Question submitted by a corporate team-leader who saw Dean Hyers and Bill True speak on Emotional Intelligence
(responded to by Dean Hyers)
Thanks for asking. We have an easy, reliable remedy.
And you’re going to have to be consistent in building a new pattern. Right now, some members of your team have a “death-grip” on their misery. This can take time to turn around, and you want to be part of your own team, without polarizing the “sides” by blowing sunshine at them when they aren’t ready for it. It’s like something I heard in a really good seminar by John Sweeney of the Brave New Workshop, who talked about turning a “no, but” conflict into a “yes and” compatibility. This is kind of what you need to do. Bring positive and negative into the same universe!
First, your problem. You want to be positive to bring up the team toward the good vision you have for whatever tough situation you all face together. But they’re bringing you down, and with it, your confidence, your conviction, and your optimism.
Second, their problem. They’re feeling burned out. They’re weary. It really is hard to be them right now. They need empathy.
Third, the conflict. Isn’t this nothing more than fear? You’re afraid that if you see it their way, you (and your team) will grind to a halt. (Not to mention, you like your work, and they are miserable. What will happen if you stoop to their misery?) But your positiveness is a slap in the face to them. It threatens their desire to avoid change, and their hopes to have you (the leader) change the situation around them.
Your Revelation; We want you to recognize that you can meet them all the way (as in, go to their misery) and still get back to where you are (the positive optimist you want to be and really are). Humans have this ridiculous notion that if I feel what you feel, I’ll lose myself in it. But don’t worry. You can empathize and still get back. And you need to, so they feel heard, understood, and cared about.
The Method: What you need to do is this:
1) Join them where they are – both in words and feelings: (You can’t beat ‘em anyway.) The beginning of a conversation with someone committed to their own misery is to meet them where they are by actively listening and checking your understanding of where they are. You need to be able to speak back to them their situation to their satisfaction. Speak to both the situation and the way they feel about it. Ask them questions until you’re sure.
But where we differ from standard “active listening” is that it’s not enough to just spit back the words (although that is critical). You need to feel it with them. The way you get there is to simply ask yourself, “Can I open myself up to feeling what they’re feeling?” Together, the words identify the understanding you have, and feeling it with them creates the experience of true empathy.
“Let me check my understanding. You are furious right now, because the night crew, who’s supposed to be your backup is actually sending their work to you to do… That is very frustrating.” (feel it as you discuss it).
2) Then you may take them to your positive vision: Once you haven properly empathized with their situation and the way they feel about it, you’re free to show them your positive side, and the vision you have to improve what they’re frustrated about. You’re not trapped in their negativity. “Here’s where I believe we can get to, if we work together.”
If you want, you can do this as an exploration, and actually get their participation in defining where you’re trying to go. But in my experience, someone who’s truly committed to staying negative isn’t going to help you define the better place. Plus, your vision might not be up for discussion anyway. But their participation can be major leverage for you.
Regardless, after your willingness to go to where they are (with both head and heart), they are much more likely to be drawn to where your head and heart are in your positive vision. Feel it, as you describe your vision, and they will, at the very least, not be threatened by your positiveness.
3) Discuss the actions you both need to take: Only then, after joining them where they are, then showing them where you are (feeling their negative with them, and feeling your positive for them), can you define what you want them to do in terms of action steps.
It’s important that you reduce your positive when you talk about what needs to be done. Don’t get me wrong, you’re not being negative, you’re just reducing your positive. This is important because they are the ones who have to do most of the work. So don’t be all “peppy” when you talk about the hard work they have to do. Be just on the positive edge of serious – warmly serious. That takes the “slap” off your positive.
Also, if possible, talk about what your actions steps too. Do this because you don’t want to look like you’re not part of it. Sharing your own responsibilities (even if they’re nothing more than supervising or checking up on progress) makes them feel less alone in the dismal realities of doing the work.
Summary: That’s the way to deal with negative downers in your team: You feel and define their negative (empathy),feel and define your positive (before their very eyes), and define (with a low-level positive) the things that need to happen to get where you’re trying to go.
Put even more simply: With your head and with your heart, go where they are, take them where you are, and define what needs to get done!
Best of luck and write back if you’re still having problems!
Story Structure Links Passion And Delivery In Sales Interviews
– by Dean Lincoln Hyers
Film Director / Professional Speaker
A day in the SagePresence trenches most commonly consists of guiding people to powerful presence under the pressure of a new business interview. We help our clients show passion while looking professional.
While much of presenting passion is tied to body-language, a surprising link between the way messages are designed and your ability to feel the passion behind them can make all the difference when you’re in the spotlight.
I was coaching a vibrant professional with the gift of instant connection. She is one of those professionals who, even as you meet her for the first time, creates the comfort of having known her for years. Surprisingly, she complains that the gift is absent when she presents, and she’s unable to bring her personality to the high-pressure moment. Instead, she comes off exclusively serious.
Her serious presence is outstanding. But it’s incomplete, because her true personality isn’t only serious, she’s also jovial. She brought me in because she wanted more of her full-spectrum presence to shine within her make-or-break moments. How could she access the personable and accessible qualities of her personality during a new business interview, a time when she needs it the most?
We addressed this in a number of ways, and over the course of our session, we centered on an approach that might feel surprising: A method of crafting messages with story structure.
We worked together on crafting her messages with this structure. In business stories, as it is in the movies, a main character progresses from a not so good situation to a better situation. Delivering a message with this structure turns out to have a direct link to passion.
The thing to understand about story is that the experience of anything powerful in life comes with a feeling. If you capture just the measurable situation at the beginning and ending, you do convey a story, but it doesn’t move us; it’s just cold and lifeless information. If, however, you can manage to capture the feelings associated with the beginning and ending situations, you go beyond the information about the change to a full-fledged experience of the change you’re describing.
So my client and I began describing stories from one vantage (that of whoever she picked as the main character). We talked about how the main character feels in the situation of the beginning of the story. Then we talked about her plan (the service) for the main character, where the main character would end up after the service, and how the main character would feel at that point.
“Your staff (the main character) knows big changes are coming and they’re not part of making them, so they’re afraid [beginning feeling] of changes that are out of their control. We’re going to involve them in the process to empower them with input, and we’re great at building positive anticipation. That way, when the changes come, they will be prepared and excited [ending feeling] for them instead of worried.”
The key to for my client to expressing her passion was to capture the change in the feelings of the story.
When we listened to the story without the feeling we got an informational journey, but when we experienced the journey with feelings, we experienced the information on a human level, and this presenter’s body-language, voice tone, hand gestures, facial expressions – especially her smile – instantly joined the presentation.
So the story and the lesson become the same. My client was frustrated because she couldn’t find her passion when presenting, but when she found her power to structure feelings into her information, she unleashed a newfound presenting presence of passion, and was elated about her new potential – what a change!