Think about a time when you stretched yourself and did something exceptional. Why did you do it? How did you tap into the focus, energy, and creativity you needed? How did you overcome the fear of failure?

I am talking about motivation – how our activities tap into our psychology. Leaders, managers and employees all play a part in creating work environments that provide motivation.

There is a well established area of research around why we do the things we do. Our behaviours are tied to fulfilling 3 basic psychological needs*:

• Autonomy (“I want to”)
• Competence (“I am able to”)
• Relatedness (“I have support to”)

In other words, motivation is firstly about doing thing things you want to do. But then it’s about feeling competent to do those things and feeling enough support to stretch yourself.

“I want to”

There are some things you do for no other reason than you want to: They are their own reward. Work usually isn’t its own reward. People may want to work and enjoy it, but they do so for an outcome…like pay. But that doesn’t mean that money creates motivation. Sometimes it hurts it.

In one famous study, researchers experimented with how subjects chose to spend their free time between experiments. In many cases, subjects would continue to ‘play’ with the experimental material, even during a break…ie…they ‘wanted’ to. But, when pay was linked to play, the interest in the play went down. The pay took away play – the activity was no longer its own reward…it was now work.

This is called the ‘crowding out’ effect, and it can impact what people in your organisation are choosing to do. Here are some things to consider when you are thinking about rewards:

Rethinking rewards

This ‘crowding out’ effect is a bit different to what we have been teaching managers for years about rewards – that we should attach a bonus or pay to the behaviours we want to encourage. Be careful not to over-simplify this – employees are not the same as rats pushing a bar to get food pellets. If people already want to do something, let them. The activity is its own reward. Save your rewards for areas where you are trying to create more motivation. Some changes you might like to experiment with:

• Reduce the amount of control and reward you associate the tasks people already ‘want’ to do. Control is counter-productive to employee engagement.
• Encourage employees to reflect on their own activities and why they do them – let them tell you where the best fit exists.
• Save your rewards systems for the things that people don’t already want to do naturally. I know of one organisation which provides a paid parking spot for the person who is rostered to be on call.

Of course, you can’t always offer choice when there is work to be done. But you can look for ways to tap into people’s natural motivations.

Once you have thought about rewards, you can think about creating the motivational elements of “I am able to” and “I have support to” – the next steps in creating work environments which encourage people to stretch themselves. More on those in the next blog.

Need help? Handspring.com.au is a collection of resources, services, and stories about change in organisations. Have a look around.

*Deci and Ryan out of the University of Rochester are world experts in motivation. You can find a detailed compilation of related resources at selfdeterminationtheory.org.

But, why do some teams just seem to work together better than others?

In 1999, a group of researchers set out to find that answer. They invited 60 business teams to conduct a yearly planning meeting in the research lab*.

Now, you might question – how anyone can study team dynamics in a lab? Did the teams know they were being studied? Yes. But the research environment was a meeting room and the researchers were behind 1-way glass and after a short time, the teams reportedly just got on with the business at hand.

Measuring Communication

The researchers focussed on communication and interactions. Specifically, they observed (and scored) these teams’ utterances based on frequency of:

• Self vs other-focussed comments
• Inquiring vs advocating statements (ie asking vs. telling)
• Positive/negative statements

Measuring Performance

Researchers compared those communication scores against external performance factors of the companies represented – things like profitability, customer satisfaction, and 360 degree feedback. There were some pretty remarkable trends between company performance and team communication .

1. In low performing companies, team members talk mostly about themselves…rarely about others
2. In low performing companies, team members do lots of telling, but not much asking
3. In low performing companies, team members make 3 times more negative statements than positive (whereas high performers make 5 times more positive statements than negative).

Now, before your roll your eyes on that last one…by positive statements, I don’t mean ‘corporate cheerleading’. I mean genuinely positive, encouraging statements. How willing are you to share ideas in environments that always shoot you down?

In other words, how your team members talk and listen to each other matters. It matters to your ability to innovate. A team that is able to encourage ideas from group members creates a healthy dynamic – a pattern of thinking and communication that perpetuates.

So how do you improve?

If you are trying to improve how your team performs, why not do a little study of your own? How often are positive statements made? How open are team members to listening to alternative thoughts and ideas? How is conflict handled?

Once you know how you rate, it’s time to think about the harder question: How open is this group to change? Just suggesting a change doesn’t make it happen. People have to want it – and want it strongly enough that they are willing to stop doing some things and start doing others. That can be uncomfortable…and will often require support, leadership, and trust from the rest of the team – the cultural building blocks of change. Is your organisation ready?

*You can read more about this study on Wikipedia under “Losada Ratios” or read the original study, which is:

Losada, M. (1999). The complex dynamics of high performance teams. Mathematical and Computer Modelling, 30(9–10), 179–192

It’s funny the kinds of reactions I get when I make that suggestion. Some people know instantly what I am talking about. For others, it takes a little coaxing. But it doesn’t take long for them to name a vice…chocolate, sweets, television, junk food, alcohol, cigarettes, and the car were all named by my group of friends hanging out (drinking) on Australia Day.

My vice is easily identified: A bold red with steak, a sharp white with spicy food, a cleansing ale after squash. I do love to relax with alcohol. So, this month, I opted to join Febfast – a 4-week pause to my bacchantic ways. You can read more about Febfast here.

One friend is sceptical: ‘what’s the point of stopping something for a month if you are just going back to it in March?’ Fair question. I am trying to learn something – because learning is a fundamental step in changing. So, here is what I have learned so far:

1. It’s not that hard

I thought this would be more of a struggle for me. But, I still enjoy friends, social events, and business events while sipping something non-alcoholic. And, when I do feel for a glass of wine, the feeling usually passes if I just wait it out. Knowing this makes me feel powerful and in control. And, by stretching my willpower ‘muscle’, I am teaching myself to be happier and more successful in other areas of my life*.

2. It’s not that easy

The thing about a vice is that it is usually triggered by something. I have all of the willpower I need to not have a drink. But, do I have the courage to ask myself why I want one? Is it boredom, self esteem, or just general satisfaction? I am noticing situations that make me want to drink and questioning why I even engage in them.

I loved this quote from Lisa Dempster’s blog:

“I’m starting to realise that physically not-ingesting alcohol might not be the hardest thing I do this year. Rather, looking inwards – and figuring out who I am, who I could be, and who I want to be – might just be the biggest challenge I face…”

3. When in doubt, change something

It’s amazing what impact changing one thing can have. As soon as you change one thing, it tends to shake a bunch of other things loose. I know someone who recently quit smoking and then realised that, without the hourly smoke breaks, he was seriously unhappy with his employer. He had been masking his unhappiness with his smoke breaks. He didn’t set out to change jobs by quitting smoking, but that’s what happened. And he is happier as a result.

Give it a try

What kind of vices are you engaged in? What would happen if you tried to change one? It doesn’t have to be permanent, it doesn’t even have to be big…it’s just an opportunity to learn.

*Read more about why willpower matters here

It’s one of the hardest parts of leadership…recognising the need to change and taking the necessary actions and then dealing with the fallout – the shock, denial, anger, and fear that often follow a big change announcement. It’s time consuming and frustrating and can leave leaders scratching their heads and management teams wondering ‘is it really worth it?’

When change involves a perceived loss for employees, I like to draw from the lessons of organisational fairness to help strengthen feelings of trust and justice during change.  “When workers see themselves as being treated fairly, they develop attitudes and behaviours required for successful change.”*

Fair doesn’t mean equal

Change creates winners and losers.  It’s inevitable.  But it is possible for employees to support a change, even when they perceive it as a loss.  This is when your change team needs to be focussed on the principles of organisational fairness:

1. Commit to consistency between what you say and what you do
2. Remind people of the common ground – the goals that are shared between parties, even when the change has resulted in inequity to some
3. Don’t overstate the positive – communication should be honest, frequent and consistent to assure employees that they will never be intentionally deceived
4. Encourage participation (organisational citizenship) – make people aware of how they can participate in positive ways. 

But who enforces fairness?

Implementing a change is time consuming and tiring and worrying about fairness usually takes a back seat.   While your project teams are focussed on delivery and deadlines.  Your change team should be focussed on people – they are on the ground and close to those most impacted employees…watching, listening, and feeding back meaningful information that is also consistent.

And this doesn’t mean delegating to a junior communications person.  Enforcing justice sometimes requires some pretty tough conversations with senior managers.  You need someone who can stand up for the principles when they are being overlooked. 

Is it working? 

An ex-boss of mine used to ask ‘is the line going up or going down’?    He was frustrated with waiting for facts and figures to prove if a communication strategy was working.  Over the years, I have learned that the best yardstick for ‘is it working’  isn’t complex statistics or a surveys,  but conversations.  Bring up the change in a small group of impacted employees and just observe what happens. 

• Do they know the facts? 
• Can they explain it to each other? 
• Can they talk about it reasonably, without spiralling out of control? 

When the principles of fairness and justice are at work in an organisation, you can observe them in the employee interactions.  That is the best ‘proof’ I know. 

*Folger, R. and Starlicki, D.P. (1999).  “Unfairness and resistance to change:  hardship as mistreatment”,   Journal of Organisational Change Management, 12(1), 1999, pp. 35-50.

Maybe you have been there? You are working on something you care about. You think it is going to plan…then suddenly it is not. But we learn much more about ourselves when things are going wrong than when things are going right.   Here is what I learned:

“We can’t solve problems using the same thinking that created them”

That is one of my favourite adages. The first thing I had to do was to get away from my work environment. Every minute I sat at my desk, I was using the same thinking. My attention was on what was going wrong. I was creating a downward spiral. I was focussed on problems, not solutions.

I left my busy office and went to one of my favourite beaches and just sat and watched the waves. I realised that my brain was full of a constant chatter of unhelpful thoughts: Failure, blame, incompetence. These were stopping me from being productive.

As I sat there, I realised that my brain had not rested for weeks. If I wanted my brain to help me though this stressful period, I needed to give it room to think. I committed to finding time for yoga and meditation, which I had stopped doing because of my busy schedule.

‘No’ is a powerful tool

Once I had calmed my brain, I could start to focus on solutions. I realised that I had been letting myself get distracted by problems that were not even truly mine. I wrote down my priorities. I started saying ‘no’ when people asked me to get involved with other things. I reminded them of my priorities and they (reluctantly) agreed.

Life is better on the front foot

Once I had my priorities clear and the mental space to do them, I got to work. I dedicated several evenings and weekend days to catching up on work so that I could stay ahead of what was happening. Each day I collected more problems and each evening I got back on top of them so that by the next day I could keep moving. I spent several Sundays doing the ‘big rocks’ (the tasks I would never get done in my interrupt-driven office environment). It was tiring. I knew that I could not maintain that pace indefinitely. But, I also knew it was temporary. After a month or so, I have been able to return to some normal work hours and I feel more in control. The project is back where it needs to be.

You’ve got to know your purpose

My role as a change manager is to be one step ahead of my customer and to keep them on a path for success. Critical to my success are my ability to manage not only my customer, but also my time and myself. Those responsibilities can’t be outsourced or even shared. They have to come from within me. Or in the words of Peter Senge:

“The discipline of personal mastery starts with clarifying the things that really matter to us, of living our lives in the service of our highest aspirations.”

Do you know your purpose? Once you are clear on the role you play and your style of playing it, you are on your way to mastering your professional self. And, that is exactly who you need to rely on when things go wrong.

That’s what Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey say in their book, How the way we talk can change the way we work*.

But what if our goal is to actually change ‘the system’ – our patterns of thought?

The tool that Kegan and Lahey use to help change ‘the system’ is called an ‘immunity map’. The concept is this: We can’t really help ourselves get what we want until we understand what we are doing to prevent getting it.

So how do we develop that kind of understanding? Well, it requires taking a step back from ourselves. It requires examining our thinking. If you have something that you are trying to change, try this exercise (the example below talks about change in a work context, but you can think of any type of change you desire):

All you need are 2 pieces of paper: One for making notes, and one for documenting your Immunity Map. To make your immunity map, draw a big square with 4 columns in it (like the one on the picture attached to this blog). Then, ask yourself this first question…

1. Think about your work. What sorts of things need to happen more frequently to experience more of what you want?
 

Don’t read ahead until you have answered this question. Write down your answer on your note paper.

Now read your answer. How does it sound? My first one sounded something like this:

“I need more time. I am so busy, I don’t have time to think about the ‘big things’”

That statement sounds like someone who is frustrated. It’s a complaint. But, it also shows that I am committed to something. With a little work, I can change my statement from a ‘complaint’ to a ‘commitment’. Here is how that commitment sounds:

“I am committed to finding work which is meaningful and important to both me and my clients”

This is my complaint, restated as a commitment. The commitment is what you write in column 1 of your immunity map. Once you have written it, you can ask yourself a second question…

2. What are you doing – or not doing – that keeps your commitment from being more fully realised?

Write this on your note page. My first answer sounded something like this:

“I keep spending too much time on other people’s urgencies and deadlines”

It sounds a little blaming, doesn’t it? But I can re-word it so that I take more personal responsibility. Such as…

“I never say ‘no’…I don’t stop to consider others who could do the job instead of me”

This is what I can take responsibility for. Once I am clear on that, I write it in column 2 of my map and move on to the next question:

3. What fears or discomfort do you have about doing column 2 differently?

Be honest. This fear should feel real. It should also feel a little bothersome. It should feel genuine, not noble. Write it on your notes page. Here was mine:

“If I did find someone else to do the work, my clients might decide that they don’t need me”

If you read between the lines of that statement, you can see that I am holding a competing commitment. Yes, I am committed to finding meaningful work, yet I am also committed to feeling needed. As a result, I keep saying ‘yes’ to things I should probably be saying ‘no’ to. I am caught in a cycle. But now that I realise the cycle, I can start to learn from it. I can start to observe how my commitments are interfering with each other.

Before moving on to column 4, it is useful to just stop and reflect on this for a while. Watch yourself and how these competing commitments are playing out in your daily life. In my next blog, I will show you how to complete your immunity map by identifying your ‘Big Assumption’ and, more importantly, talk about what you can do to start changing this cycle.

*Kegan, R. & Lahey,L.L. (2009). How the way we talk can change the way we work: seven languages for transformation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass

But as I sit on the bench recovering from my game, I am not thinking about my aches and pains, I am thinking about leadership styles.

Everyone on the squash court has a different style. The young guys in court 1 are hitting the ball impressively hard and fast, while the older players in court 3 are playing with a much more seasoned approach. That seasoning means that they will be playing good squash long after their youth and power are gone.

Career success is like this too. It’s easy to command respect, authority and action based on power alone. But power is transient and not always in your control. You can lose it with acquisitions and re-drawing of organisational charts. You don’t control those. But you do control your style – your approach to the game. Here is what the squash court has reminded me about leadership:

1. Sometimes your best shot isn’t straight ahead of you.

A squash court is a 360 degree playing field, but I tend to hit most shots to the front wall. Seasoned squash players take advantage of the angles. Have you looked around lately? Is there a move you could be making to your left or your right that might serve you better in the long run? Use all of your walls. Instead of pushing relentlessly toward a single goal, take a minute to look around for a better path – something more motivating, more fun, or more strategic.

2. You don’t have to wait for the rebound.

There is nothing that irritates me more than watching that ball take a bad bounce and die at my feet. Why didn’t I just hit it sooner? Sometimes when I wait, it becomes unreturnable – what a wasted opportunity. When I just take a step forward, I control the outcome.

3. Never give up.

A bigger reach – a quicker sprint…I am amazed at the impossible shots I have actually hit when my brain doesn’t stand in my way. My body is capable of more than I give it credit for. When I change my mindset, I change the result. When I believe that anything is ‘gettable’, I return more shots.

What in life aren’t your reaching for? Go for it. It’s your game.

Those ‘heated’ moments and conversations in our work (and personal) lives are often the places we avoid.  As managers, we ignore them, or change the topic, or take it ‘off line’.  But the reality is that these territories are rich with information.   They tell you that you have just hit a nerve…that you have found a source of energy.  In other words, you have uncovered something that people really care about.

The problem, of course, with all of this caring, is that it can also come with disagreements, political game-playing and frustration.   These are the places where organisations fall into the same old stories of ‘we’ve tried that before’ or ‘that never works’ or ‘they always stuff that up’.  To turn this negativity into something more useful, people often need some help in approaching it differently.  Here are some things you can try:

1. Find a common goal – People might disagree with what has just been suggested, but what can they agree on?  If everyone can agree that this is an important issue, you have made an important first step.  You agree on something.
2. Ask permission to pursue it – Before you drag people into an uncomfortable conversation, it is useful to remind them that they are in control.  Will they agree to stay with this topic for a while?  Simply observing out loud that this seems to be an area people care about and then asking permission to pursue it will help people relax.
3. Don’t rush to solutions – Sometimes just agreeing on the problem is enough.  There is nothing wrong with ending the meeting by saying “it sounds like we have agreed that x is a problem and we would like it to look more like y – let’s leave it there for now and we can talk about that more next time.”  This agreement alone may be enough to clear the path for a solution.  People have an amazing ability to solve their own problems.  They might leave the meeting and have some side conversations or come back to the next meeting with a suggestion.  I have seen it happen countless times.
4. Build some skills in your team to help them solve these things on their own.  Listening skills, critical conversations, and parallel thinking, are organisational skills that will enable people to solve their own problems.  Maybe it’s time to invest in some training here?

So, the next time you are faced with negativity or disagreement in a group, don’t avoid it…explore it.  It is fertile ground for successful change.  And, if they aren’t disagreeing…well, maybe it’s time to stir the pot?

Good meetings are one of the simplest things you can do to improve morale and get the best results from groups.  Yet people still consistently get meetings wrong.  Worse yet, people accept bad meeting form because the meeting leader has “been so busy” or “doing so many other things well”.    

But, think of the example that sets – it perpetuates the problem.  You teach each other that bad meeting behaviour is acceptable…that wasting each other’s time is acceptable.  The meeting I attended included at least 5 contract employees – some of whom had travelled across town to be there.  These people are being paid by the hour to watch someone else mismanage their time.

If you are guilty of sloppy meeting form, the solution might be as simple as getting a better system.  Here is mine (thanks to Franklin Covey, which is where I learned it):

1. A paper diary.   Did she say paper?  Yep, that’s right.  I love my gizmos and gadgets, but when it comes to meetings, I believe in paper.  Think about it…taking notes on paper shows that you are listening (it also reduces the temptation to check emails during the boring bits).  My paper diary has the following sections:  A month-at-a-glance calendar; a page-a-day section; and a set of tabs in the back with plenty of notes pages – one for each project I am working on and each person who reports to me
2. The big picture. I document every meeting in the month-at-a-glance section.  Yes, this is duplicating my online calendar, but it’s worth it to be able to see my free time across days…not just hour by hour.  This way I have a visual sense of which days and times are going to be my most productive. I can plan to make the best use of those times. (And, if all of my meetings don’t fit  in the little boxes, I know it’s time to question how I am  spending my  time).
3. The detail – My paper diary comes with me to every meeting, both in the office and out.  When I hear something useful –  I write it on today’s page.  When I commit to do something, I write it on the todo list.  When I hear something important to a project or a person, I write it behind that tab. Then, I make a point to share it at the next meeting with him/her/them.  (People really appreciate the flow of information.  Can you see how powerful that would be?)

Then, there is just one more thing to bring it all together…once  you are organised, make yourself a standard meeting agenda to use during each meeting.  It should go something like this.

• Remind everyone why you are meeting and the relevance to their role/project etc
• List the things you hope to talk about/accomplish in the time allotted.  If you have a white board, write them there so people can follow along
• Ask the participants if there is anything else – add the additions to the list
• Agree on time for each topic
• Follow agenda
• Wrap up 5 minutes early
• Remind people of their commitments before the next meeting and write these down so they get reviewed next time (hint:  if all of the tasks are assigned to you, you are doing something wrong).

Ok, I can hear you out there saying ‘that will take too long’.  If that’s you, I challenge you to spend a week observing how much time is wasted while sitting in meetings.  Don’t forget to add the time you spend backtracking, jumping between topics, and re-visiting the same issues the following week because no one remembered their actions.   Maybe those 1.5 hour meetings could actually be shaved to an hour?  Maybe everyone in the room could be using that extra 30 minutes on helping a customer or developing a new idea?

When a company consistently demonstrates good meeting form, they find that meetings actually run shorter.   People become more accountable and also more engaged.  Good meeting form builds trust in the communication process.  People even stop hijacking meetings for their own agendas.  Now, wouldn’t THAT be nice?

For the sake of a productive 2011, I challenge you to ask yourself…‘how’s my meeting form?’

Users often complain that they can’t get their questions answered or issues resolved.   When this happens, they turn to older/more familiar ways  of getting the job done. 

Building knowledge and skills starts with good training, supported by procedure and process documentation.  But, those tools must also be reinforced with support.  Make sure you have allowed enough time in both the schedule and the budget to support and build skills for change after the system is live.

This includes quick turnaround on questions and problems, easy access to subject matter experts who can build technical skills, but also lots of communication:

• Remind people of the vision
• Keep people in a solution frame of mind and keep a look out for blame. 
• Make sure people are spending their energies on empowerment and problem solving.
• Allow communication to include tension…this will improve the quality of the communication and the quality of the result.

The case of the ad hoc database…

When the users at iWork found problems with their new system, they turned back to the project team for assistance.   But, there was not commitment to support them through the change.  One user reported…

“There were still problems with the system and the support team had been through several business analysts.  We would point out the problems, but there were just some things that never got resolved.  It all became quite murky, so my team decided to create our own database instead – one that we could control.”

Lesson 3 in IT Change:  Don’t celebrate too early.