Posts

Thinking is more painful than electric shocks!

/in /by

Why people often don’t get clear about their desired outcome or choose the best approach to take, before they act

It’s helpful for people to think about stuff more – particularly on why  they’re about to do something and on how  they’re about to do it. This is because:

1. Knowing why  we’re about to do something – the outcome we want to achieve – is much more important than the first few steps, the tactics, that we might take to get to it.

It’s easy to grasp this. If your desired outcome is clear but the first few steps you take towards it don’t work, you can simply try some other tactics. But if you start from the tactics themselves without really being clear about where you’re trying to get to, then early failures tend to derail all your efforts.

(There are exceptions to this rule: notably if you’re stuck and don’t know what you want to achieve then just trying something – anything – can be sometimes be more empowering than staying stuck);

2. Actively choosing how  we’re going to do something – the strategy, route or approach we might take – is a key determiner of success.

Far too many people simply do everything the same way, or the same way that they did it before, regardless of whether or not this gets results. It’s where that old saying comes from, “If you’ve only got a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.” Actively choosing the way to go about doing things, dependent on the circumstances and the people involved, creates flexibility of approach. And flexibility of approach in our behaviour is what leads to win-win.

Why don’t people do this kind of thinking more?
Get clear about their desired outcome and choose the best approach to take, before they act?

One part of the answer is in an article I was delighted to discover recently, headlined “People Would Rather Experience An Electric Shock Than Be Alone With Their Thoughts”!

A team of researchers have discovered that:

  • Left alone in a room with just their thoughts, more than half the participants described the experience as ‘not enjoyable’, most found it difficult to concentrate and reported their minds wandering. The negative aspects went up further in another group who were asked to repeat the task at home;
  • In one experiment people had the option of giving themselves an electric shock rather than complete the full thinking time. Even though they’d had that level of shock before and had said they’d pay $5 not to be shocked again, 67% of the men and 25% of the women involved chose to shock themselves rather than just sit and think!

You can see their article here: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/07/people-would-rather-be-electrically-shocked-left-alone-their-thoughts

My take on this is that human minds are evolved to deal with the real, physical world and with the web of social relationships that it takes to thrive. Disengaging from actual, concrete tasks and from real interactions with others long enough to do this kind of outcome/approach thinking is not something we’re naturally evolved to do. We have to learn it. And sticking with it long enough to get results ‘hurts’ and takes a lot of energy. Similarly, if you’re anything like me, there’s a whole load of failed adventures, thwarted ambitions and personal shortcomings that I’d really rather not think about at all, if only if wasn’t for the chance to improve things in future.

As my coaching practice evolves, I find that more and more people are saying things like: “I just need to hear myself think out loud”, or “I need some space to reflect on things and work them out, a kind of sounding board.” The hardest thing to do when I’m coaching in that kind of situation, is to do nothing but listen – but at least I don’t feel the need to give myself electric shocks!

Let me know if you’ve noticed any of this too please – or what you’re discovering about thinking, outcome-focus and behavioural choices yourself.

Please leave a comment below if they’re still open at the time of reading, or tweet me @nickrobcoach

Does it really hurt to think a bit more? Click To Tweet

The Motivation Equation and Self-Belief (part 1 of a series)

/in /by

How to define the outcome and establish your evidence in order to get more Self-Belief and better Motivation at work

I’ve written before about The Motivation Equation and how leaders can use it to motivate themselves and others to get great results and feel good about their work.

In that original article, I said that motivation is like a chain. Our overall willingness to get stuff done and our overall feelings about our ability to achieve things are only as strong as the weakest link in that chain. In other words, in order to spur ourselves and others into action and to feel good about the ambition behind it, we first need to make sure that each of the components of the Motivation Equation as strong as possible.

Here’s the overall equation: The Motivation Equation: Motivation = Self-Belief x Task-Relevance x Outcome Value Click To Tweet

We can think of each of the links as a kind of question or judgement that people make about themselves and their situation. For example, in the Task-Relevance link, people might ask themselves: “If I do this task well, will it lead to the outcome that’s required?“

This series of articles will take that much further and deeper, in a bite-size way, by looking at each of the links in turn, starting with Self-Belief.

Healthy Self-Belief – Steps 1 and 2

If you want to motivate yourself or someone else to have more self-belief – either as a way to increase motivation, or just because the right amount of self-belief is usually a good thing – you’ll find the first of my seven essential steps to healthy self-belief set out below.

In terms of our overall Motivation Equation, the question that people ask themselves or the judgement that they’ll be making about themselves or their situation for the Self-Belief link in the chain, is this:

Self-Belief is about asking ourselves, 'Can I do this task well?' Click To Tweet

One thing that’s really worth emphasising at the outset is that self-belief is highly-contextual. That is, it depends on what we’re doing, where we’re trying to do it and what our situation is at the time. This is one of the reasons why self-belief can vary so much over time. It’s also why my first essential step is about getting really clear about that context:

1. Define the Outcome

What exactly is it that you’re trying to do?

You might be surprised at the number of people I coach who’re not feeling good about their self-belief precisely because they haven’t been clear enough about what, specifically, it is that they’re trying to achieve.

I think that this is partly a kind of defence mechanism – if we’ve been vague about what we’re trying to get done, then we can be similarly vague about whether or not we actually succeed. But that kind of hedging your bets, not being clear about the outcome you want, or avoiding getting too specific makes it much more likely that your motivation will be similarly ill-defined.

So don’t be vague, get clear about the outcome you want to achieve. What exactly is it that you’re trying to do?

For most people, it can also really help to then consider step 2:

2. Establish your Evidence

How will you know when you’ve done it well?

Again, this is such a simple step, but one that can often get overlooked. It’s also one of the reasons why I encourage people to celebrate and mark the occasion when they’ve achieved something significant. By looking back at it in this way, people get used to evaluating things in a much more rounded way, including the emotions involved in that accomplishment as well as the hard data.

I think also, that one of the reasons why we might avoid doing that kind of post-achievement reflection is because things rarely go as well as our secret desires had hoped for. There’s usually some wrinkle, or some aspect that wasn’t as perfect as we might have hoped.

So don’t wait until afterwards to set-up those measures. Have them be transparent right from the outset. Ask yourself these questions:

  • How will I know when I’ve done this task as well as I’d like to?
  • What will I see, hear and feel that will tell me I’ve achieved it as I’d like to?

And remember to reflect on and celebrate those things afterwards too!

In summary:

The first two steps towards healthy self-belief are: 1. Define the Outcome and 2. Establish your Evidence. Click To Tweet

In the next article, I’ll continue with the Self-Belief link in the motivational chain and will look at:

  • Enabling Beliefs – what we believe enables us to do something well
  • Reason Beliefs – what we believe is the reason for being able to do something well.

I hope that’s been helpful in some way and that this bite-size approach works for you. Please look out for the forthcoming articles in this series. As they’re published, I’ll hyperlink them here.

As usual, please leave me a comment if they’re still open below, or tweet me @NickRobCoach. Tell me about your own experience of motivation and self-belief, either as a leader working with other people, or for you personally?

Having An Outcome Focus

/in /by

Outcome Focus:
My top 3 shortcuts to individual success and great team dynamics

If there’s one thing that makes the most difference between individual success and failure, or between great team dynamics and anarchy, it’s having an Outcome Focus.

That is, knowing clearly and distinctly what is wanted in any given situation.

If you don’t know what outcome you want, as a leader, an individual or as a team, it’s almost impossible to agree on how to proceed or to focus on where to put your efforts. As Lewis Carroll wrote:

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.

So it’s frequently a great source of surprise to me to discover how often people don’t really know what outcomes they want. Or to find out that nobody in a team has had a chance to talk together about what they’re trying to achieve. As a leader, if you were to do absolutely nothing but talk about the top three or four outcomes you want people to focus on, I’m convinced you’d be providing more leadership support for your teams than 60-70% of the leaders I know!

But how do you have more of an Outcome Focus? How do you get clear yourself about what you want in any situation? And how do you help the people around you to have the same clarity?

If you’re ready to have more of an Outcome Focus, I’ve set out my top 3 tips below.
But before you get into those, it’s always worth checking – do you already know what outcomes you want?

Perhaps you know but haven’t said it out loud or written it down. If that’s the case, do that now.

And if that’s not the case, or if you find yourself very well able to say what you don’t want, or if you find that you know you want less of something, but aren’t sure what outcome you actually do want, read on…

1. Visit the Future – and look back

This is one of my favourite techniques, because it’s a chance to raise your head from the everyday pressures and take stock of a much bigger picture. Pick a time-frame (it doesn’t matter what: an hour, a day, a week, a decade, will all work); use your imagination to transport yourself forwards in time; take a look back to the present-day, and answer these questions:

  • What do you want to be different in future?
  • Where do you want to have got to?
  • How do you want to be feeling?

2. Listen to Yourself Complaining

How often do you hear yourself or other people complaining about something, in this kind of way: “He said/she said…” “She did this or that…” “They don’t understand/ care/ appreciate…”?

Us coaches like to hear this kind of complaint because it’s usually a good springboard for action – after you’ve done some work with it. Here’s why it’s so useful…

Take this (edited) real example of a complaint, given to me by a client just last week:

“I’m so sick of having last-minute tasks dumped on me and my team, only to find out later that some vital piece of information was left-out so that we wasted our time responding.”

A complaint is really two different things that have understandably got mixed-up together:

  1. A complaint is an expression of some hurt or injury you’re feeling;
  2. A complaint is a hidden or buried or unclear desire for something to change.
    That is, it’s an Outcome!

First, you have to deal with the hurt or injury that you’re feeling.

Take the example above, and imagine that you’d had those last-minute tasks dumped on you. You might be feeling annoyed, disrespected, resentful of the time you gave-up over the weekend, or any of a number of emotions. And of course, emotions are useful, once we see them clearly, because they’re nature’s way of proving the energy and impetus for us to take action.

Second, you have to get really clear about the outcome that’s hidden away inside your complaint. You have to make that outcome conscious, instead of unconscious, and to turn it into some kind of request.

Using that same example again; once you’d stopped hurting about the way you were treated and were able to think rationally, what is it you’d actually want? Is there a request you might need to make? Is there a change you would want to have happen?

3. Ask Each Other Why

Young kids are great with the “Why?” questions when they’re trying to make sense of the world. But somewhere along the way, we seem to learn that asking too many “why” questions just annoys people – so we stop. But how can you have a great Outcome Focus if you don’t know why you’re doing something?

As a team member, how many times have you felt that you’re all doing something because somebody else, at some other point in time decided it was the thing to be doing? And you don’t really know why. Or you feel like maybe you were off that day, when everybody else talked about why this particular course of action was such a great idea.

As leaders or as team members, make sure you can answer these questions:

  • Why are we doing this?
    • Yeah, but really why are we doing it?
    • What do we actually want to get?
  • Why are we behaving the way we are? Will that get us what we actually, really want? Is there a Complaint that we haven’t really expressed or explored and which might be driving our behaviour?
  • Why don’t we want something else instead?

 

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

Carl Jung