|CHAPTER 14|
Drive: Communicate that You Get Results
“Dear President/Mr. Obama,
The best thing about living in the White House would be running around like a maniac. The thing I would like least is the work.”
Drive involves these items from chapter 12:
Focus: Stays focused at meetings and at work on what’s most important. Is fully present. Gives the right amount of detail to the right audiences.
Energy: Projects physical, emotional, and mental energy (physical means you’re animated; emotional, you care; mental, you’re alert). Sustains energy over time.
Initiative: Offers ideas and suggestions to continuously improve and innovate. Experiments with new approaches, takes calculated risks. Is proactive.
Commitment: Makes and keeps commitments. Takes responsibility for getting things done. Stays true to one’s values. Persists, persists, persists.
Focus: We’ve already devoted Part I of this book to focus. Here, we’re also talking about being present. It’s hard to have presence when you’re multi-tasking or distracted.
Energy: Can you imagine a CEO without it? Where do you get your energy from? And how do you sustain it, day after day?
Energy and focus make a compelling pair. If you have energy without focus, you’ll appear hyper-caffeinated and just get in everyone’s way. But focus without energy is also a problem; you know what’s important, but can’t get moving.
Initiative and commitment also go together nicely. Initiative is about starting things, commitment is about finishing. Commitment is especially important—one of the fastest ways to build, or destroy, trust.
Presence Action #3: Focus
Stop Checking Email 74 Times/Day—Especially at Meetings
I didn’t check email once, not for two weeks. I was on vacation at the time, but still.
How often do you check? For most of us, according to researcher Gloria Mark, University of California, it’s 74 times/day.2
That means, during my two-week vacation, I didn’t check email 1,036 times. I missed it.
One day, I noticed a newspaper article about email. “This article,” I told my wife, “says that email will never die. Ever.”3
“I thought you weren’t supposed to be thinking about email,” my wife said.
“I’m not checking it,” I said. “I’m just reading about it. They call it ‘the cockroach of the Internet’”4
“That’s gross,” my wife said.
Well, cockroach metaphors aren’t for everyone. Some people don’t like bugs of any sort.
Before vacation, I had a computer bug. A friend suggested a simple fix. “Reboot,” she said. “When nothing else works, my solution is always the same: turn off the machine.” Sure enough, that worked.
To stay focused at work, you need to turn off the machines periodically. Some of my clients ban phones during meetings. They add “tech breaks” in case people get desperate.
“I was surprised,” a manager told me recently, “to discover how negatively people viewed my texting during meetings.”
Maybe you can multi-task, maybe you can’t (neuroscientists say you can’t), but either way, it sends the wrong message.
It’s not enough to pay attention. You’ve also got to look like you’re paying attention (optics).
Presence Action #4: Energy
Before You Start Work, Warm Up
You present yourself every day, as discussed, even if you work at home.
And what you’re presenting, always, is your mood, which others experience as positive energy, negative energy, or no energy.
“I can’t have a bad day,” says CEO Joseph J. Plumeri. “If I walk into a meeting, and I’m grumpy—not good . . . You simply can’t have that one off day that’s bad, because you’re going to affect a lot of people.”5
Energy is viral. We know that.
But, like the Dunkin Donuts commercial, we sometimes wake up wrong. It’s too early and it’s too dark. But too bad, time to make the donuts.
What’s your morning mood? The typical morning involves:
An alarm clock. I use one, and every time it goes off, I’m alarmed. I’m also alarmed by the possibility that it won’t go off.
Rush hour. You’ve probably engineered your morning with split-second precision. Extra time? None. Rush hour begins the second you step out of bed.
World news. Let’s face it, the news is not good. Typical headline: “Yesterday, something bad happened. Tomorrow, something even worse. Stay tuned.”
Your personal news. Everyone’s got at least two or three concerns that they wake up into. What’s bothering you, what’s not working? Could be anything from your health, to your family, to your household appliances.
Meanwhile, you need to get to work (another concern: what to wear!). But first, let’s warm up.
How? Lots of options: exercise, music, meditation. I do these things daily, even though that sometimes requires a 4:30 a.m. start. I especially like exercise; the more you sweat before work, the less you’ll sweat during.
Looking for a faster warm-up?
1. Smile (time required: seconds).
Sure, you smile when you’re happy, but research says it also works in reverse—smiling impacts your mood (act as if).
Details: Two researchers, Tara Kraft and Sarah Pressman, got some people in their experiment to smile, others not to, without anyone knowing whether he or she was smiling. (Long story, involved putting chopsticks in participants’ mouths.)
Researchers then measured stress. Smiling, even for subjects unaware they were smiling, decreased stress.6
And if you like smiling, you could also . . .
2. Laugh (time required: seconds).
Sounds odd, I agree, and it’s probably the last thing you feel like doing. Like smiling, the idea is to laugh for no reason, maybe in the shower or on your way to work. Laugh at your concerns and how, when you really think about them, they’re no laughing matter.
Details: A physician in India, Dr. Madan Kataria, has been promoting the health benefits of laughing for many years. (Technically, you don’t need to laugh for many years. A few seconds should suffice.)
There are 6,000 laughter clubs in 60 countries. I’ve never gone, nor is laughing-for-no-reason my usual practice. But occasionally, it’s a useful warm-up. Especially when I’m in no mood.
3. Power pose (time required: two minutes).
Imagine two physical postures: an expansive posture (e.g., raise your arms toward the sky, V for victory), versus a contracted posture (e.g., lean over your smartphone). The first takes up space, the second doesn’t.
According to research done by Amy Cuddy, a Harvard Business School professor, expansive postures, held for two minutes—before, not during an interaction—strengthen both your internal chemistry and your external impact.
Details: The expansive pose increases the dominance hormone (testosterone), while decreasing the stress hormone (cortisol). High dominance/low stress is a potent combo across the animal kingdom.
And Cuddy’s research subjects who power posed outperformed their peers in mock interviews.7
The point is to bring your best self to work. If that’s not the one you wake up into, warm up.
Move More, Sit Less
I like to pace. Sometimes I pace when I need to think about something difficult.
Pacing back and forth is a pleasant way to avoid thinking about something difficult—similar, I suppose, to saddling up a horse and galloping out of the office.
But I often get ideas this way.
Moving gives you mental, physical, and emotional energy. Want to change your mood? Try a fast 10-minute walk, suggests Robert Thayer, a psychology professor at California State University. Walking tops his list of mood boosters.8
To move more, invest in a really bad chair. Unfortunately, I’ve got a really good chair, with a cushy seat you could sit on forever. This chair is all wrong.
Your ideal chair is rock-hard and extremely painful. That’s the kind you want, one you can’t sit on.
p.s. I wrote all these ideas “in one sitting.” I think it shows.
Identify Your “Evil Secret”
You can’t sustain energy if your job doesn’t fit, no matter how much pacing you do. What do you really want?
“The key to what you really want,” says David Maister, a consultant and former Harvard Business School professor, “lies in something that you don’t like to admit.
‘I don’t like to admit it but I need to be the center of attention.’ Ok; find a job that will let you show off. ‘I don’t like to admit it but I really want to be rich.’ Fine; go out and get rich.
“Play to your ‘evil secrets,’” advises Maister, “don’t suppress them.”9
I’m sure there are exceptions, but most secrets aren’t evil, they’re energy.
The hard part: figuring out your secret. My early jobs seemed random, but they weren’t. Take a look:
Mailman, New York City. Great job, several summers during college.
Encyclopedia salesperson, Boston. Terrible job right after college. I lasted 30 days.
Taxi cab driver, Cambridge. Ok job, but lots of negative feedback. When I drive, even now, passengers often become agitated. They seem desperate to escape.
Are you desperate to escape your job? Maybe you’ve suppressed your secret. Mine didn’t become obvious until later, in business school.
Ed Schein, an MIT/Sloan School professor, had researched a concept he called “career anchors.” Your career anchor, said Schein, is your number one priority at work.
Schein identified eight anchors. When I first saw the list, one anchor jumped out: autonomy.
(You can find the list by searching “Ed Schein’s 8 career anchors.”)10
Autonomy attracted me to those early jobs (outside the office, with minimal supervision), and then later to consulting. Autonomy was my “evil secret.”
What’s yours?
Notice what energizes you. Do more of that.
Presence Action #5: Initiative
Initiative: Take a Calculated Risk
“You don’t follow the rules,” my wife said, “for avoiding a shark attack.”
We were eating lunch, reading the Sunday papers, and my wife had just read about a man who swam 400 yards off a Cape Cod beach, and then was almost eaten by a shark.11
Main rule: stay in shallow water.
Sharks have been on my list of concerns for years, at least since the movie Jaws. I’ve never actually seen a shark, but still, they’re on the list.
Turns out, I can worry about anything.
Lyme disease is also on the list. And of course, snakes. Bees were never on the list, but they got there after a Time cover story about their disappearance. With bees, you can apparently worry about both their presence and their absence.
A lot of worry is about losing something you’re fond of, such as your loved ones, or your health, or, in the case of sharks, your upper and lower body.
“Loss aversion,” says Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, “means that our emotional reaction to a loss is about twice as intense as our joy at a comparable gain.”12
So we’ll go out of our way to avoid loss. That’s why we’d rather hold on to a losing stock than bite the bullet and reinvest our money. And we’d rather hold on to a losing job than reinvest our energy.
But playing it safe can be dangerous, like sitting all day at the beach in the sweltering sun, never going near the water, but slowly dying of heat exhaustion because—let’s face it—the sun can kill you.
When was the last time you took a calculated risk? Nothing reckless or impulsive. Not swimming 400 yards out, just getting your feet wet.
“They were waiting to be told what to do,” said CEO Jim Donald, head of the hotel chain Extended Stay America. To embolden his 9,000 employees, he handed out “Get out of jail free” cards.13
His message: Take a chance. And if you screw up, that’s ok.
What would you try if you knew you couldn’t fail? Everyone’s afraid. But some people act anyway.
p.s. “More Americans were killed by collapsing sinkholes (16) than sharks (11) between 1990 and 2006.”14
Note to self: Update list. Add sinkholes.
Should You Consult Your Boss? Find Out
The other day a manager called for some advice. She wanted her employees to take more initiative and be more resourceful, but for some reason, they didn’t get it.
Her problem reminded me of getting lost one day in Paris, while looking for the Seine River.
I asked a few people for directions. “Où est la Seine?” I said. No one had any idea. Apparently, they’d never heard of the Seine, or else they’d heard of it but just didn’t want to discuss it.
I admit my French is terrible. “Pardon me,” they may have thought I was saying, “I obviously can’t speak a word of your language, so please, just shoot me. Then throw me in la Seine.”
Eventually, I found the Seine on my own. It’s 486 miles long, so it wasn’t exactly hiding.
Do you ever feel lost at work?
You probably know people who can’t tolerate being lost, even for a second. They ask their managers for help the minute they feel frustrated or unsure what to do next.
Other people probably should ask for help, but seem content to nibble a croissant, sip a café au lait, and wander around in circles.
Either extreme is dangerous. And some managers are extreme about giving direction: they either give too much or too little, regardless of employee or project.
When should you ask for direction, or get approval? If your manager hasn’t been clear, take the initiative to find out.
Try this question (the earlier you ask, the better): “What sorts of problems do you expect to be consulted on, and which ones do you expect me to handle?”
Presence Action #6: Commitment
Only Make Promises You Can Keep—Then Keep Them
You and I make promises every day. “I’ll call you by 5 p.m.,” you say, or “I’ll get you the info by Friday.” But then we get sidetracked.
That’s a broken promise.
I almost blew a major deal due to a broken promise.
My wife and I had sold our house—the close was later that morning—and the buyers, a young couple, just needed to do their final inspection.
We’d already moved out, so I shouldn’t have even been there, but I had a few things to clean up and a few things to give the buyers, including an extra refrigerator.
The refrigerator worked fine, but even if it broke, it was still worth $50. That’s what NSTAR, the electric company, pays you, then they haul it away for free. I don’t know why they do that, but I also don’t understand electricity. Does electricity require vast quantities of broken refrigerators?
When the buyers showed up, I wished them well, and was headed to my car—suddenly, the husband came running out.
“Hey,” he said, “where’s the bookcase?”
We’d sold the buyers some furniture, including a $20 bookcase. We’d also donated some furniture to charity. I suddenly realized a bad thing: the charity had, accidentally, taken the bookcase.
“I’m so sorry,” I said and explained what had happened.
Then I made a mistake. “I wonder if we could just swap the bookcase for the refrigerator?” Seemed reasonable, $20 for $50.
“How do we even know the refrigerator works?” said the husband. You could feel the trust evaporating rapidly.
“Works fine.” I also mentioned NSTAR and the $50.
The husband looked incredulous, like I was making the whole thing up. “It’s obvious,” his look implied, “that you know nothing about electricity.”
“I really wanted that bookcase,” he said.
So I wrote a check for $20, then left.
“I can’t believe the husband did that,” said our real estate agent when I told her later. I agreed.
But I was wrong. I had promised the bookcase, then broken my promise. A promise isn’t rational (let’s trade $20 for $50). A promise is emotional.
It’s your word.
The fastest way to build trust is to make promises, then keep them. And the fastest way to destroy trust is to do the opposite.
When You Lose Your Balance, Get Back Up
I was leading a management workshop one day when suddenly a huge TV fell on my head.
It didn’t just fall out of nowhere. The TV was on a tall stand, which I was moving to the side, when the whole thing tipped over. Not to brag, but usually you have to be about 5 years old to pull off this trick.
The TV knocked me to the floor. The workshop stopped for a few minutes while I dusted myself off. I felt embarrassed.
“Large objects,” I remember thinking, “should never fall on your head in the middle of a workshop.”
Oh well. It’s easy to lose your balance, happens to everyone. The key question: how fast do you bounce back?
Top fashion model, Jessica Stam, tripped while walking down a Paris runway. “I fell and got back up” she said. “It happens, and it’s no big deal.”15
Franklin Roosevelt, paralyzed from the chest down, fell while being helped to the stage at the 1936 Democratic Convention. The papers of his speech went flying.
“Clean me up,” he said to his aides, “and keep your feet off those damned sheets.”16
Moments later, Roosevelt was at the podium, inspiring a live audience of 100,000. Most hadn’t noticed his stumble.
Life knocks you down. We all know that. The call is to get back up.