Ed Batista

Weak Ties, Well-Being and Work Today

What types of interactions support well-being? Who helps us feel a sense of belonging and how? And what are the implications for our professional lives today?

A body of research dating back half a century has explored the distinction between "strong ties" and "weak ties" among people, reflected in the amount of time spent together, the emotional intensity and intimacy of the relationship, and the degree of reciprocity. The former typically exist between family members and close friends, while the latter characterize relationships between more distant colleagues and acquaintances.

Influential work by Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter showed that weak ties play a special role in the spread of information throughout social networks. [1] Because people who share a strong tie tend to be similar, and because strong ties often overlap, forming a node in a network, people in these relationships tend to have access to the same information.

Weak ties create more diverse connections across nodes, facilitating the dissemination of novel information. This is why you're more likely to hear about a job opportunity through a weak tie, from a colleague or acquaintance, which was one of Granovetter's most important findings.

More recent work by psychologist Gillian Sandstrom, among others, has demonstrated the impact of interactions with weak ties on our sense of well-being and belonging: "Community members who had, on average, more weak tie interactions than others reported greater feelings of belonging. Furthermore, people reported greater feelings of belonging on days when they interacted with more weak ties than usual." [2]

Subsequently Sandstrom and colleagues conducted a broad survey of related research, highlighting several noteworthy points:

• A more diverse social network (including both strong ties and weak ties) contributes to improved physical health.
• Weak ties are more likely to have helpful information regarding difficult life events.
• In some circumstances people prefer receiving support from weak ties rather than strong ties.
• Minor interactions with weak ties help satisfy our need to belong and contribute to well-being. [3]

That last point takes on a heightened significance when we consider that our understanding of what it means to "belong" is often focused on connections with strong ties. For example, in another influential paper psychologists Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary emphasized the extent to which our sense of belonging derives from relationships in which we experience lasting bonds characterized by emotional expression and intimacy. [4]

While my own work over the years has demonstrated the importance of safety, trust, and intimacy in supporting improved interpersonal performance [5], it's also been my experience that seemingly superficial "small talk" plays an outsized role in helping people develop these qualities in relationships and groups. [6] And it's clear that we can initiate such interactions more readily with weak ties--and that in many cases it's unlikely or unnecessary that weak ties become strong ones. [7]

Three years after the onset of the pandemic, I think these findings have meaningful implications for professionals who continue to work remotely and for leaders who are seeking to find the right balance of virtual and in-person work within their organizations. Recent data cited by The Wall Street Journal indicates that U.S. office occupancy is at 49 percent of pre-pandemic levels, and that figure has increased minimally over the past year, after rising from a low of 15 percent to over 40 percent in 2020-21. [8] It seems quite plausible that we've arrived at a "new normal."

I spend all day, every day talking with leaders in my coaching practice, and their experience mirrors these figures. With notable exceptions in fields such as biotech or manufacturing, my clients shifted to virtual work in 2020, slowly returned to spending some time in an office over the past two years, and have largely settled into a permanent-hybrid culture. Other than employees who never left the lab or the factory floor, almost no one is back in an office with all their colleagues five days a week. This has a number of benefits, as I identified in mid-2021:

Rather than viewing remote work during the pandemic as a temporary response to a crisis, my clients generally see it as a learning experience that enabled their organizations to become more flexible on a permanent basis. The benefits of this flexibility include responsiveness to employees' preferences, the ability to attract and retain talent in a wider range of geographical locations, and even increased productivity in some circumstances. The idea that remote work prevents hustle certainly hasn't occurred to my clients, although its impact on culture and idea generation is more complex. [9]

But this doesn't mean there aren't downsides to working virtually, or that my clients haven't struggled to address them, as I also noted: "It's becoming apparent that having every individual decide on a daily basis whether or not to join their colleagues in person will be sub-optimal and possibly dysfunctional. Instead, making the benefits of remote work sustainable will require a collective understanding of when, how, and why co-located work is necessary." [10]

The research on weak ties offers compelling evidence that organizations can support employees' sense of well-being and belonging by creating opportunities for such interactions among colleagues. I suspect that this is one of the most important benefits of in-person experiences, even (and perhaps especially) when they occur infrequently. But there are certainly ways to foster such interactions virtually, although this requires a much more deliberate and thoughtful approach than simply stringing Zoom meetings back-to-back-to-back all day. What might any of this look like in practice?

In-Person Events

As I wrote in mid-2021, my clients generally reject the idea that all employees need to be in the same building constantly, but they do agree with some of the concerns raised by leaders who want to get "back to the office":

They agree that aspects of organizational culture--specifically relationship-building and social cohesion--are supported by consistent in-person experiences, and they also agree that certain types of idea generation are more effective when people are physically present in the same room. However, they don't agree that everyone in the company needs to be in the office five days a week. Instead, they're determining which groups of people need to be co-located, for how long, and how often in order to accomplish these goals, and this can take any number of forms. Typically this involves more frequent in-person gatherings of the executive team and occasional in-person events for larger, more heterogeneous groups of employees. The key here is recognizing that in-person time is the scarce and valuable commodity, so long-term planning is critical, and time and effort must be expended to make the most of these opportunities. [11]

That trend has continued over the past two years. Most of my clients' executive teams conduct a substantial amount of their work virtually, and most of them include one or more members who live in different locations. But almost all of them get together in-person on a consistent basis, often for several days a month or even one or two weeks per quarter. And these events typically include a mix of structured activities and open, unstructured time intended to promote social interactions.

On a larger scale, most of my clients hold in-person events for functional teams and in some case the entire company. These occur less often, largely to minimize expenses and maintain productivity, but most clients who were holding such events pre-pandemic have continued to support them. And again, such events are generally designed to foster increased weak tie interactions.

Virtual Activities

Many in-person weak tie interactions occur as the result of serendipity and are unplanned--we encounter someone in a hallway, find ourselves behind them in a checkout line, or sit next to them at a meal. But virtual interactions that take place in real time, with both parties present, require advance planning and coordination. This not only adds a logistical burden but can also diminish the perceived value of the interaction, causing it to feel forced or awkward.

We're still in the process of identifying the best ways to encourage weak tie interactions in virtual settings, but there are steps we can take. At the outset of the pandemic when countless numbers of people experienced a dramatic decrease in weak tie interactions as the result of lockdowns, institutional closures, and social distancing, Sandstrom and Harvard Business School professor Ashley Whillans suggested several strategies, including the use of asynchronous channels that maintain a connection without requiring real time presence:

1. Use informal modes of communication.

Phone calls can feel intrusive, and emails seem impersonal. Instead, try reaching out to a weak tie via text message or Facebook. This will allow the other person to respond whenever they can, so you don’t need to worry about reaching out at the wrong time.

2. Don’t expect a reply.

Rejection rates when reaching out to a weak tie are extremely low--in one of Gillian’s studies fewer than 12 percent of people who talked to strangers experienced a rejection. [my emphasis] However...if you don’t get a response, don’t take it personally.

3. Set an expectation for a short and simple conversation.

Your goal is to let the other person know you are thinking about them and open up the opportunity to chat, if they want to. It’s okay to keep the conversation short: In recent data one of us collected, a "just right" conversation with a stranger was about 10 minutes long... [12]

But relying upon individuals to take the initiative to reach out virtually to weak ties will always be a partial solution. Organizations bear a responsibility to develop a virtual culture that supports weak tie interactions as well. What helps?

• Experiment with a range of virtual activities that go beyond business-as-usual: Rituals for Virtual Meetings (Kürşat Özenç and Glenn Fajardo, 2021) [13]
• Create more space for small talk and serendipity by managing time effectively: Take Five (Stop Meeting Back-to-Back-to-Back!)
• Provide support so employees can invest in tools and equipment to improve their virtual experience: Better Conditions for Working Remotely.

And on occasion, even weak ties may want to invest some time and energy to get to know each other better and perhaps grow a little stronger:

• CONNECTIONS: Meaningful Virtual Conversations

 

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Footnotes

[1] The Strength of Weak Ties (Mark Granovetter, American Journal of Sociology, 1973)

[2] Social Interactions and Well-Being: The Surprising Power of Weak Ties (Gillian Sandstrom and Elizabeth Dunn, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2014). Sandstrom and Dunn acknowledge that their findings don't determine causality: "It is possible that feeling better causes people to interact with more weak ties; indeed these possibilities are not mutually exclusive." Even if causality runs in both directions, my work with many clients and personal experience leads me to find Sandstrom and Dunn's thesis compelling.

[3] Social support from weak ties: Insight from the literature on minimal social interactions (Joshua Moreton, Caitlin Kelly and Gillian M. Sandstrom, Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2023)

[4] The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation (Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary, Psychological Bulletin, 1995)

[5] Safety, Trust, Intimacy. Also see Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups (Vanessa Urch Druskat and Steven Wolff, Harvard Business Review, 2001).

[6] Bosses and Birthdays (The Importance of Small Talk)

[7] Five Levels of Communication

[8] The Covid-19 Crisis Is Officially Over. Everything Changed. (Stephanie Stamm and Danny Daugherty, The Wall Street Journal, May 5, 2023)

[9] Four Buckets (On Co-Located Work)

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Why You Miss Those Casual Friends So Much (Gillian Sandstrom and Ashley Whillans, Harvard Business Review, 2020)

[13] Özenç, a user experience designer, has also co-authored a related book for in-person activities: Rituals for Work (with Margaret Hagan, 2019).

Photo by AJ Cann.

Compliance vs. Commitment (On Behavior Change)

At times a gap emerges between a leader's expectations and employees' behavior, and a theme in my practice is the question of how to close such gaps when they occur. Sometimes this entails adjusting a leader's unrealistic expectations, but most of my clients are striving to achieve something that's both ambitious and novel, and allowing the status quo to determine what's "realistic" may guarantee failure.

So in many cases the challenge is how to influence employees to modify their behavior in order to make it more likely that a meaningful stretch goal will be accomplished. This need not be limited to financial or technical milestones--it includes all efforts to develop a more functional organization. Broadly speaking, there are two very different ways to accomplish such behavior change: enforce compliance or build commitment.

Enforcing compliance is easy at first, but it becomes more difficult with time. People comply when they're either threatened with punishment or promised a reward. This is initially easy because some punishments and rewards are inexpensive and readily at hand: the leader's disapproval or approval, a reprimand or praise, the loss of a bonus or a minor bump in status or compensation.

But this approach imposes increasing costs on both leaders and employees. People comply when they're being policed, which requires management to expend time and effort identifying violations--which people will be motivated to conceal. Many people will find such oversight heavy-handed and resent it, and the best people--who have the most options--will tend to leave.

Further, the punishments and rewards themselves become more costly, both literally and figuratively. When disapproval and reprimands fail, the next steps are reassignment, demotion and, eventually, termination. When praise grows stale and the impact of minor bumps wear off, more effusive praise and major bumps are required.

Even more fundamentally, enforcing compliance fails to address any resistance to the leader's expectations. Debate is stifled via threats and bribes, differing points of view are squelched, and resistance goes underground. Compliance ultimately relies on coercion, and people comply because they fear further and more severe punishments, or they fear the end of the gravy train and the loss of future rewards.

I'm not suggesting that there's no place for compliance in organizational life. We rely on compliance all the time, but it works when there's a shared consensus on 1) what constitutes expected behavior and violations of same, and 2) the appropriate response for various violations. This is most apparent where organizational life meets the legal system, and a host of laws and regulations set out expectations for leaders and employees alike. Violations are met with punishments such as fines or imprisonment. The reward for compliance is simple: you keep your money and your liberty.

But in most of the situations I discuss with clients there's no applicable legal or regulatory structure, nor is there a shared consensus on expectations for behavior. In fact, it's the absence (or breakdown) of such a consensus that typically leads a client to raise the issue with me. How do we define excellence or best effort? How much time and what resources should be allocated to a given task or initiative? What constitutes a productive company culture?

Trying to resolve these challenges by enforcing compliance is often unsustainable and at times utterly impossible. But there's another way: building commitment. When people are compliant, they're essentially passive figures responding to external pressure and unlikely to expend further effort once a minimum threshold has been attained. But when they're committed, they're active agents who are internally motivated to take initiative and will draw upon their full capabilities to achieve--and surpass--a goal.

Enforcing compliance is relatively mechanical, reducing human motivation to avoiding punishments and obtaining rewards. In this regard it reflects the industrial-era managerial philosophy that M.I.T. professor Douglas McGregor dubbed "Theory X" [1], which "assumes that people dislike work and must be coerced, controlled, and directed toward organizational goals." [2]

Building commitment is a far more complex undertaking, but it's also far better-suited to the management of contemporary knowledge workers. And in this regard it's aligned with what McGregor called "Theory Y" [3], which "emphasizes the average person’s intrinsic interest in his [sic] work, his desire to be self-directing and to seek responsibility, and his capacity to be creative in solving business problems." [4]

There's also a relationship with the distinction that psychologist Frederick Herzberg made between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on the job. [5] Herzberg's research suggests that job satisfaction and dissatisfaction aren't endpoints on a single spectrum, but two distinct scales. Satisfaction is derived from sources of intrinsic motivation such as a sense of achievement, recognition, responsibility, and opportunities for growth.

In contrast, sources of extrinsic motivation (also known as "hygiene factors") such as working conditions, compensation, status, and security generate dissatisfaction if they're perceived as inadequate. Compliant people remain so only as long as they aren't too dissatisfied, but the absence of punishment and the promise of rewards doesn't generate sustained motivation. Committed people are motivated, and the fulfillment they find in the pursuit of their aims makes them more likely to persist in the face of difficulties.

As noted above, it gets more difficult and expensive to apply the right mix of punishments and rewards necessary to obtain compliance. Commitment is also costly, but more than money it requires other equally precious and limited resources, most notably the leader's time, attention and creative energy. So what does this look like in practice? How does a leader build commitment?

Dialogue

There's a reason why we use the phrase "disagree and commit." [6] So the first step is ensuring an open dialogue in which disagreements can be aired and a range of factors addressed: the leader's expectations, employees' existing behavior, any gaps that exist between the two, potential explanations for said gaps, the organization's relevant goals, and the assumption that alternative behaviors will increase the likelihood of successful outcomes.

This inevitably requires a willingness on the leader's part to have some tough conversations in which resistance to their expectations can be safely expressed and explored. That doesn't mean leaders must defer to any resistance. But the absence of a free-flowing dialogue in which disagreement is welcomed ensures that any efforts to motivate behavior change will eventually default to enforcing compliance, whatever the leader's intentions.

Influence

Engaging in a dialogue presents a leader with opportunities to exert influence. And note the distinction between influence and coercion--the latter relies upon a simplistic formula of threats and rewards to induce behavior change, while the former is a much more nuanced process. The leader seeking to exert influence acknowledges and respects others' right to choose and expends time and effort to win them over.

This doesn't mean that people are free to opt out with no consequences. Rejecting the leaders' expectations may result in a loss of opportunities, a reassigned role, or expulsion from the organization. But the leader who is seeking to build commitment through influence will make these consequences clear at the outset (or restore clarity when it's been lost), so that people can make both positive and negative choices with full awareness and agency.

Work by psychologist Robert Cialdini identifies six factors that make us more (or less) open to another's influence. [7] While it may take years to master these principles, simply understanding Cialdini's framework provides a leader with a starting point to guide their efforts:

• Likeability: We respond to people who convey warmth.
• Reciprocity: We repay favors.
• Social proof: We follow others' example.
• Consistency: We strive to live up to stated commitments.
• Authority: We defer to experts and authoritative figures.
• Scarcity: We're anxious about potential losses or insufficiency.

Norms

The leader's aspiration is to have their expectations result in a set of behavioral norms, which are "social regularities that individuals feel obligated to follow, and patterns of behavior based on shared beliefs about how individuals should behave." [8] But it's important to recognize that compliant people have not adopted the leader's expectations as norms--they've adopted the norm of doing whatever it takes to avoid punishments and obtain rewards. When punishments and rewards no longer suffice (or grow too costly to implement), compliance will vanish.

In contrast, committed people have adopted the leader's expectations as norms, and in so doing have come to internalize such expectations as their own--very possibly because engaging in open dialogue enabled them to influence the leader as well. And it's absolutely futile to try to establish norms in the absence of dialogue and mutual influence. The results aren't norms at all, but merely a set of rules, and we only follow rules when we're being policed--which brings us right back to compliance and coercion.

But even arriving at a set of shared beliefs about how people should behave isn't necessarily sufficient to cause people to feel obligated to act accordingly. We've all participated in groups and organizations that proclaimed a lofty set of values that everyone agreed with in principle but were routinely ignored in practice--the proverbial "plaque on the wall." Once the dialogue and influence process has yielded a set of shared beliefs, what else is needed to transform those beliefs into norms?

• Sufficient mutual esteem among members so that its withdrawal would be felt as a loss by any individual.
• A willingness by members to openly acknowledge a norm violation by a peer.
• A willingness by members to withhold esteem from a peer as a consequence of a norm violation.

I define this as a high-accountability, high-empathy culture. [9] It's not merely a high-accountability culture, in which people are harshly punished for their lack of compliance, nor it is a merely high-empathy culture in which people are richly rewarded for following the rules. In such a setting leaders do very little policing at all--instead, employees hold themselves accountable because of their shared beliefs regarding productive behavior coupled with their desire to avoid the loss of mutual esteem.

Again, all of this takes ample amounts of time, attention, and creative energy--and even many well-intentioned leaders are unable or unwilling to make these investments, so they wind up relying upon compliance. Which works, until suddenly it doesn't.

 

This is a companion piece to the following:

• Hard Problems in Soft Cultures
• Accountability and Empathy (Are Not Mutually Exclusive)
• Rules Aren't Norms (On Company Values)

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FOOTNOTES

[1] "The Human Side of Enterprise," page 6 (Douglas McGregor, Leadership and Motivation, 1966):

With respect to people, [Theory X management] is a process of directing their efforts, motivating them, controlling their actions, modifying their behavior to fit the needs of the organization. Without this active intervention by management, people would be passive--even resistant--to organizational needs. They must therefore be persuaded, rewarded, punished, controlled--their activities must be directed... Behind this conventional theory there are several additional beliefs--less explicit, but widespread:

• The average man is by nature indolent—he works as little as possible.
• He lacks ambition, dislikes responsibility, prefers to be led.
• He is inherently self-centered, indifferent to organizational needs.
• He is by nature resistant to change.

This essay is McGregor's best-known and most influential work--it originated as a speech on the Fifth Anniversary of the School of Industrial Management at MIT (later known as the Sloan School) in 1957, and was published in the American Management Association's Management Review in November of that year. It subsequently formed the basis of his 1960 book The Human Side of Enterprise. My citations here are from a posthumous collection of McGregor's work issued by MIT two years after his death to commemorate his contributions.

[2] Beyond Theory Y (John Morse and Jay Lorsch, Harvard Business Review, 1970)

[3] McGregor, pages 15-16:

People are not by nature passive or resistant to organizational needs. They have become so as a result of experience in organizations.

The motivation, the potential for development, the capacity for assuming responsibility, the readiness to direct behavior toward organizational goals are all present in people. Management does not put them there. It is a responsibility of management to make it possible for people to recognize and develop these human characteristics for themselves.

The essential task of management is to arrange organizational conditions and methods of operation so that people can achieve their own goals best by directing their own efforts toward organizational objectives.

This is a process primarily of creating opportunities, releasing potential, removing obstacles, encouraging growth, providing guidance. It is what Peter Drucker has called "management by objectives" in contrast to "management by control."

And I hasten to add that it does not involve the abdication of management, the absence of leadership, the lowering of standards, or the other characteristics usually associated with the "soft" approach under Theory X.

[4] Morse and Lorsch, HBR.

[5] One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees? (Frederick Herzberg, Harvard Business Review, originally published 1968, republished 2003)

[6] While the principle of "disagree and commit" seems to have originated with Andy Grove or Scott McNealy, Jeff Bezos provided a useful definition in his 1997 letter to shareholders:

Use the phrase "disagree and commit." This phrase will save a lot of time. If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, "Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?" By the time you’re at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you’ll probably get a quick yes.

This isn’t one way. If you’re the boss, you should do this too. I disagree and commit all the time... [emphasis mine]

[7] The most concise articulation of Cialdini's model can be found in this classic Harvard Business Review article: Harnessing the Science of Persuasion (2001). Cialdini discusses his work more thoroughly in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (2021, 3rd ed. / 1984, 1st ed.) He also explains the principles of persuasion on his own website. (On that page he adds a seventh principle--"unity"--but that was not an element in his original framework, and I omit it here.) For further reading:

• The Language of Persuasion (Robert Cialdini, Harvard Business Review, 2008)
• The Uses (and Abuses) of Influence (Robert Cialdini, Harvard Business Review, 2013)

[8] From Rules Aren't Norms (On Company Values). (The section above on norms is adapted from this piece.)

[9] Accountability and Empathy (Are Not Mutually Exclusive)

 

Photos: Police car by Scott Davidson. Tug-of-war by Napat Chaichanasiri.

Exploring a Potential Partnership

If you're considering forming a partnership--for a project, a team, a firm or a venture--here are three exercises to complete and an agenda to help you discuss the results. This framework is inspired by a set of questions posed by the great management thinker Peter Drucker:

Most people, especially highly gifted people, do not really know where they belong until they are well past their mid-twenties. By that time, however, they should know the answers to the three questions: "What are my strengths? How do I perform? and What are my values?" And then they can and should decide where they belong. Or rather, they should be able to decide where they do not belong.

~Managing Oneself

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INDIVIDUAL PREPARATION (90 minutes)

1. What are my strengths?

It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence. ~Managing Oneself

Many personality tests lack validity and reliability, and I employ them sparingly in my practice and teaching. One of the few I've relied upon is the Values in Action Survey of Character Strengths, often referred to as the VIA, developed by Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson.

• Complete the VIA and return to the link below to review Section 7: Making Use of Your VIA Results.
• VIA Survey of Character Strengths

 

2. How do I perform? What conditions allow me to do my best work?

Too many people work in ways that are not their ways, and that almost guarantees nonperformance. For knowledge workers, "How do I perform?" may be an even more important question than "What are my strengths?" ~Managing Oneself

When we work with people who share our work style it may feel more comfortable, but homogeneous teams can have blind spots and be prone to groupthink. Teams whose members have a diverse range of styles can be more effective if they develop the ability to manage conflict successfully.

• Complete two versions of the worksheet linked below--one that reflects your personal preferences and one that reflects your best estimate of your partner's preferences.
• Work Style Differences

 

3. What are my values?

To work in an organization whose value system is unacceptable or incompatible with one’s own condemns a person both to frustration and to nonperformance. ~Managing Oneself

A dilemma we face when discussing "values" is that their definitions are highly subjective--and when we arrive at a definition that's true for us, we still have to determine what it means to actually live that value. Here's an exercise to reach an actionable definition of your core values:

• Create a list of words that you think of as values that have some meaning to you. Don't worry about what that meaning is at this point.
• Keep writing until the words stop flowing freely. Don't worry about how many words are on the list.
• Take each word in turn and think of a story that demonstrates that value in action--an actual event you experienced or observed. Don't write out the entire story, but jot down a few notes so that you can readily reflect back upon it.
• Having illustrated each value this way, ask yourself:
  • What intrinsic rewards are the result of this value? In what ways does it fulfill me or create a sense of meaning in my life?
  • What extrinsic rewards--what forms of status or compensation--am I willing to sacrifice on behalf of this value?
  • How important is this value to my self-identity? How different would my life have to be for me to abandon this value?
• Use the answers to these questions to narrow your original list of words down to no more than five--and preferably as few as three. Consider the results your core values.

 

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PAIR (OR GROUP) DISCUSSION (1-2 hours)

(Here's a printer-friendly version of this agenda.)

If possible, share the results of your individual preparation with your partner/s in advance of your pair/group discussion. This will allow you to spend more time considering the implications of these results for a potential partnership. The times below are for a 1-hour pair discussion. Groups of 3 or more should allot 90 minutes to 2 hours.

1. Warming Up (10 minutes)

Presumably introductions aren't necessary, but a warmup exercise can set the stage for a more meaningful discussion:

The Most Important Year of My Life.

• Each person has 3 minutes to answer this question: What was the most important year of my life?
• Note that the question is NOT: What was the BEST year of my life? It's an important distinction.
• After each person has finished, take a moment to acknowledge them and express appreciation for their story, but don't do an extensive debrief or ask further questions at this point.
• Take a few minutes after the last person has finished to discuss the exercise: What was that like? How do you feel as a result? What questions are you left with?

2. Strengths (15 minutes)

• What items among your VIA results would you characterize as "signature strengths"? Your results should inform but not dictate your signature strengths--it's ultimately up to you to make this determination.
• What surprised you in your results? What surprised you in your partner's results?
• In what ways are your respective signature strengths complementary? How might they conflict?

3. Working Conditions (15 minutes)

• What items on your worksheet are most important to you? What items are least important?
• How accurate was your estimate of your partner's preferences?
• In what ways are your respective preferences complementary ? How might they conflict?

4. Values (15 minutes)

• What are your core values? (Again, identify no more than five, and preferably as few as three.)
• Share one of the stories that illustrates one of your core values. If time allows, repeat this step while taking turns.
• In what ways are your core values complementary? How might they conflict?

5. Conclusion (5 minutes)

You held this discussion because you're seeking more information about what it would be like to work with this person. Note that the discussion itself has been a type of "work," and how your partner has participated may provide some useful data.

• What has your partner done over the past hour that made you more interested in working with them?
• What has your partner done over the past hour that made you less interested in working with them?
• What questions do you have about their behavior?
• What feedback would you like to share with them?
• What questions do you have about your own behavior over the past hour?
• What feedback would you like to request from them?

Take some notes in response to these questions now, while the discussion is fresh in your mind. But don't jump into a feedback conversation immediately--take a day or two to digest everything first. And as always, bear in mind that feedback is not a gift--it's data.

 

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NEXT STEPS

Should you decide to work together, bear in mind that even the best partnerships experience difficulties over time, and this isn't merely inevitable--it's desirable. In my experience a "conflict-free relationship" is a sign that people aren't being candid with each other, perhaps because they fear that any conflict will put the relationship in jeopardy--which renders it fragile and unlikely to last. The key is learning how to engage in conflict safely, how to "disagree without being disagreeable," and how to repair when necessary. Here are a further set of readings on building--and sustaining--a stronger partnership:

Better Working Relationships

Feedback Is Not a Gift

How to Deliver Critical Feedback

How We Connect (and Why We Might Not)

The Tyranny of Feelings

You Make Me Feel... (On Language and Responsibility)

Authority and Control in Organizational Life

Safety Is a Resource, Not a Destination

The Toyota Production System for Relationships

Whether or Not to Fix a Broken Relationship

 

Photo by Wil C. Fry.

Classrooms, Churches, Cocktail Parties (On Norms)

Many of the situations we encounter in contemporary professional life take one of three cultural forms: A classroom, a church, or a cocktail party.

While there are countless variations among schools, places of worship, and celebratory gatherings, we can readily envision an idealized classroom, an idealized church, an idealized cocktail party, and these archetypes are useful lenses through which to view any number of situations.

So some meetings are like a classroom, others are like church, and still others are like a cocktail party. And some companies are like a classroom, others are like church, and still others are like a cocktail party.

Each of these forms involves very different norms, which I've defined as social regularities that individuals feel obligated to follow, and patterns of behavior based on shared beliefs about how individuals should behave. [1] To be clear, norms aren't rules. Rules are what we intend to do, or what we're supposed to do, or what we aspire to do. Norms are what we actually do.

The problem, however, is that schools, places of worship, and celebratory gatherings identify themselves very clearly through obvious signifiers. We know where we are, we readily grasp the norms, and we act accordingly.

But meetings and companies are much harder to interpret. They must serve different purposes at different times for different parties--and those parties may disagree. So the signs and signals are opaque and confusing, and it's easy to misread them.

The key is asking ourselves: Where do I think I am? In a classroom? In a church? At a cocktail party? And where does everybody else here think they are?

There's no implied value-judgment. We have need of schools, places of worship, and celebratory gatherings all. But if we think we're in a classroom, and everyone else thinks they're in church, there's going to be trouble.

The next question to ask is: Who do I think I am? A teacher or a student? An officiant or a congregant? A host or a guest? And who does everyone else think they are? We need all these roles, but again, if we don't have a shared understanding of who we are to each other, there's going to be trouble. [2]

A final question to ask is: To what extent is this cultural form serving our collective needs at the moment? Cultures are hard to change because people feel obligated to adhere to existing norms. So unless we step outside a given culture in order to observe it, we're likely to perpetuate it. We'll keep going to class, to church, to the party, without pausing to consider whether that's really where we want to be.

 

---

Footnotes

[1] Rules Aren't Norms (On Company Values)

[2] Role Clarity and Role Confusion

Photos: Classroom by Robert Couse-Baker. Church by Garry Knight. Cocktail Party by Yelp/Tom Pagut.

Some Crises Build Character. Others Reveal It.

Something bad happened, and there was a crisis. There are still many risks, and the situation could yet turn worse, but at the moment, catastrophe has been averted. If approached correctly, this can be a fruitful learning experience for you and the people around you. It may seem too early to learn from the crisis, but don't wait too long. Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman notes an important distinction between our experience and our memories:

The experiencing self is the one that answers the question: "Does it hurt now?" The remembering self is the one that answers the question: "How was it, on the whole?"... Confusing experience with the memory of it is a compelling cognitive illusion... The experiencing self does not have a voice. The remembering self is sometimes wrong, but it is the one that keeps score and governs what we learn from living, and it is the one that makes decisions. What we learn from the past is to maximize the qualities of our future memories, not necessarily of our future experience. This is the tyranny of the remembering self. [1]

So while events are still fresh in your mind, and the distress and anguish felt by your experiencing self are still vivid, here are some questions to pose to yourself and others:

What did you learn about yourself?

How did you respond under pressure, anxiety, and uncertainty?

Crises evoke a sense of threat, which triggers the "fight, flight, or freeze" response. What did you learn about your tendencies?

How did you communicate with people (venue, channel, cadence, level of detail, tone)?

How did people respond to your communications? What does that tell you about your effectiveness?

How did you make decisions? What did you learn about your decision-making under stress?

What did you learn about the people around you?

How did THEY respond under pressure, anxiety, and uncertainty?

What did you learn about THEIR "fight, flight, or freeze" tendencies?

How did they communicate with you and others?

How effective were their communication efforts?

How did THEY make decisions? What did you learn about THEIR decision-making under stress?

 

Gathering this data is a useful exercise, and it's by no means sufficient. Awareness is always the necessary first step, but it rarely leads to growth on its own. Truly learning from this crisis will entail understanding your strengths and your weaknesses, and then engaging in an ongoing effort to maximize the former and address the latter.

More specifically, you'll want to understand how you can best prepare for the next crisis. Outdoor writer Tom Stienstra survived countless life-threatening situations during his decades roaming the wilderness by remembering a piece of wisdom from self-defense instructor Il Ling New: "Everyone thinks they will rise to the occasion. What happens instead is that you default to your level of training." [2] So here are some further questions to consider:

What do your responses above tell you about your strengths and weaknesses?

How can you be better prepared for the next crisis?

What might it look like to train for that crisis?

Who might you turn to, where might you go, to obtain such training?

 

The questions above are largely aimed at capabilities, but crises also teach us something essential that can't be learned under any other circumstances about character.

What did you do that you're proud of? What motivated those actions?

What did you do that you're NOT proud of? What motivated THOSE actions?

What do any of these actions say about your character?

What do the actions of others say about THEIR character?

What do you want to remember?

 

---

Footnotes

[1] Thinking, Fast and Slow, page 381 (Daniel Kahneman, 2013)

[2] Tom Stienstra’s Tales of Survival (San Francisco Chronicle, 2023)

 

For Further Reading

How Leaders Overcome Adversity

Aggression, Panic, Paralysis, Denial

The Importance of Slowing Down

From Peacetime to Wartime

 

Photo by GraceOda.

JFK on Doing Hard Things

In 1957 the Soviet Union launched the first satellite into orbit, known as Sputnik, which raised grave concerns in the United States and accelerated the "space race." [1] Having won election in 1960, President John F. Kennedy entered office the following year determined to increase U.S. investment in space exploration. This initiative took on new urgency in April 1961 when the Soviets sent the first man into space, Yuri Gagarin, a dramatic development that caught U.S. leaders by surprise. [2]

In May 1961 Kennedy convened a special session of Congress to address "urgent national needs," including space exploration, in which he made a bold declaration: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth." [3] In September 1962 he delivered another speech at Rice University in Houston, Texas--the home of NASA's "Mission Control"--in which he reinforced his determination to reach the moon within the decade. [4]

It's worth remembering that the international mood at the time was extremely tense. The U.S., the USSR and their respective allies had been facing off in the Cold War for over 15 years, a struggle that regularly broke out into armed conflict in proxy wars around the globe. [5] The U.S. was less than a decade removed from the height of the "Red Scare," when legitimate fears about Soviet agents escalated into hysterical paranoia.

And just four weeks after Kennedy's speech in Houston the nation would be gripped by the Cuban Missile Crisis, which, we now know, was the closest we've ever come to nuclear war. [6] So the space race wasn't just a spirited contest between international rivals, a high-tech version of the Olympics in which the winner would claim bragging rights. It was a new front in the Cold War, and the stakes were incredibly high.

It was also going to be incredibly expensive, and the benefits to the average American citizen were unclear and abstract. Going to the moon was going to be hard, but it might be even harder to convince the U.S. taxpayer to foot the bill. It was one thing for Nikita Khrushchev to order increased spending for the Soviet space program, as he did in the mid-1950s. But Kennedy would have to win Congressional and popular support for the U.S. efforts if he wanted to succeed while remaining a viable candidate for re-election.

Yet this is exactly what he accomplished, in part thanks to his speeches in 1961 and '62, which make them worth examining today for any leader who's asking people to do hard things. So what did Kennedy do that helped motivate his fellow Americans to do this hard thing?

He frames his goal in a larger context.

If we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take. (1961)

The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space. Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it--we mean to lead it. (1962)

For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. (1962)

He acknowledges the difficulties ahead and is candid about U.S. shortcomings.

The facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions or marshalled the national resources required for such leadership. We have never specified long-range goals on an urgent time schedule, or managed our resources and our time so as to insure their fulfillment. Recognizing the head start obtained by the Soviets with their large rocket engines, which gives them many months of leadtime, and recognizing the likelihood that they will exploit this lead for some time to come in still more impressive successes, we nevertheless are required to make new efforts on our own. For while we cannot guarantee that we shall one day be first, we can guarantee that any failure to make this effort will make us last. (1961)

This decision demands a major national commitment of scientific and technical manpower, materiel and facilities, and the possibility of their diversion from other important activities where they are already thinly spread. It means a degree of dedication, organization and discipline which have not always characterized our research and development efforts. (1961)

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. (1962)

To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead. (1962)

He stresses the need for shared sacrifice and collective agreement.

In a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon--if we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there. (1961)

Let it be clear that I am asking the Congress and the country to accept a firm commitment to a new course of action, a course which will last for many years and carry very heavy costs: 531 million dollars in fiscal '62--an estimated seven to nine billion dollars additional over the next five years. If we are to go only half way, or reduce our sights in the face of difficulty, in my judgment it would be better not to go at all. (1961)

I believe we should go to the moon. But I think every citizen of this country as well as the Members of the Congress should consider the matter carefully in making their judgment, to which we have given attention over many weeks and months, because it is a heavy burden, and there is no sense in agreeing or desiring that the United States take an affirmative position in outer space, unless we are prepared to do the work and bear the burdens to make it successful. (1961)

To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year¹s space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year--a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United States, for we have given this program a high national priority--even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us. (1962)

He expresses hope and optimism, and emphasizes America's capabilities and potential.

I have not asked for a single program which did not cause one or all Americans some inconvenience, or some hardship, or some sacrifice. But they have responded and you in the Congress have responded to your duty--and I feel confident in asking today for a similar response to these new and larger demands. (1961)

In the last 24 hours we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man's history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn, generating power equivalent to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerators on the floor...

Within these last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were "made in the United States of America" and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union. The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the 40-yard lines. (1962)

He uses humor to lighten the mood.

I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief. (1961)

Why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? (1961)

(Rice University, the setting for the 1961 speech, had a longstanding football rivalry with the University of Texas, a much larger school. At the time, Texas led the series 29-19, and Kennedy's line got a laugh from the crowd. Notably, a few weeks after Kennedy's speech, Rice eked out the only tie in the series--although since 1962 Texas has gone 44-2.) [7]

Finally, he closes on a note of transcendence and uplift.

It is heartening to know, as I journey abroad, that our country is united in its commitment to freedom and is ready to do its duty. (1961)

Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there." Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked. (1962)

 

---

Footnotes

[1] Sputnik and the Space Race: 1957 and Beyond (Library of Congress Resource Guides)

[2] The Decision to Go to the Moon (National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA History Office)

[3] Address to Joint Session of Congress, May 25, 1961 (John F. Kennedy Presidential Library)

[4] Address at Rice University on the Nation's Space Effort, September 12, 1962 (John F. Kennedy Presidential Library)

[5] Here's just a partial list: Vietnam 1945-46, Iran 1945-46, Greece 1946-49, Philippines 1946-54, Vietnam (again) 1946-54, Malaysia 1948-60, Indonesia 1949-62, Korea 1950-53, Egypt 1952, Vietnam (again) 1955-75, Laos 1959-75, Congo 1960-65, Cuba 1961.

[6] One Step from Nuclear War (The Cuban Missile Crisis at 50: In Search of Historical Perspective), (Martin Sherwin, Prologue Magazine / National Archives, 2012)

[7] Rice-Texas football rivalry (Wikipedia)

 

Photo by Denali National Park and Preserve.

Making Layoffs Less Painful

Layoffs are painful for everyone involved. But there are varying degrees of pain, and a theme in my practice is helping leaders who are conducting layoffs reduce the pain, not only for the employees losing their jobs, but also for everyone else. The recommendations below are by no means comprehensive, nor will they eliminate the pain of layoffs. But if you're a leader embarking upon this process, here's how you can make it less painful for these stakeholders:

Front Line Managers

You're probably planning the layoffs with a small group of senior leaders, in part to minimize the risk of leaks and rumors. If there are more than two layers of management in your organization, front line managers are unlikely to play a direct role. But when leadership teams fail to provide any advance notice to front line managers, they solve for secrecy while creating other problems.

Because immediately after the layoffs have been conducted, the remaining employees will reach out to their managers with any number of questions, including something like, "I heard what senior leadership said, but what's the real story?" And if those managers have nothing more to say than, "I don't know," they look and feel useless. It's a painful moment that can undermine managers' ability to offer support and reassurance in the future.

This can be mitigated by communicating with front line managers before the layoffs are conducted to give them a heads-up and provide additional context. One way of accomplishing this is via a synchronous virtual meeting conducted a few days (or, if necessary, hours) before the layoffs begin, but there are countless variations. The goal is ensuring that your managers are better prepared to respond to employees' questions and concerns because they're not hearing the news simultaneously. [1]

Employees Being Laid Off

Being laid off is always painful, but you have some choices to make that may cushion the blow. The first is scale--en masse, in small groups or individually. The least painful option will depend not only on the number of people involved, but also on their expectations of you as leader. In some cases people want to hear directly from the ultimate decision-maker, but at times that's not feasible, and it may be preferable for the message to be delivered by someone else. Even if you aspire to speak directly with each individual, note that your capacity to convey the message skillfully is finite, and as the numbers increase so does the likelihood that affected employees may hear the news before you reach them.

Another decision is when to shut off employees' access to email, messaging, and other systems. In some cases this is a non-issue--data security and other factors may compel you to restrict access as soon as possible. But here, too, note that solving for maximum security can create other problems, and not all systems pose the same degree of risk. Allowing employees to utilize various channels to say their goodbyes can afford them a degree of grace and dignity and will benefit the employees who remain as well.

Whatever medium you employ--but particularly if you're speaking live--you can make it marginally less painful for the people you're laying off by being thoughtful about your message. This includes taking responsibility for past decisions that resulted in layoffs being necessary. But it's not just about the content--it's also about expressing empathy through your tone. To be clear, empathy isn't sympathy--the latter is equivalent to pity, and your employees will not want your pity. Instead, empathy is the ability to grasp how someone else feels and to convey that understanding. This will entail acknowledging not only their pain at being laid off, but also a range of other possible feelings--surprise, fear, anger--some of which will be directed toward you. [2]

Employees Who Remain

As vital as it is to consider your communication with the employees who are being laid off, it may be even more important to follow this up with the right message to the employees who remain. Unfortunately many leaders take a misguided approach here, imagining that this is the moment to fire up the team. Their initial remarks to the rest of the organization have the feel of a celebratory speech at a rally--while everyone is still thinking about their colleagues who were just laid off. It's yet another painful experience, but one that can be prevented.

Yes, your remaining employees will need to be reinvigorated, and they will need to hear why you're hopeful about the future, and they will look to you for inspiration--but perhaps not quite yet. In the immediate aftermath of layoffs the employees who remain are likely feeling a complex mix of emotions, and it's essential to meet them there, at least at first. After a layoff the remaining employees typically suffer from a degree of "survivors' guilt," even if they agree that the layoffs weren't entirely random. [3] In most circumstances, they'll work through these feelings with time, but efforts to rush them can be counter-productive.

I'm not suggesting that the message to your remaining employees should be entirely downbeat or that you should refrain from expressing optimism--but don't start there. Begin by legitimizing whatever people are feeling at that moment. As I've noted before, "If the leader runs too far ahead or pulls too hard in an effort to bring people along...there's a rupture between the leader's vision of the future and everyone else's current reality, and the leader loses influence as a result." [4] There will be a point at which you can transition to looking ahead and invite your employees to join you--the key is to create that moment together with them rather than trying to impose it upon them.

Yourself

Conducting layoffs is one of a leader's most painful responsibilities. Even when you know that layoffs are needed to ensure the continued existence of the organization and preserve other employees' jobs, you're not going to feel good about it. And that's appropriate--negative emotions play an essential role in learning from experience, and you'll want to learn as much as possible from this one in order to avoid repeating it.

It will be useful to acknowledge those emotions, with a major caveat. Although your ability to convey empathy will involve emotional expression, your feelings will not matter at all to the people you're laying off. It's not their responsibility to empathize with you, so don't ask them to, even implicitly. [5] And while you'll need to be judicious about what you discuss with any other stakeholders, note that difficult emotions are always easier to manage when you can talk about them with someone you trust. [6]

The effort to strike the right balance in your message and to do so while under an intense spotlight will be depleting, so plan accordingly. Don't let the logistics keep you up the night before--finalize the details well in advance and make sure you're well-rested. Don't allow less important tasks to distract you--clear your calendar before and after of any optional events. And don't expect your efforts to be appreciated--everyone will be caught up in their own anxieties, and no one will be thinking about you. So be sure to end the day with people who care about you and who think of you as a friend, a family member, a human being--not a leader. [7]

 

---

Footnotes

[1] Who Needs to Know? How Will They Feel? (On Change)

[2] How to Deliver Bad News

[3] For more on layoffs and survivors' guilt, see the following:

• Layoffs, self-esteem, and survivor guilt: Motivational, affective, and attitudinal consequences (Joel Brockner, Jeanette Davy and Carolyn Carter, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 1985)
• Layoffs, Equity Theory, and Work Performance: Further Evidence of the Impact of Survivor Guilt (Joel Brockner, et al, The Academy of Management Journal, 1986)
• The Effects of Downsizing on Survivor Employees: A Literature Review (Alice Crawford, Loyola University Chicago Master's Thesis, 1997)

[4] The Rubber Band Effect

[5] The Difficulty of Empathizing Up

[6] Talking About Feelings

[7] The Friendship of Wolves

 

Photo by threephin.

Questions for a New Leader

In late 1998 U.S. Navy Captain David Marquet was about to take command of a nuclear submarine, an assignment for which he'd spent months preparing. At the last minute, his superiors decided to put him in charge of a different boat, the Santa Fe, which was not only the worst-performing sub in the fleet, but also an entirely different type of craft, rendering much of the technical knowledge he'd absorbed irrelevant. This unexpected development caused him to approach his first interactions with his new sailors differently:

Walking the ship, I would ask the crew questions about their equipment and what they were working on. They were skeptical about these questions initially. That's because normally I would have been "questioning," not curious. I would have been asking questions to make sure they knew the equipment. Now I was asking questions to make sure I knew the equipment.

My unfamiliarity with the sub's technical details was having an interesting side effect: since I couldn't get involved with the specifics of the gear, I opened up space to focus on the people and their interactions instead, and to rely more on the crew than I normally would. [1]

Marquet developed a set of questions to guide these initial conversations, and (with a few minor changes) they're relevant for a new leader in any situation:

• What are the things you are hoping I don't change?
• What are the things you secretly hope I do change?
• What are the good things about this organization we should build on?
• If you were me, what would you do first?
• Why isn't the organization doing better?
• What are your personal goals for your time here?
• What impediments do you have to doing your job?
• What will be our biggest challenge?
• What are your biggest frustrations about how the organization is currently run?
• What is the best thing I can do for you?

 

---

Footnotes

[1] Turn the Ship Around!, pages 23-24 (L. David Marquet, 2012)

[2] Ibid, page 24.

For Further Reading

Conform to the Culture Just Enough

Building a Feedback-Rich Culture

The Six Layers of Knowledge and Better Conversations

How Leaders Create Safety (and Danger)

Andy Grove on the Right Kind of Fear

Photo by Emily Rose.

Leader as Shock Absorber

One of a leader's most important functions is serving as a shock absorber, soaking up forces generated by one part of the organization (or from outside the organization) and distributing them elsewhere, and doing so in such a way that the entire system operates more effectively. This is a simple metaphor, but it has some implications that are worth making explicit:

A shock absorber cushions the blow--it doesn't prevent the flow of force.

If a shock absorber tried to prevent force from flowing, it would A) collapse and then B) wreak havoc on the system. A useful shock absorber serves a dampening effect, diminishing a force's intensity or frequency before passing it along. But it doesn't try to stop force from being transmitted throughout the system. The controlled movement of force through a system is what makes the system useful.

The equivalent for a leader is translating forces from within and beyond the organization into forms of energy that can be productively absorbed by the intended targets.

A shock absorber pushes back--in both directions.

An effective shock absorber doesn't just act as a conduit, passing force along to adjacent elements in the system. It also generates resistance, which increases in proportion to the force being applied. This resistance is tempered so it won't exceed pre-determined limits, and it's bi-directional--it flows up as well as down.

The equivalent for a leader is knowing when and how to offer resistance, not only to colleagues and subordinates but also to superiors and external stakeholders.

A shock absorber is, above all else, resilient.

A well-designed shock absorber will last a long time over rough terrain, and not because it's tough, but because it's resilient. A resilient component deforms under pressure while retaining its internal consistency, later returning to its original form. Iron is tough, but it's not resilient--when it reaches its breaking point it shatters into pieces.

The equivalent for a leader is acknowledging the stress of leadership, obtaining useful forms of support well before they're needed, and committing to self-care practices that foster high performance.

 

---

For Further Reading

On Translation

• How to Deliver Critical Feedback
• Leadership Word of the Day: DISAPPOINTED
• The Rubber Band Effect

On Resistance

• Force Isn't Power
• Power Struggles Among Nice People
• Andy Grove on the Right Kind of Fear

On Self-Care

• Investments, Not Indulgences

• Open Space, Deep Work and Self-Care

• "Work Hard or Work Smart?" Is the Wrong Question

 

The Balcony and the Dance Floor

In 2002 Harvard Kennedy School professors Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky introduced a profoundly useful metaphor to the management literature:

Any military officer knows the importance of maintaining the capacity for reflection, especially in the "fog of war." Great athletes must simultaneously play the game and observe it as a whole. We call this skill "getting off the dance floor and going to the balcony," an image that captures the mental activity of stepping back from the action and asking, "What's really going on here?"

Leadership is an improvisational art. You may be guided by an overarching vision, clear values, and a strategic plan, but what you actually do from moment to moment cannot be scripted. You must respond as events unfold. To use our metaphor, you have to move back and forth from the balcony to the dance floor, over and over again throughout the days, weeks, months, and years. While today's plan may make sense now, tomorrow you’ll discover the unanticipated effects of today’s actions and have to adjust accordingly. [1]

Heifetz and Linsky were addressing the need to assess organizational responses to a leader's efforts to initiate change over time and the importance of creating space in that process for regular reflection. While that is a theme in my practice [2], I also talk with leaders on a daily basis about a wide range of scenarios in which they must move between the balcony and the dance floor in the moment:

• An executive team meeting
• A pitch to a prospect or investor
• A talk at an all-hands or a conference
• A feedback conversation with a direct report
• A Q&A session with employees or media members

In all of these settings--and countless others--a leader must simultaneously be an active participant on the dance floor while also observing the proceedings from the balcony. The ability to act in the moment is essential--it's rarely possible to hit "Pause" in a contentious meeting or a hostile Q&A session and take time to reflect on why things are going badly. All this is easy to grasp conceptually, but it can be difficult to put into practice. If you're a leader striving to occupy both spots at once, what helps? From the balcony, you gather data from others as well as data from within, and then use that information to guide your steps on the dance floor.

 

The Balcony, Part 1: Data from Others (aka Social Intuition)

Neuroscientist Richard Davidson has developed a framework for understanding the relationship among specific patterns of neural activity in the brain, our internal emotional response, and our subsequent interpersonal behavior. [3] Davidson calls this model the "dimensions of emotional style," one of which is "social intuition":

People differ dramatically in how attuned they are to nonverbal social cues. Extreme insensitivity to these signals is characteristic of people on the autism spectrum, who struggle to read facial expressions and other social cues, but people who fall well short of a clinical diagnosis can also be socially deaf and blind, with devastating consequences for personal and professional relationships. Conversely, acute sensitivity to the emotional state of others is central to both empathy and compassion, since being able to decode and understand social signals means we can response to them. [4]

We all tend toward a given point on the social intuition scale on the basis of our inborn capabilities and formative experiences, but if you find yourself insufficiently attuned to others' thoughts and feelings you can increase your sensitivity. This is the result of what's known as "neuroplasticity"--your brain retains the potential for growth and change throughout your life. [5] A starting point in that process is simply heightening your awareness of the potential data at your disposal.

The idea that precisely "93% of communication is non-verbal" is a myth that has been refuted by Albert Mehrabian, the UCLA psychologist whose research was the basis for that figure. [6] That said, a great deal of communication obviously occurs via facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, and vocables (which are sounds that aren't actual words but nonetheless convey meaning, such as "Mmmm," which generally indicates "Yes, continue.")

It can be harder to gather and interpret such data while working virtually, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. Investing in the right equipment can help immensely, not only in reading the social cues of others but also in conveying your intended messages with greater accuracy and fidelity. [7]

You can also improve your ability to focus on the various forms of non-verbal communication available to you in any given moment. This involves directing your attention, and the most effective tool for improved "attention management" is mindfulness meditation. As I've written before,

Mindfulness...[is] merely the process of noticing what's happening around us, observing where our attention is going as a result, and sensing our cognitive, emotional and physical responses. A heightened sense of mindfulness allows us to direct our attention toward an intended object of focus and away from undesirable distractions... We can cultivate this ability through a number of practices, most notably meditation. A key is viewing meditation as a workout in attention management rather than as a break from the stress of daily life. [8]

While I've addressed the needs of people seeking to increase their sensitivity to the thoughts and feelings of others because that's more common in my practice, it's also possible to be hyper-sensitive to such social cues, and in extreme cases they can become a source of distraction or cause crippling self-consciousness. Here, too, mindfulness meditation can help, and in this context there's a parallel with the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, who has championed meditation as a means of managing the distracting and even overwhelming effects of chronic pain. [9]

 

The Balcony, Part 2: Data from Within (aka Self-Awareness)

As we gather data from others' non-verbal cues, we also need to gather data from within, which takes several different forms. "Self-awareness" is another dimension in Davidson's model, although he employs the term in a very specific sense, referring to the ability to perceive the physiological manifestations of emotion:

Some people have a very hard time 'feeling' their feelings: It may take them days to recognize that they're angry, sad, jealous or afraid. At this extreme of the Self-Awareness dimension are people who are Self-Opaque. At the other end are Self-Aware people, who are acutely conscious of their thoughts and feelings and attuned to the messages their body sends them... This heightened sensitivity can be beneficial in several ways. It appears to play a crucial role in empathy, the ability to feel what others are feeling, and by allowing you to understand your own emotional state it can help you avoid misunderstandings... [10]

Note that emotions are physiological events well before they register in consciousness. We take in a situation, interpret it in some way, and the meaning we ascribe to it yields a pre-conscious emotional response. As a consequence neurotransmitters are released, triggering a flurry of bodily activity--an elevated heart rate, or more rapid breathing, or "butterflies" in the stomach--and only then are we aware that we're "having a feeling." People who Davidson describe as "self-opaque" take longer to access this internal data and to associate it with an emotional state.

But as with social intuition we can also be hyper-sensitive to our internal data, which at extreme levels can cause panic attacks or hypochondria. [11] Hyper-sensitivity on this dimension is more common in my practice, although it typically takes the form of anxiety or obsessive rumination. [12] In both cases, whether you're trying to increase or decrease your sensitivity to these physiological cues, Davidson again recommends mindfulness meditation:

How can the same practice both increase and decrease Self-Awareness?... Mindfulness meditation...has a regulating effect on the mind. If you lack Self-Awareness, it can help make internal sensations more salient and vivid. If you are hyper-aware, feeling and hearing your internal signals all too vividly and loudly, it can bring about a kind of equanimity so you are not as bothered by this internal noise. That equanimity eventually helps the noise itself die down. [13]

Self-awareness also involves other forms of internal data, such as intuition. While Davidson's concept of social intuition involves being attuned to the perceptions of others, we must also attend to our own. And we need not view intuition as some form of mysticism. Economist and psychologist Herbert Simon offers a straightforward definition: "The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition." [14]

Note Simon's emphasis on expertise--psychologists Gary Klein and Daniel Kahneman have determined that intuition is more reliable in circumstances that are more predictable and which provide us with feedback on our decisions, so that we learn over time. [15] This is why experience in the settings described above, from team meetings to media sessions, is so useful--even if we can't consciously predict what will happen in any given moment, when we have a broad base of experience to draw upon we're more effective at sub-conscious pattern recognition.

While we're well-served by acknowledging our intuition, we also need to be cautious before leaping to any specific conclusions on that basis. Years ago my colleague Bonnie Wentworth taught me to distinguish between A) an intuitive sense that something is happening and worth paying attention to, and B) my cognitive interpretation of just what is happening. Even when the latter isn't quite accurate, the former is usually worth exploring further.

 

The Dance Floor (aka Self-Monitoring)

Having gathered all this data, you now have to put it to use in your interactions with others--and in so doing move fluidly from the balcony to the dance floor and back again. But what does this mean in practice? One useful model is derived from a concept known as "self-monitoring." Psychologists Richard Lennox and Raymond Wolfe, building on earlier work by Mark Snyder, developed a 13-question instrument to measure this quality. [16] Their framework incorporates both aspects of the data-gathering process above, self-awareness and social intuition, and the first seven items in the instrument refer to one's "ability to modify self-presentation":

1. In social situations, I have the ability to alter my behavior if I feel that something else is called for.

2. I have the ability to control the way I come across to people, depending on the impression I wish to give them.

3. When I feel that the image I am portraying isn't working, I can readily change it to something that does.

4. I have trouble changing my behavior to suit different people and different situations.

5. I have found that I can adjust my behavior to meet the requirements of any situation I find myself in.

6. Even when it might be to my advantage, I have difficulty putting up a good front.

7. Once I know what the situation calls for, it's easy for me to regulate my actions accordingly.

The final six items in the instrument refer to one's "sensitivity to expressive behaviors of others":

8. I am often able to read people's true emotions correctly through their eyes.

9. In conversations, I am sensitive to even the slightest change in the facial expression of the person I'm conversing with.

10. My powers of intuition are quite good when it comes to understanding others' emotions and motives.

11. I can usually tell when others consider a joke to be in bad taste, even though they may laugh convincingly.

12. I can usually tell when I've said something inappropriate by reading it in the listener's eyes.

13. If someone is lying to me, I usually know it at once from that person's manner of expression.

It's not necessary to formally complete the instrument to make use of the conceptual framework. [17] Simply review these items and consider the extent to which they already feel accurate for you, as well as where you might benefit from being more deliberate. (Items 4 and 6 are "reverse-scored," meaning that affirmative answers imply lesser capabilities.)

Such heightened awareness won't automatically result in behavior change, but it's the necessary first step. That said, making the effort to track all this additional data and translate it into more effective interactions is likely to be fatiguing, at least at first. For a decade I helped train MBA students at Stanford in coaching principles and practices, which requires a increased degree of self-monitoring, and they inevitably experienced their first coaching sessions as exhausting. [18] But as I've noted before, persistence in any discipline tends to yield a degree of ease and increased stamina:

With repetition we eventually relax, and the process becomes more automatic and require less deliberation.This doesn't mean that we lose all awareness of our abilities, but when engaged in an activity we don't need to focus intensely on our goal to hit the mark. [19]

A final point on self-monitoring and authenticity, topics that psychologist Adam Grant and author and researcher Brené Brown explored in an online debate in 2016. Grant initially took a position that could be paraphrased as "authenticity is overrated," citing a set of studies showing that people who are high self-monitors generally experience better outcomes in professional life. [20] But Brown rejected Grant's premise that authenticity and self-monitoring are inversely related:

In my research I found that the core of authenticity is the courage to be imperfect, vulnerable, and to set boundaries. ...I would argue that authenticity requires almost constant vigilance and awareness about the connections between our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. It also means staying mindful about our intentions. Real authenticity actually requires major self-monitoring and isn't, as Grant proposes, the lack of self-monitoring. In fact, setting boundaries is, by definition, self-monitoring. [21]

Being more deliberate about your behavior with the intention of guiding an interaction to a better outcome may feel novel or uncomfortable, but that certainly doesn't mean you're being "inauthentic." As I've written before, we may feel that way when we view our authentic self as something we discover, but I think it's more accurate (and more productive) to view our authentic self as something we create:

When we're tackling new tasks or trying out new behaviors that cause discomfort or require fatiguing conscious thought, rather than interpret those feelings as signs of "inauthenticity" we can view them merely as evidence of inexperience. Note that this approach doesn't require us to persist indefinitely with everything that feels like a struggle--we may conclude that certain tasks or behaviors simply can't be added to our repertoire, or that the effort required is too great or the reward too meager. But we shouldn't be dissuaded from the attempt by fears that we're acting "inauthentically." [22]

 

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Footnotes

[1] A Survival Guide for Leaders (Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky, Harvard Business Review, 2002)

[2] For more on creating space for reflection, see the following:

• Open Space, Deep Work and Self-Care
• How to Think (More on Open Space and Deep Work)

[3] The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live—and How You Can Change Them (Richard Davidson and Sharon Begley, 2012)

[4] Ibid, page 51.

[5] What is brain plasticity, and why is it so important? (Duncan Banks, The Conversation, 2016)

[6] For more on Mehrabian and non-verbal communication, see the following:

• Mehrabian and nonverbal communication (Olivia Mitchell)

• "Silent Messages": A Wealth of Information About Nonverbal Communication (Albert Mehrabian)

[7] Better Conditions for Working Remotely

[8] Don't Just Do Something, Sit There! (Mindfulness for Busy People)

[9] For more on Jon Kabat-Zinn's work, see the following:

• Arriving at Your Own Door: 108 Lessons in Mindfulness (Jon Kabat-Zinn, 2007)

• Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief (Jon Kabat-Zinn, 2010)

• Full Catastrophe Living (Jon Kabat-Zinn, 2013)

[10] Davidson and Begley, pages 54-55.

[11] Ibid, page 234.

[12] Why You Can't Stop Thinking About Something

[13] Davidson and Begley, page 237.

[14] What is an "Explanation" of Behavior? (Herbert Simon, Psychological Science, 1992)

[15] Strategic decisions: When can you trust your gut? (Olivier Sibony and Dan Lovallo interviewing Daniel Kahneman and Gary Klein, McKinsey Quarterly, 2010)

[16] Revision of the Self-Monitoring Scale (Richard Lennox and Raymond Wolfe, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1984). For a comparison between Lennox and Wolfe's scale and Synder's original work, see Snyder's Self-Monitoring Scale and Lennox and Wolfe's Revised Self-Monitoring Scale (John Roob, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 1994).

[17] Should you want to complete the instrument, while I'm unable to find a version of Lennox and Wolfe's revised scale that can be scored (or even a data set of results for comparison), you can complete Snyder's original Self-Monitoring Scale. Snyder's version has 25 true/false questions, while Lennox and Wolfe's 13 items are scored on a six-point Likert scale (0 = always false to 5 = always true). But as with any psychometric instrument, bear in mind that the map is not the territory.

[18] Three Conversations (On Better Communication)

[19] Conscious Competence in Practice

[20] Unless You're Oprah, "Be Yourself" Is Terrible Advice (Adam Grant, The New York Times, June 4, 2016). I discuss the Grant-Brown debate further in Cautionary Tales (Authenticity at Work).

[21] My response to Adam Grant’s New York Times Op/Ed (Brené Brown, LinkedIn, June 5, 2016)

[22] Leadership and Authenticity

 

Photo by Quinn Dombroski.