Disliking Others – Is it Really About Them?

Disliking Others – Is it Really About Them?

by | 28 Aug 2020 | Biases, Emotional Intelligence, Michael Nicholas, Perception, Psychology

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.

Today I’m wise, so I’m changing myself.”  ~ Rumi

The conditioning we receive throughout life is so pervasive and powerful that it’s literally impossible to be aware of the psychological influence that it has on our feelings, including – perhaps especially – on our feelings relating to others. We are fundamentally social beings, so even the presence of other people can dramatically affect our experience of situations and things that we come across. For example, in his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini quotes one study where “men who saw a new-car ad that included a seductive young woman model rated the car as faster, more appealing, more expensive-looking and better designed than did men who saw the same ad without the model. Yet, when asked later, the men refused to believe that the presence of the young woman had influenced their judgments”.

What is happening is that we naturally interpret everything through the lens of our own experience and belief systems. If you’ve read my book, The Little Black Book of Decision Making, you’ll know that I love the following Sufi proverb, because it captures this idea so powerfully and in so few words: “When a pickpocket meets a saint, all he sees are pockets”. Another way of saying this is that we see the world, not as it is, but as we are.

The psychological truth is that our emotional reaction to any experience cannot be attributed to any sort of objective “reality”, any more than a roller coaster can be said to be objectively exhilarating or terrifying. Rather, our emotional reactions are the result of our subjective interpretation of whatever is happening. Inevitably, this means that the way we see others – how we label or judge them, has more to do with ourselves than with them, as this wonderful story that I’ve paraphrased from Stephen R. Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, illustrates:

Stephen was travelling on the underground when a man got on with his children. The peace and calm that had previously existed was immediately shattered as the children’s terrible behaviour disrupted the other passengers. Irritation levels in the carriage understandably started to rise, but the father had closed his eyes and seemed oblivious. Astonished by this obvious lack of sensitivity to others, Stephen spoke politely to the man, suggesting that perhaps he could control his children a little more. The father then seemed to become aware of the situation for the first time, acknowledging he should do something, and saying, “We just came from the hospital where their mother died about an hour ago. I don’t know what to think, and I guess they don’t know how to handle it either”.

This article offers some useful starting points to think about the root cause of negative biases that you might experience towards others.

Read the Article: Are You Biased Against That Coworker You Don’t Like?

My Advice

There is one capability that both comes before and sits below all the techniques mentioned in the article, and which is, therefore, an essential enabler to developing emotional balance: to become much more highly attuned to our own emotional state in the moment. To do this, we must learn to use our minds differently.

By keeping some of our attention on the inner world of our emotions, we create the opportunity to change how we feel. This focus enables us to become aware of negative reactions. Having done so, we can then track back to the underlying thoughts, developing the capability to look at the thinking associated with the emotion. This capability is sometimes called metacognition, which means thinking about what we are thinking about. By becoming more conscious of your thoughts, the self-awareness generated will enable greater conscious regulation of how you feel, improving your ability to build constructive and empowering relationships.

Take the Opportunity for Growth

Take the Opportunity for Growth

by | 28 Aug 2020 | Agility, Leadership, Learning, Michael Nicholas, Mindset, Psychology

You may well be aware by now of the work of psychologist and Stanford University professor, Carol Dweck, who identified the important difference between what she called “fixed” and “growth” mindsets. The fixed mindset belief is that our capabilities are innate capacity – we were either born with them or we weren’t – while individuals who have a growth mindset believe in the capacity for development through effort. Dweck discovered that a growth mindset is a prerequisite for the achievement of excellence, while a fixed mindset is almost guaranteed to result in mediocrity. This is true at a corporate and individual level.

The fixed mindset is so powerful that it will often lead people to turn down opportunities to improve, even when they are obviously necessary and require no initiative or effort to take advantage of them. For example, a study was conducted at the University of Hong Kong, where all classes are conducted in English. This gives some students a considerable advantage because not all of them arrive with equal skills in this area. A group of students with poor English were identified and sorted into fixed- and growth-mindset groupings. They were then asked whether they would like to take a remedial language class (that would not affect their grades).

Amazingly, most of the fixed mindset group refused the offer. In total contrast, the growth mindset group showed a high interest in taking the class. Those with a fixed mindset were prepared to jeopardise their future success rather than risk the possibility of failure in the remedial course.

The differences between these two mindsets are so deep-rooted that they even show up in brain scans. The brains of people with a fixed mindset “light up” to show interest when given feedback on their strengths, but during discussions where there is an opportunity for them to learn, their brains can be seen to switch off. They even fail to show interest in learning how to make corrections when they have made mistakes. As such, neuroscience proves that only those people with a growth mindset are genuinely interested in learning and being stretched.

Clearly, this is a critical issue for businesses, and leaders will always benefit from helping their employees to become more growth oriented. This article discusses some mechanisms by which you may be able to take advantage of crises, such as Covid-19 and is consequences, to help to cultivate this type of mindset more strongly.

Read the Article: 6 Ways a Crisis Can Help You Cultivate a Growth Mindset

My Advice

Research has clearly shown that, contrary to what most of our education, training and experience to date may have led us to believe, it is not innate ability or talent that brings success: the most important fundamental, underlying everything else, is mindset. The good news is that the key to a developing a productive, success-oriented mindset is to focus on learning.

During a crisis, the need to change can be even more evident than normal, so there may be no better time to practice the skills needed to stimulate learning and growth. With this in mind, there are two ideas in this article that I particularly love:

  • The concept of a “learn it all” culture, as opposed to the typical expertise-based culture which is described here as “know it all”.
  • Making a practice of asking people what they’ve learnt.

Whenever we ask a question it changes the thought processes that are taking place in the other person’s mind. It literally hijacks their thinking to focus it on the subject of the question, not only changing what the brain is doing in that instant, but also starting to shift future behaviour. By asking great questions you can align thinking and behaviour with growth, thus orienting your people and your business in that direction.

Maximising Influence: The Secret is in the Preparation

Maximising Influence: The Secret is in the Preparation

by | 9 Jul 2020 | Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Mindset, Psychology

What is leadership? This simple question has spawned dozens of theories, literally thousands of definitions and hundreds of thousands of books. However, while researchers disagree in many areas, there is one viewpoint on leadership where there is almost unanimous agreement, which is that, at its heart, leadership is about influence. Great leaders are always great persuaders.

So, how might we become more effective at influencing/persuading others?

One of the most influential thinkers on the mechanisms of persuasion is Robert Cialdini, whose classic book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, became a national bestseller and listed on New York Times bestseller list and Fortune Magazine’s 100 best business books of all the time. In it, Cialdini identifies what he called the six universal principles of persuasion: reciprocity, commitment and consistency, social proof, authority, liking, and scarcity. However, this is a book that is probably more useful to marketeers than leaders.

Now, 30 years on from Influence, Cialdini has added to his previous body of work by identifying another aspect of persuasion, this time, of direct relevance and immediate value to leaders. In fact, he believes this to be the most critical of all, because it also empowers the other six: how we prepare recipients to receive a message. He calls it pre-suasion. This article explains the key elements involved.

Read the Article: How to Be a Persuasive Leader (hint: it’s about the ‘moment before’)

My Advice

I’ve worked with many leaders to help them to craft important presentations that will create the impact they desire. Without exception, these high-achieving and committed professionals already have a powerful message and carefully developed plan for delivering their content, before they bring anything to me for discussion. The area that always receives much less attention, is how to maximise the impact of what they say; however, research clearly shows that this area may be more critical than the words themselves. We all know that a poor presenter can kill even the best message.

This principle is also true in any other communication or interaction where you have a goal of influencing another person. I love the example in this article of the degree to which an image, when presented alongside identical information, greatly improved the performance of call centre volunteers. Emotion matters. Attention matters. And both can be greatly enhanced by giving some of your own attention to the softer aspects of your communication, particularly those that impact the state of mind of the people you are speaking to. The principles in this article provide a great starting point.

The Viral Impact of Emotions

The Viral Impact of Emotions

by | 9 Jul 2020 | Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Psychology, Teamwork

Emotions can be infectious……

24th November 2017 was Black Friday, and hundreds of thousands of people were in London’s Oxford Street for the sales. It was not long after the multiple terror attacks across London but life had moved on and all was calm. That calm, it turned out, was quite superficial…

At 4.37pm, thousands of shoppers started to stampede, certain they were under attack. The Met Police mobilised its anti-terrorism emergency response, crowds were evacuated, and social media became filled with reports of gunshots, people claiming to have seen someone carrying a gun, and videos of people screaming as they ran. People posted photos of loved ones they couldn’t contact, worrying that they had been harmed. People’s worst fears, it seemed, had been confirmed.

The perplexing thing is, no real threat existed… No terrorists, no shots, no bomb, no danger. Nothing!

Within 1.5 hours, it was all over. Sixteen people were injured, yet it had all been a false alarm. The inquest into the incident discovered that the trigger for the mass panic was a minor scuffle on one of the underground station platforms. All it took was for the people nearby to assume the worst, then the fear and misinformation to became real and took over. Both passed quickly through the masses, as each person instinctively picked up on the emotion of those around them, so that what started as confusion on the platform had become terror by the time it was unleashed on the crowded streets.

This incident shows how quickly and unconsciously emotions can spread. We are hardwired to pick up on the emotions of others in between 8 and 40 thousandths of a second, so our brains automatically detect things like micro-changes in others’ facial expressions, tone of voice or physiology, and then, to save energy, draw inferences, take shortcuts or make snap judgments based on these tiny snippets of information. It is a capability that psychologists and philosophers call thin slicing.

The natural purpose of this capability is thought to be to enable smooth interactions and to facilitate mutual involvement and understanding. The problem is, very few of us realise how susceptible we are to it, or know how to inoculate ourselves.

As a leader, because your position of influence or power will tend to make you more infectious, you can afford to display emotions that could negatively impact others. Nor can you allow your own emotions to be dictated in this way.

I’ve long defined the ability to make appropriate choices as one of the hallmarks of emotionally intelligent leaders. This starts with the ability to manage emotions. Imagine a military leader who panicked under the slightest sign of threat, as the shoppers did that day – there would be no chance they could function effectively. Great leadership means being able to respond in appropriate and adaptive ways to whatever conditions or circumstances we face, and especially, to be able to do so under pressure.

This article demonstrates how important it is that leaders are aware of, and manage, the effects of emotional contagion in the workplace, which can otherwise be hugely detrimental to the productivity of their teams.

Read the Article: Emotional Contagion Can Take Down Your Whole Team

My Advice

It is unavoidable that emotion can have a powerful effect on any interaction, as though a second discussion was also taking place in parallel with the main conversation. Our brains are literally wired to sense other people’s feelings and react to them, making us all capable of catching and spreading emotions, both positive and negative, to the people around us – and this is especially so for leaders. Because of the knock-on impact to the performance of the people around you, I believe that managing emotions is at least as important as the technical skills you bring to work.

The route to improvement starts, as so often, with awareness. We must learn to increase our present-moment awareness so that we can become more intentional about our mood, as well as our actions. This enables us to interrupt our autopilot and notice more of the emotions that we exude towards others as well as those that we may be picking up from them. I recommend that, at the first sign of a negative emotion (your own or someone else’s), you momentarily pause and focus your attention at the emotional level. By consciously shifting awareness in this way, you should find that you can increase your control of the situation to stop negative emotions from gaining a hold.

Empathetic Listening is a Gift

Empathetic Listening is a Gift

by | 9 Jul 2020 | Caring, Emotional Intelligence, Engagement, Leadership

Listening, deeply listening, is probably much harder than you think. This is because real listening is not about hearing what is spoken – it is about understanding the speaker. It is about picking up was isn’t said, as well as what is.

One of my favourite statistics is that 93% of people think they are above-average drivers. I wonder if their self-assessment of how well they listen is much better… In Steven Sample’s book, The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership, he includes both of these areas when he suggests that the average person suffers from three delusions: 1) that s/he is a good driver, 2) that s/he has a good sense of humour and 3) that s/he is a good listener. From my own observation, it seems that few people are anywhere near reaching their potential in terms of how well they listen. The reason, I believe, is that to listen fully we also have to quiet the voice in our head, and that is not so easy.

Even when only two people are involved, there will nearly always be three conversations taking place: the obvious, audible, external one, between the two parties, and the two silent, internal ones taking place in each of their heads. Often, we listen to the other person only until something they say triggers a thought, at which point our self-talk kicks in as we mentally prepare what we will say next. In other words, conversations actually have three elements:

  • Listening.

  • Preparing to speak.

  • Speaking.

Many people I’ve discussed this with, both in one-on-one coaching and workshop environments, have confirmed that preparing to speak consumes a significant proportion of their attention. Perhaps this isn’t surprising, and there are important issues at stake, such as how others are likely to react to our ideas, whether they will create a good impression of our capabilities and how to phrase them for greatest impact. But let’s be clear: if you are framing a response when the other is speaking, you are not listening!

This article describes some of the factors that make listening such a powerful leadership behaviour, as well as some simple principles that will help you to listen more effectively.

Read the Article: Here’s How Great Leaders Listen to and Understand Their Team

My Advice

I like to think of empathy as the lifeblood of listening: the essential ingredient for dealing with people effectively in any setting. Empathetic listening goes much deeper than what is normally referred to as “active listening”, because it requires that we seek to understand not only the content and context, but also the emotions of the speaker. It is not enough to simply attempt to put yourself in another’s shoes – a common way for people to think about empathy – because this will tell you only how you might feel under the same conditions. The question that must be addressed is how the situation makes the other person feel.

To address this challenge, the unexpected capability required turns out to be our imagination. While it is clearly impossible for any of us to completely know or understand what anyone else is experiencing, we can strive to imagine what something might be like, or feel, for another. When we intuit what they may be feeling, a deeper level of connection with them is created which can transform both our impact and the quality of our overall relationships.

The key enablers to this kind of empathetic listing are focused, non-judgmental, attention and the power of silence… When we place this quality of quiet attention on another person and hold it there, putting aside things like ego, judgement, pre-existing views, ideas, and agendas, it conveys to them that they are important and cared for. Doing so also requires that we drop the pressure on ourselves to have the smartest, or fastest, response and to listen with our ears, eyes and heart. I suggest two quick mental checks before even engaging in conversation, which will help you to get into a listening mode:

  • Deliberately set your intention to fully understand the other person.

  • Literally stop anything else you may be doing and consciously direct your full psychological presence towards them in the form of your undivided attention.

If you do this well, it is incredible how great an impact it can create. I have had experiences that have stayed with me for almost 40 years for no other reason. When we receive this type of empathetic listening, it truly is a gift.