Ed Batista

Jonathan Knee on Sales, Analysis and Operations

In Must I Bank? on today's WSJ Opinion page (I'm not sure how long that link will remain outside their paywall), Jonathan Knee of Evercore Partners and Columbia Business School astutely narrows down the career options faced by MBAs (and by extension to most business professionals) to three primary paths: Sales, Analysis and Operations:

Like all service professions, investment banking is fundamentally a sales job. Individuals who feed on human interaction, and have natural empathy (sales is about putting yourself in your customer's shoes), do well in sales. Being good with numbers, often assumed to be the key to banking success, will be of little use in getting a big office with a view if you do not have sales aptitude.

Private equity, like hedge funds and other investing jobs, is essentially analytical. These are solitary professions, and one is judged on the quality of the analysis produced. The quality of this analysis is in turn assessed on highly quantifiable metrics – like whether the stock you recommended went up or if the investment in a private company you sponsored turned out well. If the classic sales person is a deeply social being, the typical analytical person is a bit of a loner.

Working at a start-up or any other company is an operational job. Operators must communicate and "sell," both internally and externally, to effectively function in their positions. Operators must also be "analytical" enough to attain the domain expertise needed to achieve credibility in their operating role.

But the defining characteristic of the operating role is a commitment to a continuing level of involvement with the organization's objectives. A sales person makes a sale and moves on. Analytical people make a call or do a trade, and reap whatever rewards that insight yields. Operators are in it for the long haul.

Most jobs fall into one of these three categories: sales, analytical or operational. The odds that the same person would prosper equally in more than one of these environments are low. The personal qualities that each position draws upon are simply too different. Some...introspection in order to identify which category would likely yield the greatest personal satisfaction is an excellent investment.

...Dedicating oneself to any profession...should not be undertaken lightly. Doing so would ignore the unique gifts that each of us has to offer. It would also meaningfully reduce our chances of ultimate personal fulfillment.

You could argue that Knee's three-headed framework is an oversimplification.  But what I find useful is how many career paths can be boiled down to one of Knee's three options and how the framework's simplicity forces us to ask whether we truly understand the essence of a given profession.

I also think Knee's observation that banking is actually a misunderstood sales field (in which analytical skills are helpful but not sufficient) is a comment on our business culture's habitual failure to appreciate the importance of sales (and the interpersonal and relational skills that make a successful salesperson).  As an MBA working in a business school, I see this attitude reflected in how we develop future business leaders--strategy and finance are held in the highest esteem, while sales is something of an afterthought.

In my experience as an organizational leader, I found that operational and analytical skills were useful, but sales skills were essential.  The organization's effectiveness was impacted by my ability to analyze options and to execute operational plans, but its very survival depended on my ability to sell--to build relationships and convince others to invest their time, energy, faith and money.  As we grew, I hired people whose operational and analytical skills were stronger than mine would ever be--but everything started with that ability to sell.

I benefited greatly from the operational and analytical education I got in business school, but I suspect I would have been a better leader after graduation had there been a greater focus on sales, relationships and interpersonal skills, i.e. "soft" skills.

Someone who really gets this is Tom Peters.  From a November 2007 post (his first-ever in all caps, apparently, reflecting his rage):

BOB WATERMAN AND I, IN 1980, DEVELOPED A MANTRA IN THOSE DAYS OF YORE WHEN "STRATEGY [STRATEGIC PLANS] WAS EVERYTHING." WE SAID:

HARD IS SOFT.
SOFT IS HARD.

THE READILY-MANIPULABLE NUMBERS ARE THE TRUE "SOFT STUFF."

THE RELATIONSHIPS-LEADERSHIP-"CULTURE"-"ACTION BIAS" [OR NOT] ARE THE TRUE "HARD STUFF."

I'm hopeful that Stanford's new curriculum and its emphasis on experiential education and leadership development (soft stuff) is a step in the right direction.

The Fundamental Attribution Error Meets the No Asshole Rule

When I studied Organizational Behavior in grad school with Roberto Fernandez (pictured on the left), one of the most important concepts he taught was the Fundamental Attribution Error, which he described as:

Ascribing causality to personal characteristics when causality actually lies with the situation.

This bias, named by Stanford psychologist Lee Ross, leads us to award far more credit (or blame) to individuals for successes (or failures) than they deserve.  We see it at work most clearly with high-profile, archetypal leaders--presidents, CEOs, coaches, quarterbacks--who are hailed as geniuses when their organizations accomplish their goals and derided as bums when their organizations stumble.

But the bias is at work in ordinary interactions with our peers and colleagues as well.  We view those interactions through a lens that overemphasizes others' personal characteristics and underemphasizes the systems within which we operate.  As a result, we tend to ascribe positive characteristics to others when those interactions go well, and we tend to ascribe negative characteristics to others when those interactions are unpleasant.

This isn't to say that people are all the same, and different interpersonal experiences are solely the result of systemic factors.  Some people truly are wonderful, and others truly are, well, assholes.  But awareness of the fundamental attribution error helps us to expand our frame of reference, to question the accuracy of our perceptions and (as a result) to select interpersonal strategies that are likely to be more effective in future interactions.

I've been thinking about the fundamental attribution error recently in the wake of an unpleasant interaction with another person at work.  I came away thinking, "Wow, what an asshole" (and perhaps he did as well.)  After further reflection I realized that 1) there were a number of things I could have done differently to improve the outcome, and 2) there were a number of systemic factors at work that affected the other person's response to the situation.

But despite these efforts to hold myself accountable and take a broad-minded view of the other person, it's hard not to wonder whether my initial response was right even it if was biased: Maybe he is an asshole.  And this line of thought led me back to The No Asshole Rule, one of the most thought-provoking and entertaining books on organizational life I've ever read, by Bob Sutton (pictured on the right above).

Sutton describes two tests he uses to determine "whether a person is acting like an asshole":

Test One: After talking to the alleged asshole, does the "target" feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energized or belittled by the person?  In particular, does the target feel worse about him or herself?

Test Two: Does the alleged asshole aim his or her venom at people who are less powerful rather than at those people who are more powerful?

By these measures, my counterpart qualifies.  But Sutton goes on to make an important distinction between "temporary" assholes and "certified" ones:

Nearly all of us act like assholes at times... It is far harder to qualify as a certified asshole: a person needs to display a persistent pattern, to have a history of episodes that end with one "target" after another feeling belittled, put down, humiliated, disrespected, oppressed, de-energized and generally worse about themselves.  Psychologists make the distinction between states (fleeting feelings, thoughts and actions) and traits (enduring personality characteristics) by looking for consistency across places and times--if someone consistently takes actions that leave a trail of victims in their wake, they deserve to be called certified assholes.

And I just don't have enough data to draw a meaningful conclusion in this case.  Maybe the systemic factors I'm aware of are even more influential than I realize.  Maybe there are other factors I'm not aware of at all.  Maybe my own missteps are to blame.  Maybe he's a great guy, and I just caught him on a bad day.

It hasn't been a pleasant experience, but it has been instructive.  Reflecting on what I learned from Roberto Fernandez a decade ago, I'm inspired to look beyond my gut-level response and take a larger view of the situation, give the other person the benefit of the doubt, inquire into my own culpability and see the ways in which systemic factors shape our responses to others.  And reflecting on what I've learned from Bob Sutton, I realize that an awareness of the fundamental attribution error doesn't mean that my intuitive response is wrong--it may well be right, but only time and more data will tell.

At the very least, I've learned some valuable lessons about myself and my work environment, I have a heightened awareness of issues I should be paying closer attention to, and I'm better prepared to handle future situations like this one.  Hey, no one said experiential learning was always going to be fun and games.

A Bad Day

I had a less-than-perfect day yesterday, but at least it went better than the one I read about in Dear Abby this morning:

DEAR ABBY: I recently presented a research proposal. I did the best I could and was verbally attacked by my boss. She is often tactless and can at times be cruel.

I tried to defend my research, but perhaps I did it too emphatically and went overboard, because my team member turned off my microphone and apologized to the boss.

I understand some of the criticisms, but what bothered me was that other proposals were more flawed than ours, but were not attacked in a similar fashion. One thing led to another, and I broke down in tears at the table. Luckily, the boss did not see it, but other team members did.

Is showing emotion in public wrong? I tried to hold it in but couldn't. I was insulted and felt terrible for my team. Was crying unprofessional? Should I have run to the powder room to sob -- or would that have made it worse?

TEARY-EYED IN MALAYSIA

Ouch.  Abby, aka Jeanne Phillips, offers some support: "To show emotion in public is human, as long as one does not have a complete meltdown..." but agrees that Teary-Eyed should have left the room and challenges her (him?) to learn from the experience.  So what did I learn yesterday?

I was in a meeting where the dynamic changed suddenly, to my disadvantage, and I didn't have much leverage to alter it.  I was completely surprised by this turn of events, but I knew that yielding to my resistance would have upped the ante on both sides, and I didn't have many chips to begin with.  It was an accommodating moment if ever there was one--but because I've worked hard to overcome my natural tendency to accommodate and to tap into and express my competitive side, it took some effort to do what once came naturally to me.

I'd like to say I did a quick cost-benefit calculation and accommodated as a result of that rational analysis, but I didn't--I just felt the discussion flowing in a certain direction and realized I had to go with it.  I was upset afterwards, primarily because I wished I'd been better prepared for that possibility, but I later learned that one of my counterparts felt I'd handled things well.

I'd like to extract something deeper from the experience than "When meetings hit the rapids, go with the flow," but that's the gist of it.  At least no one turned my microphone off.

Photo by Yogi.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Scott Ginsberg on Asking Questions

What kinds of questions do you usually ask people?  We're often drawn to yes/no questions--they're simple and direct.  But when simplicity and directness aren't our only goals, yes/no questions can be problematic.  They surface a minimum of new information because they don't invite the other person into a dialogue and they constrain the boundaries of the conversation.

When we do move beyond yes/no questions, we tend ask why? questions, such as "Why did you do that?" or "Why did you do it that way?"  But why? questions can be heard as "What the hell were you thinking?" and provoke defensiveness.

In the Leadership Coaching class I'm involved with at Stanford, we encourage our students to ask questions that are designed to get the other person actively involved.  Such questions can be challenging and even blunt, but they're also open-ended and compel the other person to reflect before answering.

Scott Ginsberg recently posted a list of 62 useful questions, along with a one-line explanation of why they work.  It's an incredible resource, and I encourage you to read the whole thing, but as I expect to refer back to it regularly, here are the 20 I found most valuable:

10. How are you creating…?
Proves that someone has a choice.

13. How could you have…?
Focused on past performance improvement.

14. How do you feel…?
Feelings are good.

16. How do you plan to…?
Future oriented, process oriented, action oriented.

17. How do you want…?
Visualizes ideal conditions.

18. How does this relate to…?
Keeps someone on point, uncovers connections between things.

19. How else could this be…?
Encourages open, option-oriented and leverage-based thinking.

23. How might you…?
All about potential and possibility.

27. How much time…?
Identifies patterns of energy investment.

28. How often do you…?
Gets an idea of someone’s frequency.

29. How well do you…?
Uncovers abilities.

30. How will you know when/if…?
Predicts outcomes of ideal situations.

31. If you could change…?
Visualizes improvement.

34. If you stopped…?
Cause-effect question.

37. Is anybody going to…?
Deciding if something even matters.

49. What are you doing that…?
Assesses present actions.

50. What are you willing to…?
Explores limits.

53. What can you do right now…?
Focuses on immediate action being taken.

57. What did you learn…?
Because people don’t care what you know; only what you learned.

60. What else can you…?
Because there’s always options.

Notice the structure of these questions.  They're almost all how? or what? questions, which encourage the other person to take a moment and look inside before answering.  They can certainly be challenging--"What can you do right now?" is hardly a softball--but they're also non-judgmental, which minimizes any defensiveness.  Perhaps most important, they're not leading--they don't suggest that there's a "right" answer--which encourages the other person to answer thoughtfully and honestly, rather than framing an answer to please you.  Many thanks to Scott for sharing his insights.

Photo by Erik Charlton.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Three Questions with Mark McGuinness

Mark McGuinness is an executive coach based in London who specializes in working with artists and creative professionals and who writes regularly at Wishful Thinking.  He's also the most tech-savvy coach I know, and he's found a number of innovative ways to integrate technology with his interpersonal work.  As another fan of technology who happened to spend two years in art school as an undergrad, I was thrilled when Mark agreed to do a Three Questions interview with me--thanks, Mark!

1) You describe yourself as "a poet and a business coach," but which came first? Were you writing when you saw an unmet need for coaching among artists and creative professionals, or did you begin to write as a form of personal expression to complement your coaching practice?

Poetry came first. And it will last longest. I never planned on being a coach, I just wanted to write poetry. I got interested in hypnosis as a way of tapping into creativity, and as I like to do things properly I trained as a hypnotherapist. I found myself being consulted by writers who were stuck on their latest novel and actors with stage nerves - they were great fun to work with, and of all the clients I worked with they seemed to get the most out of the sessions. So I started looking for ways of working with more artists and creatives, and developing it as a niche. Most of them weren't really looking for therapy, just a way of kick-starting their creativity, so I started offering professional coaching instead of therapy.

After a few years another coach invited me to do some work with him at Vodafone, which introduced me to the world of coaching in business. One assignment led to another and I ended up doing a lot of work with various organisations, mostly helping managers to become better coaches for their teams. After a few years of that, I decided to put the creative and business coaching together and focus on companies in the creative industries - advertisting, marketing, TV, computer games, web development etc.

I felt reasonably confident of my coaching skills, having been doing it for around 10 years, but I wanted to get more of a sense of the big picture of the industry sector. So I took the MA in Creative and Media Enterprises at the Unversity of Warwick, which was a fantastic course - we studied the usual core business topics like strategy, marketing and organisation theory, alongside intellectual property law, theories of creativity and theories of the creative economy. A great mixture of inspiration and business knowledge, that made me look at my business and my poetry in a different light.

2) Your recent e-book on Creative Management for Creative Teams does a great job of explaining coaching, but I'm also curious about how working with your particular clientele affects your approach. What do you think you might do differently as a coach because of your focus on creative people?

Well two things I might do differently are not to wear a suit and not to call myself a coach! It's probably no surprise that creative types don't feel comfortable with suits, but I discovered through my work and via my MA research dissertation that a lot of people in creative businesses really don't like the word 'coaching'. They associate it with corporate management-speak, so the image doesn't work for them at all. But when we get down to work, the label doesn't matter, we're too absorbed in looking at the situation and finding new options.

Image aside, a lot of what I do with my creative industries clients is no different to what I would do with any other client. People are people after all. There are a lot of issues around communication, collaboration, teamwork, management and generally dealing with other people that are the same, whatever industry you're working in.

The obvious area that is different is working on the creative process, which we can approach from several different angles. Sometimes we focus on fine-tuning creative thinking strategies. Sometimes people have difficulty getting into the right state of mind for creative flow, so with my background in hypnotherapy I can help them find the right triggers for a particular emotional state. Time management doesn't sound like a particularly creative topic, but I show people that if you don't manage your workload it can play havoc with your creativity. Other times we might focus on the craft element - using your critical faculty to appraise and revise your work. And for me the creative process doesn't end until you've reached an audience with your work, so sometimes we're focused on presenting it to others (boss, client, public) in an engaging way.

Another nice thing about working with creatives is sharing what I've learned from my own practice as a poet. I find that a lot of clients are quite intrigued by poetry, so it can be very fruitful to look for the common ground between poetry and graphic design or singing opera or writing a film script or whatever it happens to be. Clients seem to find that helpful and it's fascinating for me - I get a window on all these creative worlds that I can never enter properly, but I can have a look inside as a visitor and see some of the amazing things people are doing.

3) One of the reasons I've enjoyed your work is your effective use of technology--photos from Flickr, a Facebook group, a Tumblr link blog, prominent links to your feed, etc.  I wish more people in the field did the same, but I know that many coaches and consultants are daunted by the prospect.  How do you decide which new tools are worth using, and how do you implement and support them?

I discovered blogging by reading Seth Godin's e-book Who's There? (PDF, 2MB) and it was such an exciting idea there wasn't a decision to make - I was going to do this and I was prepared to learn all the techy stuff I needed to get it up and running. So I immersed myself in the blogging world out of sheer enthusiasm, reading sites like ProBlogger and CopyBlogger and devouring what they were teaching.

A lot of the other tools came about by seeing cool things on other people's blogs and thinking 'How do they do that?' and investigating from there. These days time is a big factor for me. E.g. I wanted to do a links blog for a while but looked around for something that wouldn't add to my workload. I was already bookmarking pages on Delicious, so I wanted a Firefox extension that would allow me to simultaneously post to Delicious, my Tumblr links blog and StumbleUpon - I found the Mahalo share extension [for Firefox] which does a great job. It means I'm creating a whole new blog without any extra work - result!  [On a related note, see Mark's e-book on Time Management for Creative People.]

If you're thinking of taking the plunge with blogging and social media, the key thing to remember is that it's not about technology, it's about people. That's why they call it social media - the tools are designed to connect people and they do a great job, I've met loads of great people since I started blogging, and the tools are getting more user-friendly as they develop.

Bonus Personal Question: Your first New Year's Resolution for 2008 was maintaining a daily meditation practice.  How's it going?

So far so good! I've settled into a rhythm of meditating first thing in the morning for 15-20 minutes and now it feels like the normal thing to do. I'll admit there have been a few days I really didn't feel like sitting, but I found myself thinking 'Well, you promised your readers you would do it - what are you going to tell them?'. And sat down. So there you have it - the power of blogging!

The Value of Journal Writing

Most of the work I do as an executive coach (particularly at Stanford) involves asking clients and students to keep a journal.  In some cases this is a structured (and graded!) class assignment, and several times a year my academic duties include reading and commenting on students' journals while they're taking our experiential "Interpersonal Dynamics" class.  But even if someone's journal is just a series of informal, private notes, the purpose is to insure that the learning doesn't stop at the end of the coaching session or the class exercise.

My empirical experience as a journal-reader, as a coach working with journal-writers, and as an occasional journal-keeper myself has convinced me of the value of this practice, and this fits with my conceptual understanding of experiential learning cycles.  But I'm still left wondering why it actually works: What are the underlying processes that make journal writing a meaningful activity?

The work of neuroscientist Joseph Ledoux suggests some answers.  Ledoux's work has focused on memory, emotions and cognition, and he talked about memory with the Edge "World Question Center":

Like many scientists in the field of memory, I used to think that a memory is something stored in the brain and then accessed when used. Then, in 2000, a researcher in my lab, Karim Nader, did an experiment that convinced me, and many others, that our usual way of thinking was wrong. In a nutshell, what Karim showed was that each time a memory is used, it has to be restored as a new memory in order to be accessible later. The old memory is either not there or is inaccessible. In short, your memory about something is only as good as your last memory about it.

So journaling 1) compels us to access our memories of an experience, 2) creates another, more recent memory of that experience, and 3) creates a physical record of those memories to which we can return in the future.

But Ledoux's work on emotion and cognition suggests an even more powerful reason for the value of journaling.  A key theme for Ledoux is the distinction between emotional memories, which he defined in an Edge interview with John Brockman as "implicit, or procedural memories that are in the brain's systems, but not reflected in consciousness" and cognitive, or explicit, memories, which he defined as "the kind of memory we usually have in mind when we use the word memory in everyday speech."

Some coaching sessions and experiential learning activities evoke intense emotions in the participants, but as Ledoux told Brockman...

[T]he brain can produce emotional responses in us that have very little to do with what we think we're dealing with or talking about or thinking about at the time. In other words, emotional reactions can be elicited independent of our conscious thought processes. For example, we've found pathways that take information into the amygdala without first going through the neocortex, which is where you need to process it in order to figure out exactly what it is and be conscious of it. So, emotions can be and, in fact, probably are mostly processed at an unconscious level. We become conscious and aware of all this after the fact.

So journaling after emotional experiences allows us to process them when we can understand them cognitively and (in some cases) consciously for the first time.

But, of course, many otherwise valuable coaching sessions and experiential learning activities don't evoke strong emotions; is it helpful to journal in these cases as well?  Again, Ledoux's work suggests that it is.  From an interview with Ledoux conducted by the Dana Foundation:

There is both an upside and a downside to the fact that emotional states make memories stronger. The upside is that we remember our emotional experiences to a greater extent than non-emotional ones. The downside is that we remember our emotional experiences to a greater extent than non-emotional ones.

So journaling after non-emotional experiences bolsters our memories of these experiences and helps to insure that they're not lost among our more powerful and long-lasting emotional memories.

One final thought--Ledoux also discussed with Brockman the potent and even destructive power of emotional memories:

Many people have problems with their emotional memories; psychologists' offices are filled with people who are basically trying to take care of and alter emotional memories, get rid of them, hold them in check.

I'd never suggest that journal-writing is a substitute for psychological care, but I do wonder if the experience of cognitively processing emotional memories in a journal entry might have some transformative power, allowing us not only to better understand those memories but also to better manage and make use of them.

(Perhaps surprisingly, given my general fondness for technology, I'm a big fan of journaling with pen and paper.  The downsides are manifest--not searchable, not archivable, and the stuff does tend to pile up.  But the upside is that it's a lot less tempting to edit and re-write, and I just get my thoughts out and move on.  A sentence today is worth a page tomorrow.   I'm not picky about pens--I prefer cheap blue Bics--but I truly love Moleskine notebooks.)

Thanks to Mark Oehlert for refererring me to Ledoux in the first place. Photos by Del Far and culture.culte.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

Neuroscience, Coaching, Leadership and Learning

Inspired by the fascinating research being conducted by Matthew Lieberman, Naomi Eisenberger and other neuroscientists, some great neuroscience blogging by Stephanie West Allen, Jeffrey Schwartz and Roger Dooley, the work of Alvaro Fernandez and Co. at SharpBrains, and the prescient questions that Tom Wolfe has been asking for the past decade, I've become obsessed by the implications of neuroscience for the fields of executive coaching, leadership development and experiential learning.

I'm well aware of the limitations of current brain-imaging technology and of the excesses of "neuro-hype" (well-documented in Haaretz by Ofri Ilani and Yotam Feldman--thanks to Roger Dooley for the reference), and I've expressed concerns myself about the rejection of sound humanistic principles by neuroscience boosters--and yet I remain convinced that neuroscience holds tremendous promise for coaches, organizational development consultants and experiential educators.

I find Wolfe's work extremely compelling.  In the articles and talks I link to above (and presumably in the upcoming book on neuroscience to which he occasionally alludes), Wolfe asserts that Homo sapiens have in some ways freed ourselves from genetic determinism by means of language and, more precisely, speech.*  For at least the last 11,000 years (dating from the earliest evidence of agriculture), Wolfe claims, speech has allowed us to adapt to and overcome our environment far faster than our genes ever could.  From Wolfe's recent interview with Steve Heilig for the S.F. Chronicle:

Once you have speech, you don't have to wait for natural selection! If you want more strength, you build a stealth bomber; if you don't like bacteria, you invent penicillin; if you want to communicate faster, you invent the Internet. Once speech evolved, all of human life changed.

And perhaps the most important change is that we're no longer merely the expression of our genetic heritage; our speech-sodden brains are far more plastic and malleable than our hard-wired genes would ever allow us to be.  Advances in genetics in recent decades ultimately suggested that humans lacked free will--our fate was written in our genes.  But Wolfe sees things differently--more from his Chronicle interview:

I'm willing to say OK, we may have no free will, but speech creates so many variables that it doesn't really matter. No machines will ever truly fully figure the brain out, because the brain's performance is constantly altered or else constrained by this inanimate, rogue artifact you can't control, namely, speech. Laws you obey, scientific findings you assume to be correct, creeds you believe in, existing plans you go by, history as you understand it - these artifacts, once accepted, will affect your thoughts and behavior and use you more than you use them.  Culture is just too big a variable to explain away with genetics...

So what's the connection with my fields of executive coaching, leadership development and experiential education?  If genetic determinism would have us believe that "Leaders are born, not made," then Wolfe's theories on the power of speech and the meaning of culture suggest just the opposite.  We have "natural," genetically-defined tendencies that support or undermine our ability to lead and to be effective interpersonally, but those natural abilities don't define our actions in those spheres.  We can learn, we can adapt and we can improve.  Some leaders may be born with a genetic head start, but all truly effective leaders are made, not born.

And just as Lieberman, et al's research on the impact of talking about feelings provides a scientific explanation for a practice that I've used in my own work countless times, Wolfe's theories and the neuroscience on which they're based suggest that many of the practices we employ in coaching, leadership development and experiential education are effective because they're consistent with--and take advantage of--the way our brains function.  (And at the same time, neuroscience also has the potential to tell us which practices and techniques are ineffective and need to be updated or scrapped.)

As noted above, I'm mindful of the limits of neuroscience, and I'd hate to see the genetic determinism of recent years replaced by a "neuro-determinism" that simply substituted brain scans for gene maps.  But we're clearly at a point where humanistic professionals--executive coaches, OD consultants, experiential educators--need to incorporate neuroscience into their practices.

* Wolfe actually suggests that we rename ourselves Homo loquax--"Talkative man"--a proposal that may have been inspired by Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz, in which Miller called us Homo loquax nonnumquam sapiens--"Talkative, and sometimes wise, man."

How Am I Doing? aka T-Group Feedback

Have you ever had a performance review conducted simultaneously by 13 people?  It may sound terrifying, but I actually consider it one of the perks of my job.  As a Leadership Coach at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, once or twice a year I serve as a co-facilitator for teams of MBA students enrolled in Interpersonal Dynamics.  The class, casually known as "Touchy Feely," uses the T-group methodology developed by Kurt Lewin and the National Training Laboratory to help participants understand how they function in group settings, how they're perceived by others, and how they might modify their behavior to be more effective interpersonally.

The role of facilitator in a T-group is an unusual and challenging one--it's highly differentiated at the outset, because the experience is so unusual for the students and they look to the facilitators for guidance.  But the success of the group is dependent on the facilitators' ability to lead not through positional power or directive authority, but rather by modeling effective interpersonal behavior.  We have to "walk our talk" and do what we ask every group member to do: identify and share learning goals, express ourselves fully, and develop and grow in the process.  Of course, this isn't to say that the facilitators have mastered any of these practices--we've just had more experience with them in T-groups--and the most important modeling we do is making mistakes and repairing relationships.

But as this process plays out over the course of the group and the facilitators participate fully as (undifferentiated) members, we retain a special responsibility for maintaining a sense of safety and a supportive learning environment in the group.  This involves a delicate balancing-act between the ability to express myself candidly and spontaneously and a keen awareness of how my self-expression is affecting others in the group and the group as a whole.

It's hard but highly rewarding work, and one of the greatest values I derive from it is the sense that my own self-development can help others.  In fact, to be an effective facilitator I have to be committed to that process of self-development--I have to have some skin in the game--in order to be of service to the group.  So I find myself eager to hear what the group has to say in our "final feedback" exercise, which comprises the class's last T-group session.  Each person receives roughly 90 seconds of feedback from the other 13 people in the group, and that feedback is typically framed as (something like) "What I've appreciated about you..." and "What I wish for you..." or "What I hope you'll continue to work on..."

From a facilitator's perspective, it's a 20-minute performance review (conducted simultaneously by 13 people!), and even when it's hard to hear, I inevitably learn a ton.  We record the feedback so the recipient can listen to it later--when I was a student 10 years ago we used these; today, thankfully, we use these--and here's what I learned about myself this Quarter...

Things I've Done Well:

• I have a strong communication style: clear, concise, and powerful.
• I readily share my learning goals.
• I model behavior effectively, rather than directing or criticizing others' behavior.
• Even when I draw on past experience, I don't come across as condescending.
• Even when I'm an active group leader, I come across as subtle and helpful, rather than overbearing.
• People experience me as candid, genuine and honest.
• I inspire confidence and trust.
• I stand my ground in disagreements, which others respect.
• I maintain a balance between strength and vulnerability.
• I identify and express a wide range of feelings, including difficult feedback.
• I'm seen as thoughtful.  (But this has a downside--see below.)
• I share my intentions and feelings, which helps others understand my position and increases my effectiveness as a communicator.
• I'm seen as willing to take risks, which furthers learning and helps build trust.
• I'm seen as trying to improve myself and working actively on issues like everyone else.
• I can express caring and encouragement.  (But not always--see below.)
• I can identify and express a complex mix of feelings, even when they conflict.
• I model supportive confrontation.
• I help create a sense of safety in the group.
• By expressing compassion, empathy, vulnerability, I make it safe and comfortable for others to do the same.
• My eye contact and facial expressions help to convey both my feelings and a sense of genuineness and authenticity.
• People understand that I have good intentions, even when I'm pushing them.
• I'm seen as perceptive; I pick up on subtle feelings and ask people to explore them further.
• I'm able to identify and share a wide range feelings at all times--not only when I have strong feelings--which helps people understand me better.
• I'm seen as being genuinely concerned for others' feelings and their learning.
• I don't hesitate to check in with someone if I'm concerned that something might be wrong.
• I'm willing to push and challenge people.
• I'm seen as being good at understanding and expressing my emotions, and modeling this behavior helps others do the same.
• The strong language and sharp tone that some people experience as harsh (noted below) was effective and had a helpful impact with others.
• I'm willing to push and challenge people, but I also provide safety and support for those who need it.

I have to say that it feels great to read that, and given that many of these comments speak directly to my current learning goals, I feel that I made substantial progress this Quarter in my efforts to be more  effective interpersonally.  But there's still plenty of room for improvement...

Things I Need to Keep Working On:

• I can sound harsh at times, which undermines my effectiveness as a communicator.
• I could give more positive feedback.
• I expressed more emotion when I was pushed by others, and I might not have done that on my own.
• My voice gets soft when I'm expressing strong emotions (both positive and negative), and this can create confusion or diminish my impact.
• I continued to be a more active facilitator after a point when the group was capable of facilitating itself.
• I could be more lighthearted; I tend to be very serious at first, which can make it harder to build relationships.
• I could have shown more emotion and taken more risks sooner in the group.
• I can be perceived as figuring people out by labeling them or "putting them in boxes," and even when those labels are positive this can have a binding effect on the other person.
• Because I was influential in the group, my actions created unspoken norms; this helped to establish a sense of safety, but when certain norms became binding, my reluctance to engage in a discussion about them hurt the group.  ("People do model themselves on your behavior, even when it's not in their best interests.")
• I can be seen as too influential, which may undermine my ability to establish productive relationships.
• I can express many sides of an issue and many feelings, but this can also create confusion; at times it would be more effective to express only my most important or leading feeling.
• I can appear physically intimidating, tough, or cold (because of my look, gaze, dress, or posture) and this hides my warm and tender side.
• My comments can be too thoughtful; I can be too particular with my words and seem too controlled.
• I was initially seen as not spontaneous, which made it harder to trust me; becoming more spontaneous over time was essential in establishing trust.
• My comments initially seemed formulaic, although this changed after I showed more emotion, which also helped to establish trust.
• Stepping out of my authority role sooner would allow me to establish deeper connections with people.

I'm particularly struck by the theme that runs through the last few comments--I can definitely stand to ease up, let go, and just be myself sooner in groups, which would involve being both more spontaneous and more emotional.

Another key theme is the idea that being too influential has unintended negative consequences, from keeping others at a distance to locking a group into unproductive norms.  My reluctance to discuss norms stems from a belief that cognitive meta-discussions about "How we should act" are ultimately less effective than simply acting in ways that are consistent with your desired aims, but I do recognize that making some room for different ways of processing these changes would serve me better.

I'm left feeling proud of what I've accomplished, chastened by how much I have yet to do, eager to keep learning and growing, and (most of all) grateful for the efforts of all my colleagues--students, co-facilitators and faculty.

Photo by Mobilski.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.

William James on Experiential Learning

A few months ago I read Robert Richardson's William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism, and I'm still absorbing the lessons to be learned from this incredibly rich intellectual biography.  In the book's penultimate chapter, Richardson quotes from James's Some Problems of Philosophy:

The intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substituting a conceptual order for the perceptual order in which his experience originally comes.

The profound meaning of this quote for me is rooted in the fact that my work hinges upon the unique ability of experiential learning to expand both our self-awareness and our behavioral repertoire, and (by extension) upon the inability of conventional modes of instruction to achieve the same results.  Richardson continues:

For this aspect of his later thinking, James has been called anti-intellectual.  A better description of his real position would be anti-abstraction; best would be to recognize it as the culmination of a lifelong protest on behalf of experience.  This is not a new position for James, of course.  It is the same clear opposition to Plato, who denigrates perceptual knowledge as mere sense impressions, and contrasts them with ideas, which are true and eternal.  Jame's life work had been to reverse this polarity, to answer Plato.

From Wikipedia (as of today, anyway):

Plato...argues...that knowledge is always proportionate to the realm from which it is gained. In other words, if one derives their account of something experientially, because the world of sense is in flux, the views therein attained will be mere opinions. And opinions are characterized by a lack of necessity and stability. On the other hand, if one derives their account of something by way of the non-sensible forms, because these forms are unchanging, so too is the account derived from them.

I appreciate Plato's appeal to the instructor: If real knowledge is based on constant universal truths and unaffected by individual sense-impressions, the process of imparting knowledge suddenly become much more efficient.  As an instructor, all I have to do is tell you what you need to know.  And I can tell everyone the exact same thing.

But that model is much less useful in a field where there are few (if any) universal truths, which is the case in my areas of expertise: executive coaching, leadership development and group facilitation.  I can't tell anyone anything and have confidence that real learning will occur.  I can disclose my own sense-impressions, but the choice to view them as relevant and meaningful remains in the hands of the learner.  Ultimately all I can do as an instructor is act on hunches, ask questions, and make observations, and hope they register with the learner as lasting sense-impressions and that the learner infuses them with meaning.  And that meaning must be created out of their own, personal experiences as a leader or in a group.

I don't want to overstate the case against Platonic ideals; after all, I propose pseudo-universal truths all the time with the intention of using them as teaching tools.  But I realize that the map is not the territory, and the purpose of these tools is simply to help us better understand and make meaning of our own sense-impressions, our own experiences.

Howard Gardner on Influence

As I continue to think further about influence and power, Howard Gardner's Changing Minds offers an extremely helpful conceptual framework, one that I see as a counterpart to Cialdini's "Weapons of Influence".  From Gardner's 2006 edition:

[W]hat...factors might cause an individual to shift his or her perspective[?]... I have identified seven factors--sometimes I'll call them levers--that could be at work in these and all cases of a change of mind...

Reason

A rational approach involves identifying of relevant factors, weighing each in turn, and making an overall assessment.  Reason can involve sheer logic, the use of analogies, or the creation of taxonomies.

Research

Complementing the use of argument is the collection of relevant data... But research need not be formal; it need only entail the identification of relevant cases and a judgment about whether they warrant a change of mind.

Resonance

Reason and research appeal to the cognitive aspects of the human mind; resonance denotes the affective component.  A view, idea or perspective resonates to the extent that it feels right to an individual, seems to fit the current situation, and convinces the person that further considerations are superfluous.

Representational Redescriptions (Redescriptions, for Short)

A change of mind becomes convincing to the extent that it lends itself to representation in a number of different forms, with these forms reinforcing each other... Particularly when it comes to matters of instruction...the potential for expressing the desired lesson in many compatible formats is crucial.

Resources and Rewards

[T]he provision of resources is an instance of positive reinforcement... Individuals are being rewarded for one course of behavior and thought rather than another.  Ultimately, however, unless the new course of thought is concordant with other criteria...it is unlikely to last beyond the provision of resources.

Real World Events

Sometimes an event occurs in the broader society that affects many individuals, not just those who are contemplating a mind change.  Examples are wars, hurricanes, terrorist attaches, economic depressions--or, on a more positive side, eras of peace and prosperity...

Resistances

[W]e develop strong view and perspectives that are resistant to change... [A] mind change is most likely to come about when the first six factors operate in consort and the resistances are relatively weak.

Taken together, Gardner's "seven levers" and Cialdini's "six weapons" form a reasonably comprehensive conceptual model of influence--the central "layer" in my Influence Pyramid.  If these models are our starting point for understanding not just how influence works but also how we as individuals can be more influential, we can then move "down" the pyramid to consider 1) our self-awareness and our impact on others and 2) our internal beliefs about power, or "up" the pyramid to 3) translate these strategic concepts into tactical tools and 4) test them empirically.

Note that by focusing on Cialdini and Gardner, I don't mean to imply that their conceptual models are the only ones worth studying, but they're the most compelling ones I've encountered to date.  (And to Gardner's comments on redescriptions above, they also both translate well into different formats--in that regard, they're even more...influential.)