Do you know when to call it quits? (I)

Mobility. The capability to move or to be moved. Ability to move or adapt, change or be changed. To move in the direction you want in a fulfilling manner.

This is the definition of mobility Timothy Gallwey uses in his book “The Inner Game of Work” on focus, learning, pleasure, and mobility in the workplace. Now, you might ask what mobility has to do with the title of this post. Take a guess before you read on… Mobility? Calling quits?

Well, it has everything to do with the title. Being able to say “That’s it! Basta! Stop!” is a very valuable approach when you realize you are either moving in the wrong direction or you are moving in the right direction but not in a fulfilling manner. Even though at times it makes us question our ability to persevere, being able to say “I quit” is an underestimated, underappreciated strength.

Let’s start with the first possibility that should lead you to say “I quit”: you are moving in the wrong direction. There are few conditions for this to happen:

• Knowing what the right direction is (And what that “right direction” is deserves at least a few posts)
• Knowing what benchmarks you should pay attention to in order to confirm you are moving in the    right direction (“I’ll know it once I get there” is not good enough!)
• Awareness that you are off-track when a deviation happens (This requires not being distracted under time and performance pressure or continuously operating on automatic pilot)
• Willingness and courage to accept you have been moving in the wrong direction (Often, we go lengths to believe and make others believe we are on the right way)
• Willingness to make changes to start moving in the right direction again (Since there might be “hidden benefits” of moving in the albeit wrong direction, eg., good money, status, approval etc.,)

A lot of the times people take too long to recognize and accept that they’ve been moving in the wrong direction. This might apply to many paths that we’re on in our lives, from work projects to companies we work for; from career paths to relationship paths… Panaceas?

• Take enough time and effort to clearly define what the “right direction” is.  The right direction in the current project you’re working on; the right direction for your career; the right direction in your relationships…
• You should determine not only the ultimate destination, but also the stations in between so that you can keep track of the course and become aware of deviations. Don’t set yourself up for a situation where you’ll say “How come I haven’t realized it for so long?”
• Within the pace of life it is easy to get carried away with time or performance pressure. You might find yourself from moving one task to another; one project from another , or even one relationship to another without a “chance” to reflect on how well your previous or next steps move you in the right direction. Use the following STOP tool to be more conscious and detect deviations in a timely manner:

• Step back (from what you’re involved with)
• Think (What am I trying to accomplish? Am I moving in the right direction?)
• Organize your thoughts (Pull your thinking together in a coherent way)
• Proceed (Continue with necessary actions)

• Once you’ve realized you’re not moving in the right direction, you have to honestly ask yourself: “What is the cost of continuing in the wrong direction?” Time, energy, focus, enjoyment, stress, reputation, credibility, confidence, respect, relationships, purpose…?
• Do the above costs exceed the “hidden benefits” (e.g., comfort, familiarity, recognition, money, approval, status) of the current, albeit wrong, direction?
• After your cost-benefit analysis, ask yourself: “I which direction do I want to go?” Keep going in the wrong direction? Or call it quits and change course?

Next time…What if the direction is right,  but the way you get there is not so right? And the times when I  called it quits. 

Falling prey to “False Consensus Effect”: Are you normalizing your success?

In a study published 10 years ago Cornell University psychologists David Dunning and Justin Krueger (now at NYU) demonstrated an interesting relationship between competence and self-confidence.

Their findings showed that incompetent people were also unaware of their incompetence and tended to overestimate their performance. They seemed to lack the meta-cognitive skill that allows them to compare their performances to their peers and realize their own poor performance. Only after they got training to become more competent they also got better in assessing their ability. This, of course, presents an interesting paradox – people become more skilled at recognizing their incompetence once they were no longer incompetent.

What I’ve found equally interesting in their results was the inaccuracy of competent people in assessing their level of performance. In contrast to their incompetent counterparts, competent people tended to underestimate their performance – they had less confidence in their superior performance. In other words, they did not think that they performed particularly “great” relative to their peers; they thought they performed at a “normal” level.

What was the reason for their underestimation? Were they just being modest? Or did they also lack the meta-cognitive skill required for making accurate comparisons , just like the incompetent people?

The explanation of Krueger and Dunning for this “burden of expertise” is a well-established bias in social psychology: false consensus effect. This effect refers to our tendency to overestimate the degree to which our own behavior, attitudes, beliefs, and so on are shared by other people.

There are a few reasons for that tendency. First, we take our own behaviors, attitudes, or beliefs as a reference point, or an as anchor when predicting the behaviors, attitudes, or beliefs of other people. Secondly, we feel good when we think others would behave or think the same way as we do. Besides, we tend to hang out and be friends with people who are actually similar to us – that further biases our point of reference when predicting the behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs of “majority”.

So, how does false consensus lead competent people to underestimate their performance? They project their performance onto their peers and “normalize” their success. They think others would perform at a similar level. The implications go even one step further when their peers are also high-performers – they might think what they are doing is just “normal”.

This might lead to a systematic pattern of underestimation in high performance environments. It might also give into perfectionist tendencies – thinking, to be “really good” you should be doing much better when in reality your performance is already superior.

How might this be relevant for YOU?

• Do you tend to explain your successes or good performance as “normal”?
• When complimented for your success do you respond “Thanks, but it’s nothing special”. Or go on to explaining how anybody could’ve done it? (That’s what I did years ago when my supervisor had pointed out how doing a Ph.D. was an indication of competence and success. Being surrounded with other graduate students, I tried to explain it away by saying ‘But that’s normal…” Well, I was simply normalizing my accomplishments.)
• Are you taking credit for your successes or are you consistently attributing it to external factors such as luck, “easy” assignments, “nice” evaluators (i.e., peers, clients, managers)?

If so, you might be falling prey to false consensus effect. The idea is not giving up the modesty and start bragging about your accomplishments, but rather acknowledging and appreciating them. This presents a number of benefits:

1. A more accurate self-assessment goes a long way in managing your time and resources strategically. You’re in a better position to decide where your attention and self-improvement efforts should be directed to when you assess your performance accurately.
2. A boost to your self-esteem. High self-esteem serves as a stock of positive feelings that lead to greater initiative and a decreased vulnerability to failures and stress.
3. Positioning yourself better in relation to others. When you start normalizing your accomplishments others will start doing the same (about your accomplishments) even when initially they were convinced about your superior performance. Once you give yourself the credit you’ve deserved, others will follow.

Now, try to reflect back on your typical responses to your successes, are you a victim or the false consensus effect?

Reference:

Kruger, J. & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 1121-1134.

“Confidence always needs to be a half-step ahead of competence”

This is one of the best pieces of advice I’ve heard of recently. Really, take a moment and let that sink… It is very precise about what should come first and by how much. When you think about it makes perfect sense!

A full-step (or more, for that matter) ahead is too much, generating an over-reliance on self-confidence that is unsubstantiated. This is very much related to the debates around the benefits of high self-esteem. Taken to the extreme, without a solid base high self-esteem can take a narcissist edge. That is, it becomes rather an unhealthy kind of self-esteem which is fragile, unstable and highly contingent upon external factors such as materialistic success, approval of others etc.. In other words, it is not backed up by a solid sense of competence – well, because it would be one, if not more, step ahead of competence.

We all know people who have that kind of self-esteem. Those who’ve made us recognize either their fragility underneath the egos they’ve built, or the complete unawareness of how unrealistic their positive self-views seem from outside. The outcome? Well, mostly these people live in a state of self-deception and continuously generate defenses such as boasting about accomplishments, downplaying or denying responsibility of failures, or putting others down as a way to make themselves look better.

Along the way, they either receive the pity and sympathy of people who recognize their fragility behind the surface, or they might encounter the displeasure of others who can not stand their boastful egos lacking the competence foundation. In either case the chances are they are not taken seriously or considered competent by others.

Confidence a full step behind competence is also problematic. In an earlier post I had written about four stages of competence – a model that describes learning as a journey that involves moving from incompetence to competence. In this journey confidence plays an important role especially for the transition from Stage 2 Conscious Incompetence to Stage 3 Conscious Competence. Conscious incompetence is an uncomfortable and awkward place to be – mainly because nobody enjoys feeling incompetent! But at that point your “half-step ahead confidence” acts as energy to pull you in the direction you need to go – that is, to Stage 3. With that pull you commit to whatever is necessary to improve your competence.

For those who are especially careful not to be boastful or over-confident, having confidence before – even if half a step – competence is not that easy. Many of us have internalized the “assumption” you feel confident once you have developed your competence. It is most likely that the relationship between confidence and competence is a circular one where they continue feeding each other. But within that circle, especially when undertaking new tasks or committing to new areas puts one in a “novice” situation, that a half-step ahead confidence gives the first push.

The most important conclusion of a thorough review of studies on benefits of self-esteem is that high self-esteem serves as a stock of positive feelings that lead to greater initiative and a decreased vulnerability to failures and stress. These are qualities that indeed pull people up to Stage 3 (conscious competence) despite the wobbling at Stage 2 (conscious incompetence).

Then, the question is how to make sure that confidence does come a half-step ahead. Two methods come to my mind:

1. Start with creating a vision of yourself at Stage 4 - Unconscious Competence - where your expertise or skill flows naturally. What would it look like to be there? How would you be behaving, responding, feeling? What would your posture look like, the way you interact with people? Once you have that vision try to live into that NOW as much as possible. This will “trick” your mind to start feeling that competence and confidence.
2. Refer to your previous journeys of learning. Remember how you DID manage to climb from incompetence to competence. And please, ignore those self-limiting beliefs that start with “Yes, but….” (Yes, but that was in a different area; Yes but, I was younger then…etc.). Use previous experiences a) as a way to boost your confidence and b) to remember what tools helped you along the way (e.g., social support, having more structure, more practice…etc.)

And enjoy watching the dance between your confidence and competence – it’s all about getting the steps and the timing right!

References:

Baumeister, R. F., Campbell, J. D., Krueger, J. I., & Vohs, K. D. (2003). Does high self- esteem cause better performance, interpersonal success, happiness, or healthier lifestyles? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 4(Whole No. 1), 1– 44.

Time travel: Will I really want to go for a run at 6 a.m. tomorrow?

How many times have you found yourself being puzzled about not being able to follow up on your goals although you were so convinced when you set them? Examples?

• Checking emails is a time drain, I’ll only check them twice a day.
• I will meditate for 10 minutes every morning before breakfast.
• I’ll go to the gym every other day.
• I will never procrastinate and hit the send button 30 seconds before the project submission deadline.
• I will speak up more in meetings.
• I will be a better listener/ more patient with my “difficult” colleagues.

I bet you can help me expand the list!

The funny part is that each time we are so convinced that “it will work this time!” We must be making some serious error or false assumption somewhere, don’t you think? Well, here’s one phenomenon that sheds some light on what might be happening.

In his book Stumbling on Happiness Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert talks about presentism - the tendency to let our current experience to influence one’s view of the past and the future. In other words, when we evaluate the past or think about the future we take our present experience (e.g., mood, state of mind, motivation) as an anchor.

Among its many interesting implications presentism also influences the goal pursuit. Broadly speaking, the goal pursuit involves two steps. First we select a goal; then we implement the chosen goal. Presentism plays a role in both of these steps – this time I’ll focus on the first one.

As I’ve mentioned last time, it is important to choose not any goal – but rather a SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Agreed upon, Realistic, Timely). That would sound something like: Running for 45 minutes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings at 6 a.m. This meets the specific, measurable and timely criteria.

If the person wants and is motivated to take on running for 45 minutes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings at 6 a.m., that would also make it agreed upon. In other words, the goal has been chosen by the person and not imposed on her by someone else. This corresponds to what some researchers call “self-concordant goals” – that is, goals that are consistent with values and interests of the person.

If it is a realistic goal or not depends on the person’s current level of fitness as well as her weekly schedule. Now, “presentism” plays an important role here – especially with respect your current mood and level of motivation. Research in the area of affective forecasting – predicting how you will feel in the future – suggests that we are pretty bad in our forecasts! That means when you try to predict how you will feel about running tomorrow at 6 a.m. you mainly rely on your current mood which is likely to be quite different from the one you’ll experience 6 a.m. tomorrow.

And this has important implications for the “realistic”ness of your goal. In other words, it seems pretty realistic right now because you are all motivated and determined about making it work but that does not guarantee that you’ll feel that way when it’s time to get out of the bed tomorrow morning at 6 a.m.!

I think this nicely explains why we are puzzled by not being able to follow up on our goals that we were so convinced of when we set them. We base our predictions too much on the present experience and underestimate how fluid our moods and motivation to act could be.

In these situations researchers who study affective forecasting suggest doing some “time travel” – that is, representing the future as though it were happening in the present. To be able to that we need to use mental images of the future more often and more accurately.

For the running example this would mean imagining as vividly as possible your experience of waking up, rolling out of the bed, putting on your running gear at 6 a.m. And doing that 3 times a week. How realistic does it feel? Effortless, somewhat unpleasant, painful, impossible? Making an accurate assessment would make your goal pursuit more successful.

If your goal seems realistic after the “time travel” next steps of implementation are more likely to follow smoothly. But if your goal doesn’t pass the test, you would be better of adjusting it to make it realistic – that would also save you from feeling guilty and discouraged in your goal pursuit each time you hit the snooze button.

Make it automatic!

I wish the title was related to a way that I’ve found to make my blogs automatic but when I am on (a looong) vacation there’s still an inevitable gap. Rather, the title is about how to make our action-taking automatic in order to achieve our goals.

Most of us don’t have a problem in setting goals – you’ve probably heard of at least one version of SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Agreed upon, Realistic, Timely). What most of us struggle with is the following up part. It is one of the themes that come up quite often in both coaching sessions with clients and casual conversations with friends.

Latest was shared by a friend over the weekend as we cruised in the canals of Amsterdam. He mentioned how much he loves playing the trombone and knows how important to have regular rehearsals , but somehow he can not bring himself to do that. It is quite puzzling for him – why fail to do something that not only he WANTS to do but also ENJOYS to do. I am sure many people can relate to him – I for one always wonder why I don’t go dancing often even though I know that is one of the things I enjoy the most!

So what is one to do to follow up on his goals?

Part of the answer lies in exercising the “self-control” or “willpower” muscle I wrote about a few times before. Another technique I would like to mention this time is called “Implementation Intention”. This framework was developed by Dr. Peter Gollwitzer , a psychology professor at NYU, who is a leading researcher in the area of goal pursuit and motivation. His frameworks outlines the whole process from selecting appropriate goals to goal attainment. I would like to focus on the part where he talks about setting implementation intentions that increase the likelihood of taking successful action to reach our goals. Here are the 5 steps to do that:

Step 1: Set your GOAL INTENTIONS (e.g., “I intend to do regular rehearsals”, “I intend to exercise regularly”)

Step 2: Set a specific plan about HOW, WHEN & WHERE you will take action. (e.g., “practicing every Wednesday and Saturday at home for an hour”, “going running Tuesday and Thursday mornings for 30 minutes and going to the gym every Saturday for 1 hour”).

Step 3: Translate the above plans into implementation intentions in IF – THEN form. (e.g., “IF it is Wednesday, THEN I will practice for 1 hour”, “IF it is Tuesday morning, THEN I will run for 30 minutes”)

Step 4: Make a list of possible distractions you might face along the way (e.g., feeling tired, limited time, TV, other interesting things)

Step 5: Set specific implementation intentions in the form of IF – THEN statements about the actions you’ll take when you encounter these distractions (e.g., “IF I feel tired, THEN I will rest for 15 minutes before my practice”, “IF there is something interesting on TV, THEN I will ignore it (the TV program)”)

The effectiveness of implementation intentions lies in the IF – THEN format. When you encounter the distraction you’ll take the action you’ve decided on without further thought – you almost make it AUTOMATIC! The same applies to goal-directed behavior – the day of the week will act as a trigger to take the subsequent action.

You might be thinking that this all sounds too simple and wondering why IF – THEN statements should make a difference. With these statements what you are doing is mentally linking an anticipated critical situation (e.g., day of the week or being distracted by TV) with an effective goal-directed response. Once “your system” detects the critical situation (and most of the time this might happen even without your conscious awareness) it automatically initiates the stored action linked to that.

This process nicely overcomes a few potential obstacles that you might face otherwise:

a) difficulty in getting started (outlining how, where & when and automating action help with this)

b) reflecting anew on the desirability of goal intention (automating action bypasses this)

c) staying on track (overseeing distractions and having actions ready to deal with them help with staying on track)

Studies have shown that implementation intentions make goal attainment more probable. When combined with setting appropriate goals and a well-exercised willpower/self control muscle you are more likely to achieve your goals by using these tools. So say it: IF I want to achieve my goals THEN I will use implementation intentions!