WorkPuzzle

Spotting a Psychopath in Your Network of Business Contacts - Part 2

Last week I wrote about a topic that is typically outside the range of our more applicable subjects: How to recognize a psychopath when you encounter one in business...and knowing what to do about it.

As you may recall, my advice around this topic is to not lose sleep over it, and certainly to not start any rumors around who you suspect may be one.  The point of this discussion is to help you gain an awareness of how to recognize these people so that you can keep your distance from them.  You can’t be harmed if you don’t take their bait. 

I promised to share the characteristics of psychopaths so you can recognize them in action.  Remember, very few are serial killers, like Hannibal.  On the contrary, most high-functioning psychopaths are smart enough to stay out of jail, are often successful in business, and appear to fit in.  To help you identify red flags, know that psychopaths typically:

• are prone to boredom and require more constant stimulation
• lead a parasitic lifestyle
• practice sexual promiscuity
• lack realistic long-term goals
• display extreme impulsivity
• are glib
• possess a grandiose sense of self-worth
• are pathological liars
• con and manipulate
• lack remorse
• have shallow emotions
• lack empathy
• fail to accept responsibility
• And finally, and unfortunately, they carry the appearance of normalcy despite being guilty of the most destructive behavior. 

What makes dealing with psychopaths frustrating is that they lack a conscience when it comes to inflicting harm on others.  Research has found that they also have no fear of pain or of the consequences of their behavior.  Please beware that these people are incredibly capable of assessing your needs and exploiting them for their own purposes.

For the two people who asked me about this subject matter recently....I hope this answers your questions.  For the rest of you, I hope you’ll never need to refer back to this information. ...

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn.  Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.  

Spotting a Psychopath in Your Network of Business Contacts

This topic may seem a bit odd for WorkPuzzle, but stick with me—I think you’ll find it beneficial.  Over the last few weeks, two clients have requested information about this topic.  So, I felt compelled to distribute some knowledge about psychopaths to our clients and readers.  Hopefully, this will prevent or minimize your exposure to these dangerous people who can wreak havoc on both your business and personal life.  

Do you really need to be worried about psychopaths?  It is not something I would lose sleep over, but chances are you've come in contact with a psychopath at some point in your career and you probably will do so again.  Experts estimate that between 0.5% and 1% of the population fit this diagnosis.  This means there are roughly 250,000 psychopaths (outside of prison) in the United States alone.  

Professionally, I have performed psychological evaluations on well over 100 psychopaths during my career, and I unknowingly attempted therapy on three high-functioning psychopaths before figuring out their condition.  I have also had the displeasure of trusting two psychopaths in my business network.  The first was a former boss who was a well-respected and gregarious leader.  The second was a financial advisor.  In both cases, these individuals eventually left a wake of devastation in the lives of everyone I knew who trusted them in the context of a business relationship.

I’m sharing this information in hopes that you can avoid some of the pain I’ve experienced personally and have seen others experience because of these people.  I’ve come to the conclusion that spotting a psychopath and then extracting yourself from any relationship you may have with such a person is a skill that could save years of heartache for you, your co-workers, and perhaps your family.

There is a great deal of misunderstanding regarding psychopaths.  In essence, they are people who don’t care about the irreparable harm they cause their victims.  They lack any empathy for their victims.  They have no conscience.  No guilt.  No shame.
 
The common thing people think of when they picture a psychopath is a serial killer.  Serial killers are indeed psychopaths, but this accounts for a very small percentage of the total.  Some criminals are psychopaths.  In fact, many lower IQ psychopaths end up in prison.  But, even the prisons contain only a small percentage of the overall number of psychopaths. 

The type of psychopath you would be most likely to encounter is termed a “high-functioning” psychopath.  High-functioning psychopaths can be very successful, appear confident, calm, and seem have their act together.  In fact, most psychopaths are actually more engaging than the average person.  They can be charming, knowledgeable and quite believable.

The primary characteristic that distinguishes a psychopath from the general population is that they are insatiable liars and skilled manipulators.  The reason for the masterful lying is that they feel absolutely no shame or guilt about the deception.  No regrets.  In fact, science is discovering, through recent brain scans, that psychopaths don't feel much of anything, with the exception of becoming quite irritated when things don't go their way.

Because they are such skilled manipulators, they are exceptionally good at figuring out your weaknesses, exploiting those weaknesses, and feeling absolutely nothing regarding their actions.  Even when their efforts are stymied, they usually return to test your willingness or gullibility to go one more round. 

When research is conducted on psychopaths, they’ve been shown to repeatedly convince people they are worthy of trust.  Inexperienced interns often describe a psychopath as “one of the wisest, most humorous and engaging men (most psychopaths are men) they have ever met.”

What does this mean for each of you?  I’ll answer this question with two warnings:

1. Don’t get overly paranoid and begin suspecting everyone around you is a psychopath!  And, don’t begin rumors out of pure speculation.
2. Take what I will teach you about this topic seriously enough to be able to identify someone with this condition when it’s appropriate.  And when you do have strong evidence that someone is a psychopath, stay away from them.  They can’t hurt you if you don’t trust them. 

In the next edition, I’ll describe in much more detail how to spot a psychopath through a specific set of characteristics.  I will also describe some interesting research regarding the lack of emotion that is routinely characteristic of psychopaths.

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn.  Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.  

Jet Blue Moments and Resilience

As I pointed out in my last blog, when people are undergoing economic and job-related stress, evidence confirms some important principles that determine what direction one takes.  Namely, that under economic and job-related stress, either people grow and go on to achieve, or they regress and become physically and emotionally unhealthy.  

I used the Jet Blue incident as a backdrop to launch some learning on what happens to people who respond like Slater and alternatively, what happens to people who actually reframe their current job-related stress in a different way.  I actually received a comment from someone that implied that Slater (the airline attendant who threw a public temper tantrum) was not in the wrong.  If you share this opinion, you are headed in a precarious direction.  There is more than ample evidence that adulthood stress can help you grow, if you're willing to reassess how growth and achievement takes place.

Dr. Kerry Sulkowicz makes it clear that you are going to need resilience if you are going to maintain a clear head during  tough times:

“Many psychologists consider [resilience] a key component of emotional health.  Resilient people, they have observed, are naturally better at containing their anxiety.  And that enables them to see in hardship the seeds of opportunity.  What would emotional resilience entail in the face of the current crisis?  The ability to resist being swept up in the global state of panic and to adapt as creatively as possible to one's setbacks and losses.”

We see this principle played out with our clients every day.  Some people are not very good at containing their anxiety and they become paralyzed as a result.  But, others are busy working to find new opportunities.  We all feel the strain, but certain people have figured out how to use that strain as a catalyst for action.

If you find yourself in the former group, Dr. Sulkowicz has some advice for you:

“But just as there is no shortcut to emotional health, you can't become resilient overnight, or by sheer will, or by reading the latest book on the subject.  Instead, resilience is acquired through increasing self-awareness.  You must connect with trusted and candid intimates who help you build confidence.  You need to repeatedly expose yourself to a range of difficult circumstances and then overcome them.”

If you are responsible for coaching those around you, you have a great opportunity to put this into practice.  You are the “trusted and candid intimate” your protégés need to overcome their anxiety.  Can you help them identify the things they are already overcoming?  This is the foundation to build upon that can give them courage to take on the next challenge.

If you are struggling yourself, then you need to connect with others who can provide you support.  The first tendency will be to just talk with those who will compassionately identify with your circumstances.  Slater has an entire fan club filled with this sort of support....all people who are going nowhere fast.  While sympathetic support is important, but we also need those “tough love” friends who can give us the push we need to take on the next challenge...

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn.  Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.  

How to Prevent your own Jet Blue moment: And Succeed

Our recent blog regarding the Jet Blue incident was more popular than we had anticipated.  Last week we wrote about the bizarre behavior of Steven Slater, the now infamous Jet Blue flight attendant who decided to grab two beers and take the short cut home from work.  (If you need a quick refresher on what happened, here is a quick video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mNRhlrBqOc)

Feedback we received shortly after our posting suggests that frustration is gaining momentum in the Real Estate industry as well.

Here is one of the responses we received:

"I have noticed frustration, anger and impatience toward other agents, clients, staff, and managers.  Deals fall apart frequently, obsessive agents hound each other to try and keep a deal, disputes are abounding, and rudeness seems to be a daily dose of medicine." 

Clearly this outlandish display of immaturity by Slater is somewhat of a "cannery in the coal mine" when it comes to today's stress in the services industry sectors.  So, if you can at all sympathize with Slater's frustration or have experienced some growing frustration toward clients, other agents or managers, it may be time to take a deep breath, and really try to figure out what is causing your stress and what you can do about it, before you have your own Jet Blue moment.

Psychologically if you have been more irritable and angry on the job, it can mean a variety of different things, as these are symptoms and could be completely personal in origin.  But, when it happens to an entire culture it points to something much more general in nature regarding stress from factors that are probably inherent in the culture itself.  Instead of delving into factors such as economic conditions, changing customer solutions, change in lifestyle related to the above, etc... I'm going to address the consequences of these stressors and the solutions to reducing stress by reframing your current condition.

The research on resilience tells us there are two potential outcomes when it comes to responding to today's economic stressors:  Either you’ll become stronger and more successful, or you’ll become weaker, less mentally healthy, and less likely to do great things in the future.

Which outcome best describes you?  The answer to this question will depend on how you’re able to handle job-related stress and whether you can become a resilient person.

Management consultants, Salvatore Maddi and Deborah Khoshaba, conducted a 12-year study of the Illinois Bell Telephone (IBT) company staff who were enduring almost constant organizational change during the de-regulation changes in the telephone industry.

Every year for 12 years, 450 IBT employees (including supervisors, managers and executives) were interviewed, evaluated, given psychological tests, and given medical examinations.  While everyone in the organization was feeling stress, almost 50% of those sampled lost their jobs.  The purpose of the study was to research how people under job-related stress handled these difficult conditions. 

The research revealed that the employees reacted to the stress in two distinct ways:

• 65% of the employees suffered additional serious stress-related events in their lives such as divorce, heart attack, depression, anxiety, and drug/alcohol abuse.
• 35% of the employees thrived under the stress. If they stayed at IBT, they rose to the top of the heap. If they left, they either started companies of their own or took strategically important employment in other companies.

When the data started to show a distinct difference between the two groups of employees, the researchers then attempted to quantify what caused a person to be part of the second group.

In their book, Resilience at Work, the researchers outlined their findings.  A “resilient person” is someone who possesses and embraces the following:  commitment, control, and challenge.

“As times get tough, if you hold these attitudes, you'll believe that it is best to stay involved with the people and events around you (commitment) rather than to pull out, to keep trying to influence the outcomes in which you are involved (control) rather than to give up, and to try to discover how you can grow through the stress (challenge) rather than to bemoan your fate.”

In short, a steadfast commitment allowed the resilient employees to engage more fully in the job at hand (or with a new opportunity for those who lost their jobs).  This helped them to understand and interpret the events that were having an impact on them.

Their sense of control empowered the resilient employees to consider ways that they could proactively influence the changes that were affecting them.  Their less resilient colleagues tended to passively withdraw effort, believing there was little they could do to impact what they believed was their fate.

Furthermore, the resilient employees interpreted the stressors and changes as a challenge, and tended to look for the potential opportunities that change would bring about.  They took the outlook that change is an inevitable part of life.  It didn’t mean that these people enjoyed the stress, but the positive outlook they took positioned them to keep an eye open for new opportunities.

My hunch is that Steven Slater didn't view his stress in this way.  The brain simply can't sustain any problem solving when your fight or flight response is firing as if your being chased by a saber tooth tiger. You have two choices:  remain frustrated and take it out on yourself and everyone else, or GROW!  Anyone can act like they have their act together during good times, but only people who want to develop great strength of character will respond well when times are tough.

In the next blog I'll write more on the characteristics of resilience.

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn.  Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.  

What Can You Learn from the Jet Blue Flight Attendant’s Tirade?

Unless you've been vacationing on a remote island with no contact with the outside world, you’ve no doubt heard about the bizarre behavior of Steven Slater last week.  He is the now infamous Jet Blue flight attendant who decided to grab two beers and take the short cut home from work.  (If you need a quick refresher on what happened, here is a quick video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mNRhlrBqOc )

Since his arrest, something strange has happened.  Slater has become a hero.  Take a look at this partial summary from Yahoo News:

“And as is the case with anyone who stumbles upon sudden infamy in the digital age, Slater has been the subject of much discussion in the past week.  As David Allan Coe advocated in song, he took that job and shoved it.  Here's a random sampling of reactions from around the Web:

• Gawker's Maureen O'Connor labeled him a 'hero' for 'doing that which everyone who has traveled by airplane dreams.'  She added, 'Unfortunately, his heroism may result in criminal mischief and trespassing charges.'
• New York magazine's Chris Rovzar predicted that hero status for Slater is imminent:  'You know, it's amazing you don't read stories like this more frequently.  You'd assume that, just as passengers periodically go berserk, so would flight attendants.  Prediction:  This guy becomes some sort of folk hero.'
• The New York Daily News' Joanna Molloy sympathized with Slater's plight, which she thinks is 'part of the frustration all over the country as employees take pay cuts and have to do double the workload as they take on the responsibilities of their laid-off co-workers.'
• The Awl's Alex Balk is ready to raise a glass in celebration of Slater, writing, 'I think even the most airline-phobic among us can sort of look at his great escape and offer a silent cheer.'
• In a recent issue of the New Yorker, essayist David Sedaris wrote about air travel and the tendency for humans to behave at their worst on planes and in airports.  'We're forever blaming the airline industry for turning us into monsters,' Sedaris wrote.  'But what if this is who we truly are, and the airport's just a forum that allows us to be our real selves, not just hateful but gloriously so?' "

(To read the summary with all the links to the original articles, please visit:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100810/bs_yblog_upshot/rogue-jetblue-flight-attendant-being-hailed-as-a-modern-american-working-class-hero )

Why is it that so many people have connected with Slater’s outburst?  As I’ve read the articles mentioned above and others, the consensus seems to be that there are many employees who are very frustrated with their jobs.  While most individuals cannot afford to abandon their posts like Slater did, they can cheer on someone who publically demonstrated the angst they feel every day.

Digging deeper...it appears the frustration is most intense in the service industries (i.e. those jobs that involve directly serving the public).  In the U.S, there are a total of 150 million people with jobs, and 107 million of these individuals work in the service industry.  That’s a huge amount of collective frustration and it’s not hard to see why it occasionally bubbles over into the media when a focal point presents itself.

So, what can you learn from Slater’s tantrum to increase your recruiting effectiveness?  Here are some quick thoughts:

1. Connect with the Frustration People Feel in Their Jobs.  As you know, change is painful.  People do not make changes in their employment status unless the change of remaining in their current situation exceeds the pain of trying something new.  So, spend time asking questions about a candidate’s current situation to bring the pain to the surface.  What bothers them about their current job?  What other options have they tried in the past that have not worked out?  Where do they see themselves in five years if they remain on the same course?  Etc.
2. Tone Down the “Opportunity Speak.”  Managers are often too eager and thorough in describing the benefits of becoming a real estate agent. If there is too much of this opportunity speak too quickly in the conversation, the walls go up.  You’re talking, but the candidates are no longer listening because they feel like they are being sold something.  It is better to admit that being a real estate agent has its own set of struggles.  Realistic hope is kindled when the new struggles seem more bearable than the ones they’re experiencing right now.
3. Encourage Candidates to Take Small Steps.  As you find points of pain in the discussion, encourage the candidate to take small steps to remedy the pain.  For example, one of the common frustrations people feel in a dead-end job is boredom.  If a candidate is considering real estate for the first time, enrolling in a real estate school is a great way to learn if the new career has the potential to be more interesting and engaging. In most states, this is a small step (low cost, flexible) towards answering the question:  Does the topic of real estate really capture my interest? If the answer is yes, the next step will be even easier.

Like most people who grab their 15 minutes of fame, Steven Slater will soon be forgotten.  But, the frustration that many employees feel in their current situations will remain.  Tap into that frustration and you’ll gain an advantage over the competition and ultimately become a more savvy recruiter.

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below. 

8 Key Behaviors of Successful Leaders

I want you to ask and answer the following question as honestly as you can: With the future of business being unpredictable and evolving quickly, how important is it to employ flexible and adaptable managers?

The latest issue of one my professional journals focuses its entire publication on answering this question.  Although the article focuses on businesses in general, I could relate everything I read to challenges in the real estate industry.

Rapid technology advances, more diverse workforces, more use of outsourcing specialized tasks, new forms of social networking, increased use of virtual interactions, and the need for online branding capabilities, have all contributed to an interest in this topic.  

While I can't cover everything here, one of the insights I thought most helpful concerns a manager's ability to embrace uncertainty and manage it effectively.  Hodgson and White, in their book Relax, It's Only Uncertainty, were able to identify some very interesting clusters of behaviors in managers who did this well, and clusters of behaviors in managers who did not excel.

The Adaptive Group (or most successful managers) demonstrated these measurable actions:

1. “Mystery Seekers” are fascinated by what they do not yet know.  We might describe them as taking a road just to see where it goes.  Curiosity is high.
2. “Risk tolerators” are not necessarily risk takers, but they have the willingness and ability to make choices with incomplete information.  They see mistakes as a way to learn.
3. “Future Scanners” are those who want to understand how a business operates, and constantly consider how it will play out in future states.
4. "Tenacious challengers” are tireless in solving problems.  They continue to seek solutions in a relentless way.
5. "Exiters” want everyone to be energized by what they do.  Behaviors that come out of this include wanting to make work fun.
6. “Flexible adjusters” exhibit two tendencies:  the ability to admit they are wrong and the ability to sell change to people whose self interest is against the change.
7. “Simplifiers” are able to take complicated ideas and help everyone in an organization understand where they are going.
8. “Focusers” have the ability to identify and attack a critical few actions that need to be done, as well as the ability to shift to a different few critical actions at the right time.

Which of these describes you?  Which characteristics do you struggle with or wish you possessed?  I recommend resisting the urge to become overly concerned with your weaknesses and spending a lot of time trying to overcome them - This would be very difficult to accomplish.  Instead, focus on becoming even more purposeful in developing the traits you naturally possess.  Then, fill in the gaps by surrounding yourself with people who are good at the other items.

In the next edition, I’ll share the eight traits found in “Restrainers” - those people who aren’t good managers because they resist change.

(Reference:  Consulting Psychologist Journal:  Practice and Research, Acceptance of Uncertainty as an Indicator of Effective Leadership, June 2010)

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn.  Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.  

The Death of the Traditional Job With Benefits: How Can You Take Advantage of This Emerging Trend?

I spent some time with the leadership team of a mid-sized real estate company in the Midwest last week.  They’ve been clients of Tidemark for more than two years and have noticed that the traditional candidate pools for real estate agents are not producing sufficiently productive new agents.  I sensed deep frustration over their realization that what has worked in the past, is not likely to produce results in the future.

One of the candidate demographics that seems to be most troubling is the baby boomer new agent, whose spouse has a traditional full-time job with benefits.  The spouse provides the financial safety net for the family, and the agent’s job is to bring in extra income for needs such as college expenses, an extra car payment, money for vacations, etc.  If the real estate market is expanding consistently, this arrangement seems to work pretty well—both for the agent (standing in the right place at the right time) and the real estate company (it needs individuals to take orders and provide basic customer service).

But, as the economics of the real estate industry have worsened, this traditional arrangement has become very strained.  A new agent can no longer make an impact (or any money) without true skills and focus being applied to the real estate sales profession.  A real estate company cannot meet their financial goals by depending on this type of lack-luster talent.

Is all lost?  I don’t think so.  But the agent/company relationship will change based on the nature of employment, the economic realities of the housing market, and the continued pressure that emerging technologies will put on traditional real estate business.  Companies that can adapt to these changes will be able to capture the available opportunities in the future.

One of the trends that the real estate industry can benefit from is what many people are calling "the death of the traditional job with benefits."  In years past, a real estate company was often at a disadvantage, competing for talent against companies who could offer someone a steady paycheck with benefits.  Even commission-based sales positions in other industries (ex. insurance, technology sales, media sales, etc.) commonly offered base pay and benefits in addition to commission.  But, according to a recent CNN report, all that may be changing...

“Jobs may be coming back, but they aren't the same ones workers were used to.

Many of the jobs employers are adding are temporary or contract positions, rather than traditional full-time jobs with benefits. With unemployment remaining near 10%, employers have their pick of workers willing to accept less secure positions.
 
In 2005, the government estimated that 31% of U.S. workers were already so-called contingent workers.  Experts say that number could increase to 40% or more in the next 10 years.

James Stoeckmann, senior practice leader at WorldatWork, a professional association of human resource executives, believes that full-time employees could become the minority of the nation's workforce within 20 to 30 years, leaving employees without traditional benefits such as health coverage, paid vacations and retirement plans, that most workers take for granted today.

‘The traditional job is not doomed. But it will increasingly have competition from other models, the most prominent is the independent contractor model,’ he said.”

So, let’s put two and two together... We have real estate companies who are no longer able to depend upon B-level talent to get the production they need.  In addition, we have A-level talent in the employment market at large, who are increasingly willing to look at an independent contractor employment model because the traditional “job with benefits” is becoming scarce.

This is a trend that can be capitalized upon.  Next week, we’ll talk about some ideas about how to make this happen.

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below. 

Motivation Revisited: Six Kids in a Car for 7,000 Miles

Over the past couple of weeks, Dave has been making most of the contributions to WorkPuzzle, as I have been working remotely in the Midwest.  Now, he is off to Europe for a few weeks to visit his daughter who is working in London, and I’ll be writing the WorkPuzzle entries.  Hopefully, you’ll enjoy the extended focus each of us have/will put toward WorkPuzzle during the weeks in July.

The reason for my trip to the Midwest is a music tour I decided to embark on with my family.  Some of you know this already, but my family started a bluegrass band a few years ago.  We normally perform in the Northwest a few times per month, but this summer we decided to do a cross country trip from Seattle to Indianapolis.  By the time we’re done, we’ll have performed 12 times in various communities across the country.  (If you have an interest in reading more about the band, you can visit the band website at www.noteasilybrokenmusic.com.)  Since we perform during the evenings and weekends, I’ve been able to work remotely. 

The trip has been a lot of fun, and we’ve created some great memories along the way.  But, as we conceptualized the journey, I knew there would also be some challenges. One of those challenges was going to be getting my six kids to ride in the car for 7,000 miles without killing each other.  My wife, Sally, suspected it would be similar to those experiments she read about in her psychology classes where they put rats in very confined spaces and they eventually start eating each other!

To keep this from happening, Sally started planning months ahead of time.  Of course, we had all the normal tricks such as books on tape, videos, games, crafts, etc.  But, when boredom sets in, we knew it would still be tempting to take a little bite out of a sibling.  To head this off, she put a request out to her network for ideas to keep kids occupied and civil during long car rides.

While she received many ideas, one in particular caught her attention.  It was provided by a mom who has eight kids and regularly takes trips across the country.  This woman had devised an incentive system whereby her kids could earn quarters for good behavior in the car.  Here’s how it worked:  Each child was presented with two rolls of quarters ($20), but they could not claim their quarters until the midpoint of the trip.  During the trip, if relational offenses (rudeness, disrespect, physical harm, etc.) were committed, one or more quarters would be deducted from their account.  So, at the halfway point in the trip, they could potentially earn $20 for good behavior.  The process would then be repeated for the return trip.

Now this all sounded good and we’ll try almost anything when it comes to parenting, but I did notice that this incentive system was at odds with what I had recently learned about motivation from Daniel Pink’s work (see previous blogs 1,2,3).  Research demonstrates that “carrot and stick” incentive systems are not effective.  In addition to having a little peace in the car, I was curious to see if we could defy the research.  Do those researchers really know what they’re talking about anyway?

Unfortunately, for my wife and I, they do.  We’ve now crossed the midpoint in the trip, so we held a “results ceremony” at lunch with our extended family last Sunday.  The results were not good.  Of the 480 quarters available, only 248 were claimed by our kids.  This means that there were 232 offenses committed over 3,500 miles.  I bet you’re glad that you were not in the car with us over the last three weeks!

If you dig into the data a little bit further, it’s even worse than it appears.  For three of the kids (I won’t name names), 124 out of 180 quarters were lost due to poor behavior.  Of course, these were the particular kids who we were hoping the incentive system would have the most impact on.  Where we needed behavior modification most, we had a failure rate of nearly 70%.  I knew we were in trouble when one of my boys said, “Dad, nice try on this quarter system.  The way I see it, this is just a way for me to be able to commit 80 free offenses.  I don’t really need the money.”  He said this about three hours into the trip!

So, science again triumphs over the well-intentioned schemes of desperate parents.  So...if “carrot and stick” incentive systems don’t work, what does?  The researchers are right on this account as well.  Inspiring individuals to personally buy into a meaningful purpose is what produces outstanding behaviors.  When it came to the band performances, there was a single event to which the entire family could focus.  With this goal, the negative behaviors generally disappeared.  Interestingly, the more important and difficult gigs were, the higher the level of focus and good behavior.

Hopefully, you can see how these principles could apply to the team you manage.  As for producing good behavior in the car, I’m still working on that…  

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below. 

Five Ways To Become A Positive Leader

In a recent opening address, as keynote speaker, Dr. Barbara Fredrickson (whom I have referred to before), explored the idea of positivity in leadership, and its direct and powerful impact upon creativity and performance.  The teachers I remember, the bosses who had the most influence, and the leaders I respected and wanted to follow, were never, ever perfect people.  But, they were generally positive people.

Here is Dr. Fredrickson's researched list of ways to create a positive, creative, productive environment:   

1. Be Open

2. Be Appreciative

3. Be Curious

4. Be Kind

5. Be Real – no false pretenses of positivity

The above isn't rocket science.  Pick the one that is your weakest and spend one week working to develop its expression.

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn.  Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.  

How to Better Track the Tasks You Delegate to Others

If you've ever delegated something, only to later find out that the person dropped the ball, this blog is for you.  I have become a huge fan of Michael Hyatt - He is full of helpful advice about practical, everyday problems we all face.

Here's what he has to say in a recent blog entry about his philosophy, advice and tips around delegating:

"Perhaps you may have heard the adage, 'What gets measured gets improved.'  I would propose a parallel principal: 'What gets tracked, gets done.'  This is especially true when it comes to delegation.

Early in my career, I had an experience that burned this into my psyche.  As a first-time supervisor, I didn’t want to be guilty of micro-managing my staff.  I had been managed this way, and found it to be incredibly demotivating.  As a result, I went to the opposite extreme:  I delegated tasks and never followed up.

One day I was sitting in a marketing meeting with one of my company’s authors.  I was his marketing director.  In a previous meeting, I had committed to him that I would follow-up on a problem he had with a report we had sent him.  I told him I didn’t know the answer, but that I would research it, and share what I learned at the next meeting.  I delegated the task to one of my staff members—and forgot about it.

In the meeting, the author, who was a copious note-taker, started out the meeting by asking me to report on the issue from the previous meeting.  I looked at the colleague to whom I had delegated the task and watched the color drain from his face.  It was obvious to everyone that he had not completed the assignment.  It was a very awkward moment.

It would be easy to blame him—and I did.  But as the leader of my department, I was also responsible.  I was the one who made the commitment, and delegating to someone else, didn’t erase my own accountability.  I was embarrassed and purposed that I would never find myself in that situation again.

Over the course of the next few years, I learned that I had to make delegation work - I had to take five steps:

1.  Assign the task to one person.  Ask them to confirm that they understand the assignment and have accepted responsibility for it.  Until this is done, the handoff is not complete.  In football, it’s called a 'fumble.'

2.  Articulate a specific outcome.  In other words, what exactly are you expecting the other person to deliver to you or for you?  I always start the assignment with a verb (e.g., 'Call,' 'Notify,' 'Write,' 'Order,' etc.) and finish it with an objective deliverable.  You have to be able to tell whether the task was completed as assigned.

3.  Include your delivery timetable.  Some projects have hard fast deadlines.  For example, I might tell someone I need a task done by 'The close of business on Friday.' Others are not as time sensitive.  I might say I need a task done, 'anytime in the next two weeks.'  Regardless, you have to express your expectations and be clear.

4.  Make yourself available for consultation.  You want to be a resource, but you don’t want to micro-manage the other person.  The best way to do this is to stay focused on the outcome rather than the process.  I personally don’t care how the other person gets the job done (assuming it is ethical); I only care about the end-result.

5.  Track the delegated task on a to-do list.  This is crucial.  Not everyone you delegate to will have a good task management system in place.  Perhaps those directly under your supervision will—because you trained them—but what about the others?

There are at least four ways to track delegated assignments:

1.  Use a page in your journal.  This is the simplest, most low-tech solution.  I used it for years and still know people who prefer it to automated solutions.  If you are using a Moleskine Notebook, you can dedicate several pages at the end of the notebook.  Divide each page into three-columns.  In the first column, note the date you made the assignment.  In the second column, note the first name of the person to whom you delegated the task, then the task itself. In the third column, note the due date (if any).  I don’t use a due dates unless a specific date is mission-critical.

2.  Use Outlook, Entourage, or Mail folders.  Nearly all of the assignments I delegate happen via email.  If I make an assignment in a meeting, I follow-up with an email confirmation.  Regardless, an easy way to keep track of these assignments is simply to drag a copy of the sent message to a 'Waiting For' folder.  If you need to check in on the status of a project, you can forward the original message to the person you delegated it to as a reminder of the assignment, and ask them for a progress report.  When the task is complete, you can delete the message from the folder.

3.  Use Outlook, Entourage, or Mail tasks.  This kicks the level of automation up a notch.  It puts your delegated tasks in the same spot that all of your other to-do lists are, so you will be more likely to review them.  If you follow David Allen’s methodology as recommended in Getting Things Done (a.k.a., “GTD”), you can set up an '@Waiting For' task category.  In the Task field itself, you type the name of the person, a dash, the assignment, another dash, and the date you made the assignment.  

For example:

Category  /  Task  /  Due Date
@Waiting For Lindsey /  Notify Andy Andrews contest winners – 1Jul /  6Jul 
@Waiting For Vicki  /  Renew my Admiral’s Club Membership – 7Jul  / 1Aug
@Waiting For David /  Review Jesse Sparks book proposal – 6Jul  /   6Aug

If you want to explore this methodology in greater depth, I highly recommend that you buy one of David Allen’s Setup Guides.  It will walk you through the process of using GTD on Outlook, Entourage, and Lotus Notes.  Even if you use Apple Mail, as I do, you can learn a ton from the Entourage guide.

4.  Use a dedicated task manager.  This is the method I personally use now.  A dedicated task manager is a more robust tool than any of the ones I have mentioned above.  I am personally using Things for Mac.  Nozbe is also excellent, as is OmniFocus.  There are literally dozens of others.  I have written an AppleScript that allows me to delegate a task via email and add it to things automatically as a Waiting For task.  (I hope to share this in a future blog post.)

Someone once defined delegation as 'the art of getting things done through other people.'  This is true, but only if you track the tasks you assign to others and make sure they are completed as assigned."

In addition to Michael's tips, here's one of my own:  We at Tidemark use Basecamp for all of our projects and delegation thereof.  In fact I'm writing this blog within the confines of Basecamp.  It will then go to our editor, Lisa, via an email alert, then back to me, then finally back to her to launch.  All very seamless.  With a well-functioning system, the number of potential fumbles is reduced dramatically.

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn.  Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.