Light Without Heat: Creating the Full Equation for Change

I'm always on the lookout for pop music from the '60s - the more obscure, the better. Last week, on a browse through YouTube, I found a song titled "Light Without Heat" by a California group called (fittingly enough) Creation of Sunlight. Even before I listened to the tune, though, I was intrigued by the title - especially in "light" of the thinking I've been doing lately on the subject of personal change.

It strikes me that "light without heat" describes the way many people attempt to effect change in others - and in themselves. For example, a leader might be dealing with an employee who has high potential but who's saddled with a behavior - such as a hair-trigger temper - that's derailing him in his career. The leader might try to give the employee a wake-up call by shining the light of realization in his face regarding his behavior. This can take the form of a coaching session in which the leader encourages the employee to reflect on his behavior and self-realize the way in which it's holding him back. It might also be a 360-degree feedback process, a comment on a performance evaluation, or (in extreme cases) a direct confrontation in which the leader flat-out tells the employee about the behavior and its negative impact.

Certainly this "light" can serve to jar the employee out of his complacency or cluelessness. But such a wake-up call is likely to have only a temporary effect. In order for the employee to do the hard, day-in and day-out work of personal change, he needs to have a sustaining vision of what he can become. By creating a clear picture of what his life will be like if he's able to work more effectively with others, he can create the "heat," the fire in the belly that will motivate him to pursue his personal goal.

Or consider an automobile salesperson who uses a consultative approach with her clients. In inquiring about a client's situation and needs, she may become aware of a blind spot in the client's understanding of his current circumstances. For example, the client may have a 10-year-old vehicle with 200,000 miles that's running fine now but that might cause problems as the client moves to a new house an extra 25 miles from his job.

In this situation, the consultative salesperson could ask a question to shed light on the client's situation: "With that longer commute, what would happen if you found yourself taking your car into the shop once a month or even more?" As the client considers the impact, he could give himself a wake-up call that might rouse him from his complacency. But to help the client see a way out of the bad outcome he's now contemplating, the salesperson could follow up with another question: "What would it feel like to have a car as dependable as your current car was 10 years ago?" This can prompt the client to see the positive outcomes in proceeding with a purchase - again, to motivate him to move toward a possible future rather than just running from an undesirable present.

Organizational change itself also works best if wake-up calls (to shake people out of their comfort with the status quo) are accompanied by a positive vision for change and a series of steps to start moving in that direction. The wake-up call - which can be a stark message about what could happen if change does not occur - can provide the light. The positive vision - the well-drawn descriptions and images of what the organization and its people could achieve - provides the heat, the inner fire of motivation to proceed even in the face of difficulties that might lie ahead.

"Light Without Heat" is another way of saying "Awareness Without Action" or "Knowing Without Doing." Both sides of the equation are necessary to maintain your resolve and commitment to change.

Why Be Positive?

As a kid, I was a huge fan of Bill Cosby’s comedy records. I particularly liked his routine about his grade school teacher who tried to teach math by rote:

TEACHER: Class, one and one is two.

CLASS: Yeah, cool, man! What’s a two?

Well, rather than fall into the trap of merely asserting “universal truths” and assuming that everyone knows (and agrees with) their significance, I’ll summarize some of the benefits that can result from the YES! Leader’s adoption of positivity in his leadership practice:

1) Emotions are contagious, and the leader is usually the main carrier. People look to the leader to set the emotional tone of the organizational environment. If the leader approaches challenges in a negative way, her mood is likely to rub off on her followers. By contrast, if the leader adopts an optimistic outlook on her people’s ability to deal with current and future challenges, the followers are more likely to believe in their capacity for creating positive outcomes.

2) Learning flourishes in an environment in which people are respected, valued, and empowered to give their best. If the leader conveys a consistent message of high (and attainable) expectations of people’s abilities, along with ongoing support for and recognition of their efforts, then people are more likely to, not just achieve goals, but learn from their experiences and engage in sustained successful performance over time. The true mark of a positive environment is the regular expending of discretionary effort by the organization’s members – doing far more than just the bare minimum.

By contrast, if the leader creates an overall sour mood that doesn’t encourage and support people in their day-to-day work, people are less likely to experience the benefits and payoffs that come from attempting to stretch themselves. Especially if the leader’s mood is inconsistent and erratic, the followers focus less on achieving and learning, more on protecting themselves from the leader’s unpredictable behavior. This can result in an environment in which people are constantly on guard against potential attacks. Simply put, optimal learning can’t occur in a high-stress environment.

3) Positivity sparks a mindset that creates a vision of an ideal future. In their book Becoming a Resonant Leader, authors Annie McKee, Richard Boyatzis, and Frances Johnson refer to this as engaging the Positive Emotional Attractor, which in turn “supports a sustainable change process by increasing our capacity for emotional flexibility, improving our neurological functioning, and increasing our sense of psychological well-being.”

One example of the Positive Emotional Attractor in action can be seen in the process of individual growth and change. Many people embark on development efforts by first identifying the gaps and weaknesses in their arsenal of skills (“If I could only get better at _____, I’d be great”).  But this focus on deficiencies can quickly become demotivating unless the person first paints a mental picture of what life could be like – what he could become – in the future. As McKee et al. say, “The key is that the vision should invoke in our mind a specific, clear picture of the future – one that we find inspiring and feasible.” Creating this vision of the ideal self and the ideal future gives us both a clear direction (to guide our development plans) and an inner passion (to keep us motivated to pursue those plans).

The YES! Leader can reflect this Positive Emotional Attractor in her own development as a leader, by creating and continually refining this detailed vision of her ideal self as a beacon to guide her individual growth. She can also inspire her followers to create their own personal visions by coaching them in their development efforts. And she can inspire the entire organization by encouraging the adoption of the Positive Emotional Attractor as a mindset to guide everyone in their daily interactions – by expecting the best of every encounter and working collaboratively to bring it to fruition, rather than wallowing in the factors that keep them stuck in the current reality.

Painting an ideal future will not by itself lead to realizing that future – but it’s a necessary starting point for a development journey that could easily involve multiple speed bumps and barriers along the way. As Jim Collins notes in describing the Stockdale Paradox, an optimistic belief in the power to change and a realistic acknowledgment of the current reality must go hand in hand. The latter without the former leads to discouragement and demoralization. The former without the latter leads to an unrealistic assessment of the challenges ahead – which, when encountered, lead to discouragement and demoralization as well.

GOOOOOAL! Keeping Yourself on the Path in Your Life's Journey

Many people believe that future success depends on creating a precise vision of exactly what you’ll be doing with your life by a defined time in the future – for example, “In 10 years I’ll be the Talent Management Director for a Fortune 500 retail company.”

I’ve always questioned whether this near-mandate of “you must have a specific goal” is a universal truth, for two primary reasons:

1) Setting such a specific goal usually involves making a future projection based on current realities. Who knows whether the existing job description for a Talent Management Director will still apply in 10 years? And if the nature of the role changes significantly, how do you know that the skills you’re building for the role will still be important 10 years from now?

2) Not only do “things change,” but we change. Our goals and motivators are largely determined by underlying values that are important to us – such as “making a high income” or “having a lot of power.” It’s funny, though, how life events (such as having children) and the natural process of maturation can cause us to recalibrate our values and priorities. As we get close to that definite goal that requires high responsibility and long work hours, we may find that “work-life balance” has unexpectedly become an imperative in the interim. And if we’ve focused our career development efforts too narrowly up to that time, we may find ourselves in career crisis.

Undoubtedly there are people who know exactly what they want in X years and go get it. But there are also others who would feel too hemmed in by such a predetermined goal and who find it more effective to shift and adjust (i.e., improvise) to meet the changes in the environment – and in themselves. As with many other things, career planning (or what I prefer to call “life planning”) is a matter of personal preference and not a cookie-cutter proposition.

Perhaps the best rule of thumb is this: In life planning, either your goals must be flexible or you must be flexible – or both, in whatever combination reflects your own approach to dealing with your environment.

One highly effective approach to life planning involves the creation of an Aspirational Goal for yourself. An Aspirational Goal is, very simply, the way you would complete the sentence, “In X years, I want a situation in which I ….” If you have a precise idea of the role or position you want, you can complete the sentence with precision – e.g, “In 10 years, I want a situation in which I am the Talent Management Director of a Fortune 500 retail company.” 

However, if you are the type who prefers to maintain flexibility in your planning, you can instead describe the factors you want to have in place in your future situation – whatever it might ultimately be. For example, “In 10 years, I want a situation in which I am able to run my own business using my creative abilities, leaving enough time to take two months off each year for travel.” A benefit of the latter approach is that it brings your values (creativity, autonomy, mobility) front and center into your life planning and allows you to reevalute them at regular intervals to see if they still apply.

You can think of your Aspirational Goal as a beacon on a distant hill that helps you navigate your life’s journey. You might find yourself taking detours from time to time and proceeding in a less-than-direct path – but the light from your Aspirational Goal will still be visible to help you reorient yourself and check your progress on the path. As you reach decision points – Should I accept this job? Do I want to pursue this degree? Do I want to relocate to Wyoming? – you can ask yourself: “Will this help me move in the direction of my Aspirational Goal?”

Getting Past the Impasse

So you’re butting heads with someone, or you’re participating in a session where people are butting heads.  What options are available for getting beyond the disagreement – other than just resorting to a show of power? Here are some options to consider:

Discuss the issue and persuade the other side. This is probably the most common way to deal with disagreement. We make our best case for our particular position and hope that our rationale will convince the other side to see things our way.

Agree on standards to which a solution must adhere, then look for solutions that best meet the standards. For example, we might agree ahead of time that a solution must cost no more than X dollars, be completed in Y number of weeks, and allow us to accomplish certain outcomes. We can then evaluate each proposal as it’s generated to determine how well it meets the predefined standards.

                                                                                                              

Agree on common interests, and work toward a solution that best meets those interests.  In a classic example, two people argue over which one of them should have the last orange in a bowl. As long as they remain stuck on their positions – “I need the orange!”, “No, I need the orange!” – they’ll never be able to reach agreement. It’s only when the parties explore why each needs the orange – “I want to make juice! , “I want to make marmalade!” – that they can see that their positions may be incompatible but not their respective interests. In fact, in this case, both of their interests can be satisfied with only one orange – by giving one the inside of the orange (for the juice) and the other the peel (for the marmalade).

                                                                               

Clarify the positions to see if new understanding minimizes or eliminates the disagreement. Sometimes in the course of discussion, the parties raise so many different proposals, contingencies, assumptions, etc., that the trail of information being shared becomes muddied beyond recognition. In those situations, the parties can find themselves reacting to positions that in fact mischaracterize what others are saying. It can help to just stop and have each party restate what they’re saying – and what they think they’re hearing. They may well find that they were in “violent agreement” all along.

Clarify the definitions of terms being used to see if new understanding minimizes or eliminates the disagreement. I recall once observing two parties who were in disagreement over how an analysis task should be conducted in a meeting. One party kept saying that they needed to just “keep it simple,” which seemed to set the other party off, as if she were being accused of overcomplicating the task. It was only when the first party was asked “What does ‘simple’ look like?” that the parties started to focus more on the needs and the defined scope of the project and less on their differing interpretations of the term “simple.” As they discussed, they found that they really weren’t so far apart after all.

Have a neutral third party decide. Even when the parties look beyond their positions and explore their interests, they may still find themselves at an impasse. In that case, the best course may be to have the tie broken by a decision-maker whom both parties respect.  Usually, this more drastic approach is indicated if the stakes – and the need for urgency – are particularly high.

Take a vote. Sometimes, groups get wrapped up in contending over a relatively minor issue that could be easily settled by just taking a vote – for example, “Where should we go for lunch - Mexican or Italian?” Even then, though, there are several options available for conducting a vote that go beyond just signifying either “This” or “That.” For example, if there are many choices on the table, each group member can be given (say) five votes, with the option to allocate his votes among the different options however he likes – all five votes on one option, or three votes on one option and two on another, etc.

Another voting option, called the Gradient of Agreement, allows members to indicate on a scale of 1 to 5 how strongly they support a proposal – a 5 means “I fully support it,” 4 means “I like it with some minor reservations,” 3 means “I’m ok with it,” 2 means “I don’t like it but I won’t stand in the group’s way,” and 1 means “I veto it.” Even if nobody vetoes a proposal, the group can still take a reading of how strongly the members support the proposal. If the votes tend toward the 3s and 2s, then even though it “passed,” the group might still decide to continue working toward a solution that might be even better. 

Learning After the Training

In my previous article, I described the GAPS Model of individual development as an approach that allows a learner to fill in skill gaps by using a series of learning steps that progressively build toward proficiency in the skill

So when you’ve completed each of the GAPS steps, you should be ready to hit the ground running on the other side of the chasm, right? Well, likely not. And this is the point where even the best development strategy can break down.

To become truly proficient at a task, you need to begin performing it in actual situations.  And no matter how closely your Synthesize-oriented learning activities resemble reality, they are after all just simulations. When you exercise the skill for the first time in actual situations, you’re still in learning mode. And you’re likely to become frustrated and discouraged when you encounter real-world challenges that the simulations didn’t cover – especially when you feel as if you’re on your own when it comes to figuring out how to proceed.

You can muddle through this School of Hard Knocks, and certainly many people do that. But you can also seek out some supporting mechanisms to help you through this critical period when you’re trying to transfer classroom learning back to the job. Such mechanisms include:

Action Learning – Action Learning is a process in which small groups work on real problems, periodically reflecting on and discussing (usually with the help of a coach) their individual and group learnings. By using actual situations as a laboratory for exploring how their learned skills and knowledge can be applied, participants can get the benefit of learning to deal with non-simulated complexity in a supportive environment. In addition, the organization gets the benefit of a completed project.

Coaching – In their influential book Transfer of Training, Mary Broad and John Newstrom demonstrated how the actions of a class participant’s manager immediately after a training event play a critical role in ensuring the application of the learned skills back on the job. Coaching at this stage can be focused on helping the learner discover how the skills and knowledge she acquired in training can be applied to  real-world situations.

Class Reunions – After a class has concluded, the facilitator can schedule a follow-up session with all participants to share and discuss some of the ways in which the participants have applied their learnings on the job. The participants can also describe some of the challenges they’ve had in implementing their new skills and knowledge and can gain insight from their cohorts about how to deal with those challenges.

Shadowing – As Yogi Berra once said, “You can observe a lot by just watching.” Shadowing involves approaching someone whose performance you’d like to model and asking if you can spend time with them as they go throughout their business day. This can be an effective way of understanding more about leadership practices and the types of things on which they focus in a typical day. Or, if you have a more specific skill you’re trying to develop – say, making effective presentations – you can watch someone who has mastered the skill and take a few pointers as he performs it.

Seeking Feedback – This can be thought of as the reverse of shadowing. When you’re trying out a new skill, you can ask someone whose opinion you value to observe your performance and provide feedback. You can make this even more powerful by briefing the observer upfront on the specific parts of the task you find challenging and asking the observer to pay particular attention to those parts.

Games – One of the biggest and most promising trends in organizational life today is gamification, the application of game structures (with their competitive aspects) to non-game contexts such as learning and development. As Ellen Langer has shown in her research on mindfulness, recasting a “task” into a “game” can have powerful benefits for individuals and organizations, such as greater engagement, increased motivation, and better retention of learning points.

The public records lookup site MyReportPlan.com demonstrated how gamification could be used as a post-class follow-up. The company split its customer service representatives into two teams, with one team playing themselves and the other team playing problem customers. The goal of the customer team was to create the most difficult-to-solve customer service problem possible. Then the customer service rep team tried to solve the problem as quickly as possible. Points redeemable for rewards were given to the rep team for solving the problem in a set amount of time, and to the customer team for stumping the reps.

If MyReportPlan.com only experienced an uptick in energy and engagement from its reps, the game effort would probably be worth it. But there was more: Measurements showed a 58% increase in customer satisfaction after a team was put through game training. Clearly, the reps’ self-generated learning based on real-life customers, along with the competitive features of the game structure, resulted in better transfer of learning and solid bottom-line gains.

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

Many leaders seem to believe that developing their people’s skills is a matter of giving them a “training pill” – that is, sending them to a class and expecting immediate performance improvement when they return. As we’ve seen, though, the classroom event is usually just the start of the learning process. It’s what happens after the class that makes the most difference in applying what’s learned in the class. And it’s the leader’s post-class actions that can be the difference between “Yep, fun class” and “Hey, this stuff really works!” – because many of the post-class strategies mentioned above can best be implemented by the leader.

Here are some questions for the YES! Leader to consider:

·         Do you discuss an upcoming training class with a team member before the class begins, emphasizing the importance of the topic and creating a plan for post-class follow-up?

·         Do you seek opportunities to coach your employees as to how they might apply their new skills to real-life situations?

·         Are you always on the lookout for creative post-class experiences that can give your team members an opportunity (with your support) to exercise their new skills?

·         As you develop your team, do you observe the 70-20-10 guideline that says that 10% of learning comes from formal classes, 20% comes from coaching and learner observation of others, and 70% comes from on-the-job experience?

The YES! Leader Closes the Skill GAPS

Let’s say that you wanted to improve a particular skill in your leadership toolkit – for example, influencing others.

You could start your effort by reading a good book on the subject. This would help you grasp the best practices involved in moving people to think and act in a certain way. But while a book can increase your general knowledge of the topic, it wouldn’t make you proficient in actually using the skills in your daily work.

So you might go a step further and organize a discussion group to talk about the book. The group could identify ways to apply the best practices to particular situations, discussing (for example) case studies drawn from the members’ own experience. This would go beyond providing you a flashcard-level knowledge of concepts and give you an increased understanding of how the concepts could be used to vary the approaches you take to your actual work.

Yet at this point, when it comes to your skill-development effort, you’re still primarily working in your head, at the level of recognition and realization. In order to truly change your behavior, you need to embed new skills (as my applied improvisation colleague Gary Schwartz says) “in your bones” and start developing your muscle memory.

So your next best step would be a strategy of actually practicing the skills that you’ve been reading about and discussing with others. In your discussion group, for example, you might create role plays that would call on members to verbalize and vocalize a persuasive message that they might actually be called upon to deliver in their work. Your role play could involve a written scenario that describes the situation, such as “You are Jeff, a manager trying to influence your manager, Najila, to adopt a new process in your department.” After brief preparation to plan what you might say in the role of “Jeff,” you would then interact with “Najila” (another role-playing participant) in a semi-scripted, semi-improvised scene that would let you practice coming up with the right words and saying them out loud. You would then get feedback from the other group members.

You’re now getting closer to your goal of implementing new behaviors. But a role play is still, after all, an artificial situation that only resembles real life. For one thing, in real life you don’t often have the luxury of pre-planning an approach as to what you’ll say. Further, real-life interpersonal interactions involve an emotional component that can only be simulated (and usually not very well) in a role play. Finally, a role play essentially says, “OK, get ready now for a situation involving the use of influencing skills,” and then constrains the roles and reactions of the role-players to those set out in the written scenario (“You, Najila, are risk-averse and value the status quo”). Real life situations are of course much more ambiguous (or, to use the technical term, messy) than that, calling for quick action on your part based on instant processing of data, taking into account factors such as power relationships, interpretation of body language and tone of voice, urgency, long-range impacts, and myriad other considerations.

To get the most from your practice, you need to create situations that more closely resemble real life. This will allow you to use your developing skills in order to synthesize many complex considerations into an effective action – on the spot, in real time. In our “influencing skills” example, your discussion group could enlist the services of trained improvisational actors to portray a group of skeptical managers whom you are trying to persuade toward a certain course of action. The actors would just be given a broad outline of the situation and their roles and then respond in a realistic manner to your attempts to change their way of thinking.

The progression of development steps described above comprises what I call the GAPS Model of development. The GAPS Model conveys the idea that development starts with recognition of a “gap” between our current level of skill and our desired level. Just as a wide chasm can’t be crossed with a single leap, a skill gap can’t be effectively traversed with a single development method, such as reading a book or taking a class. Instead, the gap must be progressively filled in with development activities that build upon each other, as follows:

Grasp – Developing a basic understanding of the concepts and procedures that comprise the skill.

Apply – Developing an ability to recognize how the concepts and procedures are or could be used in different situations.

Practice – Developing an ability to put a concept or procedure into action in a controlled environment via role plays or skill practices.

Synthesize – Developing an ability to select and use the right concept or combinations of concepts to address a given situation or scenario, usually in ambiguous circumstances that simulate actual situations and time frames.

The GAPS Model can be used to identify a multi-step strategy (similar to the “influencing skills” example I described above) for developing complex interpersonal and leadership skills. But it can also be used to design and evaluate an individual training program to assure that it doesn’t overlook any of the steps or become too heavily weighted toward (say) Grasp-oriented activities that might be more effectively covered as prework, leaving classroom time for more interactive Practice and Synthesize activities.

So when you’ve completed each of the GAPS steps, you should be ready to hit the ground running on the other side of the chasm, right? Well, probably not – and this is the point where even the best development strategy can break down. Next time, I’ll talk about strategies to continue the learning even after the training.

Be Here NOW!

In my previous article, I described how Ellen Langer’s research into the topic of mindfulness squares with the YES! Leader’s ExploreFlexSupport model. I noted how Langer’s definition of mindfulness (“Seeing the novelty in every situation”) corresponds to the YES! Leader’s practice of Exploring new opportunities, Flexing his behavior to meet the needs of current situations, and Supporting others by seeing each person as having unique developmental needs. By doing this, the YES! Leader avoids taking a rigid one-size-fits-all approach to leadership that prizes adherence to the status quo and keeps a tight grip on the controls at all times.

In addition to exploring, flexing, and supporting, the YES! Leader must reflect two foundational behaviors that come into play in any situation – and that also synch up well with Langer’s mindfulness concept. I refer to these as the NOW! and the WOW! I’ll focus on the first of these behaviors in this article and cover the second one next time.

The NOW! In order to be mindful, the YES! Leader must be fully present as she interacts with her environment. Given the rush of events of any typical organizational day, it can be difficult for the YES! Leader to put the past and the future out of her mind so that she can focus on the people and events immediately in front of her.  But just as the best performance improvisers develop the skill of listening fiercely to their onstage partners, so must the YES! Leader treat each encounter as the most important in the world at that moment.

And listening must go beyond just hearing what is being said. The YES! Leader must also be alert to how it is being said, using cues such as body language, nuances of speech, tone of voice, and other indicators of meaning. And not only that: She also must pick up on what is not being said, what’s falling between the lines.

Being fully present in the NOW! involves more than just passively receiving input. The YES! Leader must complement her listening with behaviors that encourage the other to talk, that check her understanding of what she’s hearing, and that gather more information by means of questioning.

All of this can be a tall order. But it’s essential if the YES! Leader is going to get a full view of the situation – what makes it similar to past situations, but also what makes it unique – so she can use the most appropriate Exploring, Flexing, and/or Supporting responses for that situation.

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

There are many different activities the YES! Leader can conduct with his team to help develop and reinforce the skill of staying in the NOW! One that I particularly like is called Quiz Show.

In Quiz Show, a team member (the Teller) gives a three-minute talk on an experience he’s had or a topic of interest to him, preferably one not related to work (for example, making deep-fried turkey, or meeting a famous celebrity). While the Teller speaks, another team member plays the role of Listener, and the remaining team members play the role of Quizmasters. At the end of three minutes, each Quizmaster will ask the Listener a question regarding details of the Teller’s story, and score will be kept as to the number of right answers. The roles are then rotated among the team members until everyone has played the role of Teller and Listener. The Listener who answers the most questions correctly wins.

The Quizmasters are encouraged to ask the most detailed questions possible and to be as literal as possible when scoring. For example, a Teller might start her story as follows: “I was trudging to my gate at Reagan National Airport in DC on a cold December evening when I noticed a huge long line at the checkpoint winding around the security ropes like a big accordion.” Based on this sentence, possible questions could include:

·         In what month did this happen? (December)

·         Was it snowing? (she didn’t say)

·         At what part of the day did this happen? (evening) [NOTE: “night” would be incorrect]

·         She didn’t say she was “walking” to her gate – what did she say instead? (trudging)

As a variation, you can have the Listener practice listening and communicating at an even deeper level by having her ask the Teller questions that go beyond the bare facts contained in the Teller’s story. For example, after she gets her score on the quiz, the Listener could ask the Teller questions such as:

·         How did you feel when you saw the long line?

·         What do you like the most about flying? The least?

·         If you could change one thing about the flying experience, what would it be?

What's New? Mindfulness and the YES! Leader

Since it’s the New Year, this seems like a good time to write about novelty.

In my previous article, I described Ellen Langer’s research into the concept of mindfulness, which can be defined as finding the novelty in every situation.

Mindfulness can best be understood by contrasting it with its opposite, mindlessness, a form of autopilot in which people think and act reflexively rather than reflectively. When people act mindlessly, they make quick assessments and assumptions based on a few immediate data points that remind them of a similar situation in the past.

As an example of mindlessness, you might be attending a meeting when another participant starts to talk, prompting the following thoughts to circulate in your head: I hear what this person is saying, and I know exactly what he’s going to say next, and it reminds me of a fool I dealt with two years ago who even was wearing a similar tie. When people act mindlessly, it’s as if they’re locked in a continual state of déjà vu.

As Langer’s research shows, mindfulness can serve as the antidote to mindlessness by alerting us to the factors in the current situation that are new and novel – i.e., different from a similar past situation. Being mindful can break those knee-jerk patterns of thinking that trap us in our unwarranted assumptions, harmful stereotypes, and rigid beliefs and behaviors. We approach each situation anew.

Mindfulness is directly in synch with the YES! Leader’s ExploreFlexSupport Model that I’ve described elsewhere:

EXPLORE: The YES! Leader keeps her radar tuned to changing conditions that might require new approaches to conducting work, designing products, or setting strategy. But her exploration of new ways isn’t just reactive; she also anticipates the need for change and seeks out novel ideas and approaches in advance of necessity. And not only does she respond to or anticipate change; she also seeks out change, since she recognizes that the very act of looking for fresh, creative avenues (and encouraging others to do the same) is energizing and engaging in itself.

FLEX: The YES! Leader’s mindfulness also prompts him to size up people and situations accurately. In interacting with others, he uses such behavioral models as DiSC to interpret behavioral signals – tone of voice, word use, pace of speech – in order to adapt his behavior in a way that will connect with each particular person. He doesn’t use a single behavioral style – a “my way or the highway” approach – nor does he base his responses on first impressions (“she’s talking loud and fast, so she must be an extravert”), either of which would represent an unthinking, mindless style of leadership.

SUPPORT: Many leaders tend to take a “one size fits all” approach to managing and developing their people. For example, when starting someone on a new task, such a leader might give specific, detailed directions and carefully monitor the person’s progress at the start, yet continue to take a constant watching-and-telling approach even as the person demonstrates greater proficiency. By failing to take note of the person’s new level of skill and loosening the reins accordingly, the leader rightly earns the “micromanager” label that can keep people from becoming fully self-sufficient. By contrast, the YES! Leader watches for signs that the person is moving to the next level of skill and performance and keeps pace by shifting her development approach from a telling role to a coaching role.

In my next article, I’ll describe two more foundational YES! Leader behaviors that closely track with Ellen Langer’s concept of mindfulness.