Show - Don't Tell!

I’ve written frequently about the book Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath and have been a strong advocate for the authors’ message about the elements of effective communication. Taking a page from Made to Stick, I’ve created a Commander’s Intent for the book’s main message as follows:

Informing Does Not Equal Influencing!

In other words, just dumping an excruciatingly comprehensive 500-page report or a 97-slide Powerpoint presentation with multiple indentation levels on an audience isn’t guaranteed to sway them to the message contained therein (if in fact there is one).

Now, clearly there is a time and a place for providing information – say, when a senior leader requests a status update on a high-stakes project. Yet as I frequently advise people, if you have any kind of persuasive purpose in a given communication – to prompt action, to shape opinion, to elicit caring – then you need to do more than just report data. You need to connect your message to something the audience can easily relate to – and care about. (Yes, even the senior leader in that status meeting.)


Next time I'll provide an example of "connecting with the audience" from an unlikely source: The world of scientific research.

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REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

Performance improvisers are taught a simple guideline: Show, don’t tell! For example, don’t inform the audience that the scene takes place in Spain by saying “Here we are in Spain” – connect the audience with “Spain” in a concrete way by your actions.

For the Yes! Leader, what would happen if you were to do the following?

• Talk less about what you believe in and value, act more in a way that demonstrates those beliefs and values.
• Focus less on pushing your own agenda, focus more on the questions, concerns, and ideas of your listeners.
• Always be sure to address the two key questions in any listener's mind: WII? (What Is It?) and WSIC? (Why Should I Care?)

The Yes! Leader Expects the Best

On the improv stage, performers are taught to say “Yes” to scene offers and to think “Yes” with respect to their fellow team members and the entire process of collaborative scene creation.

On the life stage, being a Yes! Leader involves having positive expectations of the people you’re leading and influencing, as well as possessing a basic trust in their desire to create a positive outcome. Rather than trying to control the outcome (and control people), the Yes! Leader needs to adopt an attitude of: Hey, someone else may just have a great idea! As I mentioned in an earlier article, the Yes! Leader must be able to resolve the (seeming) incongruity of being both influential and influenceable.

I recently ran across another great example of the power that can be unleashed in others when we expect the best of them. In their book Sway, Ori and Rom Brafman cite a study in which military trainers were provided leadership-aptitude test data for an incoming crop of new trainees and told to carefully memorize each trainee’s test result. At the end of the 15-week training, the trainees were administered a standard paper-and-pencil test to assess their knowledge of topics covered during the training.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the trainees with the highest leadership-aptitude scores going into the training emerged on average with the highest scores on the paper-and-pencil test.

But here’s the kicker: Unbeknownst to the trainers, the leadership-aptitude scores given to them were totally bogus! No such “leadership-aptitude” testing had in fact taken place; the scores were completely made up and randomly assigned.

But wait, there’s more: The trainees themselves were totally unaware that all of this was going on as well! They had no idea that the trainers had been led to believe anything about their supposed leadership aptitude.

This now puts the post-training scores in a new (and very surprising) light. As the Brafmans observe, “Simply being labeled, however arbitrarily, as having high leadership potential translated into actual improved ability.  Remember, neither the trainers nor the trainees had any idea what was going on. Without realizing it, the trainees had taken on the characteristics of the diagnoses ascribed to them [by the trainers].”

What does this mean for the Yes! Leader? As the Brafmans observe:

“If you’ve even been fortunate enough to work for a boss who values and believes in you, you’ll know that you tend to rise to meet the high expectations set for you. On the other hand, there’s nothing that will make you feel more incompetent and demoralized than a supervisor who is convinced you don’t have what it takes.”

So the expectations we have of others do matter – and can have a powerful effect (either positive or negative) on the actual performance of those we're trying to influence.

The Science Behind Being "Touchy Feely"

Hard to believe, but up until the 1950s the following was the prevailing wisdom when it came to the proper way to raise infants and young children (as characterized by the author Deborah Blum):

"Nothing could be worse for a child … than being mothered. And being mothered meant being cradled, cuddled, cosseted. It was a recipe for softness, a strategy for undermining strong character. [The child psychologist John Watson] wrote an entire chapter on ‘The Danger of Mother Love,’ in which he warned that obvious affection always produced ‘invalidism’ in a child."

Into this environment stepped Harry Harlow with a then-radical thought: Far from being “dangerous,” love and comfort are essential to a person’s health and well-being.

In her fascinating book Love at Goon Park, Blum traces the life and work of Harlow, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin. Blum recounts Harlow’s most famous experiment, in which a baby monkey was put into an enclosure with two small wire-frame structures that represented two potential “mothers” – one with a bottle of food but no covering and the other with no food but a soft terrycloth cover. According to the scientific thought of the day, the monkey should have become more attached to the uncovered “mother” since that was where it obtained its food.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, the little monkey only visited the wire “mother” during feeding time, preferring to spend the rest of its time clinging fiercely to the cloth “mother.” Harlow’s experiment demonstrated that monkeys (and, according to Harlow, humans too) are driven by a deep inner need for warmth, security, and emotional attachment that transcends even the urge for the basic “stuff” of life.

Harlow’s work (and Harlow himself) remains somewhat controversial. Yet I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to analogize his experiments to the topics of employee engagement and motivation. Recent studies (by the career development and employee engagement organization Career Systems International, as well as others) have repeatedly shown that employees are motivated and engaged in their work primarily by emotional factors such as:

·         A feeling that they’re continually learning, growing, and developing in their careers;

·         A sense of performing meaningful work;

·         A sense of being recognized, valued, and respected;

·         A reliance on great co-workers from whom they can draw support.

Of course, just as Harlow’s monkeys needed to visit the wire “mother” for food, humans have a need for the basic “stuff” of life – and the money it takes to provide it. But as indicated by the research of Harlow’s famous student, Abraham Maslow, it’s the higher-level emotion-based factors beyond the paycheck that really spark people to give that extra effort, to truly commit to a collective goal.

So the next time you hear someone dismissing these emotional components of work as “touchy feely,” you can respond: “Tell that to Harry Harlow.”

(See also my earlier article concerning Dan Ariely’s experiments with research subjects whose work was systematically destroyed before their eyes.)

Want to Help Someone? Don't Give Advice!

A peer or direct report comes to you and wants to discuss an issue they’re having with someone else. Which of the following describes how you would approach this discussion?

A – Ask a lot of questions about the situation so I can get a complete understanding of the issue.

B – Give the peer/direct report advice on how he should proceed.

C – Do both A & B

D – Other

If your answer is C, let me ask another question: Which of the following experiences have you had in applying approaches A & B?

A – I spent most of the discussion trying to understand the issue but still don’t think I quite grasped it.

B – I know I didn’t grasp the issue because the person responded to my advice by saying, “No, I don’t think you quite grasp the issue.”

C – After each piece of advice I gave, the peer/direct report said, “Yeah, I tried that, but it didn’t work.”

D – If the person was a direct report, I sensed he was treating my advice as a directive and only reluctantly agreed to follow it.

E – More than one of the above.

F – None of the above.

If you answered anything other than F, then congratulations! You’ve already discovered the downside of treating coaching as a joint problem-solving exercise in which you try to advise the coachee what to do.

In my previous article, I recommended that the Yes! Leader keep two key points in mind about coaching:

Think of yourself as a facilitator, not as an advisor. Yes, there are times when giving advice might be appropriate – say, when you’re already deeply familiar with the coachee’s specific issue and have a nearly identical experience when something worked for you.  But even if your advice is pure gold, what has the coachee learned from the situation – other than that he should come to you for advice in the future rather than try to work things out on his own? Taking an Asking approach rather than a Telling approach will help stimulate the coachee’s thinking and facilitate his ability to resolve his own issues – the current issue and future issues as well.

Help the coachee focus on future possibilities rather than current barriers. One sure way to stay mired in the Current Reality is to spend a lot of your coaching time in Sergeant Joe Friday, “Just the facts” mode, in which you find yourself grilling the coachee for a detailed description of her dilemma.  This approach goes hand-in-hand with the Advisor orientation, since we feel that, in order to give good advice, we need to have a complete understanding of the coachee’s situation. However, as your quiz answers may have shown, you likely won’t be able to get a good sense of the situation without a lengthy conversation (if even then).  And, by fixating so much on the problems and barriers that block progress, the coachee can start to wallow in a sense of negativity and futility – not a good way for the Yes! Leader to lead off a coaching session.

Remember, coaching isn’t about you understanding the current situation; it’s about the coachee identifying a future path.  You can take a lot of pressure off yourself, and provide more of a positive learning experience for the coachee, if you quickly acknowledge the Current Reality and begin asking future-focused questions to get the coachee to paint a vivid mental picture of the Goal.

Take a YES! Approach to Coaching

In improv, the term side coaching refers to in-the-moment directions called out by a workshop director as performers practice onstage scenes. Side coaching requires the performers to absorb the director’s words while continuing uninterrupted with the scene – a pure multitasking situation if there ever was one.

It seems as if the word “coaching” is used in many different contexts these days - life coaching, business coaching, performance coaching, sports coaching, etc. – each of which carries its own special set of meanings.

For the Yes! Leader who wants to make a positive difference in the lives of his followers, I think it pays to focus on three key aspects of coaching:

1 – The coach’s role is to help the coachee bridge the gap between where he is (the Current Reality) and where he wants to go (the Goal). This is called “Coaching Through the Gap.” Quite simply, coaching is a vehicle to help the coachee on his journey to improved performance.

2 – The coach is more a Facilitator than an Advisor. Coaching proceeds on the presumption that the coachee has the best answers to her own issues. The coach’s primary role is not to advise the coachee what to do but to ask powerful questions to stimulate the coachee’s thinking toward finding those answers. This “teach them to fish” approach builds the coachee’s confidence in her own abilities and leads to sustained performance.

3 – The coach should encourage the coachee not to get bogged down in the Current Reality. Focusing on why things aren’t working can keep the coachee mired in a sense of his own powerlessness to advance through the gap. By contrast, having a clear, well-defined goal will help energize the coachee, inspire him to overcome barriers, and provide a beacon to lead him forward. By asking future-focused questions such as “What will be the benefits to you when you reach your goal?”, the coach can help the coachee paint a vivid mental picture of the goal he wants to attain.

The Active Questioning method I described in my previous article can be particularly helpful to the Yes! Leader who wants to realize this positive, empowering approach to coaching. For example, in a coaching conversation, it’s very common for a coachee to start listing all of the barriers (usually external to the coachee) that are causing the Current Reality and keeping him from working through the gap. This tendency can quickly lead to griping, finger-pointing, and shirking of personal responsibility for changing the situation. 


To keep the coachee from getting stuck in this negative, disempowering spiral, the coach can counter each supposed barrier by asking Active Questions such as, “What are you doing to overcome that barrier? What can you do to overcome it?” Such a challenge can remind the coachee of his accountability (and capacity) for making change happen.

Be an Active Questioner!

Yesterday I listened to an excellent one-hour web conversation hosted by the leadership experts Marshall Goldsmith and Kevin Eikenberry on the topic of Coaching in organizations.  In the course of their freewheeling talk, Goldsmith shared an intriguing concept that nicely expands on the YES! Leader concept of accountability that I described in my previous article.

As I mentioned last time, many of us prefer to rail against the way things are rather than to ask ourselves, “What can I do to make the situation better?”  Goldsmith touched on a similar thought when he described a concept called Active Questioning.

As Goldsmith described it, in the context of an employee engagement survey, a Passive Question might take the form of: How engaged are you? By contrast, an Active Question would be: What are you doing to engage yourself? Passive Question: How happy are you? Active Question: What are you doing to increase your happiness?

I understood Goldsmith’s point to be this: By asking Passive Questions, we set a subtle expectation with employees that engagement is all about something that someone else needs to do in order to engage them. On the other hand, when we ask Active Questions, we plant the seed with employees that engagement is a two-way street.  More than a two-way street, in fact, because Goldsmith also makes the point that the individual needs to be the primary driver of any change he truly wants to see. As the saying goes, "If it's going to be, it's up to me!"  

We can also apply the Active Questioning approach to our own self-reflection. So, rather than ask ourselves Am I happy?, ask How am I increasing my happiness? By doing this, we can remind ourselves of our own accountability for making change happen.

  

Goldsmith mentioned that the concept of Active Questioning (and the employee-engagement research he’s conducted to demonstrate it) will be included in his new book, aptly titled Ask What You Can Do. I can’t wait!  (er, I mean, What can I do to get the book asap?)

Becoming a YES! Leader

A former manager of mine once told a story about taking a walk in a state park with a mentor of hers. During the walk, my manager said she noticed a large amount of litter scattered in the woods by previous hikers and campers and started to complain at length about the inconsiderateness of other people. After several minutes of kvetching, she finally said, “Why can’t other people pick up their mess?” – whereupon her mentor stopped, looked her in the eye, and said, “Instead of complaining, why don’t you pick it up?”

I often think of this story whenever I find myself grousing about a situation that doesn’t meet with my approval – and then I realize exactly what is meant by the old saying “If you aren’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” Instead of pitching and moaning about what “they” did to cause the problem, or what "they" should do (but aren’t doing) to make it better, I remind myself of the intended moral of my manager’s story and ask: “What can I do to change things?”

When we ask this question of ourselves, we start to see the truth in the statement: Anyone can be a leader! We don’t have to wait for someone else in a position of formal leadership to see the issue and mobilize resources to address it. We can seize the initiative by:

·         Recognizing a gap between the current reality and future possibilities;

·         Exploring different strategies we might pursue to influence the desired outcome;

·         Flexing our approach in the moment to meet the needs of each influencing encounter; and

·         Supporting others (and seeking support from others) so that we can collaboratively work toward the best solution for everyone with a stake in the outcome.

The Daily Improviser – wherever he may be situated on the (real or imagined) hierarchy – can apply this ExploreFlexSupport model to become what I call a YES! Leader. Saying YES! means approaching the world with a positive attitude, expecting the best from each situation, encouraging the best from each person, and applying each element of the ExploreFlexSupport model in every current or anticipated encounter with the world.

Using "Yes And" to Overcome Idea Chillers

From Day One of their training, performance improvisers are taught to say “Yes And” to onstage offers as a way to build interesting scenes and work collaboratively with their fellow players. For the Daily Improviser, taking a “Yes And” approach to life can go a long way toward keeping possibilities open while also maintaining positive relationships. By contrast, adopting a “No” attitude can keep us grounded in the status quo while blocking teamwork right out of the gate.

There are many subtle ways for people to say “No” without actually using the word. Listed below are some phrases and reactions people often use in meetings to immediately pour cold water on new ideas. These are usually used as a substitute for open-minded discussion of the idea, consideration of ways to make it work, and brainstorming of other ideas it might prompt. Chronic use of these Idea Chillers – especially when accompanied by dismissive laughter and sarcasm -  is guaranteed to stop innovation in its tracks, perpetuate Groupthink, and belittle and disrespect people. (To counteract the effect of Idea Chillers, try the responses in parentheses.)

"We tried that before and it failed miserably." (Let’s look at why it didn’t work and do it differently this time.) 
"It's too expensive." (How much do you think it will cost? What are the costs of standing still?)
"It isn't our responsibility." (Who is responsible? How can we work with them?)
"It’ll never work." (How can we make it work?)
"Management will never go for it." (How do we know unless we ask? How can we influence them to accept it?)

"We've never done it that way." (The old way may have worked fine in the past – but maybe it’s time for a change.)

"Great idea, but not for us." (Why aren’t great ideas for us?)
"That’s too much change, too quickly." (How much change is enough? How can we adapt the idea so it addresses the need?)
“People just aren’t ready for that.” (How can we gain acceptance for it?)

“Here’s why that won’t work …” (How can we address those challenges?)
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." (If we’re not moving ahead, we’re falling behind.)

”That won’t fly in our culture.” (Let’s consider if it will help us meet our strategic objectives and live our organizational values.)
“I don’t like it at all.” (What are your concerns, and how can we address them?)

"You have got to be kidding." (It might sound a little “out there” – a lot of new ideas do.)
"It's all right in theory, but..." (How can we turn theory into reality?)

Keep in mind that the process of innovation doesn’t usually start with a fully formed, practical idea. If that’s what we’re looking for, few breakthrough initiatives will ever get off the ground. Instead, most creative changes grow from the seed of an idea that might not work exactly as expressed but that are nurtured and shaped through open-minded, freewheeling discussion. For example, there can never literally be a “Beatles reunion,” but failure to capture the idea during a brainstorming session can prevent a company entertainment committee from identifying a related idea (e.g., a Beatles tribute band) that could work. (And if the idea is shot down with an Idea Chiller, you can bet that no similar “out there” ideas will ever come up again.)

Do You Want Your Experience Filtered or Non-Filtered?

Has it really been almost three years since I began The Daily Improviser blog?  As we approach the end of another year, I thought that it might be time for a summary of some of the improvisational “truths” – for both the performance improviser and the Daily Improviser – that I’ve been discovering in my blog journey:

1.      Improvisation is all about finding the connections among (seeming) incongruities.

2.      Improvisation involves holding multiple (seeming) incongruities in one’s mind at the same time and still being able to function.

3.      Improvisation does not involve directly experiencing one’s environment. Instead, the improviser uses various filters and useful structures (which I collectively call “The Layer”) to help make sense of his environment and guide his response.

4.      Improvisation involves supporting others as we work together to create a result. Support means saying “Yes and” to others – and “Yes and” means, not Agreeing with the Position, but Accepting the Person, Acknowledging the Possibilities, and Advancing with Positive Purpose.

In my reading on different topics – including history, politics, economics, science, performing arts, popular culture, and (yes) leadership – I’ve been finding examples of these truths time and again as they thread through the narrative. I admit I’m still struggling to resolve a few (seeming) incongruities (such as finding the right mixture of “Yes” and “No” in our daily thought and action), but I suppose those truths will emerge over time.

Today I’ll focus on another example of #3 above from the book Sway: The Irresistable Pull of Irrational Behavior, by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman. Now, you might assume that behaving in an “irrational” way is a bad thing, a conclusion that the book’s jacket reinforces when it describes the book as “revealing the dynamic forces that derail our logical thinking and sabotage our decision-making.” In fact, though, the Brafman brothers echo much of what I’ve observed elsewhere about the utility of the filters through which we view the world.

The Brafmans cite a number of psychology experiments that show how difficult it can be for us to overcome the “diagnosis bias,” which they define as “our propensity to label people, ideas, or things based on our initial opinions of them.” In one study,  a group of MIT economics students - a population you’d expect to be paragons of rational thinking - were given a bio of a new professor who was about to conduct one of their class sessions. Unknown to the students, however, half of them received one version of the bio, while the other half received another version. The first version concluded with the following sentence.

"People who know him consider him to be a very warm person, industrious, critical, practical, and determined."

The second version was exactly the same except for two words (italics added) in the final sentence:

"People who know him consider him to be a rather cold person, industrious, critical, practical, and determined."

At the end of the class session, the students were asked to complete an evaluation of the professor – and, as the Brafmans observed, “Upon seeing the results, you’d think the students were responding to two completely different instructors.” Apparently, changing just two key words in the bio predisposed the first group of students to see the professor in a favorable, appealing light, whereas the second group saw him in a negative, off-putting light – even though both groups of students had experienced the same lecture!

But even though the Brafmans use this story to emphasize the dangers of putting filters on our perception of our environment, they also make the following statement that echoes the observations of Nassim Taleb in his book The Black Swan:

“Each day we’re bombarded with so much information that if we had no way to filter it, we’d be unable to function. Psychologist Franz Epting, an expert in understanding how people construct meaning in their experiences, explained, ‘We use diagnostic labels to organize and simplify.’”

Like Taleb, then, even the Brafmans recognize that filters such as diagnostic labels are essential to humans’ ability to comprehend the world around them. The goal is not to get rid of diagnostic labels. Instead, we need to be continually aware of the labels we’re using and be ready to challenge them in the moment to incorporate new information that might give the lie to them. 

In terms of the ExploreFlexSupport model I’ve previously described, this is one aspect of the “flexing” that the Daily Improviser needs to engage in: Continually reframing the useful structures he uses to make sense of his world when those structures are no longer useful.

The Personal Improvement Journey: It Starts with Feedback

In my leadership-development sessions, I like to illustrate a point about feedback by rotating my finger in front of me and asking the class participants, “Which way is my finger going, clockwise or counterclockwise?”

Invariably, someone will say, “It depends – to us it’s going counterclockwise, to you it’s going clockwise.” Quite correct, but I like to drive the point home (and, I admit, ham it up a bit) by marveling at my finger as it whips through the air and asserting, “No, no, it’s going clockwise! A perfect circle, if I do say so myself! Yep, I am doing one tremendous job of communicating clockwiseness!”

My intent, of course, is to show how misguided and even absurd it is to be so wrapped up in our own perceptions of our actions that we become oblivious to the people whose perceptions really matter: Our audience. Only by tuning in to the feedback from our environment can we answer the question: Are you receiving me?

Now, each of us probably knows at an intellectual level that feedback is good for us – that we need to see ourselves as others see us in order to identify areas for improvement. If we “know” about the benefits of feedback, though, why do so many of us still resist it? Why do we argue with it, rationalize it, minimize it, or – worse – question the motives or perceptions of the feedback-giver?

I’ve come to believe that the reason starts with a basic self-limiting belief: Because we don’t think we can do anything about it!

Certainly when it comes to simple matters (“You’ve got a burnt-out headlight”), we’re more open to feedback because the issue is easily corrected. But when we hear feedback about behaviors that we feel are hard-wired deep within us, we commonly treat the feedback as an attack on who we are. In response, we tend to circle the wagons, revert to defensive mode, and block ourselves even further from feedback that could help us improve.

So how can we reverse this downward spiral? First, we need to question the belief that our behavior is unchangeable. As I pointed out in my article on Carol Dweck, we need to cast off a fixed mindset and adopt a growth mindset in its place.

But just believing that we can change doesn’t tell us how to change a particular behavior. And this is where another barrier to our development presents itself: The belief that mastery of the behavior is somehow innate and natural and can’t really be learned.

As we’ve seen with Dan Klein’s work, however, even an “innate” performance of a task can be analyzed and broken down into its component behaviors. And if the task’s component parts can be identified, they can be taught.

But even if you believe Dweck and Klein, you might still say: Yes, I can change, and the skill can be learned – but there’s a big difference between knowing the steps of a task and actually performing them.

I’ve addressed this issue in a number of articles – mostly focused on the themes of engaging in targeted practice (as developed by Matthew Syed in his book Bounce), unlearning of old behaviors, and implementing strategies such as stealth learning that make the new behaviors a natural part of one’s everyday life.

In very simple terms, then, what I've described above is the journey to self-improvement. And, as with any journey, it starts with a single step – called feedback!


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POSTSCRIPT: Many if not most of the pictures I use in The Daily Improviser are just random shots intended to lend a little visual appeal and break up the text. Rarely do they actually illustrate any of the content in the article. However, the day after I wrote this article, I realized that the picture I posted - a shot I snapped of the Neil Armstrong Air & Space Museum in Wapakoneta, Ohio - actually echoed the last paragraph. So, I guess you can also think of feedback as "one small step for a person, one giant leap toward what the person can be."