from "how high?" to "why?"

The evolution from the traditional values of control, predictability and consistency - values that made change relatively simple to implement - to the new values focused on accountability, ownership and empowerment has made the implementation of top-down business change more difficult. 

...These... employees now question and resist new change initiatives. The response of the employee has shifted from "yes, sir" to "why are we doing that?" If your employees have embraced some or all of these new values, change management is not an option for successful change, it is a requirement. 

Jeffrey M. Hiatt & Timothy J. Creasey

Change Management: The People Side of Change, by Jeffrey M. Hiatt & Timothy J. Creasey Prosci Inc. 2012. P.26,27

name it to tame it

Name It to Tame It is a technique that involves noticing and labeling emotions as they’re happening. Identifying an intense emotion (“naming”) has the effect of reducing the stress and anxiety (“taming”) in the brain and the body that that emotion is causing.

In addition to in-the-moment relief, this practice also strengthens our capacity over time to be with big emotions when they arise, without getting swept up in them.

This technique was first identified by Dr. Daniel Siegel, a psychiatrist, writer, and professor who is also the founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA...

Practicing this technique effectively involves being aware of your body, speaking compassionately to yourself, and using deep, slow breathing.

When you think of a typical cycle of reactive thoughts, it might go like this:

1. Something happens
2. Your body responds: tension, rapid heart rate, faster breathing
3. You might have thoughts like, “This is unbelievable!” / “How could they do this?” / “This isn't fair!”
4. You feel angry, frustrated, rejected, humiliated, afraid, etc.
5. If you’re trying to stop or deny the emotion, you might speak to yourself in reprimanding ways: “What’s wrong with you?” / “Get ahold of yourself!”—which doesn’t work
6. Your body responds with more tension and stress hormones
7. You act out physically or have an emotional outburst

To gently interrupt this cycle, you initiate Name It to Tame It right after you notice your body’s first response. It might look like this:

1. You notice what your body is telling you: that you’re feeling angry, afraid, sad, etc.—and you take a deep, slow breath in
2. You recognize the fact that this situation is upsetting you—without reprimanding yourself—and you slowly exhale
3. You honestly name what you’re feeling: e.g., “anger, anger, anger” or “fear, fear, fear”—and you take a deep, slow breath in
4. Your notice your body slowly calming itself—and you exhale
5. You keep naming and breathing until you feel your body regulating

Naming the emotions creates a kind of healthy distance between you and the reaction. You recognize an important truth: you’re experiencing an emotion, but you aren’t caught up in or controlled by it.

"Name It to Tame It: Label Your Emotions to Overcome Negative Thoughts," by Mindfulness.com. Accessed on April 4, 2023

the world's greatest lie

What's the world's greatest lie? It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate.

Paulo Coelho

The Alchemist, HarperCollins 1993. p.18

when we’re personally involved

Daniel Kahneman performed an experiment involving a lottery run with a twist. Half the participants were randomly assigned a numbered lottery ticket. The remaining half were given a blank ticket and a pen and asked to choose their own lottery number. Just before drawing the winning number, the researchers offered to buy back all the tickets. They wanted to find out how much they would have to pay people who wrote their own number compared with people who were handed a random number. 

The rational expectation would be that there should be no difference. After all, a lottery is pure chance. Every number, whether chosen or assigned, should have the same value. An even more savvy answer would be that you should have to pay the people  who write their own number ever so slightly less, because of the possibility that there will now be duplicate numbers that, if chosen, would mean the size of the price would be cut in half. 

Neither of these turned out to be the right answer. Regardless of nationality or demographic group, people who wrote their own number always demanded at least five times more for their ticket. This reveals an important truth about human nature. When we’re personally involved in “authoring” an outcome, we are far more committed to it because we feel we own it. The underlying psychology relates to our need for control, which is a deep-rooted survival instinct.

…The lesson for change leaders? If you want to increase the motivation for (and therefore, speed of) the implementation of change, it pays to involve others in creating the aspiration, even when the answer may already be clear in the mind of the leader…. Change programs whose aspirations phase is characterized by an organization-wide, collaborative effort are 1.6 times more likely to succeed. 

Scott Keller and Bill Schaninger

Beyond Performance 2.0: A Proven Approach to Leading Large-Scale Change. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2019

be energizing, not energetic

Here is the paradox: You can actually speed things up by slowing down. There is no doubt that being energetic is contagious and therefore a short-term source of momentum. But if you lead by example all the time, your batteries will eventually run dry. You risk being drained at the vey point when your leadership is needed the most. Conveying a sense of urgency is useful, but an excess of urgency suffocates team development and reflection at the very point it is needed. “Code red” should be left for real emergencies... with [a] co-drive mindset, [we need] to widen [our] sights and recognize and reward people who are good at energizing others. Energizing behavior is unselfish, generous, and praises, not just progress, but personality too.

If you lead by beating the drum, setting tight deadlines, and burning the midnight oil, your team becomes overly dependent on your presence. Sustainable speed is achievable only if the team propels itself without your presence. Jim Collins wrote that great leaders don’t waste time telling time, they build clocks.

Self-propulsion comes from letting go of control, resisting the urge to make detailed corrections and allowing for informal leadership to flourish. As Ron Heifetz advocates, true leadership is realizing that you need to “give the work back” instead of being the hero who sweeps in and solves everybody’s problems.

Resist the urge to take the driver’s seat and allow [yourself] to take the passenger seat instead. Leading from the side-line, not the front line will change [perspectives]. Instead of looking at the road and navigating traffic... monitor how the driver is actually doing and what needs to improve. In [your] mind...fire [yourself] — momentarily — and see what happens to [the] team when [they are set] free, [taking] charge instead of looking to [leaders] for answers, deadlines and decisions.

Merete Wedell-Wedellsborg

"Help Your Team Do More Without Burning Out" Harvard Business Review. Oct. 15, 2018

retaining your power

Saying your boss makes you feel bad about yourself gives that person power over your emotions. And declaring you have to go to your mother-in-law's house for dinner gives her power over your behavior. Retaining your power is about acknowledging that you are in control over how you think, feel, and behave at all times.

Amy Morin

"13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do" inc.com. Apr. 4, 2017

natural subversion

The work of art, as Springsteen puts it, is “natural subversion.” It is through art that the unspeakable and the unheard find a voice. Establishment leaders might praise and pay for art, but they cannot control it. That is why the artist’s leadership is usually trustworthy: It either speaks to and for people, or it has no power at all.

Gianpiero Petriglieri

"Bruce Springsteen, Artful Leadership, and What Rock Star Bosses Do". Harvard Business Review. 9/27/2017

a big idea will change you

You don't know if your idea is any good the moment it's created. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is. And trusting your feelings is not as easy as the optimists say it is. There's a reason why feelings scare us. 

And asking close friends never works quite as well as you hope, either. It's not that they deliberately want to be unhelpful. It's just they don't know your world one millionth as well as you know your world, no matter how hard they try, no matter how hard you try to explain. 

Plus a big idea will change you. Your friends may love you, but they don't want you to change. If you change, then their dynamic with you also changes. They like things the way they are, that's how they love you- the way you are, not the way you may become.

Ergo, they have no incentive to see you change. And they will be resistant to anything that catalyzes it. That's human nature. And you would do the same, if the shoe was on the other foot.

With business colleagues it's even worse. They're used to dealing with you in a certain way. They're used to having a certain level of control over the relationship. And they want whatever makes them more prosperous. Sure, they might prefer it if you prosper as well, but that's not their top priority. 

If your idea is so good that it changes your dynamic enough to where you need them less, or God forbid, THE MARKET needs them less, then they're going to resist your idea every chance they can.

Again, that's human nature. 

GOOD IDEAS ALTER THE POWER BALANCE IN RELATIONSHIPS, THAT IS WHY GOOD IDEAS ARE ALWAYS INITIALLY RESISTED.

Good ideas come with a heavy burden. Which is why so few people have them. So few people can handle it.

Hugh MacLeod

"Ignore Everybody." Gapingvoid. 7/31/2004

trust employees

In this world of intense scrutiny, where everyone is looking at what you do...one reaction is to create management systems, more process, more controls, and more bureaucracy. Relying on traditional supervision, process and controls would inhibit serving clients responsively, and stifle employees' creative energies. We cannot apply Industrial age management systems to address post Industrial age needs. There is a better alternative, which is to trust employees. Values are the glue, the bond that binds us together in the absence of controls. These must be genuinely shared values; they can't be imposed top-down. Values provide employees a framework to make decisions when management systems and procedures are unclear. It comes down to judgment, based on shared values.

Sam Palmisano

"The Future of Leadership" by Samie Al-Achrafi. The Huffington Post. 10/30/2015

you already have permission

Act: “You Already Have Permission”: This is a challenging guideline for many managers, because it means switching from direct control to a trust relationship with the members of the team. This allows entire teams to change and transform the product and the internal processes in a flexible way, to adapt to different goals and changing markets, and to be overall more innovative and competitive. Removing the worry of “I need to get authorization” from every aspect of the work can be challenging, but it rewards business and people’s health greatly.

This is embraced at multiple levels inside Automattic as a rule. While there is still a long term vision from the top, each person and team is left to decide what’s best for the work that has to be done. The goals of the organizations are collected and discussed, teams set their own roadmap, goals and milestones and individuals can start initiatives on their own...

What is important is to recognize that people will want to give feedback or add their own shape to the idea.

Rawn Shah

"5 Leadership Attitudes From Flat Organizations" Forbes. 11/5/2015

perceived control

Everyone knows it’s important to keep employees in the loop, however, few employers are very good at this.

If you’re serious about keeping employee morale high and building organizational resilience, you need to shift this idea from “know it” to “act on it.” The more employees know what’s going on, the less time and energy they spend wondering — and worrying — about what they don’t know.

Research on stress and control shows that when we know what is going to happen — even if it’s bad — we feel less stressed than when we are faced with the unknown. Psychologists call this phenomenon “Perceived Control” because even though they don’t technically have control, knowing what’s going to happen creates a sense of control.

So, find out where employees feel left in the dark and how best to keep them in the know.

David Lee

"How To Build A Resilient, Stress-Resistant Workforce" TLNT 2/24/2014

make room for what they do not know

I believe the best managers acknowledge and make room for what they do not know – not just because humility is a virtue but because until one adopts that mindset, the most striking breakthroughs cannot occur. I believe that managers must loosen the controls, not tighten them. They must accept risk; they must trust the people they work with and strive to clear the path for them; and always, they must pay attention to and engage with anything that creates fear. Moreover, successful leaders embrace the reality that their models may be wrong or incomplete. Only when we admit what we don’t know can we ever hope to learn it.

Ed Catmull

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. Random House 2014.