Pondering Purpose in the New Year

Today I've been revisiting some of my favorite perspectives on the concept of purpose.  I am particularly moved by these words by choreographer Martha Graham:

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action.  And because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.  If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.  The world will not have it.  It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how it compares to other expressions.  It is simply your business to keep the channel open.”

And some questions to ponder-

• What is the unique energy or action you will contribute to the world?
• How can you more fully express it in 2011?
• How have you blocked its expression in the past?
• How will you remove these blocks this year?
• What's the possibility you create when you "keep the channel open"?

Happy New Year.

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Five Provocative Ideas about Leadership & the Brain

I'm reporting live from Boston, where about 250 neuroscientists and leadership experts are gathered for the 5th annual NeuroLeadership Summit.  The crowd is a heady mix of folks who are equal parts charismatic and nerdy, and there is a palpable excitement about this growing field.  Here are five ideas that captured my imagination on the first day of this 3-day gathering. 1.  Group brainstorming can stifle insight (Jonathan Schooler, UCSB) Conventional wisdom says that the best way to generate lots of ideas is to bring a group together and ask them to brainstorm.  Schooler's research shows that group conversation can actually disrupt creative solutions.  Once a team member projects his or her interpretation onto the situation at hand, it is very hard for the others to see outside of the construct their teammate has created.  For maximum creativity, ask people to first solve the problem on their own, and then bring them together to share their individual ideas with the group.

2.  The essence of charisma is mindfulness (Ellen Langer, Harvard) Mindfulness is nothing more than noticing new things as they occur.  Sounds simple, but we spend much of our lives in mindless autopilot, assuming that the situation in front of us (whether it be our commute, our coffee, or our colleague) is the same as every situation that's come before.  This kind of mindless state is not lost on others; it is readily perceived by children, adults, and animals alike.  Mindfulness cannot be faked.  This is why leaders register as charismatic when they are mindful: actively engaged in the present, visibly invested in the uniqueness of the person before them, curious and ready to learn.

3.  Expanding your emotional vocabulary can change how you feel (Lisa Feldman Barrett, Boston College) Changing what you think about what you are feeling can change how you experience emotion. (It's okay, read that sentence again.)  Our feelings don't just happen to us.  In fact, both the emotional and decision-making parts of the brain are involved in how we experience our feelings.  The better we are at to pinpointing and labeling our exact emotions, the better able we'll be to shift our experience of how we are feeling.  For example, rather than settling on "angry" to describe how that encounter with your coworker made you feel, try to figure out if the feeling is really "embarrassed," "inadequate," or even "sleep-deprived."  This will change your experience of the situation that made you "angry" in the first place.

4.  Sometimes the best choice is not to choose at all (Sheena Iyengar, Columbia) We are bombarded with choices everyday.  Iyengar's research shows that the more choices we have (and the less meaningful the distinction between our choices), the worse we are at making a decision that we will be happy with.  Overwhelmed with choices, we end up either not choosing anything, or making a choice we later second-guess.  Sometimes the best thing we can do for ourselves is to opt out of choosing altogether.  It's okay to decide that the time we'd spend deliberating over this widget or that one is ultimately distracting us from our end goal.  (Incidentally, this is why I don't have TV, much less cable -- too many choices.)

5. Why we get bored of our spouses, but not our kids (Ellen Langer again) Situations/jobs/people are neither inherently boring nor inherently interesting.  It's our experience of these things/people that makes them so. Attending to what's different (what's changing) is what makes the world seem engaging.  The more we notice, the more interesting the world is.  A person will complain that she is bored in her relationship with her spouse of 20 years... but the same person would never say that after 20 years of parenthood, she is bored with her kids. This is because we expect our children to change. Our spouses - not so much.

There are many more thoughts from the day captured on my Twitter stream from the conference. Signing off for tonight.

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Peter Block Asks You to Bring Surprise into a World that Wants Control

Last week organizational consulting guru Peter Block spoke at my school.  Block, the author of numerous books (most famously, Flawless Consulting) has over the past decade turned his attention to creating communities "that work for all," most notably in his own community of Cincinnati, OH.  Block describes his work as "bring[ing] change into the world through consent and connectedness rather than through mandate and force." Block is someone who invites his audience to experience what he's preaching in real time- in this case it meant spending 10 minutes in a circle with two strangers ("knees no more than 9 inches apart") asking and answering compelling questions.

I am still absorbing/wrestling with some of the ideas Block put forward that night (particularly as they relate to social justice) but I wanted to share some of my key learnings.

What follows is directly from my notes, so while it is not a transcript, it should be considered a pretty close paraphrase of Block's words as I heard them.  These are the points that most resonated with me.

Organizations are patriarchal. Organizations/institutions are inherently patriarchal.  The essence of patriarchy is this: I know what's best for you.    The belief that The Boss = Cause of any given situation and Subordinate = Effect is a false one.  We give power to people above us because we think they are "cause" and that they set culture.  In reality, we re-produce patriarchy through our participation in it.  There is a collusion between patriarchy and our wish for safety.  Leaders must work with people in a way that makes them feel that they are the creators of their own experiences.

Relatedness is everything. Get obsessive about connecting people.  Our work is to create circles of possibility within the hierarchical structure of institutions.  The circle is the symbol of an alternative culture.  The circle says: we all matter.  Our eyes connect.  All voices are heard.  Group people together with strangers, because hierarchy is supported by like-mindedness.  I cannot be surprised if I am connecting with people I already know.  Bring surprise into a world that wants control.  In the circle, create a world that is an example of the larger world we want to inhabit.

Questions bring us together, answers drive us apart. Create a moratorium on doling out advice or help.  Working on problems isn't powerful - ask questions instead.  Get curious, be interested, pay attention.  Ask questions that have an edge to them.   Ask, "why does that matter?"  Other powerful questions:  "What is the question that is animating your life right now?" "What is the crossroads you're at at this stage of your life?"  "For the thing you're complaining about, what's your role in creating it?"

Slow down and connect with people. Building connections with one another takes time. People will say it takes too much time, that there are more important things to do.  Speed is the argument against love, against relatedness, against democracy.  Doing is a defense against being.

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The Regret Minimization Framework

In this short video, Jeff Bezos explains how he decided to leave his cush, stable financial-sector job to start this wild dream called Amazon.com. Bezos' framework is essentially this question: when I'm 80, will I regret not doing this?  He calls it the Regret Minimization Framework. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwG_qR6XmDQ]

I've used this framework (without knowing Mr. Bezos' fancy name for it) to make a few important personal and professional decisions in my life.  As Bezos suggests, I found it helped me leapfrog over anxieties and uncertainties tied to the here-and-now and take a longer view.

Like the warmer/colder test (which is more about the here-and-now), the Regret Minimization Framework is a quick "gut-check" that can help you find clarity as you approach important decisions.  Of course, not everyone's internet start-up is going to turn into Amazon, but Mr. Bezos says that the important thing for him is that he tried (easy for him to say now, a cynic might add).

You can watch the video here (having problems embedding it on my blog, sorry).

What do you think about a regrets-based framework for making important decisions?

Could You Be Happier If You Tried?

How happy are you?  Could you be happier if you tried?

Is it selfish to want to try?

While on vacation in the happiest country on earth, I read Gretchen Rubin's thoroughly absorbing (and now bestselling) meditation on these questions, The Happiness Project. Armed with research that about about 30-40% of our happiness is actually within our control (50% of happiness is pre-determined by genetics, another 10 - 20% by life circumstance) Rubin takes us along, month-by-month, on her one year quest to maximize her own sense of well-being.

The book is fun to read; it's also a treasure chest of useful tips, ideas, and frameworks for thinking about one's own happiness.  Rubin's articulation of the four stages of happiness - anticipate, savor, express, reflect - resonated as spot-on as I happily splashed about in the Pacific Ocean.  Her experiment with enacting a "week of extreme nice" is particularly amusing, if daunting.  Throughout, as she tries on the advice of philosophers, parenting experts, and self-help gurus (often to comic effect), Rubin's cardinal rule, "Be Gretchen," ensures that she remains grounded in what she knows to be true about herself.

But isn't all this focus on personal happiness kind of... selfish? Rubin addresses this question at length, and points to research that indicates that happier people are more likely to engage with the world and help others.  In Rubin's words,

"One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy; One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself."

I would go further and say that personal happiness is key to our ability to make change in the world.  For folks who feel called to create a more happy, sustainable, and balanced world, ignoring your own personal happiness, sustainability, and balance will limit your ability to act as effectively as you could.

Happy, self-aware change leaders create healthier organizations and more thoughtful social change movements. When we fail to pay attention to our own happiness -- an all too common phenomenon in the social justice field -- the results are burnout, frustration, and  organizational dysfunction.

Gretchen Rubin's book is a great reminder that in order to change the world, we must change ourselves first. How many unhappy leaders do you know, and how much more powerfully could they lead if they were leading from a happier place?