I shared this at a session I did last week and several folks found it incredibly insightful. It is self-explanatory. So this week, ask yourself, as it is still very early in the year, which group you belong to with the goals you have already set for 2012. What can you do to move into Group 5 and increase your success rate of achieving those goals?

Last week’s blog

Understanding what prevents you from performing at a high level is the first step. And I am not talking about external factors, though many are quite legitimate. I am talking about fear, especially the self-induced kind. This fear comes from the collective repository of your negative experiences. Typically, any abuse of love, trust, or effort is associated with a negative experience.

As an adult who wants to get the most out of yourself, you should take inventory of this. If you were to buy a new home, an inspector would give you and your financial loaner a list of things that are wrong with the house. A good inspector will write everything down, from a scratch on a small window in the attic to a perhaps major structural issue in the home.

Similarly, you need to sit down and make an inventory of these items with the highest level of candor. It can be a private list–one only you will ever see. This list can start with your childhood experiences and extend to your current work or life situation. Once you have the list, categorize your experiences into Green/ Yellow/ Red. Green experiences are the ‘scratch on the window kind’, Red experiences are the more traumatic kind and everything in between would be Yellow.

This categorization is exactly what your brain is already instinctively doing. When we are most inspired or motivated, it is often because the Red experiences are addressed or overcome. In other words, in order to be proactively motivated or inspired, finding a stimulus that positively impacts your Red list (can be stories, movies, articles, people, places) can be a very powerful way to perform at a high level, especially when you know you must. For example, if you have a fear of speaking and you have to present this afternoon, watching a great speaker on YouTube could, at least temporarily, address the fear.

The next thing to do with your list of Green, Yellow, and Red fears is to come up with at least 3 Emotional Enablers – these enablers address each state of fear. Using these two lists together and keeping them live and evolving is really the way to re-wire your brain’s instinctive process.

Most of us rely on random experiences to motivate us. If they happen, we’re lucky on that particular day. This is not what high performers do, and it certainly is not the way to get to your best as often as possible. Using self-awareness to recognize your fears, and self-regulation (via enablers) to change the instinctive process flows of your cognitive and emotional functions is the way to sustain high levels of performance.

Coincidentally, I spoke with a friend last week who told me she attended an amazing Leadership Workshop for several days last September where the post-session to-do list was very conveniently scheduled and structured. She was so sure that this time around she would follow through. But she still has not. So I thought I would talk about Motivation from a neuroscience perspective and share with you why I think it is the weakest and least desirable of all five of the EQ dimensions.

What exactly is Motivation? Is it an emotion or a behavior? Everyone knows when they are motivated. They feel energized, fearless, creative, and anxious to attempt something new and different. Physiologically speaking–and as observed through body and brain mapping–when a human being is highly motivated, it is not so much what kind of hormones or endorphins are present in your body, as much as it is the absence of cortisol–the fear and stress hormone. This is because a chronic release of cortisol impairs brain function.

This means that when we are not fearful is in fact when the highest states of motivation can exist. This is hard to do because a primary function of our brain in response to any stimuli is to assign it (via the prefrontal cortex) a “fear rating.” For example, if you are having lunch with your best friend, the fear rating would be “safe” (or as I call it, green, in the traffic light metaphor). Conversely, if you having lunch with your boss who you do not get along with, the fear rating might be a yellow or even red.

In a red state, physiologically, cortisol levels are very high. What determines this cortisol release? Well, it’s the context of your negative experiences, which are stored in the back of your brain. We are wired to store and recollect negative experiences faster. It’s imperative we do so as a living organism. If you had 10 experiences yesterday and 9 were great but one involved your burning your hand as you touched a hot stove, it is highly likely that today you will talk more about the one negative experience as opposed to the 9 positive ones.

What’s important to note is that this one negative experience is stored in the place that the prefrontal cortex accesses first and you to recall this experience the next time you see a stove. We’re designed this way. So what are we to do when we need a low level of fear to perform at high levels, yet our first response to everything is to check our fears and past traumas?

This is why motivation almost always has a very short shelf life. Motivation is great but it should be used for exactly what it is. It is nothing more than a caffeine buzz, and it’s a perfect solution just minutes or seconds before you have to perform at a high level. This is what good athletic coaches do very well. A good story or video or speech can significantly lower cortisol levels and the duration of this low level varies with each person, but make no mistake, it is very short lived.

Motivation therefore, is not something we should rely on for long-term high performance. As an example, motivation would not be the area of focus as a sustainable way to increase the performance of an endurance athlete. The other dimensions of EQ, self-awareness and self-regulation, are much better for longer term sustainability of high performance.

This week, take a measure of times in the day or week that you feel very motivated. Do a quick self assessment/scan of your thoughts and body. Gauge how long this state lasts for you, and what caused it. Next week, I’ll discuss more and share some tips.

It is my contention that optimism is, in fact, the outcome of very high self-awareness, both of oneself and everything around us. And self-awareness is a measurable dimension of Emotional Intelligence. I argue that the more self-aware you are, the more “glasses” you actually notice around you (metaphorically).

Perhaps not all of them will be half-full to you, but certainly a lot more of them will be if you compare that to someone else who hardly notices “glasses” around them at all. Those who don’t notice many glasses around them simply travel through each day, reacting as best as they can to the stimuli.

But if you simply choose to notice more… more of your experiences, more of other people, more of events, more of time, and more of your constantly changing emotional temperatures and those of others, then you are noticing more glasses.

Take a look at this video from Yahoo! –

It is a year-in-review for 2011. Ordinary people–like you and me–accomplished amazing things. I am fairly certain that their success did not happen by chance, but instead by choice.

Make a choice to notice more. Make a choice to think of the better consequences of your experiences and worries (optimism). Make 2012 a amazing year, perhaps the best of your life thus far. I am optimistic for you!

This past week started by connecting with one of my oldest and dearest friends – my sister of 25 years – Mollie. She is a pediatrician and gave me a heavy dosage of tough love that I needed. What is it about old friends that they can tell you exactly what you need to hear in the manner that you can hear it and at the right time? Friends like these are just priceless.

Mid-week, I talked to one of my good friends and clients, Jim, from the Midwest. He shared with me that he and his wife recently relocated to another state just to be with their very ill daughter and her family. At a time when everyone is so concerned about job security, Jim informed his boss that this was something he had to do and he anticipated being relieved from his job as a result. Instead, his employer allowed him to work virtually from his new home. Kudos to them for fully supporting him and giving him credit for his integrity and values.

Mid-afternoon later in the week I played golf with two scratch golfers and beat them both on the front 9 in straight-up stroke play, only to have both matches go to the 18th hole and win against one and lose to the other with the backdrop of rapidly falling sun and temperature. It was not the win or loss that I savored on the drive after–it was that I was able to get the best out of me against tough competition, and actually play golf in December!

On Thursday, I had a meeting with a client in Winston-Salem, NC. I got in early and wanted a quick bite to eat so I stopped at Chick-fil-a on top of the hill on Hanes Mill Road. I got a soda, grilled chicken sandwich and those yummy wedge fries. I experienced by far the best customer service of any fast food restaurant in my life. After ordering, I was given a number. Food was brought to my table by a young man, who repeatedly stopped by and asked if I needed anything. An older lady stopped by when I was done and gave me a mint and thanked me for stopping by. After easting, I was catching up on emails on my iPhone and the young man came and cleared my table and refilled my drink. I gave him $5 but he refused to take it. So I went over to the manager and asked him to give it to the young man. What an experience to have right before my own meeting with my client… doing everything possible to make sure it was a pleasant experience.

On Facebook, another old friend, Melissa, posted a campaign video by a national politician vowing that if elected, he would bring Christian values back to America and start that by ridding the military of gay servicemen and women. The conversation is still going but was delighted to see so many perspectives on the issue in a healthy debate of differences.

Friday night, the family attended my daughter’s musical at her school. I know every parent knows this but it sure is indescribable watching your child perform. Pride and joy, is all I can say. Saturday I saw the movie “The Way” which my friend Tom highly recommended. It quickly has gone to the top 10 of my all time favorite movies. I highly recommend it to you all; it is a powerful, funny, and entertaining story of a father completing his dead son’s pilgrimage (Camino de Santiago) in the Pyrenees. You will be thinking and talking about it for days afterwards.

Then yesterday my friend Dan and I were going to do a bike ride, but freezing temperatures forced us inside. We rode an actual Ironman course in Arizona using a Computrainer, a technology I’d never seen before simulating exact bike conditions as the course. It is fun to do something you’ve never done before.

What a great week. What a great year. No regrets. Great hope for next year. I wish all of you diverse and rich experiences in 2012, wonderful conversations with old and new friends, and hope you explore beyond your metaphoric shores and take advantage of the gifts of life, health, and freedom.

It is highly likely that whatever initial idea you have for your business–and no matter how brilliant you think it is–it will change and hopefully for the better. In fact, by the time you get to your three-to-five year mark, it will likely look quite different (and again, hopefully better) than your initial idea.

This will not happen by chance or naturally. It will take a high degree of emotional intelligence to seek to fail fast. This is incredibly counter-intuitive. Why would you want your great business idea to fail fast? Because an idea is just that, an idea. It is not a business with live customers and business processes.

Contrary to an mere idea, a live business–if you actively seek feedback–will generate an enormous amount of data that will allow you to morph your original idea into a better idea in practice. So “fail fast” is a powerful way to ensure that you’re working out the kinks in your business and are able to quickly get to the state where the idea is working in the real world.

Most of my readers are not entrepreneurs. I get that. You’re in the corporate world and probably questioning how this concept would apply to you. It really is the same. Constantly seeking for feedback in your job/role is exactly what this is. I know the politics and culture of the corporate world is such that it is not safe enough to fail. The wrong failure at the wrong time with the wrong people watching can be a career-limiting move.

So seek a healthy balance. Start perhaps with more safe areas–like your office, your schedule, your staff. What’s working and what’s not working? December is a great time–before the new year–to explore this topic. This week, think of yourself as an entrepreneur, even if you don’t have your own business. Seek areas where it might be safe to fail fast purely for reasons to evolve to a better place.

As I work with clients in corporate America, I hear more and more senior executives stressing the need for their employees to “think like entrepreneurs.” The term is no longer exclusive to traditional entrepreneurs or small business owners or graduate business schools. There seems to be growing realization that everyone needs to either be one or at least think like one.

In a global and knowledge economy, it makes even more sense that successful workers are those who are able to take advantage of constant changes, view them opportunistically, find ways to create and monetize them, and not be limited by an 8-5 timeframe or levels of bureaucracy.

Throw into the discussion that almost all retiring baby boomers want to be entrepreneurs and have a 2nd or 3rd career where they “own” the business, and the fact that young college graduates seem so unqualified for the jobs in demand, and I am fully convinced that everyone does need to think of themselves as an entrepreneur. In fact, I am not sure there is a choice.

I invite everyone to consider this week how it is that you can become entrepreneurial in whatever you are doing. For a resource on this topic, check out EFactor, the largest entrepreneurial community in the world (it’s free to join). Start there and explore the resources and possibilities.

It’s easy to blame this on the economy and comparative generalized unemployment numbers. But in conversations with them, they share some alarming insights. They are, in fact, getting opportunities to apply and interview for jobs. They don’t seem convinced that jobs are not out there. But they say they are competing for those jobs not just with their peer groups but also with many from groups and generations ahead of them with much more experience.

Most of the people I talked to went to some very prestigious and expensive schools, commensurate with their own high SAT scores and elevated high school rankings. They were atop of the world graduating High School and College, only to find that the playing field got level very fast in the real world, and someone with 5-10 years more experience than them was willing to take half the salary and probably outperform them, based on experience alone.

No one–not parents, not universities, not peers, not the media–nobody seemed to have prepared them for this. One young lady said,“I spent hours working to take my grade from an B to A or an A to an A+ when that time would have been better served by exploring the world and networking outside of my school.”

At Thanksgiving this week, I pray we will all be with our families and extended families. I urge you to have this discussion with your family, nephews, nieces, parents, and others. I hate imposing my personal values on others, but I can’t imagine that there are too many parents out there who do not want their children to grow up and be successful. The abdication of the responsibility to schools is a serious disservice to this value.

So take 30 minutes out of the discussion of this year’s Christmas gift sharing, of what are the cool toys and gadgets, of which celebrity or relative screwed up, or which sports team you are pulling for. Instead–talk about the future of the world and where and how the younger people in your family will need to be prepared to survive in it. It may be the best gift you can give them on Thanksgiving.

There is a reason I am writing about Thanksgiving this week and not next. In the context of the workplace, every ‘event’ seems to have an explicit business purpose. Even social events are designed around a business purpose – a team building session (so we can work together better), a networking lunch (so we can meet new colleagues), a Holiday Party (so we can celebrate an end of year), and so on.

It seems troubling and ironic that we rarely have the “Thanksgiving Event” with our work families – the people that we engage with more than another other set of people . An event where the purpose is just to sit, eat, tell stories, and hear about highlights and lowlights in a safe environment. If you are in a leadership role in your organization,  I encourage you to plan an event for later this week or next week to leverage a time-honored tradition–meal sharing–without a business objective. Do it to get to know your work families just because they are people.

I love this time of year. Thanksgiving is next week and it’s my favorite holiday. Families travel to be with family without the stress of getting gifts or celebrating anything but a good meal and the company of loved ones. They tell each other new stories, the same stories, hear about highlights and lowlights, and do it all in a safe environment without any real agenda. I’ve been told that the tradition of gathering together for a meal is not only a universal one but also one that we’ve practiced generation after generation. For many, this can be the only time of the year that we get together with our extended families and friends. It’s a special time.

There is a reason I am writing about Thanksgiving this week and not next. In the context of the workplace, every ‘event’ seems to have an explicit business purpose. Even social events are designed around a business purpose – a team building session (so we can work together better), a networking lunch (so we can meet new colleagues), a Holiday Party (so we can celebrate an end of year), and so on. It seems troubling and ironic that we rarely have the “Thanksgiving Event” with our work families – the people that we engage with more than another other set of people . An event where the purpose is just to sit, eat, tell stories, and hear about highlights and lowlights in a safe environment. If you are in a leadership role in your organization,  I encourage you to plan an event for later this week or next to leverage a time-honored tradition, meal sharing, without a business objective to get to know your work families just because they are people.

I essentially argued last week that continuous learning was an incomplete model. Prior to the last twenty years (when knowledge was inaccessible, and we did not have the communication devices we presently have) it made sense to be satisfied with merely providing ourselves, our employees, and our students with knowledge. Where else were they going to get it from if not from the workplace learning programs, conferences, seminars, colleges, and universities? Learning allowed us to go from Not Knowing to Knowing through these channels. It was rare to then go from Knowing to Transformation – the state where the previous learning has been applied continuously resulting in higher state of performing and living.

The paradigm of learning has flipped entirely. Knowledge and opportunities to go from Not Knowing to Knowing are countless, practically free, and accessible to all those who consider themselves a 21^st Century working professional. This societal transformation did not translate into the world of corporate and higher academic learning that are still stuck in transferring knowledge (some genuinely create it in research) and charging for it.

The continuous learning mantra needs to diminish itself and transform to a continuous application. In others words, I am arguing that though it is still very necessary to get from Not Knowing to Knowing, this step is happening cheaper, faster, and more organically (as a survival mechanism) and what is really needed is a great focus on providing learners with a structure and place to test and apply what they are learning in a continuum modality.

In Corporate America, this means changing the way leaders are developed and the way new skills are taught. In higher education, it means faculty spending part of their time in the same workforce where their students will end up in and for colleges and universities to transform themselves into four-year institutions of continuous application. Upon sharing this last week, a college professor asked me, “I teach History. What are you proposing I do with a topic where content will never change?” My answer? ”Make the content relevant in a way that the student will know how to use it in a job interview, in a team project, in a presentation, a conflict situation… the things that the student will likely do several times over in his career.”

We all seem to learn things all the time. Our sources vary from random conversations, TV, social media, internet, blogs, books, articles, to formal or organized learning programs and events. Just because we learn something does not mean that the learning has resulted in some positive change or change that lasts.

This is not fair, but diets are a great example. Before we jump on any diet, we often get a good dose of why the diet is healthy. We learn. Another example is listening to a speaker about tips on being more organized at work or a how to be a better leader. We nod our heads and have very good learning moments. We realize what we have learned is actually beneficial to us, and some of us actually start making a change. Unfortunately, these changes do not last and we revert to the old ways. This is what I mean by incomplete learning.

Complicit in this tragedy, and I do consider it a tragedy, are the teachers. As teachers, people come to us, and we go to extreme measures to make sure what we teach is fun, interesting, and well-researched so that in can be learned. And therein lies the problem. We only make sure it is learned. We, teachers, do not try to figure out ways to make sure it sticks long-term.

Academia is especially guilty here. School teachers and professors teach. The measure of whether you have learned or not are the tests and exams they give. There is NO measure to gauge whether that learning actually stuck and resulted in a positive change for the learner. The learner is equally culpable. Why would we spend so much time and money learning something, or sending our kids to colleges to learn, knowing well that there is no plan to make sure that these learnings are sustainable?

It is my contention that no learning has a chance to stick without a structured plan of reinforcement for a minimum of six months. Once you have learned something, figure out a way to repeat that learning by continuously applying it in real life for at least six months. To guarantee that is really sticks, plan for a year. This is what world-class athletes do. It’s why Olympians train for years for an event that lasts just a few minutes. They analyze every inch of their performance and practice, practice, and practice some more. The secret to greatness has never been a secret. It’s constant learning and integration of that learning.

This week, make a plan to reinforce one thing that you have already learned.

His article Adapting to New Realities was incredibly insightful. The ideas of ‘internal adaptive work systems’ as the new organization model based on facilitated networks to yield business results is not just a repackaging of old, but a profoundly differently way to look at work itself.  Solutions are generated in networks, tasks are completed in networks, jobs are redesigned in networks, and value is created. This is very similar to what I used to do as a consultant at Deloitte and Andersen where I showed up at a client site meeting people who worked in my firm but from different offices across the world and with different backgrounds. We came together at a client to bring the best possible network and charge enormous fees to do so. Organizations, Stu argues, should be ready to adopt this model if they want business performance, and especially innovation.

Stu will be speaking on Wednesday at Cisco (logistics below) and I will be attending and would welcome your joining in.

Turning on a Dime:
Flexible Strategy Design Relies on Adaptive Networks
Wednesday, October 26, 3:00-6:00pm
Cisco TelePresence Suite, 3979 Freedom Circle, Santa Clara, CA
( WebEx option and San Francisco Telepresence also available)
Learn More

I asked some clients of mine how many leaders in their organization they would truly characterize as ‘transformative leaders’ and none could name more than five. Is it possible that we in the leadership development business, internally in an organization and externally as leadership development companies, are selling something that is not only unattainable for the overwhelming majority but also, perhaps not even necessary for them?

Does every leader have to be transformative? Why is the head of sales–who meets her numbers and exceeds them every quarter, but is terrible at grooming others and following procedures–not a valuable leader? Why should she be punished because she has no aspiration to be the next CEO, help younger employees, be innovative, adopt new programs… when she is doing her job better than any predecessor? Why punish her strength, by highlighting her weaknesses? We all know nothing happens until something is sold!

Perhaps we should stop thinking of leaders as individuals and instead as a group, a pack of individuals who collectively are transformative but individually might not be. And as such, leadership programs should change their content from being individualistic, unrealistic, and unnecessary to being more about the herd and structure of the leadership team. This in fact is how most organizations are presently running themselves. CEOs tend to hire complementary skills and personalities knowing well in advance that their collective prowess is worth more to the organization and its stakeholders.

This week, think about what you do very well and enjoy doing–and what you do not.  Could the latter be something that someone else might be better at and enjoy? Could you take something off their plate that they do not particulary enjoy doing but you do?  Start being cognizant of how you can be better as a pack, rather than as individuals.

“Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you!”  Steve Jobs  

It is quite paradoxical that we have so many explicit and implicit business and life processes (social norms) that are inherently and powerfully designed to maintain the status quo and resist both death or change.

I have often told clients in coaching sessions that behavior is one of the hardest things to change both in ourselves and in others… unless there is a traumatic event or a severely burning platform. In fact, the hardest time to change is when things are going well, yet that is often the best time to reinvent and change.

This is arguably what Steve Jobs did so well. What was the reason to invent the iPad when the iPod and iPhone (and other devices) had already propelled Apple to be the most valuable company in the world? I watched his presentation unveiling the iPad last week and realized that Apple literally invented a market that neither the competition nor the consumer knew existed… this in-between device between a laptop and a smart phone.

You see, to be innovative requires a deep sense of curiosity of the human condition. This awareness is borne of a healthy discomfort of where you are presently… and this is the paradox as we inexplicably try to make the present as comfortable and repetitive as possible.

This week – curiously look around your office or home. Find one thing about it that you think will improve how things happen. If you’re brave enough – ask everyone to do the same!

It’s difficult to intellectualize much with such a smart and talented group; staying away from subjective data or imperatives is key. There is not much room for abstract or philosophical arguments. So I chose to harp on maximizing our five senses to enhance our self-awareness, self-regulation, and empathy (three components of EQ).

When smart people are confronted with interpersonal challenges with other human beings, both instinctively and by training, the methodology often used is rational and logical. They try to use their intellect to rationalize the right response and can legitimize just about any response. What they miss is that people are not looking for nor do they need a logical response… especially from top-of-the-food-chain physicians.

People want empathy, they yearn to be listed to, and they desire to feel like they’re okay for feeling what they feel (not weak or inferior because they show emotion or want it shown in return.) One physician asked me what I would recommend for her to do. I suggested they optimize their senses. We have five of them which we all take for granted. How about we: listen harder (instead of listening to respond), see all the non-verbals being expressed (instead of just the obvious ones), touch others a little longer and at the right time (a longer hand shake, a hug, a tap on the back), feel our own emotions longer (instead of rushing through the day ignoring them), and so on. This resonated very well with the group.

This week, sharpen your senses–focus on one sense each day this week. There are five days in the week–use each day and see if you can hear better, see better, feel/touch better, smell better, and taste better. As you do this, use the results to see if you can sense a change in your body that is not intellectual and allow that state of being to interact with others.

After about an hour, we uncovered some personal issues that had been piling up since the beginning of the year. So I asked her: Do you want to fix the symptoms or the disease? Fixing the symptom—poor performance—would be a short-term solution with temporary results , whereas fixing the disease would take longer, but the results would last longer, too. She opted for the latter.

Because of this choice, we barely talked about her game and spent the rest of our time processing the personal issue and agreeing to make many changes—some immediate and other that would take time. The following week, much to my surprise, she had her best week of the year. And has been playing well since.

For corporate athletes, working professionals whose arenas are conference calls, meeting rooms, emails, and the like, who find themselves in a funk on certain days or weeks, use a similar analogy and make the distinction between symptoms of poor performance and the cause of it, the “disease” as I did. If you have peers or people you supervise who are having bad days, do the same.

Spending a little extra time to correctly get to the “disease” will likely yield better and more lasting positive outcomes, than settling for a quick fix.  Your self-awareness and empathy skills, two key parts of EQ, really come to play here and can help you help yourself and others. This week pick some experiences you will have and try getting to the emotional root cause and explore ways to correct it.

Her father, probably in his late 70s,  had a particularly difficult time yesterday and understandably so. He was crying profusely and it broke everyone’s heart. It reminded me that burying one’s child remains one of life’s truly undesirable experiences. As is common in these situations, during grieving, many questions—some of them very important ones—are asked of oneself.

I thought about what the lesson in this experience might be for us, the living. The obvious ones came to mind—enjoy every moment, love/kiss/hug the ones you love everyday, tomorrow is promised to no one, avoid regrets, think of other loved ones passed away, look at your bucket list – we’ve all felt and thought these powerful reminders during the grieving process. Invariably, grief gives way to life’s other experiences and we forget the lessons again.

As I drove back home after the service, I thought about what the lessons of grieving might be to one’s work life. And only one came to mind: taking more risks at work. Work implicitly demands conformity to the past, to politics, to processes, to the same people. The opportunities that might warrant a creative outburst are few and far between. An adventure beyond the confines of our well-documented job description is indeed quite rare. So this week, I say go have an adventure at work. Whether it’s brainstorming ten ways to improve everyone’s lives at work and sending that list to your CEO or having lunch with someone in another department you otherwise would never interact with or going online and researching your competition’s strengths and comparing them to yours… go wander. You just might surprise yourself.

A common exercise to overcome this is to conduct an Activity Analysis. Write down for a week or two, all the activities you perform and the amount of time you spend doing them. If you have not done this, I highly recommend it. It quite similar to a dietician or nutritionist asking you to write down for a week or so all the things you eat and the time that you eat them. Nutritionists have told me that this process often is the most revealing and educational part of becoming a healthy eater.

The same is true for the activities we perform at work-–you will find this exercise quite insightful. But like I said, this is not new-–we’ve been doing this in the workplace for at least two decades. However, what neither this analysis nor the nutrition analysis can capture is the all the “white noise” that we live with that can either make us eat unhealthily or add an extra hour or two to what normally would be fairly easy to accomplish. The white noise is the chatter in our minds–-and mostly negative chatter–-that distracts us from performing at our best. It might be an argument you’re having with your spouse, child, boss, co-worker, or an experience that is troubling to you that is not resolved from the earlier in the day, yesterday, last week, or many years ago.

I argue that eliminating this white noise, or worst case, having a place to temporarily park it, can be one of the more efficient ways to increase personal capacity. A simple example: I have an argument with my spouse the night before and we go to bed mad, wake up mad, and I am off to work. It is quite likely that I will have a good and productive day, but much more likely that I will perform far below what I am capable of. What if made it a point to resolved the issue before I got to work-–what if this white noise were eliminated entirely before I got to work the next day? Would my chances of performing higher be increased? Of course.

But let’s say, that emotions and ego got the better of me and I showed up to work anyway without resolving it with my spouse. What if I had a best friend or confidant at work that I trusted explicitly and proactively decided to meet with him/her first thing in the morning; not to resolve the issue with my spouse, but to be able to “get it off my chest” or as I say, “park it”  – so that I could get some constructive and objective feedback or simply have a sounding board. Could I then have a more productive day? Of course.

This week take inventory of your white noise. When you have a negative experience this week, proactively either resolve it ASAP or find a place to park it and see how much of your personal capacity is increased. I’d love to hear from you.

I, of course, consider resilience to be an entirely emotional competency that ends up being manifested in behaviors, not so much the other way around. Stress is an emotional state, I think we all agree on that. In this emotional state of stress our bodies and behavior change because of that emotional state. Cognitively, we think faster and often do not evaluate all the data points or have access to previous data points that might impact our reaction. Our bodies in this emotional state of stress also change – pupils get dilated, heart rate goes up, we sweat, we become agitated, etc. Our reactions, our behavioral responses also change – they are faster, instinctive, and often can be loud, aggressive, defensive, or passive-aggressive based on whatever our dominant style of behavior is.

So I hope the distinction between emotions, cognition, and behavior are clear in the context of stress.

What percentage of time during a work day or week do you think you are under some form of stress? When we think of stress, we often think of worst-case scenarios, yet the truth is that most working adults are in some form of constant stress almost all the time.  This means that your resilience, as defined by Joe, is a competency that theoretically comes into play all the time too.

So, since resilience is an emotional competency, and your emotional competency (EQ) can be increased, then what are you doing to increase your EQ? Why is EQ not a part of your development? There is a ton of literature and other learning opportunities in EQ. This week, ask yourself how resilient you are and what you are doing to make yourself more resilient.

Once Irene passed, there was obvious damage to the resort. In addition, much of the local staff could not get to work, so many of the little things—like room cleaning—did not happen until Thursday.  That day, the General Manager spoke to everyone as a group and there were some people who were quite upset. There was some yelling and screaming. The GM was trying to be nice, but he stood his ground firmly as I imagined he had to in front of his staff, other guests, and perhaps for some legal reasons too.

There certainly were things that could have been done better but it was clear that they tried their best and had not gone through anything like this themselves. I had my own issues with a few items, but after watching all the folks vent, I stayed calm and remembered some sage advice from a mentor many years ago. He said, ”If you want to win a fight, take your opponent to a place where he can afford to lose.”

I had not thought of this in years and for some reason, I saw the GM in front of all us in a place where he could not afford to lose. So I waited till Friday, made an appointment with him and asked specifically to meet him in his office for 15 minutes. I also asked to meet him in private so that no one else would be there.  The conversation lasted 20 minutes, and I got what I wanted. It worked. He was in a place now that he could afford to “lose.”

This week, I imagine many of you will have encounters with others, personal or professional, where a figurative “battle” needs to be waged. You may have a difference of perspective, ideas, actions – I invite you to take your “opponent” to a place where they can afford to lose, especially if you feel very strongly about your position.