, the field will be left open to charismatic populists who continue to use their alt-facts and half-lies to manipulate too many of us with apparent success.

Inspiration from the Ancient Greeks?

As a footnote on ‘How best to influence others’ – perhaps we should look to inspiration from ancient Greece when moving from simple facts to ‘emotional’ influencing factors. When building an argument, they would famously employ a combination of Ethos, Logos and Pathos
Ethos (Ethical appeal): means first establishing your credibility – showing that you know what you’re talking about; such as presenting both sides of an argument accurately.
(Ethos is the Greek word for “character”. The word “ethic” is derived from ethos.)

Logos (Logical appeal): Then use reason to justify your argument – by for example providing a tangible comparison to the current situation (If… then true).
(The word “logic” is derived from logos.)
Pathos (Emotional appeal): Don't forget to use words/visuals that create a strong emotional response. Storytelling for example or connecting on a personal level – expressing similar desires/interests etc.
(... Pathos being the Greek word for both “suffering” and “experience” and giving us both the words “empathy” as well as “pathetic”.)

Nb: Ms Colbert’s inspiration for the original article came from reviewing 3 recent books: “The Enigma of Reason”, “The Knowledge Illusion” and “Denying to the Grave”. Her article is at:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds

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A vote for Donald Trump is not a vote for change

9/11/2016

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How Jungian psychology helps us come to terms with this crazy world

Many journalists and pundits, now coming to terms with the Brexit vote and particularly the results of the American election are making a fundamental mistake. They think it’s about the people wanting change – yet that is precisely what they don’t want. They’ve had too much change.
My going in position is rooted in Carl Jung’s psychological insights. He believed (as do I) that our way of looking at things (our thinking style) is dominated by one of four core traits. Jung believed that those traits were conditioned more by our genetic make-up than by environmental factors although modern interpretations such as those developed by Dr Katherine Benziger place nature and nurture as roughly equal influences on our mature persona.
The fact remains that these four dominant traits do not appear to be equally distributed in society. Carl Jung categorized people as being first and foremost Thinkers, Intuitives, Feelers or Sensing in nature. A more modern interpretation might use descriptive phrases such as Decisive people, those who are Creative, those who trust their Feelings and those who are grounded in day-to-day life, being simply more matter of fact. Yet even when you add in a secondary influencing trait to the dominant one, it leaves us with very different proportions of people in each segment. Using statistics from Myers Briggs analyses, admittedly self-reported but representing the input from millions of respondents, we get the following results:

Decisive, competitive creative visionaries… 13% of US population
Creative people in touch with their feelings… 14% of US population
Consistent, controlled people in touch with their feelings… 36% of US population
Controlled, consistent and decisive people… 37% of US population

Shows how 'change' is problematic for most Americans - arguably they currently suffer from continuous change syndrome.

The results are not very different in other countries, but let’s stay with the U.S. in view of Mr Trump’s victory. Mapping the statistics to the organizational and societal work detailed in John Campbell of the University of Minnesota’s book, 'Determinants of Organizational Effectiveness' published in 1977, we can see how these grouped values compete against each other. Those who are more decisive and competitive have an external focus, contrasting with the more consistent, ‘people first’ nature of those who appreciate the status quo. Those with a creative outlook embrace flexibility, much to the consternation of the more controlled, decisive grouping yet in total, nearly three times as many people can be categorized as being change-resistant and wanting stability.
Over the last 30-40 years, change has certainly been rapid. Whether you consider immigration, changing family and societal values, advances in technology and all its implications, globalization and its impact on work or the type of work available, change has been too rapid and confusing for many to embrace.
Our leaders both in the political and industrial sphere have maintained an external focus on the world and adapted as needed, while demonstrating flexibility wherever possible (see top right segment of the charts). More traditional values which ensured longer term employment and gave a sense of stability have all but vanished. Stress levels and chronic disease have multiplied as people have not been able to keep up; not because they don’t want to but because it is simply not in their nature. Too much change in too short a time-span has made life too difficult and confusing, whether they have managed to keep their jobs or not. That is the true lesson for politicians.
In spite of higher levels of education and our growing internet based economy, not many have shifted from the populous left-hand quadrants to the right-hand ones, or upwards from the lower ‘stable’ side. Genetics beats out the environmental factors so it’s not surprising that people are finally protesting. They are not however demanding change; they just want life to slow down; they want to see a return to more tried and tested approaches and governments cannot simply go on saying, “the world’s changed so you have to change”. A certain number of more ‘decisive, creative visionaries’ have hijacked the majority of the population and the U.S. government in particular has let them get away with it.
To be successful, our leaders need to accept who we are and how we think; to accept that massive change takes many generations to implement and that constructive intervention is needed, not further liberalisation. When it comes to the bulk of people, The Market does not look after itself and capitalism in its current relatively unrestrained form is wounded.
No-one wants to live in a Max Weber style definition of bureaucracy where everything flows from a strict chain of command, but the majority of people do need a bit more structure in their lives, more routines and less change. They want the world to slow down and believe it’s the government’s job to help them do that.
Too many voters wish – in the words of the musical, that they could stop the world and get off. That is not possible but just maybe, in his own unique way, Donald Trump will be able to slow it down a bit.

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Google’s 'surprising' discovery about effective teams

21/1/2016

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After two years of research...

It turns out that the secret to a high-performing team lies less in the individuals that make it up and more in the wider team dynamics.
“Who is on a team matters less than how the team members interact, structure their work, and view their contributions.” High-performing teams, they found, almost always displayed five characteristics (see diagram).
According to their research, by far the most important team dynamic is psychological safety – the ability to be bold and take risks without worrying that your team members will judge you.

So I would just add that the manager has to be held in high esteem by his/her superiors to enjoy a similar sense of psychological safety; which of course, goes on up the company, right to the very top!

http://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/12/googles-surprising-discovery-about-effective-teams/?utm_content=buffer15b8f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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Are you born to be a leader? Are you born to be a manager?

2/11/2015

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Currently popular in the Financial Times Management series is an article about Managers and Leaders, suggesting that both traits are thoroughly intertwined. I too have often thought that such characteristics are complex and they can be illustrated using the Competing Values Framework. Can you be both an organised manager and a visionary leader at the same time? If so, you would probably come across as being somewhat schizophrenic; on the one hand highly controlling and on the other trying to be highly creative at the same time. Yet organisations need both characteristics in different areas of their business at different times.
The author, Herminia Ibarra of INSEAD, gives the following example from John Kotter's work on the subject:
"... John Kotter saw management and leadership as different kinds of work, not different kinds of people. Management aims to ensure efficiency through routine planning, organising and co-ordinating; leadership aims to create change by envisioning a better future, aligning those who can make it happen, or block it, and inspiring them to do it. Most organisations, Prof Kotter argued, require a mix of both, the right dose depending on context: the more complexity — more products, geographies, units — the more management is needed; the more volatile the environment, the more leadership is required. He brought the concepts back in line with Weber by focusing on the levers available to executives rather than on their personalities. When managing, one works within one’s sphere of formal authority; when leading, one influences and motivates outside and beyond, since many crucial stakeholders are external."
Ms Ibarra continues; "Unfortunately, Prof Kotter’s blockbuster case studies of a day in the life of two contrasting Xerox managers, “Fred” and “Renn”, immortalised the less-nuanced notion of manager and leader as personality types with one clearly less attractive than the other."
The thing is; although it was popular in Kotter's day to value more the roll of nurture than nature, more recent research has supported the idea that many of our natural abilities, be they physical or mental, are indeed nature given... we must make the best of those talents. Years ago, even well meaning teachers would 'force' left handed people to write with their right hand rather than developing the optimum use of their left hand. And our brains are no different, albeit a bit more complex!
So you do require different personality types to carry out the different aspects of leading and managing. And both the Jungian psychology of archetypes and the Competing Values approach show why such attempts to balance these opposites in one person usually end in failure.
Source: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/757264a6-7286-11e5-bdb1-e6e4767162cc.html#axzz3qKxkn8iI

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All the colours of the car rental companies

7/8/2015

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Avis who are apparently still trying harder after 69 years lost their italics in the revised 2012 logo makeover and gained the new catch phrase: “It’s your space”. The red colour also came more strongly to the fore as they matched the colour-coded success of some of their competitors.
Their new slogan replaced one of the longest standing and best recognized slogans ever created, namely “We try harder”, which had been developed by Doyle Dane and Bernbach (DDB) in 1963.
Although it is ‘just’ a tagline, “We try harder” also served as a guiding mantra for their thousands of employees around the world. It’s hard to imagine three words that could more powerfully communicate what they should be doing while they represent their company.
Others take similar approaches, Ritz-Carlton reminding employees that they are “… ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.” These words sum up well what the Ritz-Carlton is all about, but they hardly work as a customer facing voice like the Avis line does.

It's whose space?
When asked why Avis moved away from its long-time slogan, Chief Marketing Officer Jeannine Haas told Advertising Age, "Consumer-centric brands must always evolve in order to keep pace with ever-changing customer needs and preferences." She added, "Avis is evolving as a premium brand to better meet those needs." Sounds like corporate bla-bla to me, particularly when noting how she continued, saying that the new tagline is "reflective of Avis' ongoing mission to be a customer-led, service-driven company, presenting the brand in terms of the customer experience and the advantages inherent in renting from Avis,"
As they say; whatever! But “It’s your space” sounds to me just too much like it belongs to a storage company and perhaps that’s why in the Summer of 2015, it is no longer to be found anywhere on their website at least I could not find it.
No lesser advertising Guru than David Ogilvy praised Avis’ original ads as a feat of “diabolical positioning” as they competed against Hertz who were openly “Number 1”. Times have changed and Hertz is No. 2 these days with Avis lagging in third place, but even so, the original line still works. Perhaps the corporate bosses at Avis were simply tired of it after so many years. They should still be proud of it. It is true that Enterprise, the reigning number 1 car rental company has profited from having many downtown locations which gave them a less cyclical business. And so the Hertz/Avis rivalry counts now as a historical relic from the 20th century, but it was good while it lasted.
Today, at least on the website, the slogan seems to be making a comeback:
“At Avis, "We Try Harder" has been more than a slogan. It's a promise to every customer. A promise that we will do whatever we can to make the trip more enjoyable. Don't believe us? Here's what our customers say”; and this is followed by testimonials.

From italics to something very Levi-like as of 2012; or is it just my eyes?

Colours for customers
In the end, if we bring things back to simple customer communications, perhaps Avis is right in bringing their logo more in line with their core colour – although to me, it's beginning to look Levi-like. If you’re currently thinking of choosing a new colour, maybe there’s something to be learned from the car rental companies. At my local “Gare du Midi” car rental location in Brussels, these are the competitors and these are their colours!

Red: Avis… the colour of fire and blood, associated with energy, war, danger, strength, power, determination as well as passion, desire, and love.
Orange: Sixt… combining the energy of red and the happiness of yellow. It is associated with joy, sunshine, and the tropics. Orange represents enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation.
Yellow: Hertz… the colour of sunshine, associated with joy, happiness, intellect, and energy. Its warming effect arouses cheerfulness, stimulates mental activity, and generates muscle energy. Often associated with food, bright yellow is an attention getter, which is the reason taxicabs are painted this colour representing encouragement and stimulation.
Green: Europcar… the colour of nature. It symbolizes growth, harmony, freshness, and fertility with strong emotional associations to safety. Dark green is also commonly associated with money. Green has great healing power, suggests stability and endurance and is the most restful colour for the human eye; it can improve vision..It's whose space?"
Blue: Budget… as the colour of the sky and sea, blue is often associated with depth and stability. It symbolizes trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, truth, and heaven. Blue is also considered beneficial to the mind and body, slowing human metabolism and producing a calming effect.
Sadly, Enterprise are nowhere to be found at this location though their green logo would put them rather at odds with Europcar who you can probably just make out in front of the orange Sixt logo to the right of the photo. Are there certain colour coded agreements in place?

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Small changes that spark big influence

1/6/2015

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Every now and then, it’s worth going back to the ground rules of influence laid out over 30 years ago by Robert Cialdini. His six universal principles of persuasion, first outlined in his book ‘Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion’ are:

reciprocity – people feel obliged to return favours performed for them;
authority – people look to experts to show them the way;
scarcity – the less available the resource, the more people want it
liking – the more that people like others, the more they want to say yes to them
consistency – people want to act consistently with their values
social proof – people look to what others do in order to guide their own behaviour

His latest book, written with co-authors is called 'The small BIG: Small Changes that Spark Big Influence', and it's well worth a read. Focused on a 'nudge-style' list of little things you can do, there are many examples such as:

"...When it comes to weight loss, should your goal be 1-3 pounds weight loss or exactly 2 pounds? Which one would keep you committed?"

The research shows that a flexible goal achieves better results and has better long term engagement… he explains how and why!

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How management can prevent the downside of change

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A vote for Donald Trump is not a vote for change

How Jungian psychology helps us come to terms with this crazy world

Google’s 'surprising' discovery about effective teams

Are you born to be a leader? Are you born to be a manager?

All the colours of the car rental companies

Small changes that spark big influence

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