Gimme a Break

September 18, 2009 by · Comments Off 

Tolerance for mistakes is at an all-time low.

Its on my mind because I’ve screwed up quite a few times this week – driving, messing up a screening form, carelessly forwarding an email, losing a receipt, forgetting an appointment. If you want to see people shut down, try explaining your mistake to them. There’s a good chance they won’t listen. In the worst case scenario, they’ll benefit or profit. Financial services, airlines and government agencies often excel at it and the most vulnerable people are frequently their biggest targets.

People have a great opportunity to gain my trust, respect and loyalty just by slowing down, listening and saying something to the effect “Its ok, don’t feel bad, its a little thing and I can quickly fix it for you”. Anyone who responds like that builds long-term social capital with me. And it reduces stress, a huge benefit.

So here’s an terrific way to differentiate your professional service firm: cut everyone some slack.

Reading this, you may be thinking that you’re already good at providing solutions to problems. That’s great as long as you’re living up to your promise with the small stuff too. That living up to also means acknowledging that you too have been hyper-critical and intolerant to the mistakes of others, that you give can yourself a break for it, and that you resolve to be vigilant and to do better.

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Filed under: emotional IQ, personal brand, self-awareness, social capital, social communications, stress relief
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Status Matters To Change Success

April 25, 2008 by · Comments Off 

Today I read something that brought up a memory so uncomfortable that I had largely repressed it. I was working as a strategy consultant for a growing company trying to get itself bought. We were a tight-knit group and although the bloom was fading from the dot-com rose, it was a mostly optimistic organization. In an effort to make everything look as professional and capable as possible to investors, there were frequent re-organizations, mostly designed by people who had never previously heard the word.

I was the last one called in to be briefed on the last re-org before the company was sold. The owner who I was meeting with looked pained and was nervously chattering. He started going down the org chart…and down….and down… And there I was, not just at the bottom but barely even connected to anything, like an org chart dangling participle. My response was visceral and I thought at the time, totally out of proportion to the event. I was assured that I was highly valued and respected (and I was well compensated and got good projects). It was just that they “didn’t know where to put me”. And I could see why. I was happy to jump from project, to account, to consulting. I cared little about politics or management and always preferred to do creative work, rather than manage others doing creative work. I was, am and always have been a creative, entrepreneurial generalist.

So why could I not get past it? To everyone’s surprise I left very shortly thereafter although it required relocation for a new position. Although I’ve stayed in touch with many of the people on that dreaded org chart, I never again spoke to, talked about or even looked at the person I met with that day. But I killed the messenger many times in my fantasies while at the same time beating myself up over my big fat jealous childish ego.

So today I read about a new NIMH study of the brain, specifically the medial prefontal cortex (involved in sizing up others), the striatum (the reward center) and the amygdala and posterior cingulate (emotional pain processing). The researchers scanned the brains of participants involved with a game that resulted in reward and loss of both money and status/reputation.

“We found that the brain reacts very strongly to the other players and specifically the status of the other players,” Zink says. “We weren’t expecting that profound a response,” she adds, noting that the subjects seemed to be concerned with the hierarchy within the game even when it was of no consequence to how much money they could make.

So now I understand; mine was a normal brain reaction to a perceived loss of status even though I was never a person who cared about titles or climbing the corporate ladder. But this new knowledge is even more important to me as a change facilitator and executive coach because either real or perceived loss of status is a major factor that should be considered and communicated when leading large organizational or small business change. Leaders who can increase their own awareness and emotional IQ about the impact of status change on their people and culture, will more effectively help others through, and consequently increase the success likelihood of, their change programs.

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Filed under: career, change leadership, emotional IQ, enterprise initiatives, going solo, Organizations
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