May 08

The Power of Purpose

I was coaching a senior executive last week and we were exploring the idea of Purpose together. It was easy for my client to define what the organisation existed for technically, but it was not until we explored the areas beyond profit, the moral and social dimensions of why he chose to engage in his role, that he became energised and animated.

Noble Purpose

This is far from a unique experience. As soon as a client explores what we call their ‘Noble Purpose’ and begins to articulate what the world could look like (Vision) if they were really living it, then limitless levels of energy becomes available to them – the energies of Passion and Inspiration.

For Leaders to positively impact their colleagues, it is crucial that this sense of Noble Purpose is shared. Everyday, spontaneous ‘Leadership Conversations’ become an opportunity to bring meaning to the lives of workers in any organisation.  I’m not just talking here about objectives and measures, though of course they are an important element in their own right, but engaging with the deeper aspirations that we hold as human beings –  to belong to something important and to make a difference.

David Kantor in his book ‘Reading the Room’ explains the importance of a shared or narrative purpose in the following way:

‘The job of a leader is to articulate and defend the story that keeps the organisation together and promotes its general success. Another job is to makes sure that the story stays close to the truth.’

 According to Kantor a narrative purpose has 4 key components:

  • A shareable big picture
  • A purpose that’s clear and that reaches beyond financial success.
  • A moral and Social Dimension… that requires moral leadership
  • Operating Values – guiding Principles and Practises

Kantor’s ideas also resonated with some other material I was reviewing about the importance of storytelling as a means of bringing organisational purpose to life.

What’s key for me is that a Noble Purpose forms a basis for what we really pay attention to in our daily decisions and actions. For example, if our purpose it to improve the health and wellbeing of our customers, then we immediately have a benchmark, a standard, by which we can measure our own behaviour and the behaviour of the colleagues around us.

For Example:

Improve the health & wellbeing of our customers
Industry Matching the standard Falling Short
Food Only buy raw materials with a validated and trusted supply chain Buy the cheapest raw materials possible in open tender.
Pharma Immediate announcement and recall of a faulty  product Continue to ship, whilst working on the problem
Automobile Implement new features that extend safety parameters Trim the design specs to meet minimum standards

Standards

Standards are different from objectives. A standard is lived today, in the moment. Even the best objectives have the potential to be deferred as an aspiration for a future date. A standard has the power to drive our immediate actions, right now and can be readily seen by our colleagues, customers and other stakeholders.

Leadership Conversations

As leaders me meet and communicate every day. If the stories we tell in these conversations are real examples of the Noble Purpose being lived, if we publicly recognise the behaviours and achievements of those who maintain the standard and immediately bring to account those that contravene them, then Noble Purpose will become a reality. If Noble Purpose is only a clever strap line developed in the Marketing department for corporate communications, it will remain at best an hallucination.

We have some fantastic clients who are bringing their Noble Purpose to life through their work. We’d love to hear how you are managing to do the same.

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Mar 14

What makes this ad work?

An advert caught my eye while travelling on the tube last week. Usually ads on the underground just wash over me, but something about this one (for a well known painkiller) had substance and I wondered why. The imagery was bright, earth coloured and invoked the spirit of a journey. It said:

This is for those that keep their head up

The ones that shine brightly even underground

For the ones that won’t be held back by barriers

For those that find their way in the crowds

This is for those that know their destination, and won’t stop until its found.’

For lives bigger than pain

Now in terms of the principles of influence this ad is very clever because it is easy, as the reader, to locate oneself in the text. The opening line ‘for those that keep their head up’ matches the reader’s experience immediately, because the ad’s physical location is high up on the tube-train above the windows. The reader is definitely ‘underground’ and will have passed through a ticket ‘barrier’. In London its also likely that the reader will also have been surrounded by ‘crowds’; and know their ‘destination’. So in terms of matching the target audience, this ad shouts unconsciously ‘This is for me!’

It is also well crafted in terms of influencing language patterns:

PHRASE  INFLUENCING PATTERN
Keep their heads up Active/Physical and Towards something
Shine brightly, even underground Visual and Away From adversity
Won’t be held back by barriers Active and Away From adversity
Find their way through the crowds Active/Physical, Towards something and implying a Pathway
Know their destination Towards something and again a Pathway
Won’t stop until its found Active/Physical and Away From adversity
For lives bigger than pain Visual comparison and Physical sensation

I wondered if I could re-write the ad to keep the same tube journey relevance but change the language patterns to match a different set of influencing preferences. This is how the same ad could read if my target audience preferred ‘Choices’ to a ‘Pathway’ approach and responded more ‘Visually’ than ‘Physically’. I also re-worked the tag line to represent ‘Away From’ adversity:

This is for those that look up for inspiration

The ones that shine brightly even underground

For the ones that see their destination clearly

And can notice alternatives in a crowd

This is for those that imagine where they’re headed and will keep searching until it’s found

For lives unlimited by pain

 

Your personal language preferences will influence which message you prefer!

 

 

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Feb 21

Influence and Obama’s 2013 State of the Union Address

As a coach, I frequently work with clients that want to be more influential in their conversations and presentations. With that in mind I thought I’d take a quick look at last weeks’ 2013 State of the Union Address

I intended to explore what was going on beneath the content and review all of the influencing language patterns at play in the speech. There was certainly evidence of options language: opportunity, alternative and chance appeared several times. There was also strong use of goal and problem orientated language. These phrases were often juxtaposed to create contrast: ‘hit the rest of our deficit reductions targets’. Repetitive statements were also employed: ‘unfinished task’, ‘bringing jobs back’, for those that are influenced by messages delivered at a higher frequency.

However, what really stood out was that the speech had such a significant action/feeling (kinaesthetic) bias, that it was worth highlighting just this area by itself. The kinaesthetic examples listed below are just a few of the many metaphoric phrases that dominate the speech:

  • ‘cleared away the rubble of crisis’
  • ‘incomes have barely budged’
  • ‘reignite the true engine of … growth’
  • ‘brinkmanship that stresses consumers & scares off investors’
  • ‘drifting from one manufactured crisis to the next’
  • ‘painful spike in gas prices’
  • ‘shoulder the whole burden’
  • ‘start the race of life already behind
  • ‘saddle them with unsustainable debt’
  • ‘putting more boots on the southern border’
  • ‘run-down neighbourhoods…hardest-hit towns’
  • ‘torn apart by gun violence’

In contrast there is very little in terms of visually expressive language. In other words shape, colour, sparkle and intensity were mostly missing. The following phrases appeared, but they were few and far between and lacked the attention-grabbing imagery one would hope to see in such a high-profile speech:

  • ‘shadow them for the rest of their lives’, ‘shadow of its former self’
  • ‘focus on graduating… science…two missions’
  • ‘transparent to the American people’
  • ‘Iran must recognise’
  • ‘brightest minds’
  • ‘not seen since’
  • ‘America must remain a beacon to all who seek freedom’
  • ‘process will be messy’
  • ‘hold different views’
  • ‘plunged… into darkness’

Of course a speech is primarily an auditory experience. Even so, the amount of auditory language used is also limited and is applied primarily to ‘Asking’ questions of the US population and Congress. Few of these auditory phrases have the metaphoric resonance of a rousing speech:

  • ‘Kennedy “declared”‘
  • ‘Can say with (renewed) confidence’
  • ‘Announcing the launch’
  • ‘Being told no’
  • ‘… all agree…”
  • ‘let’s declare”
  • ‘negotiating an agreement’
  • ‘dictate the course of change’
  • ‘these are the messages I will deliver’
  • ‘the people demand it’
  • ‘what I’ve said’
  • ‘debated how to’
  • ‘without fanfare’
  • ‘told to wait’
  • ‘erupted in cheers’
  • ‘authors of the next great chapter’

So not surprisingly, reactions to the speech have been mixed. Supporters of Obama and his policies are likely to react favourably to the speech, even if they have to overcome their own habitual ways of gathering information to understand the content.

However, independent and partisan audiences (already likely to be at odds with the content) are unlikely to make the effort necessary to overcome their habitual tendencies and so will not generate fresh meaning or understanding from the new information heard.

The following excerpt is from a generally critical review in The Guardian and highlights this response in action. The italics are mine:

‘… as a speech, it was lousy. State of the union addresses are supposed to be soaring, rousing, big-picture affairs: thematic in tone and schematic in vision, they give presidents a captive audience to talk not just policy but trajectory – whether it’s healing the world, conquering space or reshaping the nation. But if this was grand in its range, it was small in its vision.’ Gary Younge, The Guardian

Incidentally, for those of you who can extract more meaning through a visual representation of an idea or topic, look at this link to a Washington Post article for an approach that you might enjoy.

The quick summary then is that speeches that use all of the senses are more likely to resonate with the audience in a way that inspires and motivates them to see new opportunities.

Mark West

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Jan 28

Effective Communication

There are more methods of communication available now than ever before, yet poor communication is still a significant issue in many organisations.

When we analyse what has to be there for a conversation between individuals to be effective this is really no surprise.  At the heart of every human being’s attempt to share their understanding, there is a multi-layered model in operation, most of which is processing completely below the level of awareness.

The picture below outlines the factors involved:

comms_stack

The key to a successful conversation is to build rapport by connecting with another person on as many levels as possible. Effective communicators modify their behaviour and their message to build bridges that tie the stacks together. Conversely unskilled communicators drive the stacks apart.

The more flexible we can be in operating at these different layers, the more likely it is that a dialogue can occur and a real understanding be reached.

Let us know if you’d like to know more about how you can use this model to make your conversations more effective.  We look forward to hearing from you!

Mark West

 

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Feb 15

Leadership beyond fear

An interview with Margaret Wheatley was published in strategy+business recently. Known for her ground-breaking work ‘Leadership and the New Science’,  Meg expands on her views of what enables Leadership in today’s difficult times. The full interview is here

The interview raises a few points that we at RA would like to explore further.

In times of crisis and austerity, it seems common for organisations to go down the command and control route of management. It feels safe and it feels secure for managers to get a tight rein on their area of responsibility and there is no doubt some truth in this. Unfortunately it also has a profound negative effect. Time and again we experience the fact that ‘squeezing people only makes them smaller’.

What’s needed instead is a releasing of all of the energy, creativity and commitment that every leader has available in each of their employees. This is a courageous response, but it ensures the best chance of success in these demanding and uncertain times.

‘Why is that?’ you may ask. It’s because when we are free of fear we are able to think better.  When we are happier we see more, not just in our minds eye, but in our environment too (1). When we function at our best we can see new connections, find new solutions and create new ways of working that are invisible to the stressed and fearful.

‘What does that mean in my everyday behaviour?’ Leadership is about conversations. As Leaders we succeed or fail one conversation at a time (2). RA have developed a series of tools that help Leaders to have conversations that re-connect the individual with a sense of value, purpose and personal contribution. They are conversations of possibility.

The Wheatley interview draws our attention to a book that explores how some people survive when lost in the wilderness (3). To paraphrase the interview, in these situations: denial and working harder, are followed by a frantic search for the familiar, then a mental and physical deterioration. Sound familiar? Survivors then do something else though; they acknowledge that they are lost and that they need new information – a new way of doing things.

We can get trapped in our habits. Some of our habits were useful once upon a time, but now they are woefully out of date and just hold us back. When we allow our habits to determine our behaviour in this way, we lose the opportunity to think afresh. In times of crisis, unpredictable market conditions and harsh competition, we cannot afford to revert to old ways of thinking. To survive we must look for new information and new ways of doing things. We need to create a new map of the world.

Leaders can be trained to recognise and intervene in out-of-date thinking and stuck behaviour. Developing the listening skills necessary to notice the deep structure of language allows them to interact in a way that enriches the ‘map’ that their team have been operating from. This enables new ideas and innovative solutions to flourish.

Remember though that through thousands of years of evolution we humans have been programmed to scan our environment for anything that is different and to treat anything different as dangerous.  To overcome this primeval response, Leaders must have the influence and presence to calm potential fears. When these concerns are addressed skilfully, the team is then free to access their problem-solving, logical and creative abilities. For Leaders this means communicating from a centred, authentic base, using powerful [and congruent] language and gestures.

The interview with Margaret Wheatley concludes with an observation that a personal discipline is an essential aspect of Leadership in today’s demanding environment. As teachers of the martial arts for many years, we know how important it is to be able to engage in a practise of learning that connects us with ourselves and others. Through our development programmes, we at RA bring this understanding to life in our work with leaders from numerous nations, disciplines and industries.

Mark West
RA: The Leadership Consultants
www.raconsultancy.com

References

  1. The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor, 2010
  2. Fierce Conversations, Susan Scott, 2002
  3. Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies and Why, W.W. Norton, 2003
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Oct 12

Coaching for Personal Best

What’s your personal best? Is it getting better? How do you know? What do you measure?

There seems to be a bit of a mismatch between our attitudes to achieving excellence in sport and excellence in business. We’d think it strange if a top athlete or sports team didn’t have a coach. In fact the higher the level of performance expected, the more attention an athlete gets. Yet in business, it often seems that the higher up in an organisation one gets, the less attention we receive.

A recent article in New Yorker magazine outlines a successful surgeon’s exploration of coaching, its benefits and the potential barriers to using coaching to improve performance. Click the link to read the whole article. 

So why coaching?

Coaching improves performance by helping an individual or team to establish performance criteria, understand their current activity and create an action plan to close any gaps.

Coaches provide an external set of eyes and ears – asking the questions we do not ask ourselves, noticing the things we don’t pay any attention to. Their own perspective and experience means that they give a fresh view of how we act and the results that arise as a consequence.

As in the world of sport, a professional coach doesn’t necessarily have to share the same functional specialism as their client (we coach people in a wide variety of roles and industries|). They should, however, have exquisite skills in the field of coaching. This means that they must:

  • Be credible
  • Connect with their client
  • Be 100% present
  • Listen more than talk
  • Ask questions
  • Maintain a wide field of awareness

What gets in the way?

Often in one way or another our ego gets in the way.  ‘Human beings resist exposure and critique; our brains are well defended.’[1] This manifests when we don’t like the idea of being observed, we worry that having a coach makes us look incompetent or we fear that the coach will go direct to the boss with any limitations. In many cases it’s easier to decide that the coach is no good or lacks specialist knowledge, than it is to accept that we may be doing something that is less than perfect.

So what is your personal best?

How are you measuring your own performance? How do you know if you’re better at your job today than you were 6 months ago? Are you incorporating the latest understanding and knowledge into your everyday working practises? If the answer is to any of these questions is ‘No’, perhaps a coach is just what you need right now.

[1] Atul Gawande, Personal Best, The New Yorker, October 3rd 2011.

 

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Oct 05

Leading Culture

Strategy and Business recently published an article about culture change. Unusually, the case study wasn’t about a company, but TV Chef Jamie Oliver’s project to improve eating habits in one of the unhealthiest cities in the US. The link to the full article is here.

There are several things highlighted in the article that we recognise at RA as being relevant and important:

Know the Culture

Frequently leaders pay attention to their products and processes, but culture is left to fend for itself. Leader’s need to recognise how the existing culture shapes the actions of the workforce on a daily basis:

  • What get’s attention?
  • What gets recognised & rewarded?
  • What’s acceptable? What’s not?

When leaders can answer these questions they’ll be able to articulate the real culture of their organisation, and not the one that’s written about on the Company’s website.

Demonstrate Success.

To demonstrate success it’s important that change leaders have a clear idea of what that success looks like. This means building a clear picture of the behaviours that match (and mismatch) the ways of being and working that they want to embed.

Once leaders know exactly what they’re looking for, they can identify the people in the organisation who are already being role models for the change. Each small individual achievement in line with the new culture is added to the library of stories that the leader can access and share in their everyday conversations.

These adhoc ‘Leadership Conversations’ are an opportunity to share the benefits of the anticipated changes, give recognition for desired behaviours and to warn of the dangers of staying stuck in the past.

Identify Key Influencers

Influence can be a subtle thing and in organisations we are influenced by more than just the boss.

  • Cultural Carriers are visible figures in the organisation that have extensive networks. They speak publicly and frequently, inside and outside the organisation and their behaviour is an informal representation of the culture.
  • Pride Builders are respected members of a peer group. Their attitude towards any changes influences the behaviour of their immediate colleagues. For example if a respected member of a team dismisses the leaders change message with a ‘Here we go again…’ comment, it’s likely that most of their peer-group will adopt the same response.  Most teams have a pride builder, they set the local tone for what’s acceptable and unacceptable, so its essential that leaders engage with these people with a compelling narrative of their Big Idea – what needs to different, why it’s important and what will happen if nothing changes.
  • Authority Figures have official responsibility in the organisation. Most of the workforce look up to these people with the unwritten understanding that behaving like them is what it takes to get on and be successful in the business. If an authority figure acts in a way that undermines the desired culture, the generally received message to their people is that the change doesn’t really matter. In this case it’s essential that the Leader engages in one of those skilful, but ‘Tough Conversations’ that re-aligns expectations and spells out the negative consequences of detrimental behaviour.

Aligning Formal and Informal Change

Change pushes up against the habitual human response of developing a sense of security through consistency. It’s the minority of people who shout ‘Yes! More Change!’ when faced with altering their way of working. Yet it’s exactly this type of response that will sustain the culture development into the future.

One of the ways to help people to change their behaviour is to ensure that policies, systems and processes support the change. If we want a culture of responsibility, but the systems demand 12 levels of authorisation before a commitment of resources, then the behaviour won’t stick. If we say we want to act ethically, but use questionable suppliers, then the change is undermined. If on the other hand we want to make team-working the default way of working, changing the recognition systems to reward team-behaviour and not individual performance will support the change.

Summary

  • Leading Culture is a vital aspect of Leadership.
  • Setting clear expectations of what behaviours demonstrate the desired culture is essential in making that culture possible.
  • Identifying and recognising existing role models for the new culture builds a foundation for the success and makes the change tangible.
  • Key influencers exist in any organisation. Culture development projects must engage with Cultural Carriers, Pride Builders and Authority Figures.
  • Formal systems and policies must support the desired behaviour changes.

 

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Aug 17

Wonder of Leadership II

Nearly 2000 people have already read this next instalment in the Wonder of Leadership series, by Colin Reeve.

We have become lazy. We are living in the most unpredictable time in our history and we need all the resources available to us to stay with it and be successful. One of our greatest resources is our ability to think and to imagine what is possible – without this there is no new action and we spiral down into our old, comfortable and often out-dated ways of thinking and being.

We have become lazy thinkers. We read newspapers with big headlines and small stories and we listen to speeches and wait for the presenter to tell us what was said. We decide who and what to believe and we stick with them because it’s easier than thinking. We throw food away not because it’s inedible but because it says so on the packet. We respond to the same old clichés because it’s easier than thinking.  We need to wake up and wake up quickly.

Getting below the habit of headlines

We are human – we develop habits: physical habits, emotional habits and thinking habits. Unfortunately we go on to embody those habits and we begin to think we are them, “That’s just me, that’s how I am. We’ve always done it like that.” We embody them to such a deep level, we don’t see the possibility of being different and our minds become increasingly static and closed to new ideas at a time when new ideas and innovation are critical for our success.

Headline: “I can’t do that” is a thinking habit which offers no possibility of success.

Getting the story beneath the headline: “I can’t do that . . . but I have learned things before, and this would be challenging, but good for me and the business, so I could give it a try.”

This is a story uncovered through skilled conversation that leads to possibility and potential being explored and released.

We become lazy – we respond to our habits automatically, without thinking whether or not they are appropriate. Leaders awaken people to their habits; help them explore the possibility beneath the headlines they have written for themselves or their organisation. Encouraging them to let go of the hand-rail of habits they cling to, frees them to think for themselves and by doing so, act differently.

By accepting our habits as “us”, we settle for being less than we could be. Our organisations settle for less than they could be by accepting the cultural habits which were formed and embodied during different times. Great organisations and industries have been lost to out-dated thinking habits; thinking in headlines and talking in headlines has undermined their performance and slowed their progress.

Muscles remember and muscles forget

The wonder of leadership comes to those who are prepared to have conversations with the people around them, not to “do stuff” to them. Not meetings with a hidden outcome (sometimes disguised as coaching, appraising or counselling), but genuine, authentic conversations between adults whose personal wealth and wellbeing depend on their own success and the success of their organisation.

These leadership conversations can help us to explore below the negative headline to uncover a positive story and to develop new, more appropriate habits or to rediscover and awaken others we have forgotten about. Doing so allows us to realise more of our potential and become more effective and elegant in the way we live our lives.

Leadership is found in the doing not the done

How many organisations have a vision, mission and set of values written and on display in reception, on place mats, on screen savers and, having done that, sit back smugly and wait for the magic to happen. These are indeed powerful things, but their power comes from the doing of them not the done.

To evoke the wonder of leadership we need to focus on how we do things not just on realising outcomes. By paying attention to the habitual how we do things around here, we can uncover and transform that which is no longer helpful.

My experience in helping develop cultures which have become stuck to move toward a more elegant, more appropriate culture is that, within the space of around 12 leadership conversations, the culture moves and gets its own momentum. These are skilled conversations held with mutual respect and without an immediate outcome. They are a means to re-route tired thinking and create new adventures, new pathways of possibility. Leaders help people change and people go onto change organisations.

Challenge, discomfort, nervousness – these are not signs of stress. They are your body’s way of telling you that it’s time to change. Struggling to hold onto old ideas when their time has passed is where the stress comes from.

The wonder of leadership conversations are designed to transform old thinking into possibility thinking. To bring awareness to how we have learnt to think and how that thinking has become a habit. It is not “you” – you are the person thinking those thoughts and you can decide to develop an up to date, more appropriate box of habits. This is the way and the wonder of Leadership

Try this simple exercise

Stand up from your seat, sit down and stand up again. Now from the sitting position, hold your back and your head straight. This time stand up while holding that posture and without bending your trunk forward. Describe what has to happen which is different to the first time you stood up.

Most people will describe how they had to pay conscious attention, had to concentrate and had to change their start position in some way in order to stand up while holding the posture.

You have been practising standing up for all but the first year of your life and you probably have made no conscious effort to look at it and ask whether there is a different way to do it . . . it’s a physical habit. And it will take conscious attention to change it. However, if you maintain your conscious attention for a short period of time, you will develop a new more appropriate habit.

This updating, like a technical upgrade, is available to us with our thinking and feeling habits as well as our physical ones. What old habits does your upgrade need to address?



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Jul 24

The Leadership Imperative

The results of a recent global leadership forecast conducted by DDI that surveyed  more than 2,600 organisations, make a compelling and unavoidable case for developing a culture of skilled leaders at every level in an organisation.

The Facts:

 

  • Organisations with the highest quality leaders were 13 times more likely to outperform their competition in key bottom line metrics such as financial performance, quality of products and services, employee engagement and customer satisfaction
  • Only 6% of organisations that rated their leadership as poor were in organisations that outperformed their competition versus 78% of organisations rating their leadership quality as excellent who outperformed their competition on bottom line metrics
  • Retention of staff is directly impacted by leadership quality – those organisations with higher quality leadership were 3 times more likely to retain more employees than their competition and had more than 5 times the number of highly engaged leaders.
  • Only 38% of leaders rated their leadership quality as good or excellent
  • Over half of organisations state their top priority in the next year is to improve leadership skills

 

 

According to the study, high quality leadership has 3 key drivers:

  • Leadership development: Including formal programmes (the top method used and deemed the most effective by 73% of leaders. 55% of organisations plan to increase their budgets in the this area in 2012
  • Other talent management systems that build high quality leadership pipelines: the true value here is the quality of the discussion leaders have with their managers - Leadership Conversations
  • Management Culture: those organisations with effective management cultures were two and a half times more likely to have passionate leaders and 3 times more likely to outperform their competition

The question then has to be asked…. what will you and your organisation be investing in this coming year in order to develop and release the leadership talent in your business?

If you’d like to read more of the findings, Click here

If you’d like to talk to us about how RA can help, click here or call us on 01344 873472


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Jul 13

Tools For Personal and Organisational Change

‘That’s the way we used to do things around here’ is a great article that explores the link between how the brain works and how we can change, personally and as an organisation.

To summarise some of the key points from the article:

  • Habits are hard to change because of the way the brain manages them, but
  • Neural connections are highly plastic, so even the most entrenched thought patterns can be changed
  • Attention can re-wire people’s thinking habits
  • In focussing attention, positive reinforcement has power
  • Cultivating cognitive veto-power can override our impulses
  • Our capability to pay attention needs to be built over time

Here’s a quick description of the parts of the brain that we act on without conscious attention. The basal ganglia, sometimes called the ‘habit-centre’, manages our semi-automatic activities. The amygdala is a source of strong emotions and the hypothalamus manages our instinctive drives.

The basal ganglia functions extremely quickly and when we process information in this way it even feels rewarding. To emphasise this point, it makes us feel good to revert to entrenched habits and ways of thinking. Also every time we think in this way we embed the neural pathways further and connect them to other areas of the brain that together generate our ‘action repertoire’. This means that our limiting thought becomes stronger.

Permanent change comes from embedding new choices in the basal ganglia. This learning often feels uncomfortable because we are overriding our old ways of thinking. It also requires more effort and energy as it accesses our higher brain functions where we can be logical, visualise and plan.

Also being forced to do something new can activate our amygdala and we experience the fight or flight response. In this case our brain pharmacy (clearly described by James Borg in his book Mind Power) takes over and releases adrenaline, cortisol and other ‘stress chemicals’. All of this means that we’re left temporarily limited in our ability to respond or act. It’s no wonder that people resist change!

 

So what does that mean for personal & organisational change?

We use a variety of techniques to help people make the changes they want for themselves and for their organisation. Here are a few examples of tools that work with the brain to allow us all to embed new behaviours.

 

Mindfulness

As teachers of the martial arts we repeatedly recognise that people have the capacity to change their actions when they bring their attention to bear in the present moment. The practise of the martial arts, as well as other traditions like buddhism and yoga, have recognised this fact for thousands of years. Neuroscience is now able to validate this understanding. For example, research from the University of Toronto shows that this kind of mindfull attention specifically activates executive planning areas of the brain.

How do we cultivate an ability to watch our thinking? One technique is disassociation. Usually we are so caught up in our everyday actions and emotions that we operate on autopilot. If we mentally step back from our situation, for example as if we were watching ourselves in a movie, we can separate ourselves from the emotions of the present and build a more objective sense of what actions are appropriate. This skill is readily accessible for all of us, all it takes is an awareness of what is possible and some practise.

Mindfulness can also help us to spot the symptoms of an amygdala hijack before we are fully lost to the over-riding emotions of the situation. Disassociation then makes it possible to withdraw from the potentially damaging impulses and reactions that arise in the heat of the moment. By pulling away from the situation mentally and watching the situation clearly, we can cool down and take a more objective approach.

 

Well-Formed Outcomes

The brain doesn’t do negatives very easily. Take a moment, breath and then:

Do not think about a tree

In most cases, the tree pops in there, unless we consciously think of something else.

If we build a clear idea of what it is that we really want, [a well-formed outcome] we can help our brain to find ways of making it happen.  Focussing on this desired state strengthens neural pathways associated with the new behaviour. For example, the BBC filmed an experiment where a dancer’s brain activity was monitored while she imagined a dance. Her brain activity had more than 90% in common with when she was actually dancing.

Building clear expectations of what we want has been proven to reinforce productive neural patterns.  In an experiment at the University of Florida, an expectation of pain relief had the same effect as a 6mg dose of morphine, an incredible experiment in demonstrating how thought can effect our reactions, even in painful situations.

The clearer the outcome, the easier it is to measure progress. In this way we can hold ourselves accountable for the changes we wish for and help other’s on the same path.

 

Re-Framing

When it comes to helping others engage in new behaviours, ‘catching them doing things right’ is more powerful than telling them what they’re doing wrong. When the people around us find it difficult to do something new, it’s likely that they’re caught up in ‘not doing the old thing’, which only cements the old thing into their thinking further.

Re-framing helps individuals to make the journey from where they were, to where they want to be. As a technique it also helps us to engage our imagination and learn from our mistakes.

 

Embodiment

It’s not enough that we talk about our goals; we have to act on them too, being role models for what we want to create. This means spotting opportunities to behave in a way that is aligned. The Logical Levels model helps our clients to build a rich representation of the new ways of thinking and acting that they wish to embody. An exploration of their thoughts, feelings and physiology creates new mental pathways which, when used together with well-formed outcomes, helps them to engage in new behaviours.

 

Practise Makes Permanent

When we pay repeated attention to our actions and related goals, our thoughts stabilise and move to the basal ganglia to become a new semi-automatic response. Neuroscience calls this focus ‘attention density’ and it enables new behaviours to become part of our default action repertoire. In the same way in the martial arts, ‘Practise’ enables us to have unconscious access to the state, awareness and techniques that enable us to live in a peaceful way.

 

Summary

Innovative imaging methodologies and technologies are resulting in new discoveries in the field of neuroscience at an ever-increasing pace. The speed of technological and commercial development is driving many of us to adapt and re-organise our behaviour to succeed in the face of these unprecedented events.

It’s refreshing to know that those same drivers for change, are now increasing our understanding of how we work at a deeper level. By working with the natural neurological physiology of change, we can accelerate our own understanding, learning and development.

Mark West, RA Leadership Consultant

E: info@.raconsultancy.com     T: +44(0)1344 872026

 


 

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