Crack The Behavior Code

It’s because they don’t use the right words. Well, they might be the right words for you, but are they the right words that the other person needs to hear? Language structures reality. Language sets the tone for respect, kindness, safety, belonging, mattering and more. And it can do the opposite too.

Language helps us understand what another person is experiencing, how to support them, how to honor them. And it can do the opposite too.

As a Leadership and Culture Coach, I frequently help clients use the most effective words to get the result they want with others. My father was skilled at human relations, and I found the below “course” digging through my late father’s belongings.

Here’s the shortest course you’re likely to ever find in Human Relations.

The least most important word: “I”

The 1 most important word: “We”

The 2 most important words: “Thank you.”

The 3 most important words: “If you please.”

The 4 most important words: “What is your opinion?”

The 5 most important words: “You did a great job!”

The 6 most important words: “I admit I made a mistake.”

What are other important words/phrases you use?

One of mine is “together”. It’s a powerful word that helps the recipient know they are safe, they belong, they matter.

“We’ll figure this out together.”

“Together our team will innovate like never before.”

“We can crush the competition together.”

You get the idea.

When you start to notice the power of words you start to speak differently. Because you now know that language can either boost confidence or bash it, align/enroll/engage teams or tear them apart, create utter devotion and loyalty or cause people to run screaming.

How would you like to tune up your communication skills today?

Resources Mentioned:

• Language Structures Reality: https://www.smarttribesinstitute.com/the-7-habits-of-highly-effective-communicators-part-1-creating-trust/
• Respect & Kindness: https://www.smarttribesinstitute.com/the-7-habits-of-highly-effective-communicators-part-2-get-their-attention-and-loyalty/
• How to Honor Others: https://www.smarttribesinstitute.com/are-you-honoring-your-5-human-rights-work/
• The Power of Words: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinecomaford/2019/04/27/language-that-makes-leaders-look-weak/
• Growth Assessment: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/assessments/
• Contact Christine: https://smarttribesinstitute.com/contact/

You’re busy growing. Let’s have a strategy session when it makes sense, which means you are…

· Committed to getting better results and finding out how awesome your performance can truly be

· Ready to make this a priority and get started in the next few months

· Allocating budget to improving the leadership, culture and results of you and your company

· Able to make the decision to move forward (or can convince the person who can)

Ready? Great! Please fill out the form here. If not, check out our resourcesand subscribe to receive news and more tools as they become available, and we’ll work together when the time is right.

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Spidey sense. Gut feel. Whatever you call it, it’ll make or break the most important decisions in your life. The most successful executives I coach have it in spades. We're talking about intuition, and digging into what it is and how it actually works.

Oprah has it.

Steve Jobs had it.

Mark Zuckerberg has it but recently didn’t listen to it and paid a huge price.

Elon Musk made the same mistake.

How—And Where—Intuition Actually Works

Here’s how to make your intuition stronger right now. My friends at NowSourcing have created a handy infographic, be sure to check it out here.

First, let’s consider how—and where—humans think. As I outlined in a previous blog, human beings actually have three brains. Since both our hearts and our intestines have neural tissue, we have the heart-brain, the gut-brain and the brain that sits in our cranium (or, if you count the one that sits in our cranium as three—reptile, mammalian, and human neo-cortex—then we actually have five brains!).

Where You Think:

• Reptilian Brain: Instinct
• An innate inclination toward a particular behavior in response to a certain stimulus
• It’s hardwired in the body from birth to keep us “not dead”
• Examples: we pull away from something hot, run from danger, etc.
• Mammalian Brain: Where much intuition, or “gut feeling”, occurs
• A natural, thoughtless process which requires no analysis or deep thinking
• Unconsciously developed over time from our experiences and belief
• Biases operate here and are unconscious—which is why they can be problematic
• Examples: trusting someone that’s similar to you, feeling good around someone, etc.
• Prefrontal Cortex: Analytical thinking
• Intentional, organized, conscious thoughts
• Used for planning, problem-solving, decision making
• Some biases operate here too, such as making decisions based on a limited data set, or past experiences
• Example: weighing the pros and cons of a decision before making it, analyzing potential return on investment before sponsoring a project, etc.

Check out these famous examples of intuition—what parts of the brain were involved?

• 44 BCE: Calpurnia, the wife of Julius Caesar, dreams of her husband’s assassination and urges him not to go to the Senate, where he goes anyway and is killed
• It’s not magic: Calpurnia was unconsciously reacting to the tensions and signs of political dissent brewing in the Roman Empire [some heart brain, some gut brain, some reptilian and mammalian brain activation]
• 1936: On a hunch, automobile tycoon Charles Howard purchases an underweight colt named Seabiscuit, who goes on to become one of the greatest racehorses in history
• It’s not magic: Howard’s business savvy and military cavalry training gave him the experience to recognize a gifted horse and a sound financial bet [some gut brain, some mammalian and prefrontal cortex brain activation]
• 1962: After being rejected by dozens of publishers, Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time is picked up by John Farrar of Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, which had not published children’s books before [some heart brain, some gut brain, some mammalian and possibly prefrontal cortex brain activation]

Most cultures today worship the intellect—the prefrontal cortex functions—and thus often unintentionally condition children to discount their intuition. So let’s consider Albert Einstein and how when he discovered the theory of relativity he said (to paraphrase) “First I felt it, then I saw it, then I could explain it.” Sounds like a bunch of five brain activity to me!

How Intuition Works

Your intuition is much faster than your analytical mind and relies on feelings—note above I refer to the neural tissue we all have in both our gut and our heart.

We often hear about women’s intuition and how it’s stronger than men’s. Why? Two reasons: first, the insula in the female human brain is larger than in the male. The insula is often called the seat of intuition in human beings, and it’s where hurt feelings fester and hunches often spring from. Second, our female ancestors needed to ensure not only their own survival but also their children’s. While the males were often single-tasking such as hunting (with their larger amygdalas), the females were multi-tasking. The females were caring for the children, watching for danger as they gathered food, tracking non-verbal cues from others, and organizing environmental input and information.

3 Steps To Optimize Your Intuition

1-Notice your body’s reactions (changes in heartbeat, breathing, muscle tension).

2-Understand that your intuition wants whatever you value most (happiness, health, prosperity)–your intuition could be signaling that even though a decision seems logical, it won’t bring you closer to your core goals.

3-Likewise notice that your intuition is wiser than our ego, which may want you to make a specific decision for a certain gain, yet that gain might come at too high a cost—and your intuition will be trying to put on the brakes.

So how do you balance intuition and logic?

• Look at the meaning you are making about a certain situation to check your assumptions.
• Look at your organismic rights and if they will be honored and expanded by that decision.
• Check yourself for unconscious biases that might be getting in the way.

Follow your intuition when:

• Working in rapidly changing, high-stakes environments
• Performing tasks you have done many times before
• Brainstorming or discussing business with partners or coworkers

Follow your analytical brain when:

• Working in compliance scenarios or when under public or regulatory scrutiny
• Doing something you have never done before
• Hiring new talent or delegating work to employees
• 
  

“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs, 2005 Stanford Commencement speech

The Net-Net

• Intuition is a combination of the five functioning brains you have
• Intuition can be cultivated and improved by paying attention to the input your brains are offering you

Your intuition might just be trying to tell you how to make better decisions—are you ready to listen?

Resources Mentioned:

• The Article
• NowSourcing Intuition infographic
• 3 Brains blog post
• Biases
•  Neural tissue we all have in both our gut and our heart
• Organismic Rights infographic
• Cognitive Bias Codex
• Emotional Resilience Assessment
• Leadership Experience Assessment
• Growth Assessment
• Contact Christine

You’re busy growing. Let’s have a strategy session when it makes sense, which means you are…

· Committed to getting better results and finding out how awesome your performance can truly be

· Ready to make this a priority and get started in the next few months

· Allocating budget to improving the leadership, culture and results of you and your company

· Able to make the decision to move forward (or can convince the person who can)

Ready? Great! Please fill out the form here. If not, check out our resources and subscribe to receive news and more tools as they become available, and we’ll work together when the time is right.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As a leader, in what area of your life do you need to shift from being disempowered to being empowered?

We form our own reality based on visual, auditory, and kinesthetic cues. These cues recall our beliefs about the world and ourselves (our identity), which results in either feeling good or feeling bad. If you’re on a sales team that feels bad, chances are you won’t be achieving your quota because your energy will be low as well as your motivation and creativity. Is there anything you can do right now to feel better and be more productive?

Stuff happens, and sometimes we need to do a quick “pattern-interrupt” to pause our default and choose a better-feeling alternative. Remember, it is not what happens that matters but rather, what it means that matters. Change the meaning, change the feeling. We need to make more helpful meaning. 

Reframing is a terrific tool for making new meaning quickly and easily, as well as for editing your belief system in the process.

By formal definition, reframing is a way of viewing and experiencing events, ideas, concepts, and emotions to find more useful alternatives. It is a practical and valuable tool to shift perception, including your perception of yourself or others’ perceptions of themselves.

Think of reframing as putting on a different pair of glasses. What would you see if you put on a pair of sunglasses with a heavy tint when you were in a dark room? You would see shadows and dark forms you couldn’t identify. What would happen when you took off those glasses? You may see the most beautiful room in the world. When you switch your glasses, what you see changes.

Reframing, mentally and linguistically, does the same thing. It changes the story you tell yourself about what happens.

Harvard researchers proved a while back that the stories we tell ourselves shape our world. The good news is that we can also create new stories about the decisions we’ve made about ourselves, our abilities, and the world. We have the power to change our experience. Here are two examples.

In Business

Initial story: It’s really hard getting a job fresh out of college these days. The market is crowded, and overqualified people are competing for every single job. No wonder I’m unemployed and it’s tough.

Reframe: It’s awesome that there are a lot of people job hunting right now because it gives a person the opportunity to really bring his or her “A Game” to stand out. I’m sending my résumé in creative ways to get an interview, I’m doing more research than I ever have done before to prepare for interviews, and then I’m following up after the interviews using different methods. I am learning a ton!

See how the meaning shifts from defeat and deciding that job hunting will be hard (which means it will be because the universe is an exquisite mirror) to a sense of power, can-do, creativity, and agility?

In Personal Life

Initial story: I was a girl in a household of boys. My brothers and parents wanted another boy, so I was perpetually left out and labeled as a disappointment. I’ve never been good enough.

Reframe: I grew up in the perfect family to learn to see and honor my unique value. I was given great opportunities to be independent and forge my path in life. I also learned to be self-reliant, which has made me strong and fearless.

See how the meaning she is making shifts from disempowering to empowering?

Resources Mentioned:

• The Article
• Visual, auditory, and kinesthetic cues (Infographic)
• Reframing (Infographic)
• Harvard researchers
• Contact Christine

You’re busy growing. Let’s have a strategy session when it makes sense, which means you are…

· Committed to getting better results and finding out how awesome your performance can truly be

· Ready to make this a priority and get started in the next few months

· Allocating budget to improving the leadership, culture and results of you and your company

· Able to make the decision to move forward (or can convince the person who can)

Ready? Great! Please fill out the form here. If not, check out our resources and subscribe to receive news and more tools as they become available, and we’ll work together when the time is right.

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Sometimes leaders call me saying they want help to fix their team. That’s always a red flag for me.

A CEO of a west coast food company called me a while back. He said his team lacked accountability and he wanted me to “fix them”. As I asked him questions a disturbing trend appeared: his retention was some of the lowest I’d seen in my 30+ year career.

Even his executive team didn’t stick around—the longest tenure there was under 2 years, and the CEO had been around for over 15 years! What was happening here?

How’s the accountability in your organization? Would you like it to be stronger? If so, then please do this first:

1. Look at your company’s values – is accountability mentioned and sacred?
2. Look at your team’s emotional engagement – are they enrolled, aligned, engaged?
3. Look in the mirror – does your behavior support accountability? Are you a model of it?

I’ve Seen The Enemy—And It’s Us

It’s because a human isn’t a simple being. We all have parts of ourselves, and some are in conflict with one another. A part of you wants to hold others accountable, yet part of you doesn’t want to be the “the bad guy/gal”.

Here are the top 7 factors that I find prevent, or at best reduce, accountability:

1. Conflict Avoidance – if we don’t deal with what’s happening, like a missed deadline, then we “teach” everyone that accountability isn’t taken seriously
2. Organizational Values that don’t honor accountability – if it’s not part of our code of conduct, of what we hold sacred, people won’t take it seriously (again!)
3. An Absence of Process – if we don’t follow a standard process to ensure accountability, we’ll have communication misses that will set us back. Do you:
4. Delegate with a clear spec (and ask your direct report to echo back to ensure your communication was clear)
5. Empower them to succeed (give them what resources they need and check in mid-way to make sure they’re ok and on track)
6. Celebration or consequences upon completion (make it feel good to be accountable, and feel bad to not be—remember the human being will always choose the “best feeling” behavior on their behavioral menu… it’s your job to make accountability feel goo)
7. Leaders that don’t model accountability, so the team doesn’t take it seriously – yes, it’s up to us to walk the walk and talk the talk or nobody else will
8. Assumption others won’t be accountable – I see this in cross-functional accountability break downs. One team trashes or distrusts the other, telling their team that the other one won’t come through, and surprise, they often don’t… or if they do they’re perceived as having not come through due to the potent negative PR machine.
9. High staff turnover – back to the prospect at the beginning of this blog—he kept deeming people “disappointing” that he either fired them or they quit to find a better working environment. If your turnover is super high, look at how you’re causing it.
10. Deadlines and projects the responsible party hasn’t agreed to/are unrealistic, constantly changing priorities and incomplete communication overall– sometimes accountability is broken because a person didn’t agree they could deliver the deadline per the spec they were told, or they don’t realize the priorities have changed—they weren’t communicated to them by leadership. So they’re working on the old priorities. Or they’re scrambling, trying to figure out what exactly the priorities are because they’re hearing from other teams that the world has changed. Or they’re irritated and rebellious because they were told to do the impossible and weren’t given a chance to negotiate a more realistic deadline/approach.

What Actually Increases Accountability

The great news is you can turn around your accountability challenges quickly, due to your own new behaviors:

1. Resolve the challenges on the list above that apply to you
2. Forge a powerful group and individual identity around accountability
3. Give status in the tribe via public and specific recognition
4. Noting and sharing each team member’s superpower(s)
5. Make accountability a “good feeling” behavior
6. Increase communication and clarity on priorities and performance – use Quarterly Business Reviews or Monthly Business Reviews, Weekly Status Reports, Kanban Boards, SmartSheets, whatever method keeps visibility high
7. Ensure all understand the what, when, why and how of needle movers/KPIs

The Accountability Equation may come in handy too:

Assigner’s (Leader’s) Clear Expectations + Owner’s (Team member’s) Agreement + Personal Celebrations/Conversations (for Team Member) = High Accountability and Ownership

The Net-Net

• Leaders can either create the conditions for accountability or they can interfere with them
• CLICK TO TWEET
• Communication and organizational values will profoundly boost accountability
• Accountability needs to feel good!

How will you create the conditions for greater accountability?

Resources Mentioned:

• The Article
• Conflict Avoidance
• Organizational Values
• Delegate 
• Empower 
• High staff turnover 
• Incomplete communication
• Identity
• Increase communication and clarity
• Leaders can either create the conditions for accountability or they can interfere with them
• Contact Christine

You’re busy growing. Let’s have a strategy session when it makes sense, which means you are…

· Committed to getting better results and finding out how awesome your performance can truly be

· Ready to make this a priority and get started in the next few months

· Allocating budget to improving the leadership, culture and results of you and your company

· Able to make the decision to move forward (or can convince the person who can)

Ready? Great! Please fill out the form here. If not, check out our resources and subscribe to receive news and more tools as they become available, and we’ll work together when the time is right.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Emotional agility and resilience give leaders the edge they need to quickly pivot during stressful situations.

Emotions Have Energy 

Thanks to the late great  David Hawkins, MD, PhD, we have proof that emotions contain measurable energy, which can either foster or negate actual cell life. Dr. Hawkins’s groundbreaking work, as explained in his book  Power vs. Force, shows how a person’s log level - the measurable energy level in their magnetic field - increases as that person experiences more positive emotions. 

Hawkins’s most interesting finding was that cells actually died when the log level was below 200, which is where the emotions of scorn, hate, anxiety, shame, regret, despair, blame, and humiliation reside. Clearly it’s key to regulate and manage our emotional state, not just for our overall well-being (and that of those around us) but also for our physical health and the life of our cells. Taking yourself through the Steps To Consent process is a great way to start caring for all aspects of your health. 

Steps To Consent: 

• First, note what you are resisting, whether it is an experience, a person, a situation, or even a physical object. Pick something that you want to say “Grrr.. I don’t want this!” to. Use the Emotion Wheel to list all the emotions you are experiencing. 
• Now get present, or consent, to this discomfort. Say, “Ok, here I am experiencing this…”. Feel it without any resistance. 
• Next, determine your Desired State. Reframe by saying, “What would I like instead?” 

Let’s look at an example of how shifting emotions reaped massive benefits for one of my coaching and workshop clients. You can head to today’s show notes for the Emotion Wheel infographic that will help with this as well.

Emotional Agility In Action 

A market-leading food organization was in a bind. A fake news story on social media had spread like wildfire, and revenues of one of their top brands had plunged 27 percent. Whoa. It was crucial to stop the slide, stabilize, and then start to rebuild. 

What We Did 

We were brought in to train a few dozen leaders in optimal teaming and navigating change, rapidly engaging and enrolling large and diverse groups to come together, focus on outcomes, tell themselves and each other new stories about their situation, and get momentum going. Then we shifted our focus to the marketing team, supporting an initiative to reinvent how the organization marketed to consumers. 

We started the day with an intense emotion-shifting exercise, maneuvers of consciousness. Fifteen minutes into it, half the team had shifted from victimhood and disaster thinking to empowerment and possibility thinking. Fifteen more minutes, and the other half were on board. Now it was time to teach them how to bring our tools to their teams. 

The Result 

The brand is safe and growing, and the leaders are stepping into new levels of accountability, meaning, and fulfillment - and they are bringing their teams forward with them. If a disaster ever strikes again, they’ll navigate it gracefully and swiftly. 

The Net-Net 

• Emotions have energy: what we focus on, we fuel. 
• It’s key to consent to our uncomfortable emotional state, then ask what we would like instead (something, of course, that we can create and maintain). 
• Learning to release resistance increases accountability, emotional engagement, and productivity. 

Resources Mentioned:

• The Article
• Emotion Wheel infographic
• Reframing infographic
• Maneuvers of consciousness infographic
• Outcome Frame
• David Hawkins, MD, PhD
•  Power vs. Force
• Contact Christine

You’re busy growing. Let’s have a strategy session when it makes sense, which means you are…

· Committed to getting better results and finding out how awesome your performance can truly be

· Ready to make this a priority and get started in the next few months

· Allocating budget to improving the leadership, culture and results of you and your company

· Able to make the decision to move forward (or can convince the person who can)

Ready? Great! Please fill out the form here. If not, check out our resources and subscribe to receive news and more tools as they become available, and we’ll work together when the time is right.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We all have rights as human beings. 

But if we don’t know or acknowledge our fundamental rights, or if we don’t understand them, we’ll often suffer, cause others to suffer, and worst case, self-sabotage (which in turn sabotages those around us that count on us). 

To live in a state of emotional agility more consistently, we need to build the mental muscles of self-awareness. And one of the best ways to increase our self-awareness is to get in touch with our Organismic Rights. 

Your Rights As A Human Being 

The psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich observed a series of stages through which all human beings must pass on their way to full body maturation, referred to as Organismic Rights. Organismic Rights are our basic human rights that are established during our formative life experiences between approximately 0-3 years old. They determine where a person will have behavioral struggles as they move through life. They govern our behavior and can hinder our performance. The tricky part is we can be totally unaware of their existence!  

Imagine a newborn baby entering the world. He or she is forced to adapt quickly. The more fully developed a person’s Organismic Rights are, the more that individual can express themselves with greater aliveness and creativity (and spend more time in their Smart State). The less developed, the more likely they will operate in the Critter State (fight/flight/freeze). 

What Are Your 5 Organismic Rights? 

Every child, every organism, is born with these rights: 

1. The right to exist 
2. The right to have needs 
3. The right to take action 
4. The right to have consequences for one’s actions 
5. The right to love and be loved 

In a perfect world every child would have these rights confirmed by the people around them as they grow and develop. But that doesn’t always happen. Our parents, even with the best intentions and most loving parenting styles, could only give us what they had--and chances are pretty high that somewhere along the line their organismic rights got a little wobbly.  Most people struggle at least a little on a few of these.  

Organismic Rights – Decoded 

You can head to today’s show noted for the link to the Organismic Rights Decoder. It’s based on my experience of working over 10,000 hours with humans on changing their behavior. Note that you can use this on yourself or with others too. 

For example, one of my coaching clients had a direct report that was struggling with accountability. So my client helped the direct report to increase their right to take action. Another client had a partner that would often blame others for their shortcomings. The partner needed help increasing their right to have consequences. See how it works? 

Rate Your Organismic Rights 

Now that you see how certain behaviors may reveal some minimal Organismic Rights, please take a moment now and rate your Organismic Rights from 0-5 where 5 is the highest experience of this right. 

1.Your right to exist: ____ 

2.Your right to have needs: ____ 

3.Your right to take action: ____ 

4.Your right to have consequences for your actions: ____ 

5.Your right to love and be loved: ____ 

Consider your ratings. Where would you like to increase your rights? Where do you think your stakeholders at work stand? Your family members? Now revisit the table above. How would you like to help yourself and others to modify their behavior and increase their Organismic Rights? 

Bear in mind that we’re not trying to blame anyone here. Humans are mostly just doing the best they can with what they’ve got. We’re just wanting to understand ourselves a little better so that we know what we’ve got and can take some appropriate actions to strengthen our alignment with our Organismic Rights. 

When we can’t say something is not ok, then our Organismic Rights are threatened. It’s ok, and essential, to claim our Organismic Rights to exist, have needs, take action, have consequences for our action, and love and be loved. When we are told (explicitly or implicitly) that having any of these rights are not ok, then our entire humanity is being dismissed. Let’s take a sec and let that sink in. It’s big. 

The Net-Net 

First, note where you have an opportunity to increase your Organismic Rights. Notice where you get triggered and which rights of yours are low in those situations. Then, work on increasing your Organismic Rights with your leadership coach!

Resources Mentioned:

• The Article
• Emotional Agility
• Wilhelm Reich
• Smart State
• Critter State
• Organismic Rights Decoder
• Contact Christine

You’re busy growing. Let’s have a strategy session when it makes sense, which means you are…

· Committed to getting better results and finding out how awesome your performance can truly be

· Ready to make this a priority and get started in the next few months

· Allocating budget to improving the leadership, culture and results of you and your company

· Able to make the decision to move forward (or can convince the person who can)

Ready? Great! Please fill out the form here. If not, check out our resources and subscribe to receive news and more tools as they become available, and we’ll work together when the time is right.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Often leaders are focusing so intensely on growth that we miss the fact that our team’s emotional experience is suffering. And when they’re suffering, they’re in their Critter State (versus the ideal of being in their Smart State.)  

Why? 

Most likely because safety, belonging or mattering are missing. But how do you know who needs what, and when? When I do culture coaching I use three main tools to find out: 

• SBM Behavior Decoder to help leaders understand what a behavior is communicating 
• SBM Communication tools for the individual 
• SBM Index for the entire organization  

Today we are diving into the SBM Behavior Decoder and how this tool can help forge greater emotional agility for your tribe. 

You don’t need to ask if a team member needs safety, belonging, or mattering--their behavior says it all. The SBM Behavior Decoder below will help you give them what they need to shift to their Smart State. Click the infographic link and view the Behavior Decoder.

SBM Behavior Decoder Infographic

What Do Your People Really Crave? 

• If people are in their Critter State and craving safety, they’ll take safety away from others. They need their outside world to match their inside world. This could manifest in the workplace as someone spreading gossip, rumors, or fear in general. 

• If people are in their Critter State and craving belonging, they’ll isolate, withhold information, or form silos—they will essentially “leave the tribe.” They feel they don’t belong, so they’ll behave accordingly… and their outside world will reflect their inside experience. 

• If people are in their Critter State and craving mattering, they’ll take mattering away from others via condescending behavior and making people feel small. They don’t matter, so they make sure that others don’t either. Then their world will make sense. 

Discover the SBM Trigger of An Individual 

Once you determine what you think your people really crave, based on their behavior, you can begin a dialogue to confirm your findings. 

Ask your people - What is most important to you at work? 

Please list in order of importance: 

• You’re on a team that has a plan, and people have your back. (safety) 
• You’re part of the team, and you have equal value to others. (belonging) 
• You’re acknowledged and appreciated for your unique contributions, and you are making a difference. (mattering) 

This dialogue starts the process of becoming aware and once we are aware of what state we are in, we can apply the appropriate tools to manifest change. Next, notice both the “go to” behavior of a person in Critter State, as well as what lights them up. If their “go to” is Belonging in Critter State, you may want to try giving them Belonging regularly to light them up. You could do this by saying “I’m so glad you’re on the team. You really bring a lot to everyone! The team is better with you on it.” Notice also your “go to” and what lights you up, as well as your family members too! 

The Net-Net 

When we give people what they crave, their critter brain calms down, and we can guide them into their Smart State. This is where true rapport, connection, alignment, enrollment, and engagement live. Oh—and high performance, collaboration, and sustainability are the results! 

Remember, safety + belonging + mattering = trust. I’ve added links to more information on this topic in today’s show notes for you.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Article
• Smart State
• SBM Behavior Decoder
• SBM Communication
• Emotional agility
• Safety, belonging, or mattering
• Forming silos
• True rapport
• Engagement
• High performance
• Contact Christine

You’re busy growing. Let’s have a strategy session when it makes sense, which means you are…

· Committed to getting better results and finding out how awesome your performance can truly be

· Ready to make this a priority and get started in the next few months

· Allocating budget to improving the leadership, culture and results of you and your company

· Able to make the decision to move forward (or can convince the person who can)

Ready? Great! Please fill out the form here. If not, check out our resources and subscribe to receive news and more tools as they become available, and we’ll work together when the time is right.

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Our words shape our reality. And they are based on the stories we tell ourselves about the world, ourselves, and others. This is why Reframing is crucial for leaders and human beings overall: it’s a terrific tool to shape the reality you want.

Reframing is a way of viewing and experiencing events, ideas, concepts, and emotions to find more useful alternatives. It is a practical and valuable tool to shift perception, including your perception of yourself or others’ perceptions of themselves. Think of reframing as putting on a different pair of glasses. What would you see if you put on a pair of sunglasses with a heavy tint when you were in a dark room? You would see shadows and dark forms you couldn’t identify. What would happen when you took off those glasses? You might see the most beautiful room in the world. When you switch your glasses, what you see changes. Reframing, mentally and linguistically, does the same thing. It changes the story you tell yourself about something.

How To Change Your Story

Harvard researchers proved a while back that the stories we tell ourselves shape our world. The good news is that we can also create new stories—the decisions we’ve made about ourselves, our abilities, and the world—and change our experience. Here are two examples.

In Business

Initial story: It’s really hard getting a job fresh out of college these days. The market is crowded, and overqualified people are competing for every single job. No wonder I’m unemployed— it’s tough.

Reframe: It’s awesome that there are a lot of people job hunting right now because it gives a person the opportunity to really bring his or her “A Game” to stand out. I’m sending my résumé in creative ways to get an interview, I’m doing more research than I ever have done before to prepare for interviews, and then I’m following up after the interviews using cool and creative methods. I am learning a ton!

See how the meaning shifts from defeat and deciding that job hunting will be hard (which means it will be, because that’s the story the person is committed to) to a sense of power, can-do, creativity, and agility?

In Personal Life

Initial story: I was a girl in a household of boys. My brothers and parents wanted another boy, so I was perpetually left out and labeled as a disappointment. I’ve never been good enough.

Reframe: I grew up in the perfect family to learn  how to see and honor my unique value. I was given great opportunities to be independent and forge my path in life. I also learned to be self- reliant, which has made me strong and fearless.

See how the meaning she is making shifts from disempowering to empowering?

Use Your Reframing Tool Daily

While tools like the Distorted Thinking Decoder and Neuro Storytelling help you reframe your situation, you can also reframe all sorts of scenarios daily.

Here’s how it works.

Imagine your spouse has just made the morning coffee. While scooping the grounds into the coffee machine, he or she has spilled a considerable amount on the counter. He or she doesn’t notice this and moves on to the next item in the morning routine. You could focus on the “bad” behavior, complain about the mess, start a fight, and have no coffee or affection that morning. Or you could practice reframing in one of at least two ways:

1. Context reframing: These reframes work on the principle that every behavior is useful in some context. So when we change the context, we also change the meaning we make about another’s behavior. In this spilled coffee example, you could use a context reframe as follows: “Your spilling coffee means we are so much more privileged than 80 percent of the world who can’t afford to have coffee with breakfast!” This is exaggerated, yes, but it illustrates how drastically the meaning can change when you expand and change the context.
2. Content reframing: Content reframes work by changing the actual content of the meaning you give the behavior. In the spilled coffee example, a content reframe might be, “Your spilling coffee doesn’t mean you made a mess. It just means you were rushing to make sure I was taken care of.”

The behavior and the facts of the matter are the same; we’ve just altered our self-talk to make different meaning from the coffee grounds on the counter. And after all, at the end of the day, do you care more about some coffee grounds or about your relationship? In the same way, which do you care more about in business: success as a team or blame and shame?

The Net-Net

• When you change the story, you change the meaning, and you change how something feels: empowering or disempowering
• Reframing helps us make new meaning quickly and easily
• Reframing is a practical tool to shift perception, including your perception of yourself, things outside of you, or other’s perception of themselves

Resources Mentioned:

• The Article
• Harvard Study
• Distorted Thinking Decoder
• Neuro Storytelling
• Self-Talk To Make Different Meaning
• Emotional Resilience Assessment
• Leadership Experience Assessment
• Growth Assessment
• Contact Christine

You’re busy growing. Let’s have a strategy session when it makes sense, which means you are…

· Committed to getting better results and finding out how awesome your performance can truly be

· Ready to make this a priority and get started in the next few months

· Allocating budget to improving the leadership, culture and results of you and your company

· Able to make the decision to move forward (or can convince the person who can)

Ready? Great! Please fill out the form here. If not, check out our resources and subscribe to receive news and more tools as they become available, and we’ll work together when the time is right.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Have you noticed that life is moving at light speed and it’s only getting faster? Have you also noticed that people are more stressed out than ever? If you’re emotionally agile, you have not only noticed, you’re in a good position to not only survive, but to thrive.

Emotional Agility is, simply, essential. You need it to navigate turbulent times, you need it to keep your sense of humor, you need it to deal with the perpetual uncertainty of daily life. No matter what external situations you face, emotional agility is your superpower.

What Is Emotional Agility?

Daniel Goleman’s groundbreaking book Emotional Intelligence changed the way we think about human interaction and made it okay to acknowledge that humans are emotional beings, even at work. The concept of emotional intelligence is crucial for us all to understand because the lack of it causes the majority of human conflicts, including terminations, divorces, and even wars.

It’s not enough to simply know that emotional intelligence is important. How do we shift our emotional state to achieve the outcomes we want, especially when we’re overwhelmed by constant change? We certainly know it’s not as simple as telling ourselves, “OK, let’s look at this in a positive light.” Nor is it useful to tell someone, “Stop feeling overwhelmed. It’s not helping anybody!” So what works? Here’s a scenario.

A Sales Director Without Emotional Agility

Suppose you’re a sales director, and a big client, one that accounts for 30 percent of your top-line revenue, stops working with you. Now you need to either replace that client or let go of some staff, maybe delay mission-critical initiatives, and explain the loss to the board. It feels bad, so it is bad. And you, as the sales director, may want to avoid feeling bad at all costs, whether that be via denial, avoidance, freezing up, or resolving to take your anger and frustration out on your team, all of which will likely create an environment of blame instead of collaboration. However, avoiding bad feelings comes at a cost too. An opportunity cost.

A Sales Director With Emotional Agility

A more emotionally agile sales director might still feel bad about losing a big client. It would be strange if she didn’t. But the more emotionally agile sales director will also have another feeling available to her, the feeling of inspiration that comes with the challenge. Thus, that sales director will behave differently. She will consider it an opportunity to speak to the lost client and clarify with specificity why that client left. Rather than using the negative feelings as a sign of failure, she’ll relate to those feelings as feedback and an impetus for growth. She might redirect her attention to incorporating the feedback from the lost client and mobilize the team to plug the holes in the company’s main service offering so that the rest of the client base won’t suffer the same consequences.

This agile maneuver can result in increased penetration per client and increased top-line revenue per client account. The difference that made the difference? The meaning that the sales director made and the feelings that were available to her as a result.

Which of the above examples sounds familiar? How can you increase emotional agility for yourself and for your team?

The Impact Of Emotional Agility In The Workplace

Our infographic outlines how important emotional agility is in the workplace.

Research shows us that:

• Emotional intelligence and agility explain 58% of a leader’s job performance
• 90% of top performers are high in EQ
• Employees whose managers are open, approachable and emotionally agile are more engaged
• More engagement leads to lower turnover, higher operational efficiency and increased performance

Want To Increase Emotional Agility? Follow These Seven Steps

1. Release Resistance: to make room for more choice
2. Increase Rapport With Yourself: to build mental muscles and calm the mind
3. Make New Meaning: and choose the story you want to tell
4. Anchor The Outcome You Want: to make success inevitable for yourself and others
5. Enroll And Engage With Others: as you bring emotional agility to your tribe
6. Build Tribal Agility: to expand and keep change going
7. Expand Tribal Power: to help your tribe navigate any obstacle, thrive on feedback and redefine their personal best

In the coming weeks, I will be sharing tools, from the seven steps listed above, to show you how you and your team can become more emotionally agile. What will the benefits be to you when you’re more emotionally agile?

Here’s what our executive coaching and workshop clients find:

Benefits You Will Reap

• 87-93% less time in Critter State (fight/flight/freeze)
• 94% increased confidence that you can handle anything
• 92% increased compassion for others
• 85% increased compassion for self

The Net-Net

• Emotional agility is critical at work and in life overall.
• There are seven proven steps to increase emotional agility.
• The tangible benefits that you and your organization will reap are profound.

How emotionally agile are you? Take our 3-minute assessment and find out.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Article
• Emotional Agility
• Feelings As Feedback
• Meaning That The Sales Director Made
• Infographic
• Critter State 
• Emotional Resilience Assessment
• Leadership Experience Assessment
• Growth Assessment
• Contact Christine

You’re busy growing. Let’s have a strategy session when it makes sense, which means you are…

· Committed to getting better results and finding out how awesome your performance can truly be

· Ready to make this a priority and get started in the next few months

· Allocating budget to improving the leadership, culture and results of you and your company

· Able to make the decision to move forward (or can convince the person who can)

Ready? Great! Please fill out the form here. If not, check out our resources and subscribe to receive news and more tools as they become available, and we’ll work together when the time is right.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.