Tag: self-improvement

About to escalate

FabrizioLeave a comment

When a situation is about to escalate, be ready to do two things.

First, be ready to have a difficult conversation face to face. You can’t send an email, you can’t text, you can’t use the chat. In certain circumstances, you may still be able to use the phone, but be prepared when possible to meet face to face (or camera to camera in today’s world).

Second, be ready to concede. You will not get out of it if you put your foot down, if you want to win it all, if you are not open to be proven, at least in part, wrong.

But before that, how do you know a situation is about to escalate?

You feel it. You understand something is not right when you feel you are getting agitated, when you sense that being right is becoming more important than the outcome, when any minor event gets charged of unrealistic importance. So much so that you have to tell somebody or do something right away.

You have the power to defuse such incredibly dangerous situation, do not get sucked into them.

The reason is you

FabrizioLeave a comment

At any single point in time, there are hundreds of reasons not to do, not to show up, not to participate, not to express your opinion, not to come up with a new way of doing things, not to listen. Hundreds of reason not to.

It might be the toxic environment, the unpleasant colleague, the bossy manager, the trivial task, the task that is too difficult. It might be your past, the previous experiences, a pattern that often shows up. Sometimes it’s something that was not said, sometimes it’s something that was said in the wrong tone. Or perhaps a gaze, a word, a posture, a silence, a delay. Your fears, your preoccupations, your ambitions. The culture of not to. The pressure of your peers. The reasons everyone keeps giving you.

At any single point in time, there are hundreds of reasons not to.

And only one reason to.

That reason is you.

Persuadable

Fabrizio3 Comments

Being persuadable is about actively open-minded thinking. That is to say, it is not enough to be open to evidence that goes against our own beliefs. One has to seek that out.

Some good ways to practice that.

  • Ask yourself why you think a certain way, how you could be wrong, what alternative explanations might there be.
  • Think in shades of gray rather than in black and white – it is easier to update your beliefs incrementally, it is more difficult to completely change your mind.
  • Prepare to kill your beliefs by decatastrophizing – asking what is the worst thing that could happen? has the power to bring catastrophic outcomes down to earth.
  • Make time to consider other people’s perspective (before a meeting, before a talk, before a difficult conversation).

If you do that consistently, you gain in accuracy (getting closer to “reality”), agility (overcoming the status quo bias and the sunk cost fallacy), and growth (using feedback to improve).

And, contrary to common belief, you will not give up autonomy and self-determination.

Autonomy doesn’t mean reflexively resisting all external influences. That would be impossible, not to mention foolish. It means taking actions that “are both personally valued and well synthesized with the totality of one’s values and beliefs” regardless of who suggests those actions.

Al Pittampalli, Persuadable
Persuadable, by Al Pittampalli - Book Cover
Persuadable, by Al Pittampalli – Book Cover

Through the eyes of others

FabrizioLeave a comment

The only possibility we have to get a reliable view on ourselves is to look through the eyes of others.

Most of us have the tendency to think we are better than the average. We think we are more intelligent, better performing, more charitable, more careful, even in the face of evidence that we are not.

Or we beat ourselves up for things we did well. We give in to resistance, we feel our work is not yet perfect, our blog post not enough researched, our project not ready to be launched yet.

And so, it’s the others who can be our compass.

Ask those whom you hold dear, listen to their criticism, and act on it. When you are not getting the honest opinion you were seeking, look at facts, events, circumstances that tend to repeat themselves with different people, in different context, at different times. If you often find yourself raising your voice, you might have a challenging temperament; if you are not getting promoted in a series of consecutive gigs, you might have to adjust your professional presence; if you continuously find it difficult to convince others of your views, you might want to start crystallizing important ideas first; if your work is not getting the results you were expecting, you might try setting some relevant metrics to track over time.

The point is, the sooner you get out of your mind when it comes to judging yourself and your work, the more practical and actionable feedback you will get. Be the one who determines where to look, then let others be your guide.

Change is additive

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Change does not wipe away what was. It builds on it.

And when we change, it is often so that what we build looks way too similar to what was. After all, it is easier to fall back on what is known than it is to imagine the unknown.

It is ok, as change is an additive process. It is made of layers on top of each others. Some familiar, some peculiar. While you go, you will realize that change is happening, even when it does not seem so.

That is when you start to appreciate the journey and understand that the destination is mere chance.