Dan Erwin

What's Your Story?

Those who do not have power over the stories that dominate their lives, power to retell them, rethink, deconstruct them, joke about them, and change them as times change, truly are powerless because they cannot think new thoughts. –Salman Rushdie 

A good story is a key success factor for making a role, job or career change. What truly moves us as human beings, what prompts us into action is the emotion of a good story. Even overly rational, fact-oriented, data driven magazines and journals like Harvard Business Review, journals that think of business as a matter of pure rational calculation, emphasize the same point. Michael Hattersley wrote in an HBR article, “truth to tell, few talents are more important to managerial success than knowing how to tell a good story.”

Sure, people have used all kinds of means for developing and negotiating identities. When I started in the coaching business back in the early 1980s, one of my first jobs was awarded to me by the CIO of Pillsbury. He was an astute guy, exceptionally capable of identifying talent and helping his folk build an identity. That job--and I still laugh about it--was to take a young manager and teach him to dress for success. The CIO recommended laundered cotton shirts, new ties, better suits and polished shoes. “So you’re going to pay me that much to coach him in his dress?” That young manager has since had three superb CIO jobs at well-known corporations. Obviously, his identity worked. And, we’re still intimate buddies. 

Although people have paid attention to dress, humor, personal style and even office décor to signal who they are, the most useful approach is through the development of a personal narrative. As Hermina Ibarra notes, a self-narrative is a story that makes a point about the person. Self-narratives not only express who we are, but they also create who we are. 

Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook beginnings in his dorm room, Bill Gates’ dropout from Harvard, Hewlett and Packard’s and Steve Jobs’ garage beginnings, as well as Obama’s childhood stories are examples of self-narratives—personal stories—that are carefully crafted for public consumption. 

As a consultant, I learned early on that my personal narrative was exceptionally valuable, not only in the approach I took to my profession, but also as a tool to sell and manage to clients. I had to explain how I’d gone from a career as a minister, to that of a teacher and to that of a business consultant. My ability to relate that emotional story often was the determining factor in whether or not I got a consulting gig. 

In today’s world of free-lance, and “at will” employment, a personal narrative is especially valuable for everyone. At the heart of a new stream of research are the practice and strategy of crafting and negotiating work identities with stories. No one has completed a more fascinating study of identity stories than Ibarra’s work, dating from 2010. In her research, she ticks off some of the situations where your personal story will be of utmost value. 

• Career change
• Job change
• Team leadership
• New job
• High job stakes
• Interacting with high-status, powerful people
• Interactions with unfamiliar contacts
• Job interviews 

Having multiple personal identity stories is valuable in all kinds of situations. Even in questionable situations. In her research, Ibarra quotes an investment banker seeking to move into international development: 

With the nonprofits, the first hour of any interview was “Why the heck would somebody with your background and your pay scale be doing this?” It took an hour’s worth of credibility building; they weren’t wondering “What is your background and what can you offer” but “Are you insane?”

People not only construct identities by telling their story, they also reinvent themselves by telling new stories about what’s happening to them. They reinterpret past events and weave the past and the present into a repertoire. A repertoire that allows them to communicate their identity and negotiate it with others. 

Well, what’s your story?

Herminia Ibarra, Identity as Narrative. Academy of Management Review, 2010, Vol 35, No.1, 135-154.

Flickr photo: CTJ online

A Hitman and a Saint

A questionable ethic?
A few years ago, after developing a relationship with the CIO of a major American corporation and successfully working with a number of his subordinates, I was faced with a challenge. Another consultant, call him John, was edging into my info tech territory from corporate marketing. As soon as I saw what was happening, I set up an appointment with the CIO. I assassinated John with truthful rhetoric and precise data. It was a barrage of sophisticated, critical, agitating rhetoric by which I intended to maintain control. By no stretch of the imagination did I wear my usual nice-guy hat. The next day, the CIO canned John’s ass.

While hard to accept and admit, on occasion it’s necessary to become hitmen because of threats to our career by others. Indeed, plenty of people go into business unprepared for a larger reality that can be supportive, constructive and fun, but occasionally requires them to work with somebody who is dangerous to their career. They may be highly deceptive rivals, indifferent and lazy assholes who won’t carry their weight on a project, or clueless incompetents who need to be brought to their senses.

Religiously ethical?
But my consulting experience reveals that a surprising majority of people hold an ethical and/or religious commitment to life that plays havoc with their feelings. Feelings that certainly would keep them from becoming the mean and calculating hitman depicted above.

As an ordained minister, a former parish pastor and seminary professor, it’s imperative to point out that these quaint religious ideas often sabotage not only your career, but also your life. And even more significantly, these “nice guy” feelings lack a rich understanding of what it means to be fully human. In short, the baseline of normalcy in the “religious” reality structure is often profoundly dysfunctional and false. A serious confusion exists between what people think they should be and what actually is. And it’s understandable that many haven’t come to terms with those differences given the predominant, though skewed, religious perspective.

In stark contrast to much I hear today about organizational “nice guys,” the biblical text paints the person of faith as a mix of saint, sinner and hitman (and, yes, hitwomen) taking on the competition. They are not lily-white, idealistic or naïve nice guys. They work in the same human, screwed-up organizations we work in today. Joseph, he of the “amazing technicolor coat,” engages in deception, manipulation and trickery. He frames his younger brother, tossing him (temporarily) in jail to demonstrate his cruel power. But Joseph also rescues his entire dysfunctional family, including his jealous older brothers who conspired to have him murdered. King David screws his general’s wife and has him murdered to cover his behavior, and engages in trickery and political skullduggery throughout his reign. But he also guides, loves and protects his people. Neither David nor Joseph could ever be considered innocent or naïve. David is punished for his murder, yet the biblical text affirms the godly faithfulness of both Joseph and David. Intriguingly, those ethics differ significantly from the religiosity I hear from many. These characters know how and when to become hitmen, willing to take on others to achieve their objectives.

The biblical ethic is about what business folk would call big picture stuff: radical justice, the common good and food for all, including the outsider, the poor, the widow, the foreigner and the sick and homeless. Its devil word is “oppression.” And the text doesn’t fool around with small potatoes. There’s little to nothing about such things as my trickery of another edgy consultant. Fact of the matter, the biblical text confirms trickery as the action of a person with entre to the establishment, a person who’s both fully human and powerful. I suspect, therefore, that Yahweh got a good laugh out of the whole comedy. And I laughed all the way to the bank, knowing full well that I’ll still win some and lose some.

Shifting the paradigm
At the heart of this blog is an attempt to shift the paradigm regarding business relationships and personal success. As my experience revealed, the reality is far larger and more complex than many are willing to admit. Talk about the current fad of servant leadership all you wish, but reality is not just about nice guys. So I emphasized the biblical reality, not because I’m especially religious, but because it provides a phenomenally valid reality structure: a perspective that can lead to mastery of one’s career, but more significantly one’s life.

In short, reality demands that if we intend to succeed in business and life, we must be willing to use our human power. Stanford’s Jeff Pfeffer has dealt directly with this issue in his classrooms and his consulting for many years. In his latest book, Power, he analyzes the resistance of many folk to even try to become powerful. His analysis is worth its weight in gold. Even in his Stanford MBA classrooms, students find the necessity of power tactics and strategies phenomenally difficult to accept. Why is that? Both Pfeffer and I think it’s because of the wacko reality structure subscribed to by most of the population. Most accurately, he writes that we

conspire in (our) own deception about the organizational world in which (we) live. That’s because people prefer to believe that the world is a just and fair place and that everyone gets what he or she deserves. And since people tend to think they themselves are deserving, they come to think that if they just do a good job and behave appropriately, things will take care of themselves. Moreover, when they observe others doing things they consider to be inappropriate, self-aggrandizing, or “pushing the envelope,” most people do not see anything to be learned, believing that even if those people are successful at the moment, in the end they will be brought down.

Pfeffer goes on to reveal that this naiveté keeps people from learning from difficult situations and especially from people whom we don’t like or respect. Furthermore, it anesthetizes us from the need to be proactive in building a power base and dealing with the inevitable competition. Pfeffer summarizes the research, and concludes that reality is far different than we thought. It demands that we engage in power-building activities, without which we are seriously limiting our potential for both survival and success.

The messy deed
Stanford’s Bob Sutton is another of those writers who takes on a full-orbed reality. But he narrows his focus to organizational assholes in his book, The No Asshole Theory. Toward the end he devotes a chapter to the realistic, but painful task of becoming a “temporary, strategic asshole.” Sutton writes that his book “would be naïve and incomplete if I didn’t talk about the upside of acting like an asshole.”

Unfortunately, even if you aren’t a certified asshole, and even if you despise people who deserve the label and avoid them like the plague, there are times when it is useful to play the part of a temporary asshole to get something that you need or deserve. Polite people who never complain or argue are delightful to be around, but these doormats are often victims of nasty, indifferent, or greedy people. There is much (research-based) evidence that the squeaky wheel does get the grease.

The victim, who Sutton calls a doormat, completely ignores reality.

Hitman activity
What this means is that at least 98% of the time my colleagues can be trusted not to knife me. I can be a nice guy working with other nice guys. But I’m also aware that there are times when I fuck up and when my colleagues fuck up and given half the chance, may fuck me, forcing me to become a hitman. Significantly, I’ve found that my lack of innocence about reality relieves me of all kinds of life and career anxieties. When you know what you’re going to be dealing with, you’ve got a leg up on the situation. But note also, that full-orbed, biblical reality of life and organizations inevitably keeps me from being jaundiced and terribly cynical.

The ethics of my decision to occasionally take on the activity of a hitman are not black and white, but gray. And this is highly reflective of reality. It demands of me that I stay alert for the sociopath while not becoming one. It reminds me also that sociopaths screw themselves over because people won’t want to work with them. So, when faced with a jerk, an asshole or an untrustworthy competitor, stand your ground. Draw several lines in the sand about work expectations, responsibilities and scope of authority and take him on. Don’t be afraid of rhetorical trickery. Otherwise, without those rather sophisticated activities, your rise in the ranks will come to a halt. That’s not only smart power politics, but it’s also appropriate ethically and religiously.

Picture fm flickr.com: by emorse04

To Find a Job, Rebuild Your Network

The best way to find a job is still through networking. Certainly the web is useful. But ultimately, nothing is better than face-to-face. Here are my secrets to the process.

No matter how you get the contact, face-to-face will be inevitable. However, many really need to change their networking process to get that new job they’ve always dreamed of.

Networking has been around since the 1930s, but research, insights and major changes enhancing success in the process are relatively recent. Don’t limit your outreach to close friends, colleagues or your current organization. It’s important to realize that your network needs to be tailored to its objectives. And if a new job is your objective, most will need to rebuild that network.

Many people seem to think that networks are easier to form if you’re extroverted and outgoing. But the real issue is effort, not personality style.

And one of the intriguing research finds about high performers is that they distinguish themselves by their network. They don’t necessarily have a big network. But their network has “bridging ties,” ties with people who reach outside their group and outside their organization. Job searchers should be finding and using “bridging ties.”

There are a number of top students of networking and networking analysis. But for popular consumption and personal feedback on your network and network building, pick up Wayne Baker’s, Achieving Success through Social Capital. It’ll help you analyze where your network weaknesses are, how to build a better network and how to focus on your objective.  

Redefine your network to focus on your job search.
Most have far more contacts than they think. Go through your past history, identifying former classmates, colleagues, clients and community acquaintances. When you sit down with a contact to talk, always ask for other contacts. Be very specific.  Follow the sales assumption approach: “Based on our conversation what three people should I contact?” Notice the specific number. If you ask whether they can suggest some others, you’re liable to get a no. But if you ask for specific number and keep seated, they’re liable to go to their own contact list and pull out three names for you. Then ask if you have permission to tell the contact that he/she was the source of the recommendation. And here’s a terrific secret: once you’ve made contact with the three, call the original source back, telling him of the results in up-beat fashion. And thank him. Half the time, he’ll give you more insights and more contacts.

The contact meeting is a discussion, not a job interview.
Keep faith with the stated objective of your meeting. If the purpose of your meeting is information gathering, never, never ask for a job in that discussion. If the contact brings it up, that’s fine. But don’t commit such a strategic blunder. Never go into a discussion unprepared—and be knowledgeable about the contact’s industry. Using information you have about his/her industry, ask more about the industry, its status, future, current jobs situation. Ask how to succeed in the industry and how to position yourself for opportunities.

Finally, get feedback on your handling of the conversation. How can you improve your information-gathering process? What other questions should you be asking, even what shouldn’t you ask. Make it a learning session, both for you and your contact. Give the contact a smile, a firm handshake, and get out of the room—on time. And if the contact continues to give you information, let him know that you appreciate it but that you want to keep faith with his time. He’ll let you know if you can stay seated or should get on your way. And, he’ll respect you for your professionalism. 

Keep good records of your contact and your meetings.
There are all kinds of programs for record keeping, but I keep a special contact file in outlook for potential clients and information gained from meetings. But be sure to check back every two or three months, update the contact, and check to see how he’s doing and whether he has further suggestions for you.

Earlier on in this blog, I pointed out that building a network is about effort, not personality. I hope that message has really sunk in. I’ve worked with numerous leaders who were scrupulous networkers. One especially comes to mind. A vice-president of a consumer products company, I watched him move from job to job, seemingly without any difficult. His first position was lost to a merger, but he had a new position in another company before he finished his tenure. His second position was lost to a strategic IT blunder, but he marched off to another even better position before being let go. He inevitably devoted time every week to networking, revising the quality of his links, and checking in with his contacts. It paid off in spades.

Flickr Photo: by clairphotography 

7 Behaviors That Keep Women From Getting Ahead

Over the past two years, this blog (published in April, 2010) has been number one in readership, reaping well over 25,000 unique visits. Numerous bloggers have referred to the blog, even plagiarizing the hell out of it (that’s fine with me). It’s also the most commented upon blog with extremely negative and even more extremely positive comments. The commenters engaged in several heated discussions with each other, positioning themselves within their own ideology.

Initially, I responded to some of the comments, but as time went on I realized that the discussion didn’t need my input.

So, I’m recycling it because of its popularity. . . and because of its obvious relevance to the workforce.

It strikes me that I need to explain why a male would write for females so directly. One of the reasons is that more than a quarter of my clients were women, many of whom stated that they wanted to work with a man who understood gender differences. The fact that our three daughters are also professionals plays into my personal interests. Still, as a scholar in the field of organizational and interpersonal communication, gender differences have been a hot topic for years, a topic that has always intrigued me.

You’ll notice that the blog is supported by a significant amount of research. Indeed, many of the topics have been systematically studied by many scholars. Second, I have tried to be as practical as possible, making the recommendations immediately useful.

_______________________

On numerous occasions over the years, I've coached women managers and execs. Recently, while going through my file on influence management, I stumbled on an old article by Mary Ellen Drummond entitled, Seven Things We Do That Keep Us From Getting Ahead, from a now defunct (?) magazine called Women Managers. Although these recommendations don't apply to a few female execs that I've worked with, they certainly apply to a large number. Drummond doesn't mention the basis for her conclusions, but because of my studies in nonverbal research I'm well aware that a number of the recommendations have a research basis. This information seems to go in cycles in business circles, but I've seen a number of recent articles on personal presentation. I'm also aware that the top business schools, including Booth, Kellogg, Harvard and Stanford give time in their program for personal presentation, usually in leadership development programs that focus on interpersonal communication.

I've found that typically, because of their socialization, women are not aware of these issues. The issues surface out of the assumption that business is a man's world, and that if a woman wants to succeed, she'll need to mimic some of the male behaviors. (Although I've seen and read all kinds of responses to that assumption, I recommend a great deal of flexibility in these issues. FYI: I've noticed more than a few men that need help with their business behaviors.)

Since what you don't know can hurt you, here are some things to think about and perhaps get some feedback on.

1. Women do not take up enough physical space. This is not a matter of size, but how you hold yourself when standing. If you expect to be perceived as a powerful person, stand with your feet apart, and perhaps your hands on your hips. Drummond recommends the steeple gesture, placing your hands so that just your fingertips are touching. This forces the palms apart and makes your arms take up more space whether standing or sitting. This is a classic negotiating posture, so watch for it when observing others.

Although Drummond doesn't mention this, it's a well-researched fact that when men and women all sit down at a large table, women take up far less room. Men put papers and books over as much as twice the space as women. I recommend that women spread out on the business table just like the men. Take ownership of a huge area of space. The difference often has a powerful impact on the discussion.

2. Women nod their heads when listening. A man nods his head only to show agreement, while women nod to show they're listening. Plenty of women in executive suites have been schooled to avoid this. Present yourself as a powerful person, not a nice lady. Just last week, I took my wife to see an endocrinologist at the university clinic. Prior to seeing the physician, the nurse took information and was nodding her head, encouraging my wife and me to talk. Then the physician, a nationally known woman walked into the room. The difference was shocking. Though smiling and warm, she was totally in charge from the time the door opened. She asked questions, but didn't nod. She interrupted me a couple times, probing for information. Once I acceded to her authority, the conversation became much more familiar. It was a hilarious experience for this communication scholar, but also a very powerful way for the physician to assert her authority. I had nothing but kudos and trust of her insights by the end of the session. Well done!

3. Women tilt their heads when they talk. Check this out and notice that women tilt their heads when listening and talking, without even knowing it. It is not a power position from which to speak. So keep your head up, chin forward and untilted, and relax your shoulders backward, not hunched tightly forward, when you want to speak. You want others to listen to you.

4. Women introduce themselves too soon. Research shows that no one listens to what's being said in the first 5 to 7 seconds of meeting new people. They're too busy visually checking you out, and they pay little to no attention to what's being said. That's why we forget the names of people we've just met. We weren't listening. So, when first meeting someone, explain what you do, the company you work for, and then, finally your name.

5. Women's voices rise at the ends of sentences. It makes a woman sound like she's asking a question and asking for assent instead of making a statement. There is a geographical component to this. Women from the Upper Midwest are terrible at this. Sometimes I just want to yell at the phone to get them to stop it. My wife, who's from Detroit, has never done that. My daughters? Not in a thousand years. I've seen them roll their eyes at a woman doing this. My middle daughter, in a playful mood, will mock someone doing it. When we moved to Minnesota and she was in the fourth grade, someone asked why she talked like she did--mouth open, and no questioning at the end of sentences. Her response? "Why would I want to talk like you?" Ummmm. Just to set you straight, she has a terrific number of friends, including a large number of Harvard, MIT researchers who think that when it comes to research protocols and animals, she's god.

6. Women fidget. Although I think this is somewhat dated, the research shows that when men enter a conference room, they make 12 major movements. Women make 27. Many of these involve pulling out a chair and sitting down, but then women start adjusting their clothes and jewelry. The more movements you make in business settings, the less powerful you seem to your colleagues. Beware what you do when you enter a room, and keep your movements to a minimum.

7. Women let men finish sentences for them. Fading out at the end of a sentence is more common for women than men, so is being interrupted. You need to complete your sentences and your ideas. So, keep talking, a bit louder and hold up your finger to signal you're not finished. Never, never, never let men get away with interrupting you. On occasion, you can also interrupt right back to make your point. And keep talking. As Drummond says, stick to your guns and your sentences.

These bad habits are all learned. They're not natural. The good habits can also be learned. So women, don't let the men take advantage of you. Frankly, I lose my respect for a woman who lets a man take advantage of her. I raised my daughters to know better! FYI: I was never interested in raising "nice girls." Our objective was to raise intelligent, achieving females who could make some serious contributions to this world. Abrasive candor is a given. I've always taken the comment that my daughters or my wife could be difficult to be a compliment. It was expected.

Photo fm Flickr.com

The Most Frustrating, Confusing, Dangerous, Single Word in Business and Journalism

It’s amazing how a single, coordinating conjunction can impact our behavior and thinking. To a surprising degree, the majority of people don’t realize the power of this single word. Once that conjunction is pronounced or written, they become putty in the hands of the user. Indeed, a single word can be used to persuade us, even against our interests, through what Edward Bernays, the founder of public relations, called the “engineering of consent.”

How does a single word gain such power over us? Simple. Our memories are faulty. Our perceptions are partial or biased. Our interpretations of the same events differ. And we draw differing conclusions from experiences. Because of these limitations, we are vulnerable and open to the word of another. A single word exploits our faulty memories, our limited perceptions, our prejudices, inferences and predictions. Understanding how this term can slip up on you will help you avoid work fears, show you how to turn a conversation around, give balance to your understanding of important financial or political matters and think more critically about what’s going on. 

I’m not referring to that overly familiar, favorite four letter “f . . . “ expletive that displays the limits of dumb, movie-action characters’ gray matter.  Instead, I’m referring to that single, damnable, three-letter conjunction, “but.”

Think I’m making too much out of a conjunction? Here’s an exercise for you. Finish each sentence after the conjunction but with your own experiences or ideas and then analyze your emotions from that test.

You did a good job, but. . .

I’d like to go out with you, but. . .

The President’s new health care policy is a start, but. . .

It’s a possible strategy, but. . .

Newt Gingrich is very intelligent, but. . .

Jean can usually be counted on to support you, but. . .

Some meanings    

The conjunction has a storied background, coming out of the Old English, the Old High German and even the Old Norse. As language has evolved, the word takes on two related meanings. First, it’s a quick way to say that something is true (or not true), except for the fact. . . “You did a good job on this project, but it really lacks pizzaz.”  

The conjunction also is used in opposition to a first statement. “Your broker acts as though he’s really very smart, but his results don’t support that.” “The defendant is innocent, but pleads guilty to avoid the risk of greater punishment.” Both definitions show how the conjunction creates a conflict, qualifying and reframing the previous statement by placing limitations upon the initial sentence substance.   

Persuasion strategy

As I’ve described the approach to using the conjunction, the persuasion process is a form of what we call sequential persuasion. When applied to sales, it’s a sneaky way of getting your foot into the doorway. Some salespeople mention your neighbors by name, some ask for a glass of water, or some promise they’re not going to try to sell you anything.

When the sequential model is applied to our conjunction situation, it’s compressed into a single sentence. It begins with a statement that you may agree or disagree with, disrupts that statement and then reframes the issue. Journalists, of course, can’t focus on the individual. So they make a widely recognized statement, disrupt it with the conjunction, and then reframe the issue.

A page of Jeff Pfeffer’s book, Power, happened to be open as I was writing. He summarizes his first chapter with a blatant use of the power of disruption by conjunction and reframing. He argues that power and influence entail doing a good job and making certain those in power notice you, “but performance by itself is seldom sufficient, and in some instances, may not even be necessary.”  

Extensive research supports this process. In a series of studies, Davis and Knowles (1999) researched different methods for the sale of Christmas cards sold by a charitable organization. Sometimes the experimenter would include a subtle error, such as “the price is 300 pennies. . .  I mean 3 dollars.” Informing the participants the cards are a bargain increased the likelihood of purchases, but only if the statement followed the reference to 300 pennies. In fact, this slip virtually doubled sales in some situations.

Ferris, Das and Pruyn (2004) also verified the worthwhileness of this technique. Furthermore, they found that technique often amplified its benefits. In study after study, confusion techniques have been shown to distract attention from the earlier statement. Additional research dating from as late as 2007 found that disruption techniques are exceptionally successful in changing attitudes. The disrupt/reframe approach cultivates a more candid, trusting relationship. In general, people like to demonstrate they are consistent over time and, therefore, like to acquiesce to subsequent information or demands. In short, the disrupt-then-reframe tactic diverts people from resisting the new idea or request.

More than awareness

It’s obviously important to learn about persuasion because it enhances your own knowledge and awareness of the various processes. Knowledge is power, as they say.

More significantly, learning how the conjunction but and the disruption/reframe techniques work serves a defensive function. I say this with full awareness that people tend to underestimate the influence of persuasion on themselves and overestimate its effects on others, a process known as the third-person effect. Thus, you may be more defenseless than you realize.

When the strategy is being used on you, put your brain in gear. One strategy is to go back to the first clause of the sentence and deal with it before you get suckered by the disrupt/reframe technique.

Take one of the sentences from above where your boss tells you, “You did a good job on this project, but I need more timeliness in the future.” Thank your boss for the feedback, and go back to the first clause. “I recognize the project was late, but what, specifically, was especially effective on this project?” You’re after more information, but you’re also disrupting your boss’s agenda. Get him to discuss your fine work, perhaps even explaining why the work took more time than anticipated or the number of priorities you’re dealing with. And then go back to the subject of timeliness, apologizing, and checking with him and his priorities procedures, all of which involve the timeliness issue. (Notice that I used disruption/reframing to deal with another’s disruption/reframing.)

When I encounter the technique in the statements of journalists or pundits regarding a subject of interest to me, the bells go off. My thinking goes to the entire subject, not merely the reframing. That approach to critical thinking is highly informative, enabling me to be more accurate in both my thinking and decision making.

The conjunction is frustrating because it often catches you off guard. Confusing, because you have to handle multiple ideas simultaneously. And dangerous, because it’s a persuasive strategy designed to lead you astray.

The conjunction but belongs to the same category of language as the well understood by the way (BTW). They’re both signals that we need to watch very carefully.

Photo: Flickr.com, Canadian

Listening Is NOT a Linear Game

“Wait, wait. I’m not finished.” Four keys to truly listening.

Listening is far more difficult, more fatiguing and often more frustrating than talking. Even the best listeners have to bite their tongues to stop from reacting, interrupting or verbally identifying with the person talking. 

Effective listeners listen for different levels of meaning. 

The linguistic or denotative level is simply that to which the message refers. “Jim can’t come to the team meeting.” The individual words of the sentence and the sentence as a whole have linguistic meaning. “Jim” refers to one specific person and “can’t come” refers to a specific action that won’t take place. “Team meeting” is a well-defined event. That's linear listening. 

But it’s the non-linear, interpretive level of meaning where our brains really start churning. The interpretive level of meaning in a message is created by the complex set of cues within the message itself. These cues tell the other person how to make sense of the message. Is it to be taken seriously or lightly. Does the message mean exactly what’s being stated, or even the opposite of its literal content? 

When the message is delivered face-to-face, there are liable to be mannerisms, facial, hand and body gestures, as well as inflections and tone of voice that give us clearer indications of how a transaction is to be interpreted. When the message is delivered via other means, all you have are the words. 

The third level of meaning for most messages is the relational. The relational level of meaning is the complex set of cues within the message that indicate the relationship between the talker and the listener. Every message in an interpersonal transaction (that’s right, “every message”) either reinforces or modifies the existing relationship between the two persons involved. 

In short, effective listening inevitably involves a lot of parallel processing. 

Four keys to truly listening. 

It’s obvious that the opportunities for misunderstanding within the three levels of meaning are numerous. But organizational listening, even within the interpersonal, is inherently problematic. Add differing levels of hierarchy, work teams with several members, cultural and value differences, struggles for power, competition for scarce resources and the increased use of impersonal communication media to the soup and it’s a near-perfect set up for misunderstanding. So here are four keys to more effective listening: 

Avoid and ignore distractions. This doesn’t just mean shutting down your Blackberry or closing your web browser. It’s especially important to stop the business of formulating your response to what the other person is saying. Simply focus on what’s being said at the differing levels. Focus, focus, focus. 

Parrot and paraphrase. You can feel silly doing this, but parroting or paraphrasing not only shows the other person that you’re listening, but it encourages them to keep talking by showing that you’re actually listening. 

Ask thoughtful questions. Open-ended and implication questions help you see the issues more clearly. It also enables the talker to go deeper into what he or she sees as significant. 

Explore other’s listening mistakes. It’s a lot more difficult to learn from our own mistakes than from others. Whenever I’m around a “he said, she said” conversation, I pay close attention to how a person draws conclusions from that experience. I stay curious about their interpretations, sometimes even asking about how they drew their conclusion from what they heard. If you’ve sat through a team meeting, for example, and afterword someone tells you what they heard and the meaning they made from it, you begin to see how that person created meaning and how it (sometimes) differs from you. So I don’t just walk away wondering what planet they’re on or why I missed that. Instead, I pay close attention to their inference creating, learning about my own skills and even my mistakes, from them. Statisticians will tell you that our inference creations are far, far more wrong than correct. Most of us rather automatically think that mistakes were made, but not by us. That dog won’t hunt. 

The brilliant research scientist, Duncan Watts, formerly of Columbia University and now Yahoo’s principal research scientist, has a lot to say about our inference, meaning-making capacities. In a fascinating McKinsey summary on the future of marketing, Watts finds that we need to start suspecting our intuition (our inference-drawing and meaning-making capacities). Watts is talking about hard data, but his comment applies even more strongly to interpersonal/team listening. 

We can’t help thinking that we know why people do (say) what they do (say) or what they’re going to do. But whatever hypothesis or intuition you have, however self-evident it may seem, when you test it against the data, it’s wrong—not every time, but very often.

It's Not "An Eye for an Eye," but "Two Eyes for an Eye."

Don’t take “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” too literally.

Most of us are familiar with the deeply held notion of an eye for an eye. In an intriguing study of interpersonal relations, Boas Keysar and his colleagues at the University of Chicago found that reciprocity, what he calls “giving and taking,” is asymmetric. People reciprocate generosity fairly equally the first time around, less so as time goes on. But selfish acts are treated quite differently. If you screw somebody, they’re going to screw you back twice as much—or more.

Overall, conflicts (taking) between people escalate rapidly, while generosity and compassion (giving) sputter out pretty easily.

We like to think that reciprocity is a simple give and take, “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” But the sentiments of that well-worn aphorism don’t square with reality. The research found that relationship (social) exchanges, in contrast to dollar-based exchange of goods and services, simply don’t work on a fair market basis. The study revealed that social exchange is based upon the meaning and interpretation of the social actions rather than on the objective value of those actions. That includes positive versus negative behaviors, compliments versus insults, rewards versus punishments, and helping a colleague versus hurting a colleague.

Keysar said, for example, that if you’re kind and let someone go in front of you, that driver may be considerate in response. But if you cut someone off, guess what? That person “may react very aggressively, and this could escalate to road rage.” The same rules operate in work settings.

Another experiment, using money as the exchange in a game, showed that taking quickly escalated as players became increasingly greedy over repeated exchanges. In a companion money experiment, the study confirmed that the act of taking inevitably has a far bigger impact on people’s responses than the act of sharing.

In sum,

1. Generosity is rewarded, but there is a tendency on the part of the recipient for it to weaken and sputter out.
2. Acts of taking have a far bigger impact on people’s responses than acts of sharing.
3. Taking escalates negative actions quickly--proportionately faster and larger than giving.
4. Relationship exchanges and responses, both positive and negative, are based largely on the personal interpretation of the actions, rather than the objective value of those actions.

Some work implications:

1. Rewarding generosity.

--Overtime work to achieve boss’s goals will be rewarded (however, continual overtime can be taken for granted, and lose its impact).

--Donating resources and time (occasionally) to colleagues will ingratiate you to them, making reciprocal rewards available.

--If you want support for your good deeds, you’ll need to interpret the deed to the relevant persons and self-advocate.

--Significantly effective and “useful” hierarchical and peer relations require a personal reputation of liking and respect.

2. Acts of taking.

--Refusing to support a colleague’s project can result in lack of support for your project, even when the person sees your project positively.

--Critical and negative feedback may do more harm to your relationship than good. Be very cautious, contract to give critical feedback, and match the negative feedback with the positive.

3. Escalating negative acts.

--Never, never burn your bridges, it’ll always cost more and more.

--If you have an image problem and people don’t think well of you, better to demonstrate your positive qualities in a new setting where you don’t have to overcome so much baggage.

--Loss of trust may be difficult, even impossible to repair.

4. Exchanges tied to interpretations.

--Rewards won’t be granted solely on the basis of your deeds and generosity no matter what the actions. Personal interpretive and advocacy strategies are needed to “grease” the relationship.

--Interpret your repayment of generosity to the original giver. He or she may not otherwise understand.

--People trust their first impressions, whether of taking or giving. After the first impression, changes are difficult.

--Make self-advocacy the rule, not the exception.

There you have it: street smarts par excellence! Hope it helps.

Boaz Keysar, Converse, Wang and Epley, (2008) Reciprocity is not give and take. Psychological Science, V.19, N.12.

Photo: Flickr, by Manoj Trikila

Listening Is Actually All About Questioning

Effective listening is not about listening harder.

“My boss--or my colleague--won’t listen to me.” Although it’s rare to see much about effective listening on the web, my single post on the subject, Listening with minimal encouragers--with nearly 20,000 viewers--is still going strong. Listening problems in organizations never seem to go away. Part of the problem is most still frame listening through the lens of attention. So they emphasize “pay attention and listen harder.” That, however, won’t significantly impact the quality of your listening. Listening actually involves the same fundamental skill as interpreting an email, a tweet or dealing with any other message media that requires responsiveness.

Being effectively responsive to messages in any format is first and foremost all about questioning, especially within the organization. That implies that our knee jerk response to the messages we receive within interpersonal conversations or scripted media is neither reading closely nor listening more attentively. The questioning may be verbalized orally or merely internal and silent, but effective listeners are invariably questioning.

Although written messages are infamous for misunderstanding, face-to-face conversations are still more complex. That’s especially true when it comes to effective listening. We’ve been taught to listen for the big ideas and pay attention to the words and meanings, but that’s only part of the issue. Effective listeners question the larger conversational context, the immediate setting, audience relationship, emotional tone, body movement, the gestures, eye gaze, tone and inflection as well as the words. In short, effective listeners are parallel processors who question what they both see and hear within the conversational package.

Can you question all of these factors at one time? Of course not. But as you question what you’re seeing and hearing, you’ll begin to notice just a few factors in each conversation that stick out. Usually those are the factors on which to focus your questioning and analysis. This might include context issues, for example, as obvious as, “why is Joe interrupting repeatedly?” Or, “why is the leader getting 'defensive' about that set of questions?” Sometimes the more important question might even be, “why don’t I have better insights into this seemingly politicized issue? How did I miss out on what’s evidently going on here?”

Invariably, there are only a handful of questions that apply to nearly all business settings:

1. What’s the meaning of this conversation? What’s being said and what’s the real subtext?
2. What are the relevant context, hierarchy, political, relationships, emotions, tone, body language and gesture I need to focus upon and analyze? Who are the obvious players here, and why are others saying nothing?
3. What are the relevant “undiscussables?” What’s not being messaged, but would be extremely useful to know and understand?
4. What’s the impact of the person’s messaging upon the context, conversation and myself?
5. What does he expect me to do about what he’s saying--and what am I really going to do about it?
6. What are the messages my listening is sending to the speaker and what adjustments do I need to make about those messages—if possible?

You’re not always going to be comfortable asking these questions orally in every setting. But your ignorance of the answers to these listening questions can impact your projects and career, sometimes seriously.

Remember that the conclusions you draw if you don’t ask a question out loud may be off base—far off base. I inevitably assume that my assessment of what’s being said—if I don’t verbalize my question to the other—has a greater potential for being wrong than right. It’s smart to distrust your judgments about the other person and what he or she is meaning. My friends, as well as my clients, tend to expect that I’ll call back after sleeping on a conversation to once more clarify a conversation’s meaning.

If you build a social contract—an agreement with the person--that you can ask questions about what’s being said, and do it early on and regularly—you’ll find it possible to ask nearly all these questions. Of course, you’ll need to regularly renegotiate the contract. If the person is a superior, you’ll want to find out whether he’s OK with questions in public or would prefer them in private. Eventually, even the most reticent will agree to public questioning of significant issues.

FYI: Systematic research in communications, psych, anthropology, and sociology underlies all these listening questions. But I decided that enough was probably enough. Still I’ll drop one overarching piece of research directly related to listening into this blog: Misunderstanding is more prevalent and widespread than understanding within the organizational communication package. Organizational misunderstanding can be tied as much to contextual politics and body gesture as to the meaning of words. (I should remind readers that politics is not a dirty word. Nearly all conversation has political overtones.)

Time is Running Out

 The way to love anything is to realize it might be lost.—G.K. Chesterton 

I couldn’t help but laugh when I read this morning’s Minneapolis Star Tribune. Emblazoned at the top of the page was the blaring headline, Time is running out, says NFL. Act now before another city does. The reliance on what we in the persuasion field call the scarcity factor is frequent, widespread and systematic. In this example, the National Football League is attempting to persuade legislators on the need to act quickly to save the Vikings Football team for the Twin Cities.

The scarcity factor is a common persuasive strategy. In recruiting it surfaces as “if we don’t get this guy, our competition will go after him. And then. . . .” Fill in the blanks. But it also surfaces in our search for jobs: “If I don’t land this job, then. . . .” Fill in the blanks. We engage in self-persuasion also.

Don’t jump too quickly.  This is a strategy regularly employed in business, politics, religion, antiques and, well . . . you name the field. The most obvious place to see it is in the listing of autos for sale. On some weekends, the approach may be seen in up to one-quarter of dealer sales. 

Scarcity is a major weapon in the arsenal of the persuasion engineers. Robert Cialdini says the scarcity factor trades on our weakness for shortcuts. Underlying the strategy is the belief that the things difficult to possess are better than those easier to obtain. Of course, as opportunities become less available, we lose freedoms. And, if you’re like me, you hate to lose your freedoms. I watched the Twins baseball team get a multi-million dollar stadium almost solely on this basic strategy. The Vikings’ are using the same strategy for getting the taxpayer to partially fund a new stadium, costing close one billion dollars.

As Robert Cialdini says, the scarcity model works this way: when increasing scarcity—or anything else—interferes with our prior access to some item, we will react against the interference by wanting more. Simple. But it really works very well for the uneducated populace. That includes a lot of professionals. 

Becoming an educated business person and consumer requires a knowledge of this strategy. Indeed, as a student of persuasion I take the view that it is as much our responsibility to engage in self-protection as it is the business person’s to use the strategies available. 

The starting place for self-protecting is what we call “downplay.” In other words, when a persuader intensifies a proposal, downplay it. The flip side should also take precedence in your strategy: when the persuader downplays, then you intensify. So when you recognize a propaganda blitz, it’s to your advantage to be cool, detached, and skeptically alert. Not only to the inflated puffery with its dreams and promises, but also to intensified phenomena. Scarcity is one strategy for intensifying phenomena that you'll meet again and again. 

One way to deal with this is to create a scorecard. After you’ve done it methodically on paper, you begin to do it in your head as soon as the persuasive messages start coming. One way to do this systematically is to divide a sheet of paper into quarters, and then enter the kinds of downplaying and intensifying being practiced. Simply by seeing these, you can become more alert to what kind of manipulation is going on. 

The scorecard will look something like this: 

Intensify your product’s good     Intensify the other product's bad 

Downplay your product’s bad      Downplay the other product's good 

You can list what you hear and observe under each category and get a much better sense of what’s going on. Furthermore, it’s important to remember that persuasion is going on constantly, not only through the media, but just as much in our conversations. I have no problem with that. I do it too. But I also keep a data set of strategies so I become a responsible persuadee. It really is a matter of consumer beware.

What the 21st Century Career Looks Like

Twnety-five years ago if you had significant technical skills you could count on a good, well-paying job. That was especially true in manufacturing. But even in other vocations, little more than a well-developed technology was all that was required to rise in the organization and get a good-paying job. Of course the introduction of desk-top computing in the mid 1980s started to change that. Over the next ten years it became clear that everyone in business had to understand and be able to use the digital tools. The US economy was beginning to travel beyond the industrial age. 

The most significant changes were still to come. Working as a consultant at some of the leading edge American corporations, the changes were regularly called to my attention by 1990. And they were straightforward. Not only must you have a strong technical competency as part of your background, but you will need both analytic and social competencies. If you're a manager in IT at a firm like the old Pillsbury, you need to be able to manage and communicate with cross-functional team members. 

Although my clients at leading companies like 3M, Honeywell, Pillsbury and American Express made me very aware of those needs, 90% of US workers and managers were either unaware or found the demands frustrating or even terrifying. 

The salary differential first surfaced in a thorough-going research report from the Dallas Fed as recent as 2003. They identified a talent hierarchy, ranking 6 competencies underlying careers in the following order, from the bottom up: muscle power, manual dexterity, formulaic intelligence, analytic reasoning, imagination/creativity and people skills.The greatest future needs were for people skills, even more than the creative and anlytic skills.

Recently Richard Florida reported on this very subject in the October Atlantic on essay, Where the skills are. Although the article ostensibly describes and locates America's smartest cities, tucked into his essay is an absolutely fascinating and illuminating salary report on careers driven by the analytic and social competencies. Here are the salary stats, based on his study of the US Bureau of Labor detailed information on more than 800 occupations:

• Breaking up each of the vocations by required skills, he found that those in the top quarter as measured by required analytic skill, pay $25,600 more than those in the lowest quarter.
• In shocking contrast, those vocations in the top quartile requiring social skill pay $34,600 more than those in the lowest quarter.

Jobs requiring analytic skills are heavily concentrated in the larger metro areas. And jobs requiring the highest level of social skill are the most concentrated in the very largest metro areas--where, combined with the high prevalence of anlytic skill, they underpin faster rates of innovation and growth. 

So, you ask what do social skills have to do with innovation and creativity? Great question. Innovation without social competencies never gets to the drawing board. In fact, it's quite appropriate to say that if you and your team can't sell your idea and your innovation, it'll never get funded or manufactured. 

Let's clarify one important issue. Social intelligence is more than emotional intelligence or mere sociability. Social intelligence includes persuasion, social perceptiveness, the capacity to bring the right people together on a project, the ability to help develop other people, and a keen sense of empathy.

Merely being a "good communicator" won't cut the mustard any longer. There are no naturals with the competencies of social intelligence. Florida pulls together his ideas this way: Cities can't work as inovative engines unless they are populated by people who can effectively promulgate, and marshall support for new ideas.