CHAPTER ELEVEN
Bonus Track:
This Amp Goes to Eleven!*

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help
them to become what they are capable of being.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Mind Management

By this point in our voyage, we’ve examined management through multiple lenses. This bonus chapter approaches the subject from yet another angle—possibly the most difficult—how we manage our brain.

Acquiring new skills and techniques, such as those presented throughout this book, requires changing behavior. It’s not easy crushing to bits previous habits and building up bright, shiny new ones in their place. On top of this Olympian effort is the fact that the most ingrained behaviors are invisible to the naked eye… habits of the mind.

Our beliefs define us, affecting our behavior. Recall this revelation from chapter 4:

Your sole areas of direct responsibility are
your thoughts, your words, and your actions.

If I am convinced that I add little value as a manager (thoughts), my behavior (words and actions) will reinforce my belief. Interactions are the concretization of our thoughts.

How we manage is ultimately a reflection of our thoughts.

Changing your thoughts about management changes you as a manager.

What if you decide to pretend (or even believe) your staff are your teachers—especially those who challenge you? What if you want to get a handle on each lesson they are here to teach you? What if you reframe your expectations to support the idea that they won’t change to suit your whims? Consider this:

No one will change until you do.

The behavior of others mirrors your own thinking coming back to you.

Revising your perspective is for yourself; this isn’t about letting other people off the hook.

Generalizing, Deleting, and Distorting

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a cognitive science focused on improving rapport and communication through an increased, conscious use of the two primary ways people communicate—neurologically (kinesthetic) and linguistically (language). That’s pretty heady. Don’t fret. I can break it down into bite-sized pieces. I’ve snuck in bits and pieces of NLP throughout this book, similar to a cookbook recipe that sneaks veggies in on unsuspecting carnivores. It’s good for you, even if you don’t realize what’s going on behind the scenes.

Since we’ve made this far, I’ll come clean. This section is very NLP.

GENERALIZATIONS

Generalizations occur when a single experience comes to represent an entire category of situations.

Generalizations can be helpful guides at times. Examples of useful generalizations include:

Always proof a memo before distribution.

Exercise caution when crossing the street.

Think clearly before clicking Send.

Yet, unchecked generalizations can limit effectiveness:

Never back down in a negotiation; it is a sure sign of weakness.

Never trust anyone.

Only thinkers can handle tough business decisions.

Feelers always know the best way to keep a team together.

Generalizations are dangerous because past events can inordinately influence current experience and future expectations.

Models are helpful if they are assessed and evaluated for usefulness. Taken to an extreme, however, generalizations lead to a flat interpretation of the world, such as “Nobody appreciates me around here” or “Everyone ignores my ideas.”

Remember, generalizations are never true… except right now.

Certain red-flag language leads to generalizations:

Notice red-flag language in your head and conversations. Arguments bring out the best in red flag language:

You never listen to me!

Every time I speak, you interrupt!

You always have to be right.

Whatever I say, you disregard.

Whenever we go somewhere, you lose your temper.

You do that all the time.

She never pays attention to me.

He gets the credit for what I do, every time.

People should greet others when they see them at work.

Love those.

The frequency with which many of us use generalizations is downright startling. In case you’re interested, generalizations are also called universal quantifiers. If you were interested, you might want to consider a hobby… or NLP.

DELETIONS

Selectively attending to certain aspects of experience while excluding others is called deletion. Like generalizations, deletions serve a fine purpose in the right context. Recall the last time you were in a room where several conversations were transpiring simultaneously—perhaps a boardroom before a meeting, a networking event, or a department lunch. Your ability to filter out extraneous sounds and focus on your immediate conversation served you well in this context. Deletion enables us to render our sensory intake into manageable, relevant chunks.

The flip side is that an overly active filter prevents us from recognizing important data such as creative solutions to challenges, nontraditional resources, or exemplary behavior from a difficult staff person.

Thinkers may err in the direction of deleting subtle nonverbal cues sent out during a performance appraisal or negotiation, for instance. Feelers can get derailed in the same situations when they pick up on a strong emotion, such as confusion or anger from another party, causing feelers to miss important verbal cues.

Being aware of your propensity for deletion in charged situations can mitigate their impact.

DISTORTIONS

One example of distortion is the visualization of an event prior to the actual experience. Athletes frequently cite visualization prior to an important race or competition as a factor in success. Those in healing professions claim measurable increases in health when traditional methods of wellness are combined with guided imagery.

Distortion creates shifts in experience of sensory data. Artists, scientists, and fiction writers use the gift of distortion to come up with new concepts and original theories. Much advancement and beauty owes its beginnings to distortion of accepted reality.

Like generalization and deletion, however, unchecked distortion has a downside. Distortion can lead to innovation; it can also limit the richness of one’s experience. Distortion can block the intake of novel experiences.

Many misunderstandings owe their roots to distortions of reality. My supervisor might pass by my office and give a perfunctory nod. I can distort this to mean he is irritated with the report I turned in last night and is working on a way to restructure the department sans my position. Yet his reality could have been that he was preoccupied with his next meeting, where he has to persuade a new client to purchase several thousand units of product. Perhaps my report is crucial to his success and was tucked under his arm as he hurried past.

Distortions can prevent us from experiencing events as positive, because false beliefs weigh us down.

Small Acts, Big Impact

On a recent business trip, I happened into conversation with a Southwest Airlines flight attendant, Tara. She was a new hire who intended to stay with the company, as she put it, “for life.” Tara was remarkably effusive about Southwest. This kind of instant loyalty is rare among employees of large corporations.

Tara proceeded to enthusiastically inform me about how much senior management cares about the flight crews. To illustrate her point, she gave this example: Upon conclusion of each flight, the crew is responsible for tidying up the aircraft and preparing it for incoming passengers. All staff on board—except the pilots, who have their own preparations to make—are expected to contribute.

Recently a Southwest vice president was on board Tara’s flight for company business. Upon the flight’s conclusion, the VP stayed on board after the other passengers disembarked, got up, and helped clean the cabin with the regular crew. His action—which took about ten minutes—lives on not only in the minds of the crew present but also in all the others who have by now heard the story.

Do you think that VP was a T or an F? What’s your gut response?

Chances are if you’re a T, you guessed T, and Fs guessed F. That is because temperament explains reasons behind behavior as much as the behavior itself. The same behavior could have distinct motives.

Both Ts and Fs value the behavior of this VP and so identify him as being one of their own… for different reasons. His actions were practical and efficient—if he himself is a T, he probably helped out because it was quick, easy, builds collateral, and seemed like the right thing to do. If the VP is an F, he did it because it was a friendly gesture, made him feel good, enabled him to bond with the flight attendants, and showed that he doesn’t pull rank.

This little ditty personifies so much of what we’ve discussed on these pages. Real impact is made without being “bossy.” Managers are always being watched. A lasting positive impression requires much more than exuding what is typically considered “charisma.”

Little acts on the part of management add up to major, positive effects on the larger business. In 2010, 140,000 people applied for 140 jobs at Southwest. For the mathematically challenged, that means a measly 0.1 percent of the applicants received job offers. Retention is the highest in the industry. Customer satisfaction also is the highest in the industry.

And how are Southwest’s interviewers instructed to make hiring decisions? They are told to select candidates based on evidence of a “customer service mentality.” Southwest ranks people skills above technical skills in importance during interviews. Southwest believes people can learn the nuts and bolts of their jobs once they’re on board.

Except, I hope, the pilots. Somebody ask them about that.

Southwest believes happy people make generous, warm employees who will go the extra mile for each other and the customers. This approach is a mix of T and F. On a practical, thinker level, Southwest leadership recognizes that if the company shows that it values employees, such as by paying above industry standards, the employees will go further for the company too. Plus, Southwest saves millions through a high retention rate. And for the feelers? Employees are encouraged to send each other “LUV Letters” to acknowledge each other for jobs well done. Something for everyone. Employees are made to feel they matter and are appreciated.

How can you incorporate T and F incentives for your team?

Paying Attention Pays Off

From 1927 through 1932 a series of experiments began at Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois. The Hawthorne study was designed to examine the effect of factors such as light and humidity levels on worker productivity.

The researchers were surprised by a major, unexpected finding: Productivity improved regardless of experimental manipulation of external factors. Effectiveness increased merely from the psychological stimulus of being observed. The implications of these findings are thrilling! Okay, I get excited easily.

A major outcome of this research—which was intended only to examine physical settings in the workplace—was that social group influences and interpersonal factors must be considered even when performing efficiency research such as time-motion studies. In the decades since, the Hawthorne effect has provided the rationale for untold human relations theories and practices.

Conclusions of the Hawthorne study include:

The quality of relationships between managers and employees influences how effectively employees carry out assignments.

Individual aptitude is an imperfect predictor of job performance.

Even when physical and mental potential is indicated, production is strongly influenced by social factors.

Informal networks and norms, such as systemic definitions of a fair day’s work, influence productivity.

The workplace is a social system composed of interdependent parts.

The act of merely observing people changes them.

It is not possible to observe without affecting the observed, challenging basic beliefs about objective measurement.

Cue Twilight Zone music. I’m so into this.

This goes further. What the Hawthorne folks discovered complements physics research proving quantum interconnectedness.

According to quantum theory, thoughts and experience are related. There is no truly objective external reality; the physical universe does not exist independently of an observer’s thoughts. As physicists have discovered, no objects—or people for that matter—have well-defined boundaries. Not only do atoms not have clear boundaries, they are not even present as particles until we observe them. Physicists have proven—or more accurately, have discovered—that atoms spread out continuously in wave form until they are observed. So, is an atom a particle or a wave? Experimentation led to an unexpected discovery: It depends.

This mind-blowing discovery threw the scientific world into uncharted territory. Unobserved atoms behave like waves; observed atoms exhibit patterns of particles.

A wave is fluid and indicates possibility; it cannot be measured at a single point in space and time. A particle collapses that infinite possibility into one measurable, observable reality. An observer transforms the wave into a single particle through the act of observation.

This now-established principle links back to the Hawthorne effect. The Hawthorne study demonstrated—in an entirely different arena—merely paying attention, giving people (or atoms) your attention, has an impact on their behavior.

Taking It Home… or Rather, to Work

How does this cool stuff relate to you as manager? You don’t have to be infallible to be a plenty good manager. You don’t have to be brilliant. And you don’t have to possess supernatural powers to distinguish Ts from Fs with razor-sharp accuracy.

Just making an effort at the most fundamental level will yield positive results. Paying more attention to your direct reports, in and of itself, not only can ramp up their productivity but also shows your interest in their success. Applying one or two new techniques from this book is icing on the cake. There is plenty of margin for error.

Flex!

Manage your mind-set, pay attention to the people around you, seize opportunities to perform small acts that make a big impact… and start to discover the enjoyable part of being a manager.

P.S. The system with the most flexibility exerts the greatest influence.