Are You a Maximizer? Part 2

See Part 1 to assess where you are on the continuum.

What are the implications for how you make choices when you are in a Leadership role?

The Maximizer in you can make a great manager when you leverage your thoroughness, are careful about decisions, and hold your teams to high standards. On the extreme end, however, you can come across as a controlling perfectionist who is impossible to please and who overanalyzes everything.

Satisfiers’ strengths as managers can be your flexibility, your speedier decision-making, and your willingness to set general criteria without obsessing about the details. If your Satisfier is on steroids, you may be too willing to settle quickly, fail to review decisions made, or accept mediocrity.

The best leaders recognize that a balanced and flexible style works best. Sometimes the project or decision really IS important, and in those circumstances it is important to follow the details closely and progress carefully at every stage.  Let’s face it, though – most of the work done in organizations needs to be done well, not perfectly.

So the best approach, which lies halfway between Satisfying and Maximizing, is to work with your team to set very clear expectations about outcomes and deadlines – the WHAT you want – but then leave the smart people you hired to identify the path they will follow  — the HOW — to meet those expectations, without you watching over their shoulders or demanding perfection at every step

Remember, Leadership is not about a title: Anyone can be a leader who adjusts their decision-making style based on the relative importance of a the work – knowing when to hold high standards and take it slowly & carefully, and when to allow flexibility and focus on progress vs. perfection.

Are You a Maximizer? Part 1

We were waiting to pay for our groceries and realized we’d forgotten the pasta for that evening’s dinner party.  I raced back down the aisle and… um… did you know there are over 50 different options for linguini alone?  Which will our guests most prefer?  Egg-free, whole wheat, organic, tomato or spinach-infused, fresh or traditional, generic or brand name…??

By the time I returned to the checkout I was in a state of high anxiety from trying to make The Best Linguini Decision. “Don’t ever send me to the pasta aisle alone,” I begged my wife.  She just shook her head.

We’re like this with clothes, too. If I need new pants they must be The Best Deal, so I check ads for sales, visit every rack in at least three stores, try on numerous pairs, then (finally) choose.  Cheryl, on the other hand, will visit one store, try on maybe two pair, and buy one.  Done.

Maximizer versus Satisfier

When it comes to making decisions we all fall somewhere along the Maximizer-Satisfier scale. (to find where you land, take this assessment)

Maximizers need to be assured that every purchase or decision they make was the BEST possible. Yet how to know if any given option is the best?  Research.  Get more data.  Delay the decision.  Talk to friends.  Make the decision, but… then worry about whether it was the absolute best choice.

Satisfiers simply want to make a GOOD decision. Like Maximizers, they set out to meet specific criteria in their decisions and purchases.  The difference is that Satisfiers seek excellence, yet don’t obsess over achieving the Absolute Best.  Once they make a decision that is good enough, they never look back.

Let Go to Feel Happier

A continual focus on making the absolute best decisions can be a core talent but, like any strength, can become a weakness when overused. We live in a world of seemingly infinite choices anymore.  If you are unaware of your own drive to always make perfect decisions, you can end up generally unhappy because you’re constantly shy of a near-impossible standard.

Other ideas to help Maximizers reduce the anxiety of decision-making:

1. Choose when to choose. Decide to restrict your options when the decision is not crucial.  For example, make a rule to visit no more than two stores when shopping for clothing.
2. Learn to accept “good enough.” Settle for a choice that meets your core requirements rather than searching for the elusive “best.”  Then stop thinking about it.
3. Don’t worry about what you’re missing. Consciously limit how much you ponder the seemingly attractive features of options you reject.  Practice by focusing on the positive aspects of the choices you make.
4. Temper expectations. “Don’t expect too much, and you won’t be disappointed” is a cliché.  But that advice is sensible if you want to be more satisfied with life.

I hold high standards for my work, but have learned that striving constantly to create perfection is not only exhausting but it tends to feed my procrastination. To counter my own Maximizer tendencies, I’ve asked others for advice.  Now, when I am working on non-critical project I remind myself that “80% is good enough;” and when it comes to meeting deadlines, I consider the words of thought leader Seth Godin, “Done is better than perfect!”

Next: Maximizer and Satisfier in Leadership

Be bold, step into your fear!

Love this quick video — an inspiring reminder that our fears are most often ONLY in our minds.

Be Kind, Not Nice

I recently received a bit of wisdom from a colleague of mine, and it was very important in a conversation I had today with a client, so I”m passing on to you.

First, an important distinction between being NICE and being KIND

Nice is about what the other person is thinking and feeling–it’s their perception of the situation.

Kind is about what you choose to do and why.

When you want to be nice it’s because you want to please the other person; you want everyone to be happy. When you want to be kind it’s because you want to do what is right regardless of how other people feel about it. Nice is permissive. Kind is grace-based discipline

If I want to be nice to my children I will give them what they want, not do what is needed, seek to please them and hope they like me. If I want to be kind to my children I will give them blessings, do what they need, seek to teach them and hope they learn. Nice manipulates. Kindness trains.

What is the lesson for leadership and life?

When you fail to provide critical steering feedback to a team member who is heading down the wrong path, you are being nice.  They will go home and feel good about you and the workplace.  When you intentionally create an UNCOMFORTABLE conversation in which you share your observations and engage that person around improving, you are being Kind.  For if no one tells them, how will they know of the issue?

If you have a friend who’s lost their job, it’s probably important to be Nice to them for a short time. Let them cry on your couch.  Invite them over for drinks and a chance to vent about the mean old company.  But don’t be nice forever.  As a friend, you must be Kind, and look your friend in the eyes and say, “You need to find a job, and you can’t do that from your couch.  I’m happy to help you create a more positive story about your last boss, but I’m not going to listen to the old story anymore.  It’s time, my friend, to get over it.”

If you really, truly want what’s best for yourself and for others, think beyond what will allow everyone to feel good about THIS conversation. Instead, think ahead and, if necessary, step into a NEW conversation that may feel uncomfortable, yet will provide the push or shove or difficult feedback — and support — for what is needed in the future.

Be Kind, not Nice.

Apply the Learning of the Masters to your Goals

When I entered the rotunda of the Galleria dell’Accademie in Firenze (Florence) for my first live look at this Italian icon, it literally took my breath away. 17 feet tall, sleek and powerful, Michelangelo’s David is truly a marvel — accurate down to the veins on the back of his hands and the chipped toenails on his feet, I fully expected him to start breathing any second.

“This,” I thought, “is a work of brilliance!” Ah, but there’s more to the story, as I learned.

Inspiration AND Perspiration

The European Renaissance was a time of great innovation marked by a surge of new knowledge and captured in architecture, sculpture, music, and painting.  Before I visited Italy this spring, I imagined gifted Renaissance masters spending their days in sunlit studios, painting or sculpting great works of art in a flowing, effortless climate of creativity and support.

The truth, I learned, was far from my fantasy. Many of those whom we now call Masters were, in their time, mere wage slaves, often struggling to live on a fixed budget set by a wealthy patron who wanted a specific project done on a deadline.  Good oil paints, gilt, quality canvas, and fine Carrera marble were not cheap, so these artists were very careful in their use of resources.

Out of necessity, then, they spent long hours preparing for their commission. A painting would be sketched in parts and done in miniature to work out spacing many times before moving to a larger field.  Then there would be endless pencil and charcoal sketches before final application of oils and gilt onto the final medium (e.g. wood, canvas, or the dome of a cathedral).

Sculptors followed a similar process. First, multiple sketches; then multiple miniatures of different sizes and in different poses and in different media (e.g. clay, stone) and with varying levels of detail attended to in each piece, so that by the time they put chisel to marble they literally “knew” the work in their head, hands and heart.

Practice is the surest path to Mastery.

I now appreciate that the works of the masters really was WORK. Sure, some of them were brilliant.  Yet it was their attention to the tiny details that led to “perfection.”  Before he created the David in its full splendor, Michelangelo made hundreds of sketches and miniatures, gradually increasing in size and detail.  The final product, then, was not a singular act – it was the manifestation of practice, practice, and more practice.

Apply the Learning of the Masters to YOUR Goals

Follow the example of the Masters to improve your probability of success:

1. Picture your goal. 80% of your brain’s processing is visual, so writing or drawing what you want brings your goal alive.
2. Create it in miniature. Big, life-shifting goals generally flop because your system can’t shift that much, that fast.  Break your goal into tiny pieces you can implement one at a time, to see how they “fit” into your life/work.
3. Get feedback. Share your progress with others, both for support as well as for ideas to make it better/easier.
4. Adjust, adjust, adjust. The “marble” of your current habits may not cut exactly as you planned, so don’t be afraid to tweak your design as you go so that it fits into your current reality.
5. If it’s not working for you, take it as a lesson and move on.  The most moving artwork I saw in Italy was Michelangelo’s “Unfinished Slaves,” a major commission he never finished.  Yet he saw them as a great accomplishment, because he learned so much from the process.
6. Ground it in your bones. Work on some part of your goal every day.  The journey is about progress, not perfection. Some days you’ll finish a mural – other days a single brushstroke may be all you can do – yet your constant attention will build goal intimacy.
7. Risk, learn, and grow. Michelangelo was a sculptor, and he resisted taking up a brush – yet today the Sistine Chapel is considered his greatest performance.
8. Finally, find the Joy. In the end, choose goals that take care of your passions and feed what YOU really want from life, career, and relationships.

Achieving Mastery of you and your life is simple, yet not easy.  Good luck on your Master’s journey!

Are you your own worst critic?

I was reminded by this 2 minute video of my own habit of undervaluing myself and my contributions. It’s a human thing — we all do it. Let this be a reminder that you — yes, YOU — have brilliance in you!

Obvious to you. Amazing to others. from Derek Sivers on Vimeo.

Exercises to Strengthen Your Emotional Muscles

Once you’re aware that you have the power to manage your own emotional state, how might you get better at it?  What comes with awareness and observation are more sophisticated/purposeful skills.

I offer the following simple exercises, each focused on a strengthening a different dimension of Emotional Intelligence.

SELF AWARENESS

• Watch Your Emotions: For 2-3 weeks, diary your emotions. After every interaction, take 1 min to give that interaction a “score” (e.g. thumbs up, down, neutral, or a number 1-10) on effectiveness, then name the top 1,2,or3 emotions you felt during that interaction.  (over time, you will notice patterns — which emotions you spend more time in, trigger situations, etc).  Awareness is crucial to deepening your emotional intelligence
• Practice centering. Stand Tall, breathe deeply, connect to the ground, and feel into your Confident body

SELF-MANAGEMENT

• Practice Deliberate Emotions: Identify one or two emotions OTHER than calm/confidence that you would like to inhabit more often. What is the body and breath and story/assessment that go with that emotion, for you? Practice moving yourself into that intentional emotional space once or twice each day.
• Practice Recovery (Note: play carefully, here!): Find a safe space, e.g. at home, or alone in office. with intention, shift into anger, irritation, or some other emotion that gives you trouble, usu by reliving an incident/story. Give yourself a couple minutes to hold that intensity (it helps to set a timer, first). Notice all the visceral signs of that emotion in your body, breath, pulse, thinking, etc. When timer goes off, practice releasing that intensity and moving yourself back to center/calm. (Strengthens your ability to return to calm/center under stress)

EMPATHY/Other Awareness

• Strengthen Awareness: While sitting in meetings, act as observer of each of the other players or at least the key players. Without any assessment as to right/wrong or good/bad, see if you can identify — from language, body language, tone, other visible physical signs — what mood or emotional space that person is in. Do this several times during a meeting, noticing changes. (Strengthens ability to read others).
• Advanced: same exercise, except apply to the overall GROUP mood/emotion. Which person(s) appear to be the stronger influences on that group mood? (P.S. we often do this without realizing we are doing it.  The focus here is on picking up the “mood of the room” with intention).
• Check Awareness: In conversation with others, try to identify/name the mood you are feeling from them. Check your assessment by asking, “You seem ______. Am I reading you correctly, in this moment?”  (Refines your emotional radar)

RELATIONSHIPS/INFLUENCE/Other Management

• Mirroring/Drawing: When in conversations with others, selectively try one of the following:

A) purposefully mirror the mood/emotion of the other, thru standard mirroring techniques, e.g. matching body posture, energy, speed of speech, etc. Notice what effect that has on the conversation, when you Match

B) do the opposite of A — purposefully choose a DIFFERENT space, and shift into that in your speech, energy, non-verbal language, tone, etc. Hold that space with intention. Notice what effect it has on the conversation when you Draw the other

(This pairing is a training exercise/practice for negotiation, e.g. sales conversations, any situations where you seek to influence someone else — a frequent focus for leaders — or where you are striving to hone your facilitation skills, which include being able to shift the emotional space when appropriate)

How do you react when your world view is challenged?

WARNING: THIS POST MAY CAUSE YOU TO REACT STRONGLY – OR NOT. Please read the notes in blue before you read the main article.

This post is not about happiness, but it is about coaching. It is about noticing something about yourself — specifically, how do you react when you are confronted with something that really pushes your buttons?

I follow Seth Godin’s blog.  Seth is a prolific, creative, and in-your-face-highly-provocative thinker.  He challenges other’s perspectives.  He provokes and argues opposite angles.  I follow him because much of his work is in marketing, an area I study for my business.

A couple days ago, Seth published a piece that really challenged my thinking. When I followed the links to his data sources, I discovered some really vitriolic comments and a lot of fear and anger… not because of Seth, but because of the topic.   I had to read his post and the source articles several times to even absorb the message, because it is so wildly different from my world view and what I believe.

WHY AM I RE-POSTING HIS STUFF?

Because this is at the heart of real change. One the most significant obstacles to real change in human beings is that we believe stuff — and when our core beliefs are challenged, we tend to react by either ignoring new data that disproves our beliefs OR we vehemently argue against the new belief, to prove that we are right.

In my coaching, I help my clients step back and OBSERVE themselves, and notice their own beliefs and their behaviors and reactions. When you can observe yourself objectively, you become incredibly powerful at making new choices, considering new possibilities, or changing your behavior.  But first, you must NOTICE how you react and how you believe.

I invite you to read this post AS A COACHING EXERCISE.  If you are curious, follow the links to the Stats and the Images (below).  I do NOT advocate one point of view over another, but I ask the same question as Seth does:  How does this resonate with you?

Again, I am not making a statement — this is just a coaching exercise. See my questions at the end, in blue.

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The triumph of coal marketing

Do you have an opinion about nuclear power? About the relative safety of one form of power over another? How did you come to this opinion?

Here are the stats, and here’s the image. A non-exaggerated but simple version of his data:

For every person killed by nuclear power generation, 4,000 die due to coal, adjusted for the same amount of power produced… You might very well have excellent reasons to argue for one form over another. Not the point of this post. The question is: did you know about this chart? How does it resonate with you?

Vivid is not the same as true. It’s far easier to amplify sudden and horrible outcomes than it is to talk about the slow, grinding reality of day to day strife. That’s just human nature. Not included in this chart are deaths due to global political instability involving oil fields, deaths from coastal flooding and deaths due to environmental impacts yet unmeasured, all of which skew it even more if you think about it.

This chart unsettles a lot of people, because there must be something wrong with it. Further proof of how easy it is to fear the unknown and accept what we’ve got.

I think that any time reality doesn’t match your expectations, it means that marketing was involved. Perhaps it was advertising, or perhaps deliberate story telling by an industry. Or perhaps it was just the stories we tell one another in our daily lives. It’s sort of amazing, even to me, how much marketing colors the way we see the world–our reaction (either way) to this chart is proof of it.

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OK, end of Seth’s post.  Here are your questions:

1. Were you able to OBSERVE your reaction, or were you subject to your reaction?
2. Were you able to respect this point of view as a valid one (even if you disagree?) or did you feel compelled to immediately argue with it?

If the latter, pay attention, as you may be doing that in many parts of your life and be totally unaware of how rigidly you see the world.  This is not about being right or wrong, but about being able to hold multiple, sometimes conflicting view points so you can hold more reasonable conversations and make your decisions from a more informed/wider base.

OK.  Take a deep breath.  Thanks for playing the Leadership Game.

Do it backwards for a Change!

Have you ever found yourself stuck in a rut, seemingly unable to change a habit or a feeling? Have you heard the quote, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results” and thought, “What does that mean for me?”

One way to creatively approach any stubborn situation is to Reverse It – do it backwards, upside down, or from an opposite point of view.  The Reverse It technique pulls you out of the fog of Habit and helps you notice or shift things that were not possible when you were following your usual process.

I use the Reverse It technique in many areas of my life. For instance, when I find myself getting bored with my fitness routines, I can change up simply by starting at the end.  When I walk, I nearly always turn left out of my driveway, but when I turn right instead I have a totally different walking experience.

What are some ways you might Reverse It to shake up a part of your life that you want to change?

1. Instead of trying to take a deep breath to calm down in the middle of a tough conversation, try taking a minute BEFORE the conversation to calm and center you.
2. If getting to the gym is not working for you on your current schedule, flip your visit to the other end of your day and see if shifts your motivation and/or energy.
3. Start a few conversations by stating what YOU want instead of first dancing around and trying to figure out what the other person wants.
4. Park at the back of the lot instead of the front, and use the extra minute of walking to let your body warm up.
5. Come in to a building via a different entrance and notice how things look from a different perspective. For example, enter your workplace via the customer/patient entrance vs. the employee entrance.  Or use the front door vs. the side door of your church/temple and notice the new view.
6. If you’re rushed in the morning, but then spend an hour glazed over in front of the TV at night, try reversing that hour of your day – move up your bedtime and “flip” an extra 30 minutes into your morning.
7. Instead of waiting for someone to recognize or appreciate you, reverse the conversation and take time every day to offer a compliment or gratitude to someone else.

When you change the way you approach a situation, you create new points of view that can lead to different outcomes and different emotions.

An Action Step

Back to that quote:  stop the insanity of repeating old, ineffective behavior!

Pick an aspect of your life or work that is “not working” for you right now.  Step back and ask, “In what way(s) might I Reverse this to create a different motivation, reaction, or perspective for myself?” Then put that opposite into practice a few times and notice what you learn from the experience.  If your outcomes change, then you have a winner!

Change Starts With YOU

New habits can be tough to change in the workplace. People like predictability. When you show up differently – even if the change is for the better – it is still different, and you may feel pressure from others to go back to how you were “before.”

Still, change starts with you. Choose a specific situation, conversation, or relationship that sometimes creates difficulty or unhappiness for you. Notice how you behave or choose in that situation. Now, notice the internal conversation you have with yourself each time it occurs. Finally, try shifting that conversation to something more positive.

An executive client was having difficulty working with his CEO because he felt the boss was too hard to pin down. His perception was that the CEO changed her mind too often and was unable to make a decision. He found himself so focused on taking notes and analyzing ideas that he was constantly exhausted after their meetings.

We looked at the situation from different angles and my client considered the fact that the CEO, a high-energy extravert, was perhaps just “thinking out loud” and did not need him to create action plans. So he shifted his internal conversation from, “Oh no, here we go again” to “Let’s have some fun with this!” He stopped taking notes and began to practice active listening when the boss went off on tangents.

A few weeks later she thanked him for being such a great listener, saying, “I really appreciate being able to talk things over with you. Sometimes I just need to sort out the issues before I talk with the rest of the team.”

Practice does not make perfect. Practice does, however, build capacity and can serve to recalibrate us at whatever level we aim.

Remember, Leadership is not about a title. Anyone can be a leader who stretches new “muscles” and practices new behaviors that improve their relationships with others.

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