Directing emotions
A long time passed since the last entry in my blog and I almost forgot about it at all when an interesting topic came to my mind...
Since January 2009 I am teaching Crucial Conversations as a certified instructor at Sun, a training from Vital Smarts. I love teaching the class because the outcome of understanding the content and applying the skills learned can change your life.
In general as an instructor but especially for this training it is very important to come up with good stories which help the participants to make connections to real-life personal or professional situations where a discussed skill was used or could have been helpful to better understand the content.
Let me try to do a balancing act between "Crucial Conversations" and Sports Psychology:
Next to my Employee Learning Manager job at Sun I am a Curling Coach. In Curling tons of mental processes are happening all the time. On the one hand there is the shot-making (playing the Curling stone) and on the other hand there is strategy and decision making, as an individual (Skip), as a Backend (Skip and Third), and sometimes as a whole team (incl. Second and Lead).
Are there crucial conversations taking place on the ice, during a game? Well, to a certain degree. E.g. whenever the Skip is close to come up with a decision where you as a player are sure there is a better option you need to speak up. This kind of "veto" can have a huge influence on the outcome of the game but it as well can turn back at you if it goes wrong. It can become a Crucial Conversation as stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong.
It should not! You cannot have an intense conversation during a game. But this needs to be part of your agreed and practiced on-ice communication otherwise it can disrupt your game.
Strong emotions can destroy established procedures in your team. Therefore it is important to have well balanced players in your team as they will perform better, will find it easier to focus on what they really want and with that will not become emotional so quickly. Here comes the coach into play:
a) He gives his best effort to make sure the team has as little distractions before and during a competition/game as possible.
b) He prepares the team for difficult situations and builds them into the practice routine.
c) He asks for good fitness.
d) He makes sure basic needs are satisfied (e.g. nutrition/sleep).
e) He shares the commitment towards goals and expectations of the team.
Psychology in sports like Curling, can make the difference of winning or losing for high performance athletes. (If you have a hard time understanding what is going on in Curling then imagine Golf as an other perfect example.) In other sports emotions can support your performance as e.g. the adrenaline will provide extra power but in Curling they could make you lose. If you for example have to make the final and decisive shot in Curling (or putt in Golf) then your focus needs to be on your routine and the steps (set-up/anticipation/execution) on how to make it happen. Often described as "being in the zone". The higher the stakes the easier you will fail following the routine, not getting in the zone. When you start thinking about what happens if you make the shot or don't, or you start remembering a similar situation where you missed the shot, you create emotions like anxiety or excitement. You would need to re-focus, step out of your routine and start it again. Here is the difficult part: Recognizing that you lost your focus and to actually re-start your routine.
In "Crucial Conversations" it is called "telling yourself a different story". Re-direct your emotions, commit to corrective action by asking yourself: "What should I do right now to move toward what I really want?". You cannot suppress or control emotions but there is a chance to develop different emotions that will make it easier to achieve the desired result!
Be your own coach and try to do your best effort to make sure your way to achieve what you really want does not have too many traps! In sports, in your profession, and your personal life.
Posted at 02:11PM Jul 10, 2009 by Oliver Axnick in Personal | Comments[0]
Learn it right!
As I am very enthusiastic about sports, I recently wondered why certain moves took me so long till I learned them right.
A recent example is my golfing. When I started to play five years ago, a friend showed me some basic stuff and I tried to copy it. As he wasn't a professional or a good amateur I am sure that I didn't learn it the fastest and most effective way. Nevertheless I always was really energized when hitting a ball nicely and it flew for a while. This was reward enough for me to keep on going. I continuously improved and got rewarded again and again. After let's say some months on the driving range I started to wonder: Why can't I hit the ball always like this? How can I avoid my bad swings? I bought a book, a DVD, another book, got some lessons here and there... The never ending search for what I am doing wrong. I still improved but not consistently. I started to try and learn everything but everything is too much and I learned nothing thoroughly.
Finally (some months ago) I took a week of golf lessons and it helped me a lot as the pro was able to tell me the good parts of my swing and let me find out what I could do better. We circled it down to only two areas for improvement.
Learning new things by doing is not always the best approach but if this process is motivating and rewarding it could be a satisfying (most of the times ;-) ) activity.
In a professional environment this is a no go! Every time you do not use the right approach you are wasting your resources. And in a corporate environment this most probably will multiply into the organization and at the end cost lots of money.
Let us look at an example as well:
Let's assume you are learning a new programming language on your own as your boss is not willing to pay for a training. You are asked to program a computer application. After a while you get going, some of your experiences help you to move forward. The application finally is ready, it looks nice and it works. People are happy and send you their compliments. Then, not surprisingly, some identify the need for an enhancement or another feature which becomes business critical. You find out that in the way you programmed the application this new feature could not be integrated. You need to reprogram it, till that is accomplished all the work needs to be done manually for xxx customers, xxx partners, and/or xxx colleagues. They are upset that it takes so long till they get what they urgently need...
There will never be a too expensive investment in learning if you are sure that you need those skills to achieve your business objectives in time and quality.
I struggle to get under 90 in golf but who cares...Posted at 05:01PM Aug 24, 2007 by Oliver Axnick in Personal | Comments[0]
Speed of Learning
Last week during a presentation of Jay Cross I learned how soon computers will reach human brain power. On the one hand this scares me as I suddenly see "Matrix" and "Terminator" becoming reality but on the other hand this certainly offers a great amount of opportunity.
Only a couple of years ago I used to have an English/German dictionary close to my desk... I cannot imagine using it today. The translation is just two clicks away! If I need information I search in Google for almost everything... and I find it! The latest news are on the internet but a couple of months ago I started to use RSS feeds by installing a feedreader (Awasu) on my notebook. This really saves me time hooking up with news and blogs especially because more and more sites are offering these feeds. Another way to keep an eye on topics I am interested in are podcasts which I usually download to my iPod with iTunes. There is a lot out there and it is for free! Web 2.0 and the upcoming "versions" will definitely speed up our exchange and transfer of information!
With having technology which supports searching, retrieving news, and communication there is one thing I want to be: online all the time! The new smart-phones offer a lot already but expensive roaming charges are a pain point, especially in Europe.I always liked it most to learn informal and pull the information from different sources. Whatever I am doing is steered by either my professional goals or my personal interests and not too much by someone else. I can choose which pieces to learn when. I like participating in conferences as a lot of interaction is going on and my personal network is strengthened. By the way the new contacts I then add to my online networking platforms (Xing and LinkedIn).
The disadvantage of formal learning e.g. in courses is that the pace of instruction should depend on the slowest learner, has a curriculum to cover, depends highly on the quality of the instructor, and needs to be scheduled. Of course many individuals need guidance and to be pushed.
Is there the right mix of formal and informal learning? Blended Learning is a good approach but I see this as a modern way of informal learning with some self-directed (pace and content) modules. How to support e.g. employees learning informal and still make sure they know what they need to know? Providing sources of information, Subject Matter Experts, coaches, communities and then to have a final test-out after a certain period? I like this idea but e.g. workers councils or data privacy regulations often do not support tests.
Isn't it amazing to see kids using technology? I always thought I am able to keep up with technology (learning to use a computer in 1992 at the age of 22) but I am not. The load of information is starting to stress me. Will I be able to get used to it or am I getting old?
Posted at 07:05PM Jul 24, 2007 by Oliver Axnick in Personal | Comments[2]