Need for Reassurances

Reassurances are the fuel on which feelings of safety run.

The overwhelming need for more reassurances often stops us from doing the courageous work that matters.

The resistance (the Lizard Brain) is driven by the need for safety, which is why reassurances are so useful as a tool to drive people forward to accomplishing work.

Or why they are so useful for dulling people toward doing work that matters; in essence, lulling them into a false sense of safety.

If a person is seeking for more reassurances that the path they are walking is the right one, or that the method of management of a conflict that they’ve chosen will “work,” or if they don’t really want to know the details….

Well, there will never be enough reassurance.

Which means you will never get all the safety you need.

Which means you’ll react with a posture of fear when a new idea, concept, or approach is brought to you.

Which means that all the tools and tips in the world won’t really work for you.

Which means that we’ll never get the emotional labor from you that we really need to make the changes that are necessary in the world.

Stop looking for more reassurances.

Start getting comfortable with the fact that there will never be enough.

Move forward courageously with whatever decisions you’ve made, without self-doubt, or fear.

Obligation is a Funny Thing

Obligation is a funny thing.

And not funny as “ha-ha” but funny as in “Isn’t this a modern irony?”

The NFL owners voted almost unanimously this week, to move the Raiders franchise from Oakland to Las Vegas (a move fraught with its own implications in a professional sport full of people with questionable moral and ethical decision making practices…but bear with me) and their explanations to the fans of why they are moving, is reflective of a larger shift in our culture around the concept of obligation.

The attitude encapsulated in the owners’ comments following the vote reflects two views of obligation:

The first view is that of “we owe you nothing.” The franchise and the team played games, grew a fan base, and gave the entertainment to the fans of the sport that they craved. In exchange, the fans gave the team and franchise money through ticket sales and more.

Purely transactional.

The second view of obligation is that of “the only thing I ever owed you was a ‘good time.’” The players, the ownership (I’m a Denver Broncos fan, I know), and even the overall notorious behavior of the franchise reflected this “good time.” In exchange, the fans (both locally and regionally) gave the team, the owners, and the franchise attention, awareness, and an audience.

This is also purely transactional and reflects a view of obligation based not in attaining revenues of money, but attaining revenues of attention and trust. It’s the view that Frank Sinatra had about his life versus his performances, and that many celebrities of all stripes seem to have abandoned in recent years.

There are two large perspectives to consider here, both of which relate to conflict management and our real lives, as well as one small—but salient—point:

  1. Our lives are never purely transactional in nature. There is always an exchange of emotion for revenues (either trust or money) and that transaction has never been more valuable than now in our overall organizational and public cultures.
  2. Our conflicts are based on other people barreling past our obligations and asking us to give more emotionally, than we may be prepared to give.  However, the reality is that our personal boundaries around obligation must expand, or our management (not to mention our resolutions) will be task oriented, thinly veiled attempts to get to a relationship based goal we don’t really value, with the other party.

The small point is this: The organizations and leaders that understand the nature of obligation and the power they wield in a transactional relationship, will attain far greater—and far more meaningful—outcomes from individuals, societies, and cultures, than those that don’t understand.

Or even worse, those that don’t care—or never cared—in the first place.

What Does Your Perspective Look Like When You Change Your Mind

What does your perspective look like when you change your mind?

Mindsets are based in the accumulation of identity, meaning, life experiences, and assumptions that each of us make about how the world, and the systems in it, should work.

Mindsets are also backed up by the accumulated cruft of judgments, frames, attributions, and other cognitive “ticks” that people exhibit in their thinking and behavioral choices.

Many of the aspects of mindsets are considered by individuals to be fixed: they are what they are and there’s little point in attempting to change them.

Some of the aspects of mindsets are considered by some individuals to be changeable: they can be grown, can shift, can be made to serve a person rather than the other way around.

Changing your mind can come in many forms: through seeking new knowledge, through taking on new challenges, through deciding what not to do, or even through seeking forgiveness and reconciliation with another.

The journey from here to there is important. But not nearly as important as it is for you to tell us what it looks like from that new perspective.

Actions That Compose the Work

The work is rarely the most entertaining or compelling, thing.

The result of the work is a lot more compelling—good, bad, ugly, or indifferent.

The process is rarely envied.

The result of the work—the sausage, such as it were—is delicious on the plate, and worthy of being enjoyed. And sometimes, people are envious of the outcome.

The potential to experience emotional pain, public (or private) embarrassment, and even failure is so strong that people seek all kinds of shortcuts to avoid experiencing any of those potential outcomes.

But experiencing those outcomes, many times is the work.

Here is a partial (but not all inclusive) list of actions that compose the work. As in all cases, your mileage (and experiences) may vary:

Patience is work.

Resiliency is work.

Accepting outcomes is work.

Knowing where to put your focus (and why), is work.

Showing up every day, even when you don’t feel like it, is work.

Being responsible when a project, idea, or position you championed doesn’t work, is work.

Ruthlessly eliminating hurry in the short-term, to accomplish larger lifetime goals in the long-term, is work.

Having the courage, clarity, and candor to speak up about what is working and what isn’t, is work.

Engaging with people we don’t personally (or professionally) like without rancor, to accomplish goals greater than ourselves, is work.

Knowing when to quit, what to quit, and how to quit, is work.

Figuring out the right questions to ask, in the right way, to the right people, and then hearing the answers, is work.

Realizing that the work is on the line, but that you as a person are not, is work.

Raising expectations with the idea of fulfilling them, rather than using them as leverage against the other party in a conversation, or conflict, is work.

Seeing the end goal of a project, and realizing that persuasion of other people is the number one thing to accomplish to get there, is work.

Being intentional about your actions, whether in a conflict process, a project process, or a goal oriented process, is work.

Knowing yourself and what you are capable of (and what your limitations are), is work.

Understanding when to stop working, is work.

Doing any, and all, of these things in public, doesn’t make for a compelling or entertaining process to view from the outside.

And in a post-Industrial society, that values entertainment above all else, knowing what’s truly compelling, and talking, writing, and entertaining about that, is work.

Increasingly, it may be part of the only work that matters.

Clearing Out the Cruft

Clearing out the cruft that surrounds your reactions and responses to conflicts in your life, can take at least a lifetime.

Clearing out the cruft that surrounds your employee’s reactions and responses to conflicts in your organization can take at least 20 years.

Clearing out the cruft that surrounds your country, community, and neighborhood’s reactions and responses to conflicts in your country, community, and neighborhood, can take at least 50 years.

But that doesn’t mean that Ghandi, Candace Lightner, or even your cousin can’t change—or even be the source of effective change in others.

It means that the change isn’t going to happen nearly as fast as you think that it should.

It just means that when the change finally comes the impacts will appear slowly at first, and then all at once.

It also means that attending one training, reading one blog post, or implementing the ideas from one book, is not going to ever replace the hard work of working on yourself first, and everyone else second.

Collecting Data Points

Caring enough to notice the presence of patterns, trendlines, and data points is hard.

Knowing what patterns, trendlines, and data points to pay attention to, what patterns, trendlines, and data points to prioritize, and what patterns, trendlines, and data points to ignore until later, is hard.

Collecting patterns, trendlines, and data points, is hard—and sometimes boring.

Telling other people about patterns, trendlines, and data points, and convincing them that these areas have importance in their lives, their futures, and their children’s lives is hard—and sometimes disheartening.

There’s a lot of talk about patterns, trendlines, and data points, big—and otherwise.

But much of this talk is meaningless without the courage to follow-through on implementing responses—rather than reactions in the moment—to the information that you are confronted with.

Such confrontations don’t have to lead to conflicts.

They often do.

But not because of the presence of the data points, the patterns, and the trendlines, but because of the feeling that something integral was missed by somebody, who should have known better, and should have told everyone involved.

It’s hard to be the change that you want to see in the world.

I’d recommend starting that process by caring enough to notice, then to persuade others, then having the courage to act.

What Are You Paid To Do?

What are you paid to do?

What do you believe you are paid to do?

What does your employer tell you that you are paid to do?

What does your spouse believe that you are paid to do?

What does your family believe that you are paid to do?

What does your supervisor believe you are paid to do?

The systems at work, in the community, and even in the home are structured around the unstated, often unvocalized, answers to these critical questions.

It used to be that larger institutions defined these answers with clarity and provided a sense of reassurance about the answers.

It used to be that people either appealed to the authority of these institutions when their fellow travelers weren’t answering them in pre-approved ways, or when the answers seemed to be getting cloudy for everyone on the team.

It used to be that social norming and group think really kicked in on the answers to these questions, making the answer seem “obvious” and “normal.” So much so, that to even ask the questions out loud would have seemed foolish and blind.

Maybe even rebellious.

But now, with the erosions of power, with authority getting its bluff called everywhere, and with conflict and incivility on the rise because of increased role confusion, asking the questions above—and getting coherent answers to them—for yourself, is the beginning of attaining true wisdom.

Not wisdom based in learning what other people have experienced and then dealing with it, but wisdom based on knowing yourself thoroughly, first.

Not wisdom based in reassurance—because there will never be enough of that—but wisdom based in courage, candor, and clarity.

And then having the courage to ask—and to guide—others through answering the tough questions.

Seeing is Not Believing

Many times, at the intersection between human behavior and true innovative change, seeing is not believing.

Or maybe that’s hearing…

This often happens when the information we are confronted with about a coming future, doesn’t match with the information we have chosen to believe in the immediate present, about how our current situation should (or ought) to come to pass in the future.

When there is a gap between the information of the future (unbelievable) and the information of the present (believable) human beings choose to believe the information in front of their faces, no matter what the evidence to the contrary.

This happens even more acutely in groups, where the thinking of the team can be pushed, developed, molded and influenced, by reinforcing considerations that were original in the past; in spite of changing current circumstances.

More and more, the hard work of the future lies in having the self-awareness and courage to adjust your mindset when information comes in that is contrary to what you previously thought.

However, this can be daunting if you’re emotionally committed to building a business based on this information, building a family based on this information, or even building a culture or society.

Little things that seem big (changing your mind in the face of future information) are similar to the rudder of a ship: They seem small and obvious to do, but in reality, they result in the entire ship massively changing course.

Course changes aren’t nearly as hard as mindset changes.

Slow Thoughts

When it’s time to be in a hurry, slow down.

Slow down your expectations, slow down your actions, slow down interactions—ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.

When it’s time to engage, do it with courage.

Do the hard work of engaging with radical, meaningful self-awareness—physician, heal thyself.

When you’re afraid of the answer, seek scarier questions.

Have the realization that the hard questions don’t need you to think more about which binary answer you’re going to commit to, instead the hard questions need slow, high quality answers.

When the answer seems obvious, you’re probably repeating an answer you’ve always taken for granted as being true–or right.

Stop doing that.

Get under the skin of your conflicts, your communications, your story, and ultimately, yourself.

True Measure of Leadership Through Conflict

Leading people through conflict requires an emotional exchange between leaders and followers.

The leader gives inspiration, charisma, respect, and provides role modeling of a vision of the future, to her followers.

The follower gives encouragement, support, obedience, respect, and provides a feeling of self-worth through the act of deciding to follow, to the leader.

Often though in a conflict, both followers and leaders expect a one-way monologue rather than a two-way dialogue.

Leaders want the led to be quiet and follow without question.

Followers want leaders to listen or else be replaced by another leader who will.

The trouble with both desires (based in emotions not reason), played out in public, is that one side must bend to the whims and desires of the other, for goals to be accomplished, for visions to be realized and for emotional exchanges to be deemed worthwhile.

The true measure of leadership through conflict, is rising above selfish and self-serving human desires and role modeling that behavior (which wins respect) for followers.