Ducky's Dilemma: Strengths vs. Mindsets

Today I’d like to revisit the story of Ducky, the class participant I described about a year ago. Ducky was a project manager who wanted to become more spontaneous in his interactions with others, which prompted my suggestion that he enroll in an adult improv class.

Lately I’ve been wondering: What if Ducky had begun an improv class and initially found enjoyment in it – but then ran headlong into an improv exercise that left him lost for words, tongue-tied, uncomfortable?

What advice should he be given?

A Strengths-based-development guru such as Marcus Buckingham might ask him whether the experience was making him feel strong or weak. For, as Buckingham says in his book Go Put Your Strengths to Work:

“Your strengths are those activities that make you feel strong…. ‘An activity that makes you feel weak’ is the best definition of a weakness.’”

So if Ducky were made to feel weak by the activity, Buckingham would probably say: “Drop the improv! Instead, focus on developing and leveraging those activities that make you feel strong.”

But if you were Carol Dweck, you’d probably give Ducky some very different advice.

In her book Mindset, Dweck draws a distinction between the growth mindset and the fixed mindset. The growth mindset, says Dweck, is based on the belief that one’s basic qualities can be cultivated through effort, and that anyone can change and grow through application and experience. As Dweck notes:

“[People with a growth mindset] believe that a person’s true potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it’s impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training.”

People with a growth mindset welcome challenges as learning experiences, as a way to find out their true capabilities. “The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well,” says Dweck, “is the hallmark of the growth mindset.”

By contrast, says Dweck, people with a fixed mindset believe that one’s intelligence, skills, and other traits are predetermined and cannot change greatly over time. To people with a fixed mindset, says Dweck:

“Either you have ability or you expend effort…. [Fixed mindset people believe that] effort is for those who don’t have the ability. People with the fixed mindset tell us, ‘If you have to work at something, you must not be very good at it.’”

Fixed mindset people thus become easily discouraged and frustrated when a task starts to require significant effort. The need to expend the extra energy immediately confirms (to their minds) their innate inability and the likelihood of being proven a failure if they continue striving.

Given all this, Dweck would probably advise Ducky: "Don’t stop doing improv just because it’s becoming more difficult! Instead, adopt a growth mindset and keep plugging away. It’s the only way to discover your true improv ability."

So we find Ducky the Daily Improviser at a fork in the road, with one way marked Buckingham Boulevard (“Don’t try to develop your weaknesses!”) and the other marked Dweck Drive (“Keep going! Don’t stop just because it’s getting difficult.”) What should he do?

Well, he should follow the advice of the great Daily Improviser sage Yogi Berra, who said:

“When you come to a fork in the road, take it!”

(I'll elaborate next time, when "Ducky's Dilemma" continues.)

Cultivating Those "Micro-Moments" of Joy

In my previous two articles, I described the Negativity Bias - the disproportionate power of negativity in the world as compared with comparable positive occurrences. I left off last time by pointing to the use of Yes And as a way to counter the impact of the Negativity Bias.

So … how should you do this?

Perhaps the best place to start is to examine how the Negativity Bias operates in your own life. As another leading light of the Positivity movement, Barbara Fredrickson, says, you need three positive emotions for every negative emotion in order to flourish rather than languish in life. (Note again the unfair power advantage of Bad over Good here.)

The encouraging news is that you have the power to create and nurture these positive emotions – you don’t have to just wait for them to occur. Fredrickson refers to this as “cultivating” positive emotions and recommends that people focus on “micro-moments” of joy, happiness, and gratitude as a way to build their net surplus of Good over Bad. "A lot of times,” says Fredrickson, “ we get so wrapped up in thinking about the future and the past that we are blind to the goodness we are steeped in already, whether it's the beauty outside the window or the kind things that people are doing for you.”

Being aware of the Negativity Bias can remind you to take an active, vigilant role in the sustaining of your positive outlook. As Fredrickson says:

"You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it."

"Jerks Are Not Born - They're Made!" The Daily Improviser and the Fundamental Attribution Error

"When some guy cuts you off in traffic, you probably think instinctively: What a jerk.  (Or perhaps your inner voice is more vulgar.)  What you almost certainly don't think to yourself is, Gosh, I wonder what's wrong that he is in such a hurry."

In their book Switch, Chip Heath & Dan Heath use this example to make a point about the way in which our behavior (in this case, the "jerk" driver's) is often driven, not by any hard-wired personality characteristic, but by the situation we find ourselves in.  And unfortunately, as the Heaths note:

"We are frequently blind to the power of situations. In a famous article, Stanford psychologist Lee Ross ... noted that people have a systematic tendency to ignore the situational forces that shape other people's behavior.  He called this deep-rooted tendency the 'Fundamental Attribution Error.'  The error lies in our inclination to attribute people's behavior to the way they are rather than to the situation they are in."

I think that the Fundamental Attribution Error also represents another instance of the Negativity Bias ("Bad is stronger than good"), which I referred to in my previous article.

Think of the last time a driver cut you off (and I'm assuming everyone's had that experience).  Recall that sudden, reflexive, overwhelmingly negative feeling you had toward the "jerk" in the other car.  That's the Negativity Bias at work - the unfair power advantage of Bad over Good.

Now think of the last time someone "cut you off" at a business meeting, by interrupting you or ignoring your comment.  Did you immediately think, Poor guy, he must be having a bad day to be acting so cross.  Or did you think ... something else?
 
For the Daily Improviser in these instances, the Yes And approach would involve exploring the situational aspects of events rather than giving in to the knee-jerk "jerk" reaction.  The goal is not really to put a positive spin on the event but to at least find a more neutral explanation that puts you in a better frame of mind to Advance with Positive Purpose. 

Yes And vs. the Negativity Bias

Rule Number One for the performance improviser and the Daily Improviser is Yes And – that is, accept the offers of your fellow players and contribute something that advances the action. For the Daily Improviser, this doesn’t necessarily mean Agreeing with the Position put forth by your “partner,” but it does mean:

• Accepting the Person,
• Acknowledging the Possibilities in what he says, and
• Advancing with Positive Purpose.

For the Daily Improviser, though, it can often seem as if every positive impulse you put forth into the world is met by a battery of “No’s” pushing back. And this experience may not be just a product of your imagination, as Jonathan Haidt points out in his book The Happiness Hypothesis.

Haidt, one of the foremost scholars in the area of Positive Psychology, refers to a psychological tendency called the Negativity Bias, which can be simply stated as: For most people, bad is stronger than good. This is not a value judgment but a reflection of psychologists’ repeated finding that the human mind tends to react to bad things more quickly, forcefully, and persistently than to equivalent good things.

To illustrate the Negativity Bias in action, Haidt points to the following research examples:

• In marital interactions, it takes at least five good or constructive actions to make up for the damage done by one critical or destructive act
• In financial transactions and gambles, the pleasure of gaining a certain amount of money is smaller than the pain of losing the same amount
• In evaluating a person’s character, people estimate that it would take 25 acts of life-saving heroism to make up for one act of murder

(To demonstrate the Negativity Bias yourself, you can conduct your own unscientific study – just turn on the next installment of the evening news.)

The existence of the Negativity Bias sounds pretty depressing and negativity-inducing in itself, right? Well, I think this is another situation that calls for the application of the Stockdale Paradox: Confront the brutal facts, yet never lose faith!  You need to recognize the disproportionate strength of "No" in order to avoid being blindsided by the power it wields in the world.  Yet you also want to maintain your faith in the power of Yes And and be sure to cultivate, nurture, and repeatedly put its positivity principles into effect as a remedy for the “No” disease.

Next time I'll talk a bit more about becoming aware of the impact of the Negativity Bias on your own thinking and attitudes.

A Day in the Life of an Agent of Change

"The long and winding road / that leads to your door."

Paul McCartney

I love it when things Come Together!

I've been in a major Beatles groove this week, inspired by a friend who's been eagerly preparing to attend a Paul McCartney concert with her daughter in Phoenix this Sunday. As I was listening to one of the Fab Four’s signature tracks, Sergeant Pepper’s “A Day in the Life,” I was suddenly reminded of a story about the recording session for the track – one that provides a connection to the “change journey” topic I’ve been writing about in recent articles.

“A Day in the Life” is really made up of two separate songs, one written by McCartney, the other by John Lennon. Lennon, McCartney, and their producer, George Martin, wanted the two songs to comprise separate “movements” for the work but were stumped for a way to connect the pieces.

Finally, Martin hit upon a way to fill the gap. McCartney and Martin brought in a 40-piece orchestra to play a 24-bar improvised fill – a tough challenge for classically trained musicians accustomed to an orchestrated score. In order to facilitate the process for the musicians, Martin structured the fill by using a novel approach which he described as follows:

What I did there was to write ... the lowest possible note for each of the instruments in the orchestra. At the end of the twenty-four bars, I wrote the highest note...near a chord of E major. Then I put a squiggly line right through the twenty-four bars, with reference points to tell them roughly what note they should have reached during each bar.

As I read that, I thought: Get Back! (OK, so that’s another album.) Martin’s description struck me as a perfect integration of the two approaches to change that I described in my article about the Heath Brothers’ book Switch.

I had written that, when influencing other people to change, a change agent has a choice of two useful boundaries: Either focus on the first step just to get people started on the Change Road, or focus on the ultimate goal and leave it up to people’s improvisational abilities to blaze their own road to the destination.

Martin did both. He first made sure that the musicians had the same point of orientation before they began their 24-bar journey. But then he relied on each musician to choose his own improvised path to reach the predefined goal – the E major chord. (And not only that: He added rough “signposts” along the road to help them calibrate their progress throughout.)

Along with four lads from Liverpool, Martin – who in my estimation was the true “Fifth Beatle” – helped engineer one of the most momentous cultural changes of the 20th Century. And I think Martin’s creative solution to “A Day in the Life” provides a model for change agents in any field – especially when they're trying to influence seasoned people who might be anxious about the road ahead:

1) Paint a distinct, vivid picture of the ultimate goal;


2) Provide a clear starting point and first steps;


3) Set up rough milestones along the way in order to measure progress;


4) Then step back and let people improvise their way to success!

----------------------------------------------
 
Here is a video excerpt from the actual recording session for “A Day in the Life.” The 24-bar fill starts around 1:45.
 



PS - Enjoy your Magical Mystery Tour, Kathy and Kim!

ExploreFlexSupport ... and Keith Johnstone

As I sit at my keyboard today, I think I've been falling prey to something I cautioned against in an earlier article - namely the striving for originality.  So, as a remedy, I thought I would turn to that great crusader against the mania for originality, Keith Johnstone, and see what ideas I could draw upon from his book Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre.

Lo and behold, I ran across a passage that echoes my observations in my earlier article about people who try to impress others with the originality of their arguments and observations during problem-solving discussions.  Says Johnstone:

"My feeling is that the best argument may be a testimony to the skill of the presenter, rather than to the excellence of the solution advocated.  Also, the bulk of discussion time is [often] taken up with transactions of status which have nothing to do with the problem to be solved."

In other words, positioning, posturing, and one-upmanship, rather than using the ExploreFlexSupport Model:

Exploring the possibilities presented by others' perspectives;

Flexing one's viewpoints, assumptions, and (yes) biases; and

Supporting others in developing their ideas - and supporting the group in moving the group forward productively!

Are We There Yet? Embarking on the Change Journey

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step." - Lao Tzu

In my previous article, I drew a parallel between the improv structure Finding the Game and the Heath brothers’ observation (in their book Switch) that effective change efforts require focusing people on specific, concrete actions. “Reach for 1% milk” is thus a much clearer call to action than “Eat healthier” (and more grammatical, too).

To bring all of this full circle, I’d like to refer to one of my earliest articles in The Daily Improviser blog, in which I discussed the Heath brothers’ previous book, Made to Stick.

In Made to Stick, the Heaths tell how to create “sticky” messages – that is, messages that are memorable, understood, and likely to inspire people to take action. The first step in creating a sticky message, say the Heaths, is to define the essence (or “Core”) of your message and then package it into a succinct (or “Compact”) form that can be readily communicated.

Probably the most powerful example of Core and Compact messages cited by the Heaths – and the one I covered in my earlier article – involves the concept of Commander’s Intent. Commander’s Intent is a brief statement of a military mission’s overall objective, framed so as to provide direction to soliders in the field while leaving them room to improvise as necessary to deal with unanticipated situations along the way. A sample statement of Commander’s Intent might be “Break the will of the enemy in Sector C.”

The beauty of Commander’s Intent, say the Heaths, is that it “aligns the behavior of soldiers at all levels without requiring play-by-play instructions from their leaders.”

Commander’s Intent is also a perfect everyday example of Finding the Game. Both Commander’s Intent and Finding the Game involve compact statements that can guide people’s collaborative actions without having to script every move. In this way, both structures place useful boundaries on people’s thinking, giving them a loose framework (to provide focus and direction) within which they can improvise at will (to let them shift with the vagaries of circumstance).

The Heaths’ “Reach for 1% milk” example also illustrates Finding the Game, but in a way that differs from Commander’s Intent. The "1% milk" message is similar to a Commander’s Intent message in that it uses clear, simple language to put a useful boundary on people’s thinking and prompt them to act in a desired direction. However, whereas the Commander’s Intent message focuses on the ultimate goal, the 1% milk message focuses instead on the first step.

The difference, I think, lies in the context in which the two messages are being conveyed. The battlefield represents a fluid, ever-changing environment that is almost a pure example of improv being played in daily life. Soliders don’t need to be convinced of the importance of accomplishing their mission: They just need to know what that mission is and then be given the leeway to make choices that will achieve it.

In the 1% milk message, though, people do need to be convinced of the value and attainability of the goal – especially since it represents a change in their long-ingrained behavior. Since they’re likely to be either indifferent or resistant to the goal, they need to be shown a small, easily implemented action that will start them on the road to change. Trying to show them the ultimate goal (“Be healthier”) right off the bat may make the journey appear too daunting and thus entrench them in their old familiar habits.

In mobilizing people to take action, then, you have a choice of two useful boundaries you can apply: Either focus people on the goal as a way to guide their actions, or focus them on the first action as a way to start them toward the goal. Your choice will depend on their existing level of commitment to the goal.

The Daily Improviser Finds the Game!

Last time I described the loose improv framework called Finding the Game, a guideline that performance improvisers use to create useful boundaries around their creative efforts. Today I’ll begin addressing the question: How does “Finding the Game” apply to the Daily Improviser?

If you think about it, the performance improviser’s onstage challenge is no different from the Daily Improviser’s challenge in his everyday dealings: How, from the infinite universe of choices available to me at any moment, can I move forward in a productive and satisfying way?

Granted, you don’t always have to be “moving forward productively.” If you think you do, then you’re likely to lose the benefit of just sitting in quiet contemplation or deep meditation. And even then your thoughts don’t have to be directed toward any particular end. As a popular poster from my college days put it, “Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits!”

But I think most of us would also own up to the saying, “Other times I stands and acts!” We need to periodically gather those kaleidoscopic mental sensations and begin sorting through them, putting them into categories, sequencing them into a blueprint for action, and slapping them on a calendar.

Very simply, we periodically need to focus. The performance improviser needs to - in rapid fashion - both run through the Rolodex of the mind and make selections from the spinning cards in order to create a coherent scene. Similarly, the Daily Improviser must continually (though not so rapidly – in most cases) alternate analysis and action.

I’ve been thinking about this mental balancing act as I’ve been reading Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, the long-awaited sequel to Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. One of the Heaths’ first observations about influencing people to change is:

If you want people to change, you must provide crystal-clear direction.

The Heaths describe the case of two West Virginia University researchers who were trying to conduct a campaign to promote healthier eating. “Eat Healthier!” of course provides no direction for people, since the ways in which people can interpret such advice is almost limitless.

So where to start? What should people be encouraged to do? As the Heaths say, this is exactly the kind of situation that lends itself to spinning of the mental wheels, resulting in “analyzing and agonizing and never moving forward.”

The researchers could easily have gotten bogged down in the complexities of the issue and never launched the campaign at all. Or, they might have moved ahead with a campaign that tried to address all of the complexities but which would have overwhelmed the target audience. (As the Heaths said in a similar context in Made to Stick, “If you say three things, you don’t say anything!”)

Instead, the researchers decided to zero in on one specific dietary habit – milk-drinking – and conduct a campaign to encourage people to buy 1% or skim milk rather than whole milk, a change that by itself would cause the average diet to attain the USDA recommended levels of saturated fat. The general ho-hum message “Eat healthier” was replaced by the message “Next time you’re in the dairy aisle of the grocery store, reach for a jug of 1% instead of whole milk!”

Simple. Crystal clear. Focused.

You could say that the WVU researchers were successful at Finding the Game in their campaign – stating a simple, concise message that would focus people's attention and mobilize them to act in a desired way.

How do you go about your own “campaigns” to encourage change – in your organizations and in your personal lives? Do you try to address the full scope of the issues in all their complexities – and get bogged down as a result? Or, instead, do you Find the Game by focusing on those few key actions that afford the most leverage and lend themselves to crystal-clear, focused calls to action?

Finding the Game

Let’s say you’re plucked out of an audience at an improv show and thrust onstage into the glare of the spotlight. You’re told that you’re a Viking warrior being introduced to your daughter’s new boyfriend.

The scene starts – GO!

About now you may be thinking: When do I wake up from this nightmare? You may feel like the angst-ridden second-round participants in the What’s In a Name activity, except that now all the other participants are watching you and expecting you to be hilariously funny so they can get their money’s worth.

Then – seeing escape to be impossible – you futilely grope for words to string together from the infinite choices available to you. You may think: What do I say? How can I fill this blank slate?

I think this reaction lies at the root of many people’s resistance to the idea of improv. The very thought of having to fill the airspace with impromptu dialog forged from the best of all possible words provokes anxiety at best, panic at worst. Performance improvisers who can deftly create on-the-spot scenes are often seen as naturally gifted, with spontaneity imprinted in their DNA - somehow able to stare into the void and magically conjure fully formed scenes out of thin air.

But as I’ve mentioned before, performance improvisers don’t generally paint on an utterly blank slate. Instead, they use many constructs – what I would call heuristics – to loosely frame their scenes and provide in-the-moment guidance for their actions.

Yes And is itself one of these loose frameworks – i.e., “always agree with your stage partner.” This simple guideline restricts the improviser (“Don’t say no”) and yet paradoxically frees him by removing the paralyzing effects of unlimited choice. Whatever he says, he knows he needs to affirm and build on what his partner has just said. Other loose frameworks include chiches, catchphrases, and accents.

Another framework is called Finding the Game. “The Game” is simply an interesting insight or interaction that emerges from the scene in the first few seconds, one that could be stated in a few words. Here is an example of Finding the Game, derived from my own workshopping experience.

In this scene, a male player and a female player were kids playing in their adjoining backyards. The female jumped up on the fence between the two of them and began walking tightrope-like along the top, leading her partner to observe, “Wow, you’ve got great balance!” Immediately they both intuitively recognized the Game they would play: Boy watches girl’s balancing ability as they go through life. (Since this was a long-form exercise, they knew they’d be coming back with later scenes that traced their lives together.)

Rather than just fumble around with disjointed kid-like dialogue, the two players were able to focus on this Game as a loose framework within which to spontaneously develop a whole series of scenes – as teenagers, boy admires girl’s balancing of academics, sports, and social clubs; after they get married, boy marvels at girl’s Supermom overachievements as wife, mother, and corporate CEO; after 20 years, the girl starts to crumble under the weight of her life’s balancing act …

“The Game” thus provided focus and direction for the scene and effectively guided the players’ in-the-moment decisions about what to say and do next. In this way, “The Game” represented a useful boundary that freed them to do their best, most creative work.

So back to our Viking - i.e., you – and his beautiful daughter’s boyfriend. What is The Game that you could identify to help you with your onstage decisions? Maybe: Viking tries to determine boyfriend’s marauding skills to see if he’s a suitable match. Or: Boyfriend wants to marry the daughter and relocate to a warmer climate. Any of these choices can provide the loose framework within which you and your partners can creatively improvise.

But then you might say: So what? How does this inside knowledge help me? How can I apply “Finding the Game” to my Daily Improvising life?

I’ll answer this next time by circling back to a concept I covered in one of my first articles – a concept that the Daily Improviser can use to provide useful boundaries to guide his and others’ day-to-day choices.

For now, however, I think I hear Brunnhilde singing!

Useful Boundaries - Continued

OK, Pop Quiz:

In 15 seconds, write down as many things that are white in color as you can think of.

Finished? All right, now for Round Two:

In 15 seconds, write down as many white things in your refrigerator as you can think of.

How many items did you generate in each round? And which round seemed easier?

As Chip Heath and Dan Heath point out in their book Made to Stick, having the whole universe of white things at your mental disposal probably didn’t present any advantage – and in fact may have proved a disadvantage. As the Heaths say:

Most people, remarkably, can list about as many white things from their refrigerator as white anythings…. Even people who list more white anythings often feel that the refrigerator test is “easier.”

Why does this happen? Because, as the Heaths point out, placing a mental boundary such as a refrigerator around the universe of possible white things “is a way of mobilizing and focusing your brain.”

Just a neat brain trick? No, say the Heaths – a valuable concept for honing and communicating ideas, as they illustrate with the example of Jerry Kaplan.

In 1987, Kaplan was a young entrepreneur who was trying to interest the Kleiner Perkins venture capital firm – the most prestigious in Silicon Valley – in his idea for a smaller, more portable personal computer. As he began his “audition” before the firm’s partners, the tieless Kaplan realized that what he thought would be an informal conversation was really expected to be a slick, buttoned-down presentation.

Armed only with his small maroon leather portfolio, and fearing that he was losing his skeptical audience, Kaplan decided on the spur of the moment (as the Heaths recount) “to risk some theatrics” by tossing the leather portfolio onto the table and announcing with a flourish, “Gentlemen, here is a model of the next step in the computer revolution!”

Suddenly, the tone of the meeting changed from a slow grilling to an impromptu brainstorming session. The Kleiner Perkins people began focusing on the portfolio and speculating about the possibilities and opportunities represented by the prospect of condensing computer power inside such small confines. As the Heaths put it:

The presence of the portfolio made it easier for the venture capitalists to brainstorm, in the same way that focusing on “white things in our refrigerator” made it easier for us to brainstorm.

The result: The partners decided to back Kaplan’s idea, valuing his company to the tune of $4.5 million.

The What’s in a Name activity (described in my earlier article) … the Refrigerator Quiz … Kaplan’s Improv Moment … all of these are examples of useful boundaries that provide focus and concreteness for our thinking and communicating.

In Made to Stick, the Heaths provide many other real-world examples of useful boundaries that have the paradoxical effect of liberating rather than stifling one’s creativity and communicative power. In my next article, I’ll provide other examples of useful boundaries from a world that might seem the most boundless – the improv stage.