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 In my recent blog post — Leadership Skills: Your Trust Reflects Your Responsibility — I pointed out that whether we trust others has less to do with what others do and more with our own ability to respond.
And in another post — Leadership Tools: Clear Your Judgement to Move On Effectively — I encouraged you to trust a little too much in order to trust just right.
So what do you do on those (rare) occasions when others let you down, i.e., leave you holding the bag?
Well, I see the first order of business as a careful assessment of the relationship’s value to you. Is it worth changing its future course (for whatever reason)? Your other choices include living with it in a damaged state or removing yourself from the situation.
If the relationship is important to you, then you must engage the other(s) in a conversation about the broken agreement.
The way I see it, such a conversation needs to cover 7 steps — one in preparation and then 6 action steps.
Prep Step: Acknowledge your own feelings about calling someone on a broken promise. Doing so is confronting — and confrontation is only successful when done “cleanly,” i.e., without judgement about the other person.
If you’re anything like me, feelings at such times include fear, doubt, commitment, and courage.
Step 1: Be invited. Conventional wisdom tells us we can’t tell anybody anything they’re not yet ready to hear. So, it’s your responsibility to prepare others to receive your feedback. Start with something like, “Friend, I want to talk with you about how we’re working together. Is this a good time?”
Step 2: Be explicit. Describe the other(s) actions that have caused you concern. Be specific in your description of behaviors and deliverables. Tell them you thought you had an agreement with them for a specific action to take place by a certain time and that it appears they didn’t follow through.
Step 3: Use cause-and-effect language. Report the consequences to you (and your team) of the failed promise. “When you didn’t deliver on your promise, I was unable to complete my task, and the entire team’s deliverable fell behind schedule.”
Step 4: Tell how this failure affected you personally. If you’ve made judgements about the person — and you probably have — then this is the place to voice them, not before. Start with words like, “I assumed…” or “I interpreted….” The point is to take responsibility for your judgement and your feelings. “So, I decided that your promise is not as important to you as it is to me.” “I felt betrayed.”
Step 5: Stop talking and listen. If your words have been compassionate, factual, accurate and nonjudgmental, you’re likely to have tapped into the other person’s integrity and they’ll be prepared to make amends. If, instead, they lay blame or justify, simply continue to invite them “above the line,” i.e., to own their behavior. To see an actual exchange like that, take a look at his blog post: How to Call a Co-Worker to Account And Gain Wins for Both of You.
Step 6: Make a new agreement. Only when you reach this last step is it a good idea to tell the other(s) what you want them to do differently in the future. It’s here that you ask for what you want. For example, “So, in the future, if you discover you can’t keep a promise made to me, I want you to call me the minute you discover it yourself so we can figure out what to do.”
For my team leadership workshop graduates, these steps should look familiar: they’re a specific application of the model for Giving Feedback Responsibly. They work for me. Let me hear how they work for you.
5-Minute Practice Tip to Improve Work Relationships by Giving Responsible Feedback:
Sometimes it’s easier to practice feedback skills giving good news instead of bad. So identify someone who has recently kept his/her agreements with you.
Schedule and execute a feedback conversation for which you do the prep step and take the 6 action steps while giving positive/reinforcing feedback.
Then try the process in a relationship that could be improved by paying attention to and working through a broken agreement.
Christopher Avery, PhD, is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide. Build a responsible team (or family) and master your leadership skills with The Leadership Gift Program for Leaders.
Want more trust in your life? Consider this: we commonly think of trust as something that happens between particular people for particular reasons.
But, if trust exists only between people, how do we explain those all-trusting persons who seem able to exhibit high levels of trust all the time? Are they naive? Or have they got something figured out?
I think they’ve got something figured out.
From my vantage point, folks who are able to trust highly all the time have figured out that trust depends on more than interpersonal dynamics: it’s also an INTRA-personal event.
Whether we trust others or not actually has less to do with what others do and more to do with our ability to respond (to what others do). And this is true not just sometimes, but every time we trust — in our personal life and in work relationships.
Think about it. Trust isn’t simply a product of what happens between you and someone in a given situation: it’s heavily influenced by what’s happening inside of you.
As you focus on teamwork as an individual skill set, how much you do or don’t trust reflects your level of individual response-ability.
That is, the more you expect others might do something you don’t know how to successfully respond to, the less you’re likely to trust them and the more guarded you will be.
Therefore, as your ability to respond grows, the greater will your trust in others grow, because you’ll know how to respond to a wider and wider range of behaviors others might choose to display. Hence, how much you trust others is really a reflection of how much you trust yourself.
As I always point out, you can only control your response to any given situation, and learning to trust more yourself will improve situations and relationships with others — although you are doing the work.
Let me put this into a personal perspective. For three years, I shied away from repeated requests to teach Sunday School to toddlers at my church. My justification was that “I specialize in teaching adults.” The truth was, however, that I didn’t trust a room full of 2-year-olds.
I finally admitted the truth to myself and confronted my fear of not knowing what a room full of 2-year-olds might do (or that I wouldn’t know how to respond to what they might do). So I tried teaching the kids and wouldn’t you know it, after two months of practice, I had expanded my repertoire of behaviors and, as a result, dramatically increased my trust in a room full of 2-year-olds.
Remember: trust is more about what’s inside you than about what’s between you and another.
If you’re always waiting for others to prove their trustworthiness to you, maybe, just maybe, you are playing too small a game. Get started with this week’s 5-Minute Practice Tip.
5-Minute Practice Tip
Refusing to empower others is often an example of our imagined inability to respond to what others might do. So this week, identify at least one relationship where you’ve been controlling another person or balking at trusting him or her. Consider where you can develop or expand your abilities so that you can trust.
Then do it. Trust me — you’ve got nothing to lose.
Tell me what you think. Leave a comment.
Christopher Avery, PhD, is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide. Build a responsible team (or family) and master your leadership skills with The Leadership Gift Program for Leaders.
 Click to see full size One of my clients for the Managed Leadership Gift Adoption program is generating fun and creative ways to promote the Leadership Gift throughout its organization — and across functional and department lines into other units to spread the word.
Here’s a poster they are hanging up and distributing. It’s connected to an event called Responsipalooza.
I’ve learned a thousand ways to not teach the Leadership Gift. One of the most important success strategies is to make the learning light and fun — like with Responsipalooza.
What’s your Responsipalooza strategy when promoting the Leadership Gift?
Nov. 9 Update -the poll is over, the link is gone. View some of the entries below. See the winner.
We’re hosting a contest at 99designs for the badge that will be used by accredited members of the Leadership Gift Program for leaders and their coaches. Already we’ve attracted some rocking submissions, and I expect there to be even more by tomorrow.
 Click image to see full size I congratulate 99designs on the quality of my experience with them–good enough to recommend if you need a logo, badge, button, or icon designed.
Note, 99designs is not the only highly-regarded design contest site so do your own research and make your choice.
 Most leaders have the motivation process exactly backward!
For who knows how long, when you (a leader) wanted me (a follower) to commit to high performance, you and I both expected YOU to tell ME what’s in it for me to work with you.
It’s much smarter to tap into my existing motivation by asking ME to tell YOU what’s in it for me.
It’s actually kind of funny to look at the transaction from outside the habit pattern. The truth is, it’s much smarter (and a lot easier!) for you to tap into my existing — if often hidden — motivation by asking ME to tell YOU what’s in it for me.
Look at it this way:
- Everyone alive has hopes, dreams, and wants for herself/himself.
- People without any hopes, dreams, or wants are dead — they’ve ceased all motion.
- People who get out of bed and go to work have mentally and emotionally linked what they are doing today to their hopes, dreams and wants in a way that makes sense to them.
- Therefore, everyone has their own EXCELLENT reasons for investing in work projects — even if they’ve learned to deny or hide those reasons, sometimes even from themselves.
- So, the best way for me to serve my fellow workers is to help them uncover and focus on their OWN motivations — even if they attempt to convince me (through resistance and denial strategies) that they have none.
To that end, if I think I need to motivate others, it behooves me to ask them, “What’s in it for you to work on this project with this team?” and to keep them in the conversation until THEY come up with the personal benefits that move them into action.
The method is simple. It’s powerful. It’s responsible. Watch out!
Get Started With This 5-Minute Practice Tip
Practice uncovering existing motivation on yourself FIRST.
When you can see — and accept — your own intrinsic motivation, it will be much easier to see and accept others’. When faced with a task that’s not inherently motivating (like taking out the garbage, folding laundry, mowing the lawn, or emptying the dishwasher), ask yourself, “What’s in it for me to do this?”
Pursue the questioning until you find yourself moving. Note what got you going. You’ll discover much about your own motivation.
Stretch Practice
At least three times this week ask others, “What’s in it for you?” Remember, if the first answer doesn’t appear to be MOVING (i.e., energizing) to the person, feed that answer back and follow-up with, “When you get that, what does that do for you?”
Here’s a brief and flagrant example:
You: Christopher, what’s in it for you to help me with project ABC?
Me: Uh, continued employment? (Said with a slightly cynical tone, not energizing.)
You: And when you get to keep your job at this company, how does that serve you?
Me: It keeps my spouse off my back. (Again, said with a cynical tone, not energizing.)
You: And when you can keep your spouse off your back, what does that do for you?
Me: Well, I get to go fishing. (Said with a smile broadening across my face, probably energizing.)
Continue until you can both see how what the person is doing is connected to the future s/he envisions.
Christopher Avery, PhD, is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide. Build a responsible team (or family) and master your leadership skills with The Leadership Gift Program for Leaders.
 Ronica Roth (public profile), Agile Coach and CST who leads coaching strategy at Rally Software, answers the question, “What comes after scrum training?”
Click the video below to see what Ronica says.
Want to know when and where you can attend Creating Results-Based Teams?
See more testimonials for this workshop.
Posted in Agile, Coaching, communication skills, Leadership, Recommended Resources, Responsibility, Teamwork
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Tagged certified scrum master, certified scrum trainer, CSM, CST, Ronica Roth, Scrum
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Do you know exactly what you want? Do your partners know exactly what you want? Do you know exactly what they want?
Over the years, I have been fascinated and focused on the power of outcome thinking. For instance:
- Why do we–smart people–spend so much time dwelling on what we don’t like or don’t want instead of discovering and specifying what we do want and focusing on it?
- Why do we–smart people–allow meetings to start without agreeing to a clear result we’re going for?
- Why do we so frequently assume we can’t have what we want?
- And why do we advise our charges to dream big but then tell them not get their hopes up?
Outcome thinking is a marvelous leadership tool
Salespeople ask prospects what benefits they are looking for in a product. Trainers ask participants what they want from a learning event. Coaches ask clients what results they seek in every part of their life. Doctors and nurses ask patients what end result they desire from treatment. Athletes close their eyes and envision picture perfect outcomes, every time.
Do you think there is something to this?
Outcome thinking has won the ringing endorsement of psychologists the world over
Experts say, “If you can see it, you can be it.” And the opposite is also true: if you can’t see it, you can never be it.
How outcome thinking works remains a bit of a mystery, as does much about the mind, but it isn’t hocus pocus.
Psychologists claim your mind doesn’t know the difference between an actual sensory experience and a well-imagined one (ever wake up from a bad dream in a cold sweat with your heart racing? Ever have your spouse wake up mad at you based on what s/he dreamed?).
Try this right now: Imagine walking into your favorite grocery store, the one with all the great fruits and vegetables piled up in gorgeous, well-lit displays. Head for that produce section and go for the stack of huge, shiny lemons gleaming in the bright lights. Pick up a section of the quartered lemon laying there on the sample table and wedge it into your mouth, between your teeth, and bite down…
Now, if you are like most people, that description got your mouth’s juices flowing in expectation of the citric juices squirting into your mouth. Experts say that envisioning a desired, i.e., perfect, outcome programs your body and mind to produce it that result.
The same is true about focusing on an undesired outcome — you produce it!
Some even say that whatever your mind dwells on it attracts (in a magnetic sort of way). Do you think winners expect to win? You bet! What do you think losers think about?
Take this story about a dad and a little girl learning to ride a bike. He took her to a huge, empty parking lot, a totally flat surface of many acres, and helped her onto her bike. When she got going, she saw the pole and yelled, “The pole, Daddy!” Chasing after her, he said, “Don’t look at the pole, look anywhere else but the pole!” And you know what happened. She focused on the pole, envisioned a terrible outcome that scared her, and then produced that outcome by crashing into the pole.
Of all the acreage, that pole represented the 1/10th of 1% of the parking lot space that could create a negative outcome for her. And she focused on it, and it did produce the negative outcome she feared.
Why focus on our fears when evidence suggests that’s a sure way to make them come true?
What outcomes are you creating by default because you aren’t deliberately creating and envisioning the outcomes you want? Do you even know what outcomes you want? Why not? Do you believe you could have the outcomes you want if you knew what they were?
Do you believe your team or department could ever agree on common outcomes to create together? Unless you are actively addressing these questions, you are acting by default, and your outcomes likely show it.
5-Minute Practice Tip to Build Your Outcome Thinking Muscle:
- Spend five minutes a day alone with your eyes closed envisioning absolutely perfect outcomes to every one of your major projects and interests.
- Spend another five minutes a day alone with your eyes closed envisioning all of your intentions, desires, and wants. Get into a positive (happy, joyful) emotional state and stay there through this exercise.
- And here’s a game you can play with partners and teammates. I call it “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” Here’s how you play: While talking together about an upcoming project or opportunity, speculate about the great things that can happen by taking turns saying “wouldn’t it be cool if” and completing it with specific desired outcomes such as “the VP shows up in the middle of the best part of the demo and loves it.” No cynicism allowed.
Christopher Avery, PhD, is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide. Build a responsible team (or relationship) and master your leadership skills with The Leadership Gift Program for Leaders.
 We just posted the download page for the German version of the Responsibility Process poster. You can download it–and a number of other languages–in full color PDF and make as many copies as you like.
Read more about the project to translate the Responsibility Process into more and more languages to reach every corner of the globe, especially if you want to help translate into your language.
 In a previous post I called attention to “consent” as the root of “consensus” (as well as the basis for participation in any group).
What some people love and others hate about the process of consensus decision-making is that it requires participants to seek every group member’s sincere consent to move forward.
In fact, my definition of consensus is 100% agreement to move forward together.
So, why is consensus important?
- I measure team building by energy and direction. Without consensus, a group has no shared direction. Without consensus, people literally work at cross-purposes (and cancel out each other’s efforts) instead of amplifying each other’s efforts.
- When groups pursue a direction decided by majority or authority, those who dissent (either vocally or silently) display low energy. They lose their commitment.
- Remember the effect of low commitment on teams: the principle of the least-invested co-worker guarantees that when low commitment is present, it will always be more infectious than high commitment. The majority may “win” but the “losers” drain needed energy away from the “win.”
So, the real value of consensus decision-making is that it creates shared direction and high energy in a team. And isn’t that what we join groups to get?
5-Minute Practice Tip
To start becoming an expert consensus-builder, create a consensus continuum (in your head or on paper) similar to the one below. Then, when you’re in a group — any group — and attempting to decide a direction, when someone proposes a solution, immediately take a quick poll of each individual in the group.
Ask each person to rank his/her position as:
- Unqualified: Yes. Move forward.
- Perfectly acceptable. Move forward.
- I can live with the decision of the group. Move forward.
- I trust the group and will not block this decision but need to register my disagreement. Move forward.
- I feel no sense of unity as a group and think more work is needed before deciding. Stay put.
- I do not agree and feel the need to stand in the way of adopting this decision. Stay put.
The point of this practice is warm inclusion of dissenters. Inclusion gives dissenters a louder voice, instead of quelling them. The normal — and harmful — group dynamic is for the majority to beat-up the minority until they withdraw, which the majority then defines as consent.
To activate more team building when there’s a difference of opinion on a team, silence the majority and ask dissenters, “How can we change this proposal so it works for you?” Then listen.
Often dissenters solve their own “opposition” simply by being heard.
Start your practice on less-than-critical decisions. The key to consensus-building is steering away from “right versus wrong” arguments. (Use “Works for me,” or “Doesn’t work for me,” instead.)
And, above all, keep asking the group, “What could move us forward together?”
Leave a comment and tell me what you think.
Christopher Avery, PhD, is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide. Build a responsible team (or family) and master your leadership skills with The Leadership Gift Program for Leaders.
 A while ago, I had the opportunity to accept — or decline — two new business relationships (one as a board member and one in a business venture). As I listened to my internal dialogue about the two propositions, I noticed I kept coming back to my fundamental belief: teamwork is an individual (not a group) skill and responsibility.
In the end, only I am responsible for the quality of all my work relationships. So, when I enjoy them, I’m enjoying my choices.
When I don’t like my work relationships, only I can do something to improve them.
What does this have to do with my decision-making process (or yours, when you’re asked to join a team)? Well, if teamwork is an individual skill, then when we elect to join with others:
- we retain our personal power
- we lend our consent to a group direction and purpose, and
- we incur a responsibility (aka, ability to respond) to speak up if/when we disagree with the group’s direction or purpose
Said another way, take individual responsibility for every relationship and act as if you are always participating in a consensus process, even if the relationship is based on authority, majority, or some other form of governance. Or, decline the relationship.
Contrary to the popular definition, real “team players” are never willing to “go along” with something about which they have strong negative feelings.
They remain conscience that all authority relationships are just agreements — consents — between them and others. They retain and exercise their personal power at all times.
When real “team players” disagree, they push back on others (whether they’re peers, partners, managers, bosses, or elected representatives), knowing that the group’s final agreement will either represent their personal consent to a direction and/or purpose or be the signal for them to withdraw their personal power from the relationship to move in another direction.
In my case, I eventually saw that I lacked sufficient passion for the work to participate patiently in one group’s process. Since my predisposition was to change the group’s direction, without serious passion to fuel my efforts, I’m better off not becoming a member. And the group will be better off, too.
“Going along” without passion or commitment creates two phenomena:
- Entire groups going where no member wants to go (i.e., group think, aka risky shift)
- People hanging out together with low commitment, low energy, low performance, resentment and low esteem.
When I exercise true responsibility, I empower, I approve of, and I co-operate with a wide variety of group decisions towards achieving an agreed direction and purpose. When I do this, it’s unnecessary to voice my opinion on every single detail — in other words, I don’t “sweat the small stuff.”
Exercising my responsibility means I focus on purpose, direction and values — and let everything else go.
So, these days it works best for me to treat every group action, decision and process as one that I “consent to” for as long as I choose to stay in the relationship.
5-Minute Practice Tip
Consider how each group decision or action literally can’t happen without your consent (even if by silent tolerance or permission). As you do this, make note of how you feel about your membership and your urges to speak your truth.
Leave a comment and tell me what you think.
Christopher Avery, PhD, is a recognized authority on how individual and shared responsibility works in the mind and an advisor to leaders worldwide. Build a responsible team (or family) and master your leadership skills with The Leadership Gift Program for Leaders.
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