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Dolphin watching at work

3/31/2014

This weekend I went dolphin watching at an idyllic location in Port Stevens, New South Wales. At one point, we were privileged to have at least THREE pods of dolphins within 50m of the boat we were on. The dolphins had some young ones with them, and so were often disappearing into the depths of the bay, only to re-surface some distance from where they had dived in. To see them breach and experience their majestic, shimmering bodies, you only have an instant to capture the moment before they disappear into the depths again. With 30 odd dolphins to choose from, split into three different pods around the boat, the question becomes “Where should I look?

After a while, you perfect the technique of scanning the water surface at all angles around the boat, and then quickly focus, and stop scanning to look at a pod that have started to surface. Once you have enjoyed that moment, and it’s unlikely more will surface, you resume scanning again to capture the next event. Scan too slowly and you will miss a pod that already surfaced. Scan too quickly and you miss the enjoyment of the pod that is busy surfacing.

Balancing our work environments is quite similar. We have to balance our attention between the activities in the here-and-now, with the activities required to benefit us in the longer term. We do not want to be so focussed on the current task that we miss exciting opportunities in the future. On the other hand we don’t want to be so focussed on the long term, that we miss out on what is in front of us.

In my experience, a good technique for balancing this zoom in – zoom out requirement is to have quarterly planning sessions where longer term goals are reviewed. During the three month periods in between, the team should keep measuring results but be in zoom in mode, and just execute the plans set. After three months, another planning session can be held where any changes in the macro environment are evaluated, the results analysed and changes in the plans are approved.

This way, you won’t miss out on any dolphins that are about to appear but at the same time will enjoy the experience of the dolphins that have already surfaced.

Happy dolphin watching!

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Stop behaving like a cow

3/31/2014

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I was dealing with a work colleague this week who admitted to being a serial ruminator. Well, he didn’t actually say that, as he wasn’t sure what ruminate actually meant, but he did admit to spending a lot of time reflecting on conversations held during the day, and having imaginary conversations in his head, that often were not particularly positive or helpful.

So what is rumination? Many animals, such as cows or goats, have multiple stomach compartments and so after initially eating some grass, will regurgitate it again to chew on it and then swallow it again in a more digestible state.

As humans, we have the wonderful ability to remember things and to bring them back to our conscious minds, to relive the experience again. Going over old photo albums of a family holiday, can bring back all sorts of positive emotions as we relive those experiences. We often apply a very positive filter, that makes them unrealistically perfect – but hey, they are our memories, so why not embellish them in a positive way.

The problem is, often in a work environment we do the opposite. Based on some biases that we have in our belief system of who and what we are, we replay conversations in our heads and add all sorts of negative meanings and connotations that are not necessarily there. We become expert mind readers, and often to the detriment of our own happiness. Guy Winch (PH.D), writing in a recent Psychology Today magasine wrote “When we ruminate, we seldom gain insights into them. Instead, we replay upsetting scenarios in our heads, which only increases the brooding and makes us feel worse.”

So next time you get yourself into a negative, unhealthy spiral when thinking about your work colleagues or bosses, stop the cycle and leave the ruminating to the cows.

You will be a much happier person for it!

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Hearing without listening

3/17/2014

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“You are not listening to me!”…

”Yes, I am. I can repeat exactly what you said, word for word…”

We often confuse hearing with listening. As a leader, one of our primary roles is to create an environment where people feel motivated to achieve business results. There is something about human nature that, in order to feel motivated, we need to feel affirmed and understood. When we do not feel what we are saying is truly understood, we can become frustrated and discouraged.

Communication occurs at three levels: Factual; meaning; importance.

Factual - At its most basic level, we transfer facts and figures, or words and data, from one party to another. Objective facts are the most reliable form of communication, and yet even they can have distortions and unintended biases. Optical illusions are a classic example of how what we see with our eyes, is not necessarily what we see when interpreted by our brain. Our brain can’t help trying to find meaning even at the data layer. When we see a few lines drawn in a particular shape our brain may interpret that as a letter or a number, when in fact it’s just some unrelated lines. When we piece together some words in a sentence, we add additional meaning, based on previous experiences we have had, which may differ from those of the person saying those words. To improve our communication, it does help to first try to establish the facts of the communication, before ascribing any meaning to it. Written communication is very good for creating clarity on the factual aspects of the communication.

Meaning – Once we have understood what the facts of the matter are, we try to determine what that means. This is where things get tricky, as my version of the world is not necessarily the same as yours. What happens in a dysfunctional conversation is the receiving party is analysing what the communication means to them, instead of first understanding what the transmitting party is intending to convey. Good listening delves into what the other person is saying, rather than making judgements on what you are hearing.

Belief – At the deepest level of communication we explore how the person feels about the situation. Once they have subjectively interpreted the meaning of the objective facts, how important is it to them? This delves into their core belief system. We all build up our view of what we think is important and true in life. Truths about ourselves, truths about others and truths about how the world works. We like to think our truths - our beliefs - are shaped by the facts around us, but we all have distortions and biases, based on our life experiences that makes our belief system unique. This level of communication is the most complex as to challenge someone’s belief system is to get to the very heart of someone’s core being. Changing a belief is incredibly hard, as it involves re-programming our brains into how we have thought about all past experiences as well as creating a new filter on how we will judge all experiences in future.

Given how complex communicating is, and how open it is to biases, misunderstandings and deliberate distortions , is it any wonder that unless you are giving someone your absolute, undivided attention and fully engaged in understanding what they are saying, they will be crying out “you are not listening to me”.

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Defending my right to annoy myself

3/10/2014

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I have just got back from a gruelling round-the-world trip from Australia to the US (via UK) and back, spending over 50 hours just sitting on planes. I have learnt that in order to cope with this trip, it’s all about mindset. If you sit down and start counting the hours of how long you have to endure this suffering, you will suffer. If you sit down and think, how wonderful it is to have a whole day with nobody demanding anything of you, a whole day to read a book, watch a movie, catch up on a few emails, be waited on hand and foot, somehow it doesn’t seem quite so bad.

But controlling your own mind isn’t always easy. After two particularly uncomfortable, internal US flights, on old planes with no entertainment and no free food or drinks, my positive mindset about the upcoming 15 hour flight back to Australia was being challenged, especially as I got to sit in front of one of those nightmare passengers - He had barged his way to his seat, kept blocking the aisle as he jumped up and down to retrieve items from his oversized bag, filling the overhead hand luggage tray, and then to make things worse started banging his TV monitor that was of course located on the back of my chair - because he couldn’t get the touch screen technology to work. He shouted loudly to his wife for hours about how annoyed he was with everything and everybody, he marched up the aisles demanding the food arrive quicker, he rang his bell countless times because the technology was failing him and eventually after 5 hours of this I had had enough and turned around and scolded him like he was a naughty school boy. By then I had really worked myself up emotionally, and was furious that this man had ruined my journey.

Reflecting on this later, it occurred to me that I had allowed this to happen. Apart from a couple of fellow sufferers who shared my frustration and almost applauded me for my outburst, most people had just ignored him and were peacefully sleeping or were deeply enthralled by the movie they were watching. I was the one waiting in angry anticipation for every poke of my chair, every verbal outburst, every push of his attendants’ button – and every time, my blood boiled. In my mind I fully justified my anger, and knew that when I told this story to anyone else who travelled, they would justify my anger too. I had a right to be angry and I was going to indulge it!

Realising it was my mindset that was the real problem, I got up, replaced the flat batteries in my noise cancelling headset, got out my ipad, selected my favourite Playlist and drifted off to sleep to the sound of Coldplay’s “Fix you”…realising that actually it wasn’t about fixing him, it was about fixing me!

In management, especially when managing upwards, we often allow ourselves to become victims of our situation too. Instead of calmly working out a plan of how to improve our situation, and learning to accept those parts that we cannot change, we become angry at the situation, angry at the company for not hiring enough staff, angry at our bosses for not fixing the problems and even angry at customers for not being more reasonable. We know what we are doing is not improving the situation, but we are more concerned with justifying our righteous anger, than addressing the problem to create a winning outcome.

So next time you are feeling annoyed by everyone else, ask yourself if you are just defending your right to annoy yourself….

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Dolphin watching at work

Stop behaving like a cow

Hearing without listening

Defending my right to annoy myself

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