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In this edition:
Marshall Goldsmith on "Give Yourself A Chance"
Patricia Wheeler on "The Motivational Bank Account"
Give Yourself A Chance
by Marshall Goldsmith
"I am a terrible listener. I've been told that for years. People at work tell me I'm a bad listener. So does my wife. I guess that's just the way I am."
It's amazing how often I hear otherwise brilliant leaders make counterproductive, stereotypical comments about themselves.
The good news is that almost all the leaders I meet have quit making stereotypical comments about race, sex, or ethnic origin. The bad news is that we still make these self-limiting comments about ourselves.
You've surely heard them. Maybe you've used them to describe yourself:
"I'm impatient!"
"I'm always behind."
"I always put things off!"
We often talk about ourselves as if we have permanent genetic flaws that can never be altered.
Our personal stereotyping may originate from stories about us that have been repeated for years--often from as far back as childhood. These stories may have no basis in fact. But they can set low expectations that produce self-fulfilling prophecies, which seem to prove that our negative expectations were correct.
I'm a good example of this. I was brought up in a small town. Growing up in Valley Station, Kentucky, I might naturally have become involved in cars, tools, and mechanical things. My dad had a two-pump gas station. Many of my friends liked to work on cars and race them on weekends at the local drag strip.
As a child, however, I gained a different set of expectations from my mom. Almost from birth, I was told, "Marshall, you are extremely smart. In fact, you are the smartest little boy in Valley Station." She told me that I wasn't just going to go to college--I could go to graduate school! She also said, "Marshall, you have no mechanical skills, and you will never have any mechanical skills for the rest of your life!" (I don't think she wanted me to pump gas, change tires and work on cars at the service station.)
How did these expectations affect my development? I was never encouraged to work on cars or be around tools. (As a teenager in the 1960s, I thought a universal joint was something that hippies smoked.) Not only did my parents know that I had no mechanical skills, my friends knew it. When I was 18 years old, I took the U.S. Army's Mechanical Aptitude Test. My scores were in the bottom two percentile for the entire nation! In other words, I was soundly defeated by random chance.
Six years later, however, I was at UCLA, working on my PhD. One of my professors, Dr. Bob Tannenbaum, asked me to write down things I did well and things I couldn't do. On the positive side, I jotted down, "research," "writing," "analysis," and "speaking." (In other words, I wrote, "I am smart.") On the negative side, I wrote, "I have no mechanical skills. I will never have any mechanical skills."
Bob asked me how I knew I had no mechanical skills. I explained my life history and told him about my dismal showing on the Army test. "How are your mathematical skills?" he asked. I proudly replied that I had scored a perfect 800 on the SAT math 1 achievement test. Bob then asked, "Why is it that you can solve complex mathematical problems, but you can't solve simple mechanical problems?" Then he asked, "How is your hand-eye coordination?" I said that I was good at pinball and had helped pay for my college expenses by shooting pool, so I guessed that it was fine. Bob asked, "Why is it that you can shoot pool, but you can't hammer nails?"
Suddenly, I realized that I did not suffer from some sort of genetic defect. I was just living out expectations that I had chosen to believe. At that point, it wasn't just my family and friends who had been reinforcing my belief that I was mechanically hopeless. And it wasn't just the Army test, either. I was the one who kept telling myself, "You can't do this!" I realized that as long as I kept saying that, it was going to remain true.
The next time you hear yourself say, "I'm just no good at . . ." ask yourself why not. The next time you're coaching someone, and he or she says, "I'm just no good at . . ." ask them why not.
If we don't treat ourselves--and the people around us--as if we have incurable genetic defects, we can get better at almost anything we choose. Why not?
Marshall Goldsmith is a Founding Partner of Marshall Goldsmith Partners. This article was originally published in Fast Company Magazine, November 2003.
The Motivational Bank Account
by Patricia Wheeler
"Why isn't my team moving faster?" asked the senior vice president. She was at a crossroads in her department. The reorganization was three months post-rollout, and she was expected by her president to deliver results. The team, all capable and skilled individuals themselves, was moving cautiously. At times they seemed to be drifting, though they clearly had been given their marching orders. She was worried.
While interviewing her team members, I asked the question, "How do you know when you're going in the right direction?" "That's the problem," her direct reports said. "We always know when we're going in the wrong direction. She tells us that immediately. But too often when we're forced to make critical course changes, we don't get the specific guidance and support we need." Her 360 feedback results confirmed this; she was given low marks from stakeholders on measures that reflected her skill in developing employee talents and setting a positive example.
When she received this feedback, she was astonished. She knew she was tough, but she thought her management style was well balanced between critical and encouraging comments. What she didn't know is that balance in the traditional sense just isn't good enough.
Research shows that we're hard-wired to absorb criticism at a much higher internal decibel level than we absorb compliments. There are exceptions to this rule, of course. But for most of us, it takes the impact of three to five positive comments to equal the impact of one negative comment. As we make deposits to and withdrawals from our employees' "motivational bank account," consider whether you are ever overdrawn from their perspective. If your positive and negative comments occur at an even rate, you are likely to be operating in the red.
And if so, what's the cost to performance? Are "attaboys" and encouragement just fluff or do they produce measurable business results?
Think for a moment: if your employees spend fifteen minutes per day fuming, complaining or feeling demoralized about your management style, how much time does that take away from activities that are mission-critical? How much time does that amount to each quarter? What are the direct and indirect costs of this to your organization? What if you could harness all that energy in the direction of your goals?
Does this mean becoming a Pollyanna, saying nothing at all that's not positive? Of course not. Leadership requires setting the vision, charting the course and correcting off-course actions. It's not an all-or-none situation, though, and the fact is, most of us think we're more encouraging than our employees perceive us to be.
Our senior vice president tried it out for a quarter. To her delight, she noticed that not only did performance measures improve, she noticed something else: more smiling employees with more energy and innovation on the job. The cost of this: extra time each day noticing successes and good efforts. Worthwhile? She thought so.
Coach's tip : Think about your own leadership style. What balance of encouragement to criticism do you aspire to? What is the value of noticing successes and good efforts to your team? Consider keeping track of the deposits and withdrawals you make to the Motivational Bank Accounts of your direct reports.
Patricia Wheeler helps talented executives become better leaders. She is the author of numerous articles on leadership.
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