Chapter Five

ACTION 1
Developing the Daily
Habits of Cooperation

People who Glow have positive ways of thinking about others and five daily habits of cooperation. They have realistic and positive expectations of others and are prepared to share valuable information with others, to act with discretion, to use the language of cooperation, and to make and keep commitments.

For some people, being cooperative is as easy as falling off a log. That’s the case with Gareth, who has been cooperative since he was a child. Ask him what he does to be cooperative, and he will look at you in amazement— it’s invisible to him; he doesn’t know any other way. For other people, being cooperative does not come so naturally. They can choose not to change— and like Gareth suffer the consequences of the Big Freeze, or they can, like Jill, learn to Glow by actively developing the habits of cooperation.

Everyone can learn to be cooperative—it’s simply a matter of will and choice and of learning a number of habits that you will depend on every day. And if you have children, these are habits you may want them to learn as well. As Jill found, it could make their working life more energized and fun.

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The Nature of Habits

What are habits? Habits are actions you regularly take that become part of who you are and define the person you have become. Adopting some of these habits requires you to develop a skill or an aptitude, while others do not.

As I think about these questions, I am reflecting on my own daily habits. Take today, for example. Today is a writing day for me, and I am in my home in Spain looking over the Mediterranean. Since I had planned to write today, I got up relatively early this morning to see the sunrise. Then I put on some music that I always listen to, and then my habit is to spend about ten minutes in basic yoga. I then switch to another album and go to my sofa, where I write for the next four or five hours. These habits are important to me; they define who I am (I am a writer and a researcher), and they have been crucial to my success (they enable me to be productive). By the way, as I edit this section, I am under pressure, sitting uncomfortably in an airport—sadly, being near the Mediterranean is only a small part of my life! But the habits I have developed in that place have been an important part of my productivity and my capacity to Glow.

Where did these habits come from? Reflecting on my own habits, five of which I just described, I see that they have been assembled over time from bits and pieces in the same way that a bird assembles a nest. I have discovered them in all sorts of places. Some I have experimented with for years. The choice of music, for example—when I am doing yoga, I always listen to something soothing but lively; at the moment, it’s Jack Johnson’s album In Between Dreams (it has the right upbeat tempo for yoga). However, I have discovered that when I am writing, I cannot listen to voices; I only listen to orchestral pieces and preferably the piano. In fact, my habit is to listen to Glenn Gould playing Bach (The Goldberg Variations, The French Suites, and the Partita). These listening habits have taken years of experimentation to develop, but they are a habit that suits me well.

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The habit of lounging on the sofa when writing? Like most writers, I began to write at a desk (in fact, in my home in London, I still do write at a desk) but found that often my back and upper shoulders ached. Then I saw my great friend Tammy Erickson writing at her home in Boston lounging on a comfortable “lazy boy” chair. I liked the idea so much that I began to do the same when writing in Spain—and it has been a habit ever since.

The habits I have described are not cooperative habits; I simply use them to illustrate what habits are and how they are developed over years from a variety of experiences until they become incorporated into our everyday actions.

These are habits that have served me well, but I also have habits that have not served me so well. My habit, for example, of always wanting to have the last word. I am a determined person, and I find it really hard to let go—so I continue to push for my own view. Imagine what our household is like with teenage boys who also want to have the last word! Wanting to have the last word is not great for cooperation, and over the years I have tried to modify this habit and learn to let go, with mixed results, I would have to say.

I have discovered that people who often seem to be in the Big Freeze have five bad habits:

• They try to keep all the good ideas and information to themselves.
• They use confidential information as a source of gossip to devalue others.
• They only talk about the really positive aspects of themselves and work hard to create an impenetrable shell.
• They use the language of combat a great deal at work—words like battle, survivors, victory, and losers.
• They are vague about what they promise and try to form a smoke screen around what they will deliver.

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Now take a look at the five good habits, which at first glance seem rather simple but can be incredibly powerful.

The Five Good Cooperative Habits

If you want to Glow, you need to build into your daily behavior a set of habits that will enable you to cooperate with others with ease. Here are five daily habits that are crucial to developing this aspect of yourself:

• The habit of sharing valuable information with others
• The habit of acting with discretion
• The habit of being open about yourself
• The habit of using the language of cooperation
• The habit of making and keeping commitments

So lets recap: habits are the daily routines that define who you are. You have assembled these habits over time through experimentation and seeing other people behaving in those ways. Recall how Jill learned the habits of cooperation by watching the people she worked with and studying their behavior. As Jill found, where you spend your time and whom you work with can be crucial for providing role models for developing good cooperative habits.

Habits can also be manifestations of your personality and preferred style of working. For example, I am an introvert who enjoys my own company, and so the solitary habits I have accumulated while writing are a perfect manifestation of my personality and preferences.

People like Gareth, who are naturally cooperative, and people like Jill, who have learned to be cooperative, are all defined by the habits they have developed around other people. Cooperation is a habit—it is something you can learn from others and can improve with practice. You have the free will to develop these habits of cooperation if you choose to do so.

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Let’s take a look at each of these habits in more detail.

The Habit of Sharing Valuable Information with Others

One of the most powerful habits of cooperation you can develop is “gifting”: willingly sharing valuable information with other people. Recall how Gareth began to realize that his colleagues did not have this habit or how surprised Jill was to find herself in a place where people willingly shared knowledge with her.

At the heart of your ability to be cooperative is your willingness to give without anticipating that you will receive anything in return. Your relationships with work colleagues should not take the form of transactions—you do something for them, and then they do something for you. That’s what you might call tit-for-tat bartering whereby each of you is trying to maximize your own self-interest. Tit-for-tat behavior eliminates the possibility of cooperating through sharing.

Actions to take now to share valuable
information with others

Action 1.1 Identifying your possible sources of value. First work out what you have that is valuable and could be important to others. Here are some suggestions:

• Your time or your capacity to listen to others, giving them your undivided attention
• Your network and the connections that you have developed, if connecting two people you know could be fruitful
• The ideas you have that could be beneficial to others
• Your goodwill and capacity to feel positive and upbeat about others, to wish the very best for them

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Action 1.2 Sharing these valuable resources. Now think about what is valuable to you, consider how you might share this with others, and set yourself this task:

• Over the next week, I will willingly give something that is valuable to me to two of my nearest colleagues.
• I will not monitor what they do with my gift but will give again the following week.

The Habit of Acting with Discretion

If you want to be cooperative, you have to learn to trust people and they have to learn to trust you. When you trust others, you take their goodwill for granted and don’t need to keep checking the motives for their actions. When you are perceived as a trustworthy person, this encourages cooperation in your wider circle because trust permits easy relationships with people who don’t yet know each other well. One of the ways that you demonstrate you are trustworthy is the way you handle sensitive information. People are more likely to trust you if they see you acting with discretion.

Actions to take now to act with discretion

Action 1.3 Acting with discretion. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What confidential information have you been entrusted with? This could be information about people, or the organization or community that you are a member of.
• Looking back over the last couple of months are there times when you have been indiscreet? Times when you have told people information that was given to you in confidence, or occasions when you gave away information that you knew to be sensitive and should not have been shared?
• As you reflect on your actions over the last couple of months, remind yourself that sharing confidential information will seriously erode your ability to be seen as being discreet and trustworthy.

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The Habit of Being Open About Yourself

Cooperation flourishes when you have great conversations. As you will see in Chapter Six, conversation can be analytical (when you talk about business results, financial numbers, or trends) or emotional (when you talk about how you feel about something, what your views are, what it means to you). It is the combination of the analytical and the emotional that generates great conversations that allow you to Glow and fuel Hot Spots. For these great conversations to take place, you need to be open about your emotions and prepared to trust others and develop this trust in an open and authentic way.

Actions to take now to self-disclose wisely

Action 1.4 Deepening your self-awareness. What is it about yourself that you feel good about, and what aspects of yourself are you trying to improve? What aspects of your colleagues do you value, and what aspects of your colleagues do you feel are working against you?

Action 1.5 Opening up to others. You create stronger trusting relationships by being open about what you value about yourself and what you value in others. This demonstrates goodwill toward others.

Develop trust by being open about yourself and what you are striving to change. Tell your colleagues about what you are trying to change and ask them to support you.

Be prepared to share your feelings and emotions with others in a way that is appropriate to the situation but demonstrates that you are being open with them.

The Habit of Using the Language of Cooperation

Recall that in the three stories you explored in Chapter Four, language played a key role in the development of Jill’s virtuous cycle and Gareth’s vicious cycle. When Gareth joined a company that was highly individually competitive, he very quickly became aware of the language of competition—always using the word I, for example, rather than we. When Jill joined a more cooperative place, she began to trust and cooperative with people because she heard more cooperative language.

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Actions to take now to develop the language of cooperation

Action 1.6 Monitoring the language of cooperation. Over the next week, monitor your use of cooperative and competitive language. You create stronger cooperation by making sure you use the word we rather than I when discussing business matters and by consciously using language that includes others to encourage cooperation among your team of colleagues.

The Habit of Making and Keeping Commitments

When you share valuable information with others, act with discretion, and use the language of cooperation, you are practicing habits of cooperation on a daily basis. However, there is one more habit that is essential to Glowing. That is the way you engage with others in the tasks and joint actions you take. Many of the Hot Spots of creativity and innovation you find yourself in will require you to work on complex tasks. Think back to how Frank went about solving the problem he faced by reaching out to the people around him. However, for this reaching out to work, Frank has to be willing to make commitments with respect to what he is prepared to do, when he is prepared to do it by, and what would be the consequences of his failing to honor these commitments. For people to trust Frank, they have to see him delivering on these promises and to be regarded as a person who is able to keep to his commitments.

Commitments lubricate the everyday practice of cooperation. By making a commitment, you agree to a course of action you will take. Without commitments, cooperation simply becomes mere window dressing—a charade that you are playing.

Actions to take now to make and
keep commitments

Action 1.7 Making commitments. Be prepared to make powerful commitments to people, stating clearly what you are committing to. Do this face to face or on the telephone or in a videoconference so that everyone can hear your tone of voice and can acknowledge the commitments you have made:

• State precisely what you are going to do, and declare up front the consequences you are prepared to accept if you do not live up to your promises.
• Be wise and realistic about what you can achieve and the promises you make to ensure that you are in a position to fulfill others’ expectations of you. A well-intentioned tendency to overcommit and overpromise will erode the trust others have in you and their willingness to cooperate with you.

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Supporting the Habit of Cooperation

As you look back on these five habits you may be asking yourself if there is more you can do to support their development. Of course these habits come from within—they are about you. However, there are ways in which you can increase their potency. Think back to Gareth, who learned the habits of cooperation from a dearly loved uncle, or how Jill learned the habits of cooperation by watching the people in her firm. The place where John worked did the opposite. The executives he worked with behaved in a highly individualistic and competitive way—and so he learned competitive habits from them.

Since you develop habits by watching others, you need to be thoughtful about whom you have around you. Spend too much time with highly competitive people, and like John, you will abandon your cooperative habits. The people who become your role models and mentors can have a profound impact on how your habits develop, so choose carefully. In fact, my own research on cooperative workplaces shows that the most important influence on the cooperative habits of individuals or teams is how they see other (often senior) people behaving. When people mentor you, they take a personal interest in you, they support your development, and it is often from them you learn your habits.

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So choose your mentors with great care. This will mean at times steering clear of the person who looks most successful and instead choosing a mentor for his or her cooperative capabilities. For example, when John worked closely with Celia, the relationship between them was not particularly positive for John. Over the longer term, Celia will damage John by teaching him bad habits, such as becoming adept at tit-for-tat negotiations and never giving anything away unless he’s going to get something in return. These bad habits will severely limit his pleasure at work and his capacity to Glow. Perhaps most damaging, a highly competitive mentor like Celia may strive to control the access her mentees have to other people. So, for example, Celia did not introduce John to any of her colleagues who had clients beyond the gas sector. A transactional relationship like this rarely helps you Glow because the other person is only in it for what he or she can get out of it—not what everyone can put in and gain together.

As you reflect on the five cooperative habits, think about who could be a cooperative mentor for you and take the initiative to approach them to coach you on a project you are working on. You will be surprised at how delighted they will be to coach you—after all, this is a cooperative habit.

Key Points in Chapter Five
ACTION 1
Developing the Daily Habits of Cooperation

Habits are actions you regularly take that become part of who you are and define the person you have become. The development of some habits requires you to develop skill or aptitude, while others do not. If you want to Glow, you need to build into your daily behavior a set of habits that will enable you to cooperate with others with ease. There are five daily habits that are crucial to developing this aspect of yourself:

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The Habit of Sharing Valuable Information with Others
Cooperative people make a habit of sharing what is valuable to them with others.

Action 1.1 Identifying your possible sources of value

Action 1.2 Sharing these valuable resources

The Habit of Acting with Discretion
Cooperative people are trusted because they are discreet.

Action 1.3 Acting with discretion

The Habit of Being Open About Yourself
Cooperative people are trusted by others because they are able to be open about themselves and authentic in their behavior.

Action 1.4 Deepening your self-awareness

Action 1.5 Opening up to others

The Habit of Using the Language of Cooperation
Cooperative people demonstrate that they value cooperation by using the language of cooperation.

Action 1.6 Monitoring the language of cooperation

The Habit of Making and Keeping Commitments
Cooperative people are trusted by others because they are able to make and keep commitments.

Action 1.7 Making commitments

Remember that cooperative role models can be enormously important in supporting your cooperative habits.