One of the aspects of my job that I am very passionate about is helping individuals, groups and companies to find their mojo. That is, to help them discover the values that fuel their passions and that drive them forward to do what they do.
I recently conducted an Introspection Workshop for a small start-up that were in the incubation stage of their business. They had a solid idea of what niche they wanted to target and were also clear about the tangibles of their new venture - the product and service.
When it came to the intangibles that was a different story. They were still wandering around in the dark with arms out-stretched searching for their elusive values. They could feel them, but the challenge was to articulate them into concrete terms. Simon Sinek in his book Start With Why calls these values the why. The whys being the purpose of the business that is above and beyond it’s product and/or services.
On an individual level I've worked with scores of individuals. One person who stands out that I’ve worked extensively with is Inge Solheim who led Prince Harry and company on the Walking with the Wounded South Pole Allied Challenge in 2013. Even for an experienced adventurer such as Inge, who leads parties to some of the most extreme climes on the planet, going through an introspection exercise every so often helps him to adjust his decisions and realign his direction based on his internal compass.
What is the over-arching principle of human behaviour?
Human behaviour is driven by the major principle of pleasure and pain. Every choice we make and every action we take is driven by this principle. The general human tendency is to move towards pleasure and away from pain. This is true as much for an individual as it is for an organization.
Every emotion we feel is simply a derivative of either pleasure or pain. The word we use for a specific emotion defines the degree of intensity of the pleasure or pain we experience. In the English language there are approximately 3000 words to describe emotions. There are exactly 2286 words used to describe negative emotions and 1051 words to describe positive emotions.
What is the difference between a feeling and an emotion?
In the Anglo-Saxon world we tend to use the words feelings and emotions as synonyms. In actuality, they have their own unique definitions. In the context of this blog, a feeling is a raw sensation that is communicated to the brain through one of our five senses like sight and smell.
When these raw sensations make it to the limbic system, the emotional centre of our brains, we assign meaning to that feeling. Depending on if we assign a positive or negative meaning it will evoke motion (an e-motion) either toward something or away from something.
For example, if your eyes register the raw sensation (a feeling) of a bright blue sky you may assign the meaning that is is a beautiful day. This means you will most likely feel a positive emotion like optimism and happiness. The opposite is true if you assign a negative meaning to an overcast day.
Take a moment to look at the equations below:
FEELING + MEANING = Evoke MOTION (E-MOTION)
FEELING + NEGATIVE MEANING = NEGATIVE EMOTION (PAIN)
FEELING + POSITIVE MEANING = POSITIVE EMOTION (PLEASURE)
What are Values?
When people talk about values they are simply referring to either positive or negative emotional states. That is, they are stating what pleasures they are moving towards and what pains they are moving away from. The key point to remember here is that values are emotions.
Now, you may value many things such as your family, your house, your job, your friends and so on. These are things that you value, but they are not values. Your family, house, job and friends are all important to you. But here is the important distinction. Each of the above nouns are the vehicles that allow you to feel a certain way - to experience a certain type of emotion.
If I asked you, ‘What does your family give you?’ You may answer a sense of belonging, a sense of love, a sense of contribution and/or a sense of something greater than yourself. It is how we want to feel that are the drivers behind our behaviour. It is the emotions we want to experience that are our values.
What are Moving-Toward Values (MTVs)?
As human beings we are constantly motivated to move toward pleasurable emotional states. However, there are always going to be some emotions you will value more than others. For example, what are the emotions that will give you the most pleasure – Love or Success? Freedom or Intimacy? Adventure or Security?
These pleasurable states that we value most are ‘Moving-Toward’ values (MTVs), because these are the emotional states that we will do the most to attain. Some examples of MTVs are success, freedom, intimacy, security, adventure, power, passion, comfort, and health.
It is very important to understand that we do not weigh all these values equally. Usually there are preferences. There is a hierarchy to our values and the emotions we want to experience. It is this hierarchy that greatly influences the decisions we make from moment to moment - consciously and unconsciously. For example, some people value comfort over passion. Others value freedom over security, and still other people may value intimacy over success.
They key is to understand that we humans will always try to realize our highest values first.
What are Moving-Away Values (MAVs)?
Just as there are emotions we want to experience because they are pleasurable, there is also a list of emotions that we will do almost anything to avoid. As Daniel Kahneman points out in his book Thinking Fast and Slow there is a greater tendency for people to make choices based on avoiding pain than gaining pleasure, which directly impacts our decision-making.
As an example, you may be given the opportunity to present your work to the executive team of your company. You may have strong MTVs of recognition and feeling appreciated. You may also have strong MAVs of not feeling embarrassed or vulnerable. In the end, you choose to opt out of making the presentation and instead relinquish that task to someone else on your team. You were driven more by avoiding the pain of potential embarrassment and vulnerability then by the kudos of receiving well-deserved recognition and appreciation for excellent work.
Just like MTVs, we have a hierarchy of MAVs that will heavily influence on how we make decisions.
How do you discover your MTVs and MAVs?
Depending on what aspect of your life you are attending to you will have different values. In your professional life you may have values such as feeling professional and assertive in your working relationships. Although theses values are important at the office, you may not consider them top of the hierarchy in your family life.
When I’m working with clients we focus on one slice of their life at a time. Since the majority of my developmental dialogues are with clients focusing on their professional lives we tend to discover their MTVs and MAVs as it pertains to that aspect.
Here are the steps and some example questions of what I generally ask people when we are doing an introspection exercise:
Step 1 - Identifying MTVs
How do you want to feel at work?
What is important for you to feel professionally?
How do you want to feel about the quality of your work, your effort, your abilities and capabilities?
What is important for others to feel about you professionally, about your effort, about the quality of your work?
Step 2 - Prioritizing MTVs
The client then lists their MTVs in the order of priority. This exercise can be quite the eye-opener, because it reveals whether my client’s decisions are in line with their top values.
This insight can help my client to understand why he or she heads in a certain direction on a consistent basis. By articulating his or her hierarchy of MTVs my client can understand why he or she sometimes has difficulty in making decisions. This becomes easy to see when the values are written down in front of them and the MTVs can be contrasted and compared with one another.
Step 3 - Identifying MAVs
What emotions do you never want to experience at work?
What are some of the worst emotions you have experienced as a professional?
How do you never want other professionals to feel about you, your effort, your quality of work?
What emotions do you never want associated with your professional reputation?
Step 4 - Prioritizing MAVs
The client then lists their MAVs in the order of priority.
Step 5 - Reengineering MTVs & MAVs
In the final step, I help my client to reexamine their values and decide what values they want to add; what values they want to eliminate; and whether the hierarchy needs to be modified.
In Conclusion
By changing your values you change your life. This is a very powerful concept which can bring a profound shift in someone’s life or to how a business does it’s business.
You can literally change the way you think, feel and behave in virtually every area of your life simply by consciously selecting or redirecting the order and content of your values hierarchy system.
We encourage you to share your questions, opinions and comments.
Thanks again for taking the time to read our blog.
________
Interested in applying brain-science in your professional life?
Please visit us at Facebook or www.MINDtalk.no
One of the biggest changes that can hit an organization and it's employees Is when they move offices. Everything is going to be new. The route someone takes to work. The view outside the window. The placement of the all-important coffee machine. The location of different meeting rooms. The list is endless.
What can make a move even more Earth-shaking for people is if they are one of the many companies moving from an individual office plan to an open-plan solution. For the many who have never worked in an open-plan environment it can be very daunting. There be very little, and in many cases, no experience to draw from which significantly heightens the sense of uncertainty. This in turn can quickly send someone into a reactive mindset.
In a reactive state of mind people tend to get hung up on the nitty-gritty of details; they tend to exaggerate the problems; their focus be on the things outside of their control; they may get emotionally hijacked; they tend to be more problem-oriented; they develop self-limiting beliefs; and have the tendency to make more reactive decisions.
Many of us have this natural reaction to change. This is especially true if it is change that we have not initiated, but which circumstance has forced us into. Our ancient ancestors that lived on the open savannah 50,000 years ago tended to stay put if resources were sufficient and game could be had. The brain tends to see things in very black and white terms - life or death. One of the reasons the brain wanted our ancestors to stay put is certainty. Certainty that our mental map of the territory was correct. Certainty where water and food could be found. Certainty of where the predators tended to lurk. Certainty where it was safe to spend the night.
On the other hand, picking up and moving meant uncertainty. It meant the brain had to use more energy to map a new territory, but more than that uncertainty also brought with it a high-degree of risk. The brains prime-directive is to keep you alive. Uncertainty and unpredictability are the arch-enemies of the brain and it will do its very best to try to dissuade someone from making a move. Better the risk you know than the risk you don't.
What is an organization to do?
From my experience, working both with small and large organizations moving into an open-landscape work space the key is to create as much certainty as possible. Communicate often and early enough in the process building up to the move. Predictability and certainty are going to be an organizations best allies to encouraging people to take a 'constructive' approach to a move.
I consciously use the term constructive instead of positive. The reality is an open- landscape has both it's advantages and disadvantages. By using the term 'positive approach' it has the unintended connotations of trying to sell the idea much like a used-car salesman. It doesn't matter how charismatic someone is or how persuasive their message, if a person is not in the mood to buy it will be an act of futility to try to sell them the idea. This is even more true if a person is already in a reactive mindset.
When in a reactive state of mind biased thinking proliferates. Biased thinking is a type of thought process that limits our possibility to see solutions and opportunities, because our thinking becomes rigid and inflexible. We tend to only see one side of the coin and refuse to believe there is another side. When it comes to change there are 5 types of biased thinking that are relevant to moving to an open-plan office. I mention two of these below.
- Confirmation Bias. People have an automatic and unconscious tendency to filter information that only supports their current belief. For example, if a person is negative toward the move they will have a greater tendency to read articles or have selective memory of stories and incidents that only highlight the disadvantages of open-plan environments.
- Ownership Bias. You can see ownership in play when you conduct a meeting and you call for a break. When people return they will tend to sit in the exact same place. Since they took that seat at the beginning their brains not only ‘own’ that particular seat, but the perspective of the meeting leader, the location of their neighbors, the position at the table and so on. Ownership bias becomes even more evident when someone has to give up 'their' office. People tend only to think about what they're losing and what they're giving up. It becomes nearly impossible to see the things that they are gaining or the advantages a new situation brings. It also means it becomes even more difficult to find solutions for things that are not working and which need to be addressed.
From my experience, an organization needs to build a process in helping people to take a constructive approach to a move. By taking this approach it washes away a good proportion of the stink of trying to sell an idea.
What is a constructive approach?
As mentioned above, creating as much certainty and predictability early enough in the process is of fundamental importance. The other important element is creating a planned forum for people to voice their concerns, opinions and ideas.
When I run these workshops for organizations the key is to to keep the participant numbers down to a size that encourages dialogue. If the group is too large and the group is highly negative then a constructive workshop can sour quickly. I have found that a good number is between 10 to 12 participants.
In order to put people into a constructive mode for dialogue I think it essential to prime peoples minds. I find the best way of doing this is to open each of my workshops by teaching people about about mindsets, about key-functions of the brain related to change, and about biased thinking. The insights gained from this introduction help people to gain real-time perspective of how their thinking is actually affecting them physically and psychologically. I can not stress how affective I have found this to be when helping organizations acclimatize to the idea and the reality of moving offices. This part is key in putting people into a mind state that is objective, reflective and decisive.
In the second part of the workshop I find the following are some of the key areas that need to be addressed:
- how to engage people and hold conversations?
- what should we be aware of regarding our surroundings?
- how should we define phone etiquette in the office environment?
- what should we be aware of regarding focus rooms, meeting rooms, and social areas?
As mundane as these topics may seem it is actually here that create many of the flash-points of discontent and frustration with working in an open landscape. Under each of these areas it is important to ask a wide range of questions to capture a spectrum of thoughts and opinions.. The quality of the questions will determine the quality of the answers and of the quality of the discussion that follows.
What are the end-points?
I think there are 2 overall end-points that should be achieved. The first, as has already been discussed, is the fact that there are dedicated workshops where people can voice and share their opinions, concerns and solutions.
Simply getting people to constructively discuss an issue where you examine both the advantages and disadvantages leaves a majority of the people more positive about a move. People get the opportunity to have many of their questions answered and to have many of their knowledge-gaps filled. It is this increase in certainty and predictability that puts people into a more constructive state of mind.
The second outcome of the workshop is to compile a list of recommendations to create a code of conduct. This is simply document of suggested practices to encourage and remind people of behaviour that is conducive to an open-plan office. Creating such a list allows people to feel a sense of control and influence. This is so essential since many times such a move is perceived as something that is forced on them and beyond their control.
These are only my experiences working with a number of companies that have made a move to an open-plan solution. Of course there are a few other issues that need to be addressed, but the core fundamentals mentioned above are important to build into any process.
In the end
I truly believe the owners of change need to take an active and engaged role in preparing people for a big move. They need to design a forum or a series of forums where the people who will be affected have a chance to voice their thoughts and concerns as a group.
From my experience, if the forum is structured and well-balanced and people learn something about themselves, their brains, and they're thinking it can lead to a very constructive dialogue.
In a future blog entry, I will share with you the process I follow-up with companies 6 to 12 months after they have made the move. The post-occupancy process is a key element to getting people to acclimatize.
We encourage you to share your questions, opinions and comments.
Thanks again for taking the time to read our blog.
________
Interested in applying brain-science in your professional life?
Please visit us at www.MINDtalk.no
