Are You a Whole Brain Leader?
Jeffery, the COO of a Fortune 500 internet service provider (ISP), started to lose patience. Well, he has never been famous for his patience. He has been struggling for the last hour to persuade the executive team to penetrate into the Japanese market through acquisition of a Japanese ISP.
The presentation, as usual, was perfectly manicured with lots of sales forecasts, market share data and return on investment tables. He had worked on the presentation for almost a month. He looked at his watch nervously realizing that his time was up and it was just one week before the next Board meeting.
Jeffery was dreaming about press conferences followed by interviews to Forbes, Financial Times, Bloomberg, CNBC and CNN. He craves some glory after the blood, sweat and tears of the last 3 years with the company.
But his colleagues did not know all of this. They seemed indifferent to his ambitions and completely disinterested. They challenged the risks, the figures, the timing…everything. Jeffery had been so confident that nobody would disagree with this opportunity. He spent a lot of time imagining his success. He did not spend too much time on how to handle objections.
Julie, the CEO, asked quickly for feedback and with everyone in complete agreement of not pursuing any negotiations further with the Japanese company, the meeting came to an end.
“What went wrong?” Jeffery asked himself. He had covered every possible aspect of the acquisition. His presentation was packed with hundreds of supporting figures.
What really did go wrong?
Jeffery, like many executives, failed to win the hearts and the minds of his team. Most of us naturally approach business presentations, public speeches, employee communications or sale pitches from the left side of our brains. We provide the facts, information, data logically and we expect decisions, resolutions and actions based on logic.
This makes perfect sense. Doesn’t it?
The bad news is that logic is not always effective unless we engage both the logical, analytical and objective left brain of decision makers with their emotional, creative, subjective and intuitive right brains.
Many of us are products of traditional education systems that rarely emphasize emotional engagement. We have learned to develop analytical processes to reach logical conclusions. Unfortunately opinions are formed and decisions might be taken based on emotions rather than logic.
Our goal every time we engage an audience – colleagues, management, customers, board, or the public – is to engage the whole brain: left side and right side.
When we engage only the right side, nobody takes us seriously. Our communications will be no more than entertaining. Decisions are rarely taken based on the right brain alone.
When we engage only the left side, people do not develop any feelings toward the subject and do not feel the urge to take action.
We can improve dramatically our chances of achieving results, resolutions, decisions and buy-ins from any audience by becoming whole brain leaders who engage the left and right brain in every single communication.
How do we do this?
Becoming a whole brain leader is not as complicated as it sounds. We just have to start every presentation with a story with a message that sparks emotions with listeners. We can build a metaphor, analogy, allegory, or any personal story with a strong message that connects the topic to the presentation.
We start with the right brain first and then, and only then, when everyone already engaged emotionally with the message, we switch to the left brain and spit-out information, data, and analysis.
Finishing the informative part of the communication, we go back to the right brain and complete the story we started and we engage again emotionally to drive people to take action.
Every presentation is like a sandwich. The filling is the information between two slices of emotional engagements.
Poor Jeffery, if he started his presentation by sharing the same dreams he had about the glory the team should expect; if he painted the same vision of growth and how the results of the acquisition would affect personally each one of the participants; most likely he would have ended with a positive decision.
Still have doubts?
Try next time you are presenting information. Serve it as a sandwich of two rich emotional anecdotes with the information tightly packed within instead of providing only the filling spilled all over the place.
You will get more results and you will enjoy the process as well. If you are working on any presentation, start thinking about your emotional story and win the minds and hearts of your audience.
Confrontation Deflation
Joan took the Fremont Street exit from Oakland Bay Bridge and stopped at the traffic light.
“How am I going to confront Warren” she thought again. Then she decided to ask her advisor…Google.
She typed “ground rules of confrontation” in her smartphone and looked through the results raising her eyes randomly to the traffic light. Some of the results referred to Vijay Eswaran’s ground rules of confrontation.
“Never heard about the guy” thought Joan. ”He is probably a confrontation guru”. She clicked on the link and browsed and was relieved to find that the webpage had only 10 bullet points.
She managed to read the first rule before the light turned green and she moved slowly with the early morning traffic.
Rule No. 1: Check your emotions at the door.
“This is merely impossible. Warren is my best friend. Many communication books recommend starting confrontation with what we feel about the situation. This is completely the opposite” thought Joan doubting about whether she could confront without emotions in this situation.
Joan stopped again at the 3rd Street junction and read the next rule.
Rule No. 2: Never confront the person, always the issue. Avoid using the ‘I’ and ‘you’ word in the discussion.
“Avoid using ‘you’ is also recommended by other communication experts who promote using ‘I’ instead of ‘you’. Is it really possible to avoid using ‘I’ and ‘you’?”
Joan turned right to 3rd Street, drove 3 blocks and stopped at the Market Street junction passing Dave’s which has been her favorite lunch restaurant. She read the next two rules together:
Rule No. 3: Never argue your point for the point’s sake, only lawyers do that. Discuss it instead. The objective is communication not domination.
Rule No. 4: Which means equal parts listening to talking.
Joan smiled while she read the third rule. She had heard too many lawyers argue their point for the point’s sake. Some of her team did it as well. She wanted to achieve collaboration rather than domination. She promised herself to listen more and talk less in the coming confrontation.
Joan turned onto Market Street and then into her office at Number 595. She read the next rule while swiping her card at the car park entrance.
Rule No. 5: Begin by listening. The more you listen, the more effective you become in addressing.
Joan thought that listening is her biggest weakness. She is busy all the time. Her thoughts start to wonder within seconds if her companion doesn’t get right to the point. She has a tendency to talk rather than listen.
She parked her car in the reserved space and headed toward the elevator while reading the next rule.
Rule No. 6: Confrontation with egoism, lust, anger, hatred, jealousy or malice of any kind will always fail. Even pity as a motive is self-defeating as an objective.
Joan figured out why she has to “check her emotions at the door”. If she lets her anger, disappointment and frustration sneak into the confrontation; it will heighten Warren’s emotions and lead to a conflict just before the Board meeting.
She read the sixth rule in the elevator.
Rule No. 7: Always confront with love, failing which you can also do so with kindness, compassion or even understanding.
She exited the elevator into the lobby not noticing Marvin, the security guard, welcoming her as usual with a big smile.
Joan was thinking how far she was of embracing love in her work relationships. She embraced kindness. She tried unsuccessfully to be more compassionate. Love did not exist in her corporate jargon.
“Good morning Ms. Stanton” Marvin announced almost laughing at Joan walking blindly toward the tower elevator while reading something on her smartphone. “Busy morning Ms. Stanton?”
“Oh, good morning Marvin” Joan replied, surprised she was already in the lobby. “Busy indeed. Have a great day” she replied trying to read the last rules of confrontation before arriving on her floor.
Joan was relieved to enter an empty elevator. She was embarrassed having been caught off guard while memorizing the ground rules. She also didn’t want to be interrupted. Even though she hadn’t digested all the rules yet, she got the gist of the method. She decided to follow these rules while confronting Warren.
She had 30 seconds to read the last 3 rules:
Rule No. 8: Ultimately never digress. It will be highly tempting to bring other issues in. Resist and remain focused. Make only one point at time.
Joan reminded herself to keep the confrontation only on the accountability issue related to the investment.
Rule No. 9: Never forget who you are doing it with or what you are doing it for…yourself.
“Absolutely” agreed Joan.
Rule No. 10: Confrontation without compromise is only possible for a principle, never for personal gain. If you are getting emotional at any juncture, always try to get someone to do it for you or at the very least have a neutral third party present.
“Be open to compromise” Joan told herself.
When the elevator door opened, she was confidant in her ability to confront Warren without letting things get out of control or seriously affecting their relationship.
Joan entered the office, greeted Samantha at the reception and walked straight into Warren’s office still carrying her bag. She managed to evade her executive assistant Andrew’s morning routine of signatures and messages.
She took a deep breath outside Warren’s door, smiled while she “checked her emotions at the door”.
“Good morning Warren” Joan greeted with a strained smile.
“Hello Joan” Warren replied, eyes glued to the monitor while typing some last changes to his presentation.
“Can I have your attention Warren?” asked Joan disturbed with the rude reception.
“No ‘I’ Joan!” she scolded herself noticing her first mistake. “We…we…we…we…!”
Warren raised his head surprised at her tone of voice.
“Warren, we have a serious situation regarding the $3 million loss in the home-care investment. Not only that the loss is exactly the same as the company net loss but we haven’t discussed who is accountable for this loss” Joan took a deep breath again.
Warren’s face turned red. Joan also noticed his forehead vein popping out – his famous anger signal.
“Are you referring to me? Do you mean that I’m accountable for this loss?” Warren said with a heated tone of voice.
“You…Ah…we generally have accountably problem in our team and specifically in this project” Joan replied correcting quickly herself.
“Well, look who’s talking. What have you taken accountability for?” Warren raised his voice higher.
Joan didn’t expect such an explosion so fast. She thought that following the rules of confrontation would diffuse the situation. But Warren hasn’t read the rules of confrontation. She shouldn’t have expected him to control his emotions, avoid using ‘I’ and ‘you’ and stick to the point rather than making it personal. She will send the rules of confrontation to her team later on.
“Warren, we have not confronted each other enough regarding this project. We rarely confront each other at all” Joan voice was soft. She was proud of keeping up the rules.
Warren was silent. Joan, as usual, intended to continue but then stopped herself.
“Listen more than you talk” her inner voice whispered her. She held on waiting for Warren’s reply patiently.
Warren thought for a while and since Joan didn’t say anything he said “I thought we were on the same page all the time”.
“We weren’t. It was our mistake putting our relationship ahead of our responsibilities to confront each other when we disagree” Joan reflected on herself but still using ‘we’.
“Listen Joan, I drove the project because the product group dropped the ball. We have to discuss it further with the rest of the team. There is an accountability problem here but this project is the least of our problems. The loss in the books is a reporting issue mainly for tax purposes. We can sell the plant for a profit. It won’t be the biggest issue in the Board today.”
“Yes, it will” replied Joan standing up to leave Warren’s office after seeing the worried text message from Andrew “Where are you? The chairman is already in the boardroom”. It was 8:53 and she decided to go to the boardroom to greet the chairman and the other directors. She relaxed resolving the project issue.
“Warren, we’re safe If you can convince the Board that this investment is not a total loss and it can be recovered” Joan said heading to the door.
“Hold on Joan. This project is not our biggest problem!” said Warren but Joan was already outside the room.
She was quite confident with her new confrontation skills and decided to use them frequently even with the board members.
She was leaving Vijay Eswaran’s website noticing he was the Executive Chairman of QI Group of Companies taking a mental note that she would send him a thank you email later on. After all, he was more than just a confrontation guru…
Joan saw Andrew waiting for her at the boardroom door with heavy stack of documents for the Board meeting and nervous face. “Good morning Joan. I didn’t know what to tell them.”
“Good morning Andrew. No worries”.
“This day is getting better” thought Joan.
She didn’t know how wrong she was. In 2 short hours she would find out how bad things can get; Worse than her worst expectations.
To Be Continued…
Colleagueship and Friendship
It was raining heavily.
Everything was soaking wet.
She was freezing.
Joan was still in bed when the hole in the roof allowed the cold rain to flood her bedroom…
Then, bizarre thing happened. Joan woke-up, jumped off her bed and stood there shivering between dream and reality. She was really wet. The bed sheets were wet but there wasn’t a hole in the ceiling.
It was sweat.
It was a Board day.
The one day she wanted to avoid more than anything else in the world.
Things have gone from bad to worse in the 12 months since she became COO of Star West. Sales were skiing downhill. Profits were skydiving. Cash flow became a crash blow. The Board has started to lose patience.
There was also a big, dark cloud, which in good days probably wouldn’t be noticed. It was a miserable $3 million investment in a new home-care product that didn’t meet expectations. In other words…a total loss.
In the good old days this loss wold be dismissed with a notice that innovation efforts were unsuccessful…blah…blah…blah. The terrifying fact was that the first quarter net income was in the red…exactly $3 million. Poor Joan!
Joan was still standing in front her bed shivering, trying to believe that the roof was fine and she had to get ready for what was emerging as the worse day of her professional life.“
“Warren was the one who lobbied heavily for this investment. I knew that the chances of this project were very slim. Why didn’t I stop it?”
“Why didn’t I stop it?” she asked herself again while fixing her makeup in front of the mirror.
The boiling coffee helped clear her mind. She knew the answer but refused to acknowledge it. It was the photo in the dining room reminding her where the problem was. Joan and Warren were smiling at the camera on their last year ski vacation with their families.
Joan and Warren were best friends.
They played Golf together entertaining business partners and key customers every month. They spent many days traveling together on business trips. They went on vacations together. Joan’s husband and Warren’s wife were both IT professionals who had a lot in common. They lived in the same neighborhood and their kids studied in the same school. Joan thought it was great…but not this morning.
She has just started to figure out that her friendship affected her leadership and ultimately Star West’s business performance. She recalled some of her attempts to confront Warren’s decisions. She failed to cross the threatening impact on their friendship. He was very defensive and took disagreements personally. She eventually gave-up and lived in fear that one day the inability to confront her best friend’s professional decisions would damage her own career and Star West.
This fear was grabbing her firmly this morning. Warren has not taken any accountability for this lost investment. His emails to Board members were definitely reflecting indirectly that Joan was accountable for this project ignoring the facts that he was the major driver.
“I should have confronted him” thought Joan reversing her car from the garage to the early morning quite street. “I should have confronted him” she mumbled again a few times without noticing.
Joan recalled a workshop she attended more than 10 years ago about work-life balance. It was in the 20th Century. Life is so different with mobile communication and 21st Century management career lifestyle. “Work is life and life is work. Separation is unnatural” thought Joan while taking the ramp to highway 24 from Walnut Creek to San Francisco.
24 miles to the office!
Joan thought about Patrick Lencioni’s book “The Five Temptations of a CEO” she just finished reading last week. One of the temptations was choosing popularity over accountability. “That is exactly the problem” said Joan like she was talking to an invisible passenger beside her. “I prefer to be a popular friend rather than seeking accountability. We are such good friends in the management, that friendship becomes more important than accountability. We even call ourselves a family forgetting that we run a business. We behave like we don’t carry responsibilities and accountabilities toward shareholders, customers, employees and business partners.”
“We should not let friendships at work cloud accountability” decided Joan conclusively. But just before she started to gain back her self-confidence she recalled another temptation of CEOs – choosing harmony over confrontation.
Many situations she avoided confrontations of issues she hadn’t agreed on flashed Joan’s mind. In many of them she compromised her own beliefs and did not speak out her disagreements. It wasn’t only with Warren. It was almost with everybody. She remembered an employee joking that the management “scratch each other’s backs”. It was true. Harmony was definitely more important than confrontation. She even couldn’t recall the last time they had passionate, vocal confrontation or even an emotional outburst.
“That’s over. I won’t repeat this mistake again” though Joan. Friendship will never be again on the account of accountability. Friendship will not be on the account of confrontations”.
She was already on the interstate when she calculated that she would be in the office one hour before the Board starting time. “This will be enough time to confront Warren” Joan thought.
She dialed Warren’s speed number. “Good morning Joan. How’re you doing?” Warren greeted.
“Not so good Warren. I would like to discuss it with you before the Board”.
“I’m already in the office reviewing the slides. Can we do it after the Board?” Warren pleaded.
“Warren, we have to discuss it before the Board. I will be in the office in 10 minutes. See you” she hanged the call not allowing him to object.
“Now, how will I confront him?” she thought.
She‘s having 10 minutes to figure it out. But she already resolved within herself the most important reasons for her failure. She does not confront colleagues who she has friendship relationships. She does not define accountabilities with her friends at work letting accountability floating without ownership.
The worse day of her life started to emerge as the best lesson of her life.
The Reality Dialog
What is the key to making a dialog genuine and honest?
We have learned from experience that implementing a plan can be a tentative experience unless key individuals bring into the Dialog their various, sometimes conflicting, opinions and realities. Unless the realities of these key individuals are explored, we will spend a lot of time, money, energy and emotions to clean up the mess of plans that were rejected by these individuals. They will resent our plans because their personal experiences, knowledge and beliefs were not taken into account when we decided to turn plans into actions.
When we make a proposal, suggest a course of action or brainstorm solutions, we are risking failure if we make a decision before we explore the realities of all key individuals involved.
Why do we need to discover everyone’s reality? Wouldn’t everyone speak out about their feelings without being asked? Although they might, many are knowledgeable but afraid to introduce a controversial opinion or are silent because they have a different personal agenda. As leaders, before we move into the decision process we should check individually for understanding and agreement.
Check for Understanding
To check for understanding means to invite questions and clarifications. Just asking “what do you think?” does not check understanding. We ask specifically for clarifying questions and if a person is silent or seems confused we approach him or her directly. For example, ask “Melinda, what questions do you have?”
Check for Agreement
Once we are certain that everyone understands the proposal, we can check for agreement. We can say “before we move forward to make a decision about the right course of action, some of you may see it differently. If you do, please speak out. My enthusiasm may make it hard for you to challenge this, but we need your input to make the right decision for the organization”.
When this approach does not work, and sometimes it doesn’t, we ask every individual at the table personally for their opinion. For example: “Mitch, what’s your perspective on this? Silent individuals are more dangerous to the process than vocal ones. Every individual involved in the process should feel safe and encouraged to express his/her agreement or objection.
Personal requests work better because we publicly and openly invite people to challenge us. When we encourage people actively to share opposing views, we show that we are open to rational influence – that their feelings and opinions matter. Then, we can continue the process following the sharing of others’ ideas. “Paul, what is your perspective on Mitch’s idea?”
Susan Scott explains in her book Fierce Conversations the “Mineral Rights” conversation model. “If you’re drilling for water, it’s better to drill one 100-foot well than 100 one-foot wells.” This kind of conversation interrogates reality by mining for increased clarity, improved understanding and driven change.
The Mineral Rights conversation ensures that we question reality and perspective in a way that doesn’t miss hidden agendas, unexplored options and resentful individuals.
It is not as easy as it sounds. Often, we fall prey to our emotions, agendas, fear of resentment and the “need” to be right. We can stop this uncontrolled tendency. We can change our communication styles by continually asking ourselves questions. These questions will help us detach from negative emotions and perpetuate the process of identifying reality.
Some of the questions we can ask ourselves: What is the most important thing? What is the underlying issue? What are the current results? What is at stake if nothing changes? What is our contribution to the situation? What is the ideal outcome? What’s the next step?
By questioning ourselves we can stop drifting into emotional rants during crucial conversations. Asking questions helps continue the process of understanding other people views and seek agreement while enriching relationships and enhancing learning.
Dialog! Decision! Action!
D.W. Griffith has been called “the father of film technique”, “the man who invented Hollywood” and “the Shakespeare of the screen”. He established United Artists with Charlie Chaplin and was the first to use the phrase ‘Lights, Camera, Action’ in 1910 on the set of “In Old California”. ‘Lights, Camera, Action’ is still widely used in Hollywood!
Similar to Hollywood, where shots have been taken following ‘Lights, Camera, Action’ for more than one hundred years, things are not getting done in organizations without following ‘Dialog, Decision, Action’.
Nothing really gets done in business, politics or communities without methodically going through a process of ‘Dialog, Decision, Action’. It’s quite different from a battlefield where commands are executed in split seconds. It’s different from flying airplanes where swift actions are matters of life and death. It’s different from complicated medical surgeries when human being lives are on stake.
‘Dialog, Decision, Action’ is a key success factor in the business world. Is it reasonable to expect actions when decisions are not clearly defined or are not taken?
Do we attend meetings that end with an unclear course of action and subsequently with procrastination? Yes, we do.
Do we leave meetings with a different opinion regarding the course of action and consequently take action in completely different directions? Yes, we do.
Do we participate in the same conversations but eventually reach entirely different conclusions? Yes, we do.
How can we avoid these miserable situations which end with leadership fiascos and business disasters?
Engaging in ‘Dialog’, deciding how to ‘Decide’ and executing the ‘Action’ agreed upon will save us from embarrassing catastrophes.
The coming 3 blog posts are dedicated each to “Dialog! Decision! Action!”.
Dialog
Interestingly, dialog is the important part of the three. It is where we ‘buy-in’ or ‘buy-out’. When we don’t ‘buy-in’ we’ll naturally decide-not-to-decide and of course we won’t take any action.
It’s sad, but it is the naked truth.
What happens in most dialogs is that we reach the point of silence or violence. Silence feels different from violence but is actually the same. The first form is passive-aggressive and the last form is active-aggressive. Nevertheless, the end result is that the dialog is interrupted and the chances to make any decision whatsoever are slim.
In their book, Crucial Conversations – Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler claim that people who move into silence try to avoid potential problems by withholding meaning from the dialog. People that move toward violence attempt to convince, control or compel others to accept their point of view.
The three most common forms of silence are masking, avoiding and withdrawing:
- Masking consists of understating our real opinion or presenting it in a sarcastic way so the true meaning is hidden.
- Avoiding involves steering completely away from sensitive issues or “beating around the bush” without addressing the real issues.
- Withdrawing means pulling out of the conversation or exiting the room.
The three most common forms of violence are controlling, labeling and attacking:
- Controlling consists of forcing others to our way of thinking. This includes cutting other off, overstating facts, speaking in absolutes, or changing subject abruptly when the discussion is not in our favor.
- Labeling tags people or ideas to create negative stereotypes so they will be dismissed and not taken seriously.
- Attacking includes demeaning and threatening.
We have probably demonstrated or have seen others demonstrating silence or violence. Silence and violence kill the chances to move on to the next stage of decision making. How do we overcome silence or violence? Crucial Conversations authors suggest that when others move to silence or violence, we have to step out of the conversation and create a comfortable, safe environment that allows everyone to share their opinions. Only then can we go back to the issue at hand and continue the dialog.
It’s not so difficult to observe people and find out who moves to silence or violence. It’s much more difficult when we ourselves move to violence or silence. Often, we become so emotional we’re not even aware that we are silent. We’re not even aware that we’re violent. Restoring comfort can be very difficult when we are causing the problem!
Controlling Our Emotions
A proven way to control our emotions is to stop and ask ourselves questions which will help us get back to the dialog. We first ask ourselves what we are really doing.
“Am I in some form of violence or silence?”
“What emotions are causing me to behave in this way?”
“What position do I take because of these emotions?”
“Do I have any facts or evidence to support my position or have I invented some assumptions?”
These questions help us to catch and take corrective action. No one will dare continue the dialog until we make it safe do so.
Make It Safe
If we lost control of our emotions, we can make it safe by acknowledging, apologizing, smiling, or even asking for a “time-out”. We make it safe by asking everyone to share their ideas and suggestions. We have to ask for people’s opinions to get their involvement. Silence does not equal agreement.
The faster we find mutual purpose and mutual respect, the faster we clear the way toward a powerful dialog.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Recent Comments