First, you must understand that my 6-year old experiences the world with strong reactions, likes and dislikes.

“I hate spaghetti!”
“I love spaghetti!”
“I hate school!”
“Cool!!”
“This rocks!”
“This is boring!”

His body and face emote energy through his reactions, and sends an invitation to everyone who interacts with him to express emotional energy with him.

Here is the kicker…there is nothing wrong with him.  He is okay.  He is not in distress, even though he expresses negative feelings such as, “I’m mad!” He is experiencing the world through his filter of reactions, likes and dislikes.  These reactions can be loud, animated and full of energy, like a car accelerating with no muffler.

He has not grown his muffler yet.  What I mean is that he has not yet figured out how to muffle some of his reactions.  He will always react first, and it would be unrealistic and inauthentic for him to do anything else.  He is learning that there are times when he must have a quiet voice, like school, and he is learning how to self-regulate or “muffle” his reactions.  He is coming up with fun ways to quietly react, which at times involves less animated body movement, a softer voice, and keeping his negative reactions to himself.

Remember when I said some of us get sideways with our ideas and beliefs on how a car should sound and behave when in operation?  The same can be true when interacting with someone that exhibits strong reactions, likes and dislikes.  By now you may have made a connection with who this is in your life, and I invite you to “listen to understand.”  To accomplish this, remember that they are okay and are just reacting to the world as it comes at them.  They are inviting you to emote, to express energy back, to react with them.  If you can not muster up the energy, or you feel it is not an appropriate time, model your best muffled response.

At this moment, we know that Hiccup has discovered something special within himself.  For most of the movie, the scrawny, misfit son of a Viking warrior has repeated the phrase, “I can’t kill a dragon,” as if he is a victim of his own weakness and character flaws.  As How to Train your Dragon unfolds, however, we experience a moving story of choice, courage, and the true meaning of compassion. What can the unlikely hero in this movie teach us?

Lesson 1: When drama is the norm, insanity rules

A village five generations old, yet every building is new. Why?  Because the dragons keep destroying the village, and the stubborn inhabitants keep rebuilding it.  In the dance of drama, people assume the roles of Persecutor, Rescuer, and Victim. The Persecutor righteously attacks or blames others for his own problems.  The Rescuer martyrs herself overdoing for others without empowering them; and the Victim accepts the abuse day after day as if it’s his destiny.  All three roles play off each other, and recruit others to join the dance.  Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.  That’s the nature of Drama – lots of damage while nothing changes.

Lesson 2: Even good people (and dragons) do bad things

The Process Communication Model (PCM®) suggests that when people are not getting their inborn psychological needs met in healthy ways, they will attempt to get those same needs met in negative ways – which is called distress.  Whether it’s a Viking father fearful that his son won’t make him proud as a dragon-slayer, or a toothless dragon who just wants a friend, we all can do some pretty damaging things out of desperation.  How to train your dragon is a story of looking past the negative behaviors to the essential human needs beneath.

Lesson 3: Energy spent trying to control negative behavior is wasted

The entire identity and culture of the Viking clan is tied-up in defending against, and defeating the dragons.  From elaborate books on the arsenals and ordinance of each dragon species, to dragon-slaying basic training, every waking hour is spent focusing on how to deal with negative attention behaviors.  While his classmates are embroiled in gladiator-style trial and error, Hiccup discovers that attending to the authentic needs behind the negative behaviors of dragons increases his effectiveness and efficiency beyond what anyone else has imagined.  Trying to control negative attention is fruitless.

Lesson 4: Cultures of Openness, Resourcefulness, and Persistence produce unlikely heroes

Hiccup makes the choice to respond openly, resourcefully, and persistently to the dragons. By opening himself up to the Night Fury, he creates a safe space for both to learn from each other, and gains the trust and protection of this feared dragon.  He resourcefully applies his skills in new ways to make progress – for example, he uses his blacksmithing skills to craft a tail-fin prosthesis for his new friend.  Rather than doing for the dragon, he assists the dragon in empowering itself.  And, he persistently sticks with his new friend, Toothless, as they both learn how to fly with new appendages.

Lesson 5: Leveraging diversity can produce incredible results

For me, the final scene of this movie was the most poignant.  As Hiccup awakes from the epic final battle, we realize he has lost his left leg.  Then, we see that his blacksmith mentor has crafted him a cutting-edge prosthesis, already retrofitted to operate the system he originally built to help his dragon-friend fly.  As the movie ends, these two imperfect beings are working together to compensate for their weaknesses and leverage their strengths.  As others in the village come around, we see that they have made friends with, and learned to utilize the tremendous skills of the dragons to do good instead of harm.  The Vikings have always been creative and dogged in their determination.  The dragons have always been powerful.  Finding ways to make these gifts mutually beneficial instead of mutually destructive was one of the most powerful lessons of the movie.

Lesson 6: Choosing compassion instead of drama takes courage and perseverance

Throughout the movie, Hiccup is ridiculed by his family and clan for being weak, stupid, and misguided.  Yet he persists, realizing that while anyone can feel justified by doing the same thing they’ve always done, it takes much more courage to chose a new path.  By dropping his knife at the moment he could have killed the most feared dragon of them all to become a hero in the Viking world, Hiccup chooses instead to find the connection between these two supposed enemies.  By doing so, he changes the course of history for his village.

Choosing compassion instead of drama takes courage, and can reap benefits beyond your imagination.  Make the effort today to learn new ways of relating to others, new ways of leveraging the diversity around you, and be a Hiccup in your world.

They found that employees who were promoted at random, or alternating promotions between the best and worst performers, had higher rates of success in their promotions than did those whose promotions were based on competence in their current job, thus supporting “The Peter Principle.”

The Peter Principle is a term coined by the psychologist, Laurence J. Peter.  It refers to promoting based on an employee’s competence in their current job.  This process takes place when individuals are promoted until they are incompetent in their new role.  The company then suffers because it is bogged down with too many of these promoted, albeit incompetent employees.  A once stellar employee becomes a mediocre employee – at best.

This happens a lot in businesses – an employee is doing a really good job so it seems like a good idea to promote them.  The employee flounders and we wonder why.

I have a three part suggested solution.

Step One: Training.  In a recent Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Survey of Employee Training (SEPT 09) during personal visits to more than 1,000 private establishments with 50 or more employees, it was found that employers provided an average of 50 minutes of management training.

Management training is training in supervising employees and in implementing employment practices.  Examples include training in how to conduct employee appraisals, managing employees, resolving conflicts, following selection/hiring practices, and implementing regulations and policies.

Most of the time when an employee is promoted they are given supervision and management responsibilities.  However because the employee is so competent at their current job, the employer may not see the merit of providing training specific for the new position.

We could call these new skills “process skills”, training directed at the process of having a team meeting, managing employees, and resolving conflict.  I challenge you to think how much money an organization could save if it invested in training process skills prior to a promotion. Or, require that an employee possess these process skills as a requirement for promotion.

Step Two:  Develop your employee’s social-emotional intelligence.

Characteristics of Social Intelligence include: empathy, attunement, social cognition and self presentation, synchrony and influence.

Characteristics of Emotional Intelligence include: self-control, zeal, persistence in spite of challenges, and self-motivation.

Companies could continually train employees in the development of their social-emotional skills.  They would then be better prepared for a promotion, or at least  have the assertiveness to turn down the offer of a promotion for a job they knew they were not prepared to do well.

Studies by Daniel Goleman and Martin Seligman have demonstrated that social- emotional skills increase net profits, build employee efficacy and reduce turnover.  Promotion or not, social-emotional skills increase the strength and producing power of an organization.

Step Three:  Give pay raises to employees who stay put, but don’t get promoted.  This idea is a little… well a lot against the status quo.  What if you paid someone to stay right where they were at, especially if they were really good at their job?  They won’t feel the pressure to get more money through a promotion.  They could depend on their pay increases being tied to staying put and staying proficient.  We could call this an income promotion for proficiency and competence or “Pay to Stay.”  Think how much pressure that would take off on an employee and their company.

It would also take the pressure off of someone accepting a position, or applying for a position they are not qualified for.  This could also aid in having only those qualified applying for those promotions.  I have a hunch that this would also reduce turnover as individuals become more satisfied with where they are, and with how they are doing.

The three steps I propose are: Process Skills Training, Social-Emotional Skills Training and Pay to Stay.

Or you could promote at random – it beats The Peter Principle.

- by Jeff King

Links to further reading referenced in this White Paper:

http://www.nytimes.com/projects/magazine/ideas/2009/#r-2

The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong, by Laurence J. Peter, Raymond Hull, HarperCollins Publishers, Pub. Date: April 2009  ISBN-13: 9780061699061

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/sept1.t01.htm

www.time.com/time/classroom/psych/unit5_article1.html

We often hear this phrase from people who come through our communications training seminars. People say that it feels inauthentic to adjust their communication and leadership style in order to connect with and motivate others. They say that it’s more important to stay true to oneself than to be shifty and fickle.

What is it that causes people to have this innate resistance to adjusting their style of communication?

In her December 13 New York Times article, “The Counterfeit Self,” Marina Krakovsky reviewed a fascinating study by psychologists Francesca Gino, Michael Norton and Dan Ariely.  These three researchers attempted to study the psychological toll of fooling others, even of we don’t fool ourselves. To do that, they administered a self-graded math test to experimental subjects—half of which thought they were wearing genuine designer eye wear and half of which thought they were wearing cheap knockoffs.

The result?  Participants who thought they were wearing counterfeit eye wear were much more likely to cheat.  Thirty percent of the women who wore the name-brand sunglasses inflated their true performance; while a whopping 71% of the women who chose counterfeit sunglasses inflated their performance.  Says Gino, “When one feels like a fake, he or she is likely to behave like a fake.” Krakovsky hypothesized that other types of fakery could also lead to ethical lapses and quotes Gino as saying, “There are lots of situations on the job where we’re not true to ourselves, and we might not realize there might be unintended consequences.”

How does this relate to effective communication? According to the Process Communication Model, distress is like wearing counterfeit sunglasses.  When we are in distress, we are moving away from our authentic self, away from authentic relationships, away from an honest appraisal of ourselves and others.

First degree, or mild distress, sets the stage for a counterfeit self by putting our own, or others’ worth on condition, and believing the myths that “You can make me feel good emotionally,” or “I can make you feel good emotionally.” Whether with people or objects of our desire, if our relationship with them is based on these myths, we are moving away from our authentic self.

In second degree distress, we Mask our authentic feelings and needs, instead attempting to get our psychological needs met with negative attention.  When we have our counterfeit sunglasses on, the assumptions we draw about ourselves and others are inaccurate and inauthentic.  This leads to poor decision-making, and negative consequences.

The solution is to focus on getting our personal psychological needs met in healthy ways on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.  Doing so allows us to be self-ful, take off our Masks, experience our natural gifts and abilities, and explore other parts of our personalities that allow us to connect more authentically with others.

Let’s not confuse authentic with comfortable or automatic.  Doing what comes naturally means doing what’s always been done, what has been practiced and become habit over time.  Although these behavior patterns may have been developed intentionally over time and provide a sense of grounding, habits require very little energy to continue.

Because each person has all six personality types within them, we can be “true to ourselves” and access any part of our personality, even though this may require energy and feel inauthentic at times.  While we may have less energy in the less-visited floors of our personality condominium, they are no less a part of who we are.

We’d like to clarify our understanding of authenticity – which means to be all of who you are, to mobilize all of your potential in order to connect in meaningful and respectful ways with others, even if others don’t share the same natural tendencies. Sticking to what’s comfortable and expecting others to change in order to connect with you is not authentic, it’s self-centered.

Our message is simple. Take off your counterfeit sunglasses and be the authentic you!  Tend positively to your psychological needs and motivators.  And, stretch into less visited parts of your personality to authentically connect with others.

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By emotional drain I mean the employee who is never happy, frequently complains, starts rumors, triangulates, talks behind your back – you get the idea.  We’ve all known one,  hopefully that one is not you!

Companies will retain these employees because on the surface, it appears they are doing their job.  Simply completing the tasks of one’s job is not adequate in today’s competitive market place.

There are actually two components of every job – the “content” part and the “process” part.  The content part consists of the tasks such as completing paperwork, running the press machine, giving the injection or whatever type of content/tasks one is hired to do.  The process part is the relationship piece.  This is the ability to get along with peers and supervisors.  To be appropriately assertive, optimistic, confront relational discord head-on and simply getting along with others.  We sometimes refer to this as playing nice in the sandbox.

To be effective, employees must “do” both content and process.  Unfortunately, often times companies overlook the process problem because of content/skill expertise.  Think back on a situation where you worked with an employee or supervisor that was a “content expert,” and a “process problem,” how did it feel?  I have a hunch you were not a happy employee.

Everyone knows that happy employees are good and productive employees.  So when an employee is a process problem, I recommend you “show them the door.”  Just as you would if an employee did not possess the skill to do the content part of their job.

In summary: employees who cannot or choose not to play nice in the sandbox cost the organization money because they create an unhappy, unsettled and discontent environment.  Unfortunately, fellow employees are not immune from their negative influence.  Good employees leave when they find themselves in a work environment like this.  I would venture a guess that a lot of good employees leave good jobs because a process problem co-worker was not held accountable for their behaviors.

We all want to work in a positive environment.  Translation:  Positive environments can only occur when we work with content experts that are also positive-process employees.