http://www.mindsetmasteryseminars.com/artistryofchange

Have you ever ironically rushed to do something that’s supposed to be relaxing–such as a spa appointment, vacation or to get to sleep? For many people this happens regularly.

What if I just rushed faster?

The trap of rushing faster usually creates more problems. I used think that if I just worked longer hours and rushed faster that the feeling of overwhelm would eventually subside. But I now notice that never really works over the long term, because the rate of change is just speeding up and rushing faster is an impossible expectation. There is a deeper, more powerful and longer lasting solution.

80% of the reason you feel overwhelmed is because of your mindset

I have discovered that regularly feeling overwhelmed is just a bad habit of mind and actually a cultural transfer for which I pay a big price. I would go so far as to say it’s like a vampire that siphons my energy. Did you know that a recent poll of entrepreneurs and people in high-pressure jobs had To Do lists for just 1 day that would realistically take an average of two weeks to complete? Many university research studies have proven that un-doable To Do lists make many people less productive because the overwhelm causes inertia.

Overwhelm can negatively affect many areas of life

Do you remember the book the Way of the Peaceful Warrior? Peaceful warriors tend to make a lot less mistakes than frantic ones. Plus your health gets affected. People who feel overwhelmed are more likely catch a cold. Relationships suffer. If you dwell on how overwhelmed you feel it can make you less fun to be with on a date. Overwhelm actually makes you think less effectively and less creatively. In fact feeling overwhelmed is directly linked to digestive problems, moodiness ADHD and sleep problems. Feeling overwhelmed triggers the primitive fight or flight brain which can lead you to do or say things you might regret later. Over the long term the overwhelmed mindset has been linked to divorce, depression, suicide, cancer, dementia and financial problems.

So why do people keep getting stuck in overwhelm then?

Many people are unconsciously programmed for feeling overwhelmed. The human mind tends to imprint negative experiences far more often than positive ones. Neuroscientists say this is the primitive brain response. The primitive brain is consciously scanning for danger. If you burn your hand in the fire your brain will imprint that deeply so you won’t do it again. If you see a great sunset the brain doesn’t see this as necessary for your survival so won’t imprint it so deeply. This is kind of a system flaw when you think about it because it means you remember far more negative experiences than positive ones, giving you the overall impression that life is dangerous and unpleasant.

What underlying beliefs usually make you feel overwhelmed?

If you believe that you can’t change the things you actually CAN change or you react against the things you actually CAN’T change (or you can’t tell the difference between the two) that is definitely a recipe for overwhelm. And, of course this is just the opposite of a well known saying. When you’re calm and centered about your To Do list you have better health, enhanced relationships, feel more confident, trust in the future more, have more vitality, think better and make wiser decisions. There is a big domino effect here.

What you focus on grows

If you really think about it — for every one thing that’s not going well chances are 1000 things ARE going well. And, what you focus on grows so you might as well ruminate on one of the thousand things going right and instantly have a better day.

If you’d like to learn more about how to shift your mindset from overwhelm to calm and confident check out this webinar series:

http://www.mindsetmasteryseminars.com/artistryofchange

According to the latest findings in neuroscience, if you balance your brain it can make you better on the job and in your personal life. The trouble is that more people than previously thought have a brain imbalance. In fact, an imbalanced brain is almost the norm in society today. I was labeled dyslexic in Grade 1 and sent to a special learning class–I could barely read and wrote letters backwards. However, after doing many of the brain balancing techniques listed below I learned how to read and comprehend at normal speed. I went onto 8 years of post secondary schooling, wrote 4 books, and have run a successful business for 22 years helping other people access their creativity, better use their brains and manage transitions more effectively.

The most indispensable people on the job today

The most indispensable people on the job today are those who can shift gears easily and bring constructive behavior to challenging situations. Brain scans can often show how brain imbalances are at the root of behaviors that cause problems for yourself or others at work such as getting too easily stressed, being a “type A” personality, or being unable to problem solve. The good news is that there are ways now to balance different aspects of the brain so you can help yourself and others move through transitions with ease and grace.

If your frontal lobes are imbalanced you cannot learn from your mistakes

The brain is a complex piece of machinery and neuroscience findings change daily, but here is a simplified version of what we know now. There are several aspects of the frontal lobes that help you be a Change Artist. For example, your frontal lobes house your ability to learn from mistakes, make plans, and reach your goals. When your frontal lobes are balanced, it helps you be compassionate towards others, expressive of your thoughts, organized, goal-oriented, flexible in your thinking, and adaptive to changes.

What happens when you get out of balance?

The frontal lobes are like the CEO of the brain. When they are underfunctioning, it’s like there is no leadership in the office, so nothing gets done, you can be unmotivated, disorganized, unfocused or too self absorbed. When the frontal lobes are overfunctioning, it’s like the boss is micromanaging everyone. You can display “type A” personality style where you make goals more important than people, you can become rigid and inflexible, being productive for productivity’s sake while losing touch with the ultimate purpose of your work.

“Type A” people often have a brain imbalance

Often people with overfunctioning frontal lobes go undetected in workplaces and can even be rewarded. They may be sales people who bring in good cash flow to the company, but they are doing it at the expense of their health and their relationships with others. They offer short terms rewards but sometimes with devastating long term costs. The overfunctioning person can have obsessive thoughts, compulsive behaviors, excessive worrying, argumentativeness, or oppositional behavior. They can “get stuck” on certain thoughts or actions such as “I must work all the time”, “I must check email every 5 minutes”. It’s the same mindset as an addict who must have a drink, a drug, food, sex, gambling, coffee, shopping, self judgment–and even when they get their fix they want it again soon. In other words, they keep thinking about or doing something that they know is harmful but feel like they cannot stop it.

What can cause Frontal Lobe imbalance?

Many things can cause the frontal lobes to get out of balance such as:

- a brain injury or even a small bump to the head
– poor nutrition
– excessive toxins in the body
– little or no reflection time
– unresolved issues from your past
– lack of exercise, sleep or water
– a habit of shallow breathing or mouth breathing
– unexpressed creativity
– not examining the validity of your thoughts
– multi-tasking

How can you re-balance your Frontal Lobes?

Here are some activities and processes designed to balance the frontal lobes:

1. Neurotherapy (see below for more info)
2. Good nutrition, supplementation and hydration
3. Detoxing your body
4. Reflection time or a regular spiritual practice
5. Cognitive or psychotherapeutic process (see below)
6. Regular exercise
7. A habit of 7-8 hours of sound sleep per night
8. A habit of full body breathing
9. Finding a meaning and purpose for your life
10. Expressing yourself creatively
11. Paying attention to the present moment
12. Focusing on one thing at a time

Here are processes and resources that can help:

1. The Change Your Brain books by Dr. Daniel Amen  http://www.amenclinics.com

2. Neurotherapy — the use of computerized biofeedback equipment to change your brainwave activity http://www.swingleandassociates.com

3. Brain Gym – a series of physical movements that enhance brain functioning http://www.braingym.org

4. EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique)7 – a series of tapping procedures designed to remove negative blocks from the body’s meridian system http://www.emofree.ca

5. The Sedona Method – a cognitive process to release negative thoughts http://www.sedona.com

6. The Choice Repatterning Process with Carla Rieger – a process to re-write beliefs that cause brain imbalances http://www.choicerepatterning.com

Do you have a tip to share?

Do you have an example of how you balance your brain? If so, leave it in the comment below. It just might inspire others.

Teaching people how to learn, how to create something from nothing, makes more sense than teaching facts that will soon become irrelevant. Having spent years in the arts while also coaching change leaders, Carla couldn’t help but notice that leaders with some kind of artistic training could lead change more fluidly than those without. What did they have that others didn’t have? The ability to let go of assumptions, thrive in chaos, redesign and reframe … in other words they could learn on a dime.

The most indispensable people in the world today therefore are those who know how to learn. So is our education system doing enough to prepare students to be indispensible in this way, or is it just preparing them to be good contestants on Jeopardy?

There are thousands of students who would actually contribute greatly to the world, but who can’t survive a system that only rewards factual regurgitation. The good news is that the forest floor is alive with new life with alternative forms of education that prepare learners to thrive in our brave new world.

Being an artist of your own life

Yet, there is a part of everyone’s intelligence that can see beyond the horizon. I call it being a “Change Artist”. It is the part of the human psyche that can sense into possibilities before they become manifest. Pablo Picasso once said “Everyone is born an artist, the trick is to recapture that artist as an adult.” When I once asked a group of kindergarten students to raise their hand if they considered themselves an artist, all hands went up. When I asked that same question of a group of adults instead, what do you think happened?
Only about 25% put their hands up. Somehow the older people get the less they seem to frame themselves in terms of artistry. Perhaps it’s how you define artistry. How I like to frame artistry is that it is not about doing something such as drawing, playing music, or writing, it’s about who you are being. For example, you can play music very un-artistically, whereas you could plan your busy day very artistically. To be artistic in conducting your life is to sense into the natural creative flow of life and to get in synch with it, using that energetic flow to manifest just the right outcome in just the right way. It’s an intelligence beyond what we typically call IQ. Let’s call it AQ….your Artistic Quotient.

Symptoms that you may be in The Winter of Change

Using your AQ during The Winter of Change can be very beneficial because it’s usually the time in your life when your outward creative abilities are lying fallow and replenishing themselves. When you feel less outwardly creative, it’s time to tap into a more inward creativity. Few people in our goal oriented culture effectively model this inward creativity and so it’s not as well practiced. The tips below may help you tap into exactly what you need to move forward. Symptoms that you are in a replenishing phase may be:

• Feeling low energy and unmotivated
• Confusion and having little clarity about what’s next
• Grieving the old identity that has fallen away

What’s going on is that the old identity that was tied up with your previous life is breaking down and dying. It’s like what happens in your garden when the cold rain and snow set in. The remains of the last harvest start to disintegrate and the soil begins to compost to get ready for Spring. Humans have an aversion to death and dying, so it’s natural to feel uncomfortable during this phase. But ironically the more you resist it the longer it seems to take. Also, if you try to skip this step, you may find you miss out on the next harvest of your life, or at least miss out on having the best possible harvest. Here are some tips to make it through the Winter with more ease and grace allowing you to get to Spring faster while also replenishing yourself more fully for what’s next:

1. Focus on the breaking down process: If you find yourself wanting to escape the discomfort of the breaking down process, try giving yourself just 10 minutes of being with it. Often people avoid going into those sensations because they are afraid they may end up being consumed by the feelings of loss. However, feelings are like clouds. They come and they go. The focus of your attention on them ironically causes them to evaporate. Just sit quietly in a private place and breathe into the areas of discomfort and see what happens. You may be surprised about how much relief this can bring. If you don’t allow yourself to grieve the old and let go, then you cannot make way for what is next.

2. Time out: People are far more validated in our culture when they are in the Spring and Summer of change than during the Autumn or Winter phases, yet you can’t have one without the other. Giving yourself permission to be less active, less productive, to just rest and muse, will actually make the Winter phase easier and quicker. Different types of “time out” activities work for different people. It may be short, regular activities like walks in nature or meditating, or spending more time doing something you love like a hobbies or a sport. Or it could be a longer activity like a vacation or focusing for a few weeks on your gardening or writing. Be mindful however of doing activities that bring rejuvenation rather than just distraction, for example the difference between watching a soul stirring movie, and watching 10 episodes of The Simpsons.

3. Explore new options: Give your imagination time to explore that is beyond the horizon. Gurdjieff, a Russian thought leader (1866-1949) once suggested that within each person is a committee of voices. Sometimes that committee is in harmony, sometimes not. If you have spent 20 years being a parent some members of your committee may have had to be overruled. For example, if you are recently an “empty nester” chances are those more silent committee members are now voicing their interests. Exploring new options means focusing your attention on areas of your life that may have been ignoring, or welcoming in new inspirations or new committee members who have something valuable to contribute to your next phase of life.

If you would like a process to help you explore new options feel free to check out The Art of Reinvention. It is a 19-page white paper that allows you to explore the next phase of your life from various angles. It only takes about an hour to complete and can be surprisingly rejuvenating, insightful and can help you more quickly usher in the Spring.

I would love to continue this conversation with you. Feel free to post comments, insights, or questions below.

Thank you and best of luck with your reinvention!
In Friendship
Carla

God, grant me the ability to be as good of a person as my dog thinks I am. – Anon

In a previous blog post we explored The 7 Mistakes Change Leaders Make, and how mistakes are necessary to actually develop success habits. Using the metaphor of the growing cycle we explored Mistake #1 which is Planting Your Idea in Barren Soil. Then we looked at mistake #2 which was Choosing the Wrong Kind of Idea Seed. The 3^rd mistake many change leaders make is to not watering or fertilizing your idea enough.

Linda wanted to help address exhaustion and tension at work. There was a bad “vibe” ever since the latest project went overtime and over budget. While a problem solving meeting had helped, she knew people needed something that buoyed their spirits but that didn’t take much time or money.

She had heard about the simple idea of creating fun contests that would run in the organization’s online newsletter. She went to her boss and shared stories of other companies that did a baby picture contest and a cartoon caption contest and how it improved the mood at work, enhanced relationships between people, and sparked creative thinking. Her boss reluctantly agreed as long as it didn’t pull too much focus from their deadlines.

The pilot project included asking people to send Linda a photo of their pet for a contest in which everyone was then invited to guess who the owner was. Within half an hour Linda was inundated with photos of Portuguese Water Dogs, Persian cats, and love birds. One staff member complained that she wanted to participate in the contest but didn’t own a pet due to allergies. They decided instead that she would send a photo of her favourite Boston fern.

The next week the photos went out to all the staff with a deadline. By Friday, you had to guess the owner. The person with the most correct answers would receive a $75 gift certificate to a nearby restaurant. The restaurant owner had gladly donated the prize. The contest entries came through in droves and one man in accounting got all but four answers correct. He took his two colleagues out for lunch the next week.

Linda’s boss was thrilled with the results of the contest because he saw people laughing again while they tried to trick people into divulging the type of pet they owned. He noticed two people who barely talked to each other were now comparing notes on the idiosyncrasies of Portuguese Water Dogs. Meetings had a more light-hearted atmosphere, ideas about dealing with the project seemed more innovative than before, and less people seemed to be showing up late or calling in sick.

Linda got the green light to do a new contest each month. The only problem was that sometimes people attracted to leading change are not the same type of people who like to maintain the change. Change Artists are those who can do both or at least delegate to and steward those who will maintain it. Linda was enthused about the pilot project, but lost enthusiasm when it came to the on-going “watering and fertilizing” of her change initiative. The next month’s contest was to name the organization’s mascot (a wind up pig that grunted), which was successful, but not as successful as the first one. She skipped the third one because her idea ended up seeming too complicated. The fourth contest didn’t seem to appeal to people, and so by the fifth month she dropped the project.

Linda overhead one day, though, that people were disappointed that there were no longer any contests. She realized that she needed to delegate the on-going maintenance of this idea to someone who liked maintenance. She asked four people with that personality style and one of them agreed to take it on for the next 3 months. Walter in IT made the whole project take off again because he was already handling the “news” section of the organization’s web site, so it was easy for him to do. He elicited suggestions from staff and searched the web for new contests ideas. He made sure others helped him during busy months. And generally, he enjoyed the monthly attention to detail and the joy it seemed to bring people. After five years this organization still does about 10 contests a year. The role of contest maintenance has been passed along gleefully several times to people who enjoy this kind of task, and thus the spirit and purpose of the original idea stays well nourished.

The “Inner Game” of Time Management

Whenever I survey individuals and organizations on their top three challenges at work, I almost always hear that there is too much to do and not enough time. And I’ve heard the same thing for the last 20 years. Even with all the brilliant time management systems out there, even with all the highly innovative and smart people doing the work, and even with all the time-saving technology available to us. It begs the question: “Is time management about doing something different or about being something different–or both?” My answer is that it’s both, but there has been an over focus on the outer game of time management and not enough on the inner game.

The Myth of Time Scarcity

Now I realize this is the antithesis of traditional time management, where it’s all about willing yourself to move faster, prioritizing and sticking to your agenda, etc. But if time management were only about what you do, then why do some people seem calm and centered and others seem flustered when faced with the same deadline?

Have you ever been waiting for an elevator and it seems to take an eternity, especially when you are in a hurry? Conversely, have you ever been on a vacation that was filled with amazing adventures and a month seems like a week? As Kermit the Frog once said, “Times flies when you’re having fun, and time’s also fun when you’re having flies.”

Looking at it from the big picture, clocks reduce time and make it finite. But what is time, but life itself? Time is actually your experience. By measuring time, it turns a succession of unique moments into a number and distances us from our subjective experience.

Lewis Mumford once said, “The clock, not the steam engine heralded the industrial age.” The more finely we measured time, first into hours, then minutes and seconds, the less we seem to have of it and the more the clock usurped sovereignty over our experience of life, until today when we are all — on the clock. Yet industry and business require a precise coordination of human activity. It’s hard to imagine how we could function in our organizations without the clock.

Can We Function in Society and Still Experience the Luxury of Being Unhurried?

This particular conundrum has been fascinating me lately. I grew up in the “hurry” family. I watched my parents race from one activity to the next, living under a sense of constant pressure. Naturally, I followed suit and lived my adult life this way, too. That is, of course, until reading the latest research on hormone imbalances–could it be motivated by the fear of hitting menopause without my hormones in balance? Aging — yet another reason to fear time

Some studies suggest that raised cortisol levels over extended periods of time cause hormone imbalances. Cortisol is a hormone your body produces when you are feeling hurried, inpatient, or overwhelmed, among other things. This requires the body to leech other hormones to regain balance, which eventually leads to long-term imbalances. Hormone imbalances in both men and women cause an enormous array of physical and mental problems that we are only beginning to be aware of.

To that end, over the last few years I decided to experiment with taking up to two months off every year so I could experience the luxury of an unhurried existence. The happiness, creative insights, health and well being I experienced were beyond belief. Yet, as soon as I came back to work I readopted the hurried state of mind. Finally, I asked myself and my clients, “Can we function in society and also experience the luxury of an unhurried existence?” I decided it was a worthy enough experiment, and have been surveying people and researching this topic ever since. Here is my summation of the top 2 ways to do that. For the 3rd best way view my previous blog post on Breathing:

1. Keep Things Handy for Idle Times

Make a list of regular activities that trigger you into feeling impatient. I used to get very impatient in traffic but then I realized I can use this time to be productive or get entertained. I decided to start listening to audio books. If I want a book now I go to a service like Audible to see if they have the book as an MP3. In fact, now I sometimes can hardly wait till I get to drive so I can listen to the next part of my book. Keep small things handy like your mp3 player, a book, or a notepad. Idle time can become brainstorming time. I often create a list of things I want to find a solution to. This could be a new business idea, a relationship problem I want to think through, thoughts about a new blog post or anything else that needs a good thought process. I brainstorm on all possible solutions, and choose my favourite idea and start action planning it.

2. Practice Letting Go Every Day

One of the most important skills you can ever learn is to let go of thoughts that don’t serve you. It will entirely change your life. As David Wagoner says in his wonderful poem, Lost: “What do you do when you’re lost in the forest? Stand still. The trees ahead, the bushes beside you are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here.” The point is that when you’re overwhelmed and lost, stand still. Back up to a place where you feel good, then you will begin to activate the neocortex. Usually when you feel hurried you are operating from the Reptilian Complex, where you are much less innovative, efficient, and able to focus.

Most of us treat time as a precious commodity in short supply. Time is precious, but it’s only scarce if you believe it is. Taking your time ironically lets you operate at a higher level of efficiency. So whenever you find yourself rushing try letting go of the belief in time scarcity and act as if you have all the time the world. Try it for 5 minutes and see what happens. The phenomenon may seem strange but here’s why it works so well. When you are rushing, chances are you are doing one thing while thinking about something else – like where you need to be, where you’d prefer to be. This kind of mental activity prevents us from being present with the job at hand. By actually becoming present, time seems to expand. It’s all in the experience.

If you find it hard to let go of unhelpful beliefs, check out the Sedona Method. It’s one of those easy things you can do anywhere, anytime, everyday. After a while a sense of time expansion can become your default way of being.

What very mysterious things days are. Sometimes they fly by, and other times they seem to last forever, yet they are all exactly twenty-four hours. There’s quite a lot we don’t know about them. Melanie Benjamin, Alice I Have Been

==================================

If you’d like to help the people in your organization be better at the “inner game” of time management, give us a call at 1-866-294-2988 (1-604-222-2276). Or check out our web site for more tips and free articles.

Like a silently ticking time bomb, a habit of shallow breathing could be eating away at your health until one day it’s too late. Too many people these days are lost in the trance of scarcity around time, money and resources. This means you probably have a habit of operating too often from the reptilian complex, or flight or flight response.

In this state of mind, your entire system functions much less efficiently. The stress response halts or slows down various processes such as digestion, blood circulation and creative thinking. Prolonged stress responses may result in chronic suppression of the immune system, leaving the body open to infections and disease.

Most people in today’s society are having to do more with less, constantly adapt, be innovative under pressure, re-design everything in a moment’s notice–all because of constant change. Those who can stay calm, confident and clear-headed in constant change are the leaders of the future and indispensable to those they serve.

I call this being a “Change Artist”. Change Artists have regular habits that allow them to benefit from the changes affecting their world and inspire creative thinking in others, all the while staying grounded in integrity. One of the top habits of Change Artist is that they breathe more fully than their more “Change Challenged” counter-parts.

For a fun perspective on the situation check out this mock commercial for breathing:

Breathing is one of those safe, inexpensive, readily available techniques that doesn’t get used often enough.

For an easy to follow conscious breathing technique you can practice check out this video below. If you do a technique like this enough times consciously it will eventually become an unconscious habit.

The metaphor of the growing cycle, is a useful one for change leaders. Creating fertile soil is your first task towards ensuring the seed of your idea can thrive. Have you broken down the old fears, learned from them, and therefore created a rich and “alive” environment that invites excitement?

Why people paid so much for tickets for the Winter Olympics

Some people paid as much at $750 to $1500 per ticket to see an event at the Olympic Winter Games here in Vancouver this week. When I surveyed these ticket buyers as to why they would spend so much on a two-hour experience I received the same general answer: “It’s so alive and exciting, and those kind of experiences are rare in life.”

An innovative way to bring awareness to your cause

Here’s another example. An innovative organization called Imagine 1 Day was seeking to gain attention for their cause: providing primary education for all children in Ethiopia. They organized a flash mob dance during the Winter Olympics games in downtown Vancouver. The idea was to teach a choreographed routine to a group of people who would then spontaneously break into that dance in a public area — an idea no doubt inspired by the Improv Everywhere events.

They invited people in their network and staged several rehearsals to teach a dance routine to the hit song, Dancing in the Street. They expected about 200-300 people to show up. In the end, over 3000 people learned the dance. The crowd took up an entire city block in Vancouver. Ten times more people than they ever expected to attend were there, and all of those people got to hear about their cause. Not only that but another thousand watched from the sidelines. Add to that all the videographers who posted it on YouTube. Even CNN reported on it. Why would that many people spent so much of their precious time and energy to learn a rather complicated routine and then drag themselves out on a cold and rainy day to dance it? I was one of the participants along with many of my friends. The answer seemed unanimous. Because it was exciting to be part of a huge group of people harmonizing our energies together doing something fun — all for a great cause. In short, it made us all feel more alive.

Here’s a short clip of the event:

Regardless of your opinion about an organization’s goals, Olympics Games or educating children in Ethiopia, creating an atmosphere of aliveness invariably attracts people and opens minds.

Trying to plant your seed of change in unbalanced soil

In the last blog post we talked about one of the main mistakes change leaders make–which is trying to plant the seed of change in unbalanced soil. When there is an over focus on protection at the expense of growth ideas can’t get traction. People have a deep need to feel alive, to grow and thrive. They also have a core need to feel safe and protected. The problem comes when those two needs get out of balance. The tendency in many organizations especially after an economic downturn, is for there to be an over focus on protection which tends to kill off growth and aliveness. Many organizations are not open to change because there is a long standing habit of operating mainly from a fear-based need to simply survive. This survival mindset may have some basis in reality but more often it is simply a bad habit of catastrophic thinking. As a change leader you may need to address this issue before people will be open to your idea for positive change. Organizations and individuals get stuck in protection mode due to perceptions. No change can occur unless you help stakeholders perceive the situation in a more growth-oriented way. This usually cannot be done with logic alone as fear is an instinctual emotion and therefore you will need a more “alive” approach.

Case study – focusing on growth and aliveness to change perception

For example, a privately-owned software company had a culture clash between the sales force and the product development and tech support teams. The owner felt that the majority of resources and decision-making power should lie in the hands of the sales force because they drove revenue. As a result, the sales team decided on timelines and deliverables without consulting the other teams.

Naturally, the stress levels and subsequent resentment within the development team grew. When the development team presented their concerns to the owner he simply asked them to “think more positively” — and you can imagine the response to that. The owner had tunnel vision about the structure and system needed for his company to survive. The previous two years had been a tough. Cash flow suffered due to an economic downturn and they had barely avoided bankruptcy. As a result all he could focus on was cash flow, and the sales force meant cash flow. Now that sales were flowing they were taking every contract without communicating with each other before signing the deal.

Meanwhile the product developers and tech support team suffered. Several of their best people quit. Back room gossip escalated. Interpersonal conflict grew. When the owner heard that clients were leaving because of the bad “vibe” there, he hired an HR person to sort things out. She tried everything from disciplining the gossipers to sending them off for motivational training to help them “get over their resistance to change”. Not surprisingly, the resentment just seemed to grow.

After assessing the situation we helped the HR person come up with a new tactic. She led a team building day with everyone in the company that started with a fun activity. Once they were relaxed and enjoying being together, she illustrated the growth potential of a more collaborative decision-making process. She addressed all concerns such as the fear that consulting with other team leaders would mean losing contracts. She provided facts to prove that an over-focus on sales was ironically costing everyone in terms of morale, productivity, customer service, employee health, and ultimately revenue. Even though it looked like the focus on sales was all about growth, it was coming from a fear-based mindset. She offered success stories of similar firms that were consulting with each other before signing deals and still thriving very well.To make a long story short, they found a way to restructured resources in a way that seemed more equitable to all concerned and decided that all team leaders would be consulted before signing any client contracts. In the end this allowed for much better external (and internal) customer service.

Good judgment comes from experience which comes from bad judgment. – Anon

Looking at the common mistakes of change leaders is a great entry into this topic because people often only achieve success through its opposite: failure. My upcoming book, The Change Artist Principles, focuses on the problems of leading people through change and how those problems are perpetuated sometimes and resolved at other times. Before we dive into the problems or the mistakes, it helps to have some context for using this approach.

You cannot have success without failure or persistence without resistance

Consider the concepts of success and failure. They are opposites yet related—you cannot know one without the other. Similarly, persistence and resistance are opposites and also cannot be understood without the other. Both sets of opposites appear over and over again throughout the change process. Our perception of any situation is relative, and we can only understand its nature by studying it through contrast. For example, in a universe in which everything is blue, you cannot discuss the concept of blueness because you lack contrasting colors

Failure and resistance got you where you are today

Let’s take another, more personal, example. Right now think of an area of life in which you have plenty of experience. Something you could honestly say you are “good” at. It could be in golf, or parenting, or graphic design, or interpersonal communication. You probably achieved that level of expertise through having some success, making some mistakes, resisting moving forward, then persisting through the challenging parts and then learning from them, then back around again through all those phases. You became good because you embraced these opposites. For whatever reason you kept practicing, working through your resistance, being persistent despite making mistakes and feeling a sense of failure sometimes, getting feedback, learning from the feedback and trying something new the next time. Chances are, for every step into your feelings of resistance you found renewed strength to persist. For every moment you sensed failure, you found a silver lining which renewed your belief in success.

New leaders too often get chastised for making mistakes

This may seem like obvious information, but in my role as a consultant I am continually amazed at how often people enter leadership roles with no training and then get chastised for making mistakes and then rebuffed for feeling resistant to trying new things. Good leadership thrives in an environment where you are allowed to make mistakes and then are encouraged to deconstruct them and create a new plan of action continually.

Mistakes are like grounding agents in an electrical current

The concept behind the word “Mistake” is simply an entry point into what I like to call “The Grounding Agents”. These are the pitfalls along the way that ground you into the actual realities of leading people through change, much like an electrical grounding cord. The positive charge is your vision of success and the grounding agent is that which keeps it grounded in the here and now. Both are necessary to make the machine of change work.  A Transformational Leader is one who creates a positive vision of change, expects to be met with grounding agents so that the interplay of the two (positive vision + negative grounding agent) can create a third entity. The third entity is the change that truly transforms those concerned. Using these skills, a 21^st Century Leader emerges.

The Top 7 Mistakes

This list of mistakes is based on 20 years of surveying and working with change leaders and those affected by their decisions. Through my research and experience it became clear that the same human mistakes were happening over and over again and that those who made them enough times persisted through the failure and resistance were the ones who achieved success, or what I like to call the Habits of Successful Change Leaders. In a nutshell here are the top 7 mistakes using the metaphor of the growing cycle.

1) Planting your idea in barren soil
2) Planting the wrong kind of seed
3) Not enough watering and fertilization
4) No stays
5) Letting the bugs and weeds take over
6) Lack of pruning
7) Letting it go to seed

We will explore each of these mistakes and failures in the next post using a couple of helpful metaphors.

Why the Gallup Q12 may now be an exercise in futility
For the key to employee engagement, all you need to do these days is to look to the Gallup Organization, right? They conducted hundreds of focus groups and thousands of interviews with employees in a variety of industries, and came up with the Q12. This is a 12-question survey that identifies strong feelings of employee engagement.

You can see a list of the 12 questions here.

But what if you can’t live up to standards of the Q12? Certainly managers who care about you, encourage you, mark your progress, value your opinions and allow you to learn and grow—all contribute to employee engagement. But, for many that is a radical new approach to management. What if you can’t find or train those kinds of people overnight? Plus, many people don’t know what is expected of them at work because the economy keeps changing, or the industry keeps changing. Employees may not have the materials and equipment they need for the same reasons. Maybe you can’t do “what you do best” at work every day, because “what you do best” has now become obsolete. Or, you can’t do quality work, because the market turn around time has significantly decreased. In short, trying to keep up with the Q 12 may now be an exercise in futility.

So you can’t feel engaged until the rate of change slows down?
If so, you might as well drop out of the rat race now and live in a cave. The only way out of this dilemma is to adopt new habits to deal with change. Due to profound economic, sociological, and demographic changes, we must evolve at a core level. In Seth Godin’s bestseller, “Survival Is Not Enough”, he states that “Most of us view change as a threat, and survival as the goal. The first step to help yourself and your organization thrive in the coming economy is to eliminate the anti-change reflex that’s genetically coded into all of us. Once a company learns to zoom (embrace change without pain), it’s much more likely to evolve.”

Creativity as the key to employee engagement
What Seth Godin is referring to when he says “zooming” is a form of creative thinking that is available to everyone. It is bundled with our bio-computer hard drive. We just need to learn how to use it more often. The problem with the Q12 is that the burden of employee engagement mostly lies on the shoulders of management. The truth is, many managers are even less engaged than their employees. How are they possibly going to inspire their workforce? The antidote to almost all Q12 is to teach people how to zoom, at all levels of an organization. The lowest level of creativity inspires far more vitality in a person than the highest level of consuming. In other words, if you can create a workplace full of creative thinkers who share enough of the same core values, the engagement happens all on its own.

Dissolving negativity at work
Countless times, we have seen office politics dissolve; complainers become supportive; toxic emotions unexpectedly evaporate, and unethical people suddenly have integrity when an organization gets back in the creative flow. In other words, it learns how to zoom. Yet, we’d like to take it one step further. It needs to be creativity tied in to core organizational values; otherwise you can end up like Enron (innovation run amok because it lacks integrity). What we’re talking about here is zooming with integrity, or what I call being a Change Artist. To build a Change Artist organization is to create clear values and then teach enough people key habits that naturally unlock the creative thinking necessary to live those values. Once there is a high enough “vibe” of creativity, the permission for it, and the responsible demonstration of it, the Change Artist virus spreads. Others can pick it up by osmosis.

Do you have a comment?
Feel free to add your opinion to this post. For more tips, or to learn about Carla Rieger’s organizational programs, consulting and other resources go to www.artistryofchange.com.