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Old Habits Die Hard

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The Big Idea

Given that you can’t open a paper or magazine in January without a mention of New Year Resolutions, you might be surprised to know that most of us have given up on giving things up for New Year. 75% of adults reported that they didn’t make a resolution last year. This is more prevalent in the over 55’s than the under 24’s. The research also found that for those who did make a resolution, only 5% of people were continuing with the new habit, almost a year later. So maybe those over 55’s tried and failed so many times that they think there is no point promising themselves they will take up more exercise or cut back on the cake…

Regardless of your views on dry January, another study makes sobering reading. When doctors tell heart patients they will die if they don’t change their lifestyle habits, only 1 in 7 were able to make the change needed to live. Literally, even when it is a matter of life and death, being motivated to make a change isn’t enough – and that is because it is very easy to want to change something, but in fact our brains are hard wired to hold onto habits – even if they are not good for us and might lead to an early demise…

Whilst January and the start of a new decade is a great time to take stock, the research says that however motivated we are to make positive changes in our lives, most of us simply won’t be able to follow through. We will fail.  

Some clients tell me they can’t change – they have tried, failed and therefore accepted as true what they sang badly but boldly via a karaoke machine over the festive period – “I Am What I Am”. What I help people to understand is that the science doesn’t say we can’t change. It says we choose not to.

Recent research into ageing and the human brain says that it is a myth that all of our key mental development has happened by our mid-20s. Due to something called “neural plasticity” it is still perfectly possible to change and adapt – even in our 60s and 70s. The research proves that, if we choose to, we can develop our thinking to achieve more than we thought possible. There is also growing evidence that people who do adapt and change tend to earn higher salaries and live longer.

This single fact is how I can make a living as a coach – I ABSOLUTELY KNOW, with NO DOUBT WHATSOEVER that the person in front of me is DEFINITELY CAPABLE of more than they currently believe. Science puts that beyond doubt. So, once I have shared that science with my clients, we work hard – identifying opportunities and exploring barriers so we explicitly understand what the individual needs to do more or less of – and then crack on with it.

But as Shakespeare said: “Aye, there’s the rub”. Because the key word/s in that last sentence aren’t the sexy or motivating ones like “identifying opportunities”, “exploring barriers” or even “crack on”. Sadly, it is “work hard”.  

That is a key part of the problem with a New Year Resolution or change at any time of the year. It sounds easy. Your clothes feel tight so you tell yourself “I’ll just cut back on the cakes.” You know you are drinking too much wine so you tell yourself, “It will be easy to cut back, I’ll not drink in the week.” But “I’ll just” and “It will be easy” are poisonous lies we tell ourselves. It sounds easy. So that fact that it is really, really, hard to change comes as a bit of a shock.

We have perhaps come to think that giving something up is like so much else in our lives – an “on-demand” activity. But breaking habits isn’t like that. Your brain is a pattern machine. It loves collecting experiences, conversations and memories and finding existing patterns that it can fit them into. This means that every time you do or hear something, your brain holds onto the things that fit established thought patterns that you have already. The unfortunate thing is that it modifies beyond usefulness or even discards things you see or hear that don’t currently fit the pattern you know and love.

This is the simple reason why new habits that are good for us are so hard to get established. It would be great if getting into a new exercise routine is as simple as joining a gym or buying a bike but it is not ( as those of us with a gym membership direct debit but very few actual gym visits will know) We like the idea of a new pattern – that’s why we get excited about the idea of a New Year and a New You, but our brains are not very effective at the implementation part.

Remember that going to the gym or cycling on a weekend morning would be a new pattern. Implementing new patterns require will-power, resisting the urge to do something you want to do or doing something you really don’t want to do, requires deliberate thought. Deliberate thought requires mental energy and your brain is a Scrooge-like miser – it doesn’t like spending that energy.

This is particularly true if getting on the bike or going to the gym is likely to change or remove an existing pattern – perhaps if you are going cycling on a Saturday morning you will have to trade some Friday night beer? Or in going to the gym after work, you will have to leave work early or be home later. This might easily give you an attack of the guilts.

Remembering the science here can come in very handy. Because our brains hold onto existing  habits and patterns for all they are worth to save energy, one of the tactics that your brain will use is to tell you “lies” Your brain is fabulous at coming up with some very convincing reasons as to why you should not change the pattern today. Your guilt or your FOMO could actually be lies that your brain has invented because it simply doesn’t want to invest the energy required to create the new thought pattern.

This trick your brain plays on you is perfectly normal and is part of a condition we all experience called cognitive dissonance. Every day it is part of being human to look for evidence that what we believe to be true is actually true and to dismiss anything we see, hear or tell ourselves that doesn’t fit our current patterns. Because change is hard work and requires will-power and effort, when the going gets tough your cognitive dissonance really kicks in.

Cognitive Dissonance and the miser-like quality of resisting new patterns to save energy does have a purpose – your brain does everything for a reason – even if it gets in the way of change! The cognitive part of our brain – the bit responsible for remembering things, making decisions and so on, is actually quite small. This is why we are rubbish at some types of multi-tasking – our brain simply doesn’t have the room or the power to process two conscious thoughts at the same time.

All is not lost though. The great thing about patterns and habits is that if you persist, when the new habit is established to the extent that you are doing it, almost without thinking it moves out of the conscious part of your brain to our unconscious  (the limbic brain if you want the technical term). When this happens we can multi-task and the new habit doesn’t feel like so much of an effort – because we are not doing two conscious activities at the same time – we are doing an unconscious one and a conscious one.

Think about learning to drive. When you first got behind the wheel of a car you could think of nothing but mirror, signal, manoeuvre. Chances are , you now drive mostly unconsciously –  leaving you free to talk hands free, listen to an audiobook or imagine your future It’s why even if you have a break from driving/cycling etc, you never forget how to do it – you don’t need to remember how to remember something if it has moved into your limbic brain. Imagine learning how to forget to drive?!

In summary, the truth about creating new productive habits and breaking old unhelpful ones is simple but a bit depressing, because there is usually no quick fix. Most of us are well intentioned and are genuinely motivated to make changes in our lives but science proves good intentions are not enough. Particularly on days when you are tired, feeling a bit unloved and super busy, your brain will actively find evidence that making the change doesn’t really matter. That you don’t have time. Or that you aren’t the most unfit/overweight/disorganised/bored of all your friends…so if it’s not really broken, why go to all this horrible effort to fix it?

Before you settle for the status quo though, remember the good news – the research into neural plasticity and the other side of the cognitive dissonance coin. If you get to grips with the tricks that you brain is playing on you, you can absolutely change things. Expect to work hard on thinking about your thinking and you can achieve things beyond what you currently imagine (or ditch a small but irritating habit!) 

Change requires clear sighted thinking about your thinking. It requires you to develop the ability to assess the way you are currently filtering what you see, hear and tell yourself. And to see if those filters need adjustment.

So, take heart, prepare to work hard and start to think about your thinking.

Got It – What Now?

Avoid “don’t” or “mustn’t”

Ever told yourself to stop worrying and get to sleep and been unable to? Or wondered why a child touches a hot plate when you have told them not to? Our brains are not very good at recognising the “don’t” or “stop” in a sentence. One study found that insomniacs actually sleep better when they are told to try to stay awake.

If we did a quick experiment and I told you NOT to think about something, even for a split second you would find it harder than you think. Try now.

Absolutely DON’T think about a blue double decker bus.

However, every time we have a brain glitch, we also have an opportunity to use it to our advantage.  Try re-framing your commitment or resolution. If you tell yourself “I won’t have that cake”, sadly all your brain has heard is CAKE. You can’t help but think about cake. Frame it instead as “I’m going to find ways to make heathier eating choices” Another option is when you think CAKE, find something else quickly that you can focus on instead. Choose something that requires your full attention remembering that our brain is rubbish at multi-tasking – so it can’t think about CAKE if it is trying to learn a new language on an app or writing a thank you note to someone.  

Fold Your Arms

Yes honestly! Fold your arms right now. Now fold them the other way. How does that feel? I’ve done this activity with over 10,000 people and the results are always the same. Folding your arms one way feels normal, you don’t think about it. Folding them the “other way” feels weird. You have to think about it. It takes effort.

It is unlikely that you were taught to fold your arms one way over the other. There is no right or wrong way to do it and no danger to you in doing it the opposite way. Your brain simply prefers one way over the other because it has a pattern or a neural pathway to fold them that way and your unconscious brain now folds your arms for you so that you don’t have to think about it.  Asked to fold your arms the other way, it becomes a conscious task that requires conscious thought because there isn’t an established neural pathway for that alternative.

Think about any change you want to make using the arm folding trick. Chances are what you are doing now has become normal. The opposite will feel like folding your arms the wrong way. However, if you persist both will start to feel quite normal – after 10,000 goes at folding my arms the wrong way, I promise you this is true!

Listen for Your Lies

If you are going to try to break a habit, actively start to listen out for the excuses that you tell yourself as to why it is OK to “Do it tomorrow”. I have unashamedly stolen Cordelia Fine’s term for these excuses – “lies”. Her book A Mind Of It’s Own is one I recommend at least weekly to clients. Actively listen out for the lies you are telling yourself, and call yourself out on them. Maybe give other people who you are close to permission to call them out too. Remember they won’t sound like lies – they will sound like really plausible reasons that it is OK to have a lapse. That is because they have been invented by your very individual brain. The lies will perfectly suit you. Your brain is literally designed to tell you the very best personalised lie possible so that it can hold onto an established pattern.  When you hear your brain inventing an excuse like “I really don’t have time today” or “I should really stay and finish this work rather than go to the gym tonight” you brain has intended to convince you absolutely and completely to believe the lie. Some of my clients have reported that noticing the lies makes them feel like they are making progress. Feeling positive about yourself is linked to better success with breaking habits and making better judgements. This means noticing your lies can have a double benefit – you start to think about your thinking and you get the feel-good factor.

Practical Reminders Can Help the Shame Factor  

When you fall off the wagon or start to listen out for your excuses/lies it can be a bit disconcerting. Cordelia Fine goes as far as to say that the only truly self-aware people are often the clinically depressed. There is truth in that because your lies and excuses aren’t exclusively a bad thing – they are actually there to protect you from feeling the full shame of your failure. This gives us a classic catch 22.

  • Your brain wants you to avoid feeling ashamed of yourself for not going to the gym, so it tells you a lie to justify not going to make you feel better.
  • Calling out the lie is the only way to start to change, but if you do call out the lie you probably will feel ashamed of yourself.
  • Feeling ashamed doesn’t help us to think and change so we are more likely than ever to persist with the unhelpful habit.

Psychologists did some research where they got people to imagine they had done something really bad (it was kill a child in a road accident, so it was pretty horrific.) They got a comparator group to imagine they had done something really good. They then asked both groups to do a maths test, with an option for a period of practise first.  Biscuits were available for all participants. The people feeling low did worse on the test because they didn’t practise. They mooched around the room instead, flicking through magazines and opening drawers. And they ate double the amount of biscuits. This experiment was with imagined events. So, think about what happens when you have real life issues going on that you feel bad about. Is it really any surprise you can’t hold off the pies or get to the gym? 

We know that where there is a brain flaw, there is also a way we can exploit it to our advantage. The researchers also found that where they put up a sign to tell people that eating the biscuits wouldn’t make them feel any better, people didn’t eat the biscuits. When people were made aware of the facts, they performed just as well as those with happy thoughts.  

So, the top tip here is simple tricks work. That post-it note on your fridge that says “remember extra treats won’t actually make you feel better in an hour” might work. A note on your desk that says “remember, if the first thing you do is check your emails, you won’t make a start on your actual priorities” could help.

Replace Judgement with Curiosity

Try not to avoid feeling the shame of failure. Rather, when you are feeling ashamed of yourself change the language that you are using to talk to yourself about your lapses. When you find yourself avoiding the gym using sentences to berate yourself, or catch yourself saying “you are useless – how hard can it be to resist a piece of cake?” the change will get harder. Instead, deliberately use what I call “Curious and Interesting” questions – “Ok, so it’s interesting that I’ve avoided the gym tonight. Has today has been particularly stressful?”  Or “OK so I feel a bit rubbish about myself for eating that cake but if I took the time to be curious instead what would I notice about today – has it been particularly tiring or upsetting? What was my best lie?”

Expect to Fail

The drop in self-esteem from the “failure” makes us feel worse and means we are even more likely to resort to the cake-tin and the corkscrew for comfort. I help my clients to understand that failure is totally normal and something to learn from and build upon, rather than use as a sign that you will never succeed

There is a psychology study I love to quote because it is memorably about radishes and biscuits. Volunteers were sent into a room. Some were told to resist the biscuits and just eat radishes. A second group were told to eat whichever they wanted. They then tackled a puzzle afterwards. Those who hadn’t had to spend mental energy resisting the biscuits, persevered for twice as long as those poor souls who had been on the radishes…Resistance is hard work.

Remember, resisting something or doing something new takes conscious brain energy. Because we only have a finite amount of conscious energy, if we are using that energy to make decisions in the day job and resist the biscuits, we will get pretty tired. Make decisions – your day job!

It’s not weak to find you don’t seem to have the energy to resist the biscuits after a busy day, it’s inevitable that you find it hard. You simply don’t have the resources to resist.

Your brain will want to use that as an excuse/lie of course – “Come on, there’s no point in going the gym, you’re shattered”, but a quick rest of your mental resources can work wonders. Allow your brain to recharge. Stop thinking for a minute. Shut your eyes, use a calm app but otherwise don’t look at your phone or just take a walk outside. You will be amazed at what 3 minutes of not thinking can do.

Failure doesn’t have to mean that the effort is wasted – quite the contrary. Using the Curious and Interesting test about what caused you to fail on that particular occasion can be enlightening and game changing. Imagine finding through your thinking that you fail most spectacularly when you have had 6 hours rather than 7 hours sleep the night before. Maybe you will find you are working on fixing the wrong habit?

Practise Matters

Imagine that the part of your brain that deals with change is like a muscle – psychologists sometimes refer to it as the moral muscle. There is a great study that showed that where people used conscious energy to make a small everyday change that this strengthens this moral muscle. If you imagine your brain being like a real muscle it helps. Doing a particular exercise every day without fail will strengthen the relevant muscle you are working on. You wouldn’t consider exercising that muscle just twice a week as wasted energy. You would expect it to have some effect – just maybe not as impactful as quickly.

Scientists think that the important thing about changing habits is to keep trying. Forgetting is normal – you are battling your own established brain circuitry after all! But remembering to remember and persisting with thinking about your thinking, particularly when you fail, does work. It’s just hard work and your brain would rather give up.

Expect More Failure When You Feel Tired or Unloved…

Another study asked two groups of people to work at a task for a full day. One group had work that involved a lot of mental stimulation. Another group had a simple repetitive task. In the evening the researchers put them in front of a TV screen with a still picture and waited to see who would turn off the TV first. In every case it was the people that had done the simple work that acted first. They simply had more mental reserves left to go “this is boring”. Those whose brains had worked hard were slower.

A different group of researchers also found that when we feel socially excluded we are also more likely to reach for our cake/biscuits/wine. Dropping going for an after work pint or a calorie loaded coffee with a friend might sounds like a practical solution to cutting out wine or cake but actually may not help you as much as you think. Finding other ways to stay connected with your friends and work colleagues will be important.

Remembering that your brain is going to have a field day with it’s lies and make it much harder work for you to stick to a resolution if you have a day at work or home that makes you feel a bit bruised and unloved, can help. So be hyper-alert and appreciate you might have to work really hard to get to the gym or resist the wine in the fridge after a bad day.

Plan for the Long Haul

You might have heard that “it takes a month to make a new habit” but unfortunately recent research says it takes most of us a lot longer. The “month myth” did come from a doctor – a book called ‘Psycho-cybernetics’ written in the 60s by Dr Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon turned psychologist who noticed that after plastic surgery it took about 21 days for the average patient to get used to his new face or lose “phantom limb” syndrome after an amputation. Unfortunately, Malz looked for correlations with other habits that don’t stand up to modern scientific scrutiny.

Our YouGov findings echoed a previous study that UCL did in 2010. To succeed you will have to persist with a new habit for on average 66 days (or until about March 6 for those who are doing a New Year Resolution) before you have created a neural pathway strong enough to withstand your excuses/lies and allow your unconscious to take over the task. Most of the people in our study who kept going with a change for over 3 months also made it to the full year.

It is worth planning for feeling more tired than usual for probably 3 months when you make a change – even if you are “just” resisting cake or trying to remember not to bite your nails. The UCL average also contains some depressing news for some people – for one person it took 254 days of persistence. Given that willpower to resist is very energy sapping, this poor person must have been physically and mentally exhausted by the effort. You might decide that the thing you want to achieve is simply not worth 3 months hard work. If so, be honest with yourself about that now. Certainly, having a long list of resolutions or things you want to change about yourself is not likely to succeed if you tackle them all at once. With my clients we take time to find the most important things to work on and then tackle them one at a time. Maximum two at a time if the two are closely intertwined with each other.

Help Yourself and Others

You might well be exception to the rule – the UCL average of 66 days to break a habit, had one person succeed in just 18 days. However, imagine the lucky 18 day person saying to the 254 day person, “Come on mate, it’s easy. Just do it. If I can you can. It’s a simple case of mind over matter” etc.

Comments like that are likely to be well intentioned, but make it even harder for the person to succeed. So sometimes it’s no surprise that well-meaning advice from our super-fit, successful friends can be more a hinderance than a help! Be specific with your friends and family about what they can do to be helpful. Maybe share the science and give them permission to help you spot your lies. Be clear that jokes about you “eating all the pies” definitely won’t help. The right sort of support works wonders. Feeling like a failure or an “outcast” in comparison to your colleagues or friends does the opposite. It makes breaking the habit even harder given the science we have talked about above. 

Be Specific

Scientist have found that you have much more chance of changing something if you use something called Implementation Intentions. Telling yourself not just “I am going to do more exercise” probably won’t cut the mustard. However, telling yourself “I am going to do more exercise by taking a spin class on a Tuesday and going for a 2 hour walk on a Sunday” works much better. A simple trick, but hey, given this is such hard work, why wouldn’t we grab some simple things that research shows does make a difference?!

Make Brain Patterns Work For You

Something called ‘context-dependent repetition’ can really help you to have more good days than bad days whilst you are waiting for your unconscious brain to kick in. Let’s take a work example. Say you decided that you want to spend less time on emails. First, take the advice about being specific from above – “I want to reduce the time I spend on email so I am going to resist looking at email before I have written down my priority for the day”. The next step is to give that specific action some context and to make it dependent on something else. So, each time you close your laptop at night, put a plain post it on the screen. When you open up your laptop the next morning, you will need to get the post-it out of your way. You can do this by writing down a single achievement that you want for yourself that day first and sticking it up next to you.

Doing this means that when you first open your laptop and write on your post it, a mental link is formed between the context (opening your laptop) and your response to that context (writing your post-it). Each time you do a post-it in response to opening your laptop, this mental link gets stronger. When you open your laptop and this prompts you to think about your objective for the day automatically without giving it much thought, a habit has formed. You have simply replaced the habit you probably have now (opening up your laptop and opening email first) with another habit, opening up the laptop and creating your priority for the day.

I trialled content dependent repetition after a recommendation from a coach I know who works all over the world with senior executives – helping them to stay healthy and resilient. I used his recommendations for a couple of simple things – to drink more water and take more exercise. At night I would place a pint of water by my bed and choose an uplifting song for the next morning. When I awoke I would drink the pint of water, click play on my phone and get straight down on the bedroom floor to exercise for the length of my chosen track. More often, I carried on for 2 tracks. Those 4-6 minutes of exercise a day adds up usually to about 25 minutes a week. It’s not as much as I would like but what I was finding was that even that 25 minutes was at risk if I was looking for a “window” in which to do it all at once (“I’ll do it on Sunday…” was my usual lie) What I have learnt though, thinking about my thinking, is that if I start to potter downstairs for a cuppa, that exercise never happens. I have to do it before my clever brains starts making excuses – so just as I wake up and am a bit bleary is perfect!

What’s In It for You

Our brain likes habits because they are mentally efficient It can be helpful to think about what fantastic use you could put your “spare” energy to if you just created a new habit (say defining your daily objective) and removed  a bad habit (wasting hours recycling email) . One way to start to invest your time wisely and to start to use your energy better is to notice you are doing your bad habit, stop immediately and do something else instead, straight away – even if it is for just 1 minute.

This has really worked for me. I wrote sections of my first book and learnt to play the guitar by doing 5 minutes of writing or 1 minute of chord practise as a distraction activity for 2 particularly bad habits – biting my nails and over-dwelling on a particular frustration in my life that was out of my control. The writing was relatively easy. I’d do a paragraph on my phone if that is all I had to hand. In the case of the guitar, I got a stand and put the guitar by my kitchen table where I spent most of my working life as well as my home life. When I noticed myself doing one or the other, I would pick up the guitar for 5 minutes, thus breaking my thought pattern for a moment. Remember we can’t multi-task so doing something you aren’t good at immediately takes your full attention.

Think About Your Thinking

I’ve left the big one until last. If you are still reading, stay with me. This could change your life. There is a fantastic book called Immunity to Change by Harvard Professor Robert Keegan and Harvard Director Lisa Laskow that I recommend to clients all the time.

Keegan and Laskow write with experience and knowledge about how our brains are actually immune to change. How our very wiring and nature sabotages even those who are most enthusiastic and motivated about making changes.

In a nutshell they talk about the difference between technical changes and mindset changes. Technical changes are relatively easy to make. So, let’s assume for a moment that you didn’t know much about the research into calorie intake and intermittent fasting, or the life-threatening dangers of not getting enough sleep. It might be that finding out that a change is needed might be all it takes to get you to think about your eating patterns or turn off your screen at night. This would be a technical change. For me, as it turns out, some of the exercises that I was spending time on were not that efficient. A great personal trainer later (thank you Hedge Haigh) and bingo, I’ve made a technical change which has meant I spend less time on muscle based exercises, have indulged horribly over Christmas but am starting the New Year without a muffin top. Don’t diss technical changes. They can be brilliant.

However, for most of us, the persistent things we have tried to change are harder. This is often because it involves mindset change, rather than technical or structural change. It requires us to think about what we really really want, to quote the Spice Girls. This is because sometimes the change that we want to make, that on the face of it seems really simple, is not that simple at all. Sometimes a different priority that we have, another thing that is important to us, is in direct competition with the thing we want to change. If we are not aware of these competing priorities we might not realise that some of the things we are trying to achieve are bound to fail, because they are a direct contradiction to something else that we hold dear.

A practical example can work best here. Try drawing 4 columns on a piece of paper. Keegan and Laskow call this an “Immunity Map” – and it’s available free on the web.

Title the first column “New Behaviour (they call it “Visible Commitment”). In that column, write down the new behaviour that you want to create. Let’s assume it is “Drink less Alcohol” for our purposes.

Title the second column “Doing/Not doing Instead” and under that heading, list all of the things that you are doing instead of that behaviour that you want to change. So, in our case that might be “over-indulging at weekends with friends” and “always having wine with dinner” and “reaching for a G&T after a hard day to wind down”

Now for the tricky third column. Keegan and Laskow call this “Hidden Competing Commitments”. Have a look at each line in column 2 and have a think about what things you like about yourself or things that are important to you that those habits in column 2 are actually supporting. So, for example you might realise that your “over-indulging at weekends” from column 2 is because you are “love being the life and soul of the party” or are committed to “Having a reputation for being able to take my drink and be the last man standing”. You might realise that “always having wine with dinner” is actually supporting something really important to you such as “Making evening meals a real event with my partner or friends”. You might think long and hard a realise that “reaching for a G&T after a hard day to wind down” is connected to “Rewarding myself after a long day” or “Living every day as it it is my last”.

Once you start to think about your thinking, you start to realise that you have next to no chance of achieving the things in column 1, because you have some competing priorities that require column 2 in order to survive. Or at least that is what you tell yourself. Onto hard-thinking column 4. What big assumptions are you making? Our brains love an either/or. The either/or is simple. So a big assumption you might be making is “I can’t be the life and soul of the party if I am sober” or “meals don’t feel like an event without wine” or “If I can’t reward myself after a long day with a G&T then what is the world coming to…” The problem with these assumptions is that we don’t test them. What your brain is less good at is answering this brilliant question “What would you do if it didn’t have to be either/or and you could have both.”

So, as we have often come across in this chapter. Where there is a brain glitch, there is also an opportunity to use it to your advantage. Instead of allowing those big assumptions to live on and squash any chance you have of drinking or eating less or getting the job of your dreams, thinking about your thinking can work. You can have both. Sometimes just knowing these assumptions are there can help because they make you realise that some of your “doing instead” from column 2 are choices, not necessities. I recommend people experiment. Pick a party and have just 3 drinks to prove to yourself what could be possible. Book a massage for an evening where you know in advance you have a tough day to get through. Get in from that hard day and do 5 minutes dancing and singing in the kitchen to your favourite song – then see if you still need the G&T to feel good.

To download both the article and workbook , visit our bonus material section:

Bonus Material

Immunity to Change: Robert Keegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey

A Mind of It’s Own: Cordelia Fine

Research on Time taken to Break Habits: (Lally, van Jaarsveld, Potts, & Wardle, UCL. 2010

Cultural Mapping and Change

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Most of the work I do with organisations relates to change. I might be asked to help with an organisational change that will impact upon established ways of working, or to help them to introduce new ways of thinking, learning or leading.
It’s usually never easy!

But it can be a lot easier if the leaders who are responsible for the change don’t assume that they can simply tell people that they are going to do something new. And expect that will do the job.

I have seen many examples where despite following a sensible step-change model, a change or new initiative simply does not land as hoped. There had been an assumption that with good consultation and a firm project plan, it would be possible to “paper-over” the old culture of an organisation or an existing way of working. It is sometimes hoped that because the “new” is bright, attractive and fashionable that the “bumps” underneath – those places where the change doesn’t really fit or seem that popular – won’t matter.

When we pause to think about it, is it surprising that change does not always go down well – even if it looks like something that everyone would welcome. Most of the aspects of an organisations existing culture are man-made [sic?!] And if there is one thing that people aren’t very good with as a rule, it is change. Even change for the better. (Anyone who has ever struggled to stay fit, slim or sober will tell you that!)
So what can we do to plan where change might stick and change might struggle? How can we identify the unwritten rules of the organisation that might get in the way of the formal plan?

It is helpful to map out the organisation. Imagine the business as an island viewed from above with a bird-eye view. This aerial perspective would reveal the island’s own contours and the unique landmarks. Some parts of the island/organisation would have occurred naturally and been there forever. Other parts would be man-made and recent. The different parts would relate to each other – so roads would lead to particular destinations. Parts might be fenced off or protected. Some bits are beautiful and some useful but ugly. But they are all part of the island’s unique and individual aerial “map”.
Imagine the change you are seeking to implement was the equivalent of dropping a huge parachute that was big enough to cover the island from the sky.

Where the land was flat and uninhabited, the sections of the parachute landing there would cover the ground, settle quickly and almost instantly obscure what was there before.
The parts of the parachute that floated down towards hills or mountains, would have to adapt to the unique contours of the hill to find their settling point.

If the mega-parachute landed on a settlement and there was not a plan to adapt or move the people first, there is no doubt that they would find their own varied ways to get around that – either by finding a hole or an edge in the Nylon, or cutting through it and clearing the parachute off their part of the land completely. Either way damage would be done and panic would likely ensue.

Finally where the parachute came down towards a church steeple or a wind farm, the parachute would just rip, however solidly constructed it was. The steeple or turbine would proudly poke right through it.

It can be a useful image to think about when trying to change something in an organisation. We can assume that we can just land something and people will calmly and rationally adapt to it. But it’s never the case, particularly if they are not on board – It seems ridiculous to assume that people would happily live with a piece of Nylon over their heads! But actually why is any more ridiculous to assume that they would be happy to move offices and have an additional 20 minute commute or change a habit of a lifetime.

Thus it helps to think about the “map” of the organisation. Imagine you had a bird’s eye view and were looking at it from above. What are it’s own unique characteristics. Which are obvious – like the biggest mountains? And which are more subtle and unrecognisable because they are man-made and layered – but very important to someone. You are mapping out the different aspects to the organisation – such as the structure and the behaviours so that you can start to see what matters the most.

When you create a map, it can help you identify where are the bits of the organisation where the change will land with very few obstructions? Where will it land but need to adapt to the “contours” of the organisation but remain intact and still recognisable? And where because of the strength of feeling will people find a way to escape out from underneath it – either quietly or with aggression. And where will it simply rip on landing unless it is particularly well reinforced in that particular area – or patched-up quickly?!

I like the cultural map or web invented by Johnson and Scholes in the late 80’s because it does not just pay attention to the obvious things that we might look at when we are think about mapping out an organisation – such as the policies or the organisational structure. But it also reminds us to look for more subtle clues about where we might hit problems – What stories are proudly repeated in the organisation? What tangible and intangible symbols of power exist in the business? We can begin to think about whether the change is congruent with those symbols and stories. And if not, we can plan what to do about it.
Identifying what the stories, symbols and routines are that make the cultural map unique today, can help you understand what might be possible tomorrow.
One quick but really effective way to assess how well a cultural change programme might land is to draw 2 maps – One showing what the dominant aspects of the culture you have now and one showing what might be in the aspirational culture you want to create. When you compare the two it starts to become more obvious what the barriers might be. Will the people in your organisation see your “parachute” as essential to survival or providing the means to escape from some organisational practises that are no longer working? Or as a suffocating cover that destroys all that is important to them?
The cultural “web” that Johnson and Scholes used to map organisations contains 6 inter-related parts

The Stories and Myths that are told about past and current events.It is interesting to compare the stories that are told inside and outside of the company – do they match? Who are the heroes in the stories that are told and who are the villains? What stories are told about when people succeed or fail? How long have the Myths been in existence? How long does it take for a new story to take hold and what sort of stories capture the imagination of the people the best?

The visible Symbols that represent what the Company “stands for” This could be the obvious ones like the logo, but is also about the informality or the grand-ness of the offices, whether the dress code is formal or informal. Whether the car park has Director spaces right be the door.

The Power Structures that exist in the business. It may be that the power is held by one or two Executives, or that a whole department actually holds the most sway. How is power attained – is it earned or ascribed? Where are the pockets of real power and influence – who really influences decisions and direction regardless of role. Where does change usually emerge from? Who is socially successful and what characterises that informal power?

The Organisational Structures that exist in the business. Who reports where? What does that tell you about how different departments or different individuals are viewed? Which structural aspects illustrate whose contributions are most valued? It can help to look at meeting structures as part of this. Who attends which meetings and how is that related and reflected in the organisational structure.

The Control Systems – so the way that the organisation exerts control over itself and the people within it. How formal or informal are the financial and quality systems? How is performance rewarded and how is underperformance dealt with? What is expensed and what is not. How generous are the benefits and why? Are control systems followed religiously or “accidentally” ignored. If there is a difference between how different departments adhere to the control systems, does this inform what you know about the power structure?

The Rituals and Routines are the daily behaviours that you see that signal acceptable behaviour. What actions are taken that people perceive as “normal” which in another organisation might be interpreted differently? What behaviours are rewarded and punished – both formally and informally? What is supposed to happen in particular situations? What do managers pay attention to (and is this different to what they profess to pay attention to?!)

We hope that this provides you with a way to look at your organisation in a different way and provides you with some practical next steps that you can undertake to make change happen more successfully. For help, guidance or practical training to help get you there, please get in touch at dulcie@profitablyengaged.com or visit our websites at www.profitablyengaged.com or teabreaktraining.com

Broken January Resolutions? Create better habits that get you what you want…

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You’ve probably read somewhere that it takes between 21 and 28 days to embed a new habit. So as we finish January you’re  there with turning your New Year’s resolution into a life-long habit, right? 

Erm, sorry folks…Those of you who read these blogs have come to know there is usually a bit of Lemony Snicket perpetual bad news…

So don’t read on if you are going to be gutted that it’s probably going to take a lot longer…

The myth of “it takes a month to make a new habit” did come from science. Most people have traced this back to a book called ‘Psycho-cybernetics’ written in the 60s by Dr Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon turned psychologist. He wrote:

‘It usually requires a minimum of about 21 days to effect any perceptible change in a mental image. Following plastic surgery it takes about 21 days for the average patient to get used to his new face. When an arm or leg is amputated the “phantom limb” persists for about 21 days.”

Maltz then went on to find “evidence” that this translated into other situations. And as we know, if we set off to prove a hypothesis right, our brain can usually find evidence that we are…And once we have a definite number in our head that came from”science” it becomes fact right? 

Well sadly not. So a real bummer if you were over the 21 day threshold in an exercise regime and thought you were home and dry…A much more robust and valid study undertaken at UCL* in 2010 tracked people for 84 days to find out how long it took them to feel that a new “health promoting” behaviour (so diet or exercise) had become “automatic” – ie a new habit. 

They found it took on average 66 days for the habit to become “automatic”. So 6th March for those of you manfully hanging in there…

But there is good news! Hurrah! 

Another myth that the study quashed is that if you miss a day or fail a few times then all is lost. That was found to be rubbish. Missing a day made no difference to the creation of the habit in the long term. Believing that myth is really unhelpful – it makes it you feel you may as well give up trying to cut down your drinking, just because you succumbed to a night on the wine in dry January.

Unsurprisingly the “average” 66 days wasn’t that simple either. Even though all of the people in the trial did their “health thing” every day, it took them very different amounts of time to turn this into a real habit. They found people were very different. No?! Really?!

For one person it took just 18 days. Another had not fully embedded the habit by the time the experiment ended after 84 days – but was predicted to have succeed after 254!

The scientists also tested how “strong” the habit became by using a 1 to 42 scale. They formed another hypothesis about habits – It takes less time for a simple habit (e.g drinking a glass of water) to become “strong” and more time for more complex habits (doing 50 sit-ups). 

Rather than find a convenient truth that it takes us 28 days, what the rigorous science found was “people differ in how quickly they can form habits, and how strong those habits can become”.

So how can this help us at work or at home? Well the study did prove that as long as you continue doing a new behaviour consistently in a given situation a new habit will form. But you have to persevere. It will take more than a month. 

At work, when there is a new way of working, it’s likely that some people in your team will find it easy – they might nail it in a little over 2 weeks. But equally likely is that some may struggle and may need support for the best part of a year. 

Remember that when you quickly get your head around a change or a new process, that does not mean that everyone else around you feels the same. And sadly, if you are the boss and people see that you have it sussed and are praising those around you who found it pretty easy too, they are likely to feel really reluctant to fess up to the fact that they are still finding it pretty hard…Whatever they might tell you! So just be careful about the language and signals that you use when you are encouraging people to do something new.

It’s worth knowing that habits are formed through a process called ‘context-dependent repetition’. For example, imagine that, each time you get into the office each day, you decide you won’t log into your emails straight away and instead you will pin up a post-it with a single achievement you want for that day first.  

When you first write and pin up your post it upon arriving at your desk first thing, a mental link is formed between the context (arriving at your desk) and your response to that context (writing your post-it). Each time you do a post-it in response to arriving at your desk, this mental link gets stronger. When you arrive at your desk and this prompts you to post-it your daily objective automatically without giving it much thought, a habit has formed. 

So again thinking about supporting your team to create new productive habits. Until it becomes automatic you can help by making the post-it something that you notice and ask about.

Our brain likes habits because they are mentally efficient – Having a habit frees up the energy that we would otherwise put into remembering to do something or controlling a behaviour into something else. So it’s helpful to begin to imagine what fantastic use you could put your “spare” energy into if you just created a new habit (say defining your daily objective) and got a bad habit (wasting hours recycling email) out of the way.

As a final thought, you might need to think about your good and bad habits in a different way. Imagine you are trying to stop doing something you really like, that you look forward to and makes you relaxed and happy – (say pouring a glass of wine when you get in from work). Imagine that are trying to create a habit that is “better for you” by trying to replacing that with something you don’t like and won’t look forward to (those 50 sit ups again). It’s going to be really difficult. 

Look at what you really want and how your habit (good or bad) provided that. In the case of the glass of wine, perhaps you looked forward to it because it relaxed you and made you feel happy? If so it’s no surprise that it’s a hard habit to break if you are trying to replace it with something that doesn’t make you relaxed and happy and is something you dread and makes your heart sink when you remember you’ve “got to do it”. You will probably fail because needing to relax and wanting to be happy probably contributed to creating the habit in the first place! It’s no surprise that your brain will find lots of reasons to revert back to the thing that makes you happy and that you like. You’ll probably be able to find lots of evidence that your wine intake is OK after all… 

So you’ll probably be more successful if you cut down your wine by replacing the first glass after work with something else that makes you happy (calling a friend who makes you laugh or indulging in a guilty TV pleasure). You might to accept that your desire to do those crappy sit ups is never going to be strong enough to turn it into a habit. Would leaving your desk for 10 minutes at lunchtime for a quick walk serve a similar purpose and be easier to turn into pleasure?

Good and bad habits persist over time because they are automatic and easy. And our brains like that. So your challenge for yourself and your teams is to create some good habits that override some of the bad ones. And stick at them long enough for them to become tactics for your success. Like most things, if it was easy we would all be doing it already. And the self-help market worth £millions promising a 28 day result would not exist…

So I vote for accepting that changing habits is not easy…but using some simple tactics to make it easier.

* (Lally, van Jaarsveld, Potts, & Wardle, UCL. 2010).

New Year Resolutions Don’t Work

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However just before tell yourself , “OK so if that is true, I may as well ditch my good intentions and stay in my boring job/get that glass of wine/cake or skive off the gym tonight”…read on to understand why that is the case…and how to be the exception to the rule and make your personal dreams come true this year.

One of the best books I can recommend about why new year resolutions probably don’t work is a book about business. It is called “Immunity to Change” by Harvard Business Press. The authors Kegan and Lacey talk about a recent study when doctors tell heart patients that they will die if they don’t change their habits. Now bear in mind most of us won’t die if we don’t keep a resolution…knowing that only 1 in 7 of the patients in the study were able to change – and 6 from 7 died instead – helps us to be know what we are up against. Ourselves. And the fact that our brains don’t want to change and are really good at trying to find good reasons not to! If we really want to change, we have to think hard about what we really want and what is actually stopping us from having it. 

It’s useful to know a couple of bits of science. We are going to cover the science of habit. Also very useful though is the science about bias so if you have the time, go to our sister site ihttp://www.itsnotbloodyrocketscience.com/ for more on bias.

You have probably read somewhere that it takes between 21 and 28 days to create a new habit. So you are nearly there with turning your New Year’s resolution into a life-long habit, right? 

Well,sorry folks…Those of you who read these blogs often or have come to know there is usually a bit of Lemony Snicket perpetual bad news…

So don’t read on if you are going to be gutted that it’s probably going to take a lot longer…

The myth of “it takes a month to make a new habit” did come from science. Most people have traced this back to a book called ‘Psycho-cybernetics’ written in the 60s by Dr Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon turned psychologist. He wrote:

‘It usually requires a minimum of about 21 days to effect any perceptible change in a mental image. Following plastic surgery it takes about 21 days for the average patient to get used to his new face. When an arm or leg is amputated the “phantom limb” persists for about 21 days.”

Maltz then went on to find “evidence” that this translated into other situations. And as we know, if we set off to prove a hypothesis right, our brain can usually find evidence that we are…And once we have a definite number in our head that came from”science” it becomes fact right? 

Well sadly not. So a real bummer if you were over the 21 day threshold in an exercise regime and thought you were home and dry…A much more robust and valid study undertaken at UCL* in 2010 tracked people for 84 days to find out how long it took them to feel that a new “health promoting” behaviour (so diet or exercise) had become “automatic” – ie a new habit. 

They found it took on average 66 days for the habit to become “automatic”. So 6th March for those of you manfully hanging in there…

But there is good news! Hurrah! 

Another myth that the study quashed is that if you miss a day or fail a few times then all is lost. That was found to be rubbish. Missing a day made no difference to the creation of the habit in the long term. Believing the myth that if you fail once you have failed period is really unhelpful – it makes it you feel you may as well give up trying to cut down your drinking, just because you succumbed to a night on the wine in dry January.

Unsurprisingly the “average” 66 days wasn’t that simple either. Even though all of the people in the trial did their “health thing” every day, it took them very different amounts of time to turn this into a real habit. They found people were very different. No?! Really?!

For one person it took just 18 days. Another had not fully embedded the habit by the time the experiment ended after 84 days – but was predicted to have succeed after 254!

The scientists also tested how “strong” the habit became by using a 1 to 42 scale. They formed another hypothesis about habits – It takes less time for a simple habit (e.g drinking a glass of water) to become “strong” and more time for more complex habits (doing 50 sit-ups). 

Rather than find a convenient truth that it takes us 28 days, what the rigorous science found was “people differ in how quickly they can form habits, and how strong those habits can become”.

So how can this help us at work or at home? Well the study did prove that as long as you continue doing a new behaviour consistently in a given situation a new habit will form. But you have to persevere. It will take more than a month. 

At work, when there is a new way of working, it’s likely that some people in your team will find it easy – they might nail it in a little over 2 weeks. But equally likely is that some may struggle and may need support for the best part of a year. 

Remember that when you quickly get your head around a change or a new process, that does not mean that everyone else around you feels the same. And sadly, if you are the boss and people see that you have it sussed and are praising those around you who found it pretty easy too, they are likely to feel really reluctant to fess up to the fact that they are still finding it pretty hard…Whatever they might tell you! So just be careful about the language and signals that you use when you are encouraging people to do something new.

It’s worth knowing that habits are formed through a process called ‘context-dependent repetition’. For example, imagine that, each time you get into the office each day, you decide you won’t log into your emails straight away and instead you will pin up a post-it with a single achievement you want for that day first.  

When you first write and pin up your post it upon arriving at your desk first thing, a mental link is formed between the context (arriving at your desk) and your response to that context (writing your post-it). Each time you do a post-it in response to arriving at your desk, this mental link gets stronger. When you arrive at your desk and this prompts you to post-it your daily objective automatically without giving it much thought, a habit has formed. 

So again thinking about supporting your team to create new productive habits. Until it becomes automatic you can help by making the post-it something that you notice and ask about.

Our brain likes habits because they are mentally efficient – Having a habit frees up the energy that we would otherwise put into remembering to do something or controlling a behaviour into something else. So it’s helpful to begin to imagine what fantastic use you could put your “spare” energy into if you just created a new habit (say defining your daily objective) and got a bad habit (wasting hours recycling email) out of the way.

As a final thought, you might need to think about your good and bad habits in a different way. Imagine you are trying to stop doing something you really like, that you look forward to and makes you relaxed and happy – (say pouring a glass of wine when you get in from work). Imagine that are trying to create a habit that is “better for you” by trying to replacing that with something you don’t like and won’t look forward to (those 50 sit ups again). It’s going to be really difficult. 

Look at what you really want and how your habit (good or bad) provided that. In the case of the glass of wine, perhaps you looked forward to it because it relaxed you and made you feel happy? If so it’s no surprise that it’s a hard habit to break if you are trying to replace it with something that doesn’t make you relaxed and happy and is something you dread and makes your heart sink when you remember you’ve “got to do it”. You will probably fail because needing to relax and wanting to be happy probably contributed to creating the habit in the first place! It’s no surprise that your brain will find lots of reasons to revert back to the thing that makes you happy and that you like. You’ll probably be able to find lots of evidence that your wine intake is OK after all… 

So you’ll probably be more successful if you cut down your wine by replacing the first glass after work with something else that makes you happy (calling a friend who makes you laugh or indulging in a guilty TV pleasure). You might to accept that your desire to do those crappy sit ups is never going to be strong enough to turn it into a habit. Would leaving your desk for 10 minutes at lunchtime for a quick walk serve a similar purpose and be easier to turn into pleasure?

Good and bad habits persist over time because they are automatic and easy. And our brains like that. So your challenge for yourself and your teams is to create some good habits that override some of the bad ones. And stick at them long enough for them to become tactics for your success. Like most things, if it was easy we would all be doing it already. And the self-help market worth £millions promising a 28 day result would not exist…

So I vote for accepting that changing habits is not easy…but using some simple tactics to make it easier.

*(Lally, van Jaarsveld, Potts, & Wardle, UCL. 2010).

What to think about before you ask for a payrise

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There are 3 things it helps to think about in advance if you really want to secure a pay rise. Few people actively look forward to a conversation about money. Recent research by the BBC has suggested that women in particular find it difficult to ask. Thinking carefully about these 3 things should help you feel more prepared and hopefully to find the courage to give it a go. 

So well before you plan to open your mouth to ask think about…

1) What facts will help ? – some good evidence and background information will increase your chances of success

2) Who you are asking and what do you know about them? – this will help you to prepare how to ask them in particular

3) What you are like under pressure?  – you can then plan how not to be your own worst enemy !

So firstly – what facts will help. 

Prepare and take along evidence of some great results or specific responsibilities that illustrate that you are worth more. To get a payrise you are likely to need to show that you are going above and beyond whaat is expected of you – Remember to show what you will do in the future as well as what you have done in the past.  

Find out what your job is worth – look at similar jobs both inside and outside your company so that you can be clear about whether you are actually being underpaid at the moment and what a reasonable salary is for the work you do.

And think about the best time to ask – How your Company is performing and how the pay rise process works are important to know. It may be that there is simply a better time of year to have the conversation – maybe when budgets are being set or when cash flow is not an issue.

So on to the second piece of thinking – How to ask the person you are asking. 

You are probably asking someone you know so think about them personally… When are they personally at their most receptive? – is there a good day of the week or a time of the day to avoid? Certainly don’t catch them off guard by asking them in passing or when they are preparing for an important meeting themselves.

Think about what you know about their working preferences. Would it be better to ask them for a formal meeting in the office or ask to speak to them informally first? Do they like making decisions in the moment, if not, think about giving them advance notice of what you want to talk about. Some people like to reflect and so it might be better to ask and then give them a summary in writing so they can think about it?

Think about what they value in employees in particular and draw their attention to when you have done those things. Also plan what not to say – avoid anything that hints at complaining, arguing or over-sharing such as “My pay is not fair because…or I’m desperate for more money right now….” 

Finally think about your own responses in difficult conversations so that you can plan not to be your own worst enemy. 

Neuroscientists think that these highly charged situations at work make our bodies react in the same way that our ancestors did when they experienced a physical theat – so having a payrise conversation might mean your body goes into “fight or flight” mode. When our heart is racing our our palms are sweating during these highly charged situations the neuroscientists have proved that up to 80% of the blood and oxygen that is normally helping the part of the brain that deals with rational thinking and problem solving is diverted to your heart and your extremities – so just at the point where you need your wits about you and need to be able to think clearly, your rational brain is working at about 20% of its usual capacity….great ! So what can you do ?

Well, getting angry or upset won’t do you any favours, whereas staying calm and considered will. So if you notice that you are becoming emotional, breathe and remember that you may not be able to respond in a level headed way, so try not to start talking until you have really taken a moment to think about what you are saying.

Practise out-loud – saying slowly and calmly the key points you want to make – and then practise leaving it there and staying silent!  We can tend to talk too much when we get nervous. It’s often better to say what you have to say and then shut up so that you can really listen to the answer you are given.

And if you get a no, well that’s life. Rehearsing for this and preparing a question like “How would I make this a yes in 3 months time ?” is certainly better for your career prospects than threatening to resign ! 
So…Think about the facts. Think about how to ask the person you are asking. And think about how to prepare yourself. 

Then my ultimate tip is – just do it ! Asking for a pay rise is a real “who dares wins” situation. Because it is difficult to do, your brain will try hard to find you all sorts of reasons not to experience the discomfort of that conversation. So look beyond your natural resistance.

Ask yourself honestly, what do you really have to lose by respectfully asking your boss to review some evidence that suggests you are worth more?

You might get a “no” … but in the process you may well get some feedback that will help you understand what you need to do more of to get a yes in the future. 

And given practise makes perfect, asking for a pay rise once, will make it easier to ask next time! 

There’s more information about how I can help you personally with these challenging conversations at profitablyengaged.com and teabreaktraining.com.

Performing under pressure

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One of the most useful half hours I ever spent was listening to a neuroscientist talk about coaching and thinking differently about underperformance. 
I have used it almost every day since to improve my own performance and help other people to improve theirs. And it is simply a matter of understanding some basic science about your body, blood and oxygen.
When you are not performing at your best and you start to feel threatened by it, think about how you feel. What do you notice about how your body reacts to a threat? – do you want to “fight” – perhaps you get tingling/sweaty palms or a flushed face or does your body want to “flight” – perhaps your stomach churns, your heat beats faster or your feet start twitching ?
These are all totally normal reactions. And very a simple physiological level, all these reactions require blood and oxygen to exist. Thus blood and oxygen has to go to the place in your body that is “hosting” your reaction – so if you get a flush on your chest, blood and oxygen have been diverted to your chest in order to make that happen. If your heart is beating faster, more blood and oxygen is diverted to your heart.
The problem with our bodies is that we can’t produce new blood and oxygen quickly enough in order to make those reactions happen without a chain reaction elsewhere. So the blood and oxygen diverted to your heart or your chest need to have come from somewhere else. A part of your body is starved of blood and oxygen temporarily in order to give you that flush or that tingle. And guess which bit of the body is starved ?
Yep. The brain. Bluntly, just when you need your clear sighted thinking the most, you are probably at your most stupid. The particular part of your brain that is affected is the part that deals with logic and problem solving. It is thought that with reduced blood and oxygen levels caused by the threat response, it reducing in productivity by up to 80%. 
It’s an appalling bit of faulty wiring for modern life ! – But given our bodies evolved thousands of years ago and the chance of a re-wiring project happening in our lifetime are zero, then we just have to work with it. It’s probably less time consuming than working hard to somehow “grow up” and get enough experience to not react in this way. Or worse, put up with spending time with people who make us feel under threat in the hope we will get desensitised to these reactions…How about we work on an easier (and nicer !) way to manage it ?
How would it be if we could reduce those times where you berated yourself for blurting out something ridiculous or untrue when you were last in a tight spot at work or were having an argument with your partner? Or thinking later “Why on earth didn’t I say that, I meant to but my mind went blank?” 
Well first, relax a bit and let yourself off the hook. It was because your brain was starved of blood and oxygen. It’s not because you are stupid (well not for more than a second or too anyway!).
So given that this is brain wiring we probably can’t fundamentally change, what can we do ? Here are my top 3 tips:
1) Knowing this science can help. As can paying attention to your body. At least now when I get tingling palms, something in my brain vaguely remembers all of this. I take a deep breath (to replenish some oxygen) and try NOT to speak for a moment. It takes practise but it does work.
2) Remember other people feel this way too. Have you ever put someone on the spot and asked them for their best ideas or lost your rag a bit and then asked someone to explain themselves ? And got nothing? Or a story that made no sense ? Well you know why now. So a smart choice to save time and get better results is to give other people a minute before you get them to respond when the stakes are high and tensions are higher. Or you might spend hours unravelling it afterwards!
3) Use some coaching skills. Adjusting the rapport in the situation, asking a great question and pausing to allow thinking and listening can really help. Apparently being asked a good open question sends blood and oxygen back to the problem solving bit of our brains. So asking a question gets someone’s brain back in the conversation. You can even do this to yourself. My question that I dredge from somewhere (takes practise – see tip 1) is “Dulcie, what do you really want from this conversation ?”. It’s not perfect, but it comes to mind and does the job.
If you want to know more, David Rock and his SCARF model are brilliant. SCARF stands for Stability, Certainty, Autonomy, Relationships and Fairness. When we feel that one of the things in this SCARF acronym are being threatened, our body produces that fight or flight response. Thus think about what you say today – to others and yourself. Try and find ways to cut to the chase without causing the threat response and making the brain stop working…  
Let me know if knowing this helps.

Can we really change our minds ?

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Have you ever tried to influence someone and failed ? Despite having a good business case with robust research and solid, hard statistics ?
Did you spend hours re-writing a paper or checking the maths…?
There is a piece of research on the science of influence that I find helps my clients enormously.
The research was done at Yale (so I reckon we can probably believe it…) by one of their law professors – Dan Kahn. I direct my clients not directly to the research paper but to an article I love by Marty Kaplan on Alternet which asks – “Is this the most depressing discovery about the brain ever…?”
Many of us know that our brains are wired to pay attention to seek out evidence of what we already believe to be true. It is well documented that we will selectively listen and filter out things we don’t want to hear, of using instead on the things that back up our deeply held, sometimes subconcious views.
The research is “depressing”, because the news is even worse! This research suggests that if you have a particularly strong belief about something, not only will you filter out information but when presented with statistics that may prove you wrong, you are simply unable to do the maths.
Yes. You read that right.
Kahan’s research suggested that when people were presented with statistics that backed up something they believed to be true already, then they could understand the stats and do the maths. But when presented with the same statistics to challenge something they didn’t believe, they actually struggled to do the maths!
So there seems to be something about our brains that means even if we are an FD or well versed in interpreting data, we might not be able to actually understand statistics that contradict what we already believe to be true.
This research was specifically about beliefs which were political in nature. But it would be foolish to ignore the implications for influencing when stakes are high and there are strong beliefs round the table. Particularly if you were hoping that your statistics would speak for themselves…
Kaplan notes that “in the experiment, some people were asked to interpret a table of numbers about whether a skin cream reduced rashes, and some people were asked to interpret a different table – containing the same numbers – about whether a law banning private citizens from carrying concealed handguns reduced crime. Kahan found that when the numbers in the table conflicted with people’s positions on gun control, they couldn’t do the math right, though they could when the subject was skin cream. The bleakest finding was that the more advanced that people’s math skills were, the more likely it was that their political views, whether liberal or conservative, made them less able to solve the math problem.”
…So we think that we are rational. But recent research endorses that emotion drives behaviour. We think it’ss logic. But what if it’s emotion masquerading as logic ? What if we are backfilling with logic to justify what we believe and data and maths simply can’t convince us otherwise ?”
I’ve quoted further research below. But if you are convinced already, is it time to be depressed?
Well I’m a glass half full person so I think perhaps not ! Perhaps knowledge is power we can share?
My dad (a joiner by trade who built our family home at super-low cost) always used to say, “If you can’t hide it, feature it” – I think the same could apply here…
If we help people to understand that in an internal battle between emotion and reason, emotion will win (even if disguised as reason!) perhaps that knowledge in itself can help people to grow, change and to be more open minded to genuine debate. They know they won’t be, unless they make a conscious and deliberate choice to try to listen and think differently. Could we see this emotion/logic challenge as a “feature” of being human – and not something we have to strive to “hide” because we don’t want it to be true?!
I think knowing this science has made me more careful and cautious about dismissing something I don’t think to be true…
…or can I just find good evidence for that belief ?!
Contact me at dulcie@profitablyengaged.com if you find yourself needing some help to influence when stakes are high and beliefs are strong. I’d hope with a good, honest and robust discussion, we could find a way through it together !

Further Reading

It’s Not Bloody Rocket Science – Dulcie Swanston (available from Amazon and by order in any bookstore).

Kaplan quotes further research that tried to identify whether facts actually matter. Sadly, the answer is more depressing than no…he quotes research that generally giving facts and statistics to people when they believe something to be true is unlikely to work and in fact “giving them facts to correct those errors only makes them cling to their beliefs more tenaciously.”
Here’s some of what the research that he quote found to be true:

People who thought George W. Bush banned all stem cell research kept thinking he did that even after they were shown an article saying that only some federally funded stem cell work was stopped.

People who said the economy was the most important issue to them, and who disapproved of Obama’s economic record, were shown a graph of nonfarm employment over the prior year – a rising line, adding about a million jobs. They were asked whether the number of people with jobs had gone up, down or stayed about the same. Many, looking straight at the graph, said down.
But if, before they were shown the graph, they were asked to write a few sentences about an experience that made them feel good about themselves, a significant number of them changed their minds about the economy. If you spend a few minutes affirming your self-worth, you’re more likely to say that the number of jobs increased.

Here’s the articles if you want to read them in full.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2319992
http://www.alternet.org/media/most-depressing-discovery-about-brain-ever
Science confirms: Politics wrecks your ability to do math

What is top right thinking?

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The top right quadrant is the “good” box – the STAR – at least according the Boston Matrix.

The same 2×2 matrix is used throughout business and usually it’s the same – the top right box is the one that delivers real commercial performance and creates businesses that the best people love to work for.

Top Right Thinking is a business that is all about understanding and using the science and research that enables us to be at our best at work. With the end goal of translating that into STAR level profit.

The first time I saw someone draw a cross on a piece of flipchart and then put 2 axis on it and name them, I was amazed. I thought they were super clever, really business savvy and fantastic on their feet.

I have since used the same matrix probably over 1000 times to describe how to get success in just about anything you do.

Thus a reference to “top right” – this is the best box, the STAR, the one where you have relatively low investment for the biggest rewards – became a bit of a mantra of mine. Who doesn’t want to be in that box ?!

I use this in my coaching and mentoring every day. I challenge people how to be better, but with the lowest time expended possible. This isn’t because my clients are lazy. Quite the opposite. But they are time poor (aren’t we all ?!) So the best result I can get for them is a superior performance, but with only a relatively small investment of time or money.

So far so good. Sounds great ? Now the hard bit. You may have to do some things you really don’t want to do. And unfortunately for us, the way our brains are wired to work is that we can always find really compelling and logical reasons NOT to do those things – despite our best intentions. So here are my 3 rules for success. Easy but not easy. That is easy to understand, easy to say, easy to remember. But really hard to do. But that’s where I come in. I can help make it happen.

Rule 1 – Find out what is really getting in your way. Get feedback you won’t like. In order to do this you need to make it really safe for people to tell you the truth – probably including something that you don’t want to hear…

Rule 2 – Given Rule 1, decide how much you really want the superior performance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know – you REALLY want it. So why won’t you get it ? Well one brilliant study found that even when people were going to die if they didn’t make changes to their diet and lifestyle, only 2 in 10 actually made the change. 8 died instead. Clearly some of those REALLY wanted to live…So what’s going on there…Bluntly chances are they wanted it but their brains still wanted to hold onto the unhelpful things too. Rule 2 is face facts. Getting what you want probably means giving something else up.

Rule 3 – Get some help. Our brains are wired to trip us up. Coaching works because a good coach can help you see what your personal trips are and help you avoid them. If it was easy to do it for yourself you would have done it already. People have often asked me what makes a good coach. I’ve given lots of textbook answers over the years. But the one I like now is:

A Good Coach…

Someone who helps you tell yourself the truth. And someone you trust enough to say that truth aloud with, however ugly it might sound or however vulnerable it makes you feel.

That’s it. Easy. But not easy.

Top Right Performance starts here…

For more information visit Profitablyengaged.com

Not performing under pressure ? SCARF Model might help

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One of the most useful half hours I ever spent was listening to a neuroscientist talk about coaching and thinking differently about underperformance.

I have used it almost every day since to improve my own performance and help other people to improve theirs. And it is simply a matter of understanding some basic science about your body, blood and oxygen.

When you are not performing at your best and you start to feel threatened by it, think about how you feel. What do you notice about how your body reacts to a threat? – do you want to “fight” – perhaps you get tingling/sweaty palms or a flushed face or does your body want to “flight” – perhaps your stomach churns, your heat beats faster or your feet start twitching ?

These are all totally normal reactions. And very a simple physiological level, all these reactions require blood and oxygen to exist. Thus blood and oxygen has to go to the place in your body that is “hosting” your reaction – so if you get a flush on your chest, blood and oxygen have been diverted to your chest in order to make that happen. If your heart is beating faster, more blood and oxygen is diverted to your heart.

The problem with our bodies is that we can’t produce new blood and oxygen quickly enough in order to make those reactions happen without a chain reaction elsewhere. So the blood and oxygen diverted to your heart or your chest need to have come from somewhere else. A part of your body is starved of blood and oxygen temporarily in order to give you that flush or that tingle. And guess which bit of the body is starved ?

Yep. The brain. Bluntly, just when you need your clear sighted thinking the most, you are probably at your most stupid. The particular part of your brain that is affected is the part that deals with logic and problem solving. It is thought that with reduced blood and oxygen levels caused by the threat response, it reducing in productivity by up to 80%.

It’s an appalling bit of faulty wiring for modern life ! – But given our bodies evolved thousands of years ago and the chance of a re-wiring project happening in our lifetime are zero, then we just have to work with it. It’s probably less time consuming than working hard to somehow “grow up” and get enough experience to not react in this way.  Or worse, put up with spending time with people who make us feel under threat in the hope we will get desensitised to these reactions…How about we work on an easier (and nicer !) way to manage it ?

How would it be if we could reduce those times where you berated yourself for blurting out something ridiculous or untrue when you were last in a tight spot at work or were having an argument with your partner? Or thinking later “Why on earth didn’t I say that, I meant to but my mind went blank?”

Well first, relax a bit and let yourself off the hook. It was because your brain was starved of blood and oxygen. It’s not because you are stupid (well not for more than a second or two anyway!).

So given that this is brain wiring we probably can’t fundamentally change, what can we do ? Here are my top 3 tips:

1) Knowing this science can help. As can paying attention to your body. At least now when I get tingling palms, something in my brain vaguely remembers all of this. I take a deep breath (to replenish some oxygen) and try NOT to speak for a moment. It takes practise but it does work.

2) Remember other people feel this way too. Have you ever put someone on the spot and asked them for their best ideas or lost your rag a bit and then asked someone to explain themselves ? And got nothing? Or a story that made no sense ? Well you know why now. So a smart choice to save time and get better results is to give other people a minute before you get them to respond when the stakes are high and tensions are higher. Or you might spend hours unravelling it afterwards!

3) Use some coaching skills. Adjusting the rapport in the situation, asking a great question and pausing to allow thinking and listening can really help. Apparently being asked a good open question sends blood and oxygen back to the problem solving bit of our brains. So asking a question gets someone’s brain back in the conversation. You can even do this to yourself. My question that I dredge from somewhere (takes practise – see tip 1) is “Dulcie, what do you really want from this conversation ?”. It’s not perfect, but it comes to mind and does the job.

If you want to know more, David Rock and his SCARF model are brilliant. SCARF stands for Stability, Certainty, Autonomy, Relationships and Fairness. When we feel that one of the things in this SCARF acronym are being threatened, our body produces that fight or flight response. Thus think about what you say today – to others and yourself. Try and find ways to cut to the chase without causing the threat response and making the brain stop working…

Let me know if knowing this helps.