The Importance of Understanding Personalities and Attitudes
By Bret L. Simmons • July 22, 2009
http://www.bretlsimmons.com/2009-07/the-importance-of-understanding-personalities-and-attitudes/
I believe people are an open book. If you watch what they do and listen to what they say over time, I think they give us a pretty good picture of their personality and attitudes. I know that is a sweeping generality, but I think it holds true in most people. And it’s also the best we can do as leaders since we can’t always administer tests to our employees and certainly not to our peers, leaders, suppliers and customers to determine these things. The key is do you know how to read or are you illiterate? If you don’t know the difference between personality and attitude when you see and hear it, then these powerful concepts are useless to you. And it matters that you know, because how you work with knowledge about personality is entirely different than how you work with knowledge about attitudes. Personalities are relatively stable. That’s important because it means that at work, you are not going to change the personality of the people you come in contact with. We are who we are. I think the value of knowing how to “read” personality is primarily to help leaders understand their own basic personality dimensions, and then to learn to emphasize the positive and mitigate the negative aspects of their own style. It also helps you understand others to know something about their personality – knowledge that you can use to guide YOUR behavior. And your own behavior is the thing you have the most control over at work. Attitudes, on the other hand, are subject to change. We want to change attitudes because of the belief that attitudes influence behavior. But you can’t just talk about “bad” and “good” attitudes. That’s meaningless and usually represents no more than a “blame game”. The key to leveraging attitudes is to “read” a specific attitude, for example, satisfaction or commitment. If you can identify the specific attitude working in your constituent, then you can take specific action to change that attitude with the hope of getting a specific behavior as a result. If I listen to my employee and I hear what I think is low job satisfaction that clues me into the actions I can take if I want to improve satisfaction. If I made the mistake of thinking I was hearing something about my employee’s
Three Relationship Killers: Perception, Assumption, and Expectation
By Mark Gordon
Taken From RELATIONSHIP MATTERS: (http://www.markgordon.ca/three-relationship-killers-perception-assumption-and-expectation/)
Perception
We all process our relationships through our own perceptions. However, when we relate to someone only through our own perceptions, it is one-dimensional. It will usually give us a warped view of reality. There is a saying that “perception is reality”. While that is true, it may not be “actuality”. There is a big difference between our perception and the truth. External influence and internal dialogue shape perception. Truth is not influenced—it just is. When we relate only through our own reality, we are not seeing the whole picture, and that becomes a relationship killer. Relationships need a 360-degree view to flourish. People outside the relationship who have nothing to lose or gain by bringing truth to the conversation can often help. This is the power of coaching!
Assumption
We all have assumptions of the people with whom we are in relationship. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard “they always” or “they never”, I would be a millionaire. Many times, we
assume things about others without ever asking them what is in their heart. We are quick to make judgments based on those assumptions. That is a relationship killer. Our assumptions are often based on our own experiences and perceptions. Rightly or wrongly, this actually says more about you than about the one judged. When we assume, we are making a judgment—good or bad. My daughter once observed, “When you are offended you have already judged.” Many of our offences actually come from assumption and not from actual events. Someone may say something to you and because you assume you know what he or she meant, you get offended and sever the relationship. Instead, we should seek understanding, ask questions, or get advice from someone outside the relationship to see the full picture.
Expectations
We all put expectations on people with whom we are in relationship. The problem is we usually don’t communicate those expectations. Based on our perception and assumptions, we will often put an unachievable expectation on someone. Every relationship must have negotiation within it to be healthy; that is the place to teach each other what we expect. However, when those expectations are not based in reality and agreement, they become relationship killers. Because our expectations often come from a place of hurt or broken trust, it becomes impossible for the other person to achieve them. If even we don’t know what we want, how can we expect the other person to know? To bring clarity, I recommend communication and agreement. This gives you both an opportunity to share your hearts and helps achieve the expectation.
Every relationship, regardless of intimacy level, whether at work or home suffers from these three killers! Because we are often not even aware we are doing this, it takes conscience effort to overcome the tendency.
Here are three ways to defeat the three relationship killers:
1. Invite someone you trust and discuss your tendencies in these three areas with that person. Ask him or her to hold you accountable by pointing out when they see you doing it, privately of course. Meet regularly to go over or vent about your relationships.
2. Correct your mistakes by talking to the people you have offended in these ways. Ask for forgiveness and invite them to share their hearts so you can understand them better. This is not easy, but it is very powerful.
3. Dig deeper into your heart to understand why you do this. Perhaps seek counsel to dig up some roots to allow healing to happen in your heart. When you deal with the deeper issues in your heart, these three killers lose their power in your life.
Let me finish with this thought. We don’t have to look too far to see the pain that often comes from broken relationships; we’ve all experienced it. Rather than hiding or running away, work at it. It is far less painful to work on these issues than it is to walk away. We all carry the baggage from the last relationship to the next one, so let’s make sure it is good luggage.
Understanding and Managing Your Emotional Triggers
When you react badly to an event, it is common to blame the event for your reaction e.g. your boss asks you to work overtime and you get angry. Your natural reaction may be to blame your boss for your anger. However, you may notice that other people, when asked to work overtime, do not always react angrily. In fact, some just accept and get on with it while others, if it is not convenient, inform their boss that they will not be able to work overtime. For just about every possible event, you have your own beliefs, feelings or views. In the example above, you may feel that you cannot say ‘No’ to your boss. Alternatively, you may feel that your boss should not be asking you to work overtime as you work long enough hours. Can you see how either of these beliefs would cause you to react angrily when your boss asks you to work overtime?
Now imagine if rather than these beliefs, you believed that you had the right to say ‘No’ to your boss or; you just accepted that from to time you would have to work overtime. Can you see how these beliefs would lead to you feeling differently about the situation? As a result, you would be less likely to get angry. Your beliefs about a situation are just one way that emotional triggers can influence your behaviour. Sometimes, emotional triggers can lead to positive behaviour; however, emotional triggers often lie behind some of our worst behaviour. If you are unaware of your emotional triggers, these negative behaviours can seem automatic and out of your control. Fortunately, as you become aware of your emotional triggers and start to monitor them, you realize that you have the opportunity to intervene in the space between the event and your response, thus creating a more desirable situation.
Taking control of your emotional triggers
You can implement the following steps to help you take control of your emotional triggers by increasing your awareness and developing new ways of responding. These steps are divided in to 2 phases – understanding your emotional triggers and, managing your emotional triggers.
Understanding your emotional triggers
1. Identify your emotional triggers
A trigger is an experience that draws us back into the past and causes old feelings and behaviors to arise. It is important to note that the emotional trigger is not always the specific situation e.g. in the example given earlier the emotional trigger is probably not the fact that you have being asked to work overtime. The following are just some of the emotional triggers which are more likely to be the issue in that particular example:
• Being asked to do something you do not want to do
• Taking orders from authority figures
• Having somebody else control your time
• Lacking the confidence or assertiveness to say ‘No’
• Thinking errors – e.g. you may believe that the boss always expects you to be the one to work overtime and never asks anybody else
As you can see, each of these emotional triggers is different and would have to be dealt with a different approach. That is why it so important to observe your feelings and emotions to find the exact emotional triggers which are leading to your undesired behaviour.
Key point: As with any problem, it is important to treat the cause rather than the symptom. So take your time to identify the actual emotional trigger as this will save you more time and effort in the long run.
2. Spot external stimuli
Some triggers are situational and social. Take note of the situations where you behave in the undesired manner. Include the people who were there, what was happening etc. In time, you will begin to see a pattern which will better enable you to identify the root cause of the issue.
Key point: Social anxiety is an example of where the situation can make a massive difference. Some people with social anxiety are fine in certain social situations e.g. business settings, but struggle with other social situations e.g. communicating with the opposite sex. Different situations may require different remedies.
3. Identify internal causes
When you find yourself behaving in the undesired manner, take note of your thoughts and feelings. Your thoughts and feelings about situations, and people, heavily influence your behaviour. In many cases, these thoughts and feeling are inaccurate, unhelpful or no longer relevant. When you become aware of them, you are in a position to challenge them.
Key point: There is a lot of truth in the old saying that you are who you think you are. Your emotional triggers cause you to think about yourself in a certainway and then you behave accordingly. Thus, what you think of yourself on the inside dictates how you behave and, are perceived, on the outside.
4. Accept that we all have emotional triggers
We are all human and as such, we are all fallible. Having emotional triggers which cause you to behave in a negative way does not make you a bad person. Instead, view them as an opportunity to grow and develop into an even better person.
Managing your emotional triggers
5. Keep a journal
The best and simplest way to monitor your behaviour is to keep a journal. Whenever you behave in the undesired manner, make a record of your thoughts, feelings, emotions and the situation you were in when the behaviour took place. Note what’s going on in your head and in your surroundings at the time. Be as detailed as you can be. Tracking your triggers is the first step in mastering them. It allows you to identify patterns and pinpoint the causes of your behaviour. When you can do this, you are then in a position to make changes.
Key point: Journaling works best when you write from a stream of consciousness. Don’t allow yourself to edit as you go along because something you edit out could be crucial to identifying your emotional triggers. Allow yourself to write uninhibited.
6. Challenge yourself
The key to change is placing yourself in difficult positions and being open to doing something new and more constructive. Many people avoid their problems but avoidance is not an effective problem solving strategy. If you want to change your behaviour, you must challenge yourself. It is not always easy but the rewards are always worth it.
Key point: Don’t allow yourself to use the excuse that change is too difficult. You know that you need to change so; you know that your current situation is already difficult. If you are going to suffer anyway, ensure that there is some benefit to your suffering. Take the challenge.
7. Come up with alternatives
If you want to change your behaviour, it is not enough to simply stop behaving that way. That approach is rarely effective. You need to substitute a new behaviour. Brainstorm new strategies you can use instead of the old behaviour e.g. if you do not want to do the overtime, commit yourself to becoming more assertive so that you can tell your boss that you will not be available. You may need to develop and implement new skills.
Key point: View your alternative strategies as a new adventure and remember that whatever alternative behaviour you choose is going to benefit you in numerous areas of your life.
8. Know your capacity
Proceed at your own pace. To continue with the previous example; if you want to be more assertive, you can start out by being more assertive with your spouse and friends if you need to practice before talking with your boss. This will build your confidence and, as you see that the world does not end when you say ‘No’, you will build a greater resolve to stand your ground.
Key point: View your personal improvement like a car journey. If you try to drive at a speed where you are not in control, you may get there quicker or; you may never get there at all! Trying to go too fast can put you under too much pressure and may activate more emotional triggers.
9. Make time to relax
Taking the time to manage your stress levels will help you to manage your emotions better. Identify the behaviours which help you to de-stress and fit them into your schedule on a daily basis. As you begin to de-stress and unwind, you will find that you become more resilient and more determined.
Key point: Don’t claim that you don’t have the time to relax. While leading the United Kingdom through World War II, Winston Churchill insisted on taking his afternoon nap each day. He knew that relaxation was essential for good judgement in the face of a wide variety of emotional triggers.
10. Live healthy
Another way to make yourself more resilient is to take good care of your body and mind. Eat right, sleep well and exercise regularly. You’ll be better prepared to bounce back from any obstacles that may arise.
11. Develop a strong support network
When you’re dealing with stubborn issues, it’s good to know you have people who care about you and want to help. By telling people whom you can trust about your desire to change, you will have a support network whom you can turn to during your tough times and, with whom you can celebrate your progress. The knowledge that you are not alone upon your journey can be enough to give you the courage to keep going.
Key point: Professional help can be a wonderful part of your support network, if required. There is absolutely no shame in seeking professional help when you are trying to improve your life.
Failure to understand and manage your emotions is one of the leading factors behind Passive Aggressive Behaviour. To help you manage this problem, check out Tackling Passive Aggressive Behaviour.
When you behave in an unacceptable manner, it is easy to blame others or to blame events for your behaviour. When you blame outside factors it may make you feel better in the short-term but in the long-term you are cheating yourself of the opportunity to live a happy, healthy life. If you are behaving in an inappropriate or undesirable way, the problem may well be due to emotional triggers. We all have our own unique emotional triggers. Learning to handle them constructively enables us to fix the issues that get in our way and move ahead in life. So, rather than blame outside factors for your unwanted behaviour; take it on the chin, accept that you need to make some changes and get to work. When you implement the steps outlined above, you will be well on the way to taming your emotional triggers and enjoying a happy and healthier life.
Copyright © 2017 by Coaching Positive Performance
Adapted from Understanding and Managing your Emotional Triggers
Invisibilia: How Learning To Be Vulnerable Can Make Life Safer
BY ANGUS CHEN • June 17, 2016
Men who worked on oil rigs lived by certain rules. They were tough. They worked under any conditions. They didn't ask questions. It was this way as far back as Tommy Chreene, 60, who started working on rigs in the Gulf of Mexico back when he was 15, can remember. Back then, it wasn't unusual to see someone die on an oil rig. Chreene remembers the death of one man who had just finished a shift. He was standing before an enormous pipe that the workers twisted into the ground and held in place with a handle. The man kicked the handle, and the tension on the pipe released. It caught the man's ankle as it whipped around.
"In about three seconds, it spun him around about 80 times," Chreene says. A few feet from the man was a post, and "his head was hitting that post like a rotten tomato." They got 15 minutes to mourn after watching their friend and colleague die, but that was it. "I mean, that hole cost a lot of money," he says. "We got to go to work." Even though the men faced the risk of death every day, Chreene says they never showed any vulnerability. This made the work even more perilous, because the men didn't ask for help, didn't admit if they weren't up to a certain job. But in the 1990s, the oil companies started exploring in much deeper water — more than 3,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf. That meant whole new challenges, logistically and technologically. In 1997, Shell began building a deep-water platform, Ursa — a $1.45 billion behemoth that would stand 48 stories tall and, when completed, would become the world's deepest offshore well. Rick Fox, the asset leader for Ursa, says executing something this vast was a struggle, beyond the scale of anything they'd ever attempted. Something needed to change, he says, if Ursa was going to be built and operated safely.
"We had to look at the organization and see if we could do something better," Fox says. "And who knew what that was going to open?"
Then Fox got a call from a woman named Claire Nuer. She was a leadership consultant, a Holocaust survivor and a devotee of California New Age circles. She had heard about the seemingly insurmountable project, and she said she could help. When Fox started talking about technical problems like drilling schedules, she stopped him. She said he wasn't dealing with his real problem: his fear. The change Fox needed, she said, to make Ursa work, was in how the men dealt with their feelings. That wasn't going to be easy. These men had been raised on the rig code, at work and at home. Fox was raising his son, Roger, with it, although it was getting in the way of their relationship. Roger remembers the first time he heard the term "Phillips head screwdriver," when his dad had asked him to get one. "I didn't think to say, 'Hey, Dad ... I don't know what you're talking about,' " Roger Fox says. "So I went to the shop to look for something, I had no idea what it was, and felt stuck 'cause — I didn't want to be vulnerable."
"We're guarded. We're fearful. We're so angry at each other because we don't see each other, really," Fox's son, Roger, says now. Nuer felt that management problems had a lot more to do with interior struggles than with the kinds of things typically taught in business school. Creating environments where people supported each other, she thought, would free them to make great contributions. For people to make those kinds of fundamental changes, it helped to have the involvement of not just their co-workers but their family members, too. Fox was moved by Nuer, and convinced his son Roger to attend one of her seminars with him in California. There's a recording from back then where Roger tells his father that he's intolerant of weakness. "Yeah, that would be me," Fox replies. "Roger, you know, I take this really seriously. It's ruined a lot of our good times together." Fox says the session worked. It transformed his relationship with his son. He thought that if Nuer could cut through 18 years of family tension, then she just might be what he needed for the Ursa project. Over the next year and a half, while Ursa was under construction, Fox had more than a hundred oil rig workers come to Shell's headquarters in New Orleans. Nuer's company and other groups came and put the men through a series of exercises designed to open them up. George Horn was one of those men. He was not receptive to sharing. "This has nothing to do with an oil field. What is this for?" he says. A lot of the men felt the same way. One exercise asked them to draw their families and personal timelines and stand before the group and talk about it.
"They began to tell the story of their lives, and some of them are not real happy," Horn says. The men told stories of failed relationships and alcoholic parents. They talked about how they were hungry as children. "It felt vulnerable. You put your personal life out there for everybody to hear and everybody to see," Horn says. Once one man did it, others followed suit. They drilled deeper and deeper. Tommy Chreene, who had a tough reputation, broke down and wept before the group as he talked about his son's terminal illness. "I was weeping like a baby," he says. "And nobody ever come to me and said, 'Aw, you big crybaby.' "The sessions were long and intense. The men went through the exercises from 6 in the morning to 11 at night. Mark Gatlin, one of the workers, says one of the Ursa managers completely dissociated during a session.
"I guess through the exhaustion or the constant, you know, diving into emotion kind of thing. He absolutely forgot — he just kinda woke up and said, 'Where am I?' " Gatlin says. The man forgot his own name, who he was — everything. They sent him to a doctor, and he recovered. Some of the men had to stand face to face and ask questions like, "If there was one thing you could change about me, what would it be?" Gatlin says he heard some pretty rough responses: "I had people tell me I don't listen. I had some people tell me, 'You talk too much.' I'd say, 'Tell me more.' "
Gatlin says he started realizing things about himself he had never noticed before. The men were learning about each other and about themselves. Later, they learned about running an oil platform safely. Robin Ely, a Harvard business school professor, and Debra Meyerson, a professor at Stanford, began studying Fox and Nuer's experiment. In an article in the Harvard Business Review, Ely and Meyerson write that the men had changed. By allowing themselves to become vulnerable to one another, they had altered "their sense of who they were and could be as men." Ely says that as the men became more open with their feelings, other communication was starting to flow more freely. "Part of safety in an environment like that is being able to admit mistakes and being open to learning — to say, 'I need help, I can't lift this thing by myself, I'm not sure how to read this meter,' " she says. "That alone is about being vulnerable." That helped contribute to an 84 percent decline in Shell's accident rate companywide, Ely says. "In that same period, the company's level of productivity in terms of numbers of barrels and efficiency and reliability exceeded the industry's previous benchmark." The old way of being an oil rig worker — the the stoniness, the complete self-reliance — Ely thinks it was endangering the workers and holding back efficiency.
And the men themselves changed. "They're opening up and becoming more themselves," says Art Kleiner, an author who has studied corporate cultures for decades. He says the men let go of the self-image of a steely rig hand and embraced a different version of themselves. "[Fox] did it," says Floyd Guidry, one of the Ursa workers. "Built a new kind of person. Maybe not a new physical man, but a new mental man." The men are glad for the change. "I'm so grateful my son did not have to wait till he was 40-something years old to have the experience of being able to question his own habits and his own way of thinking about things," Fox says. "My son is a beautiful human being, and I cannot get enough of being around him." Horn feels the same way: "I'm glad the old way's gone. It was no fun whatsoever." Horn says that after his stepmother's funeral, his son told him, "'It could be a total stranger. I'd still cry for them. I have empathy for those I don't even know.' So where did he learn that? You know, instead of all this tough-guy stuff that you're raised with in the South. Did he learn that from me? I don't know."
This story is based on reporting by Invisibilia co-host Hanna Rosin.
The Advantages of Systems Thinking
When Solving Complex Organizational Problems
BY Dr. Juan F Ramirez Ferrer (Educator, International Business and Leadership Consultant) • Published on September 10, 2015
Systems thinking is a powerful approach to problem solving as it allows a better identification, analysis, and solution of problems at all organizational levels. Using systems thinking in the formulation and implementation of strategies increases the ability for effective leaders to understand the interactions taking place among the different units and individuals within the organization. Through systems thinking, effective leaders learn about specific behaviors, reactions, and responses taking place; thus, increasing their insight into the changes that can move the organization forward (Musa, Edmonson & George, 2005). It is crucial to understand how systems thinking leads to organizational changes and how this approach can be applied to solving complex problems in any organization.
Having a greater understanding of the behavior of the system can direct the focus to the dynamics that are taking place. One may never know of other possibilities, such as the different modes of behavior, what causes certain reactions, what may or may not work well, and what may be possible in the future if there is no change in direction (Meadows, 2008). In order for change to take place, an organization must be viewed as a system. According to Senge (2010), a system is a collection of elements or a group of spared parts combined for a common purpose. An example can be found in the Universe as it is formed, from its simplest to its most complex components, by: particles, atoms, molecules, the solar system, and the galaxy. Another way of understanding systems is by dividing a year into: days, weeks, and months. The same way, watches, cars, computers, houses, and families can be viewed as systems If one of its parts is missing the system suffers the consequences and viewed as systems. If one of its parts is missing, the system suffers the consequences and stops being a whole. This means that every single component or part of a system is important for the system to exist and thrive; forming and functioning as a complex, unified whole through the interconnectedness and interdependency of its elements or components, and the feedback processes that take place among them. It is therefore recommended and encouraged that we learn to identify the systems we each create, both individually and collectively, as we are socially, ecologically, and economically connected.
Accordingly, effective leaders can learn to solve problems successfully if they understand and apply systems thinking; if they learn to see the connection, interaction, and dependency among all components of the organization. Effective leaders need to recognize that every part of the organization or system must be present, arranged in a specific way, and with a distinctive purpose within the system to accomplish and maintain stability as one provides feedback to the other (Aron, 2011).
To be a highly functional system, hierarchy must balance all aspects of the subsystems and total system with enough central control to coordinate the large system’s goal, but enough independence to keep subsystems functioning and self-organizing (Meadows, 2008). Thus, resilience, self-organization, and hierarchy are important for a system to work properly. “Promoting or managing for these properties of a system can improve its ability to function well over the long term— to be sustainable. But watching how systems behave also can be full of surprises” (Meadows, 2008, p. 85).
Systems thinking is therefore a powerful tool when solving organizational hindrances. For this reason, leaders must learn to see their organizations as systems containing subsystems that relate, interconnect, and feed one another. They also need to differentiate between opportunities and traps, understand how they affect the system, and take advantage of both. Leaders must be aware of their organization’s level of resilience and recognize ways in which the system can be restored and preserved. They need to see the feedback loops among the different units. They also need to understand that every single element, staff member, and organizational unit is arranged in a specific way, for a specific purpose within the greater system in order to maintain stability and provide continuous feedback to one another. It is with everyone’s collaboration and commitment that an organization can survive and succeed; this is the beauty and power of systems thinking when solving complex organizational challenges.
References
Aron, D. C. (2011). Systems thinking, complexity theory and management.
Meadows, D. H. (2008). Thinking in systems—A primer. (D. Wright, ed.) White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing.
Musa, P. F., Edmonson, V. C., & George, M. (2005). Analyses of information systems students’ applications of two holistic problem solving methodologies. Journal of Information Systems Education, 16 (4), 391-408.
