Manager: “Talking to so-and-so is like hitting a brick wall.”
“Stop hitting your head against the wall and look for the loose brick.” —Keith Ferrazzi, Who’s Got Your Back

Have you noticed that some people have a knack for getting through to people, convincing them to buy into their plans, goals and desires?

It may seem like magic, but it really isn’t. The art of persuasion is easier to learn than you may think.

When you look for and find that “loose brick“ — what the other person really needs from you — you can tear down even the strongest barriers and connect with people in ways you never thought possible.

Right now, if you’re like most, there are a few people in your life to whom you can’t seem to get through. They may be team members, subordinates, clients or maybe even your boss. Perhaps it’s a partner or spouse, defiant teen or angry “ex.”

You try persuasion, logic, pleading, and bargaining, but you hit a wall every time. The more you try, the more your efforts backfire.

Most people, when faced with resistance, up-shift to higher gears. They speak louder, persuade harder, encourage, cajole, and then argue and push. The end result is greater resistance.

When you do the opposite, however — when you just listen, ask, mirror and reflect back to people what you hear — you’ll achieve the results you seek. You’ll start to get through to the people you need to reach, no matter how difficult they can be.

Why People Don’t Hear You

Almost all communication is an effort to get through to people and influence them to do something different.

The problem, however, is that people have their own needs, desires and agendas. They have secrets they don’t want to share with you. They’re stressed, busy and often overwhelmed. To cope, they throw up impenetrable mental barricades, even if they share your goals.

The Persuasion Cycle

In Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone, psychiatrist Mark Goulston shares some of the techniques hostage negotiators use in the most desperate situations. They also work well for reaching a boss, coworker, client, spouse or angry teenager.

As Goulston notes, persuasion moves through a cycle:

• From resisting to listening

• From listening to considering

• From considering to willing to do

• From willing to do to doing

• From doing to glad they did and continuing to do

Buy-in begins when people move from resisting to listening to considering what you‘re saying. How do you get a person to go from the critical stage of resisting to listening? First, you listen to them.

An understanding of three concepts will allow you to see what’s happening in someone’s head when you’re trying to achieve buy-in:

1. The three-part brain (reptile, mammal, upper primate/human)

2. The “amygdala hijack”

3. Mirror neurons (and the mirror neuron deficit)

The Three-Part Brain

Our brains evolved from lower animals:

• Our primitive reptilian brain remains responsible for split-second survival reactions (i.e., the “freeze, fight or flight” response).

• The middle mammalian brain is the seat of emotions, where the “inner drama queen” reigns.

• The upper primate/human brain is personified by Star Trek’s Mr. Spock. It weighs a situation logically and generates a conscious plan of action. It collects data from the reptile and mammal brains, analyzes it, and makes practical, ethical decisions.

Often, however, we don’t engage the upper brain faculties until it’s too late and damage has been done. To a small extent, these three brains work together, but they also function independently, especially under stress. This is what happens when people shift, becoming difficult and hard to reach.

The Amygdala Hijack

The amygdala is a part of the brain that processes memory and emotional reactions (especially fear and anger).

When it takes over, the primitive reptile brain runs the show, and surges of adrenaline keep us from thinking clearly over the next few minutes — an effect that may take hours to fade.

The term “amygdala hijack,” first coined by psychologist Daniel Goleman, refers to what happens under acute stress.

When you try to reason with someone in a full amygdala hijack, you’re wasting your time. You must speak to him before the hijack occurs — or talk him down from it using empathy.

Mirror Neurons

Years ago, when scientists were studying Macaque monkeys’ brains, they found that specific nerve cells fired when the monkeys threw a ball or ate a banana. To their surprise, these same cells fired when one monkey watched another perform these acts.

When the brain’s “mirror neurons” fire, we have the ability to be transported into another person’s mind, briefly making us feel what the other person is experiencing. These cells are nature’s way of teaching us to care about other people.

Neurologist V.S. Ramachandran, director of the Center for Human Information Processing at the University of California, San Diego, calls them “empathy neurons” or “Dalai Lama neurons,” as they dissolve the barriers between self and others.

Most of us want to be heard and understood by others. We’re willing to be touched if someone breaks through the walls we erect to avoid being hurt or controlled.

In the workplace, this may prove challenging, as we worry about being inappropriate or intrusive. We don’t want to risk delving too deeply into how someone’ emotions.

As a result, Goulston suggests that many of us suffer from a “mirror neuron receptor deficit.” Many CEOs and managers feel they give their best, only to be met day after day with apathy, hostility, or worse, no response at all. Their brains don’t get enough mirror neuron receptor activity. In other words, there’s not enough empathy going around the office.

3 Core Rules for Getting Through to People

“These days we’re experts at ‘hot-syncing’ — getting different pieces of technology, like BlackBerrys and PCs, to talk to each other. Few of us, however, are experts when it comes to hot-syncing with other people.” —Mark Goulston

You probably already know how to handle a tense situation intelligently. You wouldn’t be in your position today if you didn’t. At least subconsciously, you’re experienced in going from attack mode to emotional mode to smart mode.

Every difficult conversation involves your reptile, mammalian and human brains. Unfortunately, much of your wisdom lies buried in your instincts. You can’t always access what’s required to manage tense emotions at the precise moment you need it.

Typically, a few minutes after a stressful encounter, your pulse and breathing start to slow, and you calm down a little. Shortly thereafter, you gain enough self-control to begin reviewing your options. And later, you start thinking, “There’s a smart way to resolve this so everybody wins.”

But if you’ve reacted with harsh words in the heat of the moment, you may have already screwed up a sale, alienated a coworker or lost someone’s esteem.

Rule 1: Move from “Oh, F#@&!” to “OK”

In a stressful encounter, you may have less than two minutes to gain control and salvage the situation—a slender window of opportunity that gives you an advantage over everyone else in the room. You’ll be the only person who’s thinking straight.

Goulston recommends a five-step mental process during such crises, whether you’re dealing with a fender-bender, an enraged teenager or a work situation:

  1. “Oh, F#@&!” (Reaction Phase): “This is a disaster. I’m screwed. What just happened? It’s all over.”
  2. “Oh, God!” (Release Phase): “This is a huge mess. I’m stuck with it. Why does this always happen to me?”
  3. “Oh, Jeez!” (Re-Center Phase): “All right, I can fix this, but it’s not going to be fun.”
  4. “Oh, Well…” (Refocus Stage): “I’m not going to let this ruin my life/career/day/relationship. Here’s what I need to do right now to make it better.”
  5. “OK.” (Reengage Phase): “OK, I’m ready to fix this. Let’s go.”

Goulston is not saying that you can solve a crisis in two minutes. You can’t. But you can think your way through to possible solutions quickly. These mental steps give you a way to create a path out of panic mode and into solution mode. You’ll then be able to say the right things instead of making things worse.

Rule 2: Rewire Yourself to Listen

Many of us don’t listen well, especially with the people we deal with each day. We think we already know what they’re going to say. 

As a result, we mistake insecurity for arrogance, fear for stubbornness and legitimate anger for a dismissive “he’s just a jerk.” We talk around, over and up against people, with little actual listening to them.

We often size people up instantly, forming some pretty good first impressions. The problem is, these impressions last forever, and many are a jumbled mix of fact, fiction, prejudice and unconscious intuitions. They affect our conversations with others for months or even years to come.

We use the following filters to put people in mental boxes before we really know them:

• Gender (and all the stereotypes that go with it…)

• Generation (age)

• Ethnic background (names, skin color, accent, etc.)

• Education (level, manner of speaking)

• Looks (dress, hair, body size, style)

Check your filters, and examine how well you truly hear what someone is saying.

Rule 3: Make the Other Person Feel “Felt”

Put yourself in the other person’s shoes so you can change the dynamics of a relationship in a heartbeat. In that instant, you “get” each other, and this breakthrough leads to cooperation, collaboration and effective communication.

When you mirror what another person feels, she’s hardwired to mirror you in return. When you say, “I understand what you’re feeling” — and you mean it — she will feel grateful and, in return, express her appreciation with a desire to understand you. It’s an irresistible biological urge that pulls another person toward you.

Inside every angry person is a scared or nervous soul in need of empathy. If you ignore this person’s feelings, you’ll keep hitting the same brick wall of anger, antagonism or apathy.

When you make the person feel “felt,” you’re likely to transform yourself from a stranger or enemy to a friend and ally. You’ll get less attitude and obstruction, more support and an improved chance to get your message through. If this sounds too simple to be true, go ahead and try it out for yourself.

Phrases for Difficult Conversations

Use these phrases to help someone feel “felt”:

  • “I’m trying to get a sense of what you’re feeling, and I think it’s ______ (fill in an emotion). Is that correct?” Listen without judgment or comment.
  • “What are you feeling?”
  • “How frustrated (angry, upset, etc.) are you?” Allow the person to vent.
  • “And the reason you’re so frustrated (angry, upset) is because (repeat back to them what they’ve told you).” Again, let the person vent.
  • “Tell me, what needs to happen for that feeling to be better?” Listen without judgment or argument.
  • “What part can I play in making this happen? What part are you willing to play?”

This script isn’t written in stone. These phrases are meant to be guides or starting points for breaking through to someone.

The goal is to move them from barricading to feeling “felt”—from resisting to listening, from listening to considering.

In a ruthless, globally competitive market, companies cannot afford the luxury of holding onto more employees than they need. With economic constraints and technological advances, some jobs are being eliminated completely — a trend that will surely continue.

A new generation of sophisticated information and communication technologies, together with new forms of business reorganization and management, is wiping out full-time employment for millions of blue- and white-collar workers.

What does this mean? There is work, but it’s not the same as it used to be. There are jobs, but not the same ones offered a few years ago. And unless you want to go after menial work, you’ll need to acquire a disciplined education and variety of experiences, while also developing a highly valued mind.

Our Mind(s) Matter

In Five Minds for the Future (Harvard Business School Press, 2007), noted psychologist Howard Gardner says our mind — actually, minds — matters. We achieve greater professional success by learning how to think and learn in new ways.

Gardner believes five different kinds of minds are critical to remaining a highly prized asset in your organization, especially in times of economic cutbacks:

1. The Disciplined Mind

The disciplined mind has mastered at least one way of thinking — a mode of cognition that belongs to a specific scholarly discipline, craft or profession. Lawyers think like lawyers, engineers like engineers, managers like managers.

Start by figuring out the central concepts of the discipline you wish to master. The field you choose has key foundational concepts, methods and procedures.

You need to develop many “entry points” into your discipline. Those who have mastered a subject can think about it in many ways: storytelling, debate, graphics, humor, drama or classic exposition. If you communicate your expertise in only one medium, then you don’t really know your subject.

The end goal is to “perform your understanding.” This isn’t mere recitation of known case studies or performance of standard experiments. You must use your knowledge to attack problems you’ve never seen. You then need expert feedback to determine how well you fared.

2. The Synthesizing Mind

The synthesizing mind is adept at selecting crucial information from the copious amounts available, across disciplines.

You must recognize important new information and skills and then incorporate them into your knowledge base and professional repertoire.

You must discern what merits your attention and what to ignore, organizing this information in ways that make sense to yourself and others.

3. The Creating Mind

Human creativity is at a premium. Businesses want employees who can develop a “new vision” and “extend existing product categories,” on top of completing their daily work.

Creative thinkers are no longer deemed exceptional; they’re the expected new hire. Work by psychologists like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi show that creativity is not a lone endeavor, but three elements that interact to foster lasting breakthroughs:

  1. An individual must master a discipline or area and constantly work at it.
  2. Creativity requires a “cultural domain” that provides models, rules and norms to work with or against.
  3. The creative individual needs opportunities to perform.

The key ingredient is a creative temperament (which need not be innate). Creative people are dissatisfied with their own work and that of others. They go against the grain; it may be painful, but the alternative is even more excruciating. They notice anomalies and try to explain them, rather than explain them away.

Generally, creative people are tough, tenacious and undeterred by hard work or failures. Even when they do succeed, they look over the horizon to find the next mountain to climb.

4. The Respectful Mind

The respectful mind responds sympathetically and constructively to differences among individuals and groups. Those with respectful minds work beyond mere tolerance and political correctness; they develop the capacity for forgiveness.

Human beings naturally band into groups—and as soon as such groups form, members start to dislike one another. This pattern appears repeatedly in humans and other primates, for that matter.

To succeed, you must cultivate respect for others. Teaching respectfulness in school is certainly a promising means of fostering tolerance, and many schools put it into practice by requiring students of various backgrounds to work on joint projects with shared goals. With this kind of foundation, students can continue to cultivate tolerance and respect when they graduate to the workplace and political realm.

5. The Ethical Mind

Ethically minded individuals strive for good work and ethical balance in micro to global environments.

Four tools, while not sufficient for good work, are probably necessary:

  1. A mission. Without a mission, you don’t know what you’re aiming to achieve. Try to develop a clear, actionable mission statement that embodies your values.
  2. One or more good models.  Without models, doing the ethical thing is much harder.
  3. An individual version of the “mirror test.” Look into the mirror and ask yourself if you like what you see. Do you approve of what you’re doing at work? It’s easy to deceive yourself, so get confirmation from people you respect.
  4. A professional version of the mirror test. Look into the mirror and see if your colleagues are living up to their professional obligations. If not, what can you do to improve the ethical fiber of your profession?

The Future Is Now

In reality, many individuals in positions of influence are deficient in one or more of the five kinds of minds discussed here.

Shrewd managers or leaders select people who already possess these minds. They then challenge their employees to maintain, sharpen and catalyze their capacities so teams can work together effectively and serve as role models for future recruits.

The critical questions to ask yourself are:

  1. With which of these minds do I already show strength?
  2. How can I improve my mental capabilities?
  3. Where can I stretch my abilities to enable growth?
  4. Which of these minds do I need to learn?
  5. Who in my organization can help mentor me?

If you’ve been working hard for any length of time, in any field, chances are you’ve experienced at least one humiliating career failure. Career “hiccups” can kill your spirit and make it difficult to regain your motivation and drive.

Some of the “bad” things that happen to hardworking, well-meaning, capable people each day include:

What happens to us when our worst career nightmares come true?

There may not be scandalous headlines in the local papers, but with the emotional turmoil you’re experiencing, there may as well be.

Public or company humiliations suck the air out of one’s spirit, making it hard to carry on with dignity and drive. Our lifeblood and mental energy are drained.

Career-altering events can happen to anyone — and they do. But when they happen to us, they seem incomprehensible, largely because we’ve worked so hard to be nice, dedicated and well-meaning.

But even when we can partially blame the economy, there comes a time when we must take a hard look at what we could have done differently. Despite faltering companies, imperfect leaders, coworkers who don’t like us and other external variables, we must eventually engage in private, honest  introspection. It’s time to ask: What part did I play in the events leading up to the career crisis?

Defining Mojo

Historically and culturally, the word “mojo” has been associated with witchcraft and voodoo—specifically, the ability to cast spells. Over the years, it has become urban slang for personal power, magnetism and charisma.

In business speak today, mojo refers to the moment we do something purposeful and powerful — an act lauded by others. In sports, business and politics, the term has evolved to describe a sense of positive direction.

For some, mojo represents personal advancement: moving forward, making progress, achieving goals, clearing hurdles, passing the competition — and doing so with increasing ease. What you’re doing matters, and you enjoy it. Star athletes call this being “in the zone.” Others describe it as “flow.”

Mojo plays a vital role in our pursuit of happiness and meaning, as it involves achieving two simple goals: loving what you do and showing it.

Lost Mojo

In Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back If You Lose It, leadership expert Marshall Goldsmith introduces the term “nojo” — the opposite of mojo.

Nojo sufferers approach their work negatively. They’re bored, frustrated, dispirited and confused about the dark tunnel that envelops their career — and they aren’t shy about sharing their dissatisfaction with others.

Nojo happens when we experience a career failure and don’t get over it. Individuals who are incapable of looking inward to identify their role in a negative event get stuck — and stay stuck. As their spirit sours, they’re never able to recapture their mojo.

In some cases, people seem to have mojo one day and nojo the next. This volatility is often caused by a series of ongoing, hard-to-spot mistakes that in time lead to a crisis. If we can recognize our errors early, we can prevent events from spiraling out of control.

Common Career Mistakes

Goldsmith lists seven professional mistakes that contribute to career failures in otherwise competent, successful and smart people:

1. Over-committing
2. Waiting for the Facts to Change
3. Looking for Logic in All the Wrong Places
4. Bashing the Boss
5. Refusing to Change Because of “Sunk Costs”
6. Confusing the Mode You’re in

7. Maintaining Pointless Arguments

  1. a. Let me keep talking.
  2. b. I had it rougher than you.
  3. c. Why did you do that?
  4. d. It’s not fair.

As you examine these potential pitfalls, try to pinpoint the ones to which you’re predisposed.

1. Over-committing

If you’re good at what you do and like your job, it’s easy to take on new challenges. You’re bursting with mojo. People want you in their meetings and on their teams.

The old adage, “If you want something done, just ask a busy person,” may apply to you. And if you’re ambitious, the last thing you want to admit to your boss or coworkers is that you can’t handle everything.

If you believe you have superpowers, you will box yourself into a corner by taking on too many tasks. At that point, the quality of work and good humor will begin to fail, and you’ll lose your mojo (and possibly much more).

Ironically, the habit of over-committing has an unintended consequence: It makes us appear under-committed — a perception rarely appreciated by customers, colleagues or bosses.

2. Waiting for the Facts to Change

When we experience a setback, it’s not uncommon for us to wait for the facts to change into something more to our liking. Such wishful thinking is the opposite of over-committing, as it leads to under-acting. Instead of doing something, you freeze and do nothing.

When the facts are hard to swallow, ask yourself: “What path would I take if I knew the situation won’t get any better?” Then, get ready to pursue that path.

Doing nothing is akin to moving backward — a behavior you cannot afford in a constantly changing world.

3. Looking for Logic in All the Wrong Places

We devote many professional hours to finding logic in situations where none exists.

Human beings are profoundly illogical. Our minds crave order, fairness and justice, and we’re trained to value logic. But much of life, work and decisions that affect us are unreasonable, unfair or unjust, which sets us up for disappointment and can kill mojo.

We sometimes hope logic will prevail against all odds and that it will prove we’re in the right. If we capriciously stick to our guns until the bitter end, everyone will see how right we are. In the meantime, we seriously damage important relationships.

4. Bashing the Boss

Talent-management firm DDI found that the average American spends 15 hours a month criticizing or complaining about his or her boss. Indeed, boss-bashing is a popular diversion.

But while it may relieve tension and get a few laughs, denigrating your boss is not particularly attractive. Other people will wonder what you’ll say about them when they’re not around.

Bashing doesn’t build a better boss. It only serves to tarnish your reputation and lower your mojo. The negativity you spread will almost certainly affect others’ mojo, too.

5. Refusing to Change Because of “Sunk Cost”

Once incurred, a sunk cost cannot be recovered. Unfortunately, it’s also the basis for many irrational decisions that go against our best interest. When we throw more money at a problem and hope for different results, we compound the error — all because we cannot admit our error.

Each of us has sunk costs in our lives. We didn’t become successful because of luck; rather, we had to invest a big piece of ourselves in our work. At some point, this investment may have stopped paying off, without our awareness.

Are your decisions based on what you might lose or what you have to gain? It it’s the former, your devotion to sunk costs may be costing you more than you know: your mojo.

6. Confusing the Mode You’re in

We have two modes of behavior: professional and relaxed. Our professional selves are image-conscious. We pay attention to how we look, dress, speak and behave. We can’t afford to be sloppy.

In relaxed mode, some of us go to opposite extremes. We’re less guarded about everything, including our speech, language and use of humor.

So, what happens when we’re in relaxed mode, but still in the company of work colleagues and friends? Are we sarcastic and cynical in ways inappropriate to the office setting?

The more you close the gap between who you are as a professional and who you are when relaxed, the greater the trust and confidence you’ll generate. You’ll demonstrate genuineness, and you’ll avoid slipping into sloppiness with humor and language, which can put a dent in your mojo.

7. Maintaining Pointless Arguments

Arguing happens anytime you put a group of intelligent, successful people into a room and give them a problem to solve. It also happens simply because people have egos, and it’s human nature to compete with other members of the tribe.

Arguing can put our mojo at risk by needlessly creating enemies instead of allies. Many arguments are traps in which we fight to improve our status among the tribe, rather than to solve a problem for the greater good.

Learn to avoid the following argument traps that do nothing more than zap your spirit:

a. Let me keep talking: Everyone has opinions and enjoys expressing them. In fact, we feel it’s our right to do so. Sometimes, however, we just can’t stop; we have to have the last word. It can be very hard for smart people to “just let it go.”


b. I had it rougher than you: When we revel in how poor we were and how much we had to overcome to achieve our current station in life, all we’re doing is trying to elicit other people’s admiration. What’s the point?


c. Why did you do that? We’ll never know people’s true motivations. We can speculate with generosity or paranoia, but we never may get a completely frank answer. Why waste hours trying to get to the bottom of why people do things? It will only exhaust your mojo.


d. It’s not fair: You disagree with a decision that has been made. Worse, you believe you haven’t been given a legitimate explanation. Arguing won’t change the outcome and makes you look childish. Deal with it. Save your precious mojo.

These four “losing” arguments have the same end result: no change in outcome. Look for ways to make your point, and then move on, with your mojo intact.

Mojo Recuperation

What can you do when you recognize these behaviors in yourself?

It’s easy to say, “OK, guess I’ll stop doing that.” It’s harder to maintain progress whenever you seek lasting behavior change.

Someone once asked Goldsmith, “Does anyone ever really change?” After surveying 86,000 former clients and, later on, more than 250,000 respondents from his leadership development seminars, his conclusion is unequivocal:

“Very few people achieve positive, lasting change without ongoing follow-up. Unless they know at the end of the day (or week or month) that someone is going to measure if they’re doing what they promised to do, most people fall prey to inertia.”

The key words in Goldsmith’s statement are “measure” and “follow-up.” Because very few people can succeed alone with self-help efforts, many seek assistance from a mentor or executive coach.

Always remember that your competition continually responds to a changing business environment by working longer and harder. This means mojo is not an option; it’s a career differentiator. You need it to separate yourself from the throng — and your personal spirit will ultimately thank you.


“No one has to change; everyone has to have the conversation.” —David Whyte

Business is fundamentally an extended conversation. Whether you’re speaking with your boss, team members, colleagues or direct reports, conversations shape what gets done.

The quality of your conversations matters most, providing either:

As a leader, you must engineer conversations to foster clarity, cooperation, creativity and a connection to company values.

Too often, we let our results-driven culture provide words that render conversations stale and lifeless. We speak in terms of measurable goals, key economic indicators, cash-flow projections, action plans, and process and procedure.

We speak rapidly, using jargon, throwing out the latest buzzwords as though one or two key phrases will suffice. True conversations are replaced by quick interactions, where two people deliver words as fast as possible, and in only one direction. We’re suffering from a lack of genuine inquiry into what other people are thinking, and we lose opportunities to explore differing perspectives.

Sadly, the quality of many work conversations borders on mediocrity and/or boredom. Meaning and connection tend to be reserved for personal conversations.

Quality work conversations require:

  1. Intelligence and passion
  2. Personal and universal connections
  3. Use of strong, authentic and emotional words

Fierce Conversations

In her two books, Fierce Conversations and Fierce Leadership, training and development consultant Susan Scott explains that the word “fierce” doesn’t imply menace, cruelty or threats. In Roget’s Thesaurus, the word fierce is associated with the following synonyms: robust, intense, strong, powerful, passionate, eager, unbridled, uncurbed and untamed.

“The simplest definition of a fierce conversation is one in which we come out from behind ourselves, into the conversation, and make it real,” Scott writes.

Some people, however, are intimidated by the idea of talking about what’s real because it requires raw honesty and vulnerability. Sure, real conversations can be scary. But in reality, unreal conversations should be scaring us to death because they never address what needs to be said, cost organizations untold fortunes and limit individuals’ career advancement.

Making It Real

“Real is a change agent’s best friend. While no one has to change, when the conversation is real, the change often occurs before the conversation has ended.” —Susan Scott, 2009

Real conversations may, indeed, be uncomfortable.

“Where did we learn that we should never do or say anything that might make ourselves or others uncomfortable?” Scott asks.

While politeness and constructive criticism matter, they should not come at the expense of meaningful interactions that explore diverse perspectives and competing recommendations.

As a leader, it’s your job to accomplish your organization’s goals. You accomplish this, in large part, by making every conversation as real as possible.

The Risk of Being Real

Today’s workforce is composed of men and women who consider themselves to be free agents. They’re responsible for the course of their working careers and may think of themselves as owners and investors—not as employees. It’s a fair belief, as each day they invest time, energy and brain power at work.

Your organization’s people own their free will, drive and expertise. They’re willing to invest these assets in support of colleagues, ideals and goals in which they believe. As a leader, manager or team member, you can give them something to believe in by making every conversation real.

There are some emotional risks, according to Scott:

You have to remove your professional mask and leadership persona, setting aside your authority and power. You must open your mind to others’ potentially competing perspectives and accept that you don’t know it all or have all the answers.

Leaders who strive to increase their candor and authenticity experience a growing sense of personal freedom, vitality and effectiveness. By improving their ability to have robust conversations, they gain a higher level of personal authenticity, emotional honesty, integrity and greater capacity to inspire change in others.

Start Having Fierce Conversations

Real conversations begin with you. You must “be the change you want,” modeling how you want others to behave.

The art of fierce conversations is an evolving practice — one that must be initiated and repeated on an ongoing basis. You must practice before you enjoy progress.

Four Goals of Real Conversations

Scott describes four critical goals for fierce conversations:

1. Interrogate reality.

Reality and truth are like “shape shifters” in fantasy films. One minute, you see an adorable puppy; the next, it morphs into a fire-spewing dragon. In business, marketplace realities, technology and global demands shift rapidly — and if you’re like most people, you try to fix the same problems with the same solutions, expecting different results.

If you fail to explore differing realities, you’ll spend an inordinate amount of time mopping up the aftermath of plans torpedoed by people who resent their organizations’ refusal to value their experience, opinions and beliefs.

Regularly interrogate reality. Ask yourself:

2. Provoke learning.

Learning cannot occur in a conversation unless both parties agree to nonjudgmentally explore all sides of an issue.

One common error occurs when you’re entering into a conversation with a fixed agenda, such as trying to persuade someone to alter his or her point of view. You cannot effectively influence people until you know where they’re coming from, and this requires research and preparation.

Many of us ruin a conversation by yammering for too long about our own perspective, without giving the other person a chance to respond. And as soon as the other person says something with which we disagree, we jump back in, giving more examples and trying to build a stronger case. The person on the receiving end will tune out or go into defensive mode, ending the possibility of having a meaningful conversation.

3. Tackle tough challenges.

To have real conversations, you must be willing to identify and address the relevant issues in a truthful and courageous manner. Ask yourself: “What are the most important issues I should be addressing? Which issues am I avoiding?” Sometimes, this involves problems everyone knows exist, but rarely acknowledge or discuss.

4. Enrich relationships.

Each conversation you have is an opportunity to enhance a relationship. But for many hard-charging and competitive high achievers, conversations are used as opportunities to show off their brilliance and wit.

Fierce conversations are not competitive. Each participant must agree to communicate as an equal.

Conversations must no longer be about you, but centered on others. This requires asking questions and listening with total focus and attention on the other person. No multitasking is allowed!

Human Connectivity

For top leaders, 90 percent of their success can be attributed to emotional intelligence. Those who fail lack emotional competencies.

Three problems can derail potential triumphs:

  1. Difficulty in handling change
  2. Inability to work well in a team
  3. Poor interpersonal relations

Each of these deficits can be resolved through meaningful conversations.

Smart leaders quickly realize that their most valuable currency isn’t money, IQ, advanced degrees, achievements, charisma, good looks, athletic prowess, analytical expertise or other symbols of success. Rather, their most valuable currencies are relationships, emotional capital and the ability to connect with others.

Lack of meaningful connections with coworkers and customers costs companies billions of dollars annually. In a highly competitive marketplace, where most products and services are commodities that customers can acquire from your competitors, human connectivity is often the sole differentiator.

You cannot achieve a deep connection with colleagues and customers unless you bring valuable expertise to the relationship and can access and manage emotions (your own and others’).

Emotions Have a Bad Rep

Despite indisputable evidence to the contrary, many leaders believe displaying emotions in the workplace should be avoided. This old chestnut has been drummed into our collective consciousness for decades.

“Old school” beliefs include:

These obsolete tenets are slowly being replaced by the following concepts:

How to Sharpen a Conversation

Ten step-by-step phases can guide you through more meaningful conversations. As with any guide, consider these steps to be general principles, and choose your words with forethought.

  1. Prepare to have your conversation in person, without distractions.
  2. Clarify your intentions.
  3. Prepare your opening statement.
  4. Name the issue.
  5. Select a specific example that illustrates the behavior you want to change.
  6. Describe your emotions around the issue.
  7. Clarify what’s at stake.
  8. Identify the ways in which you contribute to the problem.
  9. Indicate your wish to resolve the issue.
  10. Invite your partner to respond.

Once you’ve made a trial run with these guidelines, debrief with the other person. You can say something like: “Thank you for hearing what I had to say and for sharing your perspectives. Your success is important to me, and I applaud your commitment to action. I’d like us to follow up on this later.”


Leaders must persuade others to get behind their ideas and plans. Strategies don’t implement themselves. And even with a great plan, you can always expect opposition and resistance.

Successful leaders must use power, political savvy and persuasion to bring their ideas to fruition. Many executives, however, are uncomfortable with power or office politics, viewing them as the dark side of workplace behavior. They believe job satisfaction, morale and commitment erode when politics dominate the environment.

But research clearly shows that being politically savvy and building a power base pay off. In “Power Is the Great Motivator,” a classic 2003 Harvard Business Review article, leadership consultants David McClelland and David Burnham examined managers’ primary motivations and success in achieving results.

Their studies reveal managers are primarily motivated by one of three drives:

  1. Affiliation: a fundamental desire to be liked
  2. Achievement: the motivation to attain goals and gain personal recognition
  3. Power: the desire to influence others

The most effective managers, measured by results, were motivated by power. But there’s a difference between managers who crave power for personal advancement and those McClelland and Burnham deem “institutional managers” (those who place the organization’s needs over personal goals and being liked).

Institutional managers:

Sources of Power

There are three sources of power in an organization: positional, relational and personal:

  1. Positional power: Your title and job status confer some level of formal power. You are authorized to act within a certain scope, but it’s seldom sufficient to get things done.
  2. Relationships: Informal power stems from the relationships and alliances you form with others. If you do a favor for someone, the law of reciprocity impacts your relationship. Coalitions and alliances increase your relational power.
  3. Personal: Some people generate power based on their knowledge, expertise, technical competencies and ability to articulate ideas or a vision that others will follow. Your communication skills, charisma and trustworthiness help determine your personal power.

Open to Influence

Power often expresses itself as influence: the ability to change, direct or affect others’ behavior without barking orders or threatening them.

Ironically, executives and managers who are open to peers’ and subordinates’ input garner greater respect than those who resist others’ influence. An openness to influence demonstrates trust and respect, which become reciprocal and contagious.

With greater openness comes access to information and insights about the environment. You’re therefore privy to signals when something isn’t working, and you can rapidly adjust. Influence becomes a two-way street.

Currencies of Exchange

In their 1989 book, Influence Without Authority, Allan Cohen and David Bradford introduced the term “currencies of exchange,” a metaphor that teaches businesspeople how to acquire and expand their organizational influence.

Essentially, you can offer goods and services to a potential ally in exchange for cooperation. Currencies may take the form of technical assistance, information, lease of space or equipment, a plum assignment and the like. The key to using currencies is to understand what others want or value.

Power without Authority

Effective use of power is becoming increasingly important, as many organizations are flatter, less hierarchical and cross-functional. This structural shift works best when leaders exert broad power and influence, without official authority.

While power skills are more important than ever, many executives shy away from developing them or fail to understand how they can expand and use them to full force.

Avoiding Power

No matter your position or title, you need power to push through any important agenda. Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and author of Power: Why Some People Have It — And Others Don’t, cites three barriers that cause executives to shy away from using power to extend their influence.

The Power of Power

Power is ultimately defined as the ability to have things your way. When you need others to give their best efforts in the face of differing ideas and opinions, you need leverage — and powerful people use several strategies to advance their agendas.

1. Leverage Resources.

Whenever you have discretionary control over resources — money, equipment, space and/or information — you can use them to build a power base.

Helping people evokes reciprocity, a universal drive to want to repay a favor — even without making it explicit that there’s a quid pro quo.

Your ability to garner support becomes self-sustaining, as people want to join the “winning” side.

Money is not the sole source of leverage. Access to information or key people can be even more valuable.

2. Shape Behaviors with Rewards and Punishments.

In international companies and governments, leaders reward those who help them and punish those who stand in their way. You may disagree with this approach, but it remains an important tool for building a power base.

Leaders who effectively wield influence make it clear that subordinates will reap rewards if they help and problems if they refuse to pitch in.

3. Make the Vision Compelling.

It’s easier to exercise power when you’re aligned with a compelling, socially valuable objective. Similarly, power struggles inside companies seldom revolve around blatant self-interest. At the moment of crisis and decision, clever combatants typically invoke shareholders’ interests, company values and mission, and causes greater than short-term or personal interests.

Fair Play?

You won’t go far — and neither will your strategic plans — if you cannot build and use power.

Some of the people who compete for advancement or stand in the way of your agenda will bend the rules of fair play and, in some cases, ignore them entirely.

Don’t bother complaining about this or wishing things were different. Part of your job is to know how to prevail in the political battles you face. You’ll succeed if you understand the principles of power and are willing to use them.

Persuasion

Persuasion has four elements:

  1. Credibility: Credibility is built on trust and expertise, and it must be earned. People will believe you have expertise and are worthy of their trust if you exercise sound judgment and demonstrate a history of success.
  2. An understanding of the audience: Identify the decision makers and centers of influence. Determine their likely receptivity and personal agendas.
  3. A solid argument: What is perfectly sensible to you may elude others — especially those who are already opposed to your ideas and prepared to resist. 

You can improve your chances of persuading them when your case:
    • Is logical and consistent with facts and experience
    • Strikes an emotional cord
    • Favorably addresses the interests of the parties you hope to persuade
    • Neutralizes competing alternatives
    • Recognizes and deals with the politics of the situation
    • Comes with endorsements from objective and authoritative third parties
  4. Effective communication: Don’t mistakenly think that logic and rationality will win out and persuade people to your side. You may inadvertently trigger confirmation bias, a situation in which people become further entrenched in their own ideas. 

Effective communication appeals to people’s emotions, tapping into universal human values and desires. Appeal to both hearts and minds if you want to build and sustain commitment to your strategic plans.

Office Politics

It’s naive to suggest that office politics are destructive and unethical. If you define politics in such a narrow way, you overlook the value of political awareness and skill. Political savvy, when combined with the right values, can be advantageous to you, your team and your organization.

To become politically savvy and build your power base:

When you face objections, don’t go to individuals’ bosses or peers to undercut their arguments. Instead, ask them questions to determine their goals. Stakeholders may:

You can identify potential allies and resisters with direct questioning.

Once you’ve persuaded others to join your coalition, you’ve established a base that will legitimize your idea. Coalition members will then use their networks to evangelize for you.

Getting others to make changes and do things your way is risky and fraught with personal peril. Making your organization a better place is often at odds with personal advancement.

You can’t do it without power. Just be sure to create power in and with others, as opposed to using power over others.


The following behaviors characterize a good leader in a downturn:

Honesty and credibility. This can prove difficult. Nobody can be certain about the business environment and its direction. How can you tell people what you believe when you lack full confidence? The only viable options are intellectual honesty and humility. Your authority depends on your ability to facilitate understanding and solutions – not from omniscience. (more…)


Are you the type of leader who’s dealing well in these trying economic times?

Who confronts reality?
Who figures out what needs to be done?
Who communicates with confidence?
Who finds opportunities in chaos, despite uncertainty, inevitable change and unpredictable sales?
If you’re like most, you’ve never before experienced a downturn like this. Reports about the end of the recession mean little if your company continues to fight cash-flow problems.
You cannot allow yourself to be afraid. Others look to you for strength and guidance. You must give the best you have and move quickly, even when faced with incomplete information.
Leading in uncertain times is not for the faint of heart. Some management teams navigate these challenging times well, while others fail miserably. It’s not just the CEO and CFO who are responsible; everyone has an important role to play. Indeed, those who lead well during the recession will emerge as shining stars for tomorrow’s top teams.
In his new book, Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty, bestselling author Ram Charan identifies the key rules to follow if you want to get the right things done in difficult times. They include:

Pay attention to salespeople’s contributions.
Accept guidance from your board of directors.
Understand how various business functions must be aligned and coordinated.
Communicate candidly and frequently.
Respond to external pressures in realistic, yet positive, ways.
The Call for Leadership
Do tough times make great leaders, or do great leaders emerge when the going gets tough? The ability to stare into the face of uncertainty, accept change and make decisions with incomplete information is crucial.
Such skills require strengths you may not have previously tapped. You must be able to:

Experience fear realistically, without getting paralyzed.
Act decisively, even if you’re uncertain about whether your plan is the best-or even the right-one.
Take charge and pull people together.
Adjust quickly, change course as needed, and maintain people’s confidence.
Management challenges don’t usually strike to the degree we’ve experienced over the last year. It’s not only your business or industry that finds itself in a downturn, but a disruption of the entire global economic system.
Uncertain Data
Projections and estimates are little more than guesses these days. We won’t know when we’ve turned the corner, and we cannot envision the future shape and scope of our businesses. What we can say is that change will present as both a danger and an opportunity.
Whether you can afford to see these changes as a pessimist or an optimist is not the question. Some predict the global economy will take a full year to normalize, while others project a three-year wait.
Smart leaders are reshaping their businesses to carry on through whatever hard times lie ahead. They are making changes now so they can emerge in better shape than before, ready for new growth. They’re pouncing on new opportunities, devising ways to move faster and trying to serve customers in different ways.
These leaders will be the game changers in the next period of expansion. How can you be one of them?
Shrinking Business
The new reality is that, barring acquisitions, your company will likely be smaller two years from now, according to Charan. In an environment of falling demand and liquidity risk, most companies have no choice but to shrink.
As bitter and painful as it may be, survival depends on cutting costs and raising cash. This is the time to narrow your focus and concentrate on your business’ core: the invaluable assets you can’t afford to lose.
Choose the market segments and customers you will continue to serve, the products you will continue to make and the suppliers from whom you will continue to buy. Eliminate the rest.
Seize opportunities to simplify your processes and reduce layers of management. In the end, you’ll have fewer customers, products, facilities, people and suppliers, but you’ll set the stage for a stronger company.
Reducing costs and managing liquidity risks will reshape and refocus your business, putting you on the offensive. You’ll turn a bad situation into an opportunity to emerge from the storm even stronger, more flexible and better positioned than the competition.
Management Intensity
Day-to-day management practices may have to change. Now’s the time to use management intensity: a deep immersion in your business’ operational details, as well as the outside world. More hands-on involvement and follow-through are required.
You need a granular understanding of what’s happening outside your company, with customers and inside operations.
Diverse parts of the business must be tightly coupled and linked to the outside. Plans and progress should be revisited almost daily. Every leader has to be involved, visible and in daily communication.
Ground-Level Intelligence
The most important type of intelligence to gather involves your customers.

Which changes in this volatile environment can affect your business?
Do you have up-to-date, detailed and unfiltered information?
How are the slowdown’s effects (credit, job losses) affecting consumer behaviors? Suppliers?
Get out in the field and observe. Salespeople are often closer to customers than other company representatives. Find out what they know or suspect trends will be.
The need for unfiltered information extends to suppliers and partners. Probe carefully to learn what’s going on throughout the value chain.
All of this information needs to be shared and examined to extract key facts and patterns as they begin to emerge. Conversations must cut across silos so you know what management, peers and subordinates are picking up on, as well as what’s happening in your area.
Only by synchronizing people as a companywide team can you obtain focus, speed, urgency and flexibility to make and execute faster decisions.
Controlling in Real Time
Increase your frequency of control, setting targets on a quarterly, monthly or even weekly basis. Revisit goals and key performance indicators, track progress toward them, and take corrective actions more often.
Volatility shortens the lifespan of a business model and strategy. Yours may become obsolete sooner than you think. Your company may have to change its approach more than once before things return to normal. Flexibility may be your line of attack, and conservation of cash may be your goal, until the economy gains strength.
Staying in close touch with your people and digging into the numbers more often will help you pick up early warning signals that your strategy, business model, tactics and/or execution aren’t working.
Build Confidence
Management intensity means watching the horizon and periphery even as you move decisively to ensure survival over the next six months. Use your ground intelligence to detect the forces that are changing the world, both during the downturn and after it ends.
Determining where things are headed isn’t easy. Even in the best of times the future is often foggy, but a persistent focus on what lies ahead, along with a pragmatic approach to preparing the company for the worst, will produce high returns.
Aggressive measures and decisive actions build optimism and confidence. Spotting opportunities and pursuing them aggressively will inspire people and change their psychology from fear to realistic optimism. Your actions and words will align people’s minds, physical energy, hearts and souls.
Authenticity Is Critical
Your presence on the front line is important to energizing people and transforming their fear into confidence – but it must be authentic. Combine rock-solid integrity and intellectual honesty with straightforwardness and the ability to confront reality.
Instill courage and optimism by putting reality on the table and addressing it decisively. Show people a credible, concrete path, and enroll other change agents who have the courage to make tough calls, without sacrificing values.
If you tell half-truths, sugarcoat bad news or fail to recognize a toxic environment, people won’t trust you. Worse, they’ll never respond to your sense of urgency.
What You Can Do
Never has it been more important for everyone in a company to understand the stresses and strains on fellow colleagues. The more you know about others’ situations, the better you can work with them as team members for organizational well-being.
Six Essential Leadership Traits for Hard Times
The following behaviors characterize a good leader in a downturn:

Honesty and credibility. This can prove difficult. Nobody can be certain about the business environment and its direction. How can you tell people what you believe when you lack full confidence? The only viable options are intellectual honesty and humility. Your authority depends on your ability to facilitate understanding and solutions – not from omniscience.
Ability to inspire.  Many people are extremely anxious. The recession descended as suddenly as a tsunami, destroying hard-earned savings and putting jobs at risk. People don’t trust what they hear, see or read. You and your team must inspire employees by working with them to toughen their resolve. Help them develop one or two realistically optimistic pictures of what can lie ahead. People need a vision that sparks the creativity required to develop new ideas and solutions.
Real-time connection to reality. Reality is a moving target. You have to keep updating your picture of it, continuously monitoring change with ground-level intelligence. The same applies to your team, whose members must put all concrete information on the table, however bad it may be. Gather info from unconventional sources, and don’t get locked into one view. Allow the picture to change as you gather new intelligence.
Realism tempered with optimism.  Unadulterated pessimism is no more realistic than unbridled optimism. The first order of realism is to understand and accept a problem’s magnitude. Then, focus your people on a vision of what’s possible. Energize them to search for actions that will help them realize their visions.  As Charan suggests, this kind of leadership becomes a performing art. When you introduce the right touch of optimism, your people will tap into their psychological reserves to deal with bad news and transform fear into action.
Managing with intensity. Dig into the right details more frequently than before. Hands-on participation is essential. Only through personal involvement can you acquire the ground-level intelligence needed to act with the required speed.
Boldness in building for the future. The need to conserve cash and survive may pressure you to shortchange the future. You must resist. It takes imagination and guts to place strategic bets with no guaranteed payoffs when there’s little money and great uncertainly; however, it’s critical to aim for long-term payoffs.
A note from Ram Charan:
“Hands on, head in, is the guiding principle.
“Adjust your mindset, gather your people, and tackle the problems squarely. I have been gratified to see that some leaders are already doing this by calling emergency meetings and asking their people to help generate ideas.
“The best of them are finding realistic solutions, communicating, and doing diligent, frequent follow-through.
“If you’re a capable leader, you will have a stronger business after the downturn than you did before.”

Sincerely


Leaders are almost by definition people who change minds.  -Howard E. Gardner, Leading Minds

There is a lack of trust in senior management, according to a survey by the human-resource firm Watson Wyatt:

Clearly, much is going wrong in the workplace. Some 40 percent of surveyed executives doubt their leaders have credible plans to address the economic crisis. Certainly, this lack of confidence harms an organization’s ability to move forward.

In light of these problems, middle managers have unprecedented opportunities to become more proactive by stepping forward and offering course corrections – and they should act with deliberate speed. Good times allow organizations to ride out challenges, but today’s tough financial climate won’t permit a wait-and-see approach.
While senior executives don’t set out to fail, research shows they make several common mistakes:

When strong leadership doesn’t come from above, it’s up to the organization itself – in particular, the people in the middle – to launch a rescue operation.

What’s Happening

You see a problem. There’s a clear need for action within a certain time frame. You’ve discussed the issues and possible solutions many times with your boss, and she has agreed with your way of thinking. For unexplained reasons, she hasn’t acted or given you the go-ahead. What do you do?

This could be a situation in which you take action and lead your boss. You develop a plan on your own, gather data (both pro and con), suggest a course of action and ask permission to move forward.
In doing so, you’re filling a leadership void through prompt decision-making and follow-through. You’re demonstrating what it takes to “manage upward,” or lead your boss. But you’ll soon discover that you need buy-in from more people, including peers and subordinates. You’ll have to become a leader without authority – an ambassador sans portfolio.

Emerging from the Middle

Those who succeed at leading from the middle are artful, skilled managers who:

To accomplish this, you must rethink what you want to achieve and how you’re going to do it. In essence, you’re not acting for yourself, but for the good of the organization. This requires initiative, persuasion, influence, courage and persistence.

Perhaps the most crucial element is a large dose of passion. You must care deeply and want to make a difference because such efforts can carry big risks.
“Leading up requires great courage and determination,” says Michael Useem, a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the seminal book Leading Up: Managing Your Boss So You Both Win. “We might fear how our superior will respond, we might doubt our right to lead up, but we all carry a responsibility to do what we can when it will make a difference.”

3 Questions to Ask

According to John Baldoni, author of Lead Your Boss, managers who lead up demonstrate they’re aware of the bigger picture. They’re ready, willing and able to do whatever it takes to strengthen the organization and team.

Baldoni urges readers to ask themselves three questions:

  1. What does the leader need? The boss is responsible for motivating her people to get things right. What does she need to do her job better? To help her, you’ll need to think more strategically and act tactically.
  2. What does the team need? Teams don’t always pull together because egos get in the way. The boss ends up spending valuable time soothing hurt feelings. What if a team member were to step forward and help bring everyone together? This would free the boss to focus on bigger issues, and the team would be more productive.
  3. What can I do to help the leader and team succeed? Perhaps you can take on more responsibility or step back and let others rally. Maybe you can sacrifice a personal need that allows the team to conquer a challenge. What will it take to help everyone push ahead?

When you can answer these questions and formulate an action plan, you’ll have a roadmap for leading your boss in ways that make her look good and the team succeed. You’ll  emerge as a team player who is adept at making the right things happen.

Your ability to lead up is an indication of your potential to become a senior leader. How you demonstrate initiative, overcome obstacles and promote resilience are critical measures of senior leadership. If you influence your boss and convince others to work together, you’ll open the door to future promotions and the chance to lead the entire organization.

The View from Above

Developing managers who can lead from the middle is a sound management practice that won’t undermine a CEO’s authority. When these managers take ownership of issues, make decisions and accept accountability for the results, their bosses have the freedom to think and act strategically, without getting bogged down in tactical matters.

This not only creates a stronger organization in the short run, but it equips emerging leaders for greater challenges and advancement to senior leadership positions. And with flagging confidence in today’s senior leaders, there’s no better time for leadership to come from below.

What’s Needed to Lead Up?

To lead up, you must:

You will also need to think and act strategically, which requires creativity and imagination:

Assertive Diplomacy

Taking initiative requires assertiveness, confidence and decisiveness. Effective leaders radiate power and seem to be in total control.

But too much assertiveness (i.e., aggressiveness) drives people away, discourages collaboration and causes people to resist your influence.

Assertiveness, by definition, is the outcome of acting like a leader; that is, it gives people a reason to believe in your abilities to decide, act and lead others.

Managers on the way up want to ensure they’re seen as “assertive enough.” Those at or near the top are often advised to be “less assertive.” In truth, there’s a special kind of assertiveness that is just right – a quiet confidence and power that Baldoni calls “reflective assertiveness.” It emerges from experiences, including one’s trials and triumphs. It requires both humility and resilience.

To cultivate reflective assertiveness, you must:

  1. Listen first. A leader’s ability to listen signals that he values others’ ideas and input.
  2. Keep it low. People know where power lies. You don’t need to advertise it. If you model quiet power, you can remain calm when tempers fly.
  3. Act decisively. The payoff to reflective assertiveness is decisiveness. You demonstrate strength by acting confidently. Even if you need some time to think before taking action, you can keep people informed about how the decision-making process is progressing.

Challenge Ideas, Not People

It takes gumption to challenge assumptions and the status quo. Middle managers must care enough to shake things up, and they’re in a perfect position to see what doesn’t work.

Those who resist your ideas will undoubtedly outnumber your supporters at first, but persistence pays off. Begin by challenging “the way we’ve always done it.” You must be willing to rethink options. Only then can you create new possibilities and solutions.

At the same time, you may find it uncomfortable to challenge those in authority. It’s a natural feeling. The trick is to challenge assumptions, not the individuals in positions of power. Focus on ideas, not personalities.

Push Back

Not all bosses want to be led. Some fear their authority will be undermined. Others are so insecure that leadership from below is a threat that must be stamped out at all cost.

These obstacles shouldn’t prevent you from trying to lead your boss, when appropriate. Observe the following guidelines:

Dealing with a Jerk Boss

In some cases, all of the best data in the world won’t convince your boss that you’re right. If he’s a jerk, he’s probably insecure. He acts tough because he’s afraid of losing his job and control over others.

Jerk bosses cannot be reasoned with, so don’t even try. You can roll over, fight back or leave. Choose wisely.

Bounce Back

Ultimately, what really matters is how we recover when things don’t go our way. Resilience gives you the strength you need when faced with rejection.

Review these points:

The resilience to bounce back from a raw deal distinguishes those who succeed from those who become stuck, bitter and angry. It’s important for you to remain focused on goals and engaged in the process of fulfilling them.

True leaders will step up to the plate, regardless of where they fall on the organizational food chain. They see a need and are driven to find solutions. When they distrust their senior leaders, they spot opportunities to step in, lead up and prove their value.

Never give up on your dreams, and continue your pursuit of making a difference.

Sincerely,

David Joud
Dynamic Strategic Alignment
www.DSAlignment.com
Coach@DSAlignment.com


Even with a solid foundation of good moral values, no one is immune to making unethical choices.

Ethical slips and traps are rampant, from telling white lies that protect a friend, to ignoring a gut feeling and following orders when we know better.

Not a month goes by without some highly publicized ethical scandal. Be it tax evasion, executive pay excesses, sexual dalliances and outright fraud, many individuals are simply unable to resist temptation.

Does this make the perpetrators corrupt sociopaths?

Sometimes, but usually not. They’re often leaders and pillars of the community, and their actions leave us shaking our heads and wondering what were they thinking.

The sad truth? No one is immune. Cheating isn’t limited to those in positions of power. While power is certainly fraught with opportunities and temptations, each of us faces daily choices that involve doing the right—or wrong—thing. Only when a CEO, politician, celebrity or sports legend gets caught does the problem rise to front-page news. Just ask Tiger Woods.

But the same ethical traps lie in your path. Even the little guys transgress. Often, people feel an urge to cheat—a strange pull to try to get away with something. Sometimes it’s small; other times it’s scandalous. Sometimes it matters; other times it goes unnoticed.

What exactly happens inside our heads when we choose to violate our ethical standards? Do we lose sight of what’s right? Do we take the easy way out? Are we driven to win at any price? Are we attracted to our “dark side”?

Ethical Roots

Psychology and other social sciences offer a huge body of experimental studies that demonstrate the allure of cheating. In The Ethical Executive (Stanford University Press, 2008), Robert Hoyk and Paul Hersey describe 45 ethical traps inherent in any organizational environment.

Many of these traps are psychological in nature, creating “webs of deception” that distort our perception of right and wrong. Such rationalizations lead us to believe our unethical behavior is normal and appropriate, and they have contributed to large-scale corporate disasters like the Enron and WorldCom affairs.

The Brain Science of Traps

Fish are caught in wire cages with funnel-shaped entrances, which are designed to direct the fish to swim inside.

In the same way, individuals and organizations move in a certain direction—one that may trap them if they fail to reverse an ill-fated course.

At any given moment, we have impulses that motivate us to act. They are reactions to internal or external stimuli, which may be powerful enough to trigger automatic behavior. At this point, we may rationally ignore other (and better) options.

Other times, we’re aware of several distinct choices, but the stimulus’ effect overrides these potential actions. We may desire a specific outcome so strongly that it propels us to move in an unsound direction. Anxiety and stress may also compel us to make choices that alleviate our short-term distress, yet lead to irrevocable long-term consequences.

Our ultimate behavior depends on a complex weave of situational factors, history and personality.

Four Basic Tribal Drives

Some experts believe we’re motivated by four basic human drives that have evolved from our primitive ancestors:

  1. The drive to acquire and improve our status in the tribe
  2. The drive to bond with others
  3. The drive to learn and acquire knowledge
  4. The drive to defend and protect

These drives are especially evident in American and other modern cultures. We work hard to provide for our families, far beyond our survival needs for food, clothing and shelter. Many of us are highly motivated to land the best job, home and/or salary possible. It’s human nature to want to acquire things that make our families comfortable and happy. Many of us are driven to be the smartest or most prestigious person in the room.

Much of our energy goes toward protecting what we have and defending our territories, families, positions, rights and freedoms—a strong drive that explains why nations go to war.

Organizations are like theaters, where actors play out their desires to acquire, bond, learn and defend. There’s no better stage to demonstrate our tribal drives, and nowhere are there more daily opportunities to choose between right and wrong.

The Ethical Stage

As children, we were primed to obey our parents. Our very survival depended on it. Some families demanded strict obedience; others were lenient about opposition and rebellion; still others encouraged creativity and individual spirit.

But all families required obedience to authority. This conditioning continued in school. Consequently, as adults, when our boss orders us to do something, we quickly obey—often, without thinking.

If an authority figure orders us to do something unethical, our sense of obedience may be so powerful that we follow orders without acknowledging that we’re going against our ethical principles. The impulse to obey is so strong that it overrides rational judgment.

Root Causes of Traps

Obedience to authority is a “primary” trap, which means a strong external stimulus impels us to move in a certain direction, without regard for our ethical principles.

In business, people don’t abandon their ethics simply because they want to maximize profits. Rather, their drive to acquire and improve their status lures them into a social-psychological trap.

This often happens in small steps—yet another trap. If you place a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will jump out quickly. But if you place it in the pot and slowly increase the heat, it will remain there and be cooked.

Small steps and choices create minor ethical transgressions that do little harm, but they set the direction that eventually leads to major, irreversible violations.

Primary Traps

Hoyk and Hersey describe three types of social-psychological traps that occur in the workplace: primary, defensive and personality. They include:

  1. Obedience to authority
  2. Small steps
  3. Indirect responsibility
  4. Faceless victims
  5. Lost in the group
  6. Competition
  7. Self-interest
  8. Tyranny of goals
  9. Money
  10. Conformity
  11. Power
  12. Obligation
  13. Time pressures

When we carefully review and understand these traps, we can prepare for—and avoid—them. Our choices become sound.

A Study of Business Ethics

Twelve years ago, Joseph Badaracco, an ethics professor at the Harvard Business School, interviewed 30 recent MBA graduates who had faced ethical dilemmas in the business world. All of them had taken an ethics class at Harvard. Half of them worked for companies that had official ethics programs.

As Badaracco notes:

“Corporate ethics programs, codes of conduct, mission statements, hot lines, and the like provided little help…the young managers resolved the dilemmas they faced largely on the basis of personal reflection and individual values, not through reliance on corporate credos, company loyalty, the exhortations of senior executives, philosophical principles or religious reflection.”

Most of the Harvard-educated managers had learned their personal values primarily from their family upbringing, not from ethics courses. Traditional ethics education based on philosophical principles does not always transfer to the workplace.

What does make for better choices in our jobs, however, is an understanding of the root causes of unethical behaviors: the psychological dynamics. If managers have a firm knowledge of how pervasive and compelling ethical traps can be, they can use this understanding to objectify what’s happening to them.

When you can think and talk about these traps with a trusted colleague, mentor or coach, then their allure and the possible distortions they evoke can be revealed. Some distance is created between the person, the choice and the trap. As a result, anxieties are reduced, improved clarity is achieved and more effective choices can be made.

Traditionally, business-ethics and MBA programs present vignettes of ethical dilemmas one may face, such as pollution, sexual harassment, product safety and discrimination. These problems have no clear right or wrong answers. To solve them, students are often provided with an outline of eight to 12 critical questions. A sample is provided here for your use.