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Step 1: Think About Thinking

The first step in quiet leadership is to think about thinking - this is, to set aside concern for what people think and focus instead on the way in which they think. A quote from Galileo: "One cannot teach a man anything. One can only enable him to learn from within himself."

Let Them Do All the Thinking

Many companies make the critical error of seeking to hire the best and brightest people, but once they are hired they are managed in a way that seems to be designed to prevent them from applying themselves. Not only does it prevent the firm from benefitting from the qualities that made them successful, but it is highly demoralizing to an intelligent and successful person to be prevented from doing good work.

(EN: Calls to mind the incident in which a candidate was turned away from a job as a policemen because he scored too high on the IQ test. It seemed quite illogical at the time, but considering what the author just said, it likely makes sense for organizations that value procedures to be disinterested in an intelligent candidate who will be less likely to obey and more likely to think independently.)

Reflecting on studies of the brain, its acts on external stimuli, but its processes are entirely internal: each person must learn, think, invent, create, solve problems, visualize, etc. within their own mind, as the brain makes its own connections. To help people think better, or to think at all, we must let them think for themselves.

Moreover, there is a difference between getting another person to think better and getting them to think like yourself. Our brains are dramatically different, and connections that work well within the context of one cannot be directly transplanted, nor can the process of thought be shortcut. Specifically, the "eureka" moment that provides the motivation to take action occurs when connections are made within the mind, as the result of its own cognitive processes.

This stands in contrast to the traditional/archaic approach to leadership, in which the leader is expected to know everything, to have all the answers, and to tell subordinates what to do. Even today, a chief complaint among managers is that they constantly have to solve their peoples' problems. However, there is little evidence that this is necessary or even expected - it is an assumption made by the manager.

The author's anecdotal research suggests that employees expect or need an answer or a directive only 10% to 20% of instances in which they mention an issue to a manager. In most instances, and employee is simply seeking information to help them solve a problem, not for the manager to solve it for them.

The author suggests asking questions to probe the issue and help the person think it through. This is not an approach to be used in every conversation: when an employee is seeking an answer to a question, access to a resource, or is just venting, it's not helpful to encourage them to think more deeply.

A good indicator of when this approach is appropriate is to consider what you are about to say: if you are about to give advice, tell them what they ought to do or how you would handle the situation, resist the urge and instead help them to think it through.

The author suggests asking questions that help you to identify what level of assistance is needed or wanted by an employee. When they mention a problem, first ask a question such as "How can I help you with that?" or "Do you want to think this issue through with me right now?" This will give you a clear indication of whether it is appropriate to engage in a discussion, or it may elicit a more specific question that can be quickly answered.

(EN: I think the author might be missing a step here. If it's not already clear what the person is attempting to achieve, you may need to probe that before continuing. People often complain about a situation without really considering what they want to achieve - sometimes, they're just venting, but when they have a legitimate problem, getting them focused on the desired outcome is effective in making the dialogue more productive.)

Once that has been established, you can then ask questions that lead the employee to think: "What's the best way to do that?" or "What would work for you?" leads the employee to consider approaches.

In some instances, the employee may not be able to find an answer to his dilemma on the spot, in which case you can help them work out how to find the information they need. Where would you need to go for an answer? Whom would you need to talk to?

(EN: This might also be an instance where the person needs information. Employees may not know where to get information and rely on a manager to be more knowledgeable about where it might reside in the organization in order to access it. When the knowledge is in someone else's head, the manager may need to identify the person to ask and facilitate an introduction.)

If all else fails, you may need to provide an answer - but when that is the case, it should be phrased not as a directive, but as a suggestion or option for them to consider. First, ask for permission (Do you want me to tell you what I think? Do you want the short answer?) and then be careful about how you propose the solution (I have an idea that might be useful, you might consider trying this approach, etc.) being careful to leave the other person with a clear sense that they are in control - they can take your suggestion or find an alternate solution.

While examples have been provided, the author stresses that this approach is not a script for interactions - they are merely examples to illustrate an approach to interacting with another person in a way that allows, and requires, them to use their own brains to arrive at a solution.

Also important: it is not always appropriate, and there are in fact instances where a leader must take a more directive stance. But in many instances, arguably most, direction is an unnecessary shortcut that prescribes a course of action and cuts off any opportunity to think - it may take a little longer to let them solve the problem than to give them an order, but it improves their performance and gets them in the habit of thinking.

A quick quote from Sir John Whitmore: "To tell denies or negates another's intelligence. To ask honors it."

Focus on Solutions

It seems self-evident that performance improvement requires us to focus people on finding solutions rather than wallowing in their problems - yet it's surprising how seldom this is actually done in practice. As a leadership coach, this is a pattern of behavior he has seen in "hundreds of people" and a habit that is very difficult to break.

There's nothing inherently wrong with considering the nature of a problem. It's often necessary to understand the present situation before considering a course of action, and sometimes this exploration can surface solutions that were not obvious at first.

But if the conversation goes no further, it is not helpful and may even be harmful and demoralizing - the problem is aggrandized and possible solutions are cut off. Exclusively focusing on problems is looking backward to the past and leads to blame, excuses, and justifications

Focusing on solution "creates energy in our minds" by looking forward and considering the possibilities. It paves the way for meaningful action that will result in a satisfactory outcome.

The author provides a table of questions, contrasting the problem-focused approach to a solution-focused approach. A few examples:

An observation is that may of the problem-focused questions begin with "why" - asking for an explanation of the present situation that requires the respondent to consider the past. Removing "why" from the conversation may be a useful device in focusing on solutions. But the more important aspect is that the problem-focused question is answered by dredging up details from the past whereas the solution-focused one is answered by considering possibilities for the future.

Looking to the scientific basis of this suggestion: recall that the brain is a connection machine that is inclined to map new information to an existing mental model. That is, we have a default frame that filters our perception, and "reframing" only occurs when the information cannot be fitted to that existing frame.

An aside, many analytical people tend to focus on problems because there is a wealth of data to dig into, to establish causal connections that lead to reliable conclusions based on hard proof rather than speculation. But analysis and problem-solving are two different tasks that require distinctly different approaches. There's also a negative argument about to solution-based thinking: that it is merely being upbeat and cheery, ignoring the problems that exist, and which will not go away.

In the same way, much of psychology is focused on the problems people have, and the analytical approach used by Freud and Jung focuses entirely on past events and understanding the cause of a present problem. The belief is that if the cause of a problem is discovered, it will be solved automatically.

But merely understanding a problem does not lead to a solution - you can explore it fully and it has not gone away, and it will not go away until action is taken to effect a solution.

Back to the science again: it is easier to create new connections than to change old ones. Focusing on problems causes us to recollect information perceived through the connections that have been made in the past - information that did not fit that frame has already been discarded, and we are locked into a point of view. Focusing on solutions gets us to consider new facts and new ideas as we look forward to a future that has not yet been perceived and, more significantly, has not yet been filtered.

In essence, focusing on solutions is not ignoring them - by definition, it is solving them. There is still the responsibility for outcomes that comes with taking action, and the past can be a useful reference to the outcomes that have been achieved, good and bad, from actions taken in the past. But it is nothing more than that.

Remember to Stretch

In order to transform performance, a leader must change behavior - he must move them out of their comfortable routines and encourage them to take risks: doing things differently will achieve different outcomes. And conversely, achieving different outcomes requires doing things differently, fueled by the hope that the "different" outcome will be better, but accepting the risk that it will not. In other words, it means asking people to stretch themselves.

Consider this: patients who suffer a heart attack must change deeply ingrained habits - their lives depend upon doing so. But in a study published in Fast Company magazine, it was found that only one in nine patients are able to change their lifestyle after a heart attack. Even when so much is obviously at stake, changing is hard.

This goes back to the neuroscience concept of hardwired connections and the way such connections drive behavior and even perceptions. When we try to change, we are struggling to alter deeply embedded habits. A person who feels they are "no good at selling" has a hardwired connection that prevents them from becoming better. Modeling behaviors and suggesting techniques will have little chance of success against the ingrained belief.

Another scientific theory is that the brain has two different qualities of internal machinery. The conscious mind is highly flexible and adaptable, but cannot handle much information at any given time; meanwhile the unconscious mind contains vast stores of information, but its hard wiring is not very flexible.

As such, learning something new is analogous to writing software on a personal computer that will be installed onto a mainframe - it's a labor-intensive task performed with a great deal of discomfort and uncertainty, which requires making conscious decisions through a trial-and-error process that can, or should, be thoroughly tested out before the code is moved to the mainframe.

This concept has been considered in the context of change management and the phases a person goes through in learning a new skill:

  1. Unconscious incompetence - The individual doesn't know what he needs to learn in order to be successful, and experiences a great deal of confusion and frustration
  2. Conscious incompetence - The individual has a sense of what he needs to learn to do, but has not yet learned it and cannot do it, and begins to learn parts of the task
  3. Conscious competence - The individual has learned all the things he needs to know and applies them, with a great deal of conscious effort
  4. Unconscious competence - The individual knows all the things he needs to know and applies the effortlessly - the task has become "second nature" to him.

A leader can support this learning process by being aware of the mental state of the person who is going through it. From example, when a person is just starting out and is in the unconscious incompetence phase, the leader must understand that there will be a great deal of confusion and frustration, and that they will need a great deal of support (information and resources to help them learn) as well as encouragement (emotional support to help them cope with the frustration). As they move through the phases, the nature and amount of support and encouragement they need will change.

Stretching - changing habits and trying new things - is an inherently uncomfortable proposition, which is the reason people tend to avoid it. People are geared to seek comfort and avoid discomfort - it isn't merely a matter of seeking ease, as people will stick to an old and familiar routine that is comfortable even if a proposed new behavior is functionally easier. From an anthropological perspective, challenging the status quo is a universal taboo - every culture, without exception, is geared to preserve the traditional folkways and to be hostile to change - though some are less hostile than others.

It's also notable that people seem to expect others to accept changes, while they remain themselves reluctant to do so. Part of the power-struggle in any relationship is in defining common ground, with each party expecting the other to conform to their preferences while resisting the need to accommodate to the other party.

The willingness to accept change is often predicated on the belief that if they soldier through a period of difficulty, things will return to the way they were before. An athlete will work through the pain, or a salesman deal with rejection, both with the expectation that the unpleasantness is a temporary situation that will go away.

Another broad statement: people are generally more focused on their limitations than their potential. This is particularly true of ongoing conditions: a new employee has a level of enthusiasm about a job that more seasoned workers find annoying or comical, whereas the five- or ten-year veteran goes to work each day anticipating that there will be problems to solve, drama to deal with, meetings to suffer through, and distractions to manage.

But in the present day, work is a temporary situation: most people change jobs every few years rather than remaining at one place for a long period of time (EN: The author doesn't make a direct connection to the previous topic, but it seems self-evident that the veteran employee is soured on his situation and welcomes a stimulating change.)

While working situations can change, a person always has to deal with himself - you are your own project, and have been so for your whole life. In the same way, living with yourself for the long-term gives you a dour perspective: you see your limitations, rather than your potential.

Because of this, people are not inclined to stretch themselves, but seek help from other people who will push them. Consider that personal trainers, once the sole domain of professional athletes, are very much in demand among the general public: people need, and want, another person to help them to overcome their reluctance to change.

The author refers to Csikszentmihalyi, who identifies that the most productive mental state for workers is in the zone between boredom and anxiety. Border leads to inertia and lack of motivation to change, but too much stress is overwhelming and leads people to reject or avoid changes. It requires a careful balance to put people in the right state - where they are presented a challenge that inspires them without overwhelming them - or in terms of the present topic, to get them to stretch a little, but not too much.

In summary, a leader must do more than "putter in the background trying not to upset anyone." They have to become comfortable with making other people uncomfortable - but to understand the right kind and right degree of stretch to effect growth and achievement, rather than demoralization and frustration.

Accentuate the positive

The author makes a number of observations that suggest that people receive primarily negative feedback - and they receive it so often that they have internalized it. By considering his own internal monologue and asking others to do the same, he estimates that the average person is tough on themselves in about ten instances each day. Even if it is only a temporary situation, and we take just five minutes to criticize ourselves, that amounts to over 300 hours per year lost to self-doubt and negative emotions.

Meanwhile, positive feedback is rare. By his own "anecdotal research" the author suggests that only about one in thirteen critical remarks we receive from others is positive, and that people have genuine difficulty accepting positive remarks: because they are in contrast with so much negativity, they don't internalize it or eve accept it - but instead become suspicious of the motives of a person who provides positive feedback.

Effective leaders recognize the value of positive feedback in transforming the performance of others. The author turns to the anecdote of a coach (Timothy Gallwey) who claimed to be able to teach anyone to play tennis in thirty minutes. His technique was to break down the task into simple steps (for example, just watch the way the ball spins without trying to hit it) and providing positive encouragement - and in a publicity stunt for a television station, he did exactly that: he coached a person who had never played before into a reasonably competent player in about half an hour, never making a negative remark the whole time.

The author refers to neuroscience theory (Ratey), which suggests that our "inner voice" stifles performance. He believes there is a limit to the amount of processing the conscious mind can do, and the negative emotions such as anxiety, fear, and self-consciousness floods our neurons with negative signals so that there's little leftover capacity for cognitive thought - and it may even lead us to ignore sense data that does not agree with the negative outlook.

Additional research has been done (no source cited) on gender differences and IQ. In general, the notion that girls are smarter than boys bears out - but what can also be observed is that girls receive significantly more positive feedback than boys during childhood. A son is constantly criticized, whereas a daughter is constantly praised.

The author suggests an equation: performance equals potential minus interference. Moreover, the greatest source of interference is internal: approached with a new task, people doubt their ability to do it, and witness that the outcome is not good. They don't need anyone to tell what they are doing is wrong, but someone to suggest a better way and provide positive encouragement. With this in mind, transforming performance requires a leader to master the skill of acknowledgement - watching out for employees who are in challenging situations, and call attention to what they are doing well.

This is difficult for the hard-nosed leader who conforms to the stereotype of the taskmaster. His believe is that people are naturally inclined to do the wrong things and his role is to catch, punish, and discourage them from doing so. He further believes that positive remarks will make people complacent and inert. They might even ask for a promotion or a raise. The author attests that he has never witnessed any leader who is constantly negative toward his people to earn their trust and respect, nor to be capable of brining out the best in others.

The author describes a few techniques for giving feedback. The first is to completely set the negative - tell people "what you did well" and "what you could do better." Where negative feedback must be given, the author suggests a sandwich approach: couching a negative comment between two slices of positive feedback. He suspects that for many this is merely "a manipulative way of trying to disguise that we're [mainly interested in discussing] what people did wrong," but at the same time it's a better alternative than just blurting out negative feedback.

That is not to say that we should gloss over the facts when a person makes a serious mistake - there are times for frank and direct conversations about poor performance, but they tend to be few and far between. Left to their own devices, people do relatively well at most tasks and achieve an outcome that, while not optional, is generally acceptable - all the while struggling with internal criticism. Serious incidents aside, the day-to-day focus of a leader should be acknowledging good performance and coaching for improvement, rather than finding fault and fixing mistakes.

The author provides a list of tactics a leader should seek to use, along with some common phrases:

The notion of positive feedback is likely not new: "The One Minute Manager," a book that most managers have read, stresses the importance of catching people doing things right and giving positive reinforcement. However, there is a gap between knowing what ought to be done and actually doing it - and what leaders must do is create new wiring within themselves by putting the principles into practice. It will be difficult at first but it will become habit in time.

Process Before Content

Having clear objectives is critical to success: objectives enable us to plot a course of action, identify milestones, track progress, and assess whether the actions we take on a day-to-day basis contribute to their accomplishment. The manner in which the activities that contribute to a goal are managed are the "process" that guides practice toward the objective.

The author considers the importance of process in a one-to-one interaction: both parties are clear about their roles, the outcome they are attempting to achieve, how the topic relates to each person's agenda, what other issues may be affected by a decision, and the main points of agreement or disagreement. Each of these examples improves the chances that the conversation will be successful.

The author has developed a model he calls "Choose Your Focus" to help people orient their thought processes: it begins with identifying the type of thinking you are doing at any given moment, evaluating whether it is productive, considering other approaches, and choosing the most productive option.

The model is based on five different modes or kinds of thinking:

Most, perhaps all, of the activities done within an organization fall within one of those five modes of thinking - and the greatest efficiency and progress results when the right mode is applied at any given time.

For example, consider coming up with a name of a new product. A common way to do this is to brainstorm to develop a list and pick the one that seems best. It's highly likely you will fail to get a good outcome this way. A better approach would be to recognize that this is a decision related to vision - specifically, to consider your goal in naming the product (what do you want people to think of, immediately, when they hear the name), which provides a more clear and rational approach to choosing or developing an option that supports your objectives.

Effective decision-making means pausing to consider the process of thinking before diving into the conversation/exploration. Effective leadership means encouraging others to do so as well.

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