Dan Erwin

The Surprising Secret of Success is Failure

The blueprint for successful failure has no straight lines. Nor is it guaranteed.

At 77, I’ve long-since quit stewing and being embarrassed over the fact that I was expelled from college for both social and academic reasons when I was a freshman. Unlike Bob Sternberg, who blew it in the fourth grade, I blew it my first year of college. Fact of the matter, aside from the woman I married and our three daughters, that freshman failure was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

That failure made “I’ll show ‘em” one of the central motivations of my life. I took a mandatory year off, worked in a Detroit factory, and resolved never to find myself in that situation again. So in due time, I knocked off a baccalaureate degree, a masters of divinity from a theological seminary, most of a master’s in theology, an M.A. from the University of Colorado and a PhD from the University of Minnesota. And my careers, most anyone would say, have been marked by success—and great fun. Freud wrote that the “normal healthy life” includes work, love and play. That was a swell blueprint for me.

I tell this story with obvious relish, recognizing that I’m not the only one who wrested success out of profound failure. But I’m also aware that research has shown that failure can have devastating consequences for psychological well-being. There’s a lot of evidence suggesting that rejection can precipitate a psychological state resembling physical pain, often followed by long-term isolation. You expect psychologists to look for the grim human experience and the abnormal, and that’s what the early research revealed.

However, a fascinating series of studies from 2007 issued a strong caveat to that early research, and also explained my motivation in spades. Jon Maner of Florida State and a number of his colleagues asked whether social exclusion motivates interpersonal reconnection. Six different studies found that the experience of social exclusion increases the motivation to forge social bonds, but . . . with new sources of affiliation. Although it was possible for me to return to the college that expelled me, I chose to go elsewhere.

In retrospect, much of my life has been pure luck. Most probably don’t have the opportunities I was given, much less the mentors who walked into my life, gave me clear direction and were not at all shy about delivering “shape up” lessons.

Merely changing schools, however, did not necessarily imply a “successful failure.” Conventional wisdom says that we learn from failure. That’s far from the truth. Most of the time, we don’t. Failure anxiety rules us. We jump to conclusions, rationalize the hell out of failure to make it look good, ignore or distort feedback and, significantly, fail to separate skill from pure luck.

John F. Kennedy once said that “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” We are quick to take credit for success and deny responsibility for failure. Don’t think that the failure was anyone’s but mine or that the success was solely about my own ability. Again, much of it was luck. Being born a White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant male in the 1930’s to a family that became moderately well-off, a family willing to fund experiences in one of the culturally richest cities of the world (Detroit in the thirties, forties and fifties), educated in a school system that provided experiences students would drool over today, attending a prominent church that pointed its kids to rich and fulfilling experiences and meeting people who took an interest in me, often for no discernible reason, played a large part in my successes. Furthermore, my success over that freshman failure certainly failed to inoculate me against more failure. That’s reality.

Still, motivation, ability and just gutting it out play a huge role in anyone’s life of successful failure. So along the way, I developed the learning competencies that support future success. Though invariably curious, I had to build those performance virtues of persistence, self-regulation, responsibility and what Duckworth calls grit. My small wins responded to the multiplier effect and my successes become more obvious. I found, as Paul Tough has put it so eloquently, that cultivating those strengths is a reliable path to “the good life,” a life not just happy, but meaningful and fulfilling.

Successful failure is not easily won. It’s hard work. But lest you be put off by the seeming demands of success, it’s important to say that I count many friends among my list of successful failures. People who rose to take advantage of their failures. I’ve gotten a lot out of my freshman failure. So maybe the failure never will be finally forgotten, and that’s not such a bad thing. Yeah, I seriously doubt that it’s possible to be successful without real failure. And Steve Jobs is the classic example of that truth.

Note: John K. Maner, DeWall, Baumeister, Schall, Does Social Exclusion Motivate Interpersonal Reconnection? Resolving the "Porcupine Problem." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2007, Vol. 92, No. 1, 42 - 55.

"How to Be Irresistible to Women"

It's not coincidence. With Virginia Rometty as IBM's new CEO and Meg Whitman at Hewlett-Packard, my wife and daughters will be proud. So it's not surprising that the exceptionally knowledgeable Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Ripa Rashid have just published a book on why women are the solution to winning the war for talent.

In a blog published in strategy + business, Sally Helgesen set the book's context and printed an excerpt from the new book. Helgesen points out that though the first efforts to increase the number of women in the workforce were spurred by a compliance mind-set and given little support.

By the 1990s, companies realized that the resulting attrition was a waste of valuable resources. Furthermore, the war for talent heated up and companies began to become more strategic in their recruiting and retaining of women in the workforce.

In a very cool excerpt from the new book, the authors relate the strategy created by Infosys, the Bangalore based information technology giant. Here's the situation: Like every other company in the burgeoning field, it [Infosys] was engaged in a fierce war for the best and brightest university graduates. Unlike many of them, Infosys specifically targeted women as a solution — not only to expand the potential pool of top talent but also to tap in to a wider range of intellects.

So Infosys developed a strategy to achieve their objective.

The Infosys Women’s Inclusivity Network (IWIN) was launched in 2003, when 17 percent of the Infosys employees were women. Today, 34.1 percent of the workforce is female — in absolute numbers, more than thirty-six thousand women. Women make up 40.3 percent of entry-level workers, 24.2 percent of midlevel managers, 6.5 percent of senior managers, and 6.2 percent of top-tier leaders, nearly double the number of six years ago.

The key reason for those impressive figures is IWIN. The program has three aims: to persuade more high school girls to study engineering in college; to attract more female engineers to Infosys; and to make it easier for women to maintain their careers at the company after having children.

They were strategically smart.

They identified the stress-points for women and created policy to manage those very stresses. For example, expectant mothers asked for parenting workshops and health programs. Infosys provides daily Pregnacare yoga and fitness classes on the main campus. There’s an online referral service for hospitals, pediatricians, day care centers, nannies, and schools. Nursing stations supported by women lactation experts and a doctor on call are set up in all the offices. Similarly, all the offices have day care centers within four kilometers; most are equipped with Web cameras so that mothers can check in remotely throughout the day. Employees use office shuttle buses to drop their children at day care free of cost.

And the result of all that? Whereas prior to the program only 59% of women returned to work after maternity, over the past five years the figure has gone to 88%, and the total number of working mothers tripled during the same time period.

The company’s ultimate goal is to have women make up at least half of the workforce, if not more. By creating a work environment that both attracts and retains them, IWIN helps make Infosys a magnet for women.

This is a book not merely for men, but for corporate America.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Ripa Rashid, Winning the War for Talent: Why Women Are the Solution. (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011)

The Critical Dimensions of Organizational Learning

The most gratifying response to one-on-one coaching is the enhanced potential for success. It should come as no surprise that what’s true for individuals is definitely not true for organizations. 

In a long-term coaching and mentoring relationship with a senior client it’s readily possible to figure out the disruptions and the political changes new competencies may bring. At the same you’re able to help the executive make the necessary adaptations required by new skills. But that’s a very different story when it comes to organizations. 

My checkered history of working with volunteers and non-profits before going into corporate consulting positioned me to be very skeptical about organizational change. If volunteers don’t like the changes you’re trying to make, they’re gone, buddy. And you’re left holding the bag. The political ramifications of working with volunteers and non-profits often require almost god-like insights. So truthfully, even though some had suggested that corporate America would be easier to work with, I kept my skepticism in place.  That was a smart move. 

Organizations require a much more thoughtful and methodical learning model than individuals. I’ve worked with brainy individuals who, upon receiving extensive feedback, could talk very quickly about the changes that implied. They’d run off to try them on and come back three weeks later telling me what worked and what didn’t. We could easily fine tune and they’d come back in a few weeks, successful change in place. 

But organizations require a better model. That’s why I’ve found Crossan, Lane and White’s model of the 4i’s to be a cool way to think about and plan for organizational learning. Here are its basics: 

Intuiting.  This is that “pre-conscious recognition” that there are some potentially better patterns or ways of doing things. Pre-conscious recognition is a nagging or gnawing that something is not working as well as it should, or it should work better than this, or we’re not getting the best possible results. It usually starts out with frustration, and eventually some individuals develop novel insights and language to talk about that nagging. 

Interpreting. Organizational learning often looks to be more sequential than individual learning. I suspect, though, that often there are a lot of simultaneous things happening. Don’t get hung up on sequence.  Anyway, after intuition comes the explaining, through both words and actions, of the insights of intuition. We explain both to ourselves and to others in the process of interpreting. I think of it as “bouncing” ideas or explanations off others to clarify and refine the interpretations. 

Integrating. This is the first process that occurs at the group level. As Crossan puts it, it is “the process of developing shared understanding among individuals and of taking coordinated action through mutual adjustment.” You’ll find the group going through a great deal of sorting, analyzing, discarding and adding before they begin to integrate the needed actions. 

Institutionalizing. This is where the learning that has occurred both among individuals and groups is transferred into organizational institutions and on to the members of the organization. Over the years two of my clients—very different organizations—showed themselves to be masters of institutionalizing. They were the 3M Corporation and American Express Financial Planners (now Ameriprise). Once 3M research and development has gained significant new learning, they formalize it and make it available throughout the company. Of course, often those ideas are kept under wrap and key as intellectual property. But the information is networked throughout the needs of the corporation. Someone always knows who has the learning or where to go for it. In very different fashion, Amex used extensive training to institutionalize learning. They were so effective at institutionalizing learning, that competitors were inevitably attempting to steal their employees. These two organizations represent vastly different kinds of institutionalizing processes. Yet both were very successful. 

What I haven’t alluded to in this blog is the very relevant issue of the politics of organizational learning. That’s an issue that can’t be omitted--one I’ll get to at a later date. 

Photo by Sean Dreilinger, Flickr.com

Boomerang: Crooked Greeks, Anal Germans, and Brain-Dead Californians

Michiko Kakutani, easily the most ruthlessly critical book reviewer in the world, puts it this way about Michael Lewis’ latest book, Boomerang: No one writes with more narrative panache about money and finance than Lewis. . . . [An] entertaining new book. That’s an understatement. 

I first wandered into Michael Lewis writing in Liar’s Poker, his early semi-autobiographical depiction of the 1980s Wall Street bond traders. I was initially resistant to reading the book, but one of my best friends insisted that in spite of my lack of interest in Wall Street I’d find this book intriguing. After nearly having to pick myself up off the floor—backdrafts from all the laughter—I’ve become a devoted reader of absolutely anything Lewis writes and says. Ummmm. This is not a book review. Just a dedicated . . . ummm, well. . . response.

The dust jacket explains the hilarity. The trademark of Michael Lewis’s best-selling books is to tell an important and complex story through characters so outsized and outrageously weird that you’d think they have to be invented. (You’d be wrong.)

What’s really frustrating about Lewis' writing is that he teaches me finance by osmosis, even though I’m certain I don’t want to learn it--or be bothered by the insights. Still, it’s tough not to be curious and intrigued by finance with all the mess of recent years. So, for my money, he’s the best teacher in the world. He seems to recognize that seduction works better than any other strategy. Lewis’ books are always page-turners.

Having consulted for a still unnamed sub-prime lender, I was especially curious about this new book. Lewis doesn’t let me down. He explains what the hell went on in the global financial markets, but he does it through the unique, national character of the players. Though cartoonish, they’re too real to reject. 

If you want to gain intercultural insight, this book is better than any grad class on the subject. Yeah, I know. What he writes may not be politically correct, but, god, it’s very accurate. I’ve worked with endless internationals over the years. And Lewis’ insights inevitably ring true. 

Since I’ve got family memories from Greece, Germany and California, I’m pretty comfortable with the title of my blog. I learned about a dozen years ago that when it came to the Greeks and Greece, they were all living on hot air. I had to insist again and again that my ex-son-in-law step outside Greek practice and report all his earnings. Uncle Sam actually enforces the rules. Married to one of those Germans, I’ve always celebrated her “orderly” (nice term, but “anal” is probably more accurate) ways. Her order always seemed to make life easier for me. And when it comes to Cal-i-for-ni-a, well. . . having lived there for a couple years in the ‘sixties, and consulted there more recently, and with a kid who lives there, I’m well aware of its plastic ways. Lewis got it right. 

You can be damned certain that Lewis gets it all very, very right. He’s also a weird one—with a degree in art history from Princeton, a master’s in econ from the London School of Economics, and Wall Street experience in bond trading.  Where do these occasionally strange, delightful writers really come from? Is it in the genes? Or what? This is a book that will make for some of the most delightful, hilarious reading of the year. But if you don’t believe me, you’ll want to read why he could have made a fortune in business, but instead, made a fortune writing about it.

"Selling Out, Or Buying In?" Three Keys for Decision Making

There are few things we hate more than uncertainty. When our work situation is ambiguous and not clear to us, it’s easy to feel uncomfortable. Just being “different” from others may cause you to wonder whether you’re “selling out” when you join a new company. Those “differences” may be the result of race, gender, age, religion, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation or language. You know the feeling: uncomfortable, unaccepted, different and unique. 

The more different we feel in an organization, the more we look for someone to explain—or some rules that make sense. Renee Blank and Sandra Slipp have identified three very useful guidelines for helping you decide whether you’re “buying in” or “selling out.” Their guidelines will help you determine what you’re trying to do. 

• Your basic value system. Those values that you hold close to your heart are the final “decider.” If your values—which you learned as a child and solidified as an adult—are in direct violation of the organization’s values you’re in trouble. If you have to discard those beliefs that are important to you, you could be in danger of “selling out.” 

• If you know yourself—you’re certain about your talents, skills and abilities and you’ve validated them over time—and you’re performing a function or accepting a position well beneath them, you could be in danger of “selling out.” 

• If you accept the culture of an organization that flaunts its discrimination against or disrespect for your culture, you could be in danger of “selling out.” 

These are very personal matters. The organization is trying to help you become a part of their culture, but you must decide if that organization is asking you to give up too much. 

You’ve got several options in that kind of setting. If you decide that becoming a part of the organization means you’re going to have to give up too much of your own culture and that you will not be accepted no matter what, you can leave and seek employment elsewhere (if the economy and your skill set will make that possible). More and more, the quality of your skill set is the determining factor for work success. There are jobs out there—if you’ve got the skills for them. 

 You can also remain in the organization and drastically change your style. Finally, you can adapt to the organization’s values while maintaining your own values and political views. That’s schizophrenic, but it’s a possibility for many of us. 

In today’s economy, seeking employment at another firm is not always an easy task. You may find yourself splitting your personality between work and home. Some of us can do that for a long time, but eventually it catches up with us. It’ll impact our work productivity, but more than that it’ll affect our emotions and personal life. Our family and friends may notice it before us, so you’ll want to pay attention to them.  

One of our favorite family stories was the result of my decision to leave a job where the organization’s values and mine were just too much in conflict. Unlike her husband, my wife has no history whatsoever of using expletives--aside from one single situation. So I’ll never forget sitting on the living room sofa, telling her that I was going to leave my decade-long position and go elsewhere. Without missing a beat, she said, “It sure as hell took you a long time to make a damned obvious decision.” Two expletives in one sentence. So out of character, she got my attention instantly. She had refused to make a recommendation prior to my own decision because, wisely, she knew the decision had to be mine. But she had known all along that my job was causing deep, personal conflicts in my life. 

I suspect that most of the significant people in our lives can tell rather clearly when we’re facing a serious value conflict in our work setting. So. . . when deeply conflicted about your job, . . . get on with whatever.

Blank, R. & Slip, S. From the Outside In: Seven Strategies for Success When You're Not a Member of the Dominant Group in Your Workplace, AMACOM

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.

Where New Employees Go Wrong

Effective socialization strategies can impact the company bottom line early in a new employee's tenure. 

One of my friends recently left her consumer products' firm and accepted a project role in a medium-sized software firm. Over the past two months, I’ve quizzed her about her firm’s assimilation process. Frankly, I’ve been surprised and delighted by the firm’s approach to new employees. They’ve emphasized organizational culture more than her new job. Unlike her organization, far too many firms fail in this fundamental process. And, as a result, the productivity of the employee suffers. But her new firm takes a multi-pronged, strategic approach to its assimilation process. The result, thus far, is one happy camper, who’s digging into her new role with a great deal of enthusiasm. 

Her experience reminds me that new employees easily go wrong because most firms provide far more information about the employee’s initial job tasks than about the organization’s culture.

Task information that comes from the top of the organization down to the lowest-level employee is usually specific and narrowly defined. Cultural information, in contrast, is vague or sometimes implied. That's a dangerous situation. Research shows that without effective assimilation processes, gossip often plays a large role in the employee's assimilation. Susan Hafen,at Utah's Weber State University,found that gossip has a major role in enhancing workplace deviance behaviors. Lacking cultural input, new employees have no way to evaluate gossip which detracts from the desired goals of organizational citizenry. Her research serves as an important warning to firms regarding the assimilation process. 

The cultural values and principles of the organization and the kind of supportive (or non-supportive) environment has direct bearing upon an individual’s ability to understand the task and its importance. For example, in some organizations, collaboration work is highly valued and rewarded, whereas in others only individual efforts are recognized. The more cultural information is unclear or uncertain, the more the new employee needs help in understanding it. Without detailed cultural information, employees have difficulty assessing cultural information from their new colleagues. That’s a potentially dangerous setting, one that could easily impact long-term productivity. 

Employee socialization is also especially important. One of my clients, a senior manager at a major small appliance firm, told me that the first problem he encountered in his job was one that took four years to get over. The facility was one in which the average years of service was about 10 years--yeah. . . there still are places like that. When he first arrived, the employees felt that he could not be trusted and that he couldn’t possibly know what he was doing. His predecessor had retired from the position after 15 years, and had given him his blessing as the new replacement. Still, he was viewed as an interloper and an incompetent by most of the employees--even though he came into the new role with extensive experience. The problem resolved itself after several years, but he told me it was very troubling at the start. An effective assimilation process, with a focus upon socialization, would have made for an easy adjustment. When he was promoted to VP a few years ago, one of the first issues he dealt with was the firm’s entire assimilation process. He emphasized the costs of poor assimilation processes several times as he related that story to the CEO. Once the CEO understood the finances of the problem, my client got the needed support—and made some significant changes in HR. 

How do better companies integrate the new employee? 

Rather than focusing solely on the formal orientation process, smart companies take a multi-pronged approach to employee entry. Traditional approaches include the formal orientation programs, socialization strategies, training programs, and formal and informal mentoring. Research from as far back as 2004 recommend advanced communication and information technologies including e-mail, web pages, voice mail, instant messaging and video-conferencing. A sizable amount of research and corporate resources are expended on socialization processes. What corporations and especially HR need to keep on the front lobes is that the socialization processes are critical to maintain a dedicated and loyal workforce. Indeed, how seriously the organization takes it obligation to socialize new members determines the degree of turnover and, ultimately, productivity.

Three Keys for Determining Whether to Trust a Co-Worker

 Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead. – Ben Franklin

Today’s diverse and rapidly changing workforce has made trust a deep-seated, complicated issue. It comes up regularly in conversations with employees and managers.  Senior clients make questions about the trustworthiness of an employee part of my “assumed” contract. I’ve also received a number of thoughtful questions and comments on trust from blog readers, especially as a result of my blogs on narcissists and asshole bosses. One writer, for example, asked me to “throw the light on trust,” for the purpose of developing “life-time friendships,” including “both genders and also for divorced people.” And, this writer made it clear that his concern was for people in their 30’s and 40’s as well as for those of a younger generation. Still others have presented me with specific cases, asking for my analysis to help determine whether an individual could be trusted. 

Figuring out whether to trust someone can be a difficult task. About 15 years ago a senior client told me it took him six months to decide whether to trust an employee. He needed the time to observe a person’s behaviors so he could figure out his trustworthiness. It’s an exceptionally valid approach for that decision. But his question took a slightly different tack. “Is there a faster way to make a trust decision?” he asked.

. 

The experience of life-long, trusted relationships may well become a delicious experience that fewer and fewer of us find ourselves able to enjoy, largely because we’re a mobile society. Many of us rarely have the time or inclination to keep up relationships when we change geography. Time invested in relationships comes at a price and therefore must be prioritized. About ten years ago, I developed an intimate, trusting relationship with a high school friend, a relationship that provided many hours of delight until his passing last year. Although there were 250 kids in my Michigan high school class, it was the only long-term relationship from my teen-age years. We were merely acquaintances in high school, but our history, values and interests brought us together here in Minnesota, making it possible to receive the “blessings” of a relationship.  I touch base regularly with two college friends, but I have no intimate relationships with anyone else from that far back. Still, I have numerous trusted relationships dating from my thirties. I value all these trusted persons both as friends and resources.   

Another difficulty facing really long-term relationships is that many of us grow apart. The vast differences that can surface over time, including experiences, interests, values and even changing life-objectives put an end to what once may have been a very good and meaningful, trusting relationship. For many of us, life-time trusting relationships may be few. 

The wise and pragmatic psychologist, Abraham Maslow, says that we need at least four or five significant friendships. I’m fortunate to have more than that. However, the lack of family responsibilities at my stage of life makes it possible. 

3 keys to trust-building 

Trust is an ambiguous term needing clarity. The psychologist, Erik Erikson, believes that the first stage of human development centers around a child’s basic needs of comfort, food and dependable affection. If the child receives that, he begins life with a fundamental outlook of trust. Lacking that early experience, trust of himself and others becomes a more difficult task. Erikson viewed trust as confidence that life and the future are basically okay. I don’t believe that our first experience in life is destiny, but that experience certainly impacts us. Figuring out whether to trust another is often strongly related to the inherent level of confidence about people and the future that you bring to the party of life. Some may require a great deal of data before trusting, while others require less.

Trust is the degree of confidence you feel when you think about a relationship with another person. Trust makes it possible to share the important experiences, values and questions of our lives. These self-disclosures are not shared readily with people we do not trust. But it’s that mutual sharing that can make life interesting and full. I like the description of trust attributed (perhaps wrongly) to George Eliot: Friendship (trust) is the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring all right out just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful friendly hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of comfort, blow the rest away. I should say that many of the people with whom I’ve had that relationship are business clients, not only those outside my profession. 

Trust, according to a number of fine studies, is composed of three primary keys or perceptions between you and another. I’ve found that these keys are very helpful for making determinations about trusting another and that they work in any and all settings. They serve as a template for both identifying and developing relationships of trust. 

Predictability—the expectation that the other person will act consistently in positive ways toward you. Does he or she do what they say they’re going to do? Be wary of this. Give a person the opportunity to be consistent about his promises to you. But be realistic about that. No one keeps all his promises. All you need is a strong tendency to be predictably safe in the relationship. My little test is that if the person significantly fails to be consistently positive and protective of me in two or three settings, trust is broken.  It can be rebuilt, but it’ll take time. 

Dependability—means that I can rely on that person when it counts. Predictability overlaps with dependability. I had a conversation this morning with two long-term colleagues about a serious ethical problem related to my wife’s care. I knew that they would have insight on the matter and would also be comfortable disagreeing with me. Further, I was quite certain that disagreement would only add to my store of insight. 

Faith—refers to the belief that your friend (or partner) will continue to be responsive and caring in the future. Faith is not a permanent given. It has to be talked about and worked on between people. It is a covenanted relationship requiring mutual action. 

One of the reasons we see people disclosing highly personal information to strangers is that they realize there is minimal risk. But in the work setting, trusting enough to share highly personal information can make us vulnerable, giving others power over us. That’s why we try to get people to talk about themselves when we meet them: we’re trying to get to know where they stand, what they think so that we can have some control and predictability in the relationship. I think of disclosures as a dance. I’ll disclose this much, and then you disclose. If one doesn’t reciprocate, the dance quickly comes to an end. Most people are comfortable with cliché talk and personal history. But when it comes to important opinions and deep-seated attitudes, we’re cautious about revealing those matters--and rightly so. 

Mark Knapp and Anita Vangelisti provide a very appropriate capstone to this discussion of trust in their book on interpersonal communication. We must make the person feel our appreciation for his or her trust in us and our acceptance and support for that person, and not necessarily for the behavior or feeling that is the focus of the disclosure.  

Hope this throws some light on the experience of trusting.  I’m very curious to get your comments and questions in response to this blog.

Photo: Flickr. Yourclimbing.com

How to Make a Smart, Zig-Zag Career Move

This is a riff on a fantastically simplified, even out-of-touch article in the latest Fortune, entitled How to Make a Smart Lateral Move. It’s obvious, as the article admits, that moving straight up the hierarchical ladder is not as common anymore. The article suggested that that this is a new approach to careers from the past five years, that it was due in part to the economy and that the conventional wisdom is that it’s a dead end. Baloney!

The economy just escalated a 20 year old strategy. The IT and marketing people in my Contacts list knew from organizational flattening--by the end of the 1980s--that the most prevalent opportunities were not up, but lateral zig-zags between companies. Many of them managed their career on that basis way back then. Even Ibarra’s seminal book on career change, Working Identity, published in 2003, shows an intimate knowledge of lateral moves as the primary means for career change and success. For that matter, Doug Hall, wrote on the issue in the 1970s. And if you want to get fussy about it, Dante Aligheri demonstrated its power at the turn of the 13^th century AD.

Still, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Lateral career moves offer terrific career opportunities. I suspect that the best opportunities in the future will be mostly lateral.

Certainly, as Fortune suggests, it’s true that many execs and ordinaries are willing to take jobs with similar titles and pay in exchange for little more than a shorter commute to work. According to a poll from Right Management, 84% of employees planned to look for new jobs in 2011, which is up from 60% the previous year. A lot of people are yelling, “get me out of this job.”

The writer, Jena McGregor, says that lateral moves may not always carry a stigma these days. Hmmm. She must have been interviewing dyed-in-the-wool traditionalists. The people I talk to view laterals as an astute move. Of course, as she suggests, you want to do your homework about the potential firm’s financials and the real responsibilities of the new job. I thought that was a given. Anyway, it’s still true.

But here are the real issues. The key question is not about leadership opportunity as much as it is about developmental opportunity. Leadership is just one issue among many. It's also an overworked buzzword, used to catch the attention of people who don’t understand the necessary development beyond “leadership” required for success in the New Economy. Jobs go obsolete within 3 to 5 years, and if there’s no opportunity for a new job with a 3 year tenure, it’s time to start looking—unless you want to become just another obsolete worker. Recognize also that a lateral in this environment may provide the best way to get out from under a crappy boss.

I’d want to know the potential for mentoring and coaching within the potential firm. Just how much of an orientation to learning will you find at the company? I’d also want to be sure that the firm is strongly oriented to developing its technology. Above all, I’d want to know how astute the firm is around the issues of social intelligence. In today’s world, you need your own technology as well as a growing amount of social intelligence if you’re to succeed.

Furthermore, as a Deloitte exec pointed out, a key issue in your move is assessing how many future choices a lateral move might provide. A final accurate comment from the article is the admonition to be certain you’re going to comfortable with the new culture. Cultures vary greatly. Not only do you want to make certain the new culture makes decisions on the basis of evidence, but also that’s it not too concrete. Many cultures represent a specific, narrow psychographic within their employees. 3M, for example is classic. If you don’t perceive reality through the lens of chemical engineering and R & D, you’re going to be out of pocket. My friends in classic marketing always struggle in that culture. In contrast, if a culture is highly entrepreneurial, nailing few other constants down, you’d best make certain you’re going to be happy with lots and lots of change. You’d be surprised at the difference in cultures within the same industry. Old Pillsbury was strongly oriented to change, restacking in the high-rise, remodeling and creating new groups with new objectives all the time. General Mills, in contrast, was not at all entrepreneurial—always sticking to the tried-and-true. As you look back in time and say that General Mills now owns Pillsbury. Yeah, but they bought Pillsbury precisely because of its entrepreneurial nature, replacing many of the General Mills execs with Pillsbury people. Technology companies can be shockingly different. Moving from Microsoft to FaceBook could be trauma for plenty of people who have difficulty with rapid change. “Nuff said about culture distinctions.

The pay and promotion issue is still another complex matter. It's astute to prioritize development opportunities first, then future choices second. Indeed, some in IT won't accept a two-year position that provides no learning. In a good economy, IT people won't accept more than six months on a job without development opportunities. These complexities play out in surprising ways. Because of the insistence upon development opportunities and future choice, pay and promotion become secondary issues. The consequence is that numerous employees willingly and wisely take a pay cut for future opportunities. Titles and promotions seem to have far less cachet than in the past. Others accept similar salaries, some opt for more money and no promotion. You'll also find that many from all the disciplines, not just IT, are looking not to the first lateral, but to the next two moves to make up for salary and even promotion needs. Lateral moves are for people who are thinking several years ahead. The zig-zag assumes a strategic role in career thinking. It's not just a one-shot deal.

In sum, for the bulk of the working population smart laterals may well be the wisest way to go. Don’t get caught up in the dead idea that your company is going to take care of you. You’re going to have to take care of your own career—or end up on the streets.

How to Exploit Personal Vulnerability

You blush. Confused and discomposed. Embarrassed. You’re found out. You know the rule in business: don’t let anyone know what you don’t know. Keep up a good front. Don’t trap yourself and have to admit ignorance. Never, never open up and admit to personal vulnerability on any business subject. 

For nearly all of us, vulnerability is a very helpless feeling. Our guard is down and we believe we’re open to emotional attack and censure. Why is that? Surprisingly, the answer is that we’ve learned that’s the way we should respond when our ignorance and missteps are found out. We didn’t come by it naturally. You won’t experience embarrassment from a 3 year-old. We think that way, so that’s the way our gut responds. It’s NOT that our gut responds and then we think that way. And since feelings are most prevalent in vulnerable situations, we search for ways to deal with those horrible, unnerving feelings.

 

Quite a few years ago, before I became familiar with Martin Seligman’s orientation to learned helplessness and optimism, I wondered whether there wasn’t a non-psychological way of looking at embarrassment and vulnerability. I was unconvinced that therapy had anything to offer.  At the time, I’d been studying work from the Chicago Center for Decision Research and was especially intrigued by the studies on “framing. I’d had some success applying the process to business problems and wondered whether it could also be applied to personal, behavioral problems. Framing, I suspected, offered a different way of looking at feelings of vulnerability.

Framing

Business people intuitively know something about frames. They refer to them when they talk about “thinking outside the box,” “not being on the same page,” or “it’s all in how you look at it.” Frames simplify and guide our understanding of a complex reality. We experience frames when we meet people who just seem to immediately “click” with us. And we’re also dealing with frames when we try to talk with others who just don’t seem to “get it” no matter how much we try to explain. A frame is a mental window that both focuses and limits what we perceive.  Similar frames make it very easy to talk with clients. Different frames make it nearly impossible. Indeed, buried within every decision is a frame that circumscribes way we think about each. A new frame can move us beyond a debilitating perspective that only frustrates, providing us with more useful ways of thinking and deciding about important matters in both business and personal life.

Frames determine and limit problem resolution

The way we frame an issue determines the solution. Frames work like that. Our attachment to them is both emotional and cognitive. Furthermore, they’re usually out-of-our-awareness until we dig into our thinking and look at them. Good framing is both an art and a science. In both personal life and business, you’ll find that understanding, using and replacing frames will have a distinct advantage. And, as Russo and Schoemaker comment, if you can’t, you may wake up one morning to find yourself framed.

The key issue in my experience of vulnerability was the recognition that if I viewed the experience as solely an emotional experience, the only possible out was psychological. But the research on therapy, I knew, is not very encouraging. Half the time, counseling doesn’t work. So out the window went that approach.  Thus, I wondered whether the insights on framing couldn’t be applied to emotionally-laden experiences such as vulnerability. But how?

What causes the sense of embarrassment and vulnerability?

That brought me to the place where I began to analyze the causes of my feelings of vulnerability, wondering whether it wouldn’t respond to reframing. My undergrad background was in history, a background which caused me to first focus on my thinking about my thinking rather than on the experience of vulnerability, itself.

In attempting to reframe vulnerability—or any issue—I ask a number of questions:

• What are the most important objectives to aim for?
• What are the yardsticks, reference points and boundaries inherent in my old frame? How might someone else approach these measures?
• What biases might my old frame entail?
• How can I bring in other perspectives?
• What do I know about vulnerability and its typical resolution?

I played with the problem of vulnerability and framing for quite a few months, trying to understand how vulnerability affects us and answer those questions. What stuck in my craw was the key rule that business people “never let someone know what you don’t know” My gray matter eventually moved from that point to one specific conclusion: Inevitably, vulnerability is an announcement that there’s something I don’t know—and may need to learn.

And that was the new frame. Vulnerability in business is not about the emotions of fear, embarrassment, humiliation, or even disappointment. It is fundamentally about a lack of knowledge and that’s the problem that needs to be resolved—not my emotions. That insight took me out of trying to resolve my emotions to developing my knowledge of business process, managerial relations and just plain old street smarts. In short, I moved from being controlled by fearful emotions, to controlling the experience and making it a learning opportunity.

I’ve concluded that vulnerability (and embarrassment) is certainly nothing over which I need to get my shorts all tied in a knot. It’s merely an announcement of the need to learn something. Nothing more. So when I start feeling a blush creep up my neck, the question readily comes, sometimes out loud: “What is it that I don’t know?” Or, “Obviously, you guys are enjoying this. What’s so funny, and what am I blundering about?” I have completely and pragmatically reframed the issue as a matter of my business and relational knowledge that needs to grow.

BTW: If you believe I’m being too hard on the emotions, you might pick up Martin Seligman’s Learned Optimism. That’s exactly what he recommends.