Anonymous Boss Check-Up

Hello! If you're human, and you have ever worked for a boss of any kind, and you feel like investing 4-6 minutes of your time, I recommend completing this anonymous online form: https://forms.gle/xqqP58bYzDr8gSSW9 - picking a good, bad or somewhere inbetween boss you have had. 

You can fill it in for multiple bosses.

The benefits are:

1. For you: seeing your boss in new ways, and developing more space/distance/time between your boss and your organisation. This extra space will help you for the rest of your life either picking a new boss, working more effectively with your current boss, or being a boss yourself.

2. For me: the data you and other respondents around the world are submitting, are landing in a big spreadsheet that has been very useful to analyse and come up with insights I never learned in a textbook, classroom or through my own experiences as boss or team member.

3. For everyone: I turn the insights into public posts on various platforms, attempting to reach and help different folks who have these kinds of challenges and would be helped by receiving some insights and tips for the situations they find themselves in.

Thank you in advance for helping yourself, me and the large community that is growing around this initiative.

Team Member Tips for Manager's Bias, un-Equal Opportunity and non-Rewards

Inspired by REAL Anonymous Boss Feedback (last Wednesday Data Drop https://lnkd.in/eMFFanwR)

In this post's data-led insights, I sow on hard ground. Data or not, team members who experience any of these 3, or combo of them, are not performing at their best. Worse, from anecdotes I hear, boss biases are extending into the neurodiverse spectrum:

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗱 (those who chose their management well, or got lucky with being inherited by the good)
🌟 2 in 3 have unbiased bosses
🌟 2 in 3 have bosses who give equal opportunities to all demographics
🌟 2 in 5 have bosses who reward with promotions and prizes objectively
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗮𝗱
😱 1 in 3 feel boss is in self-denial and is biased
😱 2 in 5 feel boss is in self-denial and is gender biased
😱 2 in 5 feel boss sometimes rewards objectively
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗴𝗹𝘆
😱 1 in 10 feel boss is obviously gender biased
😱 1 in 10 feel boss rewards friends

𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗕𝗮𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗨𝗴𝗹𝘆?
🦠 Anger / cynicism / disengagement / fear / disgust / distress / unsafe / superficial team building / clock watching?
🦠 "𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿" - 𝗔𝗗(𝗛)𝗗 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗔𝗦𝗗

🫣 Leave! Leave! Leave! 

But sometimes, it's not possible to go immediately. And sometimes if you stay long enough, they will leave before you...

So today we're looking at survival strategies in a toxic environment. These improve your health for the whole of your life, whether you end up staying because you can happily and magic happens, or you end you leaving because you do land a better job and manager elsewhere. 

✅ 𝗥𝗲𝗳𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗮𝘀 𝗼𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆
The famous "growth mindset" works! Step into it, every day, all day, intentionally! You have a context, a clear cause, and you can focus on a few conditions to intentionally make changes.

✅ 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗳 𝗻𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗵
Grow and protect your energy levels. We need more than air, food, water and sleep. Develop your "life affirming essential" rituals - and practice daily.

✅ 𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗸 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗱𝘀
Be listened to - tell them what's going on, how you are feeling.

✅ 𝗦𝗮𝘆 "𝗡𝗼" 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗳𝘂𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸
Learn and establish your boundaries, based on your own needs, prioritise your own holistic health.

✅ 𝗦𝗲𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀' 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘀𝗲𝘁𝘀
Differentiate your boss as a person from their mindsets. Name the mindset in a question - "Can I check something with you? It sounds like you have a strong belief/attitude towards [some label]? I'd love to understand you more - are you ok to talk about it?"

✅ 𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱
Grow a movement, leading by example the above tips.

💬 Share thoughts below. 👇

How to get it done in organisations

I was attending a course during 2016. Attending were a whole bunch of people from many different walks of life, and many different organisation experiences and levels.

Out of the blue, one of my fellow trainees was explaining how they, in their role of working with many organisations on big business-to-business transactions, had discovered a very useful approach to getting things done in their own organisation, as well as client organisations.

"Want something done? Give it to a busy person"

This statement about "how to get it done" in large organisations drew quite a negative reaction from within me.

I realised the statement was right and wrong at the same time.

Busy people have figured out ways to give and to create more value to the organisation - by being of good service, they are asked to do more and more. They figure out ways to do more and more - usually alternative work practices that make them more streamlined / efficient. They become extremely knowledgeable across the whole organisation - knowing who's who, and who to go to directly and for what. Also importantly, they know which avenues to not even bother to try - saving everyone time and frustration.

So...the statement still makes me feel a bit ill, but I also recognise the truth in it. Many organisations I have worked within are literally functioning mostly as a result of these very busy network nodes.

For managers and leaders - look after your ever-busy people - they are busy keeping things moving in the right direction. You may not know what keeps them so busy - but perhaps that's where a little more curiosity and study will be quite revealing!

Agile In Four Or 4 words

I've been heavily reflecting on last week's post agile in 3 words and I'm not happy enough with it.

So this "Agile In 4 Words" is a response to that previous thought - to bring in a previous previous thought I captured in this older post Open question how.

I think the shortest summary to what is agile - other than "collaborative lightweight working practices" that means many different abstract things to many different people I've tried it on...and gotten nowhere with, is actually:

"How can I help?"

This one induces in the person asking out loud or silently to themselves the team working principles, the proaction, the learning, and more. That lovely "how?" question really opens things up more for everyone!

Especially in response to my earlier attempt "Can I help?" - a simple "No" would stop anyone in their tracks. And that "No" is to be expected when people are massively in a state of focus and don't want any interruptions.

The "simple" introduction of the "How" makes this an engaging question that any team member can get creative with by themselves and come up with more creative suggestions - even innovative practice improvements!

How do you think this is better or worse than the earlier version? Or...indeed..."How can you help?" :-)

Agile In 4 Words - How Can I Help?

Thankyou for supporting!

My favourite coaching tools: The Mindset Works Online Mindset Assessment

Caveats:

A reminder that all my favourite coaching tools - free, online, or other - need to be applied with the sensible cautionary advice from statistician George EP Box: "all models are wrong but some are useful". Remember also that this is about "the other" and the other's perception - not you and not your perceptions! 

Some time after I posted http://change-challenge.blogspot.com/2017/03/my-favourite-coaching-tools-mindset.html a friend of mine put me onto this fantastic Ted talk by Eduardo Briceno during 2017. Since then I have only looked forward!

I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone to watch - more than once! How To Get Better At The Things You Care About packs a number of important truths and is well researched. 

Upon researching Eduardo Briceno a little more over the months after first watching this talk, I discovered his company Mindset Works, and their online mindset assessment tool: What's My Mindset? (amongst other good things like the courses they give, and their blog site).

And it's as easy and simple as that for this one - 8 questions later there is an easy to understand assessment and some advice to follow!

But why bother? Well...those with open and growth mindsets appear to be living happier and more fulfilling lives, and accomplishing more at work. It seems that's quite important given the speed of the changes we're experiencing, as well as the quantity of changes. Both appear to still be rising exponentially.
For extra insights into how mindsets work, and how to work with them, of all the books I have read so far, this one has 2 excellent chapters on the subject, as well as several other excellent chapters!

The Creative Manager (we could all do with one, work with one, or be one!)

My favourite coaching tools: The Evening Review

The Evening Review is a great technique for increasing self awareness.

It is deceptively simple – but it is very powerful. The evening review puts the spotlight on all the kinds of vague impressions about how one's life is going so that one can encounter and understand more fully what is actually happening. 

Requirements:

I suggest keeping a diary/journal next to your bed.

The review method:

1. At the end of the day, preferably about 10 minutes before going to sleep, find a quiet place free from outer distractions.
2. Close your eyes, give attention to relaxing your body, quieting your feelings, and as much as possible stilling the activity of your thoughts - aka calm your "mind monkey". Your mind should be quiet and receptive, but remain alert.
3. Now, review your day in your mind, playing it back like a movie, but backwards, beginning with where you are right now, then the time of late evening, then early evening, then the dinner hour, and the late afternoon and so on until morning when you woke up - and even any disturbances of your previous night's "sleep".
4. Throughout the experience it is important to maintain as much as possible the attitude of an objective, detached, non-critical observer, calmly and clearly registering the events of the day, neither becoming elated at a success, nor depressed and unhappy about a failure. The aim is not to relive the experience, but to notice without emotion in your consciousness what were the patterns and their meaning for this day.
5. Finally, write down your general impressions of what happened and anything particular that you have learned.

There are many variations of the Evening Review. In the above form, it is very effective for gaining a greater sense of the whole of one's life.

After you have captured a few days (or many days, weeks, months or years) read through your notes and observe how they affect you. Usually people are surprised by what patterns they discover for themselves, once they just start to collect "the evidence".

And that's really what's required - once you have brought the unconscious into the conscious, suddenly you have greater awareness and from there, you have more choice about how you wish to proceed or act or behave differently - if you so choose. And hence you have more freedom!

Thank you for reading and your support!

My favourite coaching tools: Mindset Evaluation

For sure I was aware of, and thought I understood the meaning of the term "mindset" for a long time. It's only when I went a bit deeper, and upon a great reflective mediation, that I documented all (that I knew of in that moment) of mine. And there were quite a few...over 30.

Then, the hard, but most rewarding work really began.

Evaluating each of them on their merits and on their consequences...which is the first step towards freeing oneself from mindsets that no longer serve the intended positive outcome, but instead have become restrictive to the life that could be led.

As our facilitator told us, before proceeding with the mindset evaluation, look with kind eyes, and be gentle with your self and your mindset. It began its existence to serve a purpose - to protect you and guide you to the future. And it has done its job really well - hence you are alive today, and, if you are reading this and looking at your own mindsets, then it has somehow also guided you to this point where you are given permission to free yourself from this restraining pattern of being.

The 9 simple questions I use to use to evaluate a mindset:

1. How strong (on a scale of 1 to 10) is this mindset?
2. How long have I (or the coachee) had the mindset?
3. What behaviour does the mindset drive?
4. What feelings are behind the mindset?
5. How has this mindset served me (or the coachee) in the past?
6. How has this mindset limited me (or the coachee) in the past?
7. How does this mindset serve me (or the coachee) now?
8. How does this mindset limit me (or the coachee) now?
9. How would I (or the coachee) like it to be?

These question seem simple and innocent enough, but "Oh wow!" do they open up some serious thought and feeling provocations...and these of course lead to deeper realisations.

Interestingly I found some mindsets were much fresher due to a significant later life event, than most of mine which stemmed from childhood and teenage years, and in the fresher ones, I found limits, but I was happy with them as they appear to be healthy boundaries.

Also significantly I found this work incredibly exhausting - mentally and emotionally I was drained after evaluating sometimes just 1, but often no more than 3 in 1 sitting. Simple and innocent questions - I am just amazed what the right framed question does at the right time and place!

Also interestingly, several of my answers to number 7 were - "it does not!", and several answers to number 9 also converged on a similar pattern. I believe these patterns in number 9 were more indicative of my true self trying to be authentic - and hence I am doing this work, so there is quite a bit of synchronicity I believe in this exercise, if it is performed as intended: open heart, open mind, quietly and extensively.

Thank you for reading and your support!

Agile In A Nutshell Part 2

Okay, so I tried (really really hard) to capture the essence of the vast topic "agile" in my Agile In A Nutshell post earlier ... but something is bothering me. Really.

So I hope you don't mind if I give a second dimension to this massive multi-dimensional concept! This stuff is BIG!

Agile In A Nutshell - Agile Is Now An Umbrella Term

Agile as a mindset and a movement started out in the software development and delivery space. But my first brush with "agile" as a concept was when I was studying business management in South Africa around 2003. The South African management textbook that mentioned "agile companies" stated that the future of businesses relied on them becoming more agile to keep up with customer needs. Although this was after we had implemented much of eXtreme Programming (XP), it was still before (because South Africa has/had very slow internet connectivity, and expensive imported books were scarce) the big software movement really got going worldwide.

I reckon it is likely that the line in that South African management textbook had been inspired by The New New Product Development Game written by the great management scientists Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka in 1986.

But skip to the here and now nutshell point:

Agile is now an umbrella term to mean all of the agile manifesto, agile principles, agile frameworks, agile practices, agile tools, agile approaches.

Basically, any abstract or tangible thing that helps an organisation or an individual, be quicker or nimbler, in delivering value to the end customer. Usually this begins with the mind/thinking framework being applied by the people to the challenges they're responding to.

In other words, it is more important to be agile, than to do agile. For more practical thoughts on agile checkout my collection of teaching/learning agile at What Is Agile For. Thankyou for supporting!

Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment Materials Now Online

A while back I blogged about Professor Philip Zimbardo and his research and great work around post traumatic stress disorder. In his work in this area, Zimbardo has come up with a new theory of time - the Time Paradox (UK) (or US) - as well as a Personal Time Perspective Inventory which has been quite helpful to my coachees to get a better sense of "what may be".

Zimbardo speaking in Warsaw 2009

Just recently I discovered that Prof Zimbardo has made materials from the infamous "Stanford Prison Experiment" available online. Despite having first learned about the "prisoners and wardens" experiment during a university psychology module years ago, and learned about many other psychological experiments since then, the write-up and photos are still quite a shocking account of what happened during those 6 days (out of the planned 2 weeks) before the experiment was terminated early due to how quickly things got out of hand.

It's well worth the read-through, as well as watching the movie clips. It really is amazing what a system can do, and does do, to ordinary people. And as for uniforms and other physical associations. Wow.

And just when it might become grim and depressing, Zimbardo offers us all hope and salvation from the very human condition of life - his Ted Talk on Psychology of Evil. We need to celebrate heroism - the rise of the ordinary normal person who takes heroic action in the space where others are frozen.

"But I just did what any other person would have done under those circumstances"

Maybe, maybe not.

Anyway, Zimbardo for me, is a truly an amazing mind and life story with amazing benefits for humanity! For a little self-help/coaching for yourself and more detail, see my earlier Zimbardo time perspective assessment post!

My favourite coaching tools: The CIA Of Any Situation

Control Influence Accept was taught to me a few years back by one of the team leaders I was coaching in agile mindset and approach to team and delivery. I am not sure where it originated as a consequence and searches on Google have been non-satisfactory.

CIA For Control Influence Accept Any Situation

Essentially, as the C-I-A was explained to me, every situation that one finds oneself in (as I explain to coachees), one asks upto 3 questions in the order Control - Influence - Accept (CIA):

Question 1: Can I Control this situation?

If yes, then Control it (by using your management position or leadership)!
If no, then ask the next question,

Question 2: Can I Influence this situation?

If yes, then Influence it (by working with your network, expanding your network, orchestrating and asking your network for assistance in changing the situation)
If no, then ask the next question,

Question 3: Can I Accept this situation?

If yes, then Accept it (by opening your heart and open your mind and embracing it, so that your new personal reality becomes your new personality)
If no, then you have only 1 healthy choice - to leave the situation.

Failure to Accept the situation, and not leave this situation will cause you stress and all the negative consequences that stress brings. It will lead to negative behaviours and cynical comments leaking out, causing you to be mis-labelled further deepening the pygmalion effect and negative vicious reinforcement cycles. (see my post on labels being applied to people and more importantly how you can help the team "fix" the problem)

So you can use the CIA for personal coaching, and you can use it for team coaching quite effectively as well. I typically use it for helping teams understand if the potentially SMART-ifiable productivity improvement and/or happiness improvement actions they have proposed within the team's periodic Retrospectives are actually Achievable.

I did see several parallels in Stephen R Covey's excellent The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People where he discussed the 3 spheres that we live and work within as concentric circles. The Control Sphere is the smallest space, followed by the Influence Sphere, followed by the Accept Sphere. Basically we need to realise how little in life we do control, versus how much we think we control. An example he uses is the common illusion of control when driving in our carefully selected vehicle...and getting stuck in a traffic jam. We think because we can control our music selection, volume, air temperature and fan speed, we have control, but actually we have to accept that the dynamic system of the traffic on the roads is in control, we have very very little in reality.

I am planning on adding another 2 posts to extend the conversation and observations I've had about this CIA over the past 5+ years, so keep an eye out for the followups!

Thankyou for reading! I bumped into a previous team member after 6 years, and he is still using this fantastic tool with his own teams ever since!

My favourite coaching tools: Zimbardo's Free Personal Time Perspective Assessment

Caveats:
A reminder that all my favourite coaching tools - free, online, or other - need to be applied with the sensible cautionary advice from statistician George EP Box: "all models are wrong but some are useful". Remember also that this is about "them" and their perception - not you! I make sure to tell individual coachees, teams and team leaders these things before giving them homework or some brief presentation on Zimbardo's Time Perspective theory.

I was fortunate in 2014 to attend a Professor Philip Zimbardo talk where he introduced (me) to several topics including the The Time Paradox: Using the New Psychology of Time to Your Advantage (UK) (or US). With the Time Paradox, Zimbardo's research and theory focuses on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) sufferers and how the new theory of time helps them "catch up" with their new current reality. Another great book about PTSD and help for sufferers is from Peter Levine - Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma - The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences (UK) (or US) - which explains somatic experiencing and was my first introduction to the 3 instincts humans face when stressed - the familiar "fight", "flight" AND the 3rd one "freeze". The research in this space is amazing and continuously evolving to help us understand us and to help those who suffer.

I recommend both books to anyone in any situation - not least because sooner or later you will experience 1 or more of the top 10 stressful events in life and having any knowledge to help you deal with them is invaluable. And also because modern life is so full these days of multiple minor stressors and we've learned that all the minors add up substantially even without a top 10 stressor.

And upon receiving some feedback on this tool, I believe both books are mandatory reading for any coach deploying this free test.

Prof Zimbardo is a wonderful speaker - if you get the opportunity to watch/listen/learn - take it! Stories from his (in)famous 1971 Stanford Prison Study (anyone who studies psychology or those who want to try understand how war atrocities are committed by normal people reads about the Stanford Prison Experiment) and his own early childhood facing near certain death in a hospital ward surrounded by other dying children (amongst other very memorable anecdotes) are incredible.

Here's a much condensed Ted version of his new theory of time talk.

I believe the theory can be applied to anyone no matter what their current psychological disposition is. I mean - who wants to live a half-step behind, or a half-step ahead of current reality? Who wants to be sure they are actually "living in the moment"? I reckon everyone, upon reflection, sees the benefit of being present, preferably present in the moment.

In my coaching practice - I meet a lot of people who want to know. They have deep questions about some past event or current lifestyle "choices" they seem to fall into habitually. They want to know if they are practicing enough mindfulness meditation. They want to know if they are truly self-aware. How does anyone but the Buddha know? Anyway, my clients - like most people - want to know if they're okay! (yes they are, and not because I suggested that they completed an online test!)

Step 1:
Go to http://www.thetimeparadox.com/surveys/ - print the graph manually and keep for later. Or better still, you can save it on computer, my Macbook has a great and good-enough editing tool in the form of Preview!)

Step 2:
Do both free online tests!

• Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory - 61 questions - takes 10-30 minutes
• Transcendental-future Time Perspective Inventory - 15 questions - takes 5-10 minutes

Step 3:
Manually plot the assessments on the survey graph paper or pdf

Step 4:
Discuss the gap between the "Ideal Time Perspective" and the coachee's results.
This is critical to get right - it is the coachee's understanding and interpretation of the gap that matters, and it is the coach's role to suggest options to improve ONLY if required.

With more self-awareness of their time perspective, the coachee opens up possibilities to understand more about their historical events that affect their perspective on their workplace as well as how their vision of the future pulls them to a good place or not based on their behaviours. From there it is possible to figure out the steps to take to change as required.

For the coachee, this view can be used as input to their coaching plan, to set some goals to acquire new skills and new behaviours (eg too much Present Hedonism might be an indicator of too much "good time, live for the moment" attitude and not enough time invested in the future thinking or planning and from there creating).

Step 5:
Several people find watching The River of Time video - inspired by the time theory - calming, reassuring and helps them to slow down enough to catchup with current reality.

I recommend also to complete Johnson's free online personality test as well as the free online Belbin test.

Additional Resources:

• Philip Zimbardo - The Secret Powers of Time is a 44 minute youtube video that has about half of the content I originally learned during the talk I attended.
• RSA Animate: The Secret Powers of Time is a 10 min youtube video that has less content again, is focused on the theory, and the infographic drawn real-time is wonderful!