Transience

What it is: Over time, we forget details of events, and sometimes entire events.

Implications for your career: Consider this: What did you do two days ago? You can probably name a few things. What did you do one year and two days ago? More than likely, you have no idea. You will forget your accomplishments over time and you will forget the praise you have received over time. Keep a running list of them and update your resume or CV regularly.

Absent-mindedness

What it is: When you are not paying attention fully in the moment, you’ll forget bits of information later.

Why it matters at work: These very normal lapses in attention happen to us all, especially if we are multitasking. That is understandable. However, they often result in you forgetting to do things, which is not excusable. If this happens once or twice, people will start to think of you as unreliable and question whether they can count on you. Write things down at meetings, keep a running list of action items, and take a few minutes to review your calendars and to-do lists at the start and end of each day.

Blocking

What it is: Knowledge exists in your mind, but you cannot seem to recall it at the moment.

How it happens: We’ve all forgotten the name of an acquaintance at one time or another or had the tip-of-the-tongue experience. Usually this happens with words you haven’t used in a long time or information that wasn’t learned very well in the first place. Usually, it’s not a big deal. But sometimes it can happen at the worst of times, such as when you are put on the spot with a question during a presentation.

Misattribution

What it is: The correct memory exists, but you confuse a detail with a different context, person, or location.

How it affects workplace relationships: The misattribution error is a common source for conflict. You and your coworker work on a project that is a big hit, but then he or she mistakenly takes the credit for your idea even though it was you who thought of it and initiated it. They’re not trying to steal the limelight; it might truly be that they honestly thought they were the one who thought of it. Another scenario might be that your boss promises you a raise of $x next year, but now there is dispute about the exact number.

Suggestibility

What it is: False memories are created about things that never occurred.

Suggestibility in the workplace: Memory distortions can occur due to repetitive misinformation. This is more likely to happen if the source of the misinformation is someone with high credibility. Within limits, this is sometimes called good marketing, but when it gets out of control there is potential for ethical scandals. Often, these things start with lying to yourself.

Bias

What it is: What we know now (and didn’t back then) distorts our memories.

How it affects your management style: As we get older, generally speaking, we learn new information every week, every month, every year. Over time, we have a lot of knowledge that we take for granted. It might even seem like common sense. We might forget that we all started at 0; that before we knew, we didn’t know. We remember our early career selves in a more positive manner: smarter, tougher, friendlier, harder-working.

Persistence

What it is: Something you don’t want to remember becomes difficult to forget.

How it affects your performance: Certain information from the past, the type that we’d like to forget, sometimes pops up when we least want to think about it. You are reminded of that onetime you fumbled that big presentation (never mind that it was 15 years ago) right before you have to give one. Even if it doesn’t consciously reappear, it might color our self-perceptions of our skills and abilities.

Notice that transience, absent-mindedness, and blocking are three are different types of ways of forgetting information. The last four are errors of misinformation; a memory is there but it isn’t fully correct. When was the last time an absent or incorrect memory caused problems at your workplace?

This post was originally published on the Intuit QuickBase Team Leadership Blog.

I wrote about six different types of goals a while ago. As a quick recap:

• Behavior versus Outcome Goals: focusing on what you can solely control (your behavior) can prevent the frustration that occurs when, despite your best effort and intentions, events outside of your control serve as a roadblock.
• Approach versus Avoidance Goals: using positive phrasing and focusing on what you do want can have dramatically different results than focusing on what you don’t want.
• Concrete versus Abstract Goals: stating your goals in very specific language and quantifying them can provide more structure and motivation than being vague about it.

It may seem that I am advocating behavioral, approach, and concrete goals. While they are better in most cases, outcome, avoidance, and abstract goals can have a place too — especially in long-term goal setting such as New Year’s Resolutions. Here’s how.

Outcome goals can serve as the end-point marker. By setting outcome goals, you are essentially defining the flag that goes up when you have achieved what you set out to achieve. Often when we get wrapped up in pursuing our goals, we don’t celebrate our accomplishments. As we progress, our standards get higher and higher and what seemed impossible when we started now looks like you’ve known how to do it along. This is especially true for high performers and so-called perfectionists. Outcome goals are also a crucial type of goal to set when you are setting goals for others. As a leader, you want to set the outcome goals and help your people define their own behaviors that will lead to the achievement of those goals.

Avoidance goals can serve as the initial momentum that keeps us going. Avoidance goals often stem from fear, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. Peter Bregman, blogger for Harvard Business Review, writes, “There’s an ongoing argument in the world of behavior change about what works better: fear or incentive? Some argue you need both at the same time. My experience is that you need both, but not at the same time. If you want to change your behavior, start by creating a bit of fear, then experience the reward.” Sometimes you need to bring that which you fear, and therefore want to avoid, to the forefront of your mind.

Abstract goals can help when procrastination or uncertainty gets in the way of defining goals. Thus, abstract goals can serve as temporary goals until you are able to create more concrete ones. For example, sometimes an image or a feeling or a seemingly unrelated desire can help you get closer to discovering what it is you truly want to achieve.

Goal Setting Activity

Let’s give this a try. Think about the New Year’s Resolution that you made, and transform it into timelined objectives using the bolded questions below. In the parentheses I include the types of goals that are most helpful for each stage. If you didn’t make a New Year’s Resolution or define any goals for 2012, now is a good time to start thinking about it!

What is your 1 month goal? (Behavior, Approach, Concrete)

• Example of Behavior: What will you do differently today, tomorrow, next week in support of this goal?

What is your 3 month goal? (Behavior, Approach, Concrete)

• Example of Concrete: How many miles will you be running per week during the last week of March?

What is your 6 month goal? (Outcome, Approach, Concrete)

• Example of Approach: What new achievements do you want to be able to add to your resume by mid-2012, that is, end of June?

What is your 1 year goal? (Outcome, Approach/Avoidance, Concrete)

• Example of Outcome: How much do you want to weigh on January 1, 2013?

What is your 5 year goal? (Outcome, Approach/Avoidance, Abstract)

• Example of Avoidance: What don’t you want to be when you are 40 [or your age in 5 yrs]?

What is your 10 year goal? (Outcome, Approach/Avoidance, Abstract)

• Example of Abstract: How do you want to feel about your life in 2021?

This is a lot of information to work with, but my tip is to take what is relevant to you now and leave the rest for later. Two years ago, I set the most basic goal – a one-year goal that was behavioral, approach, and concrete. I resolved to be consistent in my efforts to work out, exercise, and just move in general. My plan was that I would either get to the gym or take a walk around the neighborhood every day in 2010 (give or take 1-2 days a week – the point was to not skip out on physical activity for weeks or months at a time). It was that simple. As the year progressed that remained my #1 priority (“just start” / “just get out there” was my mantra) but what also happened was that I set sub-goals as my skill level increased. I finished up 2010 not only 100% achieving this goal, but also 15 pounds lighter, running 25 miles a week, and lifting 140+ pounds.

This post was originally published on the Intuit QuickBase Team Leadership blog.

What was your inspiration behind writing this book?

Stories are the best teachers. Patrick Lencioni’s series of ‘leadership fables’ are a good example. We see ourselves in the challenges that confront the characters and in their successes and their failures. I could have written a book that presented what I have learned about how to succeed in spite of the obstacles life throws at us. But instead I thought the drama and struggle of my failures would be as valuable to readers because those struggles represent what many people are going through today in trying to find something positive in extremely difficult circumstances. Nothing teaches better than real life, and the stories in the book are absolutely true.

What was your writing process like? Did you identify the stories first or the lessons and tools you wanted to share? Are there any that didn’t make it to the final version of the manuscript?

I have been an educational psychologist since 1978. So learning how to learn from life’s experience is kind of a professional competence I have developed through decades of doing therapy and being in therapy. But I have also been a professional speaker at the same time who shares practical tools and techniques for managing the stress of change as well as improving the quality of relationships at work and at home.

I always ground the insights and tools I’m sharing in my own personal experience. It was a natural evolution to write an autobiographical self-help book that contains true stories I have included in my presentations for many years, e.g., being shot, fired, divorced, remarried, dealing with a spouse’s illness and eventual death. In the book I have described my struggle in discovering something positive in each challenge (the lessons) and have designed an activity (the tools) for the reader to practice to save them time and pain in applying the same insights to their own life.

There are many, many stories and additional tools and models that did not make it into this first book. Until I can publish additional manuscripts that are currently “in the works”, those who are interested can learn more from my blog: UpsideDownTimes.com.

In Chapter 1, you write, “Isn’t it also true that your best stories are about things that were extremely stressful when they were happening?” … Many extremely stressful events, at least initially, have too much negativity to make good stories. How can we rephrase a bad situation into a story worth telling?

First, I don’t think every stressful event has a story worth telling, no matter how it is rephrased. Stories that are worth telling seem to follow a pattern of overcoming some challenge that leads to making a positive change, which in turn produces a new and better result. Such a story is valuable because there is a message, a point, or lesson we can learn from it. Consider the parables in any sacred text. We read or ‘hear’ them on multiple levels. The phrase “for those who have ears to hear” says there is more to this than just a story. From a self-help point of view a story worth telling should be an example of what can be accomplished in one’s own life, or at least a cautionary tale of what to avoid doing. The story serves the message.

I think the telling of the story needs to answer the following questions:

• What were the challenges of this emotional event?
• What fears did each challenge force you to face?
• How did you overcome each challenge? Who helped?
• What specific changes did you have to make?
• What humorous moments did you experience (if any)?
• What were the most important principles you learned?

In Chapter 2, you state, “the opposite of worry is a goal” and provide tips on how to turn worries into goals. This seems like a very powerful strategy. How often does this really work?

It is a very powerful strategy. It works every time I am aware enough to recognize that I am worrying. I can’t stop worrying. It is a habit. I cannot control my initial reaction to or thought about anything. It is a habit. But I can control my second thought – when I notice that my first thought isn’t what I want.

By definition, worry is having your mind move down a path towards what you do not want. The opposite is usually something that you do want, which is called a goal. The more quickly I recognize the worry for what it is, i.e., what I don’t want to happen; the more quickly I am able to identify: What is it that I actually want to happen? That’s goal setting.

But that is not enough. Most people who get this far hit another barrier when they realize they don’t know how to achieve the goal. Then they fall back into worry, believing that since they don’t know how to achieve the goal that they can’t. But you don’t have to know “how” in order to believe that you can. One of Stephen Covey’s ‘Seven Habits…’ is “Begin At The End”. Covey is saying you have to envision the desired end result in order to figure out how to get there. As a result, you begin to see and take initial steps in the desired direction, which puts you in a new place in relation to your goal. From this new place you can see a few more steps. With persistence, step-by-step, you can figure out the “how.” Sometimes you may experience a little “luck” along the way. In reality, this luck is a consequence of the steps you have taken, placing you in a position to take advantage of fortuitous circumstances.

Even this rational, clear approach is not sufficient to encourage hope for those whose habit of worry is profound. In some cases of clinical illness medication is needed to provide support when chemical or neurological damage is present.

For those who recognize a worry as a negative possibility rather than a reality, handouts and recordings from my training programs may be useful. Two that are immediately relevant are: Turning A Worry Into An Action Plan (Towards Your Goals) and A Six Step Process for Developing a Positive Habit.

Your book has 9 chapters, which read like 9 lessons. If you could share just one of them, which would you choose to emphasize?

From Chapter 2: “Use your worry to find a positive opposite possibility and build a plan toward a positive goal.” If school taught us how to turn a worry into a goal we would be able to figure out just about everything else. Babies are not born worrying. Since we learned how to worry, then we can learn how to use the worry to produce positive results.

Your voice in the book reads like you are highly optimistic and a positive thinker. Have you always had this cognitive pattern? If not, what sparked the change and what was the transition like?

I think I’ve always tended towards being a half full rather than a half empty type of person. As a child I discovered I could make others laugh. Later in life I discovered I could also awaken in others a new idea or perspective on what was possible. But I still have many habitual insecurities, fears, worries and doubts. I have simply learned to recognize them faster, move through them quicker and focus sooner on something positive.

Perhaps one of the biggest catalysts for my own personal growth happened while I was in college in the late 70’s. For about 10 years encounter groups were very popular. I was fortunate to participate in thousands of hours of these programs, half as a participant and half as a co-facilitator with one of the most respected social psychologists of the time, Dr. Elliot Aronson. Elliot was a genius at creating an environment in which people could discover and transform their unlearned lessons into new abilities, e.g., learning how to communication more effectively in relationships, or discovering self limiting beliefs and planting new ones.

It set me on fire to discover the power that an insight could have to dramatically changing the course of a person’s life. Like a stick in the river creates waves that exist until the end of the river, the learning from one idea I discovered could generalize and change my life. I wanted more. I wanted to know how to share what I was experiencing in ways that helped others. I have been a student of human growth and potential ever since. I have been forever fascinated with how to help myself and others to first recognize and then overcome the self-imposed blocks and barriers that prevent us from becoming a more powerful, successful, supportive, loving, amazing being. That process continues today as I move from speaking to writing.

What is your intended audience? Who should read your book?

Broadly, my intended audience includes people who want to save themselves the time and pain it took me to discover these lessons. More specifically, anyone who wants to have a better relationship with themselves and with others would benefit. Those who have a health challenge or who care for someone who does would also find value in the stories, lessons and activities of this book.  And of course any one who has a habit of worry, doubt or fear will find practical steps that can help them build the confidence to overcome those challenges.

Book Giveaway: If you are interested in reading my copy of the book, let me know! First person to speak up gets it.