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REPOST: Listening With the Intent to Understand

by Ron Potter
A Note From the Editor:
As we recently mentioned, we are reposting popular blog posts while Ron is recovering from some health issues.

The next time you’re listening to something, especially on a topic where you don’t necessarily agree, try this experiment: Use part of your brain to pay attention to what you’re thinking when listening to the other person. It’s okay. Your brain has a lot more capacity than your think. You can actually listen to another person at the same time as you act as an observer to watch what your own brain is doing. I know you can.

If you’re like most of us, you’ll find your own brain developing some sort of checklist:

  • Those two points support my side of the argument so I’ll immediately respond with those.
  • That point is not supported by fact, so I can instantly discount that.
  • That reminds me I need to pick up dog food on the way home.
  • I can’t believe they actually think that point is valid. How could they be so naive?

Then the moment happens. The other person pauses; they may not even be finished with their point of view, but just pausing a moment to collect their thoughts or even pausing a moment before presenting their obviously convincing closing statement. It makes no difference; it’s a pause.
So you jump in:

“Let me reinforce a couple of statements you made earlier because I believe they make my point exactly. And let me also clarify another conclusion you reached that is counter to all the facts we have.”

And on and on and on until you’re forced to pause and the cycle repeats.

If this scenario reflects in any way what you are experiencing while “listening” to other people, then you listen with the intent to respond. Most of us do it. Most of us do it most of the time. It takes a conscious effort and some practice to actually start listening with the intent to understand. But what a difference it will make in your life if you even get marginally good at it.

When you listen with the intent to understand, your curiosity kicks in. You’re not trying to catalog the points you’re hearing. You’re wondering:

  • I wonder why they believe that?
  • I wonder what experience they’ve had with this in the past?
  • I wonder who they trust on this and why?
  • I wonder what they believe will be the best outcome?

If you’re truly curious and wondering, then your response when that inevitable pause comes will be totally different.
Your first reaction to the pause may be to simply wait to see if there is a conclusion or further thoughts.
You may actually ask if there is a conclusion on further thought.
You may express your wonderment and curiosity and begin to ask questions or clarification or deeper understanding or more background.

Whatever you’re response. If it’s driven by curiosity and wonderment, the other person will immediately know that you’ve been listening to understand. You want to understand, you want to know their viewpoint. This sparks a very different reaction on their part.
A few key things happen from their point-of-view:

  • Once they realize you’re trying to understand their point-of-view, they become less rigid in their stance and more willing to admit it’s just their point-of-view.
  • They become more open to questioning their own point-of-view because you’re honestly questioning it in an attempt to understand and not with the intent to control or discredit it.
  • And most importantly, once you’ve fully listened to and attempted to understand their point-of-view, they’re much more willing to listen to and be open to your point-of-view.

Steven Covey, in his The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, indicates that one of the seven habits is to “seek to understand before being understood.” This is what he was talking about.

Listen with the intent to understand. Practice it. Use it often. You’ll be amazed at how much people are willing to share with you and how much they’re willing to listen to and understand your point-of-view.
Try it. It will be refreshing.

And one more solid point: In my book, Trust Me: Developing A Leadership Style People are Willing to Follow, the number one trait of great leaders is humility. The foundation of humility is the willingness to listen with the intent to understand.

What’s your reaction when someone actually listens to you and truly wants to understand?

This post was originally posted here on January 15, 2015.
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BlogPersonal

Firsts

by Ron Potter

We received a card the other day and in the card, and they mentioned that they missed my blogs.  It was not my intention to stop blogging,  it’s just that my health issues have left me with the inability of producing weekly blogs as I have done for years.  It takes more “thinking” than I have the ability to accomplish and it has left me with typing skills that are almost non-existent.  That lead me to remember those “first” things I ever did.  Much of the world was ahead of me on many of these fronts but they were “firsts” for me.

Typing Class in High School

I attended a very small high school.  One of the skills I thought would be useful for me in college and beyond was typing so I joined my high school typing class.  I was the only boy in the room and because I was the fastest and most accurate I was at the head of my class.  Unfortunately, that upset the girls in the class as they prepared to become secretaries and typists in the business world.  They didn’t have a lot of opportunities in the business world when we were graduating.

Survey Class in My First Couple Years of College

One of my early classes in college was a survey class.  At the time we would have to go into the field and run a survey circuit.  We would make notes during the survey and then return to the classroom and use a hand crank Friden Calculator to check all of our notes and make sure our math “closed.”  If your work “closed,” great.  If not, back to the field to start over.  It was very time-consuming and I felt I needed to find a better way.

I had started to hear about a Curta Calculator on the road race circuit.  They used it to calculate the speed needed to hit their next point as accurately as possible.  Now I could go into the field, take all my notes, then sit under a tree and use my Curta to check my math.  I still own my Curta over 50 years later.

Structural Steel (Walking)

My first job out of engineering school was walking structural steel on a power plant.  I worked as high as 160′ in the air.  That’s approximately a 16-story building.  Back then, there was no safety harness belt or any netting below me.  Just me, the breeze, my instruments, and an 8-inch beam to walk on.  It was a terrifying experience but I had a wise chief engineer.

When I went to him after that first day of terror and told him I couldn’t do that, he asked me to spend two weeks doing the best I could at my job up on the steel.  If I still wanted off the steel, he would find me another job to accomplish.  His wisdom came with the fact that after two weeks, I could do the job.  There were still terrifying moments but I learned a great deal about facing my fears and what my fears were.

Introducing Computers

I had finished my bachelor’s degree at Michigan on a slide rule.  I still own my Pickett from those days.  Several years later I was teaching a course in the graduate engineering school at the University of Utah.  None of the students had seen or touched a computer yet.  I introduced them to computers and had them working on a program for scheduling that I had hired a friend of mine to write.  Soon after, microcomputers were introduced and the computer age began.

Blackberry

In the late 90s, a company called Research in Motion (RIM) introduced what they called the Blackberry.  I was blown away.  RIM introduced the Blackberry publically in late 1999 (December?).  I purchased my first one within months of that introduction.

Consulting with Executives

After years in engineering and software, I decided that I wanted to become a consultant.  I started with a partner who has been in the business and learned “the ropes.”  Eventually, I struck out on my own and named my company TLC standing for Team, Leadership, Culture.

I was working with one of my first CEOs and we had just finished a session with members of his teams from around the world.  It was just him and me in his office that evening and he said,

  • You helped me to build that global team more than I could have imagined.
  • You’ve taught me more about being a leader than I’ve ever seen in the leaders I’ve worked for.
  • Today you helped me build more of that into the culture of the company than I could believe.

At that point, I was feeling pretty good about my TLC company.  Then he said, “Dut your real value is…”!!  I was shaken.  I couldn’t imagine what he was talking about.  He had just covered every point of TLC.  He finished, “Your real value is when we talk like this.”  That’s when I learned that corporate leaders needed someone they could talk with, someone they could trust, and someone they could express their fears with.  That was my greatest value.

Dictate in Word

Because of the deterioration of my typing skills I needed to find a new way to create blogs other than just typing them out.  I discovered that Microsoft Word has a dictate section.  I’m now learning how to talk with MS Word and convert it into text for publishing my blogs.

My “Firsts”

I’m sure there are others but the ones that came to mind for this blog included:

  • Typing Class
  • Survey Class
  • Learning about my fears on the structural steel
  • Computers and Blackberrys
  • Being a sounding board for executives
  • Converting my spoken word to the written word

Our “firsts” help determine who we are.  They shape us and form us.  Think about the “firsts” you’re accomplished or even walked away from.  You’ll discover a lot about who you are.

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BlogIn-Depth Book Reviews

The Fifth Discipline

by Ron Potter

I retired from business travel at age 70.  I just turned 74 and it seems impossible that it has already been four years.  During my business career, I did a lot of reading.  I read novels and business books.  I never talked too much about the business books I was reading because I assumed that most of the business leaders I was working with were also reading the same books.

I Was Wrong

Those leaders were so engulfed in running and leading their businesses they really didn’t have time for outside reading.  Although some of the books are old, they contain many pearls of wisdom about leading and running a business.  I’m going to spend the next few weeks sharing some of the wisdom I picked up from those books.

The Fifth Discipline

This is a book by Peter Senge talks about four skills of great teams then wraps it all together with Integrated Learning, the fifth displine.  He outlines this book into four categories:

  1. Personal Mastery
  2. Mental Models
  3. Building Shared Vision
  4. Team Learning
  5. Integrated Learning
    At the heart of a learning organization is a mind—from seeing ourselves as separate from the world to connected to the world.
    From seeing problems as caused by someone or something “out there” to seeing how our own actions create the problems we experience.

Personal Mastery

Senge talks about people with a high level of personal mastery are people who are able to consistently realize the results that matter most deeply to them.

They do that by becoming committed to their own lifelong learning.

Mental Models

Mental models are deeply ingrained assumptions and generalizations of how we understand the world and take action.  This starts with turning the mirror inward, learning to unearth our internal pictures of the world, to bring them to the surface, and hold them rigorously to scrutiny.  People expose their own thinking effectively and make that thinking open to the influence of others.

Building Shared Vision

We are hard-pressed to think of any organization that has sustained some measure of greatness in the absence of goals, values, and missions that become deeply shared throughout the organization.

The practice of shared vision involves the skills of unearthing shared “pictures of the future” that foster genuine commitment and enrollment rather than compliance.

Team Learning

Team learning starts with dialogue.  To the Greeks, dialogues meant a free-flowing of meaning through a group, allowing the group to discover insights not attainable individually.

Dialog differs from the more common discussion which has its roots in percussion and concussion.  Literally a heaving of ideas back and forth in a winner-takes-all competition.

Fifth Discipline: Integrated Learning

The fifth discipline is the discipline that integrates the disciplines, fusing them into a coherent body of theory and practice.

By enhancing each of the other disciplines, it continually reminds us that the whole can exceed the sum of its parts.

At the heart of a learning organization is a shift of mind from seeing ourselves as separate from the world to connected to the world, from seeing problems caused by someone or something “out there” to see how our own actions create the problems we experience.

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BlogTeam

Conquering Our Fears

by Ron Potter

It was a beautiful sunny day.  A light breeze was blowing and I was walking along a sidewalk.  What conditions could make it better?

Well for one, it would have been great to have some safety equipment.  My walk wasn’t exactly on a sidewalk.  I was about 140 forty feet in the air (fourteen stories) walking on an 8″ I-beam with no safety equipment.  To further hamper the situation, for those who know me, you already know that I’m extremely knock-kneed.  When my knees are tightly together, the inside of my feet are still 5″ apart.  This makes it even more difficult when you walking on a “sidewalk” that is only 8 inches wide.

I was just out of engineering school and this was in the day prior to safety equipment.  No belt tied off to anything.  No net to catch me if I fell.  If I missed a step, it was 140′ straight down to a concrete slab.

Encouraged to Overcome Fears

At the end of that first day, I went to see the chief engineer and said I just couldn’t do that job.  I spent the whole day terrified.  His come back was “Give it three weeks.  If at the end of that time you still can’t do it I’ll give you another assignment.”

I’m sure he had worked with other “rookies” through his career and had learned about facing your fears and then overcoming them.  Who knows, he may have gone through the same experience in his early career.

Facing my fears

So the next day I was back in the structural steel doing my job the best that I could while dealing with my fears.

While I was up 140′, the Ironworkers were another 20 feet above me continuing to put the entire structure together.  We topped out at about 200 feet.  These Ironworkers ran around grabbing beams being lifted to them by cranes and loosely bolting them together.  They were running around as if they were on that sidewalk on a breezy, sunny day.  I could tell they were watching me with amusement as I carefully picked my way through steel 20 feet below them.

Discipline and Focus to Overcome Fears

I began to learn a technique that worked for me and helped me move across that 8″ I-beam approximately 40′ in distance.  I would stand at one column with my back wedged in as tight as possible so that I felt secure and then I would begin focusing on the column 40′ away that I had to walk to.  As I focused more and more, a flaw or mark in the structural steel began to become visible to me.  It was something I could look at and keep my focus on.

The next move was to step out on the beam, never losing my focus on my spot, and begin walking.  If I looked down I would fall.  If I moved my focus left or right, I would step off the I-beam.

I stayed focused and disciplined to keep walking forward.  Eventually, I reached the other side and the “safety” of another column.

Distractions Throw Off your Focus and Discipline

After a couple of weeks, the Ironworkers thought I had become more than a curiosity to watch and was now something to be played with.

After slowing my breathing, locking in my focus, and stepping out to walk my next I-beam, I was nearly halfway across when an Ironworker slid down the column where my focus spot was and began walking toward me.

One of the first things they teach you before going into the steel was the technique for passing someone in the middle of a beam.  You were to stand toe-to-toe with the other person, grasp each other’s wrists tightly, and then lean back until your weight was balanced.  Then you would slowly swivel 180 degrees, keeping your toes on the beam and your weight balanced.  After the swivel was completed, you turned and continued walking the other way.

After we completed our little dance, the Ironworker turned and walked away from me chuckling.  I was left standing in the middle of the beam trying to settle my brain, my fear, and regain a focus point.  I finally captured a focus point on the column I had just come from and walked to it.  It took me several minutes to calm my heart and breathing to get the fear in my brain to subside while clinging to the column —the one I had just come from.

All the while there was a chorus of laughter coming from the ironworkers overhead.   On the way down in the construction elevator that night one of the Ironworkers said quietly how proud he was of me for handling such a scary situation.

Distractions: Outside and Inside.

Distractions will come at you from anywhere.  The outside world is constantly throwing distractions at you.  I really don’t like the word “busy” because it indicates to me that you’re letting those outside distractions rule your life and are not facing the fears and difficult situations that you need to face to be successful.

The inside distractions are maybe even worse.  They’re excuses!  Seemly valid reasons for not facing your fears or developing the focus and discipline to overcome them.

Fears are natural and they are powerful.  But they are just fears.

One definition says that fear is “an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that something is dangerous, likely to cause pain.”  Notice that it’s based on a “belief”.  Just because you fear something doesn’t make it a real threat.

Get focused.  Be disciplined.  Make the decision to face your fears and overcome them.

I was fortunate to have that fearful experience just a few weeks into my work career.  It set the tone for a lifetime of facing my fears directly.  You may not have had that early experience but it doesn’t make any difference.  Starting to face your fears at any point in your life will make the rest of your life much better.

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BlogCulture

Four Tools of Discipline

by Ron Potter

Shane Parrish (my favorite blogger) wrote an article titled “The Four Tools of Discipline”.  The four he lists are:

  1. Delaying Gratification
  2. Accepting Responsibility
  3. Dedication to Reality
  4. Balancing

Dealing with Difficulties

Shane sets up the article with a few quotes from other well-known people.

Scott Peck from “The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth”.  This has been one of my favorite books through the years.

Peck points out that most of us want to avoid problems.  They’re painful, frustrating, sad, and lonely.  All things that we would prefer to avoid.  But he also points out that the whole process of facing, dealing with, and solving problems is what gives meaning to our lives.

Benjamin Franklin said, “Those things that hurt, instruct.”  He said that fearing the pain involved we attempt to avoid them.  We procrastinate, ignore, forget, and pretend they don’t exist.  We attempt to get out of the pain rather than suffer through it.

Avoiding problems avoids the opportunity for growth!  Shane lists the four disciplines needed to face and deal with the problems.

Delaying Gratification

We’ve all seen this play out in our lives.  I’ve been desiring a new watch.  Do I need one?  Not really.  Do I need one right now?  Definitely not!  What would delayed gratification tell me to do?  Wait?  The price will likely come down.  I have a watch that meets my needs right now?  Will I put off the purchase of the new watch?  Probably not.  Why?  Because I want it and I want it right now.

You can see the difference in children who have learned to delay their gratification.  If they haven’t, they want something now and will raise all kinds of calamity so that the parents will stop trying to delay their gratification and just give them what they want in order to shut them up.  The child has learned that if they just throw a new and louder tantrum, they’ll eventually get what they want.  They never learn delayed gratification.  Unfortunately, that leads to difficulties as young adults and even into their adult lives.

Accepting Responsibility

Shane says that accepting responsibility is emotionally uncomfortable.  He’s right.  It’s easier to say

  • traffic delayed me
  • someone else did the wrong thing, it wasn’t my fault
  • no one told me about the bigger picture or what was at stake
  • It wasn’t my fault.  It wasn’t my fault.  It wasn’t my fault.

The list goes on and on.  Shane closes that section with the following statement

Whenever we seek to avoid responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual, organization, or entity.

Dedication to Reality

My blog last week was titled “Reality is Constructed by Our Brain”.  In that blog, I quoted Brian Resnick who said “Intellectual humility: the importance of knowing you might be wrong.  Knowing that you might be wrong should drive you to be curious about how others see their “reality”.  If it doesn’t create that curiosity, it causes us to dig in our heels about what we believe to be true and our own version of what reality is.

Scott Peck says “Truth or reality is avoided when it is painful.  We can revise our maps only when we have the discipline to overcome that pain.”

Shane says “The only way we can ensure our map is correct and accurate is to expose it to the criticism of others.”

If we believe our view of the world is the one and only correct view, we remain closed to the view of others.

Balancing

Shane says that “Balancing is the discipline that gives us flexibility.  Extraordinary flexibility is required for successful living in all spheres of activity.”

A few blogs back I talked about Simone Biles and the balance she exhibits in her gymnastic routines.  There are only a handful of people in the world who can come close to the physical balance she exhibits.  But many of us can work at and accomplish that kind of balance in our mental thinking.

Delaying gratification.
Accepting responsibility.
Dedication to reality.
Balancing.

Let’s close with the last one, “Balancing”.  Think about balancing the other three.  If the first three get too far out of balance with each other, problems arise.

Too much-delayed gratification without a dedication to reality will lead to frustration.  Eventually, the question will arise, delayed gratification to what end?  If there is nothing at the end of the tunnel, the delayed gratification is for nothing, it only leads to frustration.

As I was about to write the next statement about “Accepting Responsibility”, I found myself looking over at a picture of my father.  He had lost a leg during WWII.  I never heard him talk about how the Germans were responsible.  I never heard him talk about how the generals and leadership were responsible.  While he may not have accepted responsibility, he did accept reality.  He came home from the war, married, started a business, and had four children.

The picture I found myself looking at was dad (with his cane) and all four kids out on a frozen pond with a hatched while he taught us to cut a hole in the ice for ice fishing.  Looking at that picture reminded me why he has been one of the most influential in my life.

Balance.  Balance.  Balance.

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BlogLeadership

The Good Ole Days

by Ron Potter

Notice anything unusual about these medieval castle ruins?  You wouldn’t unless you knew it was built in the 18th century to resemble a medieval castle constructed in the mid-five hundreds.

Why do we have this fascination with the “good ole days”?

The Good Ole Days

I was born in the late nineteen forties.  So for me, the good ole days were probably the decade of the ’50s.  I have fond memories of lying in the front yard at night, looking at the stars, and listening to the Tigers play baseball on my portable radio.

We lived in the country about 3 miles from town.  I remember getting on my bike and riding to town and anywhere else I wanted to go.

We also lived on a piece of property with a wonderful stream running through it.  I remember leaving the house with my Red Rider BB gun.  On every occasion, my mother would say “don’t get wet!”  And on every occasion, I would come home wet.

To me, those were the good ole days.

But they weren’t all good.  I remember doing nuclear bomb drills at my school where we got under our desks.  Seems ridiculous now but that was all we had at the time.  My dad who had lost a leg in WWII built a new house in the early ’50s.  Off one corner of the basement, he built what we knew as the “storm shelter” but as I look back today, it may have been his attempt to build a bomb shelter.

Those “good ole days” were not all good.  But my memories of the good parts seem to outweigh the bad parts.  Research demonstrates that our mind enhances those good moments to the point of fantasy.  They were good but not as good as we remember.

The Good Ole Days were short-lived

For me, those good ole days were pretty much the 50’s.  The 60’s brought the sexual and drug revolution.  I didn’t understand or get involved with either.  I had a family member who dropped out of college in his senior year and moved to Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco.  That made no sense to me at all.

By the 70’s, I had graduated from Engineering School and was working.  I enjoyed it but it was work.  Not like the good ole days of being carefree.

In the ’80s I started a software company.  It was a new technology and it was exciting.  But still not like the good ole days.

From the ’90s on I had moved into Leadership and Team consulting and coaching.  Probably the most satisfying work I could imagine but I also had to sit in an airplane seat for 4 million miles to accomplish it.  Still not the good ole days.

So I began to wonder, are everyone’s “good ole days” short-lived and from an earlier part of their lives?  I imagine they could come from any portion of our lives but I believe they are probably short-lived.  So why this yearning for the good ole days when it was such a small portion of our lives?  A Wall Street Journal article indicated that 41% of Americans believe life is worse today than 50 years ago.

Placing our Identity in the past can be both natural and useful

I must admit that much of my identity is based on my life during the ’50s.  Life seemed to be simpler.  Life seemed to be more about community.  Life seemed to be more carefree.  I would head out the back door and jump on my bike and head in almost any direction I wished.  My grandchildren don’t have that kind of freedom today.  It’s sad to me but I also need to remind myself that every generation has probably experienced very changes.

Leaders and Team Members

I think the lesson here is to not get too stuck in our own “good ole days”, no matter how recent or distant.  I entered the workforce in the early seventies.  That was less than 30 years after the end of WWII.  America was rebuilding and the management approach of the day was built on a military model that many of the leaders had experienced first hand.  But that model was already beginning to chafe on the young generation (me) who wanted to be more entrepreneurial and innovative and not just do what we were told to do.

After starting in traditional engineering work, I saw my first microcomputer.  This was new and exciting and I wanted to be a part of it.  When I told my boss that I wanted to shift out of engineering and into microcomputers his response was “what’s a microcomputer?” I said hang on, you’ll find out.  In a few years, we had shifted the work that we had been doing on an IBM370 which we leased for tens of thousands of dollars per month to microcomputers that cost almost nothing in comparison.

Millennials

As I was wrapping up my 50 years in the business world, almost every leader I was working with was complaining about the millennial generation and their lack of a good work ethic.  I watched that generation get excited about things and put in many hours and a lot of brainpower.  They were working through something entirely new and exciting and different than any company had seen before.  It’s not that they didn’t have a work ethic (good ole day thinking) but they liked tackling things in new and innovative ways.  They were doing things differently, just like every generation before them.

As a leader, you need to keep an open mind and watch with curiosity and interest how the next generation is tackling things.  Mentor them.  Guide them.  Don’t tell them they need to do things as it has always been done in the good ole days.

Learn from them.  One of your jobs as a leader is to keep learning.

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BlogLeadership

Know or Didn’t Know

by Ron Potter

In an earlier blog, I was wondering about why we didn’t have the philosophers today like the ones who were around thousands of years ago.  Then I came to the conclusion that many of today’s philosophers were songwriters and singers.  I zeroed in on Billy Joel in particular as a philosopher of our day.

Modern Day Philosophers

Two songwriters/singers caught my attention the other day because they seemed to be thinking about and signing about an idea from entirely different directions.

One was Rod Stewart and the group, Faces. The song is “Ooh La La”:

I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was younger
I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was stronger

The other was Bob Seger in his song, “Against the Wind”:

Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then

I don’t know if they are on opposite ends of the same scale or just asking different questions.  But if you think about these lyrics, it can create some deep thoughts.

Knew More?

Do you wish that you knew more in your youth? (When I was younger, I wished that I knew what I know now.)

On the one hand, I would say no, I don’t wish that.  I believe the sense of curiosity and adventure is formed and honed when you’re young.  If you were fortunate enough to have mentors that encouraged those traits, they likely served you well and created a lifelong habit of wanting to know and understand things as well as a desire to try things.  When I meet people who are lacking one or both of those traits, it seems to me that they are falling short of living their life to the fullest.

On the other hand, knowing more may have helped you understand people and circumstances better.  As I age, there are often times when my thoughts say, “Boy, I didn’t see that coming!”

But in general, I think that knowing more when you are younger probably feeds your ego more than your curiosity and that’s not a good thing.

Didn’t Know

Seger talks about being as naive and innocent now as when he was younger.

Again, on the one hand, it might be easier to be living the kind of life that you were when you were younger.  I grew up in what I considered almost an idyllic setting.  We had a small piece of property that had a stream running through it.  Every time I would leave the house my mother would say “don’t get wet.”  I, of course, “fell” into the stream every day.  Even during Michigan winters.  I also lived in a rural area and it was a three-mile bike ride to town.  My biggest worry during those days was a flat tire on my bike.

On the other hand, it would almost require seclusion from the world to avoid the bigger problems of an adult.  We do run into those people who have protected themselves so much from the world.  They assume their experience and life is the only one or certainly, the only right one that exists.  I think of those people as having and knowing a very small world.

Perspective

People with a “large world” perspective see things differently.   Even if their world is physically small, they look at the bigger picture and try to understand what others are thinking from a different perspective than their own.

My father ventured beyond his physical boundaries once when he served in WWII.  After the war that he had spent in North Africa and Italy, he came back to Michigan.  I only remember leaving the state once during the rest of his life, but he seemed to have a big world perspective.  During my college years in the Engineering School of the University of Michigan, I would learn something new about the engineering world and couldn’t wait to share it with my dad.  I assumed that I would finally know something beyond his high school education in the same small town that he raised me.  But it seems that whatever the topic, he would say something like “I’ve been reading a lot about that topic.  What do you think this aspect means?”  Of course, I didn’t know the answer because he knew more about the topic than I did.  He was a very “large world” thinker.  I have one cherished possession left from my father.  Here is a picture of his dictionary.

Living Around the World

All four of my grandchildren have lived in different parts of the world.  But just being physically worldly, doesn’t make you worldly in your thoughts or attitudes.  They all see the world as large, expansive, and varied.  It will serve them well.

Examine Your World View

How large is your world?  Think about it!  You’ll never know it all but expanding your world through curiosity, learning, and gaining understanding will keep you in a “growth mindset” which is essential for great leaders.

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BlogMyers Briggs Type IndicatorMyers-Briggs

Myers Briggs Type Indicator: Energizing

by Ron Potter

Extroversion or introversion. Where do you get your energy from?  In Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) this is known as your energizing function.  More importantly, if you’re making a decision, which side of the pair do you need to be in when you are comfortable or convinced the decision you’re making is right.  We are energized by extraversion or introversion.

Extravert or Introvert Labels

I think this pair more than any of the others has been misused when we label people.  I clearly fall on the extraversion side of this pair.  In fact, when I take the assessment I usually have the highest possible score on the extraverted side.  People often assume that extroverts talk all the time.

Even though I score the highest possible score in that area, I spend a great deal of time reading and thinking quietly.  My amazon statistics indicate that I read somewhere between 50 and 100 books a year.  I spend that time in silence.  I enjoy writing these blogs, creating visuals, both Powerpoints and animations, for my consulting work.

Every month or so I look forward to getting up to my cabin which sits in the middle of 500 acres of wilderness in northern Michigan to enjoy the quiet, solitude, time to think, and time to write.  I spend much of my time being completely quiet.  This is not a trait associated with extroverts.

However, if I’ve been thinking through a concept or a decision I have to make during this quiet time, I must talk it over with someone before I’ll make the decision I’m confident about.  If I make a decision with quiet time only, then I’m always questioning the decision.  I need to talk it through with someone.  I need their thoughts and opposing views to be sure of my decision in the end.  I am energized by my extraversion preferences!

Introverts Can Be Talkative

One of the traits of introverts is that if they’ve had time to think about a topic (which puts them into the introverted preference), they’re ready to talk.  They will be fully engaged in the conversations and willing to share their thoughts.  However, if we extraverts suddenly bring up an idea they haven’t had time to quietly think about they may go quiet.

What I’ve seen happen more often with teams is the introvert will simply repeat what they’ve already said.  It can often sound as if they are saying to us “Didn’t you hear what I just said?  Let me repeat.”  In fact, the extraverts heard what they said, this was simply a new thought.  But springing a new thought without time to quietly think about it doesn’t go over well for the introvert so they repeat what they have thought out.

How to Accommodate Introverts

Let’s face it, meetings are designed by and meant for extraverts.  Why do we have meetings?  To get together and talk.

One of the best approaches to accommodate both the extravert and introvert in meetings is for a wise moderator to:

  • Stop the Discussion
  • Ask everyone to write down what they think the three best ideas were based on the discussion
  • Give them time to write down their thoughts
  • After a reasonable amount of time, ask each member to put their best idea on the flip chart

It’s always fascinating to me to watch what happens during this “writing” time.

The introverts will do something to cut off the “chaos” in the room.  They’ll put one hand over their eyes, or they’ll turn away from the team with their pad or they might even move elsewhere inside or outside the room.  But this allows them to think.  Almost immediately the thoughts clarify and they start writing.  They’ll often write more than the requested three things and then either rank-order them or combine them.

Meanwhile, the extraverts may write the number one thing that was obvious to them.  Sometimes they’ll even write two things but they seldom get three things written down.  What do they do?  They move over to the refreshment area where the rest of the extraverts have gathered so they can talk.  By doing so, they’ll come up with their list of three and then regather at their seats.

The wise moderator then begins to go around the room and ask each person to contribute their number one item to the list.  In doing so, the moderator has essentially kept the environment on the introverted side even though people are beginning to speak.  Once the list is exhausted, the moderator will open it back up to discussion thus moving it back to an extraverted environment.

Meetings are extraverted environments.  They don’t have to dedicate 50% to talking and 50% to quiet time.  However, if you don’t build in some quiet time, you will lose the brainpower of a high portion of the participants.

I’ve often asked the introverts what happens to them as soon as they walk out of the room at the end of the meeting.  They will all say something like “I wish I had said that —It all of a sudden became so clear to me!”  What they’re saying is they didn’t have the opportunity to “think” during the meeting.

We must create an environment that allows everyone to capture their best thoughts.

Archetypes

The statistics on MBTI have proven to be the same around the world.  However, I’ve observed that each culture has its ideal of what type a great leader is or should be.

In North America, we tend to hold up the extraverts as leaders.  They should be outspoken, confident, leading through words, and ready to handle change.

In Asia, it tends to be almost the opposite. Their leaders should be soft-spoken, quietly confident, lead through action and think long term, not reacting to every change that comes along.

In an American office, if someone walks past the leader’s office and sees them sitting quietly, it’s assumed they are not doing anything so this might be a good time to interrupt them with a question.  In Asia, if the leader is seen sitting quietly, it is assumed that they are deep in thought and should not be interrupted.

Statistics

For each of the four pairs, I’ll identify the split in the US Population, Leadership Teams, and Operations Teams.

The US Population is well researched and statistically sound.  For Leadership Teams, I always used the database that I have gathered through the years.  And even though it had a couple of thousand data points and should have been valid, I was always a little hesitant to say that it indicated anything beyond my own file.  Then, one day I was able to see the database collected by the Center for Creative Leadership.  They had tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of leaders in their database.  And to my great relief, their statics were exactly the same as mine.

Operations teams are the teams in the organization that are responsible for the rubber hitting the road.  If the company makes widgets, this team is responsible to get as many widgets out the door as fast and cheaply as possible.  The head of the Operations Team is usually part of the Leadership team.

Once we see the splits of these three data sets, it’s worthwhile to ask if there is anything to be learned.

US Population – Extraversion = 50%   Introversion = 50%

Leadership Teams – Extraversion = 62%   Introversion = 38%

Operation Teams – Extraversion = 56%   Introversion = 44%

One of the things learned here is that Leadership Teams are more extraverted than Operation Teams and a lot more extraverted than the general population.  This is a talkative bunch!

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Myers Briggs Type Indicator: Diversity

by Ron Potter

We can see almost daily comments about diversity.  It creates great division when it seems to be lacking and it’s talked about in glowing terms when it’s promoted as the issue that will solve all of our problems.  The issue I get concerned about is that we think of diversity in too narrow terms.

Most of the time we are thinking about and talking about race or gender.  While these are very important I believe there’s much more to diversity than those two categories.  Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be talking about and focusing on race and gender, I’m saying there is more to consider.

Myers-Briggs Helps with Diversity

A couple of years ago I wrote several blogs focusing on the use of Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).  I’ve been amazed at how many questions and comments I’ve received from people wanting to know more about MBTI in general and asking questions about specific situations and wondering if understanding MBTI would help.

This is why I’m starting a short series on MBTI again.  I have not gone back and read any of my previous blogs.  I just wanted this series to be inspired by my current thinking.

MBTI is Not a Label

Most of the teams I worked with wanted to label everyone to help them understand the person better.  I always discouraged this practice and I didn’t like to hear about trained professionals who thought labels were a natural conclusion.  They are not!

MBTI checks for preferences.  Meaning, in a given situation what would your natural preference chose?  This doesn’t mean that you can’t train yourself to look at things from many aspects, not just your natural preference.

In fact, the best leaders I’ve worked with have trained themselves to look and behave in the world in almost all of the MBTI aspects, not just their natural preferences.  I’ve even asked people who work for these great leaders to tell me what they think the leader’s MBTI is.  They can’t.  They can see them perform, ask questions, make decisions using almost all of the facets of MBTI.  It’s one of the things that make them a good leader.

I’m not going to go into great depth with every aspect of the MBTI.  I’m going to focus on the four natural pairs, how they conflict and can also complement each other.  I will also look at the statistics I’ve found that show how much of each time is present in the population as a whole as well as in business leadership teams.

Four Pairs

Over the next few weeks, we’ll take a look at the four pairs that exist within MBTI.  They are:

  • Energizing – Extraversion vs Introversion {EI}
  • Perceiving – Sensing vs Intuition (SN)
  • Judging – Thinking vs Feeling (TF)
  • Orientation – Judging vs Perceiving (JP)

Each person has a “preference” for one unit of each pair.  For instance, my MBTI is ENTJ.  That means that I have a tendency to be Extraverted, Intuitive, Thinking, and Judging.  Thus ENTJ.

Be Careful

I can’t tell you how many times people have said something to me like, “I’ve taken the MBTI many times and I always come out the same.  I’m an ESTP.”

Be careful on two fronts.  The first is that you are not an ESTP or any other type.  It simply means that you have a preference for a certain set of pairs.

Second, be careful what you remember.  For those people who have said that or something similar to me, I’ve asked to see their previous results.  They are almost always wrong.  They have simply categorized themselves into something they like or that resonates with a particular type but they are totally wrong in what they remember as their tested and identified type.

Scientific

There are a couple of other stories I would like to tell you.  I was once asked by the head of the psychology department in a major pharmaceutical company to help her with her team.  I told her I wanted to collect MBTI data of her staff so they could see how each other approached the world.  She agreed.  However, once the letter went out to her staff I received a scathing email from one of her managers.  She wanted to know how I could expect to promote the work of these charlatans who weren’t even scientists with such an esteem group.  I simply said that her boss had asked me to do it and to hang in there.  As we finished the session, this person quietly came up to me and asked if I could do a session with her team.

A Rose by Any Other Color

Another experience I’ve had over the last few years is that clients would say to me, “We don’t use MBTI anymore.  It’s very dated.  Now we use [name of another product].  I said that was no problem, would they please send me what literature or website they had and how their people fit into this “new” chart.  I would read through the data and then in every case, did a full day session with the team to help them understand themselves and the team in more depth.  They were always amazed at how much I had learned in such a short time.  What I often didn’t tell them that the “new” product was simply MBTI repackaged with different words and colors.

Granted, some of the language is dated and could be upgraded for modern teams to understand better.  But the essence of MBTI is solid and extensive.

I hope you’ll enjoy and learn from our journey over the next few weeks.

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BlogLeadership

4 Things that a Leader Should Provide

by Ron Potter

At the end of the last blog, I indicated that the star leaders of the future will help their teams feel safe and connected in a virtual world.  There are some critical issues that a leader must provide in order to create a safe and connected atmosphere.

Hope

It doesn’t take much reading or watching documentaries to realize that entire groups of people lose their will to live or even attempt to do so when they have lost all hope.  Leaders and teams will face setbacks and failures, but they must not lose hope.

Among the things that a leader or individual can do to provide hope include:

  • Freedom of choice and free will.  Leaders must be careful even when they are well-intentioned.  They may think that a solid plan and direction for the future will help people through a difficult situation but they also need to be careful not to stifle people’s ability to input their own ideas and goals.
  • The arts and creativity.  We all are inspired by various arts (music, paintings, motion, etc) or creativity and innovation.  Inspiration can lead to or renew hope.
  • Goodness and kindness.  These acts of unselfish behavior on behalf of another person will inspire hope.
  • There are many other things that can inspire or renew hope.  Loss of hope is deadly.

Love

The word love can be greatly misinterpreted.  A more useful word in today’s business world might be respect.  When people feel respected, even when their ideas may be at the opposite end of a scale, great things are possible.  I believe this is one issue that makes our current politics so ineffective.  It should be OK to have very different ideas.  In fact, it’s powerful and useful to have different ideas if there is respect for the person and their ideas.  Unfortunately, different ideas are not accepted or discussed with respect.

Respect is required for great leadership!

Joy

Although there is more to joy than humor, humor is a big part of it.  When we’re able to laugh and enjoy the moment with each other (not at the other’s expense) life is so much better.  A touch of humor or a lot of humor is a powerful ingredient of joy.

Peace

The opposite of peace is fear.  From the dictionary, the opposite of fear can be curiosity, trust, courage, or calmness.  What a great list of words.  Being curious is fun and leads to learning more than almost any other word.  Trust is powerful.  Both to trust and to be trusted.  How great is it to be both courageous and calm in times of difficulty?

Hope, Love, Joy, Peace.  These are the new currency for great leadership in a virtual world (or any world for that matter).

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BlogTeam

The First Failure of Socialism

by Ron Potter

We have just finished Thanksgiving, or what we experience as Thanksgiving in this age of Covid.  It is a time, rightfully so, for each of us to talk about what we’re thankful for.  However, let’s not forget that the pilgrim settlement in plymouth in the early 1600s may be socialism’s first failure

Needs vs Work

In the settlement, all that was needed by individuals was provided from them, having been either produced or paid for by the collective-owned farms.  The “accounting” system was determined by what the individuals needed rather than how hard they worked or earned their way.

Discontent and Starvation

The strongest colonists who worked hard in the fields all day began to resent those that received the same amount for doing nothing while the able-bodied provided all of the hard work to supply the goods.  In addition to the discontent, nearly half of the colonists died during that first winter because too many people took advantage of the supplies provided by the few.

Nearly 400 years later, Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of the UK said, “The trouble with socialism is that eventually, you run out of other people’s money.”

Socialism Abandoned

About two years after the famine brought on by the socialism approach, the pilgrims decided that enough was enough, a new approach was undertaken that required each family to provide for themselves.  It required hard work.

Work Application

If you’ve followed my blogs, you know that I’ve tried to stay away from politics for the most part.  So how do we look at our own and other’s failed attempts at socialism?

How does socialism disguise itself in the workplace?  It’s not all that hard to see.  Some people are there simply for the paycheck.  No motivation.  No extra effort.  No innovation.  Unfortunately, those people are left in place for various reasons even though it’s obvious to their colleagues and others they’re not pulling their weight.

What happens when that attitude is allowed to continue?  Other people either:

  • Begin to exhibit the same traits: “Why should I put in the extra effort, create my own motivation, look for innovative approaches when others are not and no one seems to notice?”
  • Leave for new employment: If a person is hard-working, motivated, innovative, they begin to look for a different place to work.  Just like our pilgrim’s failed effort, it leads to starvation.  Starvation is the sense that productivity begins to dwindle and those left tend to wither on the vine.

Winston Churchill (where are all these UK quotes coming from all of a sudden? 😉) is quoted as saying, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those others that have been tried.”

Don’t put up with it

This form of socialism in the workplace leads to failure.  Every time I’ve seen the “deadwood” taken out of the system, I’ve seen productivity increase.  Not just for a moment, but long-term.  Pulling together a team of highly motivated, hard-working individuals will always lead to long-term productivity gains.

Build a Team

Build a team of highly motivated people, each being productive, and you will experience long-term growth like you’ve never seen before.

Radar

Recently I watched a documentary on the development of radar that is credited with saving England during the Nazi air blitz of London.  Many times individuals wanted to quit but they were always reminded that they were part of a team that was bigger than any individual.  It took a team to accomplish the goal.

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BlogCulture

Growth Mindset

by Ron Potter

Fritz Seyferth is a great friend of mine and a wonderful executive coach and counselor.  He promotes Growth Mindset as the first requirement of great leadership.

I recently read a short article by Andrew Cole titled “Adopting a Growth Mindset”  on Linkedin.

Growth Mindset vs Fixed Mindset

Andrew talks of a Growth Mindset with a quote: “Failure is an opportunity to grow,” and a Fixed Mindset as “Failure is the limit of my abilities.”  I think these are excellent summaries of each mindset.

Andrew also does a great job of using short statements to help you understand each mindset type.

Growth Mindset

  • I can learn to do anything I want
  • Challenges help me to grow
  • My effort and attitude determine my abilities
  • Feedback is constructive
  • I am inspired by the success of others
  • I like to try new things

Before I list the points of a Fixed Mindset, review each one of these in a silent moment of reflection.  Do you fully believe one, some, or all of them?  Are there elements of each that you don’t believe you possess or could accomplish?

Think about them for a minute.  Think about them over time.  Write down your thoughts and answers. (There’s something about writing that solidifies ideas and brings your thoughts to life).

Can you really learn anything you want?  As I thought about that one I felt there were things I couldn’t learn.  As I thought about them more, I began to realize they were things I didn’t want to learn.  Why not?

  • Was I afraid I couldn’t learn them?
  • Did I really see no use for them in my life?
  • If I was able to learn them, would that enhance my life or open new doors for me?

As I began to think about the answers to these questions, I realized that I had to be very clear about what I did want to learn in my life and why.  Where was I headed?  Was I stuck?  How would I rate my happiness level?  Am I spending my time working on things that are meaningful to me now or will be in the future?  All of that from examining one simple statement.  That’s what a Growth Mindset can do for you.

Fixed Mindset

  • I’m either good at it or I’m not
  • My abilities are unchanging
  • I don’t like to be challenged
  • I can either do it or I can’t
  • My potential is predetermined
  • When I’m frustrated I give up
  • Feedback and criticism are personal
  • I stick to what I know

It was fascinating that as I wrote each one of these statements the name of another person came to mind.  I could quickly and easily see the Fixed Mindset attributes in others.  As with many things, it’s easy to see things in others and difficult to see them in ourselves.

But don’t just skip over these Fixed Mindset Attributes.  Just like the Growth Mindset, examine yourself.  It’s likely you’ll learn more than you did when you questioned the Growth Mindset attributes.

Learning About Yourself

One of the statements that Andrew Cole makes in his article says,

In adopting a growth mindset, my worries about my perceived intelligence or abilities have dramatically dissipated.  I no longer value my ‘self-validation’ in the world.

I’ve realized how to ask better questions.  Questions framed to generate conversation as a means of establishing trust with others.  (italics are mine)

The subtitle on Fritz’s home page says

FS/A elevates leaders and connects individuals and teams to their purpose to positively alter the trajectory of organizations.

Growth Mindset

Do you have a growth mindset?  Do you need a growth mindset? Only if you want to be happy. 😉

  • Examine yourself
  • Check out the LinkedIn article and what else Andrew Cole might have to say.
  • Contact Fritz at FS/A to get you and your team on a Growth Mindset trajectory.
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