What goals have you set for yourself this summer? Exercise more? Relax more? Spend more time with family? How about working more on your brain and understanding how you can harness it to help you be more effective?
That goal certainly wasn’t on my list until I finished reading Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long, by David Rock.
Rock is the author of another of my favorite books, Quiet Leadership, which I wrote about in a previous blog. Quiet Leadership was all about effectively managing people. Embracing the partnership principles, Rock suggested that doing the thinking for others doesn’t work very well, with the possible exception of helping people out of a life-threatening situation when most of us want to be told what to do.
Instead, Rock suggests that leaders should help colleagues make their own connections by finding ways to advance the thinking of those they lead rather than trying to do all the thinking for them.
Your Brain at Work offers a variation of this theme, by helping readers focus on their own mental function. Using the metaphor of a theater production, Rock suggests we can become much more effective in our work and daily lives by being aware of how our brain functions and harnessing it to maximize our own behaviors and those of others in our professional circles.
We have an internal director in our brain
Rock invites readers to learn more about our internal “director,” which he uses as a metaphor for being aware of your actions.
Much like Heifetz’s suggested “balcony view,” Rock’s director “can watch the show that is your life, make decisions about how your brain will respond, and sometimes even alter the script.” (p. 87)
The “director” helps us become more self-aware or mindful and is focused on our metacognition (that’s when we take a step back and think about our thinking). In short, it helps us notice our own mental process in ways that can have a “dramatic impact on [our] capacity to stop and separate [ourselves] from an automatic train of thought.” (p. 242).
Why is this important? In our roles as educators, we are constantly working to influence others. And, quite frankly, as we’ve learned from Jim Knight, Edgar Schein and many other thought leaders, most people don’t like to be influenced! That’s why the carrot-and-stick approach is not often effective.
Instead, Rock suggests that we first work on ourselves by employing our director so that we are more self-aware. The challenge, however, is that being more self-aware requires the brain to exert lots of energy, which is a limited, yet very valuable internal resource.
“Changing one’s own behavior is hard. A study found that only one in nine people who underwent heart surgery were able to change their lifestyle and these people had the ultimate ‘motivation’—possible death. Changing other people’s behavior is even harder.” (p. 223)
Listening to your ARIA
To become more self aware of our own actions, without burning off all of our energy, Rock suggests paying attention to what he calls our ARIA: Awareness, Reflection, Insight, and Action.
• Awareness helps us “put the problem on the stage” in ways that enable us to simplify it so it doesn’t tap all of our energy. We do this by describing a problem or challenge in as few words as possible, which helps us clarify our goals in an efficient manner.
• Reflection helps us think about our thinking rather than dwelling on the content of the problem itself. Reflection helps us brainstorm, make connections, and move forward.
• Insight is the stage that Rock finds most fascinating. “An insight is a moment when things change. Insights also bring a rush of adrenaline and dopamine. Insights are exciting; they hold your attention and make you feel great.” (p. 83)
• Action offers the opportunity to address the insight, particularly if you move quickly. In fact, Rock argues that the insight “high” enables people to be “more courageous and motivated to act.”
The trials of Emily and Peter
Rock explains ARIA and another acronym, SCARF, which is addressed later in this post, through the actions and interactions of two fictional characters – a married couple named Emily and Peter.
Throughout the book, we read of their trials and tribulations, and we also learn about strategies they —and we—can take to more effectively address these challenges.
Each chapter gives us a look at a more self-aware Emily or Peter after a big snafu by actually giving them a “mulligan,” or a chance to change the scenario by employing different behavior.
Through Emily and Peter’s stories, we learn that there are three key factors to effective change:
1. Creating a safe environment (e.g. minimizing any threats);
2. Helping the person (or people) focus their attention “in just the right ways to create just the right new [neurological] connections”;
3. Drawing their attention constantly to these new neurological connections so the behavior can “take hold.”
We all wear a SCARF
As we work for change, Rock reminds us of human nature and the importance of being aware of what he calls SCARF: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness.
Using SCARF is particularly effective, Rock suggests, when managing tense or very uncertain situations. He illustrates SCARF using the following scenario:
“Imagine you are starting a conversation with a team of people whom you manage and you want them to pay attention to something difficult. Taking care of status, you might say, ‘You’re all doing great. I’m not here to attack you but to find ways of our becoming even better than we already are.’ Taking care of certainty, you might say, ‘I only want to talk for fifteen minutes, and I am not looking for specific outcomes.’
Taking care of autonomy, you might say, ‘Is that okay with you, if we focus on this right now?’ Taking care of relatedness, you might share something about yourself on a human level. Taking care of fairness, you might be careful to point out that you have had the same conversation with everyone else on your team.”
While your initial reaction to this example might be to think that the leader is not assertive, remember that Rock is suggests that SCARF can change behavior rather than just attain compliance, which is at best ephemeral. And, think of times when you’ve felt threatened, bullied, or forced to do something you don’t want to do. What type of approach would you prefer?
Will you do some change work this summer?
Changing ourselves and others is hard work, but Rock’s formula really appeals to me. If you agree, you might consider adding a new goal to your summer list: Exercising your brain so you cannot only be more effective—and happy—but so you can effectively influence others as well.
Here’s a short promotional video where Rock summarizes his 2009 book in much pithier ways than I can.
