ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Listen to Kerrying On via MP3 Listen to Kerrying On via iTunes As a boy, I loved to watch Father Knows Best, a TV program showcasing your typical sitcom family of the 50s. One of the more memorable episodes involves a short-wave radio that teenager Bud is refurbishing. When he finally gets the contraption working, he finds himself listening to a conversation between two boats located over a thousand miles away. The signal is bouncing off the ionosphere—making him privy to a conversation between the "Betty Anne," a 34-foot cabin cruiser and other vessels nearby. Soon, the entire Anderson family is drawn into the action as the Allen family aboard the Betty Anne heads into a horrible storm. The Allen’s think the turn in the weather is nothing more than a rainsquall. The Coast Guard sounds a warning of an impending storm. But the two parties can’t hear each other due to local interference. The Andersons, beneficiaries of the signal bounce, can easily hear everyone involved and can’t figure out why someone doesn’t help the Betty Anne or radio the Coast Guard. As the Allens are about to be tossed into the violent sea, the Andersons anguish over their inability to offer help. Completely pulled into the teleplay, I shouted into the TV: "Call the Coast Guard! You know the Betty Anne is about to capsize five miles off Shark Island. You can save the Allens! Just make a phone call!" Finally, after ten minutes of tortuous inaction from the Andersons and constant coaxing from me, Mr. Anderson realizes that he can phone the Coast Guard. He makes the call, saves the Allen family, and I stop yelling at the TV. I walked away from that teleplay vowing that if I were ever in a position where I could spot an upcoming disaster (one that I could foresee but others couldn’t) I’d shout out a warning. Today, I feel as if I’m watching just such an impending disaster, so please allow me to offer up a warning. As you observe young people working their way through school, you can’t help but take notice as they approach certain critical junctures. Early on, they decide whether school is their thing or not. They decide whether grades and studying is their thing or not. And finally, they decide whether math, science, literature, art, or philosophy is their thing or not. There was a time when the subject you chose to master at school, or for that matter, how many years you attended, didn’t exactly seal your financial destiny. When I was young, there were a variety of jobs available for people who barely limped through high school. Manufacturing positions paid good money and offered a solid career path to individuals who were willing to roll up their sleeves and get dirty. In fact, blue-collar positions paid, on average, more than white-collar ones. The joke at the time was that factory workers made more than lawyers. Advanced education seemed more of a luxury than a strategic choice. Circumstances have changed to the point where the data are now crystal clear. While we still have a strong manufacturing core, contemporary firms produce high-tech, high-cost items, built by people who’ve done well in school and have had plenty of it. As a result, on average, American employees make more money with each year they spend in school—all the way through a PhD. So, when youngsters say, "You know, school isn’t my thing." It’s our job to let them know of the disaster that might lie just beyond the horizon. It’s our responsibility to explain that when they distance themselves from school, they might be choosing a job pool and income level they won’t like—and it could last their entire life. In a similar vein, when a youngster says, "I know that school matters, but it isn’t easy for me. I don’t test well. Grades aren’t my thing," alarms should go off in your head. Grades matter a great deal and according to recent research, most people can learn to get good grades if they’re taught how to study. Learning how to learn doesn’t call for rocket science. I’ll never forget the day I graduated from high school and our friend Harry Roller sat me down and prepared me for college by teaching me how to succeed in school. He told me to go to every class and do every assignment. You read the reading assignment beforehand. You leave class and head straight to a quiet place in the library where you don’t study with noisy friends. Instead, you sit down in that quiet spot, review your notes, and prepare for your next class. Reading is a science in itself. You take a short walking break after fifteen minutes. At thirty minutes you take a three-minute break. At sixty minutes, a five-minute break. You start a chapter by reading the questions at the end and pouring over the headings, charts, and models, then you read the chapter. And so forth. We know how to maximize learning. It’s not a mystery. So when young people say grades aren’t their thing, teach them how to earn good grades by helping them improve their study techniques. It’s hard to imagine an investment that has a greater rate of return than learning how to learn. And now for the final danger sign. Say your kids agree that both school and grades matter. Unfortunately, they find math and science to be puzzling. It’s not long until they explain that they don’t like math. Eventually they suggest that they don’t "do" math. After all, they aren’t nerds. With time, they come to frame their disdain for all things quantitative as an asset—sure they’re bad at math, but hey, they have social skills that give them an advantage. For others, math and technology is their thing and they see literature, art, and the like as weak and without scientific underpinnings. While it’s wonderful to find a passion, it’s sad when young people turn this love for one field as a reason for not exploring others. Not only does this narrow framing cut them off from important parts of life, it makes them vulnerable. I used to sit on the admissions committee of a popular master’s program. Demand far exceeded supply so we could only accept a fraction of the applicants. About once a year, one of the local candidates who had been turned down would corner me in the hallway and plead his or her case. "I scored nearly perfectly in the verbal section of the qualifying exam and I won two writing awards. Sure my quantitative score was only average, but my verbal skills more than make up for it." Or: "Did you see my quantitative score? I’m a gifted scientist. Sure, my verbal score wasn’t all that great but . . ." You can see where this is going. I would point out that the students who were accepted scored high in both areas of the test. To be admitted, you have to be able to play with both sets of blocks. It was sad to watch these eager applicants as they realized for the first time that doing well in only one domain simply wasn’t enough to earn them a place on the roster. Of course, all of us are acquainted with people who’ve found ways to work in careers they love, and some of them earn a good living. There are always thousands of exceptions to the rule. Nevertheless, I believe it’s important to let your young family members and friends know the impact of school, grades, study methods, and a balanced skill set. We’ve looked out into the future and like the Anderson family, have observed what could easily be an impending disaster. It doesn’t involve boats heading into a storm; nevertheless it could be disastrous just the same. Allow the next generation of youngsters to dismiss the importance of school, disregard grades, and turn up their noses at whole branches of knowledge and they may face a tumultuous future. I feel it’s my duty to sound a warning. Related posts: Kerrying On: The Sky’s the Limit Kerrying On: The Buck Stops Here Kerrying On: A Disaster in the Making

What have you done lately to make someone’s life easier? That’s a question you should be asking yourself every day. I like to constantly think of things I can do to make someone’s life easier. When thinking about learning experiences when training is needed, it’s important to train as efficiently as possible. Even if you’re cutting down an hour and a half plus training session(s) down to less than 30 minutes, it might not be enough. It makes life a bit easier to save time, but is it possible to go even further? Is it necessary to force everyone to do training in the first place? Maybe some people do need full training, but still forced training isn’t the answer to anything. Making training an option but available makes it easier for everyone. Not everyone will need or want to take training, so don’t ever make it required unless somebody will be harmed if it’s not. Doing something for someone would be to trust them to decide if they need to partake in training or not. You are making life easier by trusting them and putting the decision in their hands. This trust builds something important in an organization and I’d argue creates an even better learning culture. What Creates a Learning Culture? Required training is the opposite of what creates a learning culture. Wanting to learn and helping employees be curious and interested in learning is what creates a learning culture. Developing training and making it available isn’t enough, giving resources to people and allowing them to do the learning is what makes a learning culture. What have you done for someone to help foster a learning culture at your organization? Have you allowed them to use their brain to decide if they need the training or not? Have you given them the option to forgo the training and rely on performance support? Have you made sure is thorough enough to give those self-directed learners the resources they need? Making life easier for others dealing with L&D is to not force them to do something. Make it an option if it can be, and in most cases it can. Make Someone’s Life Easier That’s what your goal should be every day. Simplify to the point of making someone’s life easier. Everything is getting easier every day (and harder at the same time), sometimes to the point of flaw, but for the most part it’s a great thing. What have you done lately to make someone’s life easier? That’s the question you don’t hear asked often enough in Learning & Development. This question should be part of every model used by Instructional Designers. It’s the most important question you can ask, and it should be thought about every day. When we ask ourselves this question it makes us think more about what we’re putting others through. I don’t want to sound like this is something only Learning & Development professionals should be asking though, everybody in every industry should be asking this question. Everybody is making or doing something that somebody else will use or touch in some way. Nobody cares as much about what we’re designing as much as we do, so we need to make it painless for them. They simply won’t respect the thought we put into it nor should they have to. Simplifying processes and making it easier on others is just one important thing that we can do for others. Take a look at the course, training, whatever you’re designing or doing. What can you do to make it easier and quicker? Not everybody wants to sit through a 30 minute course, especially if they’re already familiar with the content. Easy Life is complex (and easy) in so many ways, it’s time to think about how to make it easier for others. If we all make part of our job to make things easier, everybody wins. It may take a bit more thought and work on our part, some people may push back, but it’s all worth it. What have you done to make someone’s life easier? The post Make Someone’s Life Easier appeared first on Nick Leffler's Portfolio & Learning Insights. You might also enjoy: First Thoughts on Learned Helplessness What’s My Development Process? Learning Experience As a User Experience

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joseph Grenny is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, My husband is constantly angry at our fifteen-year-old son. They are always in shouting matches and it drives me crazy. When I walk away from them, my husband says I am "burying my head in the sand." My husband is very negative and set in his ways, and he expects our son to have the same ideas. My husband also verbalizes his disappointment in our son and tells him he is only concerned with himself. Granted, there are times this is true, but he’s a typical teenage boy. He’s sometimes mouthy, but he’s a good kid, works hard even though he may complain, and is never in trouble anywhere but at home. I want to support my husband, but I feel he is often wrong, that he goes too far, and that some of his expectations are unreasonable. When I try to talk about it, he says that I am taking our son’s side and that the only way he can keep the peace is to just shut his mouth and not say anything. He’s not very open to conversation. Help! Signed, End of My Rope Dear End, Aren’t marriages wonderful? And I mean that! Sustained, intimate relationships are usually both the greatest opportunity for personal growth and the greatest challenge of our lives. And they are the former because they are the latter. You are exactly the gift your husband needs, and he may just be the perfect gift for you. Children need both affirmation and influence. It sounds like you’re world-class at affirmation and he has a bias for influence. Unfortunately, many relationships break down because we keep trying to make the other person be good at what we value without properly recognizing our need for what they bring to the party. Now, I’m not suggesting your husband’s approach to influence is the best. But it sounds as though what’s important to him is trying to help bring out the best in your son. And your approach to affirming him may, at times, come at the expense of helping him aspire to higher standards. But that should not take away from the fact that you see great worth and beauty in him. That’s wonderful! So the question is how do you turn conflicting values into complementary ones? How can you and your husband create a relationship where your son gets the best you both have to offer—and where you both learn to offer it in a healthier way? Here are some suggestions: 1. Start with safety. Help your husband know that you value what he is trying to do for your son. Express genuine appreciation for his desire to influence your son to strive. Point out specific ways you can see that your son has benefited from having him as a father. Then scrupulously avoid using the word, "but." Don’t do it! Get it out of your brain. After affirming your value for having a positive influence on your son, don’t go on to say, "But…you often do it about things that aren’t that important." There are no "buts" when you’re affirming people and creating Mutual Purpose. There are only "ands." The fact that you appreciate him wanting to challenge your son is not offset in any way by your desire to also affirm him. The two are complementary, not competing, values. So don’t make it seem like they are in conflict by using the b-word. 2. Motivate with natural consequences. If your husband is reluctant to engage in this conversation with you, think of things that are important to your husband that will help him want to engage. Then share these as you invite him into this complex discussion. Think, for example, about pain, concerns, worries, or problems he may have with you or with your son that are connected to the changes you’d like to discuss. For example, you might say, "John, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we can better work together with our son. I know you and I haven’t always seen eye-to-eye. I know you are also frustrated that he has drifted away from you. I also know you don’t like how I criticize you at times about how you handle things. I don’t have a lot of answers, but I want to find a way to help you have the relationship you want and to partner in a way that works for you as we solve problems with him. Could we set aside some time to discuss this?" 3. Work on you first. Realize that while you will have useful feedback for your husband, he will likely see weaknesses in you that you must be willing to hear. Be open and humble. If you get defensive in the conversation, avoid reacting in the moment. Say, "I’m sure there is merit in what you’re saying. I’m feeling defensive right now so I’m going to need time to think about it. Can I do that and then get back with you later to talk about what I will do with these suggestions?" If you are to work together better, it is going to require both of you to change. You will need to be more willing to be part of raising tough issues with your son and holding him accountable. Your husband will need to be willing to learn to do it in a healthier way—and focus on big things while letting go of little things. If you both work on yourselves, you’ll be a potent parenting team for your son. 4. Organize for the long run. Have realistic expectations. If both you and your husband have habits that have been nurtured over a lifetime, they aren’t going to change after one conversation. I suggest you frame this conversation as a starting point, then agree on ways you can help each other stick with commitments you make about how to work together more productively. Be patient with one another as you try new approaches. Expect relapses. I suggest you read our book, Change Anything, as a couple, for ideas on how to create a plan that will help you both make steady progress in changing these habits. I applaud your commitment to your son and wish you the best as you find ways to complement one another, grow together, and give your son the gifts both of you want so much to offer. Warmly, Joseph Related posts: Responding to Unwanted Parenting Advice Gaining Acceptance Having Integrity in a Family Business

Attentions spans are shrinking, nobody can pay attention for more than a few seconds. That’s what I hear all the time, and it was brought up many times in a recent chat2lrn. Just to clear things up, an attention span is that thing that allows us to pay attention to something. You know, when something captures our attention because it’s so incredibly interesting and we can’t turn away. Patience goes along with attention spans, it takes patience to have a long attention span. The big claim is that they’re both getting shorter. The Immovable The problem isn’t that attention spans are getting shorter, the problem is that those that had our attention in the past never deserved it. Yup, we’re getting more selective about what we pay attention to. There’s a lot of information coming at us. It used to be just newspapers where we got our news, then came radio, then TV, then Internet, then our brains exploded. There’s a lot of great stuff to read, watch, and listen to. There’s also a ton of crap. Attention spans haven’t gotten shorter, they’re just more selective for good content. So if I’m not writing good content, I’ll lose my audience within 8 seconds and it’s not their fault, it’s 100% mine. Here’s the Tweet from the chat, it was pretty lively but it had nothing to do with attention spans, it just happened to come up, I have a strong belief in it, and I felt like writing about it. @Quinnovator @LisaAGoldstein yup! attention spans are getting more selective for good content, not shorter #chat2lrn — Nick Leffler (@technkl) April 9, 2015 So there you have it, to sum up the truth on attention spans, and by extension patience: Attention spans aren’t getting shorter, they’re becoming more selective for good content. — Nick Leffler Explosion I mentioned above there’s so much stuff coming at us we’re likely to experience a brain explosion. Sometimes it really does feel like this. Am I alone there? It’s more important than ever to learn how to manage all this information. You can’t shut it off and stop reading and stop learning, jobs demand that you’re a lifelong learner. From the minute you get out of college with your degree you’re starting the learning program of life. It’s not possible to read everything you run across, so it’s important to learn how to manage information in a meaningful way. Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) is a great way to manage that. My favorite person to follow that writes regularly on PKM is Harold Jarche, he runs workshops that help people get a handle on their professional improvement through PKM. One of Harold’s methods of making sense of the information he runs across is blogging. It’s great because it’s publicly searchable and can be shared with others easy. I can’t recall how many times I’ve searched my blog for information I’d previously written about to share with others so I could better explain something. It has come in handy on more than one occasion. I found the post above in this paragraph in less than 3 minutes. So, what do you think the best way to deal with the explosion we experience from the information overload? Blogging! I even included a long section (one of the longest!) in my course about setting up your professional website to have a blog. I’m also working on another course that’s about getting started blogging on WordPress.com for free. While this isn’t the ideal method for the future, it’s better than not blogging at all. Gut Filters We have our gut to thank for attention spans getting shorter, or I should say seeming they’re getting shorter. Our gut paired with our split second filters gives us the ability to decide if reading, watching, or listening to something is worth our time. The shorter our attention span, or rather our ability to decide if something is worth our time, the smarter the being. In the year 2000 as a whole the human race was less intelligent than a goldfish (of course that’s not true! Is it?) with our attention span measuring about 12 seconds. In 2013 we are now the more intelligent of the two with an attention span measuring about 8 seconds on average. (Attention Span Statistics) Dismiss The Confusion Just so we’re not confused anymore, the statistics mentioned above have nothing to do with attention spans, those are gut reactions, the ability to decide quickly if something’s worth our time. It’s not a bad thing to have a quick gut filter, in fact it helps us find something worth our while faster and be able to spend more time on that. Attention spans have actually gotten longer. Could you imagine a movie 40 years ago at 3 hours long? Let me know if you find one. We regularly sit in movie theaters for movies that are 3+ hours long and we love it, we come back for more! That’s attention span. They’ve gotten immeasurably longer and we have all the patience in the world for great content. Video games? I used to play for hours at a time when I was truly into a game. Now I’m much shorter on time so I play quick bits if that. It’s not that my attention span has gotten shorter, I just know I have to use my time more wisely so I use my gut filters regularly. Moving On I invite you to dismiss the myth of attention spans. Propagate the fact we’re better than ever at exercising our gut filters therefore allowing us to become more intelligent and wise with our time. What do you think? Are you going to join me in the battle against myths? Yet another one in the long line of myths that are sold to us everyday because they’re easily packaged and can easily deceive. The post Attention Spans Are Getting Shorter appeared first on Nick Leffler's Portfolio & Learning Insights. 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ABOUT THE EXPERT Steve Willis is a Master Trainer and Vice President of Professional Services at VitalSmarts. READ MORE It all started with what seemed like an innocuous question. And since then I’ve been wondering about a personal training practice to which I hadn’t given much thought recently—specifically the questions I use. My current practice was called into question (here used as figure of speech rather than a reference to the specific training practice mentioned in the second sentence, or the actual inciting question referenced in the first sentence) during our annual REACH conference in August. One of my colleagues, Cricket, made the following statement, "the way you ask questions is a measure of whether you are testing the participants’ understanding or encouraging them to test your own." This really got me thinking, "What kinds of questions do I use?" I realized that many of my questions were pretty darn good (if I do say so my pretty darn self), yet the questions I used to close off a section weren’t so great. And when I got really honest with myself—not so good at all. I typically ask a question like, "What questions do you have about how/where you’d use these skills we’ve just covered?" if anyone responds (and so many times that’s a big IF), it’s usually in the form of a question for me. If I instead ask, "How/where will you be able to use the skill of..?" or, "We’ve been talking about X principle, how would you summarize what it means in your own words?" I get to test how well they’ve understood the main teaching points I’ve been trying to convey, address any inaccuracies, and compare different responses. As I’ve been making a conscious effort to make what might seem like a subtle shift in the types of questions I ask (switching to questions that test their knowledge and understanding), I’ve experienced a noticeable increase in the participants’ ability to understand and apply the training content. Any Questions? Related posts: How can I help participants better understand and benefit from the summary questions at the end of each section of training? From the Road: P is for Practice From the Road: When Does Training Start?

Life ebbs and flows, that seems to be how it goes. I went from relatively quiet days to too much. The quiet was prior to 6 months ago, it’s gone to relatively busy since then. In the past few days it’s caught up with me, either that or I have a bug that’s slowing me down (I do, finally took my temperature so if this post is a bit loopy that’s my excuse It’s nice to slow down sometimes and take a deep breath though.  Taking a little time (how much time is up to you!) and resting can feel great. The revival it creates is excellent, although I have to admit it’s hard to sit still after so much productive time. I’ve slowed down a little the past month, but not like the past few days. I’ve been trying to move to a post a week schedule but haven’t been able to push over that hump yet. Picking up a 2nd blog and trying to keep that up weekly has given me a bit more to think about, and some gear switching to do. The question is, what have I been working? I’m going to go over some of the general projects I’ve been working on in my spare time outside of my daily 9-5. eLearning Contractor For about 5 months I took on a contractor position doing some basic work on eLearning modules. I don’t have a lot to say here though, it involved putting translations into place and animations. Several of my other projects overshadowed this one so I had to put it on the backburner. In the end I learned you always have to do what’s best for your future, never for the immediate dollar. Udemy WordPress Course From late November to late December I worked solid on creating a Udemy course. The work didn’t end once I created the course, and it still hasn’t stopped. The hard work for this one went on for 3 months. I became a marketer, an instructor, an editor and a lot of other things. I had used WordPress a lot on this website and it helped me get some jobs, but I hadn’t taken WordPress to the level I did with this course and beyond. I’ve written about the course in its early days quite a bit, but not lately. I have plans to create another course on getting started blogging with WordPress.com. My goal is to have several courses that focus on using WordPress to have a better career. If you haven’t checked out my course yet there’s a link to it on my other website and a larger description. WordPress Website I originally created this website as I creaed my Udemy course. I walked through the entire process while recording. In the course I ended up with a very different website. The reason it looks very different now is that I rebranded it into another platform for me to blog, this time on WordPress and using it to promote yourself for your career. I continue to blog on this website almost weekly including a recent post about my WordPress update process. I also have future plans for this website to help funnel all students I bring into my course through the courses section. The reason for this? I was putting links all over the place for coupon codes that would expire and I’d constantly have to update them and find them. With one place I can put coupon code links on NickLeffler.com and then link to that everywhere. It’s easy to chance the coupon code then, just one place. With Udemy, if you bring a student to the course, you get 97% of the money for that student. If they go through Udemy then you only get half. Even if I don’t have a special going on, I can still funnel students through this page and ensure I get the credit for bringing the student to Udemy. There’s always more updates to this website, and it’ll continue to evolve and change. I also use it to test plugins and run other WordPress experiments. Based off all my testing and researching I have a lot of updates to do on my course, so it’s always a work in progress. Helping My Wife From mid-February until now this has consumed a huge amount of my time. My wife, Jill is a stay at home mom to my daughter Holly. Jill wanted to bring in some money also and was brainstorming some ways for her to help that her interestests could contribute to. The initial idea was gluten free baking because in July last year she was diagnosed with celiacs disease. That idea didn’t work because of laws that prevent home baked goods from being shipped anywhere. Jewelry was the answer. Jill enjoys fashion and jewelry and my daughter Holly especially loves jewelry, mostly of the princess type at her age though (3). Lovely Leffler Jewelry was born, and I’ve been the tech head for the website while I learn even more about WordPress, and now WooCommerce. Before I created this website I got some practice in setting up WooCommerce on WordPress by creating an eCommerce website for my brother-in-law, that’s another story. WooCommerce is a great eCommerce platform and I’ve enjoyed putting it together. There’s alaways something to learn about WordPress. I’ve also got to try my hand at marketing also as I’ve helped her get set up and running on social media, and advertising. I must say marketing isn’t my strong skill and I’m still learning. It’s been a great adventure and I enjoy doing it, but jewelry is definitely a hard business to break into. A little self promotion isn’t a horrible thing (in moderation) so I’m going to say, if you can take a few minutes and follow Lovely Leffler Jewelry on social media it would be appreciated. It’s almost been 2 months and it hasn’t gotten any easier, but I’m always up for a challenge. Bonus Info: The color palette I used for the website is from a picture I took of Jill several years ago when I was playing with the Adobe Color (then Kuhler) app. So, the website has multiple representations of her and the profile in the logo is my daughter Holly. Expanding with Social Consultant I don’t have a lot to say about this one yet, but I’m hoping to write about this in the near future. I haven’t received permission to write in detail about the position, nor have I even begun yet, but it will be a lot of fun. Enough cryptic talk though, the Master’s program I graduated from in 2011 has been going through some changes. It was a small program of about 30 students in each cohort, they’re now expanding and wanting to do so online through several routes. My place in all this is to consult and help the program through its social presence. I wrote up a few proposals on what I would do to help grow the program. I am a firm believer in social learning and the power of self directed learning, but at the same time I think formal education has a big place also. If it weren’t for formal education I wouldn’t be where I am now. It gave me guidance and a goal of where I wanted to go. I had little idea where I wanted to go before beginning my undergraduate degree, and with each year I was given a path, guidance, and a place to go. I’m looking forward to this project and will pursue writing about it more because being successful with it relies heavily on transparency and openness. What I’m Working On Going Forward Going forward I still have as much as ever on my plate. My goal is to be self sufficient in creating an income for myself which includes consulting. This gives me the opportunity to have a great effect on organization who are ready to join the modern era of work which has limited places for silos and hierarchy. What are you working on? The post What I’m Working On appeared first on Nick Leffler's Portfolio & Learning Insights. You might also enjoy: Closing Out 2014 With A Bang Rethinking The Holiday Rush Work Out Loud - Don’t Just Share What You Did

ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Maxfield is coauthor of three New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, Here in Australia, we are currently undertaking a safety culture change initiative in my company using your Influencer model. I have an opinion leader who is quite negative about most things, including the Influencer strategies. This opinion leader was involved with the creation and rollout of the Vital Behaviors Roadmap and his positive support would lend great credibility to the program within his crew. How can I harness this person’s passion for positive influence rather than negative? Sincerely, Searching for a Solution Dear Searching, Thanks for an interesting question. What can we do when an influential employee is using his or her influence to undermine an important initiative? I’ve worked closely on an initiative similar to the one you are describing. I can use it to illustrate the broader challenge presented by unsupportive opinion leaders. I’ll begin with a thumbnail sketch of this situation, which will likely sound very familiar. This organization operates open-pit and underground mines. While the firm already has a positive record for workplace safety, the goal of the initiative is to eliminate severe injuries and deaths. The company’s focus has been on changing behaviors, because the majority of accidents happen when drivers speed, when construction workers fail to tie off ladders, and when operators take shortcuts. Herein lies the challenge: we, and the employees we work with, often know what the best safety practices are, but fail to follow them. For example, how many of us stay within speed limits when we drive, or tie off ladders when we clean rain gutters around our roofs? The key to changing these behaviors is broad social support. It’s essential that peers watch out for each other, remind each other, and hold each other accountable for following safety practices. Building this social support will be vital to your initiative. The company took pains to involve two groups of people: formal leaders and informal leaders. Formal leaders include every executive, manager, supervisor, and foreman. All of these leaders have to be on board. Informal leaders include the opinion leaders you referred to in your question. Here is how they identified these opinion leaders: they asked everyone who works in the area to answer the following question: "If you were facing a challenging issue at work and you had time to ask for help, who would you go to for the best, most trustworthy advice?" People could name up to three of their coworkers. They focused on the people who were named most often by their peers. And let me explain what I mean by "most often." Two-thirds of the employees weren’t named by anyone, or were named by only one or two of their peers. These people are not opinion leaders. However, there was a small group—about 8 percent—who were named by fifty or more of their peers. These people are true opinion leaders. Opinion leaders are either your most powerful allies or your most powerful opponents. They are never in between, because, whether you like it or not, people go to them for their opinions and they will be swayed by what these opinion leaders say. So, what do you do when an opinion leader isn’t on board? 1. Take the opinion leader’s concerns seriously. If an opinion leader has concerns, you can be sure others share them. Try to use the opinion leader as a leading indicator or early warning signal. We often involve opinion leaders in focus groups, where the whole purpose is to surface concerns early. 2. Be open to modifying your approach. You can be fairly confident that the opinion leader shares your goal for eliminating serious injuries and deaths. His or her concerns almost certainly involve specific strategies and tactics. Look for common ground and more effective approaches. Opinion leaders tend to be more committed and informed than their peers. Involve them in finding better solutions. 3. Respect the opinion leader role. Don’t try to co-opt opinion leaders or demand they toe the company line. Part of their credibility comes from their independence and you don’t want to undermine that. 4. Support the opinion leader’s right to be skeptical. You want the opinion leader’s understanding and buy-in, not his or her obedience. Explain the big picture reasons for strategies, and be flexible on the forms his or her support takes. In addition, accept that there are differences you won’t be able to bridge. Focus on areas of agreement, instead of demanding total agreement. A skeptic who supports your initiative is the most powerful supporter you can hope to have. 5. Don’t barter for the opinion leader’s support. Some opinion leaders want to include broader or unrelated issues in a sort of negotiation for their support. Don’t go down this path. It turns your safety issue into a commodity, instead of a moral purpose. 6. Ask other opinion leaders to help convince the opinion leader. Sometimes you are the wrong person to have influence with an opinion leader. Perhaps you are a part of an untrusted group, or you have a bad reputation with this person. If you suspect this is the case, ask others to take the lead in gathering and responding to the opinion leader’s concerns. 7. If necessary, remove the opinion leader—but only for cause. You never terminate an opinion leader because of their lack of support. Unlike formal leaders, informal leaders’ support is always voluntary. However, they do need to follow safety policies and keep others safe as well. Workplace safety is a universally accepted and universally mandated part of the workplace. It’s not optional for anyone. I hope these ideas give you tools you can use as you work with this opinion leader. The work can be slow and frustrating, but getting opinion leaders on your side is the key to your success. Best Wishes, David Related posts: Influencing Corporate Policy Overcoming Resistance to Safety Standards Holding Peers Accountable Without Management’s Support

I tried posting this last week but I’ve been having a hard time, so here’s my second chance breaking my many week silence. Hopefully dropping some knowledge on the knowledge-base will open the flood gates. There’s been a few times when a knowledge base has popped up in my world lately, from where I put things in a closed internal environment to being available to the public. I’m writing specifically about an internal knowledge base for employees to put some context around what you read here, not the public knowledge base which is another animal. What role do you need in the knowledge base? This is a question I see and have been asked. Knowledge bases are set up in tiers so each group only has access to what they need and no more. I’m not convinced this is the best model, or even a good model at that. It doesn’t work well. Just as trying to organize information into neat categories rarely works and is not useful, so is access levels useless. This method of organizing and controlling access to information is a remnant of the hierarchy. It takes a lot of management and maintenance to keep information up-to-date, perhaps more than is possible. It’s helpful for people to know if an article is pertinent to them but by no means is it necessary to lock out access to an entire tier of articles. Everything needs to be searchable and maybe a step further into user editable. The knowledge base should go into user generated content territory. Don’t control knowledge. Let it free. The Future of the Knowledge Base The future of the knowledge base lies in user generated content. A large repository of information edited by the subject matter experts and users alike. Hmmm, this sounds a bit familiar. Don’t we have something like this already? Yes! We do! The best knowledge base in the world for internal uses is a wiki. It has the best of both words with information from the experts and the ability to edit and build up more real knowledge. It also has the benefit of having more eyes on the material to correct those errors because we all know even the experts aren’t perfect. There you have it, the knowledge base is dead for internal use. It’s all about real-time feedback, real information (not theoretical), and instant gratification (see a problem? Fix it!). Your Turn What do you think? Why are wikis awesome or terrible? Why do you think the knowledge base is king, or crap? Let me know, I’d love to hear from you in the comments section below. The post Don’t Control Knowledge, Let the Base Free appeared first on Nick Leffler's Portfolio & Learning Insights. You might also enjoy: Mobile Help Overlays - Ultimate Performance Support for Mobile Apps Challenges and Barriers to Mobile Learning in the Enterprise What’s My Development Process?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Al Switzler is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE   Dear Crucial Skills, I’m trying to follow the chain of command in our organization when presenting ideas and suggestions, but the ideas seem to stop at my boss and never get to the people who would benefit from the suggestion or idea. My boss doesn’t like conflict or change, believes that getting along is more important than addressing issues that might cause conflict, and doesn’t see the value in sharing feedback unless it is to tell people they are doing a good job. How can I motivate my boss to take action on ideas presented to him to improve our organization? Regards, Trying to Address Change Dear Searching, You are not alone in feeling stuck in this situation. Many would agree that influencing or motivating upward is a tough challenge. It’s tough to speak to leadership about behaviors that are negatively impacting the quality of work or the quality of work life. It’s tough to speak up about ineffective systems or stifling bureaucracy. It’s tough to tell your boss that you have more on your plate than you can do without feeling like a whiner. It’s tough to speak up when your boss overtly or subtly makes it clear that he or she does not appreciate you speaking up. And a key word here is boss—the person who can impact your ability to make your mortgage payment next month. So, it’s tough. I know that. I’d like to share some advice I’ve formulated over the years. 1. Frame the challenge in the best possible way. This is, of course, a variation on the crucial conversations principles: Master My Stories and Make It Safe. Start by asking yourself, "Why would a reasonable, rational, decent person (yes, your boss) act this way?" Why is he not passing ideas on or not encouraging or inviting others to speak up? What would make it safe enough for him and yourself to have this conversation? Make sure that you clarify Mutual Purpose and are prepared to be very respectful when you bring up the issue. You want to make sure you come across as curious and helpful rather than frustrated and judgmental. Also, don’t speculate and focus on the possible negative outcomes. We often exaggerate possible negative consequences and underplay the positives. That strategy causes us to vote for staying silent—thus voting for the status quo. 2. Talk about the right issue. In tough situations, we are often tempted to bring up a simple, easy topic and not the real one. In your particular case, the easy issue is that you made a suggestion and it wasn’t passed on. The real issue is that your boss has a pattern of not passing on ideas and that means that you and your colleagues face the same problems at work week after week. The real issue may be that you see yourself and others becoming disengaged and thinking that nothing can be done to change the situation. As a part of your preparation, you’ll want to do a consequence search. What are the consequences of the boss’s behavior? Who is being impacted? Teammates, other departments, customers, you? How? When you find the consequences, you are prepared to talk about the tougher issue. 3. Make sure it’s safe, then talk. Not all times and situations will be equally safe for your boss. Of course, the first goal is to make it safe by mastering your clever stories and getting your motives and emotions right before you open your mouth. When you meet with your boss, if your face is saying that you’ve held court in your head and found him or her guilty before your mouth says anything, the boss will hear the first message. Also, you should consider other factors that create safety. You don’t want an audience. Privacy makes this conversation safer. You will also want to choose a good time. You will know if there are better times—some people are more receptive and have fewer work demands or stresses during certain times of the day or week. And when you talk, start with an observation and question, not a conclusion and emotion. It’s always hard to create scripts in a vacuum, but one that might be helpful is: "I’ve been excited about the new employee involvement program the company has initiated. I’ve noticed a pattern over the past three weeks. Each week, two or three suggestions were given to you and I hear that those have not been passed on to the committee. I’m wondering if we could talk about that. Would that be okay?" In your conversation, you want to honestly and empathically understand the reasons and jointly seek solutions. 4. Know what you’ll do if it doesn’t work. There are a variety of responses you can expect. 1) You and your boss talk about it and find a solution or not—but you are talking and that’s progress. 2) The boss agrees to a solution and then doesn’t change (which leads to another conversation about the pattern and the relationship). 3) The boss gets angry—maybe loudly, maybe quietly. On a bell curve this response is an anomaly and yet many people magnify the tail end to be the middle of the curve. They inflate the small percentage of this happening to a large number and thus choose silence and gossip rather than speaking up. If you play the real odds, you choose speaking up in a safe way. Whatever the reaction, it’s always wise to have some backup plans. If it doesn’t go well with your boss (it’s not safe, he gets emotional, etc.) there are two possible backup plans you might consider: a. Share your intentions and excuse yourself. Tell him that you brought up this topic to improve the results and teamwork in the company and that you didn’t intend to cause him any stress. Express thanks for his time and find a way to leave. b. Suggest a team approach. If appropriate, you might propose that the improvement program can be done by members of the team. After the suggestions are vetted by the team, one team member could take them to the Employee Involvement Committee. This might fit your boss’s preference or style better. For either of these plans, you need to assess what is happening in the moment and what might be the best next step. The point here is that you’ve anticipated some next steps, so when one option ends, you have a way forward. Preparation and sound anticipation improve confidence. Speaking up to your boss can be tough. Yet I remind you that if you don’t speak up, you are voting for the status quo. Also, if you gossip or speak up in a frustrated, angry, or judgmental way, you’ve diminished the relationship. Either way, you have become part of the problem. On the other hand, if you can speak up in a safe, considered, and planned way, you are much more likely to solve the problem and build the relationship. I wish you well, Al Related posts: A Boss’s Drinking Problem Chaotic Boss Crucial Conversations With a Strict Boss

I recently began a new consulting job with the Master’s program I got my degree from. It’s the MSIDT program at California State University Fullerton (CSUF). It wasn’t for any typical Instructional Design work which I’ve worked on (even in my side consulting jobs) but with social media skills at the center. I’ve done a lot around social media lately including participating in several Twitter chats. For the past several years I’ve focused heavily on increasing my social presence from LinkedIn to Twitter, and even this blog. This blog has been the focal point of my online presence and I think to build trust and authenticity in the social world, it’s a must to show a more personal side of yourself (or company). This blog has been precisely the place I’m able to be myself and jot down some of my thoughts. I’ll get to the consulting job with my former Alma mater in a moment, but I wanted to get some things off my chest about online presence. Some readers may be aware that I’ve created a course on how to build a portfolio and blog similar to this. Why does this matter? Social presence and authenticity revolves around being real and not hiding who you are or what you’re thinking/doing. It’s a necessity to have a blog and depending on your type of work, possibly a portfolio too. If you don’t have one, check out my course for help on building one. Now back to the important part of this website, the part where I spill my guts about what I’m doing. Fitting Pieces Together Another thing you may know about me is that I’m all for self-directed learning (SDL < ick an acronym). It may seem odd then to have started a consulting position to help a higher education program build their social presence and expand their program. Aren’t higher education institutions the epitome of non self direction learning? They’re all about formal learning right? They are mostly about formal learning, but saying that they don’t fit into self-directed learning is wrong. I went through the program and I don’t regret it one bit. I had the opportunity to find my path and the tools to get a good footing on that path. Since I went through the program I’ve been able to take my self-directed learning to an entirely new level. Formal education to the Master’s level is almost necessary for some, including myself. Since I’ve finished my program I’ve taken off on a rocket-ship of learning though I couldn’t imagine ever going back to school for anything else. Since going through the formal steps of education up to the Master’s level, I’ve earned the tools to take advantage of all the self-directed learning tools out there. My success has come from a lot of different activities over the past 10 years, one being my Master’s degree. Even though there are many options out there to learn on your own, I still think formal education has a huge part to play for most. This is how I fit the pieces together and hopefully it doesn’t seem as if I’m doing it intentionally to fit my needs. I am a huge fan of self-directed learning and think you can take your career anywhere with it, but I also think formal education has an important place for getting most people where they want to go. I wouldn’t have made it where I am as quickly as I did without higher education which was a big reason in giving me what I needed to benefit from the self-directed learning I now take part in. Social Awareness Program Now about the social awareness program I’m now heading to raise greater awareness into the MSIDT program. One question I have to propose and I’d love to hear your answers is: How do you gain authority in a Master’s degree program beyond the fact you get a universally recognized degree? In other important words, what makes one Master’s program better than another? There are better known programs out there which people speak highly of (you know, world-renowned) and they’re recommended by word of mouth. If you look into these programs you notice a familiar pattern, they offer many of the same courses and they take somewhat similar paths to get to the end. So what gives one Instructional Design program more authority over another? It’s easy to answer that question in the era of social media. The answer is usually (or should be) that they have a greater presence in the community and show their authority. They’re out there helping the community beyond their program by doing research, sharing it, and synthesizing it so a larger audience can understand it. This along with personal attention to all of their students which I’d argue is more important, but the program I went through already has that very well in their practice. The program was closed to a small cohort of about 26 students so they had personal knowledge of the professors AND each other. Now with the expansion of the program and more students being brought in, it’s important to also expand the social presence of the program to help the Learning & Development (L&D) community outside of the program. I’m going to be spending the summer working on ways of doing this and I’m looking forward to making arrangements with some of the L&D organization to showcase what great information and personal attention comes out of the program. Have You? Have you helped build a presence of a newly expanding higher education program or something similar? It will need a great deal of social media expertise for part of it, which I’ve worked at for several years. It will also need a great deal of marketing skills too though. This social media thing is 50% social and 50% marketing if you’re dealing with some sort of organization. It’s a blending of the two and making most everything public is of course my goal, this funny working out loud thing. I hope to hear from you along this journey and will be writing more about the activities I’m doing and how I’m trying to help promote the MSIDT program into its prime-time. The post Social Awareness Program For Instructional Design Degree appeared first on Nick Leffler's Portfolio & Learning Insights. You might also enjoy: Social Learning Has Never Been About a Single Tool Is Instructional Design Like Choreography? Social and Learned Helplessness in Learning

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Listen to Kerrying On via MP3 Listen to Kerrying On via iTunes When I was a young boy, I lived with my parents and older brother in a one-bedroom house at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the forest. Couple this isolation with the facts that we didn’t own a TV and our car wasn’t roadworthy enough to go very far, and it would be correct to conclude that I lived a rather cloistered childhood. By the time I was six, I doubt that I had ventured more than three miles from our home. I remember the day when all of this changed. Our neighbor, Wilson Cowslip, asked my mother if it would be okay to take me to the county fair with his son Billy. Mom smiled broadly and told him, "Sure, it should be fun." I had no idea what a county fair was, but since mom smiled so broadly at the mere mention of the place, I jumped at the chance. Later that day, as we drew near the fair, we happened upon a snack stand where I realized that, for the very first time, I was about to step upon sacred ground. There stood a shed that contained foods and confections I had never dared to imagine. I immediately settled on a hank of cotton candy and after sampling it, couldn’t believe that I had never before tasted such a wonderful invention. Where had they been hiding this delectable treat? Next came my very first candy apple. It was so beautiful I only licked at it for fear that I would destroy its luminous shine. And then came a fat, juicy bratwurst. Holy cow! Why had I been eating hotdogs all my life when bratwurst existed? From there, the three of us walked to the midway where I learned that you could win terrific prizes by completing various feats of hand-eye coordination. After throwing baseballs at bottles so long and so poorly that the worker operating the concession took pity on me, I won a celluloid stuffed monkey that I loved so much I wouldn’t let go of it for the next two days. Then came the real animals. The first structure we entered housed pedigreed rabbits, guinea pigs, and pigeons. Each animal was more bizarre and beautiful than the previous. Huge fuzzy ears, radiant tail feathers, fur so thick it covered the animal’s eyes—could there be anything more adorable? Some of the pigeons, I learned, if released into the air, would do summersaults. Imagine—acrobatic birds! Next came the show animals. There was a bull so large you could have fit our entire house on its back. Nearby were chickens so colorful that they looked like they had escaped from a Disney movie. At one point, I came across a steer whose horns were so sharp and long, I stood frozen on the spot. I couldn’t move. Where had this all been before I visited the fair? Certainly nowhere near our house on 25th Street. When I finally arrived home that evening, I nearly dislocated my arms, so wild were my gesticulations as I described to my mom and dad the wonders I had seen for the very first time. That day, I must have experienced over a hundred "first times." But the wonder soon faded. With time and repeated exposure, the new became the recent until the recent eventually wilted into the old. Consequently, twenty years later when the local county fair was promoted on TV, I wasn’t the least bit interested—that is, until my boys begged me to take them. I reluctantly agreed. And then something marvelous transpired. When the three of us arrived at the fair, the tired old place was made new to me through the eyes of my boys. It was their first time. Even though they had lived a far more diverse life than I had as a boy, they were still excited by the sounds, smells, and sites of the fair. My sons reveled as they stood in the shadow of the enormous animals. And so did I. They purchased massive turkey drumsticks and walked around chewing on them like pirates, shouting "Arrrg!" And so did I. Then came the coup de grâce. Each of us bought a mystery box at the rock-house display, poured out the sand, and discovered our very own thunder egg—complete with accompanying quartz crystals. Now my sons weren’t merely pirates, they were treasure-toting pirates! And so was I. Later that day, as I sat at home basking in the glow of a successful outing, I slowly became aware of something I had experienced before, but now I had a name for it. While it was true that I would never have the same first-time experience I’d had years earlier by simply returning to the fair (or something equally grand)—if my children accompanied me and experienced the event for their first time, I could enjoy a second first time through their eyes. We do such things all the time. We take a friend to a play we’ve already seen, not simply to view the play again, but to watch our friend and borrow a bit of their first-time reaction. When we do, we enjoy a second first time. It took another twenty years for researchers to fully understand this particular phenomenon. As it turns out, human brains are filled with what are now known as mirror neurons. When others are experiencing an emotional event, our mirror neurons are set into action. As these information-transmitting cells fire, we don’t merely understand what is happening to the other person or feel sympathetic toward him or her—it’s as if the experience is actually happening to us. Mirror neurons are the font of all vicarious experiences. Mirror neurons give us a second first time. I know this sounds strange, but I can be a bit purposeful when it comes to exploiting my own mirror neurons. Aware of the power of these tiny cells, I look for chances to hitchhike off the emotions of the uninitiated. At the age of 67, I volunteer my time by teaching an MBA class where newcomers help remind me of why I love the field. I serve as a mentor at work by meeting once a week with a young employee and discussing the history of our books and products. Oh yes, and with regards to my grandchildren, I can’t wait to take them to new sights and experiences where I can enjoy a third first time. As a parting comment, I’ll concede that not all first-time experiences fade and can only be revived by a second first time. We have titanium-like experiences that don’t wear, rust, or weaken with use. In fact, they can be experienced over and over and never lose their luster. I was reminded of this fact yesterday when my daughter shared the following experience. As she watched her five-year-old son Tommy play with action figures, complete with cute sound effects, she turned to him and said, "I love you Tommy." He looked up at her, smiled, and responded, "I know mommy." Then, after thinking about it for a moment he looked up again and said, "But you can keep telling me." Some things just never get old.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joseph Grenny is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE One of the most humbling—and to me, sacred—experiences I’ve had over the past thirty years has been hearing stories like those of Laura and Jim below. I say "sacred" because I realize more fully now that when we founded VitalSmarts, our mission meant entering some of the most intimate areas of people’s lives. Our goal was to discover key skills and insights that would assist people in solving the important human problems they faced. Since then, we’ve heard stories from many of the millions who have given us the privilege of entering those places with them. Through our work, we’ve been part of conversations between parents and struggling teens, couples on the brink of divorce, managers struggling with problem employees, and leaders agonizing over how to lead change. To those of you who have offered us this honor, thank you. And to those who are just entering this wonderful community of learning and growth, welcome! Warmest wishes, Joseph Laura’s Story: Putting Family First When Laura met with her father in April of 2012, she had no idea what a lucrative meeting it would be! They had a great relationship and she had no complaints about her childhood. But when they met that day he unburdened his heart about several incidents in her childhood that weighed on him. As a teenager, Laura found a well-paying job and her dad directed her to buy a car using the money she earned. However, both of her sisters used the family car and did not purchase cars of their own until much later. As Laura prepared to enter college, she decided to attend a local community college while her sisters both attended universities with significantly higher tuition and fees. Laura was the first of her sisters to get married and she paid for her own wedding. However, when both of her sisters were married, her parents made financial contributions to both of their weddings. Laura’s father handed her a check for $3,000 as a way to compensate her for these three areas where he felt she was not treated equally. Laura was taken aback by both the check and the issues that so greatly concerned her father. But the next thing he said blew her away—he told her he would give her cash every year until he felt she was fully compensated! She was very grateful, as finances had been a struggle recently. A year passed, and it was now spring of 2013. April came and went without a check, then May, then June. Laura started feeling angry. She recognized that she wasn’t mastering her emotions and began telling herself stories about why her father had not kept his word. And, instead of facing the conversation, she merely dropped hints. But after completing training in Crucial Accountability, Laura decided she would not slip into awkward silence and instead used her new skills. After all, the compensation plan was her dad’s idea and she wanted to speak to her father in a way that would resolve the issue without causing a new one. Laura mustered the courage to talk to her dad. She felt it was important to deal with her violated expectations without damaging their close relationship. She was living with a failed promise and needed to find resolution and understanding. Through the course of her accountability discussion, she explained her expectations and then allowed him the opportunity to explain his actions. How Laura used her skills: Describe the Gap: Laura identified what she expected to happen versus what actually happened. Choose What and If: She unbundled the situation using CPR and addressed this as a content and relationship issue. Laura wanted her father to follow through on his promise, and she valued the relationship and herself enough to not want to experience this frustration again the next year. Master My Story: She stopped telling herself negative stories about her dad and listened to what he had to say. Make it Motivating/Easy: Laura reminded her father of his previous promise and held him accountable to it by addressing it with him. Move to Action: They agreed on a plan for when she would receive the money and she followed up with a thank you call once she received it. Because of the skills she learned in Crucial Accountability, Laura not only received the compensation she was promised, but she preserved her relationship with her father—something of infinite value. Jim’s Story: Winning the Weight Loss Game In November of 2011, Jim attended a training conference in Scottsdale, AZ. As it happened, David Maxfield, coauthor of Change Anything, was also there. Jim attended David’s presentation and felt it was one of the most valuable experiences of his life. He received a copy of Change Anything and remembers eagerly reading it on his long flight home. He decided he needed to know more and signed up for a local Change Anything Training. He was so impressed by the change model he learned, he decided he would like to share this newfound knowledge with others. Even though he was not in a training role by profession, he received special permission from his manager to become a trainer and bring the course back to his team. In the course of Jim’s learning, he decided to test the Change Anything principles in his own life. He began a personal weight loss journey that drastically improved his health, energy levels, and outlook on life. At the author’s recommendations, Jim took a hard look at his default future. He recalled an experience in 1999 when his father underwent triple bypass surgery after struggling with several health issues; one of these issues was weight management. Jim had to sign the paperwork regarding who would be the decision maker if his father did not regain consciousness after surgery. Jim reflected on his own children—two teenage girls. Did he want them to face such an experience? So Jim put Change Anything to the test. He found that his crucial moments were getting to the gym after work, his lunch selections, and what he snacked on before dinner. He recognized that getting motivated to go to the gym after work left room for him to make excuses not to go. For lunch, he often went with friends to a location that had a Chinese buffet, an Indian buffet, and a Five Guys Burger and Fries. He visited each restaurant at least once a week. He also noticed that he drank soda with his lunch and ate more food as a result. When he got home from work, he snacked on chips or cookies before dinner. Jim focused on the following vital behaviors to counterattack these crucial moments. If he was going to fit a workout into each day, he would have to do it first thing in the morning. For lunch, he’d visit his company’s recently revitalized salad bar—keeping his head down and walking straight to the salad bar without glancing at the other tempting options. He also chose water instead of soda to accompany his meals. Before dinner, he made sure that fresh fruit and almonds were available to snack on. Jim reviewed the Six Sources of Influence and found ways to plan for each. Personal Motivation: Jim wanted to be around for his wife and daughters. He also wanted to stop taking cholesterol medication. In order to stay motivated, he kept pictures on his phone depicting his starting weight. He also created a personal statement, reminding him of how he felt when his father went in for surgery. He didn’t want his daughters to have to face a similar situation with him. Personal Ability: Jim began using an online tracking tool called myfitnesspal.com to assist him in tracking his calories as well as to better understand how many calories he was actually consuming. He finally realized what his mindless eating was doing to his health after seeing that one meal from his favorite burger joint totaled 1500 calories. For exercise, he found videos he could do that were very structured, like INSANITY and P90X. He was much more motivated to complete his daily exercise because he didn’t have to go to a gym and try to create his own workout regimen. He was able to use the spacious workout facility at work before he reported to work for the day, ensuring he actually got his workout in. Social Motivation & Ability: Jim’s wife was very encouraging and they planned a cruise for the following summer. He knew he wanted to be in better shape before donning a swimsuit in public. He also used the message boards on the myfitnesspal.com where he read other’s contributions; he saw what others struggled with, and what methods they used to overcome those challenges. Structural Motivation: As a reward for reaching his goals, Jim allowed himself a favorite dessert at the end of the week if he stayed on track. As he lost weight, he recognized the need for new clothing and bought nice shirts to reward his hard-earned efforts. Structural Ability: Jim also used myfitnesspal.com to track his weight loss. He entered his starting weight into the tool and made sure to weigh himself often in order to keep on top of any fluctuations he noticed. Results: By using the Six Sources of Influence, Jim lost over forty pounds in eight months. More importantly, he no longer has to take cholesterol medication! All of his health numbers have improved, he has more energy, and his friends and family have commented on how much healthier and happier he looks. Related posts: Crucial Applications: New Year’s Advice from Joseph Grenny on Forbes Joseph Grenny Introduces Crucial Conversations Second Edition Joseph Grenny on ABC News: Asking for Vacation Time

There are many questions that come up when deciding on what type of mobile solution is needed for an organization. I’m not going to cover them all or else I’d be writing a novel. The question I want to cover is whether to app or not. What I mean by this is the two major options for covering people who use a mobile device, either through a mobile app or through a mobile website. I think the deciding factor for which one you go for is fairly easy in most cases, but it’s not always. One question you should ask yourself is if an app is really needed. Can the requirements of an app be accomplished by other means and be more accessible to the user? I’m going to cover the two big options which is a native mobile app and a mobile website. Maze of OS There are a lot of different operating systems out there and that’s not going away. Beside the big players of Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android There are also a number of small guys out there such as Windows, Blackberry, and Firefox. There are probably a lot more but those are what I can think of off the top of my head. Covering this maze of operating systems is no easy task, or cheap one. There are developer fees, difficulties in having to create your app for each operating system, and more. Oh, you also have to know how to program or a lot of money to hire a developer for your app or pass it on to a developer who you don’t get to work very closely with. There are a few benefits to a mobile app though. First, mobile apps are fast, there’s no denying that it’s faster to tap an app icon than to load a website. Apps can be programmed in the operating systems native language which is a huge benefit. Facebook recently (recently being over a year ago) ditched programming their app in HTML5 for the native language of each operating system. Second, mobile apps can work offline if that’s a need. Website can’t work offline, or if you somehow are able to make it work then its still severely limited. What are some of the other benefits of going app? Simple Yet Effective No you can’t charge for the website as easily as you can an app, but then again you’re lost in the app store anyway. I’m talking about a handy website that’s mobile friendly. They can be slow, bulky on mobile devices, and take careful planning, but you can make an effective mobile solution with a webpage. Oh, did I mention all you need is a website, WordPress, and a responsive theme? Sure there’s more to it than that but those are the basics. A web app can even be developed which looks and functions just like a mobile app but doesn’t need the overhead and costs. I’m lumping in web app with webpage though I could go into detail about each of these. If you haven’t noticed this isn’t an in-depth article about them I prefer to go the website route because I can provide a great deal of information to people across devices and it’s easy for me to keep up. Deciding As an organization looking to develop a mobile friendly website, web app, or mobile app, there’s more to consider than when I have to decide how to show my work and create a presence online. In fact there’s almost nothing the same. Some of the questions I’d ask are: Does it need to be accessed offline? Is it external facing or internal? What devices are the users using? Should it be available on a desktop also? Do you have resources to develop a mobile app? Can you meet your goal with a website? If not with a website, can you meet your goal with a web app? If not a website or web app, can you meet your goal with a mobile app? (yes, actually ask that question) Do you need to take advantage of special mobile affordances? (gyroscope etc.) I’d love to hear from you what questions you’d ask. Every situation is unique but this is a good basis for questions that should be asked. When I need to get access to information through my organization, it doesn’t ever have to be from an app unless it has to be. Most of the time I’d be perfectly happy opening up my browser and typing in intranet.company.com and searching for the information I need. I have 260 apps on my phone as of today and I don’t need another app unless necessary (or if it’s so well made I have to download it). I have a few questions I’m interested in hearing about: How do you prefer to access information in your organization? Does your organization have any applications for internal employees? The post Are You Appy? appeared first on Nick Leffler's Portfolio & Learning Insights. You might also enjoy: Mobile Help Overlays - Ultimate Performance Support for Mobile Apps Stop Trying To Predict Mobile Users Needs Mobile Learning in the Enterprise, An Introduction

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joseph Grenny is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, I recently joined a new company that I love. The technology and services I will be working with are cutting-edge and I’m excited to be part of this thriving organization. The only downside, if you can even call it that, is that the majority of my colleagues, and even my supervisor, are significantly younger than me. While I’ve known this from the beginning of the hiring process and it’s something I willingly stepped into, I’m simply wondering if you can share tips for navigating an environment where I’m now the "old guy" and the pace and attitude of my colleagues is somewhat different than I’m used to. Sincerely, Old Guy Dear Old Guy, Hmmm…pace and attitude. That’s worth giving some thought to. I was about to offer some nifty Crucial Conversations advice about "negotiating stories" and "setting expectations"—and I’ll offer that in a moment. But as I re-read your question, the words "pace and attitude" jumped out at me. So my first advice is to do a gut check and set some boundaries for yourself. Here’s why. I worked with an executive team once that was riddled with resentment and mistrust. As we unraveled the pain I discovered that a couple of the executives joined the team after their company had been acquired by the current firm. These guys were brilliant, but had run a "lifestyle" business; one in which they worked a bit, earned a lot of money, developed great products, but had lots of time to windsurf in the early evenings and weekends. They also happened to be a smidge older than their new colleagues. The acquiring firm was chock full of young guns with boundless energy who were used to the pace of a startup tech company. These folks slept in their offices and ate pizza for breakfast. It wasn’t long before the lifestyle guys resented the young guns and vice versa. One side saw the other as soulless, while the other saw the former as lazy. As we sifted through the crucial conversations and unraveled the stories they had concocted about each other, the lifestyle guys did a gut check. They asked, "What do I really want?" They realized they did not want to spend the next three years living on energy drinks and Cliff Bars. As they clarified their boundaries and presented them to the rest of the team, they realized they were at an impasse. They were unable to develop a creative solution that wasn’t an unacceptable compromise. So, the two walked away; somewhat amicably. This sobering experience urges me to encourage you to do the gut check now rather than later. Be sure you know if your different "pace and attitude" could run afoul of work norms (hours, pace, quality, ethics) in the new firm. Determine what your boundaries are, what you really want, where you are willing to compromise, and where you aren’t. Then you’re ready for the crucial conversations. These conversations will help you 1. Set expectations and 2. Negotiate stories. First, be sure to talk openly with your new colleagues about "pace and attitude" expectations. For example, what kinds of hours constitute "full engagement?" How will you assess one another’s contribution? How do people connect with each other socially? Etc. You’ll do a better job generating a set of questions than I can by simply noticing what’s strange to you in the new place and exploring whether these are norms or just coincidences. Second, negotiate stories. This means that you must surface any ways you will diverge from norms clearly up front and let people know why you are behaving the way you are. That will help them draw proper conclusions. For example, my "lifestyle" friends could have saved a lot of heartache for themselves and others had they held a crucial conversation shortly after joining. They could have said, "I really respect the pace and attitude you all have about working long hours. At this stage of my life I am not willing to do that. And yet, I think I can make a contribution if you can accommodate my 40-hour weeks. Please understand, this is a life choice, not laziness. And then let’s talk in three months to see if it feels fair and workable to all." My guess is, if this had been done well, others would not have seen them as slackers, but as choosers. It may still not have been a "fit"—but they would have discovered that, without so much conflict. I wish you the best in the new venture. Warmly, Joseph Related posts: Working With a Negative Boss Working Behind the Scenes Working with a Difficult Employee

ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Maxfield is coauthor of three New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, I try to use crucial skills in my workplace but have struggled to sound genuine and have even turned people off with my approach. I’m no actor and I sometimes have to take a moment to recall some techniques. However, I’m worried that I might still be coming off as too calculated because of some of the formulas I generally follow. For example, during a content or pattern conversation I use a contrasting statement, then describe what I noticed versus what was expected, and finally end with a question as to why that was the case or what info I am missing. Judging by the other person’s silence, I get the feeling they feel put off by what probably seems like an insensitive show, but I don’t know how to make it any more natural. I’m being as candid as possible while trying to avoid all of my own messy emotional reactions. Have you encountered similar resistance to your techniques before? Yours Truly, Awkward Actor  Dear Awkward, Thanks for your question. New skills often feel awkward at first, and the last thing you need is awkwardness when you’re trying to be your very best. I do have a few tips that might help. Sense and respond. First, walk away from the formula. Instead of using the skills as a series of sequential steps, use the process as a map. Listen to the other person, ask yourself where you are on the map, and then respond. This sense-and-respond process will feel more natural for you and for the other person because it puts a greater emphasis on listening. It makes you more responsive to what others say, and it makes your responses more brief. Here’s an example. Suppose you begin with Describe the Gap. State the facts about what you expected and what you observed, and then pause to listen. As you are listening, ask yourself where you are on the map: "Do they understand and agree with what I expected?" "Do they agree with what I observed?" "Are they telling themselves a different story about the gap?" and "Are they feeling unsafe?" Depending on what you hear, you will respond with another skill. For example, if they don’t agree with the expectation, you will review the facts. If they are telling themselves a different story about the gap, you will use CPR. If they appear to be feeling unsafe, you will use a contrasting statement or another skill to restore safety. Get your heart right. We used to try to teach fairly sophisticated acting skills, such as how to look concerned, how to appear nonthreatening, and the like. In fact, one of my side jobs in graduate school was with a legal firm, teaching witnesses how to appear less shifty-eyed under cross-examination. But that’s a whole different life. What we learned is that if we get our heart right, all the subtle nonverbal cues we send out become consistent with our message, and we become natural. However, if we don’t get our heart right, then few of us are good enough actors to appear to be anything but awkward, unnatural, and insincere. So we no longer try to turn ourselves into actors. Instead, we change our hearts. I’ll remind you of a couple of mental skills for getting your heart right. First, use the Start With Heart skills. Ask yourself what you really want long term—for yourself, for the other person, and for the relationship. Let that long-term goal be your North Star. It should guide your conversation and keep you on track. Second, use the Master My Story skills. Remember, when we feel frustrated or angry, it’s because we’ve drawn an ugly conclusion about the other person. We are telling ourselves an ugly story. Change your emotions by interrogating your story. Here are three questions I use to interrogate ugly stories: a) "Do I really have all the facts I need to be certain my story is accurate?" b) "Is there any other more positive story that would fit this same set of facts?" and c) "Why might a reasonable, rational, and decent person do what this person is doing?" Asking myself these questions changes my emotions by opening my mind to new and different stories. Don’t worry too much. Once you have your heart right, don’t worry too much about the rest. People focus on your heart, not your head; they focus on your motivations and intentions, not your facts, logic, and argument. Others may see that you are frustrated or angry with them, but they will also see you are trying to control your anger, and that you respect and care about them. And that’s a good message to send. Stop sooner and more often to listen. At VitalSmarts, we’ve spent a lot of time studying opinion leaders—people who are especially respected by their peers. However, there is another line of research—people who study "low self-monitors." Here are two hallmarks of being a low self-monitor: a) If you think of a conversation as taking turns, low self-monitors don’t give you your turn. They monopolize conversations. b) Once you do get a chance to speak, low self-monitors don’t sense and respond. They don’t change course based on what you’ve said. For example, if you say, "I’ve already heard that joke," prepare yourself, because you are about to hear it again. What we’ve learned is that we are all likely to make these two errors when we’re in a crucial conversation. We want to be at our best, but we act like a low self-monitor. Can you see why? We tend to focus on ourselves and on what we’re trying to say, and we stop focusing on the other person. The trick to avoiding this trap is to stop and get the other person to respond sooner and more often. Practice and make the skills your own. My final tip is to find your own words and phrases. Integrate the skills into your everyday conversational style. Set aside some places and times when you will look for chances to use a skill here and a tool there—not the whole process but pieces of the process. Practice the pieces and make them your own. You’ll find the process becomes a part of yourself. Best Wishes, David Related posts: Recovering from a Crucial Conversation Owning Up To a Crucial Conversation Facing a Crucial Conversation?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Listen to Kerrying On via MP3 Listen to Kerrying On via iTunes The following article was first published on December 15, 2010. Thirty years ago, after landing my first consulting job, I could hardly wait to get started. For years, I had studied how to change the world and now it was my turn to roll up my sleeves and actually do something. The goal of this particular project was to take an adversarial, punitive, and authoritarian corporate culture and turn it into a productive, team-oriented place. At least, that’s what the plant manager requested. "And I want it soon!" the agitated manager told me over the phone. "Or heads are going to roll." As I drove to the airport on my way to the anxious manager’s factory, I couldn’t help but notice a bumper sticker sported by several of my neighbors. The popular sticker stated rather immodestly, "Irvine: Another Day in Paradise." Several hours later, as I exited the Wayne County Airport on my way to visit the client, I noticed Detroit’s version of the home-town promotional slogan on a sweatshirt: "Detroit: Where the Weak Are Killed . . . and Eaten." Later that day, as I interviewed hourly employees, I got my first glimpse into the rather un-paradise-like nature of the company I was supposed to help fashion into a paragon of cooperation. When I asked the question "If you ran this place, what changes would you make?" the employees immediately started ridiculing their leaders. At one point, they told of a supervisor throwing a heavy ashtray through a plate-glass window and then chopping up a breaker box with a fire ax—you know, to get his team’s attention. Later, during that same interview, a rather animated employee explained that the ashtray-hurling supervisor’s direct reports eventually grew tired of his shenanigans and one Friday afternoon chased him out to his car. When he climbed on top of it for safety, they lit the car on fire! Then things turned from scary to complicated. As I interviewed a group of supervisors from whence this ashtray thrower came, they (much to my surprise) seemed reasonable and rational—nothing like the slavering maniacs their direct reports had just described. In fact, they appeared rather pleasant. The supervisors did share one thing in common with their direct reports. They had a bone to pick with their own bosses, the superintendents who, in their words, were authoritarian monsters. Of course, when I met the superintendents, they seemed quite professional, and—you guessed it—they pretty much loathed their bosses, the managers. As it turns out, everyone at this rather frightening factory blamed everyone else for their problems and everyone—based upon the unprofessional actions of their bosses—felt justified in their own counterproductive behaviors. Why? Because everyone deserved whatever you gave them. And this wasn’t a problem unique to this particular factory, city, or region. As my career has unfolded, I’ve run into similarly violent and reactive places all around the country. Not everyone lights cars on fire, of course, but the idea of dealing back what you’ve been dealt is still widely shared. It seems one of the values reflected in today’s video games, TV shows, and movies has left its mark. All encourage revenge. For instance, the longest running TV show of my generation, started with the "bad guy" riding into town, getting off his horse, spitting on a nun, and pistol-whipping a schoolmarm. Then, for a full 55 minutes, the good guys sought revenge on that pistol-toting bad guy, who, as we all knew, deserved whatever he got. And to this day, this same troublesome theme continues on the screen. I recently mentioned our seemingly insatiable thirst for revenge to my next-door neighbor and he chuckled softly and stated, "I have the same problem with my own children. They’ll be in the middle of a squabble, I’ll ask one of them what’s going on, and my oldest son will invariably come back with, ‘It all started when he hit me back!’" "It all started when he hit me back!" What a clever encapsulation of a contemporary malaise. As long as others mistreat us, we can mistreat them right back. Because, well, they deserve it. I’ve thought about this issue for quite some time, and as many of you know, it permeates our writing. For example, the principle of working on ourselves first from Crucial Conversations suggests we need to think less about exacting revenge on others and more about our own style under stress. Equally true, maybe we shouldn’t mirror the very behavior we loathe. Transforming others into villains and viewing ourselves as heroes also fuels the fires of getting even. In short, in both our training and books we teach that responding to violence with violence is a bad thing, and I believe we’ve made some progress. In fact, in that first factory where a supervisor wielded an ax, leaders learned to effectively handle high-stakes, emotional conversations, and over the next two years violence decreased significantly. Today, I hope to take this message to a new audience: children. Actually, I’m hoping you’ll pass the message along for me. I know, asking a favor deviates quite a bit from your standard business newsletter, and writing something for children—why that’s virtually unheard of. But it’s my hope that if we can set kids on the right path while they’re still young, they’ll be better prepared for the unrelenting stream of invitations to violence that will most assuredly assault them as they turn on their TVs, play their video games, go to movies, and eventually show up at work. So, with the children in mind, and in the spirit of the holiday season, I’ve written a rather Seussian children’s tale that I hope you’ll share with the young ones in your world. It’s not about mistletoe, snowmen, and the like, but apropos to the season of love and tranquility, it shares a message of peace—the kind of peace one creates through a healthy and loving response to how others treat us, even when they’re being naughty, not nice. For this holiday, I plan on reading it aloud to my grandchildren. You might consider doing the same. Download Story Here Related posts: Kerrying On: A Holiday Gift for the Children Kerrying On: A Christmas Gift Kerrying On: My Favorite Gift

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joseph Grenny is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, At work, many times we have to say no to internal customer requests because they aren’t priorities or because we aren’t the people who can help them. The problem is that our staff has learned to say no too well and it’s becoming a negative experience for our internal customers. What ideas do you have for saying no without turning off our internal customers? Signed, Dr. No  Dear Dr. No, What auspicious timing. I’ve been thinking about this very topic because of a recent experience I had in the Philadelphia Airport. Having just finished working with a group of remarkable leaders from Southeast Asia, I was in a pretty perky mood when I approached the reservation agent to check in. I offered a cheery "Hello!" to the agent, who simply stared at me in response. At first I assumed she might be deep in thought on some other topic, so I said a bit louder, "Good afternoon!" She cocked her head to the side, closed and opened her eyes slowly, and said, "I heard you. What do you want?" Apparently her day wasn’t going as well as mine. I told her my destination, handed her my ID, and then asked, "Is my flight on time?" To which she answered… drum roll… "No." I thought I saw a slight smile creep up her face. Now, the information she provided me was highly accurate. So why did I feel less than grateful for her highly accurate information? It wasn’t the no that hurt, it was the story I told myself about the no. When you tell people no, there are two problems you can create; the first is disappointment. The second, disrespect. The first says, "The world isn’t going to work the way you hoped it would." The second says, "And I don’t really care!" While you may occasionally need to create the first problem, you need never create the second. In fact, the first one feels less vexing if delivered by someone who assiduously avoids the second. Here are some things to keep in mind when delivering a no. Find a way to say yes. Even if you can’t do everything the customers want, show you care by finding a way to mitigate the disappointment. For example, if you try to make a reservation at one of Danny Meyer’s highly popular New York restaurants, there’s a 90 percent chance the time and date you want won’t be available. Reservation agents, therefore, always come up with a yes they can add to their no. "I’m so sorry, Mr. Grenny, that time doesn’t work at the Union Square Café, but I can get you in at Gramercy Tavern. Or, perhaps I could move your time back two hours and then I can find you a table at Union Square…" When delivering bad news, show you care by proposing alternatives: different times, smaller requirements, other resources the customer can use, etc. Help, don’t scold. It sounds as though part of your problem is that people make requests of your team that don’t fit your scope or role. Of course, it would be highly inefficient and a misuse of your scarce resources to say yes when your duties are in another direction. In this case, you can still show you care by not just saying, "We don’t do that," but actually taking the customer’s hand to guide them to the place that does. For example, while on the same trip to Philadelphia I stayed at a wonderful Ritz Carlton hotel. In the morning, I donned my exercise clothes and rode the elevator to the lobby then looked around confusedly for the Fitness Center. A housekeeper noticed my lost look. Rather than simply saying, "It’s not here, doofus," she said, "Follow me." She walked me to the elevator, called for an elevator car, then pushed the appropriate button and wished me a good workout. Manage the story. An unexplained no feels much different from a no with a reason. For example, when the reservation agent said no, I realize now that I instinctively searched her face to see whether she cared. Perhaps the smile I thought I saw didn’t really happen. But you and I are hard wired to assess the motives of people we interact with. When we enter a room, a significant amount of cognitive processing power is spent scanning the room for social, emotional, or physical threats. Evolutionary biologists suggest that this automatic behavior is highly adaptive. When someone tells us no, our brains kick into assessment mode to determine whether this person is celebrating our disappointment (meaning they are a potential threat) or is sympathetic with it. All you need do to communicate the latter and avoid the former is offer a small explanation. There is a seven-second difference between "The movie is sold out" and "I’m sorry, we just sold the last ticket. A large group of senior citizens came in a bus to this showing." But the two feel much different. I’m impressed that you are aware of the need to offer a different kind of no. It speaks to your concern for your customers and desire to serve. Best Wishes, Joseph

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Al Switzler is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE   Dear Crucial Skills, Our twenty-year-old son has unfortunately been using prescription drugs for some time now. He came to me and my wife for help, and we immediately placed him in a well respected center for a twenty-one-day medical detoxification and rehab program. He went willingly and seemed to learn quite a bit about the entire rehab process, and what was required of him in the near future. Although he got clean, we suspect he is still not equipped with the skills to stay that way. We would like to apply the model in Change Anything to help him stay clean and live a happy, productive life. Here are our questions: Do we apply the model in a certain sequence or all at once? Are there sources of influence that need to come before or after another source? Should he help construct activities within each source or should we create them before we present anything to him? What are some known best practices when applying the model to this problem? Anxious to Start  Dear Anxious, As parents, family members, and friends, how we long to help those we love. I have found over the years that knowing how to help, and even defining what love means in these situations can be difficult. So I applaud you for your help and love to date, and for your questions about how to help and love in the future. Needless to say, situations like the one you are facing are complex and with the few details I have and more that I’ll assume, I may miss the mark on some parts, but I hope that as I address your questions a few principles or tactics will be useful. Before I get to some answers, I’ll provide context for readers who are not as familiar with the Change Anything approach as you are. When someone wants to change his or her behavior (and thus the results he or she is getting), often this person fails because he or she is blind and outnumbered. That means that there are more influences encouraging bad behavior than there are influences that encourage good behavior. The fact that you helped your son find professional help is noteworthy. And your suspicion that he is not well-equipped to deal with challenges now that he is home is spot on. Let me explain. Like everyone who goes to a program, he was a subject. At good programs, all Six Sources of Influence™ are applied to helping the clients do the effective behaviors. Again, for those unfamiliar with the Six Sources of Influence, a little side track here. At the rehab center: Source 1: Personal Motivation—Your son gets in touch with the reasons why doing drugs is dangerous and why being clean will bring happiness and success. Source 2: Personal Ability—Your son learns new skills like saying no, overcoming urges, and so on. Sources 3 and 4: Social Motivation and Ability—Your son is not surrounded by accomplices, partiers, or pushers, but by cheerleaders, caregivers, and coaches. Source 5: Structural Motivation—Your son gets rewards for small wins: gold stars and other incentives. Source 6: Structural Ability—The environment is controlled to make the good behaviors easy and the bad behaviors impossible. The big point I’d like to emphasize here is this: many programs are effective when the client is the subject. They influence the subject in powerful ways, but they don’t always equip the clients to be their own agents when they go home. Clients often remain blind to the skills and strategies that helped them succeed while in rehab. So when they get home, they can’t see the influences that will cause relapse. They haven’t been equipped to be their own scientist or agent. How do you help him see and use enough influence so that he can control his own behavior at home? So now to your questions: Do we apply the model in a certain sequence or all at once? Yes and no. The first step in the model is to diagnose. Why is your son behaving like he is? What caused his problem? What and who is helping or hindering? What are the times or conditions when your son is most tempted to take drugs? These are "crucial moments" and will help you identify and determine a plan to achieve the desired results. Focus on the vital behaviors and the sources of influence he needs to add and eliminate to make positive change much more probable. So, first diagnose his current behavior and that will lead to a specific, customized plan. Are there sources of influence that need to come before or after another source? Your son will need different sources of influence to change his behavior than someone else’s son or daughter would. Customization is important. What specific influences are helping, hurting, or missing altogether? Identify them first and then design strategies to turn those influences in his favor. By doing so, you’ll marshal enough influence that your son can change for good. Marshaling enough influence simultaneously—not sequentially—is key. Should he help construct activities within each source or should we create them before we present anything to him? Your son should lead this process, so he knows that he is the capable captain of his own ship, not just a passenger along for a ride on a larger vessel. You can be the guide on the side. There are two goals here. One is to create a plan so that he stays clean. The second is to have a process that motivates and enables him to be his own agent. What are some known best practices when applying the model to this problem? This question requires more space than I have. I will say that we tried very hard to identify best practices in Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success. The chapter entitled "Addiction: How to Take Back Your Life" is our best shot. I’ll end where I started. Bless your hearts for helping and loving your son to this point. I hope that the suggestions I’ve offered will assist you in aiding him to be his own agent and, on his own, do the behaviors that will help him live a happy and productive life. Best Wishes, Al Related posts: Overcoming a Lifelong Battle Against Addiction Change Anything: Overcoming Addiction Blind and Outnumbered by Life

ABOUT THE EXPERT Steve Willis is a Master Trainer and Vice President of Professional Services at VitalSmarts. READ MORE It’s a new year and with it comes so many "news"—new opportunities, new resolutions, new beginnings, new goals, new mindsets (or would it be new minds set??). It’s a whole new year! Indeed, it seems like with every breath I draw in a huge mouthful of newness. It’s invigorating and energizing! It definitely erases the bitter taste of all those "should haves" I was chewing on at the end of 2013. Now don’t get me wrong. While I love new, it doesn’t mean I completely neglect anything that’s not new. There is, at this time of year, an opportunity to infuse our "currents," "on-goings," and "existings" with new effort and passion. Take training for example. How do you breathe new life into something you’ve done or seen a lot? In some cases, your dreams include VitalSmarts’ actors—presenting a whole new set of problems! How do you make it new for you, and especially how do you make it new for the participants? What are you going to do during the course of this new year? What will be new in your delivery, in your roll-out, or in the way you’re targeting the skills? Comment below to share your ideas. Related posts: From the Road: So Much Training From the Road: Again with the Questions From the Road: By the Numbers

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ron McMillan is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, I have been through the Crucial Conversations Training and feel confident using the skills. However, sometimes an unexpected, angry attack or accusation surprises me. I feel emotional, get flustered, and do not handle things very well. After the situation is over, I can Master My Stories, but unfortunately the damage is done. What can I do to better deal with the situation in the moment when I can’t get my brain to work? Flustered  Dear Flustered, Congratulations on doing well with the use of your skills. You will get more and more fluent and confident as you use your crucial conversations skills regularly and consistently. You describe a very difficult situation where you do not have time to prepare in advance. These moments when we are blindsided or feel ambushed are among the toughest crucial conversations to conduct well. Let me suggest a strategy to help you do well in those emotional moments. When you find yourself in the middle of a crucial conversation and feel flustered and can’t get your mind working, call for a "strategic withdrawal." Now, going silent and refusing to talk with the other person may be hurtful to your purposes and the relationship, yet having some time to consider what to do and compose yourself would be very helpful. Picture a situation. John approaches you in the hall and says, "The VP announced today that your team is not going to give us any resources on the ABC account. Apparently your schedule is full. You are leaving us high and dry; meanwhile you end up looking pretty good!" Try saying something like: "John, you are raising an issue that is obviously important to you. It’s important to me as well. We need to discuss this further. Can you and I get together after our budget meeting this afternoon and talk about this more fully?" Notice what you have not done. You did not attack him and say all he cares about is himself. You did not blow him off by telling him you refuse to talk about this. You did not leave him hanging saying that you will have to talk this over sometime in the vague future. And you did not insult him by saying he should come back after he has gotten "control of his emotions." You were respectful and you acknowledged that his issue matters. You made it a Mutual Purpose by saying it matters to you as well. You then set a specific time when you would get together to give this issue the time it deserves. You have created a degree of safety with John and made a plan to do more. Meanwhile, this gives you some time to think things over. You can Master Your Story by asking yourself why a reasonable, rational, decent person would act that way. You have time to Start with Heart by asking yourself what you really want. You also have time to collect more information to better understand what’s going on with the VP. A "strategic withdrawal" is a respectful way to take the time you need to prepare for a crucial conversation. When you reconvene at the appointed time, begin by paraphrasing John’s attack. Focus on the main ideas he voiced without using "hot" words (emotionally laden or provocative terms). You might say: "John, you said the VP announced we would not be supporting you on the ABC account and you feel we are leaving you in a bad position. Did I get that right?" Now listen carefully. If needed, use your AMPP skills to get a better understanding and diffuse his strong emotion. You may want to use Contrasting to clarify a misunderstanding or use your STATE skills to add meaning to the Pool of Shared Meaning. There are a lot of possibilities depending on what you really want and what is needed. Having created a space for yourself to deal with your own strong emotions and plan the coming crucial conversation, you are in a better situation to deal with this emergent problem in a way that gets you better results and an improved relationship. All the best, Ron Related posts: How do I respond to participants’ concerns about participating in training? How do you respond to "That would never happen here"?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Listen to Kerrying On via MP3 Listen to Kerrying On via iTunes It didn’t take long for a heated argument to break out. Dozens of us had just arrived in Yorktown, Virginia to undergo officer training for the Coast Guard—each of us armed with his own story of the ghastly treatment that was rumored to lay ahead. According to scuttlebutt, we were soon to be marched until we dropped, cursed at, threatened, and mentally taxed to the point where many of us would wash out. And now for the bad part. If we did wash out, we would be denied the chance to become an officer, forced to sign a four-year enlistment contract, paid one-third of what we’d expected, and sent to Vietnam to die. Or so went the stories. But then again, you couldn’t deny the pleasant experience we had just enjoyed. After we climbed out of cabs that transported us from the airport, we were politely ushered to the mess hall, where the officers on duty greeted us warmly and with dignity. One lieutenant invited a group of us to his dining table where he regaled us with inspiring Coast Guard stories. Why, the silly rumors were wrong. This was going to be fun! Training was going to be like scout camp, only with gunboats and howitzers. Or was it? We were actually given several clues as to what lie ahead. The beds we retired to that evening didn’t have a chocolate on the pillow. That couldn’t be good. A note on the table said we would be awakened at zero six hundred the next morning at which point we were to gather at the "grinder." True, the term "grinder" sounded suspicious, but perhaps it referred to a coffee house where we’d toss back espressos while singing "Yo-ho, yo-ho, a Coast Guard life for me!" One could only hope. The next morning, after awakening to a version of Reveille that could have easily drawn blood, we donned our civilian clothes for the last time and wandered out to the blacktop patch behind the barracks—the actual grinder—where we continued debating what was in store for us. And then we heard it. A curious noise in the distance that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. At first I thought it was a pack of wolves. Emanating from the darkness came a feral roar accompanied by the sound of feet beating on the blacktop. And then we saw them—those charming fellows who had greeted us the evening before—the kindly officers from dinner. Only this time, their faces were twisted into grotesque masks of hatred and instead of greeting us with a warm handshake, they charged at us at full speed while screaming orders that none of us could understand and all of us desperately wanted to obey. It wasn’t long until we were all doing pushups, running with rifles held above our heads, lying on our backs doing an impression of a dying cockroach, and otherwise being pushed to the edge of sanity. Finally, at our first break (standing in line to receive inoculations), Jim Propopolis, the officer candidate from New York City who stood behind me, uttered four memorable words. The evening before Jim had sided with the optimists in the debate by insisting that the training we were about to undergo was going to be pleasant, not dreadful. Now, appearing as defeated as is humanly possible, and with a Brooklyn accent you could cut with a knife, Jim exclaimed: "Da Jamboree is ova!" Indeed it was. And so was the debate. The scuttlebutt had been right. We were about to descend into the seventh circle of training hell. Now, I’ve told this story before—usually ending with a warning of how things are about to grow more difficult—you know, the jamboree or good-old days are behind us whereas the future is going to be more challenging. However, today I’d like to approach the incident from a different angle. I eventually graduated from Dante’s training school, served three years in the Coast Guard, exited into the civilian world, and never looked back. That is, until one day over forty years later, when the Commandant of the Coast Guard asked me to speak to the top 1,000 leaders at a conference. At the end of my speech, I was presented with a yearbook from the class of 1971—my OCS class. I opened it and there staring back at me was a photo of my platoon. The rather haunting picture had been taken during the heat of that dreadful first day. We looked horrible. As my eyes worked their way across the photo they eventually settled on the fellow in the bottom right-hand corner—Jim Propopolis. He looked worse than everyone else. He looked defeated. Four decades of consulting experience coupled with the entire cannon of organizational theory rushed through my head in a single flash of insight. With Jim’s image fresh in my mind, I wanted to go back to 1971 and attend OCS again; only this time, I wanted to get it right. The first time through officer training, my colleagues and I botched it. With the threat of being sent to the front hanging over us, we turned into a group of selfish louts. When someone struggled with, say, celestial navigation, nobody formed a study group or offered tutoring. When someone had trouble squaring away their quarters, nobody taught them best practices. When a candidate washed out and was spirited off in the middle of the night, no one spoke of the fallen comrade. We studied alone, suffered alone, and occasionally washed out alone. And when I say "we," I mean "I." I watched Jim Propopolis struggle and did nothing to help him. He was the only guy in our platoon who was willing to appear vulnerable and as you can probably tell from his "jamboree" remark, he had a much-needed sense of humor. He was also a bit of a train wreck. No matter how hard Jim tried to look spiffy, he always looked like a sack full of doorknobs that had been dragged through a swamp. I worried about Jim. I even encouraged him, but I never actually helped him. It just wasn’t done. And when Jim eventually was whisked off in the middle of the night, nobody ever spoke of him again. The same was true for my other four platoon mates who disappeared to points unknown. Nobody said a word. And so Mr. Propopolis, I apologize. You were right about the jamboree being over. We were about to face hard times and that should have been a call for us to pull together, not fall apart. I know I needed your help and I suspect you needed mine. But I didn’t know I could help. I didn’t know I should help. I was young and frightened. Imagine that. We were supposed to be learning how to be leaders who would eventually lead teams, and we couldn’t have acted more selfishly. Worse still, this gross misconduct wasn’t merely a military anomaly. A few years later, when I took MBA classes, students were purposely pitted against one another. Collaboration was actually punished. As a result, classroom combatants verbally accosted one another while secretly hoping for each other’s demise. A few years later, when I was hired to consult with executives who had come through one of those MBA programs, what did I find? Silos. Leaders frequently worked against one another, spoke of others as "them," and failed to support each other under times of stress. They were a mess. Fortunately, over the ensuing decades most of us have come to realize that interdependent specialists need to collaborate—meaning we need to act like healthy teammates not combatants. And some of us do. For instance, that MBA program that used to encourage unhealthy competition has actually changed. A recent graduate informed me that students now share their notes, create study groups, tutor one another, and feel and act as if their teammates’ problems are their own problems. This should be true of all workgroups. Everyone deserves to work with colleagues who have their back. And if that’s not your current reality, it should at least become your aspiration. Organizations should be havens, not gladiator arenas. We should learn together, grow together, and help one another. Challenges should unite us not yank us apart. And most of all, when the chips are down, we should be able to count on each other for help. Related posts: Kerrying On: The Power of a Story Kerrying On: The Buck Stops Here Tough Promotion Decisions

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE   Dear Crucial Skills, I am struggling with the culture in my current organization. The goals set by management are ambiguous and seemingly meaningless. Performance feedback and "constructive criticism" are at first rare, then harsh and punitive. Morale is horrible. I dread going to work every morning! Everyone does. What can my colleagues and I do to make a positive impact on the culture of our organization? Desperate for Change  Dear Desperate, If misery loves company, then take solace in knowing that there are a lot of people out there who suffer similar circumstances. Job satisfaction, pride, meaning, happiness (maybe even joy), are not terms that many people associate with their jobs. Depending on the survey you read, as many as two-thirds of employees polled across the country don’t like their work. I once interviewed a group of front-line supervisors who so hated their jobs that they looked into the mirror each morning and talked themselves into going to work that day. Not good. When it comes to how most of us feel about our jobs, we fall somewhere between "thrilled to go to work" and "bring me a mirror." The fact that you’ve spotted a problem with morale in your current job and that you’re anxious to do something to improve it is good news for the people around you. It is an important issue, it can be addressed, and it’s definitely worth the effort. So, let’s start with a couple of key ideas. First, it doesn’t take much to turn a career into a job and a job into a daily grind. Lots of elements have to be in place to create both a job and workplace that generates daily satisfaction. One element goes wrong, and a job, even an entire workplace, can go sour. Second, there are lots of positive emotions that could and should be associated with work. Most people shoot for being satisfied, and that’s nice, but many people actually take genuine pleasure from their work. For others there’s pride; for still others, meaningfulness. Many find deep and abiding relationships. Some describe their work place as happy and, as we’ll learn later from our friend Rich Sheridan, some even aspire to making the workplace joyful. Imagine that—"joy" and "work" being used in the same sentence. It’s important that we acknowledge the fact that a workplace can be a cornucopia of positive emotions. It gives us something to aspire to. Stress shouldn’t be the norm. Anger, depression, boredom, disgust, fear, and other negative emotions shouldn’t be shrugged off with, "Hey, it’s work. Nobody said it was supposed to be fun." Work is too time consuming and life absorbing not to provide us with lots of positive emotions. Anything less would be a tragedy. So, let’s look at some likely places to start exploring and intervening, if you want to create a productive and satisfying workplace. Candor. When we first started studying people at work, we quickly discovered that every workplace came with a potential malaise. Often, people don’t feel comfortable expressing their best ideas. They quickly learn that if they openly disagree with the current thesis (particularly if their opinion runs against the majority or a person in authority), they fall under attack. Sometimes it’s only an ugly stare, but it’s an attack nevertheless. So employees learn to shut up to keep the peace and then suffer the consequences of working in a place where poor ideas are routinely accepted. If people can’t voice their opinions, speak up to solve problems, and bring their best ideas into play, they’re not going to like their jobs. Accountability. If you want to be happy at work, don’t take a job at a place where accountability is spotty. You’ve seen it. Coworkers don’t stick to their promises and let you down, and then nothing happens. This can be very frustrating. You end up doing the work of two because others aren’t doing their fair share and are getting away with it. In a similar vein, allowing people to bully coworkers, disregard safety, deliver poor quality, and otherwise underperform can lead to enormous stress. And if the bosses finally get upset at the current level of performance and then go off on a tirade, you have a whole new set of problems. If your accountability system and the face-to-face skills that go with it are subpar, don’t expect job satisfaction. Influence. Today’s marketplace is so turbulent that organizations are constantly being forced to reinvent themselves. This means that if leaders aren’t adept at both motivating and enabling changes in routine behavior, they’re going to create two competing camps—one fighting for the new, the other clinging to the old. If you can’t create a vision of the kind of organization you want to become, along with a path to get there, expect conflict, disappointment, and angst. Now, I realize that I’ve just addressed three areas we write about. There’s a reason for this. We believe they form the very foundation of organizational success along with the attendant positive emotions. Nevertheless, there are other factors to consider as well—each with it’s own gurus and theories to back them up. Let me quickly share four. Flow. After years of analyzing what leads to a deep sense of satisfaction with completing one’s daily assignments, Mihály Csikszentmihályi explains that if a job isn’t intrinsically rewarding, under one’s own control, and completed within an environment free of constant interruptions—it won’t be satisfying. Look for each of these three components in every job. Happiness. When Daniel Gilbert released his book Stumbling on Happiness, he forced us to rethink our views on what will bring us satisfaction. What we imagine will bring us satisfaction is often wrong. Gilbert recommends that we look to what actually brings others satisfaction, not what one imagines will do so. At the corporate level, take care to study what the best companies have aspired to and carefully consider those goals. Meaning. In a recent article published by Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, Dr. Jennifer Aaker suggests that happiness isn’t the only emotion to consider when evaluating one’s life (or, for that matter, running a company). Many people may not be happy in the moment, but they’re having a meaningful experience and that’s a good thing. The opposite can also be true. You can get something you want—which will make you happy—but satisfying your current wants is not likely to feel meaningful. In a similar vein, solving problems or working through tough relationships may not make one happy, but it can be very meaningful. As you generate your aspirations, consider a range of positive outcomes. Satisfaction and happiness are worthy aspirations, but don’t forget to include meaning on your wish list. Joy. In his recent release of Joy, Inc., Rich Sheridan dares to take on the challenge of making the workplace not merely satisfying, but joyful. After years of working in settings that should have been satisfying, fulfilling, and even exhilarating but were actually stressful and depressing, Rich set out on a mission to find what it takes to create joy at work. It turns out, it requires a host of elements—many tied to the physical environment as well as how work is actually completed. If you want to see how one determined leader turned a stressful workplace into one that is both joyful and triumphant, check out Joy, Inc. So there you have it. It is a good idea to try to improve morale with all of its attendant emotions. Start with where people currently feel the most pain. Look under the hood and closely evaluate candor, accountability, and influence. Talk to your coworkers about the issue. Decide what you want to achieve and then measure those aspirations frequently and carefully. Dare you ask if people can’t wait to come to work each day? Would you ever poll employees by asking if they think about their job during their commute, or brag to their friends about the cool place they work? Set your goals high. Aspire to create a workplace where people routinely experience deep satisfaction, happiness, pride, meaning—and yes, even joy. Kerry Related posts: Creating a Culture of Accountability Kerrying On: Finding Joy at Work Bullying at Work

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Andrew Maxfield is director of the Influencer Institute, a private operating foundation that seeks to increase humanity’s capacity to change for good. It began innocently enough. My wife and I bought a fixer-upper—a cool, though neglected, ’60s suburban gem—and drew up plans with an architect for a "little remodeling project" that we would do, ourselves, to "save money." You can probably guess where this is going. And if you’ve been there, you also won’t know whether to laugh or cry. Several months later, I was staring at our back yard—from my vantage point on the front sidewalk, through the giant crater in the middle of our house. This was a view no one was ever supposed to see and that was now haunting me day and night. By that point, we had nearly leveled the house, ripping off the roof and even pouring new concrete footings and foundation walls. My headache-du-jour was the entryway that we were supposed to build in place of the crater. This entryway would be a prominent design feature on the never-ending construction project that was now infamous throughout the neighborhood. More importantly, it would be the barrier to prevent passersby from walking their dogs in my dining room. True story. But there was a problem: I had no idea what to do or even where to start. I felt hopeless. It wasn’t just the frustration of the moment; it was the accumulation of weeks and weeks of stress. Not only could I not make heads or tails of the architectural schematics, I didn’t have the carpentry know-how to cut, treat, and install the planks of tongue-and-groove cedar that were stacked in my driveway, mocking me. Fortunately, my father arrived on the scene before I could find a stick or two of dynamite. An experienced builder and cheerful worker, he helped me break the task of building the entryway into bite-sized pieces. First we overlaid measurements on the underlying structure to make sure our work was plumb and square; then he showed me how to make mitered joints and cuts using a variety of saws; then we started applying timber oil to the cedar. Of course, I was overthinking each step and agonizing over my mistakes. But the act of doing, the deliberate repetition of small steps, gradually built my confidence and competence. Before long, the entryway took shape—and our local dog-walkers had to choose new routes. So my father won on two accounts. First, he showed up, and it’s hard to overstate how much I appreciated that help. Second, he sensed that I was anxious about my lack of ability rather than simply unmotivated, and he provided help in the form of unhurried coaching and teaching. Rather than delivering a pep talk, he helped me learn how to do what needed to be done, which in turn freed me from my feelings of frustration and despair. How does this homebuilding homily relate to your work and mine? Consider it a warning about a kind of thinking that can sabotage our work: when we see someone who isn’t doing the right thing at the right time, it’s convenient—but often dead wrong—to make assumptions about that person’s lack of motivation. For instance, in Influencer Institute’s work to accelerate the successes of microenterprise organizations, we’ve learned that it’s folly to assume that poor people are simply lazy. Instead, we’ve learned that they very often lack skills related to personal management, which they can develop through coaching and practice. Your conclusions about yourself and others can be no better than your assumptions, so train yourself to look for hidden skill gaps that underlie what appear to be maligned motives. Reflecting on my ongoing renovation saga, what’s most interesting to me is that when it came time to build the rear entryway to my house (very similar to the front), I jumped right in and built it without hesitation, indigestion, or help. Moral of the story? Never trust the architect. Related posts: Influencer Institute: Introducing the Influencer Institute—And a Call to Action! Influencer Institute: Beating Poverty One Vital Behavior at a Time Influencer Institute: Finding Meaning in the Mundane

ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Maxfield is coauthor of three New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, What do I say to a boss who consistently steals credit for my work on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis? If a question comes from a client and she doesn’t know the answer (which is often the case), she asks me to help her out. She then turns around and delivers my advice to the client as her own. She strenuously objects if I suggest that we call the client together—even more so if I contact the client—all in the name of "teamwork" of course. She also secures all of my suggestions for improvement of company processes and procedures and presents them to upper management as her own. I know all about "documenting" but I don’t feel like I should have to do that. A good boss would freely give credit where credit is due, as I myself have consistently done throughout my career. By the way, the "clients" are all internal. I have been with the company for over ten years and she has been with the company for less than a year. Feeling Violated  Dear Violated, I’m sorry, but I’m totally identifying with your boss on this one. While it’s my name on this column, our editors, Amanda and Brittney, contribute to it in many important ways. In fact, as I think about it, I wonder whether you work here at VitalSmarts. Are you a member of my research team, maybe Chase or Annie? I’m sure they share some of your feelings. Seriously though, your situation sounds very frustrating. I agree that credit should be shared. So, what can you do? I’ll ask you to forgive me in advance, because my suggestions may not sound like "fixes." I don’t think you should pick a fight with your manager. In my experience, you’d lose in the long-term—even if you seemed to win in the moment. Instead, my recommendations will focus on actions that are safe and within your control. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I will ask you to change—perhaps even more than your manager. Master Your Stories. The story you’ve shared is about your boss "stealing credit." You’ve provided several facts that support the story, and they seem convincing. However, I want you to begin by challenging your story. Here is why: You’ve described your manager as a villain, and yourself as a victim. Our villain and victim stories are often one-sided and biased in our favor. I want you to interrogate your story and look for the rest of it—find any missing facts that may fill in your manager’s perspective and make her more sympathetic. Here are the questions to ask yourself: "Why might a reasonable, rational, and decent person do what my manager is doing?" "What role have I played in encouraging my manager’s behavior?" "Is there any other, more charitable story that could fit this broader set of facts?" Mutual Respect. It’s clear that you don’t have a lot of respect for your manager right now. Why would you when you feel she’s violated your trust? However, you won’t be able to develop a positive relationship with her unless you can change the way you interpret your manager’s behavior toward you. Making this change depends on how you read her intent. Ask yourself: when she steals credit for your work, is it because she wants to undermine or destroy your career? Or is it because she is worried about her own position? Could it be it’s because she’s a new and unseasoned manager? If her motivation is based on self-protection or inexperience, rather than malevolence, then there is hope. We can all relate to behaving badly when we’re threatened or ignorant. We’ve been there and done that, and it doesn’t mean we are hopelessly bad people. Try to find a way to relate, empathize, or even sympathize with your manager’s motivations. At the same time, don’t be naÏve. If you conclude that your manager is out to get you, then take special care. Don’t leave yourself open to an attack. Mutual Purpose. You want your manager to treat you as an ally, as a member of her team. But she is acting as if you were a competitor, or as if she can’t trust you. You need to convince her that you’re not a threat to her career, her plans, or her broader purposes. In fact, you need to demonstrate that you’re in her corner, that you’ve got her back. Begin by asking yourself why she might view you as a competitor. For example, were you in competition for her job? Have you done or said things that could undermine her credibility with others? Does your disrespect for her show on your face? If these are issues, then work to change them. However, don’t try to change your words and actions without first changing your heart. Mouthing the words won’t work if disrespect is showing on your face. That’s why I began my suggestions with Master My Story and Mutual Respect. Next, determine what your career goals are—goals that don’t make you a competitor—and ask your manager for her help. Your manager wants you to be a team player, and that’s fine. But it’s also fine to have career goals, as long as they don’t conflict with hers or with being a team player. In fact, asking your manager for help gives her a positive, rather than a negative, way to demonstrate her power. I hope these ideas are helpful. Understand that I don’t know the facts of your specific situation, so take my advice with a grain of salt. Please don’t burn any bridges or take actions that could be career limiting based on my suggestions. Good Luck, David Related posts: Approaching a Hard-to-Please Boss Abusive Boss What Happened? A Boss On a Spending Spree