Become a Problem Solver!

Read on for some tips on boosting your problem solving ability! Learn how to be a slow thinker and also slow your stress levels.

For many of us the start of each New Year means making resolutions, usually ones we think will improve the quality of our lives like losing weight, being more fit, giving up nicotine. You may find that you keep making the same resolutions year after year!

You are not alone. Richard Wiseman, a UK psychologist, undertook some research into new year resolutions; his team tracked more than 3,000 people attempting to achieve a range of things including losing weight, using the gym, quitting smoking or drinking less.

Men and Women ARE Different

They concluded that New Year’s Eve is not a great time for making resolutions (!) and that you have more chance of success if you plan ahead for the changes you want to make. They also found some interesting gender differences in achieving success. For men, the secret of success lies in setting specific goals and focusing on the rewards you will get if you achieve them; for women, the best way to keep a resolution is to tell people about it. At the start of the project 52% of the participants were confident of success but Dr Wiseman found that only 12% actually achieved their goals.

Men

Men were 22% more likely to succeed when they set goals for themselves, such as losing a pound a week rather than losing weight in general. In addition, men tended to succeed when they focused on rewards, such as losing weight to become more attractive to the opposite sex. “Men may be more likely to adopt a macho attitude and have unrealistic expectations, and so simple goal setting helps them achieve more,” said Dr. Wiseman.

Women

Women were more successful at keeping their resolutions when they told family and friends about their plans. They also responded better to encouragement not to give up if they reverted to old habits temporarily – such as treating a chocolate binge as a setback rather than failure. Telling others increased women’s chance of keeping resolutions by 10%, although sometimes they were reluctant to do so, losing this source of support.

Most Likely to Succeed

The researchers found that the resolutions most likely to succeed were:
Enjoy life more, (32% of people stayed with it)
Improve your fitness (29%)
Lose weight (28%)
Be more organised (27%)
Quit or cut down drinking (25%)
Quit or cut down smoking (24%)

Try Nothing

However, I have another suggestion for an enriched life this year. Book some space in your diary to do…..nothing! Read on and find out how.

We know quite a lot about how the brain works and how important it is to exercise it and keep mentally active. We know that successful people are whole brain thinkers; they utilise both the left logical side of their brains along with their creative right handed side and we know many techniques to help this along.

But there is a potential flaw in this approach- the creative and visual techniques, initially designed to help you relax and tap into deeper parts of your self or subconscious are now being used as problem solving techniques in themselves.

Brainstorming, for example, is now a mainstream tool, but it started life as a creative right brain activity. Once we start putting pressure on ourselves to come up with a result in a time limited way we can lose the very essence of what we were striving for, tapping into our creative subconscious.

Tip of the Tongue

How many times in a day is information on the tip of your tongue and yet the more you try to remember that person’s name or a phone number, the more it eludes you? Yet when you give up and stop trying to remember and relax, suddenly it comes to you!

Guy Claxton has written a fascinating book on this topic (although be warned, it’s not light reading) called ‘Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind’. In it he argues that we overvalue the hare brain, by which he means the intellectual thought and quick wit highly prized in the world of work and business. Our minds works at different speeds.

For example, if we’re in a crisis situation like avoiding a road accident, we may go into auto pilot and react instinctively using all the driving skills we have acquired without doing any of it consciously. Afterwards we may marvel that we did it at all and at how fast our brain was working!

Then there is logical reasoned thought. We employ this type of thinking when we’re trying to solve a problem at work, when we deliberate over something and come up with a solution, like the mechanic tutting over your engine, or the board members debating a particular agenda item. Generally someone who is good at this type of thinking we think of as clever or bright.

There is a third way of thinking though which is the one I want to encourage to you experiment with. It is not as purposeful and is more ‘dreamy’ in style.

It’s when we ruminate or mull things over- often without realising that we are doing it. It’s taking time out from our hectic schedule to just stop and look out of the window, or simply close your eyes and take yourself to somewhere that makes you serene and tranquil, real or imaginary. Make time in your life to simply ‘stand and stare’*.

Slow Thinking

The idea of slow thinking feels contrary to our Western take on problem solving. However, there has been some scientific research that demonstrates that the more patient, slow type of thinking is more effective than deliberate, logical thinking when we are trying to solve a problem that is ill defined, when we don’t know exactly what we are looking for, what the parameters are, or simply where to start.

You will probably have experienced this already, for example, how often do good ideas come to you at odd moments, maybe in the shower, or when you are on the brink of sleep and your brain waves have slowed but you are still awake? (Incidentally, this is why visualisations are so successful as they take your mind to that point just before sleep but leave you mentally alert).

Allowing your mind time to unwind is not a luxury, or being lazy, but positively good for you!

Contemplate

To tap into these slow ways of knowing, or our inner wisdom, we need to throw off for a time our Western need to do everything fast and know why we are doing it and have a theory to explain it. This is something known by many of the great thinkers of our time. Einstein, for example, was often found just sitting in his office staring into space and Sir John Harvey Jones (ex-Chair of ICI) said that a meeting without long silences meant that no one was thinking.

In my training for many years now I have tried to build in some reflective space and to encourage participants just to wander for a while, actually or figuratively, to allow some of the ideas and strategies just to percolate round in their head. It’s something we rarely get a chance to do in the fast paced world of work but it costs nothing and can greatly enhance your problem solving capacities, your mental well being, and your enjoyment of life!

So, put some time in your diary now. Slow Thinking Time (STT). And see what happens – you may be surprised! And if colleagues scoff, tell them you are employing a well known technique from Einstein!

Suggestions for Further Reading available from Amazon
Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind by Guy Claxton

* This quote is from a poem by William Henry Davies, called ‘Leisure’.

Do You Feel Lucky?

Do you believe in LUCK? Do you think you are a LUCKY or an UNLUCKY person? Is there such a thing as a LUCK FACTOR and if so where can you get it? Read on…

Recently I met up with a participant from one of my training events. She told me that she had just got her doctorate and went on to say how much my course had helped motivate her. I warmly congratulated her on her achievement, and she replied that she had been lucky. Lucky? I had to disagree.

She had worked really hard for every bit of that PhD, staying up late at night to study and managing to do a high powered day job really well to boot! She also had the support of friends, family and colleagues, which she described as ‘luck’, but which is freely given because she is a lovely person who helps others out whenever she can and receives help and good will in return. Her actions had caused her good ‘luck’.

The Luck Myth

We often describe events as ‘our good luck’ when actually they are the result of hard work and preparation. Conversely, we sometimes deplore our bad luck when things don’t go our way. Either way we are absolving ourselves from any responsibility in the matter. Random events do occur over which we have no apparent control, but, we do have control over how we respond to them and that, research has found, is what makes the difference between people who consider themselves lucky or unlucky.

Can You Make Yourself Lucky?

Well, the research would suggest that you can. My own experience of working with people over many years certainly bears this out. If you can change your habitual, unproductive (unlucky!) way of thinking you can change your behaviour. Changing your behaviour can produce a different result, one that you want and might just call lucky!

Dr Richard Wiseman spent several years researching with people who called themselves either lucky or unlucky. He and his team discovered some fascinating differences in how the two groups thought and behaved. People who described themselves as lucky were creating their own luck (like my PhD Friend) through their mental attitudes and behaviour. Having identified some basic principles about changing thoughts and behaviours the team then went on to teach these principles to the ones who considered themselves unlucky.

Almost all the participants reported significant life changes including increased levels of luck, confidence and success.

Try This!

When training, I often play the Pollyanna game and would like to share it with you. In brief, the game involves looking for the positives in anything bad or unlucky that has happened. I usually do this in the context of managing change in the workplace but you can apply it to anything. For example, getting a redundancy notice is usually not great news but, if for a few moments, people can allow themselves to think creatively of all the possible good that might flow from it, like a new job with new friends, the opportunity to learn a new skill, create the perfect garden, use the time getting fit, and so on they can often turn their negative thought patterns around. Lucky people play this game all the time.

Here’s another example. Parking in the nearest town to me is always difficult. Sometimes I have to park quite a distance from where I want to be and it can be stressful. So I have a little Pollyanna conversation with myself, about how lucky I am to have a car to park at all, how lucky I am that I can walk the distance into town, how lucky I am to be getting in a bit of exercise etc. I could spend the walk bemoaning my bad luck at having to park so far out of town, the fact that the drizzle of rain will make my fringe (bangs) curl, that too many tourists come to my town, etc.

If I adopt the second approach you would see a grumpy middle aged woman stomping through town with a scowl on her face and you’d probably avoid me. The first me though, is smiling and much more relaxed and do you know what, people smile back at me, reinforcing my feeling that all is well with the world and the virtuous circle begins. Don’t stomp – smile!

The Kindness of Strangers

Before I end this article, I’d like to tell you a story. I was with my daughter in Florida where we had been studying Myers Briggs. On the way back to the airport we ran out of petrol, on the freeway, four miles from the airport! Twenty minutes later we were still there, my daughter on the phone trying to get some help but being put on hold for a very long, unproductive amount of time.

Just as I was beginning to despair and wondering where we would spend the night, a white (yes it was white) pick up truck pulled up on the hard shoulder and a man stopped to ask what was wrong. We rather sheepishly told him we had run out of gas. He then drove off, left the motorway via a toll, bought us a spare tank, filled it and came back onto the motorway and poured it into our car. With great reluctance he accepted some dollars from us but he actually wanted nothing. He was simply being kind. I never got his name, although we thanked him profusely, but I feel sure he is a ‘lucky’ person. If you know anyone in Florida please forward them this link and you never know, he might just get to hear how grateful we are!

Commit Random Acts of Kindness!

I hope this article has given you pause for thought and, that the next time you think you are unlucky you perhaps try the Pollyanna game. And maybe, just maybe, committing a random act of kindness will bring you ‘luck’, and at the very least stop the stomp! I wish you luck of your own making!

Suggestions for Further reading available from Amazon
The Luck Factor by Richard Wiseman

First Impressions

If you want to DRESS TO IMPRESS and make a GOOD FIRST IMPRESSION this article will help. It is a very old cliché but you never get a second chance to make a first impression. But you do get a chance to revitalise your image and confound people’s expectations of you, which you will do if you change your personal image.

Almost all the people I work with tell me that changing how they dressed actually had a significant impact on how they felt which caused them to behave differently and as a result to get different reactions from others. Imagine turning up at an event severely under dressed (i.e. jeans and a sloppy sweatshirt when everyone else is in evening attire) you are likely to want to slink into the background and feel out of place; you will certainly stand out from the crowd and get noticed but it may not be the impression you want to create.

If you dress differently but making sure it is appropriate, you can actually give your confidence a boost and cause people to behave towards you in a different way. There is now some significant research to show that feeling good about how you look can also have a very positive effect on your mental well being!

The Halo Effect

Much research has been done into how long it takes someone to sum you up based on what image you present; it varies slightly but an average is about 90 seconds. 90 seconds! That is particularly important when it comes to job interviews as I can testify myself. Having interviewed many, many people and despite always telling myself it’s the person that counts you just can’t help yourself being influenced by that first impression – which is invariably what they look like. Do they look like they’ve made an effort? Are they dressed appropriately? Do they stand, smile and offer you a firm hand shake as they introduce themselves?

It all contributes to the final package, it’s called the ‘halo effect’ and will influence how all other information is received, including answers to interview questions or whether they choose to buy your service!

Is it just a cliché?

Some of us find it really difficult to accept that how you look can have such an impact which invariably brings out another old cliché – Never judge a book by its cover. But if we’re honest we do, don’t we? How many of us will pick up a book in a plain brown cover with a dull coloured small type if we are looking for a light holiday read? Most of us are drawn to the brightly coloured and striking covers. But if we’re looking for a text book on say, contract law, we would be very suspicious of that brightly coloured striking cover fearing it would not have the right gravitas, we wouldn’t trust the content. Similarly, we need to dress for the market, or the customers, or the next job we want!

People receive messages about us in many ways and how we choose to present ourselves gives one piece of information about us. Even if we say we don’t care about how we look then that is the message we are giving others.

Manage Your Image!

I used to manage a team of social workers in a large hospital. We’d never spelt out a dress code but there was one and we didn’t really think about it until someone transgressed it.

We had a young man in our team for a short while. He was a good worker but his appearance belied this; he was scruffy and dressed as if just back drom a student party. I gently took him to task for his appearance (which he resented), but he then went out and got himself a very smart suit, way above the usual standard of dress in the team. He did it originally to prove a point but it was fascinating to watch the effect it had.

When he went onto the wards staff gave him more attention and respect than he had previously received and he actually said it was akin to being treated like a consultant. His confidence improved, his standard of work went up and he certainly raised his profile. He was the same person as before but then patients, usually elderly, had to overcome their feelings about his appearance before they could trust him; he did not have the luxury of time to demonstrate he was a competent worker. He had to give that ‘I’m a professional, you can trust me’ message very quickly and he learned that his personal image both helped and hindered him.

With women the effect can be even more marked and research shows that people will always assume a woman in a tailored jacket is in a senior position.

Stocktaking your appearance

Take a few minutes to think about what you (and your whole business if appropriate) are wearing now and what this says about you and the service you offer. If you are in your workplace is it a professional and competent look? Is that the image you want to convey or does your business call for a more approachable look? What is the dress code?

Where to get help

If you think you could do with a new look there are lots of places where help is available. There are many image consultants as a quick trawl of the internet will reveal but have you thought about trying the personal shoppers in major department stores? They usually offer their services free to men and women and in my experience are brilliant at what they do. Give them a brief and your budget and see what they come up with. You are under no obligation to buy.

Whatever you think about how we judge one another it is worth knowing for those times when you want to use it for your advantage. It’s a relatively easy way of giving out a message and giving yourself a boost in the meantime. Be bold!

Suggested Further Reading available from Amazon
First Impressions by Demarais and White

The Eyes Have It

Are your eyes letting you down? This article explores the benefits of being a good listener in relation to communicating well with your clients, colleagues and family.

Good communication is important in every part of our lives, personal or at work, and contributes to our ultimate success in any arena. You can be the best accountant in the world but if you can’t communicate with your clients you will not reach your full potential. We don’t always make rational choices based on what is the best or good value; we also choose people and their services on criteria such as do we feel comfortable with them? Can we communicate easily with them? Inappropriate eye contact is one sure fire way of making people feel uncomfortable! And if people feel uncomfortable around you they won’t do business or make friends with you. They might remember you – but for all the wrong reasons!

Powerful eyes

Of all the ways we communicate with people, eye contact is the most powerful. Looking at people and meeting their eyes are the first steps towards striking up relationships and making a positive impression. Advertisers know that a face with eyes directed at the camera is an effective way to get people’s attention. The eyes most definitely have it.

Most of us easily recognise inappropriate eye contact; that glance that is held far too long, turning into a stare which becomes rude and perhaps threatening. For example, if we are on the tube or train in our own little personal space bubble, and someone glances for longer than a brief look, we feel that they are intruding on us and we usually feel uncomfortable. Or think about the person who just won’t look you in the eye; it’s hard to build up a rapport with someone who does that as it sends a message of either lack of confidence or dishonesty. It’s difficult to trust someone who cannot or does not make appropriate eye contact.

What is appropriate?

In ordinary conversation, eye contact plays an important role in ‘turn taking’. To start a conversation with someone you first need to establish eye contact. If that person looks back, ‘permission’ to speak has been given. Notice that as the conversation starts, if you are speaking you will look away from the listener with glances back now and again to check they are listening. When you are listening, you look more at the speaker, on average about three quarters of the time, with short glances of about 1-7 seconds. If you want to speak it’s important that you re-establish eye contact with the speaker. If you are in the audience of a larger meeting and you want to say something then make some physical movement like changing position to cause the speaker to look at you.

Eye contact in groups

If you are speaking to a group, or putting your point across in a meeting, try and make eye contact briefly with all of them to capture their interest. If you talk regularly to groups you will know that a good tactic with constant interrupters is simply not to make direct eye contact with them. But it won’t work with hecklers!

The same principle applies to meetings. Looking at someone allows them to interrupt you and you can lose some control; likewise if you need to interrupt whoever is holding the floor they will find it difficult to resist if you ‘catch their eye’ and signal your intention. And if you are in the audience, and don’t want to be asked any questions the chances are you will be sitting there with your gaze averted from the speaker. Teachers know this and pick on the pupil looking least interested!

Skilled speakers who want to emphasise their point or the strength of their convictions, will look directly at the audience and even make quick eye contact with all of them in order to give the impression that they are having a mini conversation with each person.

What are your eye movements telling others?

There is a lot of material on how we look when we are speaking or listening, and researchers have found that when we pause to choose our words, we usually look away from our listeners. Some to the left and some to the right. Apparently, if we look to the right we tend to be more scientifically minded while those who prefer the left are more likely to be religious or artistic. I’d be interested to hear if this accords with any observations you have made.

Cultural differences

It‘s important to note that all the research referred to and advice given applies to British or American norms. If you are from another culture yourself, or regularly work with other cultures, they may not hold true. For example, in some cultures direct eye contact is considered rude, or immodest, so it’s worth checking it out. If you have any examples relating to the above, I’d love to hear them.

Improve Your Communication Skills by Eliminating One Little Word…

The idea for this article about came to me when I was listening to a BBC radio broadcast recently. The radio presenter was reviewing a particularly poignant programme about a mother who discovered her child had a serious illness, and she said in her introduction:

‘For the first four days she had a beautiful baby but then the diagnosis of illness was made.’

It made me reflect on the use of the word ‘but’ and how that little word had conveyed the impression that the baby was no longer beautiful and how it had taken away the impact of the opening words.

How different that phrase would have sounded if but wasn’t in it. I’m sure the presenter did not mean to imply that a baby with an illness is no longer beautiful; that would have been contrary to the whole tone of the programme. However, she gave that impression in her opening remarks by her choice of that one tiny word.

Apart from sending a subliminal message that somehow disability, or illness, is inherently unbeautiful, that phrase set me thinking how that tiniest of words in the English language can undermine much of the intent of our communication and weaken the messages we think we are giving out.

Definition

I looked up some of the definitions of ‘but’ in the dictionary and they are:

‘On the contrary’

‘Except’

‘Unless’

The plural ‘buts’, is defined as ‘reservations’ or ‘objections’, which is exactly what using it does. It sends a message of reservation and lessens the impact of whatever has gone before it.

Are You a Butter?

Think back over some of your recent client meetings or conversations with colleagues and try to see if you are a regular butter. I know I often do it without thinking and have even written it once or twice while writing this article! When we say ‘but’ a lot it’s almost the verbal equivalent of holding up our hand like a police officer calling halt on traffic duty. Have you ever found yourself saying to a colleague or someone who works for you?

‘I really liked the way you handled that difficult client but if you had stopped the conversation ten minutes earlier it would have had more impact.’

Or maybe

‘That was an excellent proposal you wrote for the board but I have made one or two alterations’.

In both cases a compliment is being given about the nature of the work done, but the receivers of those phrases will only have heard that it needed changing in some way thereby not learning and developing their skills. Depending on the circumstances, most of us would hear that phrase as a criticism of our work when actually it is quite complimentary. The use of the word ‘but’ negates the positivism of the earlier words.

Sales

Are your sales people, front line staff, or even you, giving the wrong impression of your product or service?
I have experienced this several times when trying to purchase something and asking about a specific feature. For example, a salesperson will say to me, ‘Yes, it does have that particular feature but you need to do this first to make it happen. I hear the ’but’ and am mentally walking away because I hear that actually it doesn’t easily do what I want it to. Or, ‘yes, you can have life assurance cover at that price but it will increase when you reach 55’. Again, I only hear that a price increase is on the way, not that it is want I want right now.

Do you give back handers?

Have you heard the phrase a ‘back handed compliment’? For example, ‘you look quite business like when you make an effort’. The subtext of which is, ‘most of the time you don’t make an effort and look an unprofessional mess!’ If you use ‘but’ a lot in your speech you may find you are giving people a back hander without meaning to.

Practical Steps

When running seminars within either the private or public sector, I often use a variation of the following exercise which I believe will be helpful to you if you incorporate it into either your own, or your staff, training plan:

Imagine that you are giving feed back to a member of staff or a colleague. As well as complimenting them on what they do well, you are going to add something that will improve their performance. For example,

‘Your summary of our sales objectives to the new director was excellent BUT it would have been even better if you had been able to add this month’s figures as well.’

Now try that as:

‘Your summary of our sales objectives to the new director was excellent AND it would have been even better if you had been able to add this month’s figures as well’.

The use of and does not detract from the sentence in the same way that using but does and it still conveys message you want to get across. You want them to continue to do all the things they did right plus, something additional not something instead of, or on the contrary. You are adding something. And when you are selling something, describing your service, explaining your business USP, applying for a career boost, you want to add to your impact, not subtract.

So, each time you find yourself tempted to insert a ‘but’ into your speech think, what am I taking away by doing this, how is this message going to be heard, and try using and instead!