When Eve joins Adam she is literally titled his “counter helper.”
What is a good definition of what a “counter helper” is in your opinion, and how, if at all, do you think it applies to how you manage your team?
What do you think?
Reut
Joe is cooking dinner. He has planned to prepare three dishes: a fancy version of mashed potatoes, steak and salad.
1. Think of someone you know well (let’s name this person Joe). Which of the following options do you think, based on your familiarity with Joe, would best represent how Joe would have approached this cooking task:
Joe would have:
A. been extremely efficient, planing the timing of each stage of the cooking to save time (say start by boiling the water, then prepare the meet, then back to the water as the boiled, then to putting the meat in the oven etc.).
B. worked on one dish at a time (just mashed potatoes first until done, them just meat, then just salad)
C. Other (please describe)
2. If you had to choose one memory about interacting with Joe (that you appreciated or really did not appreciate), which memory stands out the most?
3. In your assessment of Joe, does this “cooking style” correlate with other habits? (”No” is totally a good answer btw :)).
Thanks!
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We are testing a bunch of questions for an application specific diagnosis tool we are developing. I’ll be delighted to share what we learn from your answers or to share our unique approach to developing an accurate implicit diagnosis. Thanks for your insights!
Reut
One of our clients, a manager with many years of experience in management roles, worked with a confident team member, and overly confident one. Each time she asked the team member if he is certain a statement is accurate the team member said: “yes, I’m sure” but in many cases what the employee was sure of was misleading.
Management requires depending on other people, but in order to depend on other people they must to some degree be dependable.
The manager had a discussion with the team member making him notice and develop awareness to this pattern in his behavior, but that didn’t seem to work (as we know, explicit memory, the home of awareness and knowledge, does not lead to change). Then she tried to revise the question. Instead of asking “are you sure” she started asking: “how sure are you?” To that the team member often answered: “I’m 100% sure.”
To “overwrite” this pattern the team member needed to implicitly realize he is making faulty assumptions. In working with KCI’s process the manager practiced the synaptic pathway associated with noticing faulty assumptions. As a result the team member altered his response to similar questions in a lasting way in under three weeks.
The manager needed to guide the employee to implicitly notice his own hidden assumptions. Anything short of that led to superficial, frustrating short term desired results.
What do you mean when you use the word “leadership”?
When I was a little girl my brother and I shared a room. I wanted my own room and because we lived in a small house the only room I could have was the basement. We painted it and cleaned it but no matter what we did I met at least 5 cockroaches a day in that room.
I wanted a room of my own but the roaches were never my favorite insect. It is what happened next that is of importance to our discussion.
I define leadership as the ability to be in a position of choice.When my clients avoid decisions, blame reality or others for the results they are facing I find the first step to change is always in one way or another linked to choice. I believe the main quality of leaders is their ability to express their uniqueness in choosing how to interact with reality minute by minute, from one situation to the next (according to this definition whether people follow them or not has more to do with whether their leadership as well as their management has reached a high enough level of effectivness).
When people act they reinforce a synaptic pathway in their brain. When they act without choosing they are more likely to act in the same way again in the future just because they are “used to it”. The very action of choosing makes it more likely that with time, through trail and error, they will act in more effective ways. The very action of choosing makes “followship” more likely…
Two teams in the R&D department of a large telecommunication company work on consecutive stages of developing a chip.Once both teams are done with the first round of development they combine both stages and test the solution.
Something doesn’t work…
Both teams’ first response is that something is faulty with the other team’s development outlining a few possible reasons for the result.
Team one examines the suggested flaws in it’s programing and comes up with a few other theories that could have, if they existed led to the problem.
Team two insists the suggestions about faulty programming on its end are not possible and is waiting to see what team one finds.
All of team one’s testing indicate the source of the problem is in team two’s programming. At this point team two reluctantly tests it’s program and finds that one of the original theories team one brought up earlier was indeed that flaw.
It is 10:31 am. You are having a conversation on Skype and your laptop is right in front of you counting the time your are on the call.
For a split second, right around 10:32 am the Skype meter is showing 10:32, then a second later 10:33…your brain is suddenly associating the time on the screen with the actual time of day and in a few seconds it’s confused: “how can the time have flown so fast? Can it possibly be 11:32 am? Is my watch showing the wrong time?” and so on until a few seconds later you get it and all is happy again.
This phenomenon is actually more common than we’d like to believe. We humans often think we know something we don’t know. We assume we do because the our brain has enough clues to support the faulty evidence until we choose to accept or question these faulty evidence. It’s only when we agree to explore evidence as faulty that we can make the correction.
1. Have you come across managers who take a long time to explore their faulty assumptions? What does interacting with them feel like?
2. Same as 1 expect I wonder if you know managers who can quickly “fix their brain” and how interacting with them feels like?
Looking forward to your insights,
Reut
Do you let others control you?
During my HR director days I used to describe one of my assistants as a volcano: she’d take on tasks and emotional discomfort gradually until every now and again it reached a critical mass and she would “erupt.” The key to getting her to better manage her time and to balance her “volcanic activity” was to get her to be in control of her day, to be deliberate about her choices and actions (she often didn’t get to make decisions but she knew what she thought about them and hence could actively discuss whatever it was she needed there and then instead of holding it all in).
1. Do you find team members who are aware of what they think and feel about tasks and interactions to be more effective or less effective than those who just do?
2. Which benefits being aware/not being aware have for the manager of that employee?
Looking forward to your thoughts, as always
Reut
1. Which rules have you made for yourself that you have decided to defy?
2. When you choose to defy your own rules do you think it is effective for what your overall “goal” is?
3. Do you find managers/team members are better at management/being a team member when they always stay loyal to their own rules or when they break their own rules from time to time?
(quote taken from Gery’s Anatomy).
Looking forward to your insights,
Reut
…what you don’t know and what you assume you know
When I do things with my husband, when I talk to my kids or when I discuss things with a business partner that knows me well I am typically making a lot of assumptions…effective assumptions that speed our communication. It’s sometimes enough to say one word for these people who know me well to get exactly what I mean.
Sometimes, I extend that “assumption” mode to people who don’t know me as well and the thing that was so effective in one place becomes a problem when borrowed to a different context.
When that happens (with the tools we have now it hardly ever happens anymore but when it does it reminds me!) I’m not aware of making an assumption in the first place.
1. What was your most recent “borrowed from a different context” assumption and what were the outcomes?
2. Have you met a manager that manages assumptions? What does his/her interaction with his/her team look like?
Looking forward to your insights,
Reut
I can remember myself being a completely different person. I was constantly doing (now I spend most of my time being present), I used to judge things without exploring them fully, my moods controlled me far more frequently than I controlled them and so on. I don’t believe it’s life alone that changes us, we change.
1. If you’ve ever been someone else what was it about you that helped you change?
2. Do you think that once one changes they can change more deliberately? If so why and if not why is it that the first change didn’t contribute to their ability to change deliberately?
Awaiting your insights as always,
Reut
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