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Flow, Boredom and Anxiety: An Interview with Bill Hefferman of Intel [April 2008]

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This month we explore a powerful way to create successful organizations and happy people: increasing flow. No, not the flow of cash (though that doesn’t hurt!), but the experience of doing what we do best and loving every second of it. New research suggests that when people are in flow in the workplace, they’re more engaged, and their organizations produce better results. To help me understand flow and what it means for leadership, I sat down with Bill Hefferman and chatted over smoked salmon omelets at a restaurant in Northwest Portland (Oregon) called Besaw’s Cafe. Bill works at Intel Corporation, where he is highly sought by managers interested in using a strengths-based approach to elevate team performance. 

What is flow and why does it matter in the workplace?

Bill Hefferman (BH): Flow is the state of peak performance, a state of concentration so focused that it amounts to absolute absorption in an activity. People lose track of space and time. It is a time of high productivity, high creativity, and high innovation. Flow occurs when there is a great match between a person’s strengths and the challenge at hand. Strength equals competence combined with passion. There is positive affect, often deep enjoyment that goes with it but not necessarily in the moment flow is happening because flow is an emotion-less state. You’re so engrossed in what you’re doing that you don’t feel emotion in the midst of those flow activities. It’s when you step out that you say, “Wow, this is so great!”

When are you in flow?

BH: I’m in flow when I’m presenting to a large group of people on a topic I know well and care about, when I think the information I am sharing is of use to the audience, and when they are at least neutral to somewhat receptive about the topic. [Read more…] about Flow, Boredom and Anxiety: An Interview with Bill Hefferman of Intel [April 2008]

Practice, Fakers and the Sincerity Police, Part 2 [March 2008]

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Practicing leadership is tough. It involves both learning something new and unlearning something habitual. Thus many leaders find practicing itself to be uncomfortable if not painful.

Last month we explored one upshot of this: Fakery, which is when people say things that are completely out of alignment with what they think and feel inside.  This led to a simple injunction: Don’t be a Faker. 

This month, we look at different phenomenon: the Sincerity Police, which you’ll recall are those critical voices inside and outside of you saying that unless you are 100% sincere, you are being fake. These voices are a tremendous barrier to practice and, therefore, to more skillful leadership. That’s why I advise:

Accelerate past the Sincerity Police

Contrary to popular assumption, I believe that sincerity in communication is not all-or-nothing. At any given moment, we can be 100 percent sincere or 0 percent sincere, but these are not the only options. Sincerity actually exists along a spectrum. This is because human beings are complex. Although we live in the present, we hold within us both the legacy of our pasts and unrealized intentions for the future. [Read more…] about Practice, Fakers and the Sincerity Police, Part 2 [March 2008]

Practice, Fakers and the Sincerity Police, Part 1 [February 2008]

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Last month’s issue highlighted the importance of practicing leadership every day. We looked at the Rule of 300/3000: 300 repetitions produce bodily memory. 3000 repetitions allow you to fully embody the new skill. This is as true for becoming competent at difficult conversations or framing decisions strategically as it is for learning to drive a stick shift car. Thus, I advised: start practicing today.

Now, here’s the rub: practicing a skill, particularly something new, is frequently uncomfortable and sometimes darn painful. A major reason Americans fear public speaking more than death is that most of us have little practice at it, and most of the practice we do have is as beginners. This is true of so many activities, even those we look forward to with excitement. I remember how thrilled I was a decade ago to take classes in swing dancing, first in Ann Arbor, then in San Francisco. The energizing music, the elegant moves, and the romantic environment-all of it felt hip and fun. It was also a chance to get a taste of an earlier era. Yet my actual experience in class was about 85 percent embarrassment at my own awkwardness and 15 percent glee when my dance partner and I actually pulled off a move. This was on a good day.

I remember this experience when I ask the leaders I coach to try something new. As with swing dancing, most shifts in leadership behavior involve both starting something new and ending something habitual. Consider, for example, someone who has made a commitment to negotiating around interests rather than positions (as described in Getting to Yes and its successor books). He not only has to learn to assess his interests, listen for others’ interests, and speak from a place of win-win. He also has to unlearn his old habits of unconsciously identifying with narrow positions, listening for whether or not the other person supports his position (and what it will take to persuade them), and speaking from a place of win-lose. These habits are neither minor nor new. [Read more…] about Practice, Fakers and the Sincerity Police, Part 1 [February 2008]

Practicing Leadership: The Rule of 300/3000 [January 2008]

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Recently I introduced my coaching clients to a principle I call the Rule of 300/3000. It is one of the most important and least discussed principles in leadership development. I didn’t invent the concept. I heard about it from Richard Strozzi-Heckler’s book Leadership Dojo and then coined the expression. Here it is:

The Rule of 300/3000

  • If you want to get good at something, you need to practice doing it over and over again.
  • To be specific, it takes 300 repetitions to develop a bodily memory of a skill and 3000 repetitions to fully embody it.
  • Therefore start practicing right now.

Example: learning to drive stick shift. When you first learn to drive a manual transmission car, shifting from first to second gear (or from second to third) is incredibly challenging. When do you push your left foot down? Can you time it with your right foot? When do you move the gear? Does your hand even know which gear is where? Coordinating these movements is hard. As a result, initial attempts typically produce a combination of stalls, erratic acceleration, and multitudes of disturbing sounds coming from who-knows-where in the car. Do you know anyone who skipped this step in learning stick shift? I don’t. This is why some people give up and switch to an automatic. [Read more…] about Practicing Leadership: The Rule of 300/3000 [January 2008]

Shining through Cynicism [August 2004]

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A cynic, it is said, is an idealist who has experienced one too many crushing disappointments. After all, who among us has not at some point placed our trust in a person, organization, or idea and then experienced betrayal when reality fell short of the promise? Situations like these rattle the ground upon which we walk.

A dozen years ago, when first encountering such thoughts, I reconciled myself to the notion that cynicism is an inevitable end state of the human condition. We can barricade ourselves from it—some of us longer than others—but eventually it will break through. And once it does, it will hold dominion over us until the day we die.

I’m no longer so sure. Another decade of living and observing leads me to question whether this view is either valid or helpful. While witnessing many challenging events in others’ lives and my own, I have learned that pain does not always produce cynicism. Other responses are possible and—under the proper conditions—likely. Clients laid off from their jobs in disrespectful, even cruel,ways have turned these “hits” into “gifts” by rediscovering resilience and forgiveness within and networks of support all around. While feeling the pain(genuinely, in their bodies), they have also discovered reason to hope. In my own life, I have found that the experience of bouncing back from disappointment feeds into my body at least as much energy as was depleted by the disappointment. In short, breakdown does not need to lead to cynicism. It can lead to breakthrough. [Read more…] about Shining through Cynicism [August 2004]

Waking Up The World [March 2003]

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When movers and shakers in the world declare that they feel powerless, it is time to take notice. In the past week, several people I consider teachers and leaders of the highest order have made precisely this declaration with reference to the war in Iraq. I did not argue with them. Yet as the murmur of their words settled in my mind, I began to sense that this moment in history calls for a richer response. It is not that the feeling of lacking efficacy is untrue. Instead, this feeling is but one of many truths – and, of these, the least likely to be helpful.

When we say that we lack power and criticize people we think have it, we are engaging in what Harvard researchers Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey call the language of complaint. This language is pervasive in our organizations and families. Indeed, it is so common that we hardly notice it. It is particularly prominent when compared with declarations of what we truly care about, or the language of commitment.

What is wrong with a culture where it is more permissible to complain than to state our commitments? Nothing, other than (a) life becomes less fulfilling and (b) it’s harder to get things done. This is why it is so painful to be part of conversations lamenting the war and the futility of our actions. It is also why we can’t seem to find an alternative to them. [Read more…] about Waking Up The World [March 2003]