When an idea hits me from three different directions at once, I should probably pay close attention—or at least write a blog post about it.
Last weekend, in reading The Obstacle Is the Way, by Ryan Holiday, I noted his advice that one way to make your personal fears and worries diminish is to focus on others. On Monday morning, I also read Mike Kunkle’s blog post about the servant approach to selling, in which he quoted Zig Ziglar’s line that “You get want you want in life by helping enough others get what they want.”
But the real kicker came when I read the morning paper, and came across a real-life demonstration of the power of focusing on others in a life-or-death situation:
Michele Catalano was at his print shop outside of Paris, when he noticed the two brothers responsible for the Charlie Hebdo attack approaching. He quickly told his employee, Lilian, to hide, and went to meet them. During the hour he spent with the terrorists, he managed to keep calm even as they asked him three times whether there was anyone else in the building. As he told the AP: “I stayed an hour with them. I was never scared, because I had only one idea in my head: ‘They should not go to the end (of the hallway) to see Lilian, that’s all.’ That’s what kept me calm.”
I don’t know if Mr. Catalano reads motivational books or blogs, but he instinctively took the best possible course he could have in deadly circumstances. Besides saving his employee, his cool demeanor is probably what led his captors to release him after an hour, so by focusing on keeping someone else alive he managed his own survival.
Hopefully none of us will ever face a situation like that, but the idea of getting what you want by focusing on others has immediate application in sales and in presentations. In sales, focusing on what you can do for the customer rather than on what they can do for you will put you in the right problem-solving mode and make it easier for you to come up with good answers. One reason is that it’s generally easier to think clearly about someone else’s situation than on yours.
Focusing on others is also helpful in delivering presentations, especially if you suffer from pre-presentation jitters. Take the attitude that you have an important message that will help your listeners get what they want, and that outside focus will take your mind off your own internal state and make you more confident at the same time.
Terrorism is the ultimate selfish act—being so wrapped up into your own goals and twisted passions that you are willing to hurt and kill innocent people. We may never understand what drives some people to commit such heinous acts, but fortunately we each have the power within us to be part of the response—to think more of others and less of ourselves.
Reality is never this obvious
We’re told by the motivation mavens that our attitude is a critical factor in how successful we are in life. Zig Ziglar tells us that, “Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.” They go on to say that we can choose our attitude, and the right choice makes all the difference. I certainly can’t disagree with that sentiment, but what influences our attitude?
In this post, I will explain that your perception is a powerful hidden factor influencing your attitude, and that you can choose your perceptions.
I’ll begin with an example of something that happened to me years ago. I used to take my clothes to a dry cleaner that was conveniently located on the way to our kids’ school. If it wasn’t convenient I probably would have switched, because the woman who worked there most days had a surly demeanor which made it one of the lowlights of my day to stop in. One day, there was a new face behind the counter and I greeted her with a cheerful hello which was returned in kind. It was only after about a minute of pleasant banter that I realized it was the same person, but she had done something so different with her hair that I didn’t recognize her at first!
This story illustrates the importance of perception in determining attitude. Attitude is a choice, and we can consciously choose the attitude we want to bring to certain situations. I could have made a choice before going into the dry cleaner to have a positive and friendly attitude toward the woman. I might have told myself that it would be a challenge and I would be a better person for rising to it and being the bigger person. That would have been an example of choosing a positive attitude rather than a negative one.
But we usually go through life without making those conscious choices. We carry a default attitude that runs like a script in our brains depending on the situation we perceive. What we see activates the default attitude, unless we consciously override it. I didn’t have to choose a positive attitude when I went in to the dry cleaner that day because my default attitude when I meet someone new—thankfully—is to feel positive and pleasant about the person until they give me a reason not to. I guess you could say they’re innocent until proven guilty. (Except in traffic situations, unfortunately.)
So, if you perceive something as positive, you don’t need to make the conscious choice to apply a positive attitude. It’s easy to be positive when all you see around you is positive.
But it also works in reverse, as illustrated by this incident that happened almost twenty years ago. My wife used to volunteer her time at Dan Marino’s annual charity golf tournament, and one year I decided to go along with my two young children. My kids knew nothing at all about golf, so I had to answer a lot of questions. We came across a golf ball washer, and I tried to explain how a golfer would put the ball in the little hole and plunge the handle several times, but they seemed confused. Just then, probably the largest and baddest human being I’ve ever seen up close, Warren Sapp, drove up. He barely glanced at us as he moved his enormous bulk from the relieved golf cart and went over to wash his golf ball. I said, “Now you know how it works.”
He froze, drilled his eyes straight into mine, and said, “Now you know how it works. What’s that supposed to mean?”
You have to realize that Sapp literally weighs twice what I do and was known for being extremely good at chasing down and hurting large men who are fully padded, so part of my mind was rapidly looking for escape routes and calculating whether a three-yard head start would be enough, but instead I said, “Actually, I was talking to my kids. They’ve never seen one of those before.” When he heard that, his whole demeanor changed. He flashed that big smile he’s known for on TV, and then gave the kids each a ball and hoisted them up to stick it into the washer.
That’s why perception is so important an influence on attitude. When Sapp perceived an insult, it activated a script in his mind. When he saw the situation differently, it activated a totally different script.
Observation, then Perception, then Attitude
But here’s the part that I didn’t fully understand until I read Ryan Holiday’s book, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
To put it simply, you make an objective observation and then apply a subjective judgment to it. You see, and then decide what it means. If you’re walking in the woods and see something long and curvy on the trail ahead, your attitude toward will differ depending on whether you perceive it as a snake or a stick.
Why should this matter? Because here’s the kicker: our perceptions are often, maybe even mostly, wrong. They may be wrong because of confirmation bias, so you see what you expect to see; because of the fundamental attribution error, so you assume someone else’s action shows their character; mostly it’s because bad is stronger than good, and the negative explanation is the first that springs to mind, so you see far many more snakes than actually exist. As a result you worry more than you need to, your personal relationships may suffer, and you miss innumerable opportunities. As Holiday says, many of life’s problems stem from needless and false judgments that don’t have to be made.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that you can train yourself to perceive objectively, to just view the situation for what it is, without automatically assigning meaning.
Be aware of your perceptions
To take control of your perceptions, you first must practice awareness—actively perceive your own perceptions. When you look for it, you can easily see how you apply a judgment to observations. I’ve been consciously paying attention to the rapid judgments I make. In public, I glance at someone and find myself judging something about them; I note that a potential client has not replied to an email yet and I assume the worst; I feel a raindrop and think it will ruin my plans for the afternoon. I estimate that I make hundreds of judgments every day—maybe even every hour. I choose between snakes and sticks constantly.
Take control of your perceptions
After a couple of weeks, I’ve noted that the mere fact of becoming actively aware that I am making judgments helps me keep them in check. But you can take a further step: objectively examine what you perceived—what judgment did you form? Your aim is to give yourself clarity not sympathy, as Holiday puts it, which is easier if you pretend it’s not happening to you but to someone else. When something transpires that blocks your progress toward a goal, you could perceive it as an obstacle, which is a negative judgment; you could see it as a stepping-stone to a better path, which is a positive judgment; or you could simply see it as information, which is no judgment at all, but just may allow you to appraise your options more intelligently and dispassionately.
When you are aware of the judgment you formed, you can then think of alternative meanings. Was that a purposeful brush-off, or was the other person distracted by her own problems? Is the situation 100% disadvantageous, or is there a hidden opportunity? When confronted with an either/or, is there a third way? If you look at the bigger picture or the longer view, does your perception change; is it worth getting that worked up over?
Holiday takes his ideas from the Greek and Roman stoics, so the importance of perceptions is certainly not a new revelation, but I’ve found so far that it’s extraordinarily helpful in facilitating the right attitude for the situation. And it gets easier with time: with enough awareness and discipline, you can substitute a new habit of detached observation for the old one of knee-jerk judgment.
It has been tough enough to practice in the small challenges of daily living, so who knows if the new habit will be strong enough in truly challenging situations, but that applies to any sort of training that you put yourself through. I’m confident that having a better understanding and awareness of the importance of perception will make it much easier for me to apply the right attitude when it really counts.
In a conversation I had recently with one of my coaching clients, she asked me how to handle a request from a senior level executive for a report on a particular topic. Although she had an idea why he needed the information, she was not exactly sure, and for various reasons was not in a position to probe further for clarification. She was in a quandary: how much should she pack into her response. Her question for me was, is it better to cover all possible contingencies to ensure he got what he needed, or to focus on her own guess?
I’ve fielded this question in various ways many times in the past, because it’s a common issue I see when experts interact with generalists. I’ve also heard many times form the generalist side, those at senior levels who need information to make informed decisions or recommendations higher up their own chain of command. Typically, their complaint is that when they ask someone what time it is, they’re given a tutorial on watchmaking. In general, they prefer less rather than more; if they need more they will ask for it.
On the other hand, those providing the information, because they know so much about the topic, hesitate to give a simple yes or no because they see so many shades of grey. More selfishly, they are afraid of being caught short by not giving the questioner what they need, or they think they can bolster their own credibility by showing off their command of a difficult and nuanced topic. So, they give more rather than less, and expect the recipient to glean what they need from the mass of information. Recipients may not have the time or inclination to dig through it for what they need, and the consequence is inefficient and ineffective communication, which helps neither party.
Because she works in software development, I asked her if she was familiar with the concept of a minimum viable product, and she instantly caught on to what I was proposing. Basically, an MVP is a way of getting to market quickly with a product that works, that just does what it’s supposed to do, rather than delaying launch to pack in features to try to please everyone. In effect, an MVP is a best-guess hypothesis about what the market needs. It’s not a stab in the dark, because it’s based on your knowledge of the “customer” and your analysis of the situation.
Give them what you think they need. Answer their question directly without hedges, caveats and circumlocutions. Most of the time, you will give them exactly what they need, but if they need more, they will ask for it. The payoff for them is time and clarity; they won’t have to wade through a swamp of excessive detail to get exactly what they need.
The payoff for you is time and credibility. Make this a habit, and others will find that you are a clear, prompt and credible source of the information and judgment—and that will make you a different sort of MVP!
Looking for a cheap but priceless gift?
While the Christmas holiday season is a time of joyous anticipation, fellowship, and spiritual renewal for many, it can also be an extremely stressful and trying time for others. If you’re one of those Grinches who can’t see past the aggressive commercialism, long lines, bad weather and annoying songs, perhaps you can do yourself and others a favor by boosting your skill at empathy.
Wait a minute—skill? How can empathy be a skill? Isn’t empathy a feeling you get when you identify with what other people are feeling? Isn’t it a trait that you get a certain amount of when you’re born? How can it be a skill?
Actually researchers have shown that empathy can be taught and improved. Even if you’re not feeling it, there are skills that you can employ to improve others’ perceptions of your empathy level—and actually foster the internal changes that will make you feel it. You actually can fake it ‘til you make it.
Why would you want to? If you’re already stressed out, why on earth would you want to start feeling others’ pain on top of yours?
The obvious answer is that it’s the right thing to do, but if you’re not feeling it, you’re not buying that one. So is there a practical reason for becoming more empathetic? Here are three:
- Irritation and anger are definitely bad for you. But, as Mark Goulston says, “anger and empathy—like matter and antimatter—can’t exist in the same place at the same time. Let one in, and you have to let the other go.”[1]
- If people around you feel valued and understood, their stress levels will go down, which helps you.
- Having trouble knowing what to give? Empathy is a priceless gift you can give someone that costs you almost nothing.
So, how do you go about it? There are two general ways; you can adjust your mindset and/or your behavior.
Adjust your mindset:
When something happens or someone does something that gets under your skin, ask yourself, what’s really going on here? Did the other person purposely set out to attack me personally? Most likely, they did not. First, you never know what’s going on in someone’s life—they may have even more on their minds than you do. For a powerful reminder of this, watch just a minute or so of this video about empathy by the Cleveland Clinic. Goulston suggests giving yourself an empathy jolt: ask yourself, how would I feel if I were him right now?
Apply the same standards to them that you do to yourself. Remember the fundamental attribution error: when someone does something that irritates us, it’s a reflection on their character. When we do the same thing, it’s either an accident or was caused by circumstances.
Adjust your behavior:
Catch others doing something right. It’s easy to think everyone around you is crabby and discourteous, because you’re only going to notice evidence that supports your hypothesis. Make a game of scoring one point every time you see someone do something nice for others. (If you do something nice yourself, that’s not cheating, it’s a way to game the system so that everyone wins.)
Even if you’re not feeling particularly charitable towards the rest of the world, fake it. It will make others happy and because of embodied cognition, your mindset will tend to catch up with your behavior. You already know how to fake it, but in case you need some pointers, check out Helen Riess’s TED talk about practicing EMPATHY.
We all need an empathy boost once in a while, and what better time than the Christmas holidays to give others—and ourselves—that priceless gift?
[1] From one of my favorite books, Just Listen, by Mark Goulston, p. 126.
