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Archive for the ‘Videos’ Category

The Nature of Breakthroughs – What does May 6, 1954; Oxford and Stories have in common?

29 Aug

 

 

May 6, 1954, on a windy spring day, Roger Bannister ran a mile in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds in Oxford England. He crossed the finish line with a time of 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds, and broke through the “four minute mile” barrier.  He demonstrated that the story about the impossibility of the four minute mile was only a myth, not a reality.

In less than 60 days, John Landy beat Roger Bannister’s record with a finishing time of 3 minutes and 57.9 seconds.  Within the year several other runners managed to run less than a four minute mile.  The current record holder is Hicham El Guerrouj from Morocco, with a time of 3:43.13.

For years, the four minute mile eluded runners, and was thought to be impossible.  I am sure people documented the reasons for why this was impossible.  So, why try?  What lessons can we learn about the nature of breakthroughs?  Remember, in my last blog I said that a breakthrough is an extraordinary and unprecedented result.  Most people believe that breakthroughs are accidental.  This is conventional wisdom.  We believe breakthroughs can be created intentionally, if you know how to do it.  What stops you from creating a breakthrough?  YOU!

How many of us are constrained by our own stories of impossibility. 

Some say seeing is believing – I say, you have to believe to see

As you can see by looking at the video below, we proved this last Wednesday.  Approximately, thirty people came together to experience the power of belief for the purposes of creating a breakthrough.  This was to demonstrate that, properly lead by Eric Best Ph. D., they could bend metal spoons and forks with just the power of their mind.  You might say the demonstration was a trivial example.  However, it was not for the people who overcame their traditional belief system.  For them, it was a potentially life changing experience.  84% of the people were able to bend their spoon or fork. 

 Our belief system defines for us what is possible and impossible. Beliefs or what we call mindset (our rules of engagement) shape our actions because we see them as true.  Or worst, we don’t even see our beliefs, but nonetheless, they shape our behavior like an automatic pilot.  Our mindset shapes what we attempt or do not attempt to do in our everyday personal and professional life.

Success and failure begin and end in what we believe is possible.  Roger Bannister must have held the belief to make it happen.  Once he demonstrated the possibility, it was “easy” for others to make the commitment and to improve on his results.

The first step that a leader must take to create a breakthrough is to change his/her mindset and the mindset of his/her team.  Some time ago Eric changed his mindset.  Last Wednesday he changed the mindset of almost everyone in the room.

Just like the four minute mile many of the barriers that hold us back are self imposed.  They exist only in our mind.  

What are your four minute mile type stories, that you hold as true, but do not really know are true, that are holding you back in your personal and professional life?  If you at the event Wednesday could you have done this.

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Posted in Creating Breakthroughs, Videos

 

Do you have or see meetings after the real meeting?

13 Jul

We live in language similar to how fish live in water. It is transparent to us. If we want to improve our conversations in a fashion as we discuss here on the Executive Perspective blog, you also need to understand the type of conversations that you are currently having within your team and organization.

  • Have you ever been part of an organization laced with politics?
  • Do you recognize the person who is not there to help the team agenda but is trying to push their own agenda?
  • Do you ever feel that you are not receiving the information you need to be successful at your position?
  • Do you participate in meetings where you or someone else is not saying everything, but are calling a smaller meeting after the meeting?



One common denominator in all these organizations is what we call ‘Inauthentic Conversations.’ In this conversation, you as the speaker are communicating certain things, but more importantly you are withholding other information that you should be sharing with the listener. The listener now cannot interact to that what you are not saying, has to make their own interpretation, and typically will withhold information themselves in their response.

These withheld conversations unexamined will not allow you to break through the cycle of politics, dysfunctionality or those meetings after the meeting. These withheld conversation represent an automatic and immediate break in trust. This will always impact employee performance, and hence organizational performance as illustrated in this recent study from Watson Wyatt.

What do you think the impact is of stopping the withheld conversations at your organizations?

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Posted in Change, Conversational Dynamics, HR, Innovation, Teamwork, Uncategorized, Videos

 

Using Authentic Speaking & Listening to Resolve Issues

11 Jul

Combining the Authentic Speaking Map with the Authentic Listening Map provides a powerful issue resolution process.

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Posted in Authentic Listening, Authentic Speaking, Conversational Dynamics, Videos

 

Authentic Listening – Reflection & Questions

04 Jul

The final stages of the authentic listening process are checking out your understanding, and asking any questions that might be unanswered as a result of the speaking and listening process. The reason you want to check out your understanding is because you can never say what someone said, you can only say what you heard. A critical aspect of the authentic speaking and listening process is to respect the notion that in order to assure understanding you have to go through this reflection or feedback process.

As a listener, once you are clear that you’ve heard and understand what the speaker said you can either respond by starting your own speaking process or even ask questions. We leave the questions to the end because if the process is done correctly they should be very little if any questions. But if, for some reason, the listener did not get key information from the speaker this is the time to resolve any missing information. Our example, if as a listener you did not hear how the speaker felt about the situation or what the speaker wanted to do about the situation, this is the time to ask those questions.

The next set of posts will put the speaking and listening map together and show how they can be used as very effective conflict resolution tools. If people engage in open and authentic conversations, there should be very little energy around legitimate differences of opinion. Resolving differences should have the same emotional energy is pouring a cup of coffee. Unfortunately, when people do not speak openly and authentically, then conflict usually contains an emotional charge. This limits the ability to resolve conflict quickly, creatively and in such a way that maintains or enhances a relationship.

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Posted in Authentic Listening, Conversational Dynamics, Videos

 

Are you part of a High Performing Team?

29 Jun

We often hear that high-performing teams happen by accident. “If you hire the right people, you feel it when you are on a high-performing team.” Does that sound familiar?

That is not our reality. We strongly believe that you can create high-performing teams by design but in order to do that there are three things that you need to know:

1. Where are you going?

    Does your team have a strong purpose and a clear mission of what it needs to achieve? The difference between a team and a group is that a team has a shared goal, and the team members are aligned and committed to get to that goal. However, they will not talk about the goal, or any issues they see in getting to that goal, unless there is sufficient amount of relationship and trust.

    2. How are you going to get there?

      How is your team working together, and are there clear accountabilities of who is doing what in order to achieve the goal? If there is no clear conversation about how you work together and being sincere about your accountabilities, team members will have to start guessing about what it is that you will or will not do.

      3. Where are you now?

        None of the first two distinctions will matter at all, unless you as team have a clear idea of where you are currently. Additionally, you are prepared to have an open conversation about what it is you need to do to achieve the mission. We have a simple high performing team survey that we use to get that conversation started. What is interesting about the results of that survey is that there often is a difference between how you think the team will answer and what they will actually answer.

        For a limited time, we offer our readers of our blog access to this high performing team survey that they can fill out with their team. If you are interested to take this survey with your team, contact me at kbogaert@strategic-momentum.com, and I will be happy to set you and your team up for a free survey that will take each team member 10 minutes to fill out anonymously.

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        Posted in Change, Conversational Dynamics, HR, Teamwork, Videos

         

        Authentic Listening – Empathetic Acknowledgement – Checking For Completion

        24 Jun

        This post deals with one of the most difficult parts of the listening process. That is, the ability to acknowledge empathetically the feelings of the speaker. This is an important aspect of listening since it emotionally connects the speaker to the listener. When you’re able to do this effectively the speaker gets, at a very deep level, that you’re listening, and that you understand. It’s a minimum intrusion into the speaker’s conversation.  It is always a short phrase like, “really scary” or “you’re hurting.”

        Acknowledging empathetically is a key listening skill that takes practice. Some listeners have the skill more naturally than others. Regardless of your skill level empathetic acknowledgement can be developed and enhanced with practice. I suggest it is worth the effort.

        Checking for completion is another important aspect of the listening process, since we tend to take a pause in the speaker’s conversation as our cue to speak. That is because many times as a listener, if we’re not careful, we are rehearsing our response, or we already have our response, and we are just waiting to get it out.

        In the listening process it is important to resist responding before you check to see if the speaker is complete by asking a simple question. The question could be “is that it,” or “are you finished,” or” is there anything else.” When the speaker responds with “yes that is it”, then you know you can go to the next phase of the listening process which I will cover in the next post.

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        Posted in Authentic Listening, Conversational Dynamics, Videos

         

        Every organization is perfectly designed to produce the results it is producing!

        17 Jun

        Every organization is a system, and as a system it is perfectly designed to produce the results it is producing! Is this true? We have been in front of executives who will disagree with this, at least initially. Often it is because they trip over the fact that it is perfectly designed. As a leader, this can be a hard message to hear, as the buck stops with you!

        Can you see that this sometimes is a hard message to deliver to executives? If you are not getting the results that you are looking for, and yet you have been working hard, does that mean that you have been doing it wrong?

        Now, let’s look at the good news. The good news is that once you accept this premise, and you see that it is a design, now you can start looking for what it is you can change in your design to significantly improve your results.

        As discussed at several topics here on our blog, you design your company system through the conversations that you are actively having as well as those that you have codified in employee manuals, procedures, plans. However, your design is also stuck in unspoken conversations that you should be having but you are not having. The classic example is of a company that wants to be innovative but does not reward risk taking.

        Once you recognize that, you can now also see that if you want to change your results, and therefore the design of your team or company, you just have to change your conversations.

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        Posted in Change, Conversational Dynamics, General, Leadership, Strategy, Videos

         
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