What's Your One Thing?

The late, great Jack Palance played grizzled cowboy Curly Washburn in the 1991 comedy ‘City Slickers’. Do you remember this classic Scene?

Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?

Curly: This. [holds up one finger]

Mitch: Your finger?

Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don't mean shit.

Mitch: But what is the "one thing?"

Curly: [smiles] That's what you have to find out.

So what's your one thing?

If would like to learn more about asking great questions, my new book 'Purple Monkeys' A Leader's Practical Guide To Unleashing The Power Of Questions To Deliver Great Results' will be available shortly. For More information go to my website www.pmpgenesis.net or simply click the HOME button on the right.

The Golden Rule v Platinum Rule

Most have heard about something that has become known as the Golden Rule, namely; ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ Many of us aspire to live by it. It assumes that other people would like to be treated the way that you would like to be treated.

However I think the Golden Rule misses a trick. Recently I came across an alternative to the Golden Rule.  It is something that has come to be known as the Platinum Rule. It is as follows: ‘Treat others the way they would want to be treated.’

Think for a moment about the difference this makes.

It creates a subtly but very powerfully different outcome to the Golden Rule. The Platinum Rule does not just include my views, feelings and assumptions, as useful though as this is, but it also includes the feelings of others. The focus of relationships shifts from; ‘This is what I want, so I assume everyone else wants the same thing’, to ‘Let me first understand what they want and then I'll tailor my response to what might work for them.

Now of course you might not know what they want. But if you are prepared to live by this rule then it will motivate you to find out, either by listening carefully to what they are saying, or simply by asking them.

The goal of this Platinum Rule then is productive relationships. You do not have to change your personality. You do not have to roll over and submit to others. You simply have to understand what drives people and recognise your options for dealing with them.

It links to another ‘rule’ I have always found useful. If you want to take someone to where you are, first of all you need to go to where they are.

Personally I have found all of this very useful, not out of any spiritual or religious perspective (I don’t happen to be a believer in those things) but purely because it helps me to achieve more productive relationships

If would like to learn more about asking great questions, my new book 'Purple Monkeys' A Leader's Practical Guide To Unleashing The Power Of Questions To Deliver Great Results' will be available shortly. For More information go to my website www.pmpgenesis.net or simply click the HOME button on the right.

What If I'm Wrong .....

A powerful question is “What if I’m wrong?” If you cannot consider that question, you allow yourself no wriggle room in life. Rigidity (mental rigor mortis) sets in and with this limited flexibility, you lose touch with reality and believe that you have greater control over events than really exists

If you don’t permit yourself to be wrong, you may feel that you are eliminating risk and avoiding mistakes. You aren’t. Rain falls equally on the just and the unjust and bad things happen to good people. What you are eliminating is the aliveness and excitement of new adventures. 

Mistakes are the greatest teachers in life. Churchill said, “ If you want to double your rate of success, double your rate of failure.” If you aren’t making mistakes and you are always right, it simply means that you aren’t doing anything new. If you aren’t doing anything new, how can you grow? If you aren’t growing, how can life be exciting? You are stuck!

If would like to learn more about asking great questions, my new book 'Purple Monkeys' A Leader's Practical Guide To Unleashing The Power Of Questions To Deliver Great Results' will be available shortly. For More information go to my website www.pmpgenesis.net or simply click the HOME button on the right.

The Truth Can Set You Free .....

Many people, even very successful people, harbour deep beliefs that that can work against their apparent drive for success. Very often these are also unconscious.

To see what I mean, try the following experiment. Say out loud the sentence: ‘I can create my life exactly the way I want it, in all ways - work, family, relationships, community.’ Now notice how you react to this - the ‘little voice’ in the back of your head says: ‘Who am I kidding?’

Imagine as you move towards your goal there is a rubber band symbolising creative tension, pulling you in the direction you want. Also imagine a second rubber band anchored to the belief of powerlessness pulling you in the opposite direction. The closer we come to achieving our vision the more the second band pulls us away. This force may show itself in many ways. We might lose energy. We might question whether we really wanted the vision. Finishing the job might become increasingly difficult. Unexpected obstacles develop in our path. People let us down. So how do we deal with these two tensions? There seem to be three coping strategies:

·       We let our Vision erode. We pretend that achieving everything we set out to do wasn’t so important after all, or that circumstances have somehow changed, or that we have done pretty well already.

·       We focus on what we don’t want. This is the strategy of those who worry about failure. They point out the unpleasant facts if goals are not achieved. We focus on what we don’t want rather on what we do. What’s wrong with a little fear of failure? Nothing as long as you don’t get hooked on it, living l as if you can only achieve if in a state of fear and anxiety. Even when you succeed, you worry about losing any gains.

·       We use the strategy of ‘willpower’. We psych ourselves up to overpower all forms of resistance. ‘Successful’ people see this as synonymous with success. The problems with this are many-fold. First we reach our goals but the effort is enormous. Those hooked on willpower may actually go and look for dragons to slay. Second there are often terrible consequences, if not at work often at home. Finally this strategy leaves the basic problem unaltered. Despite considerable ‘success’ your underlying beliefs have not changed, you often have an inability to achieve a sense of peace.

These ‘coping’ strategies are to an extent unavoidable. They are deeply habitual and we cannot change them overnight. Real achievement will not come as long as we hold un-empowering beliefs. How can we begin to change this? We can begin by a disarmingly simple but profound strategy: telling the truth. It often seems an inadequate strategy, as people want a formula or technique. It is in fact far more powerful than any technique.

Commitment to the truth does not mean seeking the ‘Truth’, the absolute final word. It means a relentless willingness to root out the ways we limit ourselves from seeing what is and to continually challenge our theories of why things are. Things we are unaware of hold us prisoner. Once we can see them and name them, they no longer have such a hold on us.

One of the classic examples of this is in Charles Dickens’s ‘A Christmas Carol’. Through the visitations of the three ghosts on Christmas Eve, Scrooge sees more and more of the reality from which he has turned away. He sees the reality of the past, and how the choices he made have whittled away his compassion. He sees the reality of the present, , such as Tiny Tim’s illness. And he sees the reality of his likely future, if he continues in his present ways. But then he wakes up and realises that he is not a captive of these realities. He has a choice and he chooses to change.

Significantly, Scrooge can’t make the choice to change before he becomes aware of his current reality. In effect, Dickens says that life always avails the option of seeing the truth, no matter how blind and prejudiced we may be. If we have the courage to respond to that option, we have the power to change ourselves profoundly. Or to put it another way ‘The truth can set you free!’

References: ‘The Path Of Least Resistance’ by Robert Fritz, The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge                 

If would like to learn more about asking great questions, my new book 'Purple Monkeys' A Leader's Practical Guide To Unleashing The Power Of Questions To Deliver Great Results' will be available shortly. For More information go to my website www.pmpgenesis.net or simply click the HOME button on the right.

Why Does Power Go To People's Heads?

It is strange that people who normally act with empathy and emotional intelligence then often start to misuse the role power they have been given, when promoted to a leadership position. Below are some of the factors that help explain this. In becoming aware of these factors, both as leaders and as those that help develop leaders in our organisations, we can strive to avoid pitfalls and help focus on the behaviours that have been proved time and again to be far more effective in delivering sustained benefits in this complex world.

1.     Those in a power role are often removed from the checks and balances of the feedback loop in which people tell each other about their impact, both positive and negative. When in low power role, it is often perceived to be too risky to offer negative feedback. Thus leaders don’t hear the negatives and lose their ability to check reality and as a result feel immune to the consequences of abuse of power. Without feedback, leaders can be insulated from the feelings associated with their impact, finding acting with empathy more difficult. In addition, leaders may become isolated and lonely leading to poorer judgment. 

2.     Our biologically inherent desire and capacity for empathy can easily be overridden by strong emotions such as anger, fear, and shame, because these strong emotions are responses to feeling threatened. When feeling danger our nervous systems revert from emotional intelligence to the less evolved nervous systems that are associated with fight, flight, or freeze. 

3.     We have all been wounded by misuses of power and there may be an unconscious tendency to treat others as we have been treated. Or we may in fact cause harm by overcompensating to avoid causing the same harm to others.

4.     People can over-identify with their role power. They see their enhanced power as entirely personal rather than simply the authority of the role. This can lead to feelings of grandness and an unrealistic sense of self. When a leader has power associated with their role, they forget or override the kinds of respectful and beneficial behaviours that were effective before. When they see their role power simply as increased personal power, they can also begin misusing power in revenge for past hurt or maybe because now they can get away with it. 

5.     People often link role power with control, and as a result tend to become motivated by the fear of losing it, and sometimes too by the greed for more.

6.     Many new leaders may feel insecure after being promoted to positions of authority, especially when they have had little training or preparation. This insecurity tends to make them feel alone with negative emotions that go along with this. 

7.     Leaders can also become part of their organisational systems and cultures and it becomes difficult to act alone. These systems may well support or even mandate particular behaviours that contribute to right or wrong uses of power.

8.     Most of the programmes and films we watch give rise to conditioned expectations about the use of power. We have become accustomed to thinking of power as manipulation, coercion and deception. We have come to understand that this is what power is and how it is effective. As a result we put up with this model of power and sanction it, even though it often causes harm. 

If would like to learn more about asking great questions, my new book 'Purple Monkeys' A Leader's Practical Guide To Unleashing The Power Of Questions To Deliver Great Results' will be available shortly. For More information go to my website www.pmpgenesis.net or simply click the HOME button on the right.