This blog post contains job articles about psychology and self- help.
Jul. 25, 2018 "Breaking out of a negative feedback loop": Today I found this article by Bill Howatt in the Globe and Mail:
A great part of his job satisfaction was owing to the fact he enjoyed working with Sally. But his world changed suddenly one day when Sally decided to ask for a transfer. Sally didn’t tell Sam until the end of their shift on the day that she was leaving. She never really gave a reason – she just said she wanted a change – and wished Sam good luck.
Dr. William Glasser, author of Choice Theory, taught that we all wake up each day looking to meet four basic needs: fun, freedom, love (including personal and professional relationships) and power (such as job fulfilment). What’s unique are the specific desires we have to meet these needs.
Until that’s resolved, it’s normal to keep looping and focusing on the unfulfilled desire. Most people become stuck because they become hyper-focused on understanding the why instead of accepting what they can and cannot control.
The looping thought of why Sally moved on caused him to withdraw from his family and friends. His diet changed; he began eating more to try to improve how he felt; he started taking an extra drink each evening, and he stopped exercising.
Sept. 1, 2018 "In management, think of the letter A": Today I found this article by Harvey Schachter in the Globe and Mail:
Jul. 25, 2018 "Breaking out of a negative feedback loop": Today I found this article by Bill Howatt in the Globe and Mail:
Have you ever been stuck in a negative mental loop?
A mental loop is a repeated replay of something that’s bothering you. The dangers of a negative loop are that they can be distracting, often come with unwanted negative emotions and can result in consequences such as lost time, energy and hope.
To illustrate how we can become caught in a negative mental loop, let’s consider the following scenario. Sam worked closely with Sally over a 10-year period. Known by leadership as being a highly productive team, Sally and Sam appeared to all onlookers – and to Sam – as having a wonderful working relationship. Sam looked forward to his job every day.
A great part of his job satisfaction was owing to the fact he enjoyed working with Sally. But his world changed suddenly one day when Sally decided to ask for a transfer. Sally didn’t tell Sam until the end of their shift on the day that she was leaving. She never really gave a reason – she just said she wanted a change – and wished Sam good luck.
Sam felt this change was abrupt and her exit was cold. He was disappointed that he didn’t see it coming and that she didn’t come to him earlier to discuss her plan or to give him some notice to prepare. He started to think that she must have left because of him, and that triggered a negative feedback loop.
This microskill explores what a person can do when stuck in a negative loop such as this.
Awareness
Whenever there is a difference between what we want and what we have in life, a negative feedback loop can be created.
Dr. William Glasser, author of Choice Theory, taught that we all wake up each day looking to meet four basic needs: fun, freedom, love (including personal and professional relationships) and power (such as job fulfilment). What’s unique are the specific desires we have to meet these needs.
In Sam’s case, Sally supported his need for job fulfilment and relationships. Dr. Glasser purported that when a desire to meet a certain need becomes unfulfilled, it creates emotional pain until we can find another way to meet that need.
Until that’s resolved, it’s normal to keep looping and focusing on the unfulfilled desire. Most people become stuck because they become hyper-focused on understanding the why instead of accepting what they can and cannot control.
Accountability
In the end, all Sam can control are his decisions and choices. He can’t control Sally’s decisions. Regardless of why Sally moved on, Sam is left with the reality that to move forward, he will need to figure out another way to enjoy his work and accept that Sally is no longer his work partner.
For Sam, the why may not be as important as his level of awareness that he’s caught in a negative loop that’s affecting his mental health and quality of life.
The looping thought of why Sally moved on caused him to withdraw from his family and friends. His diet changed; he began eating more to try to improve how he felt; he started taking an extra drink each evening, and he stopped exercising.
To get out of a negative loop, you first need to be aware that you’re in one and accept that the solution comes from your own actions. Once you’re able to do that, you’re positioned to break the cycle.
Action
Before answering each of the following questions, read each bullet point and reflect on the key message. Write out your answer and then read it aloud to help you break out of your negative feedback loop.
- Why does it really matter to know the why, and how will it really change anything?
- Sadly, getting a why answered doesn’t change reality. It may provide some lessons that can be applied to the future, but it’s not guaranteed to change how you feel. Answering this question helps challenge your thinking, which can help change your focus. It really doesn’t matter, in the end, why something you didn’t want to happen did occur as much as what you choose to do next. Instead, spend your energy on finding a new solution.
- Without judging, what are five possible ways to move forward? Answering this question challenges our rational brain to look for alternatives that can help us expand our conception of what’s possible. Often, when a person gets caught in a negative loop, their world can feel small, and their belief that there’s an alternative or solution can become dampened. Challenging our brain to find five alternatives can help activate our creativity as well as our desire to ask others for ideas.
- How long am I prepared to stay in this negative feedback loop before I make a change? Life can be good and life can be hard. When we don’t have what we want in life, the path to a new solution often requires us to do something different.
- The good news is we don’t have to know what to do or how to change or solve all challenges or problems. We only need to decide we want the emotional pain to stop and find a positive solution. When we do this, we create an opportunity to find an alternative. If we can’t find it ourselves, there are alternatives such as talking to a trusted peer or getting professional counselling to help solve the challenge.
Bill Howatt is the chief research and development officer of work force productivity with Morneau Shepell in Toronto.
My opinion: I really like this article. It's very positive. It's like those self- development telesummits I listen to.
Sept. 1, 2018 "In management, think of the letter A": Today I found this article by Harvey Schachter in the Globe and Mail:
Management begins with an A.
A is for accountability, appreciation, anger management and overcoming adversity.
Get those right and you’ll take giant strides towards success.
Accountability can be confusing. As Ginty Burns explains in A is for Accountabilty, it is not the same as responsibility. Responsibility is an obligation you feel to act within an organization’s values.
Being accountable means you can be called to answer for your own actions and, if you are a manager, for the results of your direct reports, since you determine their goals, provide their resources and monitor their performance.
In an accountability-based company, she says, people understand what they and others are accountable for, and people get called to account if they do not meet expectations.
Being accountable means you can be called to answer for your own actions and, if you are a manager, for the results of your direct reports, since you determine their goals, provide their resources and monitor their performance.
In an accountability-based company, she says, people understand what they and others are accountable for, and people get called to account if they do not meet expectations.
In a collaborative world, it’s vital everyone knows what they are accountable for, since it can be muddy. Some things can be hard to spell out. But you need to find some clarity.
You also need a starting point. Consultant David Dye recommends this script on the Let’s Grow Leaders blog: “I haven’t been the best leader in this area. Frankly, I’ve preferred being liked over achieving the results we’re here to achieve. I haven’t done the best job when it comes to accountability, but that changes today. I owe it to you and we owe it to one another and we owe it to our customers.”
He cautions that the word “accountability” will likely be scary to your team. So clarify your intentions. For example, he says, “accountability doesn’t mean beating people up for poor performance; it means we’re going to keep our commitments to one another. When we do, we will acknowledge it. When we don’t, we will work to understand why and what to do next time (or to make it right, now).”
He recommends starting small, building confidence. You might try a 10-day period to practise accountability, with everyone keeping their commitments to each other and, when that doesn’t happen, addressing it directly.
Appreciation can complement such an endeavour, making accountability less forbidding. It comes in two varieties. The first is recognition and rewards, an antidote to lack of engagement in today’s workplace. Recognition, ideally, comes soon after the event.
It can be shared privately with the individual or be more public – my boss pulling me out of my office to announce to staff I had won a significant award was memorable, but to someone else it could have been mortifying. There are bonuses and rewards programs companies conceive but the key is to know the individual and what they might like.
The amount of the reward need not be high to be meaningful: I still remember being told to have dinner with my wife on the boss’s dime (rather than put the cash he handed me in my bank) and the dinner extravagance is a warm memory decades later.
It can be shared privately with the individual or be more public – my boss pulling me out of my office to announce to staff I had won a significant award was memorable, but to someone else it could have been mortifying. There are bonuses and rewards programs companies conceive but the key is to know the individual and what they might like.
The amount of the reward need not be high to be meaningful: I still remember being told to have dinner with my wife on the boss’s dime (rather than put the cash he handed me in my bank) and the dinner extravagance is a warm memory decades later.
Appreciative inquiry is the second variety. It involves changing your managerial approach to a positive thrust. Rather than focusing on what’s going wrong, build on the strong points in the organization – people, programs and processes.
You might fear organizational collapse if you fail to fix sore spots but proponents have found the appreciative approach catapults an organization ahead. “It brings out the best of people, encourages them to see and support the best of others and generates unprecedented co-operation and innovation,” consultants Diana Whitney and Amanda Trosten-Bloom write in The Power of Appreciative Inquiry: A Practical Guide to Positive Change. You also don’t have to spend your days as an angry sourpuss.
You might fear organizational collapse if you fail to fix sore spots but proponents have found the appreciative approach catapults an organization ahead. “It brings out the best of people, encourages them to see and support the best of others and generates unprecedented co-operation and innovation,” consultants Diana Whitney and Amanda Trosten-Bloom write in The Power of Appreciative Inquiry: A Practical Guide to Positive Change. You also don’t have to spend your days as an angry sourpuss.
Which brings us to anger. It can have positive effects, at times, but most of us know times when being angry has hurt us and others.
Hiding our anger can lead it to detonate unexpectedly. So it’s important to manage our anger, particularly if it is a consistent presence in our workday.
Hiding our anger can lead it to detonate unexpectedly. So it’s important to manage our anger, particularly if it is a consistent presence in our workday.
Finally, adversity. You can count on it striking. In The Power of Presence, leadership coach Kristi Hedges says you don’t lose your credibility from failure but from how you handle it.
Catastrophizing – imagining the worst, extending the reach of the negative adversity beyond its actual scope – can be a very serious mistake. (Dare I say catastrophic?)
Take ownership, accept, move on and learn. Easy to say, of course, and harder to do.
Catastrophizing – imagining the worst, extending the reach of the negative adversity beyond its actual scope – can be a very serious mistake. (Dare I say catastrophic?)
Take ownership, accept, move on and learn. Easy to say, of course, and harder to do.
But that’s true for all of the As discussed – and perhaps another reason for their importance. Not all management comes down to A. But it’s a good place to start.
Cannonballs
- Consultant Alan Kearns says 80 per cent of your conversations, energy and time should be focused on identifying and encouraging the strength of your team members’ styles with the remaining 20 per cent on what needs to be changed.
- To retain high standards, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos suggests asking these three questions with respect to potential hires:
- Will you admire this person down the road;
- will this person raise the average level of effectiveness of the group they’re entering;
- and along what skill, perspective or other dimension might this individual be a superstar?
- “The only thing worse than training employees and losing them is to not train them and keep them," legendary motivational speaker Zig Ziglar says.
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