Photo by Elly Johnson on Unsplash

It wasn’t until last week when I started writing this article that I really understood why I bought extra toilet paper two years ago. More on that in a minute.

Do you think you are an “effective” leader? If you do, then you know how to influence people. After all that’s what Stephen Covey teaches us in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Dale Carnegie, too.

When anyone says “yes” to a purchase or job assignment or volunteer opportunity or vote decision, they likely have been “influenced” in one of seven ways.

One of the most interesting, modern experts on influence is Robert Cialdini. In his updated book Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion, he describes how we humans take seven universal short-cuts when we make decisions. He then converts these short-cuts into influence principles leaders can deploy to get people to say “yes”.

He notes, importantly, that when a leader uses one of these influence methods to manipulate someone, that is unethical. Whether for good or bad, here are the seven ways people are influenced to make decisions.

1 – Reciprocation – People naturally feel an obligation to give when they receive. This is reciprocity. It is very common in most human cultures and helps us live together in communities.

Photo by Quickbooks-Intuit

One example Cialdini shared is the practice by many restaurants to bring special candies or gifts to the table at the same time they bring the check. Research showed this boosted tip amounts significantly. And, when they come back right away with another gift “because they just enjoyed serving you”, the tip amount explodes.

To influence effectively using reciprocity be the first to give, and make it personal and unexpected.

2 – Scarcity – People tend to value things more that were once in high-supply and now are not. We all saw the toilet paper shortage that happened when COVID-19 hit in March 2020. People decided to overstock their homes because they were influenced by a scarcity-shortage fear.

Another example – If you have ever booked airline tickets you have likely seen this message on the website “only 3 seats left at this rate.” We are being told what we have to lose if we do not take action. This is using scarcity influence to move buyers to “yes.”

3 – Authority – People can be influenced by other people they perceive to be credible, knowledgeable experts. For example, this is why medical and fitness professionals mount their diplomas, certificates, and positive news articles on the wall for us to see. Even just a stethoscope around the neck of a medical professional raises the confidence level we have in their ability (yes, this sounds weird, but we are easily influenced!)

For better or worse, as was shown in the Milgram electric shock experiments, people are often influenced by, and respond blindly to, commands from authority even when their instincts suggest the commands should not be followed.

4 – Consistency and commitment – People want to appear consistent in their behavior and value consistency in others. If you want someone to make a big commitment, having them make small and progressively larger commitments influences them because of their desire to be consistent.

We see this technique used in fundraising campaigns, especially for politicians. For example, “Thank you for your $50 donation last time. May we count on you to make a $100 donation today.”

5 – Liking – We are very highly influenced to make a “yes” decision when we like the asker. We mostly like people who are (1) similar to us, (2) pay us compliments, and (3) cooperate with us. We often like people who are physically attractive, smile, and make us laugh. While it is unlikely that just one of these reasons will influence us, in combination they can be very impactful.

6 – Consensus or Social proof – This is when people take action because certain other people they admire or want to be like took the action first. A simple example is the celebrity “infomercial”, like Suzanne Somers famous “Thighmaster” product promotion. A sadder example is when someone installs solar panels on the north side of their home just so their neighbors will see the panels, not because the panels will do anything helpful.

7 – Unity – This influence principle is a new one Cialdini has identified that has emerged over the past 10 years. This is the value one gets from sharing their identity with others. In this highly polarized world we live in, this influence gives us a sense of belonging. An example I experienced recently was when a student from Northeastern University, where I got my MBA, called me on a university fundraiser. The fact she was a student helped the conversation because I could identify with her.

Unfortunately, though, it seems more and more lately that the unity influence has caused more division among all of us rather than unity. This influence has created more “Us against Them” thinking.

When I was in high school I wanted to go into advertising. I had read about David Ogilvy, the Father of Advertising, and written a report on how he focused advertising on what influenced and drove consumers to buy products – human behavior.

In my senior year in college, I advanced to the final interview with Proctor & Gamble (4 interviews) and was not selected. I ended up going into banking, how’s that for a contrast? However, in both my career in banking and now with Work Opportunities Unlimited, I have been drawn to human behavior.

Hard to believe, though, it was only when I focused on Robert Cialdini’s insights on influence that I understood why I bought all that toilet paper in March 2020.

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I suspect you missed this crime that happened a few years ago in a small New Hampshire town. There on a bright and sunny day two young thieves stole a canoe from inside a Walmart. Though hardly as valuable as an Ocean’s Eleven heist, it was just as clever.

The mastermind of this felony was a 15-year-old boy I’ll call Jake. He and his friend wanted to go out on the river fishing, but they had no canoe. He and his friend noticed a brand-new canoe on display in Walmart and it was perfect. The only problem was it cost $550, money they did not have.

Photo by Andrew Montgomery

“No problem,” said Jake to his friend, I have a plan.

Jake bought a Coke and made sure he got a receipt. He and his buddy then went back to the sporting goods department where Jake put the Coke receipt between his teeth and they picked-up the canoe. They then carried the canoe right out the front door of Walmart “showing” the greeter at the front door a receipt between his teeth. The greeter nodded, and off they went.

It wasn’t until later in the day that a store manager noticed the canoe was missing and there was no transaction recorded. A quick discussion with the greeter and a check of camera footage confirmed who the thieves were. When the local police saw the film, they recognized the boys and arrested them and the canoe was recovered, but only after a nice day of fishing.

Hammer or No Hammer. This true story is an example of some of the at-risk youth our company, Work Opportunities Unlimited, has served over the years. Many are very bright and because of life’s circumstances, their talents and ingenuity go undeveloped.

A NH District Courtroom

In his chambers before sentencing, the judge privately smiled and noted Jake’s ingenuity to the prosecutor and our Youth Resource Specialist. The judge knew Jake needed a different form of punishment and should not be sent to a youth lock-up or jail facility, now called a youth development center. There, he knew, Jake would “get educated” by other youth on how to commit other crimes.

Instead of dropping the hammer on Jake, the judge “sentenced” him to the Work Opportunities Unlimited program, which used “work” as a modality to create purpose for youth and connect them to responsible adult role-models, often in the workplace. As part of his “sentence” Jake had to comply with our community-based rules and objectives, or he would be sent to the lock-up facility in Manchester. While I do not know where Jake is today, he did comply and graduated from our program six months later. I like to think he has a job and is a hard-working citizen and is grateful this judge didn’t use his hammer.

How Leaders Can Avoid Using the Hammer. Too often today some leaders choose to use a hammer to deal with people when better alternatives are available, but often out of sight in the moment.

In John Maxwell’s book Winning with People he gives the reader some very useful tips for working with and leading others. While it was given to me by a colleague, Susan, many years ago, I still refer to it often because his tips are ageless.

In one chapter called the Hammer Principle Maxwell recommends using these four-Ts if you feel angry and want to drop the hammer –

1. Total Picture – Get all the information first.
2. Timing – Ask yourself if this is this the right time in the mind/life of the recipient to take the action.
3. Tone – Think about what words and voice are appropriate for the result you seek.
4. Temperature – If you are angry, you likely will not achieve the best results you desire. Cool down and think first.

Maxwell reminds us –

• If the reaction is worse than the action, the problem usually gets worse.
• If the reaction is less than the action, the problem usually decreases.

I think the judge in my story agreed with Maxwell’s final thesis – Never Use a Hammer to Swat a Fly off Someone’s Head.

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This week on April Fool’s Day in 1982, Joe Leddy, a New Hampshire native, left a comfortable, salaried position in government and created Work Opportunities Unlimited. Forty years later his creation has helped over 70,000 people find successful employment and this number grows daily.

In this article I will use Joe’s launch of Work Opportunities Unlimited to explore five common ways entrepreneurs are just “wired” differently.  To give you context I will often share Joe’s direct quotes from a four-part, 2007 podcast series Sounds of Success  hosted by Roger Wood.

1 – They Have a Deep Passion – At the heart of every entrepreneur’s wiring is a passion for something. For Joe Leddy it is a passion for helping others overcome a barrier that holds them back.

“When I graduated from college in 1969 I took a job at a veterans hospital in Northhampton, Massachusetts.  The reason I took that job was because it was a pilot project for the VA (Veterans Administration) to work with veterans coming back from Vietnam who were not only blind, but they also had emotional and psychological problems.

“The goal was to teach the veteran they could still do things; they could still live their life and have a normal life even though they were blind. My goal was to teach them to work with tools and machines. Try to imagine with your eyes closed, working on a table saw, that’s a very scary thing. So, I would teach them how to do that.”

After working at the VA hospital Joe went to work with the New Hampshire Technical College system still working with blind people. From there he went to the state division of vocational rehabilitation running a workshop, again for those with sight and other barriers.

2 – They Experience “Aha” Moment or Inflexion Point – Most entrepreneurs can articulate a moment in time when they knew it was time to launch their business. It was while Joe was running a workshop for the disabled in Manchester, New Hampshire that he had an “Aha” moment and inflexion point – a time when his whole view of the world shifted.

“When I first started at the workshop, which is like a business where individuals assemble things and get paid piece work rates, the place was really in rough shape and behind the times. So, the goal was to modernize it and bring it up to speed so people could earn more money.”

Around this same time Joe was inspired by the film Try Another Way that showed how a skilled trainer, Dr. Marc Gold, trained a man with no measurable IQ and severe disabilities to assemble a complicated bicycle brake.

“I watched Marc Gold do hand-over-hand training with this gentleman. On the first Day, nothing. Then on the second day the fellow tried picking-up the piece and it fell, and Marc said, ‘That’s okay, let’s try another way.’ They did this for four or five days and all of a sudden, he put two pieces together. Eventually the fellow was able to assemble the whole brake. This was very moving to me because I saw then what I needed to do in my professional career for people with severe disabilities.”

From that point “Try Another Way” became Joe’s motto. Meanwhile, back at the workshop, Joe had another “Aha” moment with a fellow named Fred.

“One of our individuals named Fred told me he would like to get a real job. He reminded me he had asked me this before and I would always say, ‘Well gosh, you have a real job here when you’re making $4 more now than before.’ Fred then pointed out the window of the workshop and meant ‘out there.’ So we found him a job out in the community.”

“Our very first placement for someone with a severe disability was Jessima. She was a deaf-blind woman and was one of our best workers in the workshop. We got her a job at Carol Cable Company, which was right down on Canal Street in Manchester. We went in and talked with the employer and this employer was great. She became a terrific worker there, her production rate was up, and she later retired from the Carol Cable Company.”

With the successes of Fred and Jessima, Joe and his team proceeded to find everyone a job out in the community and the workshop would close. And this was Joe’s inflexion point and he knew then what his mission was – it was time to launch his own company.

3 – They are Optimistic – See No Barriers. One attribute common in successful entrepreneurs is they are optimistic and don’t think of barriers as problems, they see mostly opportunities.

“I talked to my boss, who was the Director of Voc Rehab, and I said I’d like to leave and start a business to help people find work. Remember nobody else had really done this before because it was all sheltered workshops run by big nonprofits.  I talked with my Director and the Commissioner and they grilled me about the details. This really made me think a lot about leaving my safe, state job – it really was a pretty good job. But I decided to leave and the very next week on April 1^st, I had my first VR referral, and I was in business.”

Keep this in mind as you read – In April of 1982 mortgage rates were near 15%, unemployment was the highest since the Great Depression at about 11%, Joe had a family with two young teenagers, and yet he only saw opportunities to find jobs for people with disabilities and start a business. Few people are wired this way.

4- They Have a Resilient Work Ethic. Every successful entrepreneur I have studied has a resilient, determined work ethic. We already know Joe was inspired by Marc Gold’s Try Another Way spirit, which embodies this. But read this as Joe describes his work hours right after first launching the business.

“When I first started, I worked out of my car and I covered all my clients personally. I had a person working 1^st shift, another working 2nd shift, and another working 3rd shift. I would work all day and go back about 8:00 o’clock and stay there until the end of that second shift at midnight. Then I would go home, sleep a few hours and get up and go there at 3:00 o’clock in the morning. I was getting tired and so that was when I decided I was going to bring on a second person.”

5 – They Build a Culture. Successful entrepreneurs, who have built companies that last 40 years, have built unique workplace cultures, and not one culture is the same as another. Joe Leddy built what I like to refer to as a Yes We Can culture that I described in an article called Five Attitudes of a Yes We Can Culture, which continues to be one of my most widely viewed articles to date.

When you build a workplace culture, you need to have a solid foundation and for Joe it is understanding the “value of work” itself. Here Joe talks about this importance.

“Work is highly valued and important here in America. Important not only monetarily, but psychologically. It defines who you are as a person.  When the public sees people with disabilities working, they begin to value them more highly. When you go to the grocery store and you see our individuals working right beside non-disabled people, you know coworkers and customers view them differently.”

This foundation led to the creation of the Company’s Mission Statement – We create new opportunities for success in the workplace, every day!

One of the attitudes of the “Yes We Can” culture Joe created is resiliency. Joe believes all team members on the Work Opportunities Unlimited team share this one attitude. Here is what he says.

Senator Judd Gregg and Joe – May 2000

“To move forward in the employment service business, you must know how to face adversity. You only survive if you’re a strong person. To me if you’ve been with Work Opportunities for a long period of time you’re already up on a different plane, the top. I know you’ve definitely worked hard, you’ve heard “No” a lot, and you certainly heard more “No’s” than “Yes’s”, so please develop your own lifelines for when you run out of gas. I know I did, and those people can help you fill-up your tank.”

I trust now you can see how entrepreneurs like Joe Leddy are just “wired” differently. But the wire that really makes Joe unique among entrepreneurs is his humility. I can still remember the humility with which he accepted his Small Businessman of the Year Award in 2000.

And I think humility and unselfishness have become a common thread running through the cultural fabric of Work Opportunities Unlimited – a thread that will last another 40 years!

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Photo by Thomas Park

Most of us are looking for anything to feel good about these days. One thing I do to feel good is to look for and appreciate high quality. Here are three “quality” observations this week involving planes, parachutes, and Jerry Seinfeld that all make me smile.

A Tip of My Hat to American Airlines. On Saturday my wife, Patti, returned home from New Orleans where she had gone with a few high school friends. Even though the weather on this end was a little rough, all went well on her non-stop return flight to Boston on JetBlue.

One high school friend from Maine, however, had to fly home on American Airlines with a stop in Washington, DC. After arriving in DC she learned the flight from DC to Maine got cancelled Saturday, likely due to weather, and she would need to spend more than a day waiting for the next flight near midnight on Sunday.

This friend has several limitations and requires wheelchair and other assistance. Not only did American Airlines book her into a nice hotel, they provided transportation supports, and meals and got her safely onto the Sunday night flight.

There are so many negative stories about airlines, I wanted to share how American Airlines in this case provided high-quality service.

Jim in Wingsuit

Parachutes. Speaking of quality, I have become more intrigued with the quality of parachutes since our nephew, Jim, became a serious skydiver. To date he has over 1,000 jumps to his credit and in recent years has become a huge fan of diving with wingsuits.

Jim also skydives in groups and has been involved in several, near record, synchronized jumps with dozens of jumpers linked together like you might see on popular Team Building posters.

It takes great “quality control” to successfully jump, especially in groups. Not only do you need high quality chutes and wingsuits, you need organizers and jumpers who pay close attention to the myriad of details it takes to make these jumps safe for everyone. And Jim is the kind of bright and detailed-oriented person you would want on your team.

Jim in Group Jump

I know my sister and her husband are nervous when he jumps, which brings me to my third story.

Jerry Seinfeld on Skydiving. Last year I received a wonderful gift that gives me a laugh every day – Jerry Seinfeld’s book Is This Anything? This book contains the text of his actual comedy routines since the 1970s. As I read these routines, which were carefully crafted with high quality to fit his gifted timing and delivery, I can see Jerry in my mind’s eye delivering each as a stand-up comedian, and I laugh hard.

Here is the text from two of his routines on skydiving – picture Jerry standing-up now delivering these lines.

Skydive at 19  (From Is This Anything)

I went skydiving once.

I was 19.

Horrible thing to do to your parents.

They’ve just spent 19 years trying to protect me from harm, injury, disease.

I turn around,

“Mom, dad, it’s a pretty nice day…

What do you say we risk the whole ball of wax right now?

My idea is this,

I go up in a plane thousands of feet in the air.

Hurl myself out.

Attempt to operate the parachute correctly.

And avoid plummeting to an almost certain death.

… can you lend me the 75 bucks?”

Skydiving Helmet (From Is This Anything)

Skydiving is definitely the scariest thing I’ve done.

My question,

What exactly is the point of the helmet?

Can you “kind of” make it?

I think if you jump out of a plane,

And that chute doesn’t open,

the helmet is now wearing you for protection.

Later on, the helmet’s talking with the other helmets going,

“It’s a good thing he was there or I would have hit the ground directly.

You never jump out of a plane unless you have got a human being strapped underneath you.

That’s basic safety.”

Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

If you need another smile today, even if you have seen this before, watch this Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee Seinfeld segment with President Obama at the White House.

Remember to watch for the high quality around you and your own performance will step-up even if you have to jump-out.

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When I stopped and thought about why they do this, of course, it makes sense. If I’m on a cable channel, it likely holds me on that channel and I might see more commercials. If I’m on Netflix, it creates more binge watching and hooks me to Netflix.

What I didn’t know until now, was how understanding “friction” had something to do with the invention of this technique.

Fuel and Friction – The Human Element. In business we spend a great deal of time trying to get our customers to buy more of our products and services. We study this and try new things to incent customers to buy using promotions, lower prices, improved features, and more persistent sales calls. We spend far too little time, however, studying and reducing the obstacles that get in the way of the customer’s purchase decision.

This week I discovered Loran Nordgren’s book The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance that Awaits New Ideas while listening to a Hidden Brain podcast. In his interview with host Shankar Vedantam, Nordgren clearly described the premise for the book, “How do you get people to say yes to a new idea or innovation.” He and co-author David Schonthal say there are always two things you need to understand when humans make a decision – “the fuel and the friction.”

Fuel. The fuel starts with the product or service or idea or innovation itself. Additional fuel, which is what most of us focus on, might include advertising campaigns, sales promotions, signage, lower prices, improved features, more assertive salespeople. The purpose of fuel is to push people into a decision. And, as Nordgren describes, the “folly of fuel” is that when we push too hard, the friction can increase.

Photo by Inside Weather

Friction. Friction is a force that inhibits a decision or a change and is a drag on innovation. Friction is often the obstacle getting in the way of a decision. In the book and in the podcast Nordgren says that friction most often falls into one of four types and he gave great examples for each.

1 – Effort – is “the energy (real and perceived) needed” to take action. One story was the custom furniture store in Chicago that allowed customers to customize their own sofas and chairs on-line with huge activity but had very low actual purchases. Their research discovered that buyers were mostly young people living in apartments and they could not figure-out how to get rid of their old, likely beat-up, sofas. That was going to take too much effort and was a type of friction. They then began to include taking away the customer’s old sofa upon delivery and sales exploded.

2 – Inertia – is “the powerful desire to stick with what we know, despite the limitations.” In organizations we see this often when someone brings forth a new idea and it gets shot down. As one example, Nordgren described how the University of Chicago, in the face of many years of declining entrance applications, changed its very difficult essay application to an application similar to other prestigious institutions. The result was an instant increase in applications.

3 – Emotion – is “the unintended negative emotions created by the very change we seek.” To describe this friction Nordgren talked about the U.S. Army. The Army wondered why when they had recruits fired-up and ready to enlist that many high school students never followed-up. They discovered these recruits were afraid to tell their parents. The Army then developed scripts the recruits could use and, in some cases, would go with the recruit when they told their parents. The result was a greater increase in successful recruitment.

Photo by Andreas Fickl

4 – Reactance – is “the impulse to resist being changed.” I had never heard this term before and found this definition – “Reactance is an unpleasant motivational arousal that emerges when people experience a threat to or loss of their free behaviors. It serves as a motivator to restore one’s freedom.”

This friction comes from our natural instinct to maintain autonomy and control over our life. Nordgren told a simple story about the tale of two signs. In one city men were writing graffiti on public bathroom walls. So, in one place they put-up a sign that read something like “Please don’t write on bathroom wall” and in the other place they put-up a sign that read “Under no circumstances should you write on bathroom wall.” The results were that Graffiti declined on the walls of the former and increased on the latter.

Nordgren noted that in the graffiti example we can see that that sometimes when we don’t think through the fuel correctly (the sign in this case), the fuel can turn into more friction.

Nordgren and Vedantam also noted that this reactance friction is exactly what happened when the government began mandating seat-belts decades ago and, very likely, contributes to the anti-mask and anti-vax pushback today.

So, how does my cable television or Netflix example fit-in here? Nordgren says that understanding friction, even small amounts of friction, and finding ways to reduce it can make huge differences downstream. Netflix learned that when they automatically started going to the next show and not requiring viewers to use their remote control, viewing time increased. And more viewing time led to more binge-watching, which led to more viewers.

Like me being slow to notice things sometimes, many forms of friction are hiding from our view every day. So, the next time I’m involved in change decisions I will focus equally on the fuel and the friction.

If you want to learn more about working with this friction, pick-up Nordgren’s book The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance that Awaits New Ideas and listen to the Hidden Brain podcast.

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“And in the naked light I saw

Ten thousand people, maybe more

People talking without speaking

People hearing without listening”

In that summer 52 years ago, I thought those lyrics were so profound, and they sit with me still today.

Photo by Vitolda Klein

“The Vaccine Whisperers.” This week I read a story, a narrative like I described in my last article, about “vaccine whisperers” that will also sit with me for many years. In his book Think Again, Adam Grant tells us the story of Canadian Marie-Helene, who was a mother of four children and one was a two-pound newborn named Tobie. She insisted none of her children be vaccinated for measles and that included Tobie, who was growing healthy in the hospital.

Because there was a huge measles outbreak in Quebec, the nurses feared for Tobie if he was not vaccinated before discharge. So they called-in neonatologist Arnaud Gagneur, whose nickname was the “vaccine whisperer”, to chat with Marie-Helene.

Motivational Interviewing. Grant reminds us that if we try to persuade someone to change a strong belief, it rarely works and often has the opposite effect – it strengthens their belief and makes them less curious about alternate positions. These folks often report that the persuaders reek of condescension, which only deepens their belief. Marie-Helene was one of these people saying of one persuader that it felt like “she was accusing me of wanting my kids to get sick. As if I was a bad mother.”

Chart – Resilience Rehabilitation

When Arnaud Gagneur met with Marie-Helene he used motivational interviewing (“MI”) to talk about vaccinations. I admit that while I have heard of MI, it wasn’t until I read Grant’s description of how to use it and his own example, that it made sense to me. He writes, “The goal (of MI) isn’t to tell people what to do; it’s to help them break out of overconfidence cycles and see new possibilities.”

The process for the interviewer to use MI essentially involves four steps:

1. Ask open-ended questions.
2. Engage in reflective listening.
3. Affirm the person’s desire and ability to change.
4. Summarize.

The summarizing step happens either at the end of a conversation or at a critical break or transition point. Summarizing includes a) “Explaining your understanding of the other person’s reason for change; b) Checking on whether you’ve missed or misrepresented anything; and c) Inquiring about their plans and possible next steps.”  This last step is critical and one Grant admits forgetting in his failed MI example.

Four More Takeaways. First, effective motivational interviewing takes skill, but we all can learn the basics. It never hurts to try, but you might want to start with low-risk situation. I recommend you buy Grant’s book and read the Chapter Vaccine Whisperers and Mild-Mannered Interrogators.

Second, one of the keys to successful MI is learning to ask truly curious questions. Grant credits journalist Kate Murphy who wrote that curious questions don’t contain hidden agenda terms aimed at “saving, advising, convincing, or correcting” the person.

Photo by Artem Maltsev

Third, the hardest thing to do during MI is avoiding our natural “righting reflex” – which is our desire to fix the problems and offer answers. (Miller and Rollnick) Grant writes, “Although people want a doctor to fix their broken bones, when it comes to problems in their heads, they often want sympathy rather than solutions.”

Fourth, if you like trivial tidbits, as I do, Grant taught me the word abracadabra comes from a Hebrew term that means “I create as I speak.” Since I often talk to myself as I try to understand things, I will start saying “abracadabra” when I wrap-up!

What Happened with Marie-Helene? The vaccine whisperer, Arnaud Gagneur, helped Marie-Helene decide to have little Tobie vaccinated before he left the hospital. But that wasn’t the end of the story – she chose to have all her other children vaccinated and successfully convinced former anti-vax family members and friends to do likewise.

I think if leaders practice the basics found in motivational interviewing, we will build more successful teams. And we can only wonder what could happen if Paul Simon changed the last words in Sounds of Silence to “People listening without hearing.”

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I was at the gym yesterday on the Stairmaster when I saw a woman I thought I recognized named Linda. Within a nanosecond, though, I realized it could not be her because she passed away this past Fall. But then my brain shifted instantly into remembering Linda’s wonderful life story – but it was only my memory, my narrative of her life, not the total narrative.

I’ll bet this happens to you, too – you see someone you think you recognize and it isn’t them, but then “pop”, you think about the person and a narrative about them forms in your mind.

Our individual brains house thousands of these types of personal narratives or stories. When combined with everyone else’s narratives, we can begin to feel like we are but one small wave in the ocean of humanity.

Jodi Foster

What’s the Little Mermaid Got to Do with It? Until recently I never thought much about why and how our brains create narratives. But then I listened to Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast about the Little Mermaid movie, and my curiosity took me down a fascinating rabbit hole I just had to explore.

While the main three-part series was full of interesting lessons about the Disney story model and a clever re-write/reenactment of the ending that included Jodi Foster, the part that intrigued me most was in the special follow-up podcast called Revisionist History Revisited – Extras from the Little Mermaid Series.

In this podcast Gladwell talks more deeply with Angus Fletcher about how both sides of our brain function in tandem to interpret stories that form our personal narrative and understanding of the world.

First, I can see why Gladwell likes talking with Fletcher – he is absolutely brilliant and can explain complicated topics clearly and enthusiastically. Fletcher is a neuro-scientist, who went on to get his PhD in literature. His niche is understanding how our brains process stories and how literature evolves over time as the writers-authors mirror the world itself.

Fletcher’s current book Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature, takes the reader down into a really deep, but fascinating, rabbit hole that is cognitive narratology.

A Few of My Lessons Learned so Far. I have not read Fletcher’s book yet, only small snippets including Shakespeare’s invention of the soliloquy. But in my journey to learn more about narratives or stories, here are a few quick lessons from the podcasts and other reading of Fletcher’s work.

• Only we humans create narratives. A narrative is a spoken or written description of connected events, a story. We humans are the only species on Earth that create narratives in our brains to make sense of the world. Our brains are not rational, so we create narratives that link causes together, establish sequences, and then form stories to help us understand effects. We also insert personal memories into our narratives, which we think are factual, but probably not.
• We each have our own narratives that we can share with others. Because each of us is unique, we develop and hold onto our own narrative about an event or situation. When we share our narratives with others, we likely influence their narrative of the same event in one way or another.
• We are drawn to narratives with people. As humans we like to have people in our narratives or stories. This is why we are attracted to stories with interesting characters as well as biographies. Also, have you noticed how we humanize or “anthropomorphize” the characters in animated films? We do this because it helps our brains, both children and adults, perceive and interact with the world.
• Right Brain. The right-side of our brain is the cautious, more pessimistic side and tries to keep us safe. When scary or bad things happen to us, it controls our fight or flight response. When really bad things happen, like the outbreak of the pandemic, we might catastrophize or imagine the worst possible outcome – I did this when COVID-19 broke-out.
• Left Brain. The left-side of our brain is more optimistic and kicks-in to relax and slow down our body’s response to the bad event. This is why we naturally turn to the news, books, or movies because these stories or narratives may help us short-circuit our panic. (Of course, this depends on what story or commentator we choose to watch or read, but we’ll save that narrative for another day.)
  

  Angus Fletcher

• Hope effect. Fletcher notes that positively crafted stories or narratives can have a “hope effect” in our left-brain, which is what we yearn for when we catastrophize – we “hope” for positive things to happen and we search for narratives that deliver this.
• Old fairytales and parables. Fletcher notes that many old classic parables and fairytales were written with “twists” to show that bad things can happen to good people, and, quite often, the wicked and evil characters win. The goals for those authors, which were supported by Rulers at the time, was often to scare the readers into good behavior. For example, in the original Hans Christian Andersen’s version of the Little Mermaid in 1836, she commits suicide in the end. (Can you even imagine today showing your 6 year-old this movie? I cannot.)
• Modern versions of fairytales and parables. Over time classic fairytales and parables were updated, many by Disney, to include different twists – twists where good people can have bad things happen, but with “poetic justice,” and the good can win in the end. In the Little Mermaid movie, for example, the wicked witch dies in the end and the Little Mermaid gets the legs she wanted and marries the charming prince, of course.
• All narratives or stories are flawed and need evolution. Each of the narratives or stories we have created in our brains is flawed. Most are reconstructions of old memories or learned information and those facts likely eroded or faded. Recognizing this before we share narratives or stories is important – we should constantly look to learn and evolve our narratives.

Leadership Lessons. Be careful sharing your narratives that need more evolution and may lack facts. If you are a credible leader, your narratives can spread like wildfire among your faithful team or followers and the results can be significant. Remember the importance of the “hope effect” when evolving your narrative about a difficult situation – this is the narrative your team or followers yearn for in that moment, but should not include unverified “facts.”

And, finally, include people or characters with humanlike characteristics in your narratives or stories because it will connect better with your team.

Let me close with this thoughtful story from the book Tuesdays with Morrie, shared by the late Morrie Schwartz –

“This story is about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He’s enjoying the wind and the fresh air-until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore. “My God, this is terrible,” the wave says. “Look what’s going to happen to me!”

Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave, looking grim, and it says to him, “Why do you look so sad?”

The first wave says, “You don’t understand! We’re all going to crash! All of us waves are going to be nothing! Isn’t it terrible?”

The second wave says, “No, you don’t understand. You’re not a wave, you’re part of the ocean.”

The post Watch The Stories in Your Head appeared first on Steve On Leadership.

     

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New Year’s Day is what Katy Milkman calls a “landmark date”. Landmark dates help we humans move away from the past and experience the Fresh Start Effect.

Yesterday on January 17^th when I went to Planet Fitness I saw fewer people – just like last year. Why is it that many of us start out the year with a list of good resolutions and within just days we seem to forget them?

I’m not pointing fingers at anyone because all I have to do is look in the mirror and I see one of these well-intentioned people looking back at me. So, these last two weeks I have explored making resolutions, trying to find a simple formula that will work for me.

Since my main resolution involves you, I thought I would share my four-step formula that I am trying this year based on my reading.

Step One – Make One Significant Resolution. The primary reason most of us fail to achieve our resolutions is that we are busy people. When we make many resolutions the chances are very good we won’t achieve any because our “whirlwind” just blows them away.

If we choose one resolution that is meaningful to ourselves, we can focus on it. A spin-off benefit of focusing on one resolution is that we learn how to make better and more effective resolutions.

My significant resolution this year is to write more frequent articles and share them with you.

Step Two – Identify Barriers to Success. It is likely you and I have tried and failed to achieve our resolution before so we should make a list of what things got in the way. These are barriers that blocked our prior attempts. Also, we should look at the current environment and try to spot current barriers.

When I made my barrier list I noticed something interesting, my barriers read like excuses. Maybe yours will, too. If you are going to tackle something big, I would suggest Katy Milkman’s book How to Change, which is on many lists of top books in 2021.

Step Three – Create a Short Specific Plan with Actionable Objectives. This plan should not be complicated, but should include short-term actionable and measurable objectives. Remember to include actions that help remove your barriers. In my business world we might refer to these as “interventions”.

My plan includes such items as having specific publication dates, developing three article ideas queued up in advance, and surveying colleagues.

Step Four – Reward Yourself. Most resolution plans are really about creating new habits. I find it helpful to remember the habit loop described by Charles Duhigg in his book The Power of Habit. The loop starts with a trigger, which creates an automatic behavior, and concludes with a reward.

Rewards work differently for each of us. One important reward to include in our resolution plan is for when we effectively overcome a barrier. One of my barriers related to writing articles was “thinking” I did not have time to write – clearly a mental barrier. My plan includes scheduling writing time and my reward for publishing on time will be some kind of exercise I have not done before – like a different bicycle route that is new to me. (Cycling is my favorite exercise, and my colleague, Mary, reminds me is my most dangerous!)

I hope these four steps are helpful to you and, if weight-loss is your resolution, you might want to steer clear of Kelly Clarkson.

The post What Resolution? I Forgot Already appeared first on Steve On Leadership.

     

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He yelled, “Nice boat, where did you come from?”

“Far away,” I said, smiling. His mom smiled, too, as she walked-up and spoke to him. When I turned the boat I could see his face – it was full of wonder about knowing what he didn’t know.

The Unknowable. I was stopped dead in my mind’s tracks last week when a writer wrote something like, “Many of the world’s biggest disagreements, movements, and bureaucracies began because of different opinions about the unknowable.  And the one unknowable we all share that causes the most trouble is what happens when we die.”

Lempster, NH Cemetery (Steve Wood Photo)

An unknowable is a question or problem that is void of enough facts to create truth. A correct answer cannot be determined. Over time different explanations for the unknowable are offered and humans choose to believe in the explanation that resonates best with them.

What many of us forget is that the explanation we believe for an unknowable question is really an untruth. For as long as it is unknowable, the only truth is that the question is unknowable.

Knowing What You Don’t Know. Over the past few centuries, thanks largely to scientific research and development, many of what were once unknowable questions, are now knowable. What I am learning right now for myself is how to know what I don’t know that is knowable, and to ignore what I think I know that is currently unknowable.

Please rest for a minute and let your mind wrestle with that last sentence.

In my last article I mentioned Adam Grant’s mind-opening book Think Again, and its subtitle is The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. In his first chapter Grant mentions the brilliant Mike Lazaridis, the inventor of the Blackberry phone that held 50 percent of the smartphone market in 2009.

By 2014, though, the Blackberry had only one percent of the market and was effectively out of business. Grant writes that Lazaridis not only didn’t know important information that was knowable about the changing smartphone market, he didn’t know he didn’t know.

Preacher, Prosecutor, Politician. In describing how a brilliant person like Lazaridis, let alone regular folks like us, did not know what he didn’t know, Grant introduces us to an interesting mindset developed by his colleague, Phil Tetlock. Grant writes, “As we think and talk, we often slip into the mindsets of three different professions: preachers, prosecutors, and politicians. In each of these modes, we take on a particular identity and use a distinct set of tools.

We go into preacher mode when our sacred beliefs are in jeopardy: we deliver sermons to protect and promote our ideals.

We enter prosecutor mode when we recognize flaws and other peoples reasoning: we marshal arguments to prove them wrong and win our case.

We shift into politician mode when we’re seeking to win over an audience: we campaign and lobby for the approval of our constituents.

The risk is that we become so wrapped up in preaching that we’re right, prosecuting others who are wrong, and politicking for support that we don’t bother to rethink our own views.”

Scientists Pierre and Marie “Madam” Curie

The Scientist. Grant wraps-up the chapter by describing the scientist mindset, which is one that constantly develops theories, creates and tests hypotheses, measures results, and then rethinks and tweaks and tests the theory until a truth emerges.

While most of us are not scientists, we can think like one when we are presented with an important issue or question. By using a scientist mindset new information that we never knew existed will emerge and we will begin to learn what we don’t know.

Here are a few gems I plucked from Grant’s first chapter:

• No matter how much brain power you have, if you lack the motivation to change your mind, you’ll miss many occasions to think again.
• After all, the purpose of learning isn’t to affirm our beliefs; it’s to evolve our beliefs.
• If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom.
• The curse of knowledge is that it closes our minds to what we don’t know.
• Good judgment depends on having the skill – and the will – to open our minds.

I will share more from Grant’s book as I discover more ways to I learn how to know what I don’t know that is knowable.

The post Do You Know What You Don’t Know appeared first on Steve On Leadership.

     

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We have all heard the expression “put your John Hancock on it.” Most of us know this comes from the very distinctive, first signature we see on the actual Declaration of Independence.

This week we will be celebrating Independence Day, that fourth day of July in 1776 when John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress, signed the Declaration with a very large, distinctive signature. The actual original document only had his signature and that of Charles Thomson. Myth has it that he signed it in a large way because he didn’t want the king “to have to put on his spectacles to see it.”

John Hancock was not afraid to take responsibility and he was risking his life if the King prevailed.

Putting Your Name on It. Many businesses have team members take responsibility for their work and  sign or mark their work. For example, sometimes when I buy clothes I take a slip of paper out of a pocket and it tells me either who made or inspected the piece.

I remember an episode of Monk when Monk, a detective character with OCD (Obsessive-compulsive disorder), would only buy a shirt made by a person with a certain number on the slip he retrieved from the pocket. He searched stores for his favorite brand and his favorite “number” and visualized in his mind what the person looked like. Yes, of course, a mystery developed that forced him to find the person.

Most of us do not make products, but we do produce tangible items. Voice mail, e-mail, Facebook posts, Tweets, and text messaging, to name a few. Every time we produce these items we are making our mark, we are putting our “John Hancock” on them. We should ask ourselves, “if a wider audience heard or saw this work, would I be proud of it and stand behind my work?”

Fewer People Taking Responsibility – Fear. Over the past nine years since I first wrote about this topic, it seems to me there has been a huge decline in people, especially leaders, willing to take personal responsibility…and it is getting worse. I think there are many causes beginning with the gross irresponsibility of political and public figures, who call themselves “leaders”.

I think it is also the fear of being wrong that makes people shirk responsibility. In Adam Grant’s mind-opening book Think Again, he shared a moment he had with Daniel Kahneman. Kahneman, who is in his 80s and a Nobel Prize winning psychologist, had smiled during Grant’s presentation on “givers, takers, and matchers.” Grant’s research showed that givers had the highest rates of failure, but also the highest rates of success.

When Grant asked Kahneman why he smiled he said, “That was wonderful, I was wrong. I enjoy being wrong because it means I am now less wrong than before.”

Credible Leaders Take Personal Responsibility. If you want to be a credible leader you can start by not being afraid of being wrong. When you reduce this fear, you can begin to take more responsibility and others will learn from you that it is okay to be wrong. They will begin to take more responsibility, too, which makes delegation more effective.

Keep in mind that most of the work of leaders is intangible and made visible by their behavior as they do these activities:

1. Connecting all your team’s activity to satisfying the needs of your customers;
2. Selecting the right people for your team;
3. Clarifying personal objectives and showing people how their objectives connect to your organization’s mission;
4. Inspiring team members to excel and do their best; and
5. Using your core values to guide your behavior.

The intangible work of leaders by its very nature is easy to “get wrong” because it depends on other people. You put your “John Hancock” on this work when you allow yourself to be wrong sometimes and take responsibility for moving forward in a new and often better direction.

As you celebrate the 4^th of July this week remember how proud John Hancock was to put his signature on the Declaration of Independence and how ready he was to stand behind it. Then make your own declaration to pridefully put your “John Hancock” on all your work and follow it up by taking responsibility.

The post Do You Take Responsibility? appeared first on Steve On Leadership.

     

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