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More Joy

I was working with a client who was very focused on work and unhappy. So I gave her what seemed to be a simple homework assignment, add more joy to her life. When we talked the next week, she confessed that this assignment stressed her out—at first. She spent a bunch of time wracking her brain for things that might bring her joy: a new class she might enjoy, a hobby she could take up, an enriching experience she could seek out. Then all of the sudden it hit her as she was driving to the Office Depot in the city she was visiting—she felt joyful in that moment. Why? Because one of the things that brings her joy is discovering familiar things in an unfamiliar place.

My client hit on the crux of finding joy. So often we think finding more joy in our lives is about creating some kind of big-deal new experience. “Adding” joy to your life is a misnomer, it’s really about noticing when you feel joyful in your life right now. It could be as simple as driving to Office Depot, snuggling with your pet/child/significant other, laughing with a friend, walking along a familiar stretch and noticing the truly beautiful scenery, your favorite song coming on the radio at just the right moment, or colored pens (a personal favorite). When my client noticed how this simple activity brought her joy, she started noticing more and more things that caused her to feel joyful and by the time we talked, she was just about giddy with all this newfound joy. No classes, brain-wracking or bungee jumping required.

What brings you joy? Comment and share.

Approval Anyone?

I want you to like me. Really. I want everyone to like me and not only that, to tell me how much they like me. On a regular basis—effusively would be fantastic. Adulation, compliments, atta-girls, gold stars (oooh, how I love gold stars), recognition, attention, love—I love approval in all its sundry forms. I love approval like Carrie loves shoes. I can’t get enough. And that’s the problem.

When I look for approval in others, I only suffer. They just aren’t good enough at it. They don’t give me enough, they don’t say what I want when I want, or I just plain don’t believe them. People suck at giving me approval. I’m really the only one that’s good at it. When I give myself approval, I always get more than enough at just the right time in precisely the way I want. And, if I’m doing my work, I always believe it. Funny thing happens when I count on me for approval—it starts coming from everywhere. I can’t imagine people not approving of me. And if they do, they must not know me—because if they knew me, of course they would adore me.

How do I give myself approval? Basically, I clean up thoughts that get in the way of me approving of myself such as, “I’m not good enough.” and “I need others to validate me.” I call this process of finding all the thoughts on a given topic Clearing My Mental Cluster*&$%. The next step in clearing my approval-seeking cluster is to replace the thoughts that don’t serve me with ones that feel better and importantly, also feel true. I’m not talking about Stewart Smalley positive affirmations here; I’m talking about doing the work to really find thoughts that create a positive mental shift for me. (Thoughts are just the stories we choose to tell ourselves, so why not find better stories to tell?) Could “I am not only good enough, I’m freakin’ awesome!” be as true or more true than not being good enough? Definitely. Could “Others never really validate me, only I can be in charge of that.” be as true as the original? Works for me.

I used to think self-esteem was something I had to seek, that it was something I had to add to myself. Now I know that my esteem is inherent and all I need to do is subtract my crappy cluster thoughts and all that remains is self-respect, love, approval and a giant gold star.

How you do what you do

I used to sit in a lot of meetings. Meetings, meetings, meetings—meetings about meetings, meetings to follow up on meetings, you get the idea. Sometimes meetings would make me crazy. I finally figured out why. I have a high propensity toward deciding and moving, to go for it. I discovered not everyone has this quality. Here’s how a typical meeting would go:

Me: Here’s the data about project XYZ, essentially it’s not meeting our revenue targets (yes, I used to say things like “revenue targets”). Here are two tests we could run and a third crazy idea we could try. My team is ready to roll on this, we just need you to give us the green light (yeah, I said that too).

Project Approver: Thanks Bridgette, but I see here in cell A32 of your spreadsheet that you have rounded to 3 decimal places when the other cells show 4 decimal places, can you provide all the backup data and include some charts to further illustrate the implications of cell A32? And while you’re at it, can you please build a detailed revenue model for your crazy idea? And please don’t call it a crazy idea.

Me: (mentally) AAAAGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!! Why can’t we just decide and GO?
(verbally) Ummm, sure, I’ll get right on that. (I probably did say the long ummm, I was mildly insubordinate.)

Customer Service Manager: And also Bridgette, if we did your crazy idea, what would be the system for handling customer service inquiries?

Me: Oh, I hadn’t thought about that. I have no idea what the system would be, it was a test in my mind. I figured we would just try it and see what happens. Can’t we just roll with it?

Web Developer: Can we white board out this crazy idea? I need to see it to understand what you’re talking about and to figure out how to build it.

Me: Sure, although you’re going to have to draw it, I have a hard time seeing in pictures.

This meeting usually ended with me feeling defeated, demoralized and trying to lobotomize myself with my pen in my office. Why couldn’t they just try my idea and see if it worked? We can always adjust on the fly after all. Jeez. These people are SO annoying.

Here’s what other people likely said after leaving this meeting. “Bridgette is always flying by the seat of her pants, she expects us to make a decision right there and doesn’t always think things through. She wants to move way too fast. Jeez. She is SO annoying.”

I wish I would’ve known then what I know now about conative styles. Conation is an underexplored aspect of the mind. We’re very familiar with the other two parts of the mind, how we know (cognition) and how we feel/personality (affect). Conation is the third aspect of the mind, and governs how we get things done, our modus operandi (MO) if you will. You Fact-Finders (explained below) can read more here for the scientific lowdown.

There are four distinct conative styles that describe how we get things done. When you operate against your MO, you are likely to feel frustrated or even incompetent. However, when you operate in harmony with your MO, tasks flow and you’ll probably find yourself having a lot of energy and enthusiasm for what you’re doing.

Conative Style Breakdown

The meeting story above illustrates the four conative MO’s, while everyone has aspects of all the styles within them, there are normally one or two in which you favor. There will also be at least one which will feel like the antithesis of how you prefer to operate. 

Quick Start: I am the Quick Start in the above story. Quick Starts like to ad lib, think on their feet and frankly, wing it. They are also great at initiating innovation.
The downside: may go off half-cocked and are not inclined to think through all the details.

Fact Finder: The Project Approver is the Fact Finder in our above tale. He is focused on details and wants all the information before making a decision. Fact Finders are thorough information gatherers; they want to know a topic inside and out before venturing into it.
The downside: may get “stuck” in info-gathering mode and have trouble moving into action mode.

Follow-Through: The Customer Service Manager is our Follow-Through. She wants to have a system for managing customer inquiries in this particular example. Follow-Throughs love to create structure and order, they like to have a plan and work the plan. The more systematic, thought out and detailed the plan is, the better.
The downside: may feel frustrated and out-of-sorts in a disorganized or chaotic environment (e.g. startups).

Implementor: The Web Developer is an Implementor. He wants to create physical objects (or a facsimile thereof) to help him understand the proposed crazy idea. You can recognize Implementors by their need to create things—they are the ones who are always white boarding concepts, using various items on your desk to illustrate an idea or even using hand gestures to help explain their point.
The downside: Long meetings can make Implementors feel very edgy. They need to move and create. If you see someone doodling in a meeting, don’t assume they aren’t listening. Implementors listen better when they are creating at the same time.

There is a great test you can take to determine your own conative style at www.kolbe.com. The test results include all kinds of great info on how to work best with your style. That said, you probably have a decent idea of your conative style just by reading the above. Understanding your own and others’ conative styles can help you greatly in the workplace. For me, conative styles helped me understand that my former co-workers were not out to annoy me to death, but rather were simply operating from their conative styles which were very different from my own. I would still operate from my own Quick Start place, but I can also work to meet others’ stylistic needs.

Here’s how that typical meeting could go with me having an understanding of conative styles:

Me: Here’s the data about project XYZ. Project Approver, I’ve included more details and a few charts that provide a more in-depth understanding of the data. I would like to roll on my recommendation; can you review the data and give me a green light by the end of the day?

Project Approver: Thanks Bridgette, I’ll consider all your information and I can get back to you by the end of the day. 

Customer Service Manager: And also Bridgette, if we did your crazy idea, what would be the system for handling customer service inquiries?

Me: Oh, I hadn’t thought about it. Can you help me brainstorm a solution for that? You’re so great at figuring that stuff out.

Web Developer: Can we white board out this crazy idea? I need to see it to understand what you’re talking about and to figure out how to build it.

Me: Absolutely, I’ll be interested to see what you sketch out.

The main thing missing from this meeting is my frustration. I still probably wouldn’t think everything through or draw out the idea in advance, because that’s just not the way I get things done.

The next time someone bugs you at work, take a step back and see if there’s a conative style clash going on. If so, see if there’s a way you can better accommodate their style without compromising your own. You might even want to team with those people, making your project more well-rounded and thought out. At the very least, they may stop bugging you so much.

Check out this podcast (click and scroll to the bottom) I did with Martha Beck on conative styles. We are two Quick Starts trying to stay on topic, very funny.

It’s a Total Cluster!

When I was a corporate citizen one of my favorite and most-used words was cluster&*#$ (rhymes with fustercluck). I, along with many co-workers (with much credit to Justin Foster), developed a colorful vocabulary to describe the escalation of problems and associated emails, meetings and actions one experiences in the corporate world when it all goes bad.

FYI
FYIs usually come in the form of emails and are used to inform a superior or other relevant party that a problem (such as a Minor Cluster) may be brewing. They usually do not require further action, but in some cases the recipient may choose to respond with a Little Sit-Down.

Little Sit-Down
Describes the conversation that happens between two professionals when there are issues to be addressed. It’s not usually an acrimonious meeting, but is a bit stronger than a FYI. You might say something like, “I need to have a Little Sit-Down with Jones in advertising to get on the same page vis-à-vis the Widgets-R-Us account.” (It’s my sincere hope you don’t really talk this way, but you get the idea.)

Minor Cluster
A Minor Cluster may follow on the heels of an FYI or come out of the blue.  Somewhere, someone screwed up enough to cause a ripple of angst within the company. A Minor Cluster may result in a Swirl, various Sit-Downs, another FYI, or all of the above (common).

Swirl
A Swirl is the frenetic-but-unproductive activity that usually follows a Cluster of any type. Swirls may include some or all of the following: executive requests for impossible-to-gather information, 5 p.m. meetings, quickly implementing Cluster fixes only to pull them 30 minutes later, multimedia finger-pointing, crazy idea generation, breathless emails, closed-door office meetings and my favorite, being asked to do something that takes 3 months in less than an hour (i.e. magical thinking).

Total Cluster
A Total Cluster has an especially strong correlation to a Come-to-Jesus (see below). When a Total Cluster happens, the proverbial crapola has hit the fan. A Total Cluster is always followed by a mad flurry of activity to fix the problem, much Swirling and usually more than a little CYA activity as well. There will be some kind of unpleasant fallout from a Total Cluster. You know you’ve hit the cluster hall-of-fame when someone says, “We don’t want this to turn out like another <insert name of cluster event here> again.”

Come-to-Jesus
The conversation that happens with the responsible party after a Total Cluster. If this is a client/vendor relationship, the vendor will be put on notice to not do this again or else. There will be a high degree of mea culpa-ing and talk of “make goods.” If the talk is between internal groups, there will likely be blaming and finger-pointing, which may include evidence presented via Excel or PowerPoint. The ideal outcome of a CTJ is that the parties can get past the anger to have a true meeting of the minds (MOM) to resolve the issue and ensure it doesn’t happen again. Sadly, this does not always happen.

Heart-to-Heart
Smart corporate denizens will arrange to have a Heart-to-Heart (H2H) with one key person from the “other side” after a Come-to-Jesus (or even before). This is where the two individuals privately air any grievances and attempt to repair the relationship in order to move forward. The Heart-to-Heart is not used nearly enough and can be very effective in heading off future Sit-Downs, Clusters and Come-to-Jesus events. The key to the H2H is to be honest and forthright and willing to see the situation from your compatriot’s point of view.

Tips for Staying Sane in the Face of a Cluster

1. Stay Calm
Do not buy into the hysteria around you. A good rule of thumb is the more intense people get, the calmer you should strive to be. If you need to, take a moment to step outside, have a momentary freak out and then take a deep breath and calm yourself. Not only is this just good for your state of mind, but you’ll be much better equipped to come up with viable solutions to the problem at hand. Plus people will think you’re amazing under pressure.

2. You are not the cluster.
Even if you are unfortunate enough to be at the center of the latest tempest, remember that these events do not define you. This is simply a bump in the road, and no matter how big the bump, it will pass. 

3. Fall on your sword.
Mistakes happen, do your best to clean up the mess, fall on your sword as needed, and move on. Taking responsibility is a much better tactic than denial. You might still be in hot water, but people will respect you for taking responsibility. Just don’t overdo it, martyrdom is going too far and makes others uncomfortable.

4. It’s just clothes.
This is what one of my mentors used to say to remind me to have perspective. We worked for an apparel retailer and ultimately no matter how important we thought our work was, we were just selling clothes. This may not work if you’re an emergency room doc, but it does the trick for most gigs.

5. Remember that you’ll have a funny story later.
Clusters are almost always hilarious in hindsight. It could take a couple of years, but at some point this is going to make a great story.

Have your own cluster or vocabulary word to contribute? Comment and share.