How Do You Do Conflict? Are You in Conflict over Substance or Style?

June 9, 2014 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By

I recently read in another Leadership blog citing a study of top leaders that found they spend up to 26% of their day doing conflict management. With that kind of time related to solving conflicts at work, it behooves us to learn more about conflict management and conflict sequences and how to resolve issues effectively.  Relationship Awareness® is founded on the guiding principle that we are each seen as the expert on ourselves – only we know our true, authentic motives for behaving and communicating as we do. And once we discover our motives and learn about ourselves, then we have the responsibility to use that knowledge to the best of our ability for positive effort and/or change in the world in relating to others. Relationship Awareness is also built upon four simple yet profound premises:

  • We all do what we do because we want to feel good about ourselves and protect our self-worth.
  • We tend to take two different approaches to life:
  1.  When things are going well, in our everyday life
  2. ‘When we are in conflict or are challenged and stressed about something

 

  • A “personal weakness” is no more or no less than the overdoing or misapplying of a personal strength and one that others do not value. We can misapply our strengths in four different ways:

Frequency – we deploy it too often or not enough

Duration – we deploy it for too long or not long enough

Intensity – we deploy it with too much power or verve, or with not enough zest or passion

Context – we deploy it in the wrong place, with the wrong person or at the wrong time or any combination of the three

 

  • We naturally tend to perceive the behaviors of others through our own filter, our Motivational Value System, one that we have grown up with and reinforced by our behavior throughout our lives.

The Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI)®  is a whole-life, dual-state, interpersonal inventory focusing on motivation when things are going well and changes in motivation in conflict situations or when we are faced with a problem or challenge to our self-worth. Some of us change our behavior dramatically when we are in conflict and we don’t seem to exhibit the same types of clustered characteristics normally associated with our Motivational Value System that we “own” when things are going well. Others exhibit very little behavior change when they are faced with opposition or conflict and their outward behavior seems to reflect the same types of characteristics that they exhibit when things are going well.

Relationship Awareness Theory addresses these differences of motivation by identifying the three stages of conflict as well as the Conflict Management Sequence that each of us goes through when faced with a challenge to our Motivational Value System. Behavior in conflict can best be understood and managed when the purpose behind it is clear. The costs of conflict are well-documented – high turnover, grievances and lawsuits, absenteeism, divorce, dysfunctional families, prejudice or fear.

There are two types of conflict: warranted conflict and unwarranted conflict:

  • Warranted Conflict –  when each party wants different outcomes or desired goal (I want to go out for dinner and you want to stay home and skip dinner)
  • Unwarranted Conflict – when each party wants a similar outcome, but the means or style of getting there differs (we both want to go out to dinner and I want fine dining and you want fast food)

A conflict sequence is a predictably sequential set of changes in behavior and communication styles and focus during conflict. There are three stages of conflict and our focus and communication style changes in each deepening stage. We move through the three stages when we cannot resolve the conflict in the previous stage. Each of us moved through these sequences at different rates and with a differing set of characteristics as mentioned above. Knowing another person’s conflict sequence can help you determine which stage of conflict they are in at the moment and can help you predict where they are going next, or on what they are focused. It can help save face, feelings, misunderstandings, time, effort, energy, and money or other resources. The three stages of conflict have these characteristics:

  • Stage One – the focus is on me, you and the problem, and on maintaining self-worth: we speak professionally, civilly and work together to attain desired outcomes while looking at the problem and considering each other’s feelings. I may accommodate others, rise to the challenge or be prudently cautious.
  • Stage Two – the focus is on me and the problem, and on preserving self-worth: you drop out of the equation and I may surrender conditionally, fight to win or pull back and analyze the situation.
  • Stage Three – the focus is on me and protecting my self-worth: I may not even remember what we are fighting about or care to be respectful of you; I just want to win and save face in the process. I may surrender completely, fight for survival, or withdraw completely.

Our ability to focus diminishes in each progressive stage of conflict; we are more likely to attempt to resolve conflict at Stage One – where the parties involved are still concerned about each other. We see more clearly the costs of allowing conflict in the organization to get stuck at Stage Two – where a lack of concern for the other party generates turf battles and stifles communication. By coming to understand our own conflict sequences better, we feel more empowered to manage the conflict in our lives. Some organizations who have employed the use of the SDI in their conflict management pursuits have realized a 6841% return on investment by avoiding formal and informal grievances, saving them hundreds of thousands of dollars in direct and indirect costs.

Relationship Awareness tools help us to identify the source of our conflict and manage it more effectively – reducing unwarranted conflict and turning warranted conflict into opportunities for growth and the strengthening of relationships. These tools are unique among conflict management tools because they assess our motivational values. They get at the reasons behind conflict behaviors and show how those reasons connect to our motivational values when things are going-well.

We learn to recognize these changes in ourselves and in others – then learn what to do about it. Once we have a better understanding of ourselves and how we operate, communicate and move through the world, our self-mastery helps us become aware of how others move through their world. This ever-widening sphere of understanding helps individuals, organizations, families, teams and others communicate on a more authentic level for more successful outcomes. Relationship Awareness® is a registered trademark of Personal Strengths Publishing. For your very own personal assessment and facilitated consult to see where you stand in the conflict management spectrum, contact Gaia@GaiaHart.com.

Read More →

More on Happiness and Your Health

June 1, 2014 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By

It begins with happiness. Happiness is not the end state. Happiness is the starting point that leads to all kinds of positive things in your life including your health. Choosing to insert moments of happiness into your day (I call them holi-moments instead of holidays), is like a string of pearls of joy. Stringing together all the pearls of happiness each day creates a happy, healthier life. Here are some of the things stemming from happiness as a secret ingredient. Extensive research in the Positive Psychology movement of the past couple decades has proven that happy people:

  1. Have fewer strokes and heart attacks
  2. Get sick less often in general – fewer colds, viruses and flu incidents
  3. Have a stronger immune system in general
  4. Have less pain and inflammation
  5. Sleep better
  6. Develop resistance to stress and adversity
  7. Enjoy improved work performance and success
  8. Have more fulfilling and longer-lasting marriages
  9. Attract more friends and are more social
  10. Are more altruistic and have a greater positive impact on society
  11. Attract more wealth
  12. Are more connected and active in their communities
  13. Have a larger network
  14. Live longer

The research is very clear that these things don’t lead to happiness. The exact opposite is true – that happiness leads to these positive outcomes. Happiness is the first ingredient to living a better life all the way around. We’ve had it backward for many years – thinking that IF we have these other things, THEN we’ll be happy. Now we have scientific evidence that the polar opposite is true – happiness comes first to attract these other things. Happiness is something we can do right now to start attracting these other things to us. Albert Schweitzer summed it up well: Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.”

Read More →

F1 – Function – What is Yours?

May 26, 2014 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By

What is your function in life? Studies show that those who have a purpose, and are actively working towards achieving their goals, are happier than those who just show up for life each day. Set goals, change them, as your needs or situations change, and actively work on them. Do you have a mission statement and vision statement for creating your personal life as well as running your business or working in your organization? How does your professional function merge with your personal purpose? Writing down your goals, your purpose, and your function help to ingrain those visions into your subconscious to assist you in achieving them and giving you energy by looking forward to them. I’ve said it before in other posts – find your why that makes you cry and you’re on your way to living out your calling.

Anticipating and preparing for congruent personal and professional functions add energy and enthusiasm to your life. Knowing your function can give you the strength to face adversity in the world. Help increase your resilience to stress by choosing to align your workplace values with your personal values and purpose. When these two foundational things are congruent, you get the least stress and the most energy from the partnership. A playbook by Kathie Hightower called Your Enchanted Life: A Journal of Discovery & Delight at www.JumpIntoLife.net has tons of exercises and action steps to help you discover your function and what you really want. Spend some quiet time and meditate on your fuction and your why, then match that to how you can best serve. I find that being in nature helps me clear my head and clarify my thoughts.

Read More →

Insights into the Motivations Behind Behaviors According to Relationship Awareness® Theory

May 18, 2014 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By

Couldn’t we all just get along? Individual and organizational success depends upon the quality and effectiveness of the working relationships between people. Conflicts that arise between people can damage a healthy personal or professional environment and affect individual or organizational productivity. By providing people with powerful insights into the motivations behind behavior, having the knowledge about Relationship Awareness® helps to build better relationships both personally and professionally. We work together more effectively when we better understand potential differences between ourselves and others — an understanding that empowers us to choose behavior that achieves intended results.

When we have a way to better predict how others will react to situations, we are better able to approach that person in the manner that will be most successful, and then be prepared to handle the outcome of the encounter.  Leaders who deploy learning assessments for themselves and their teams are better positioned to improve morale and meaning at work. When we know better, we are capable of doing better and we have the tools in the form of assessments to help us know better. There are many dozens of personality and leadership assessments on the market and I will cover one of my favorites in this article.

Relationship Awareness Theory, like many psychological theories, holds that all people want to have relationships with other people. It is a Motivational Theory which addresses the motives that are behind everyday behavior when we are relating to others. Like Freudian theory, it assumes that there is meaning behind all behavior. By shifting our focus from only looking at behavior or outcomes, to looking at the motive behind the behavior, we can gain a clearer understanding of ourselves and others. Therein lies the basic difference between typologies such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or the DISC, which measure behavioral outcomes and the Strength Deployment Inventory, which measures the motivations behind the behavior. For example, we all eat, which is a behavior. But we each have a different motivation behind our behavior of eating such as stress, boredom, social obligation, forced by parent, hunger, to get strong, to grow taller, or to get healthy.

Developed by Dr. Elias Porter with over forty years studying Freud, Eric Fromm and practice as a psychologist under tutelage of Carl Rogers, the theory assumes that behavior arises from purposeful strivings for gratification. Motives, what people want from relationships, are the basic antecedents for behavior. Behavior flows from how one’s character is organized and the manner in which character is organized stems from certain motivations, and motivations come from needs. People are born with a predisposition for a particular motive set. From Fromm’s writings, Dr. Porter further articulated that there were four main strivings, or motivations apparent in us, based on consistencies in behavior and characteristics predominantly found in these four main categories of motivations, along with three other blends of the main categories.

Each of us has internal motives, the why’s of our behavior and communication styles. It is assumed that we each have some quantity of each of the personal strengths in our makeup. The degree of each strength varies from person to person so that no two people are exactly alike, even when the personal strengths that we use most frequently are the same. Unlike other “personality profiles” that quantify only a handful of measured styles, Relationship Awareness Theory and the accompanying Strength Deployment Inventory measures 27 million different individual styles by acknowledging our differing styles both in and out of conflict.

Behavior and the way we communicate, work, or interact with others flows from conceptual orientation, and conceptual orientation flows from systems of strivings. Relationship Awareness Theory is based on the premise that our behavior traits are consistent with what we find gratifying in interpersonal relations and with concepts or beliefs we hold about how to interact with others to achieve those gratifications.

Relationship Awareness Theory identifies three styles of relating and communicating which have very different motives and outcomes.  The first, the Valued Relating Style (VRS) is a cluster of behaviors consistent with our own Motivational Value System, which supports our sense of self-worth.  It is our internal filter through which life is interpreted and understood, a unifying set of motivational values, which serve as the basis for judging ourselves and others and for engaging in behavior that enhances our sense of personal worth. When we operate out of our Valued Relating Style, we are in the zone and feel a sense of flow with natural and easy behavior that is comfortable to us and we are rewarded by that behavior.

Each Motivational Value System carries with it a cluster of behaviors called the Valued Relating Style (VRS), the external expression of the Motivational Value System. The style of relating which a person normally prefers to use is their Valued Relating Style – the style of relating to others we most often like to follow because most of the time it makes us feel good about ourselves to act that way. When we frequently use a particular set of behaviors or communication in a particular way, it becomes our most noticeable and most “characteristic” pattern of behavior.

Below are the four main motives for behavior and the three blends of behavior called the Motivational Value Systems. Each category has a light side and a dark side. When a positive trait or strength is overdone or misapplied, it becomes a detriment or a weakness. Some of the characteristic traits are listed with each style below.

  1. The first primary style is those whose major striving is to be genuinely helpful to and nurturing to others, with little or no concern for what they receive in return. They have the Altruistic-Nurturing Motivation. Leaders with this style may be more willing to bend a rule or let go of a desired outcome in exchange for better morale or the benefit of an individual employee – trusting that creating a better working environment will lead to a desired goal.
    1. Characteristic Strengths: trusting, loyal, helpful, modest, devoted, caring, supportive
    2. Overdone Strengths: gullible, blind follower, smothering, self-effacing, subservient, submissive
  2. Those associated with the exploitative orientation (the striving to take from others) whose major concern is to be leaders of others, but not at others’ expense have the Assertive-Directing Motivation. They are concerned with task accomplishment and organization of resources. The Valued Relating Style that supports this Motivational Value System would likely include competitive, persuasive or risk-taking behaviors, and would be inclined to do whatever it took to get the job done. They tend to be outcome oriented and may try to find the quickest route to a desirable result and want to be the first to market with new products or ideas. They may be willing to reduce research time or over-burden individuals in pursuit of results.
    1. Characteristic Strengths: self-confident, ambitious, persuasive, forceful, competitive, risk taker
    2. Overdone Strengths: arrogant, ruthless, abrasive, dictatorial, rash, combative, gambler
  3. Those who predominantly display the hoarding orientation (the striving for infinite security) whose major concern is with logic and analysis to create order and achieve self-reliance and self-dependence (not independence) as their way of relating to others have the Analytic-Autonomizing Motivation. They tend to be concerned about processes, fairness and order. They may prioritize standards, accuracy, and thoroughness in their decision-making. They may be willing to defer an opportunity or restrict access to needed resources until certain of the appropriate action.
    1. Characteristic Strengths: cautious, reserved, methodical, analytical, principled, fair, preserving
    2. Overdone Strengths: suspicious, cold, rigid, nit picking, unbending, unfeeling, stubborn,
  4. The last primary style is those who display a multiplicity of behaviors, in a consensus-based style, fairly evenly divided amongst the above three orientations have a varying concern depending upon the situation. They can float between the other motivations based upon their needs at that time and their way of relating to others is known as the Flexible-Cohering motivation. These people tend to be concerned about incorporating input from multiple sources to produce a result acceptable to all parties. They tend to select strategies that allow future flexibility and preserve or generate future options. In an effort to balance their decision-making, they may make decisions that look inconsistent to observers and are often termed unpredictable.
    1. Characteristic Strengths: flexible, open to change, socializer, experimenter, adaptable, tolerant
    2. Overdone Strengths: wishy-washy, inconsistent, aimless, spineless, uncaring, without focus

We learn these behaviors and become entrenched in them as we grow up by getting positive feedback through exhibiting these behaviors. We learn that when we practice this behavior and are rewarded, the behavior strengthens and will be used, or deployed, with more frequency than other behaviors. Those with other Motivational Value Systems may also deploy similar behaviors, but value them differently, choose them less often, or use them in service of different goals, making them a part of a different Valued Relating Style.

Caution must be used to group people in categories based upon their consistency in behavior according to that particular style. It gives us a very valuable base for predicting much of a person’s behavior, yet we must avoid stereotyping and predicting that because the individual behaves in “this way” as a general rule he or she will behave in “this way” in a specific instance. Thought must be given as to whether or not that particular style of behaving is most likely to produce the outcome that person wants to produce.

The Strength Deployment Inventory®, Relationship Awareness® tools are trademarks of Personal Strengths Publishing. Leaders who want to shine some light on the blind spots of themselves and their teams would be wise to embrace the teachings of Dr. Elias Porter and his assessment to help uncover the motivations behind the behaviors of a work team. Once we see what the light reveals, it is very difficult to hide in the darkness again. For this and other assessments for yourself and your team to enlighten the workplace, contact Gaia@GaiaHart.com.

Read More →

Shift: Shift Tasks to Increase Energy

May 12, 2014 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By

Adults, in our infinite wisdom, think that children have short attention spans. Children know they are just shifting to a task that brings them more energy when they are getting drained from the task at hand. Shift from left-brain tasks such as budgeting and “administrivia” to right-brain-oriented tasks such as reading your mail, playing with a pet, or talking on the phone. Your productivity will increase and your mind will feel refreshed with this shift in gears. The same shift is needed when working on a right-brained creative project. If the ideas stop flowing, shift gears to something more mundane or something fun to give your brain a break.

Shifting your body also shifts your way of thinking and gives you a new perspective. Get up and move to jostle your body, jog your memory, and get that blood flowing to your brain to carry more vital oxygen to your cells upstairs. If you have been staring at a computer screen for too long, even shifting your gaze and your focus to something else will help with your energy.

Shift your tasks according to your body and brain rhythms to be more productive. If you are brain-dead after lunch, use the morning hours for creative tasks and the afternoon for less taxing projects. If you are not a morning person, then make sure your important meetings and difficult tasks are scheduled after your body wakes up and is alert enough to handle the task. Becoming more child-like, which is not to say childish, will give you more energy by going with the flow of energy and shifting your tasks, your brain, and your body to something that excites you and holds your attention.

Listen to your body and when it is fighting the urge, take a break and come back to your task when you are fresh. It will save you stress, mistakes, and mishaps. Sometimes you have to shift your space and move towards the Escape key to shake things up and shift into high gear. As I wrote this revision for my book Keys to Energize, I was floating aboard ship in the Caribbean harbor of St. Kitts to have the solitude I needed to think and type without interruption. Cruising solo having the world come to your balcony is a fantastic way to write and recharge. Take stock of your needs and figure out if you need to downshift or shift into high gear to charge up your energy.

Sometimes it’s a shift in thinking, a shift in perceptions, a shift in your environment, a shift in attitude, a shift in your belief system, or a shift in movement. It’s up to us to figure out the category, intensity, frequency, or duration of the shift for the most positive results.

Read More →

The Science of Happiness and Your Health

May 2, 2014 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By

The study of the science of happiness has just recently caught up with what generally happy people already intuitively knew. In the past couple decades the science of Positive Psychology has learned:

  1. Happiness does not come from genetics, luck or chance
  2. Happiness has a lot less to do with circumstances than we originally thought
  3. Happiness is not the result of some big, momentous occasion or event or goal attainment – it is realized by all the little small, daily things that add up moment by moment
  4. Happiness is created by thing simply, daily things we decide to do – how we choose to move through the world
  5. Unhappiness is created by NOT choosing to do those simple, daily things that we recognize as the things that create our happiness – we must identify the things that we are doing first so we know which things to keep doing and keep putting in our lives so maintain our happiness and be consciously aware of the things we add to our lives that bring us joy and happiness as well as those things that create unhappiness and delete those things.
  6. Happiness comes from conscious living and living purposefully – being in tune with what you allow in your life and deciding what you do and what you don’t, having the feeling of being in control of how you live your life

Some other rules of the road for creating happiness stemming from the scientific research as part of the Positive Psychology movement:

  1. Keep a positive mindset and speak in positive vs. negative terms
  2. Make a regular practice of counting your blessings and focus on gratitude and appreciation
  3. Do kind things for others and help make the world a better place in the service of others

Keeping a positive mindset and speaking positive words is more powerful than most people realize.  There was some amazing evidence of this at the third World Congress on Positive Psychology as reported by the Center for Disease Control. They linked the incidence of atherosclerotic disease county by county of the northeastern United States with the amount of negative words used by those counties as evidenced by the Twitter posts. The study had analyzed 40,000 words in over 80 million tweets and when the results were overlaid with a county-by-county analysis of heart attacks, it was nearly an exact correlation. The words used that were predictive of illness were expressions of anger, hostility, aggression, disengagement and lack of social support.

The study also revealed the correlation of positive attitude and lower risk of heart attacks in a county-by-county study with these maps also being nearly identical – similar to the negative words and more heart attacks. The positive words that correlated with health included fabulous, helpful share, great, interesting, gratitude.

Being in the personal development field for over 30 years; this “new” scientific evidence only certifies what many of the thought leaders, motivational speakers and experts in the field of human performance have been saying for decades. I’m very grateful there is now science behind what we’ve been touting for a long time. It gives more intellectual weigh and credibility to what we’ve been sharing with our audiences on the positive side effects of positive thinking. It has opened doors and opened the minds of many in the corporate world, in government and in the general public about how their mindset and the mindset of an organization has a great deal to do with the morale of the people and their performance.

Combining Fun and Effectiveness is good business. Often, those of us in the personal development field have found roughly 10 % of those in our audience are really attuned to the positive thinking movement; but when you link that movement to the happiness movement, then the percentage of those who are willing to embrace it skyrockets to well over 50%. I haven’t yet met anybody who doesn’t want to be happy, though I’ve met many who want to be happier or even those who are happy, but didn’t know it because of their mindset and their choice of focus.  How is your mindset? How are you choosing to be happy? Have you noticed what words you choose on a daily basis? Have you paid any attention to your tweets and Facebook posts and the type of words you are using? Try transforming your words and I bet you will begin to transform your life. I dare you…

Read More →

Escape: Escape for a Mental Health Break

April 24, 2014 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By

Physically fleeing the scene of stress for a holiday restores personal energy. Sometimes all we have is a “holimoment” where we can purposefully escape into daydreams or meditation if we can’t physically escape to take a break. Americans lag far behind most of the world in reaping the rewards of longer vacations and time to escape the real world responsibilities.

Employers in Europe know the secret to having employees be refreshed, renewed, and recharged for more productivity is taking longer or more frequent holidays. Europeans average five weeks per year holiday time as compared to the paltry American two weeks annual vacation. If you are saving up those vacation days, or worse yet, losing them because they have expired, you are doing yourself, your family, and your colleagues a disservice by not giving them the best you can be at optimum performance levels.

We need a break to clear our minds and re-connect in order to perform at peak performance at other times. If you must hang around the office, surround yourself with items that bring back good memories or that state your affirmations boldly. Take a mental health break by gazing at your memorabilia while you wait on hold on the phone. (Research suggests we are on hold an average of 15 minutes/day or 60 hours/year). Fresh air and movement do wonders, as do office toys or a personalized treasure map of things you want to accomplish in your life.

Treasure maps are collages of pictures and words representing your desires, goals, or affirmations. These posters filled with cut and past magazine photos and headlines are a physical and mental reminder of what’s dear, and act as a magnet to attract you closer to your goals and aspirations. The more you use the powerful force of visualization; the imagery of your dreams becomes imbedded into your subconscious and you start behaving in a manner to elicit responses to move you towards your image. There have been numerous studies of athletes and performers using guided imagery and visualization to help them compete and win. When you start imagining the possibilities and show your brain concrete images, it sends your body signals to help make that image materialize.

Travel can generate excitement, adventure, intrigue, and other awesome feelings all rolled up into one package. Experience other cultures and new ways of life, or just get out of town for a weekend escape. We need this time for creative renewal in order to be our best to meet our challenges. Seeing how other cultures live gives us a fresh perspective on what may be out of kilter back home. Flexibility and an attitude of discovery go a long way in creating positive travel experiences. Where are you going next?

Read More →

Keys to Success Found in the Cauldron of Knowledge

April 20, 2014 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully, Wealthy Woman | By

I have a cauldron. Doesn’t everybody? I call it my Cauldron of Knowledge because that’s where I keep the magazines, books and other publications I’m reading at the moment or have on my To-Do list. I used to keep a bookshelf until I rescued a cute little doggie who had a penchant for knowledge. OK, I think he had a penchant for paper. Specifically tearing up paper and listening to the ripping sound as he held down the pages with his paw and tore the paper with his teeth. He seem to get such pleasure out of such a simple thing.

My need to reading pleasure and knowledge surpassed his need to shred, so I ditched the bookshelf, put most of the books behind an armoire door and put the current batch in my cauldron. His legs are too short to jump up into it, so I feel safe with keeping the wisdom stored in a big pot.

Rummaging through the reads this morning, I came across a poem by William Arthur Ward who wrote so eloquently on the Keys to Success. And since I’m doing a series on the Keys to Energize, I thought this fit nicely into the series.

The Key to Success is to:

Believe while others are doubting.

Plan while others are playing.

Study while others are sleeping.

Decide while others are delaying.

Prepare while others are daydreaming.

Begin while other are procrastinating.

Work while others are wishing.

Save while others are wasting.

Listen while others are talking.

Smile while others are frowning.

Commend while others are criticizing.

Persist while others are quitting.

I believe that about sums it up nicely. Thank you, William Arthur Ward for providing today’s inspiration while sipping some tea on the deck with my pup.

Read More →