Dan Erwin

Can You Tell When Your Boss Is Telling You the Truth?

The short answer to that question is . . . rarely. Yet bosses matter a lot because nearly all employees have them.  And most bosses also have bosses. There are at least 21 million bosses in the United States.  Bob Sutton points out that estimates run as high as 38 million bosses. With a lot of bosses in most organizations, it's inevitable that we sometimes wonder whether the information coming from our boss is really the truth.
Bosses can be deceptive for any number of reasons: they lack permission to share information, they don't think we need the information, they don't understand our need for information, or they're defensive.

As a result, most of us prefer face-to-face meetings when there's a lot at stake.  We like to think we can gauge the truthfulness or sincerity of our boss's words by the look in her eye and the tone of her voice. 

So, how good are you, really, at ascertaining when your boss is telling the truth? Paul Ekman, the well-known expert at non-verbal assessment and lie-detection, has found that most of us aren't nearly as good as we think.  In fact, the studies indicate that our hunches about whether people are telling the truth or deceiving us aren't much better than a coin toss. 

In an earlier blog, Powerful People are Better Liars, I pointed out that research has found that if you give people power, they're more comfortable lying, and it will be harder to tell they're doing it. That's supported by recent research that has found that the higher up the ladder and more isolated from his or her people, the more oblivious and indifferent to your needs your boss becomes.

Swearing Is Good for You

In a fascinating little book titled in this blog post, Emma Byrne lays out "the amazing science of bad language." The two blurbs on the back cover of the book are more than enough to gain a reader's attention. 

"A good book about bad language by a trash-talkimg woman? Sign me up! Swaring Is Good for You makes science feel downright celebratory." Mary Norris, best selling author of Between You and Me.

"I"m evangelical in my defense of swearing, not just on the grounds of freedom of expression, but because swearing is beneficial to us both as individuals and as a species. Is this book an attempt to justify rudeness and aggression? Not at all. I certainly wouldnt want profanities to become commonplace: swearing needs to maintain its emotional impact in order to become effective. So I'm not necessarily encouraging people to swear more, but I do hope they'll give swearing the respect it fucking deserves.  --From the Introduction.

A Personal Perspective on Crisis

. . . all kinds of crises.

More and more people find themselves in situations that get labelled “crisis.” But very few of us will have to engage in the messy stuff of crisis leadership. In fact, most of us end up on the sidelines, sometimes trying to make sense of the situation and other times taking sides. If not overtly, then covertly.

Of course, newsmakers and entertainers would have us believe that we are almost always in crisis, a perspective that’s more wrong than right. But crisis language keeps surfacing regularly, even though it’s unnecessary and unrealistic. My basic attitude over the years is to begin with the obvious fact that we live in a 24-hour world, not a 12-hour world. By that I suggest that since the at the 1980s, digital innovation intends to keep the eyes and ears of John Q Public on news and entertainment. So, conflicts and crises are the best process for doing that. In my mind that understanding eliminates a lot of the interactions that are called “crisis.”

Political Intelligence Is a Lot More Important Than Emotional Intelligence

There’s no question but that the psychologist, Daniel Goleman, has had a great run with his emotional intelligence. The fad struck a chord among business people and has shown itself to be fairly useful. Furthermore, the constant emphasis on the emotional response of empathy has sometimes resulted in better business relationships, all of which makes for better team and cross-disciplinary relationships. When, that is, people have the soft skills to use the emotional insights surfacing. But that, of course is a more complicated, but very learnable and coachable set of issues.

However, it should be very clear that political intelligence is a lot more important for personal and organizational success than emotional intelligence.  By political intelligence in business, I refer to the ability to gain buy-in and/or support from people with differing or potentially differing agendas to achieve one’s own personal objectives and enable others to achieve theirs. The unstated fact about teams is firstly, that they hold together because they have a common interest in survival and success, and secondly, because they practice politics—not because they agree about “fundamentals” or “principles” or some such vague notion. That bottom line can, admittedly, be pretty dark. But bear with me. This is the kind of expertise that is often talked about in derogatory terms. And you may not recognize its real value and necessity until you have more responsibility than just taking orders and following through.

Far and away the most appropriate analogy for politics is sexuality. They are both activities with a number of unstated objectives that make more formal discussions unnecessary--and sometimes undiscussable. Granted, sexuality is a more widespread activity than political action. But the person who can live without either is either inhumanly sterile or an alien from another planet. Furthermore, in contrast to emotional intelligence, the basic characteristics of both politics and sexuality are absolute necessity and unpredictability. In addition, both politics and sexuality are activities in which the range of conduct is far greater than what we are willing to engage. But they both must be carried on to some degree or else both organizations and humanity will cease to exist..

What Am I Missing?

I was a bit surprised in a recent conversation with my ophthalmologist that though she was a superb eye physician, she was utterly in the dark when it came to human behavior. We got off my discussion of some refraction issues—readily resolved—and onto the behavioral failures of highly educated business people. Her underlying assumption was that the behaviors shouldn’t have happened because these well-educated people should know better.

I commented that far more often than not, behavioral failures are out of ignorance, not laziness or intention. Boy, that didn’t go over well. I repeated the simple statement a couple more times, but it was obvious from her nonverbals that she absolutely was not accepting my conclusion. I thought about saying, “look, I’m the expert in behavior and you’re the expert in ophthalmology,” but realizing that she wasn’t ready to go that far, I stuffed it, just letting it soak in and knowing she’ll want to talk about it six months from now at my next appointment. So, I went back to the questions about my refraction.

What she was missing was a great deal of understanding not only about human behavior, but especially about the complexities making up simple behaviors like listening and questioning, much less the rich complexities of highly interactional business conversations and often highly interactional personal conversations. Her problem was not unusual: medical specialties like business specialties (think “silos”) create thick walls. And some issues of behavior never break through such walls. And like plenty of professionals, they naively think they understand talk and communication. Sheer nonsense!!

Many never give thought to what they’re missing, especially in their conclusions about human behavior, business or otherwise. In this instance as in many, she was missing a lot of facts about the business of human interaction. Most people simply talk and communicate based on what they learned from their family of origin and perhaps from a teacher or two. I had a required speech communication course (“sending and receiving”) in high school in 1950-51, but very few have had my educational experience, much less a quality trained teacher.  And if you’ll think about it, very few families ever talk about talk and communicating, or even have the expertise to engage thoughtfully and accurately.

The “what am I missing” question is quite different than the “what am I missing out of” question. That’s primarily a question about missed luxuries in life—missed experiences that others might have or be having. “What am I missing?” is a question about your thinking related to problem solving and decision making. It’s an attempt at gaining better data and/or better ideas in your processes.

But this question of “what’s missing?” is assuming a far more important and obvious role in technology, a role that openly costs billions of lost dollars for a company. Of course, I’m quite capable of also arguing that what’s missing in conversations can also cost billions, but let’s not go there.

So, as I reflected about the issue with my eye doctor, I thought not only about what we miss in behavioral interactions and knowledge, but how often we miss major issues in business thinking—especially in the cutting-edge world of algorithms. And about how often algorithmic failures have become front page issues.

Six Resources on Creativity

Innovation and creativity, everyone says, are key to our nation’s success in the marketplace. While working through some new stuff on creativity and innovation, I stumbled, once more, across Robert Sternberg and Todd Lubart’s analysis of the resources for creativity. It has the intriguing title, "Buy Low and Sell High: An Investment Approach to Creativity."

The resources are a reminder of what it takes to get a leg up on creativity. More significantly and perhaps more usefully, the resources are especially programmed for succeeding as a worker in today’s business world.

1. Intelligence. This is not a reference to your IQ or to your capacities, but to your processes for planning, monitoring and evaluating your thinking. It’s more than a matter of gut feel, it’s reflecting on your decision process itself. The technical term is metacognition...

4 Key Attitudes of Critical Thinking

As a result of apartment renovation and moving upstairs, a number of my first floor and new second floor neighbors have been in my apartment. They wanted to see my new digs. One of the most striking features of their perusal is a seemingly profound lack of curiosity and very little ability to “notice.” “You have a beautiful apartment,” most respond. But what’s intriguing is what they don’t see unless I call attention to it. And these are not ill-educated people.

I have nearly 45 photos, sculptures, water colors, porcelains and artifacts hanging on the walls—all hung by a professional. One of the most gorgeous is an authentic Navajo rug, along with a recent painting of Indian tribeswomen. Not a single person mentioned one unique, beautiful, artistic hanging, a branch of spruce, covered with dripped copper. I have an extensive library, approximately 1500 volumes, yet no one gave it more than a glance. Not a single question was asked about any of the artifacts.

Even more sad than not noticing my personal context is the seeming lack of awareness of how context actually impacts each of as individuals and as members of a work team. So in the weeks following their visit to my apartment there was no sense they knew me any better, no attempt to get to know me better and no inherent projections of how I would respond to their conversations. The kind of familiarity information that can surface implicitly and explicitly in conversations was completely absent. And I’ve been watching and looking for that knowledge. But it was just never there in any of the dozen neighbor’s conversations. The underlying attitude of curiosity was absent—and so they remained in their small worlds. Expressing interest—but never following through on it. Perhaps, not recognizing what they were looking at or knowing the value of asking questions.

What is critical thinking?
Critical thinking, as I use the term, is the business of identifying the complications of relevant contexts and communication, and unpacking them thoughtfully. That includes physical contexts like those I describe in the above paragraphs. Of course, it also includes all the conversation and non-conversational talk, as well as the supportive physicality seen and heard in posture. So too, movement, non-verbal, language choice, values, arguments, persuasion, written materials, and linguistic forms like small talk, narrative, questioning. Including context artifacts like book choice, pictures, paintings and architecture.

To a very high degree, success in business—and life—is tied to one’s critical thinking skills in relevant, significant situations. One of the most illuminating experiences of critical thinking about “ordinary” talk took place at one of my last executive coaching jobs. I was working with the CEO of a major East Coast mortgage firm and had finished interviewing about twenty of his colleagues in preparation for coaching. I always got to their offices much earlier than any appointment, spending time with various execs and managers in “small talk.” Uniquely, the firm insisted on paying me on an hourly basis, rather than on a project basis. I had noticed the corporate attorney, who regularly received my billings, was unhappy with my fee. Late in the process, I happened to stop by his office and after he asked me how the “project” was going, he expressed frustration with my use of time—and the large bills he was paying just for “small talk.”

Five Laws for Interpersonal Sensitivity and Success

It’s not very often that you can learn strategies for talking and communicating that always are true. Much of the time in psychology, communication or sociology, strategies are very context oriented. The strategy will work in one situation, but not in another. That means that you’ll have a lot to learn to be successful. But when the strategy is a rule or a law, you can apply it to all kinds of situations in many different contexts.

Back in 2015, I wrote about a fascinating study by Rod Hart and Don Burks who surfaced a relationship between “expressive” communication and “instrumental” or “rhetorical communication.” They emphasized that expressive communication is very attractive in business because it involves frankness, honesty, openheartedness and non-manipulative intentions. But they also pointed out that as attractive as it is, expressive communication rarely provides people with effective means for creating and managing relationships. In contrast, the research found that instrumental or rhetorical communication is based on rules or laws, working successfully in nearly all situations.

The study remains highly relevant. Indeed, the information that was laid out by Hart and Burks is even more applicable and useful today. It’s far more applicable because business is highly interactive and not nearly as hierarchical today as it was in when the study was first completed.  Surprisingly, their research was first published in 1972, forty-three years ago. Not only is that study still relevant, but other studies have revealed that their study also remains highly accurate. 

Uniquely, the research revealed central tendencies in interpersonal communication. And, as Rod Hart puts it, “the law of central tendency is a law.” Rather than focus on so-called transcendent moments of interpersonal rhetoric, they focused on ordinary communication. it’s far more interesting and useful to “scrutinize real people who act like real people. They do it all the time, after all, so why not pay attention?” So, Hart and Burks paid attention to the regular, the repetitive and created a science of human behavior by focusing on central tendencies. So interpersonal success inevitably follows their science—whatever your business or profession.

Three communication tendencies
The research surfaced three communication tendencies for interpersonal communication. The first tendency, which you see often in business, is the “Noble Selves” tendency: the notion that people should not adapt to other people or to situations in any way that violates their beliefs, attitudes or values. That’s the nice way of talking about these people. But maybe you’ll remember these people if I remind you that many of these people are those that Bob Sutton refers to as “assholes” in his book on Asshole Theory.  Sometimes this is a commitment or a sickness of the individual, but more often it’s an angry practice growing out of lack of awareness and adaptive tools. Whatever. These people are difficult to work with whether they’re assholes—or, in other situations, the “righteous.”

The second tendency, which can be seen as “sucking up,” is what Hart and Burks called the rhetorical reflectors. These are people who present a different picture of themselves to every person and in every situation. They are careful to reflect the image that they think others want them to present.  This is not only true in business and the professions, but especially obvious in students. Students belonging to the most religiously fundamental groups have significant differences from students outside that same group. They found a positive relationship between rhetorical reflectiveness and fundamental religiosity as well as a negative relationship between the rhetorically sensitive and fundamental religiosity. 

It's Even More Important Now to Keep Your Friends Close and Your Enemies Closer

When I first wrote this back  in 2012, it was just fairly relevant. Given the status of our culture today, this article is extremely relevant. People aren't talking to each other about their differences. They are not just marching, but sometimes they are rioting over their differences. The issues that divide are numerous: politics, science, education, religion, pandemic, etc. The list is seemingly endless. Now, more than ever, people are just ignoring those they know differ with them, and sometimes behaving like irreconcilable enemies.

So why should you keep your friends close--and your enemies closer? It wasn’t the Godfather’s Michael Corleone who first uttered this well-known dictum. Actually, it came from Machiavelli in "The Prince," the definitive primer for how to be a dictator. You’d think that with my easy-going optimism, I’d never write a blog on this subject.  But, au contraire!

As a manager or leader it is inevitable that we’ll want to add to your knowledge base, try to sell ideas, get people on board and even change the direction of our organization. One of the involved persons just might be your enemy. That’s my basic rationale for acting on Machiavelli’s instinct. In my first vocation, the Christian ministry, I worked diligently to stay close to parishioners who disagreed with my orientation. The consequence was that unlike many in the congregationalist polity I maintained significant support not only from those of my ideology, but also those of more rigid, fundamentalist ideologies. They could have been "enemies" and capable in our polity of creating a lot difficulties. But over an eleven year period, that never happened because I was close to those who differed--and worked to make "adjustments" without compromises.

In the business setting, I refer to “enemy” as a person you have to interact with, someone who’s competing for your resources, who doesn’t follow through on his commitments, whom you don’t trust, with whom the “chemistry” isn’t there, or who disagrees with your perspective from the ground up. These are also people whom you’ll need in order to get your own personal and organizational objectives met. As both a manager and a consultant, I’ve found a number of people who fit in that same box. In short, I’ve found Machiavelli very useful for my own success.

But there are a number of exceedingly important reasons for keeping your enemies close...

So why should you keep your friends close--and your enemies closer? It wasn’t the Godfather’s Michael Corleone who first uttered this well-known dictum. Actually, it came from Machiavelli in "The Prince," the definitive primer for how to be a dictator. You’d think that with my easy-going optimism, I’d never write a blog on this subject.  But, au contraire!

As a manager or leader it is inevitable that we’ll want to add to your knowledge base, try to sell ideas, get people on board and even change the direction of our organization. One of the involved persons just might be your enemy. That’s my basic rationale for acting on Machiavelli’s instinct. In my first vocation, the Christian ministry, I worked diligently to stay close to parishioners who disagreed with my orientation. The consequence was that unlike many in the congregationalist polity I maintained significant support not only from those of my ideology, but also those of more rigid, fundamentalist ideologies. They could have been "enemies" and capable in our polity of creating a lot difficulties. But over an eleven year period, that never happened because I was close to those who differed--and worked to make "adjustments" without compromises.

In the business setting, I refer to “enemy” as a person you have to interact with, someone who’s competing for your resources, who doesn’t follow through on his commitments, whom you don’t trust, with whom the “chemistry” isn’t there, or who disagrees with your perspective from the ground up. These are also people whom you’ll need in order to get your own personal and organizational objectives met. As both a manager and a consultant, I’ve found a number of people who fit in that same box. In short, I’ve found Machiavelli very useful for my own success.

But there are a number of exceedingly important reasons for keeping your enemies close...

3 Keys to Successful Career Change

Although the notions around career change have been in flux for a number of years, there is one identifiable thread running through the rhetoric of the past 50 years: always build on your old career and its well-developed competencies.

You won’t need all of your old competencies, but a significant number must be available to support your new career. Journalists love to report on the unique people who won’t follow that rule. But the number of people who build a successful career that ignores their previous competencies is miniscule. Analyzing the past can force you to define what’s transferable and what’s not. In the long run, the distinctions between the past and the future provide focus for gaining new learnings quickly and efficiently.

This approach has two significant advantages: it is not overwhelming—and it makes you immediately valuable to your (new) organization. I always assumed this was self-evident, but experience reveals that few really understand the process initially!

One of my mentees provides a superb example for successful change. About a dozen years ago, he got into a major financial firm right out of college as a client relationship specialist. An English major, his conversational and linguistic skills were superb. Though he did not initially recognize his giftedness, he almost automatically thought first in big pictures, then created or broke out process from that macro understanding. This unusual competency sometimes goes with a humanities degree, but is usually missing in those with technical and business degrees.

His use of that expertise was spontaneous and unconscious. Early on in the financial firm, he began using technology with his relational skills, the focus of the finance position. After just a couple years, he bumped up that elementary experience into making sense out of tech strategy, assessing internal tech needs--and working with technology folk. Pretty soon, though he’d never had any technical background in software, he began to understand technology process and strategy more richly. (You don’t need to know how to code to understand process and strategy). Soon, with articulate questioning and networking, he became adept at figuring out what various programs could and could not do. As a result of his curiosity and focus, he became an expert strategic and planning thinker. That led to project management in a leading tech firm. (Still no coding expertise.) But from that experience he recognized the value of Agile, got his credentials very quickly and was soon using Agile in his project management. Next, you guessed it, he got on the Scrum bandwagon and is now a Senior Scrum consultant. I suspect there’ll be still further vocational and growth moves.

His career development model is simple and straight-forward: develop by adding strategic tools.

Sure, this sounds like overly simple process. Yet, the model is fundamental to all career change. Surprisingly, no more than five to ten percent of business folk seem to have the understanding and discipline to follow the model. Indeed, my observation of several hundred individuals attempting to develop skills without anchoring growth in the past reveals ongoing, unnecessary limitations.

Why is that?

Edgar Schein of MIT has talked and written about this macro problem for years.  More recently, Herminia Ibarra has also been dealing with this same issue. They believe that when the gap between your present situation and the hoped-for new situation is too large, the more likely it'll be that you'll ignore or misunderstand the information in the new context. And the result will be—failure...

Why Is It So Hard to Learn?

There are at least ten or so reasons that tend to make learning difficult for most of us.

Less than 10% of professionals are agile enough learners to quickly process an experience and apply their lessons to new situations. That's a spooky statistic. In today's economy where innovation, skill development  and learning are the only means to circumvent  personal obsolescence, why is the number of agile learners so small? In other words, why is it so hard to learn? Max Bazerman of Harvard  suggests three basic obstacles to learning. In this brief summary I add eight more insights gleaned from both research and face-to-face experience with hundreds of clients. 

The need for balance
If you’ve achieved some level of professional success, the idea that your skills could be lacking won’t compute. In fact, as Bazerman reminds us, balance theory emphasizes that we want consistency when we organize our thoughts and think about our expertise. To maintain our cognitive balance—our need to believe we’re consistent--we are nearly certain to avoid hard or painful truths.

If it ain’t broke, why fix it?
Generally, most of us reach a level of competency between four and six years into our vocation—then we slow down and eventually stop learning. Partly, that’s because we’ve been praised in the past for our work prowess. According to reinforcement theory, we tend to continue behaviors (skills) that brought positive rewards such as raises and promotions. If your professionalism has rewarded you, you’ll tend to resist information suggesting that your judgment and your toolbox could be systematically improved. 

Mistakes were made, but not by me
You’ve probably relied on your way of doing things for years. When you receive negative feedback about your performance, that will mean that you’ve made some costly mistakes in the past—and that will be unsettling. Interpersonal studies suggest that getting negative feedback causes us to avoid the person who gave it, filter information to him in the future, and constrict our  thinking. It’s no surprise that most of us will try to discredit the truth about our deficiencies, and become impervious to self-correction.

Missing the big picture
When learning new competencies, some people are so wrapped up in the detail and concrete specifics of a new skill that they miss the big development picture. Our education, whether business, law, architecture or engineering is highly specialized—making us all "Incrementalists." As a result, we fail to fully integrate the new skill into our toolkit, thinking that learning is merely an item-by-item matter. Without integration, our learning results will be nothing more than mediocre, barely moving the needle.