Career Development: Don't Imitate an Imitation

I just finished reading Gerald Nachman’s outstanding book about the Ed Sullivan Show, Right Here on Our Stage Tonight, and was particularly intrigued by the story of one of the greatest of all impressionists, Will Jordan, generally considered the first person to do an Ed Sullivan imitation. Jordan’s Sullivan was so spot-on, and became so well known, that it became the virtual blueprint for the avalanche of Ed Sullivan impersonations that followed.  As Nachman notes, “Many of the [later] imitations were based on, or rudely stolen from, Jordan’s concept of Sullivan.”

Reading Jordan’s story prompted me to wonder: How often do people try to chart their own lives and careers by “imitating an imitation”?

Think of it like this: A person may embark on a certain career path based on what other people say she should be doing. Or she reads articles about “the top growth careers for the next decade” and thinks that money and opportunity should be the driving factors behind her career choices. Or she leaps onto the manager track because she hears that that’s the only way to make career “progress” (which she equates with getting promotions).

By listening to these outside voices, a person can form a mental image of who she should be and what she should be doing as she pursues her career. But this person in her head is often a pale imitation of who she really is, can be, and wants to be. So instead of trying to identify and capitalize on her true strengths and unique value, she spends her development efforts struggling to emulate this imitation self.

She then wakes up one day to wonder:  Why don’t things feel right? Why do I feel like an imposter?

The remedy for avoiding this “imitating the imitator” syndrome?  First, find your own authentic career fit. Dr. Beverly Kaye, CEO of Career Systems International, describes “career fit” as a match of three things – personal values, skills, and interests – with your current situation. Get clear about each of these three career fit components for you, and don’t shy away from exploring ways to realize the match – even negotiating with your manager to modify your current job.

Second, open your mind to the idea that, when it comes to career progress, “up is not the only way” (to quote the title of one of Dr. Kaye’s books).  Instead of a career ladder, think of it as a career lattice - a multi-directional model in which you can move up, sideways, or even back down, depending on your career or personal goals and your own assessment of career fit.  Again, expand your thinking as to how you can customize a path that works for you.

Keep in mind that career development starts with a clear understanding of your own unique, ideal combination of values, skills, and interests. Don’t imitate an imitation. If you’re going to model your career development actions on anybody, model yourself on an original – your own self-created vision of who you are and what will work for you.

For more resources on career development, see the Career Systems International website.

What Is Hip? An Example of Powerful Communication

In previous articles, I’ve described one of the hallmarks of great communicators: They connect their message with something the audience can relate to and care about.  A colleague of mine once described an experience of hers that I thought represented an outstanding example of communicating with impact.

As she was preparing to conduct a class in making effective presentations, my colleague met with the leader of the participant group to gather some background on the group's learning needs. The leader mentioned that members of the group frequently had to make persuasive presentations to senior leaders but too often became scattered and unfocused in their pitches.  The leader told her that his team often had “only one shot” at making an impression but frequently didn’t think through in advance exactly what they would say.

Armed with this information, my colleague went into the effective-presentations training and addressed the group with the following opening:

"I understand that many of you often only have one shot at making an impression with senior leaders, is that right?"

(Nods and murmurs.)

"Well, let me ask you this: If you only have that one shot, how effective do you think you'll be if you shoot from the hip?"

(And here she struck a "shoot from the hip" pose.)

Immediately the group sat up and took notice. Just by making this simple analogy (complete with pantomime), my colleague led them to realize the ineffectiveness of taking a scattershot approach to communicating with such an important audience. They were ready now to listen to ideas and approaches for thinking through their presentations in advance.

I can imagine as well that, by incorporating the leader’s “only one shot” comment in the training session, my colleague served to build her own credibility in his eyes.

  

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

My colleague’s story is a great everyday example of a device that performance improvisers refer to as a callback - that is, a reference in one scene to something that was said in a previous (and usually unrelated) scene from the same performance. Using callbacks truly challenges a performer to be fully present and to quickly note connections between things that otherwise might seem totally unrelated.

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

• Listen for key words and expressions – especially metaphors – in others’ speech as a guide to what they care about, how they think, and how they communicate.
• Ask people what matters to them – and then treat them in a way that shows you heard them.
• Explore the topic of building rapport with others.

Abraham Lincoln: The Great Communicator

In my previous article, I described one of the hallmarks of powerful communicators: The ability to connect their message with something else that listeners care about, as a way of influencing the listeners’ actions or attitudes. I also suggested that the Yes! Leader look to examples of great communicators from history to gain inspiration for crafting powerful messages.

I thought it might be fitting on this February 12 – Abraham Lincoln’s birthday – to cite one such example: The Gettysburg Address.

Quick, what do you recall of the Gettysburg Address? Of course you know that it was delivered at the height of the American Civil War. And,if you’re like most people, you probably recall the opening words:

Four score and seven years ago …

Perhaps you thought that Lincoln was merely using a colorful turn of phrase to refer to a particular date in the past. But actually, in those few words, Lincoln immediately signaled the intent of his speech and the conceptual bridge he wanted to build.

“Four score and seven years” from the date of his speech (November 19, 1863) referred to the iconic year of 1776 and the beginning of the American Revolution. By harking back to that event, Lincoln wanted to reframe the war’s purpose as less of a campaign to restore the Union, more of an effort to reconnect with the principles of freedom and equality upon which the nation was built. His intent was to link these principles (and who in his audience would dispute them?) with the great act - the Emancipation Proclamation - that marked the shift in the war’s focus.

Four score and seven years ago … in six words, Lincoln encapsulated his entire purpose of putting the upheaval of the Civil War in a larger context that transcended the political turmoil that preceded the taking up of arms. And by packing meaning into every part of his 268-word, two-minute speech, he created perhaps the most famous “sticky message” (remembered, understood, and inspiring) in American history.

Informing Does Not Equal Influencing

In my previous article, I described the distinction between informing and influencing and emphasized the importance of not relying on information alone to persuade an audience.

So – are there any situations where “informing” does reign supreme? How about the world of science? Aren’t scientists swayed only by the weight of factually proven information?

Not necessarily – and once again we turn to the story of the University of Wisconsin psychologist Harry Harlow for an example.

In my previous article on Harlow, I described his experiments with baby monkeys who preferred a terrycloth-covered wire “mother” to an uncovered wire “mother.” As I mentioned, at the time of the experiments, Harlow faced a huge uphill battle to get his revolutionary conclusions on the importance of parental nurturing accepted by the psychology establishment – and by the public at large.

So, even in the supposedly data-driven world of science, Harry Harlow clearly understood that he needed to persuade as much as inform. And he did so in a most ingenious way that brought his experiments home to generations of people – in the scientific community and the lay community alike. As author Deborah Blum describes it:

“[Harlow] needed the surrogate [mother] to look like more than a bundle [of cloth]. It needed personality. It needed a head and a face. If monkeys were going to look at this substitute mother, it needed to look back at them. And it needed to look back at the human observers, too; it needed to mean something real to people. Harry wanted them all – not just psychologists but mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles and stepparents and grandparents – to think about connection and affection.”

At the time, many people within Harry’s scientific team resisted the idea of fabricating a monkey-like head for the terrycloth “mother,” calling it “showmanship,” something beneath a real scientist. But as one of his team members later recalled:

“So [the head] might not have been [scientifically] relevant. But it was to the outside world, because once people looked at the surrogate like a mother – made a connection to human mothers as well – then you could start talking about things like mother love.” [emphasis added]

In this way, Harry anticipated one of the key points of the Heath brothers’ SUCCES principle in the book Made to Stick: To influence people, you need to get them to care about your message. And one way to do that is to connect your message with something else they care about.

Certainly Harry’s act of “showmanship” wouldn’t have been enough to persuade people if he didn’t have solid data to support his message (again, consistent with the Heaths’ point about creating Credible messages). But the point is that Harry knew that, without connecting his research to something the lay person could relate to and cared about, the data itself wouldn’t have had the impact he wanted to make on the wider world.

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

A Yes! Leader flexes his perspective in order to see the world through others’ eyes. In your own leadership practice, what would happen if you were to:

·         First inquire about others’ concerns, motivators, and values rather than immediately try to sway them to a certain point of view?

·         Think about creative things you can do to really bring your message home to others in a concrete way?

·         Research examples (from business, history, and elsewhere) of people who successfully translated an abstract concept into a concrete communication that connected with people “where they lived”?

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?)