San Francisco Bay Area Executive Coaching

The Language of Effective Leadership: Confirmation Biases

The Language of Effective Leadership

It would be great or maybe not if helping people change their behavior was easy. In my coaching practice and having taught a self-management course for fifteen years, I learned that most people resist change even if it is in their own interest. There are a myriad of reasons why people fear change and the reasons for each individual may be different. Many people have internalized voices of fear, perfectionism, overwhelm, scarcity and impatience. Asking people to change runs into the very prevalent human dynamic of confirmation bias.

Confirmation Biases

A significant body of research shows that asking people to change often drives them more deeply into opposition. In study after study, people display a phenomenon called confirmation bias, first noted by Francis Bacon almost 400 years ago. As he noted, “The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion … draws all things else to support and agree with it.”

Confirmation bias is a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions and to irrationally avoid information and interpretations that contradict existing beliefs. We listen attentively for information and messages that confirm our own thinking — and upon hearing them, we feel rewarded and validated.

If the communication varies from what we know or believe, we dismiss the message as being irrelevant or wrong. We become skeptical about the source. All of this happens instantaneously in the part of the brain that’s responsible for emotional reactions — not in the areas that handle logic and reasoning.

This explains why traditional persuasion techniques fail, especially when delivered too early in a presentation. You risk speaking to a skeptical, cynical or hostile audience whose confirmation bias has been activated.

At this point, your reasons for change will be reinterpreted as reasons not to change. Even worse, skepticism and cynicism are contagious.

Are you working in a company or law firm where executive coaches help develop effective leaders who lead change?  Does your company or law firm provide leadership coaching and leadership development for their leadership talent?

One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is “Do I attempt to get people to change by attempting to persuade them to change their established beliefs?” Emotionally intelligent and socially intelligent organizations provide executive coaching and leadership development for leaders who champion change at all levels of the organization.

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i and CPI 260 can help you become a more effective at communicating change. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become fully engaged with the vision and mission of your company or law firm.

I am currently accepting new executive coaching and career coaching clients. I work with both individuals and organizations. Call 415-546-1252 or send an inquiry e-mail to [email protected].

The Language of True Leadership: Old-School Communication

The Language of True Leadership

Are you working in a company or law firm where executive coaches help develop true leaders who lead change?  Does your company or law firm provide leadership coaching and leadership development for their highly valued leadership talent?

One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is “Do I attempt to get people to change by appealing to reason?” Emotionally intelligent and socially intelligent organizations provide executive coaching and leadership development for leaders who champion change at all levels of the organization.

Old-School Communication

The traditional communication approach follows this sequence:

Define the problem ► Analyze it ►Recommend a solution

This approach appeals to reason and has been a revered intellectual tradition in organizations since the ancient Greeks. It works well when the aim is to pass on information to people who want to hear it, or who are obliged to comply and follow without question.

But if your aim is to get people to change their behavior and act in some fundamentally new ways with sustained energy and enthusiasm, old-school communication has two flaws:
1. It doesn’t work.
2. It often makes the situation worse (negative impact).

People who disagree with you or have other ideas and habits won’t respond well to your list of reasons to change. In fact, lecturing them on your beliefs will often lead to greater entrenchment in their long-held approaches and behaviors.

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i and CPI 260 can help you become a leader who is more adept at leading change. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become fully engaged with the vision and mission of your company or law firm.

I am currently accepting new executive coaching and career coaching clients. I work with both individuals and organizations. Call 415-546-1252 or send an inquiry e-mail to [email protected].

The Language of Authentic Leadership: How to Lead Change

The Language of Authentic Leadership

Are you working in a company or law firm where executive coaches help develop authentic leaders who lead change?  Does your company or law firm provide leadership coaching and leadership development for their high potential leadership talent?

One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is “Do I inspire people to want to change?” Emotionally intelligent and socially intelligent organizations provide executive coaching and leadership development for leaders who lead change at all levels of the organization.

How to Lead Change

There’s no lack of proposed concepts to answer this question. Many experts proclaim that leadership is solely an issue of inner conviction: You must find the leader deep within yourself.
Other experts encourage you to:
• Become the person others will want to follow
• Discover your strengths
• Increase your self-awareness, self-regulation and authenticity
• Become emotionally and socially intelligent
• Visualize to materialize
• Be true to yourself, and change will happen

In reality, sustained, enthusiastic change doesn’t occur by osmosis or extrasensory perception. Charisma goes only so far. If leaders’ own inner commitment to change is to have any effect at all, they must communicate it to those they aspire to lead.

Leaders’ actions speak louder than their words, but in the short run, it’s what leaders say — or don’t say — that has an impact.The right words can create:
• A galvanizing effect
• Enthusiasm
• Energy
• Momentum
• Sustainable motivation

The wrong words, or even words said in the wrong sequence, can undermine your best intentions and plans, killing an initiative on the spot.

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i and CPI 260 can help you become a change leader. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become fully engaged with the vision and mission of your company or law firm.

I am currently accepting new executive coaching and career coaching clients. I work with both individuals and organizations. Call 415-546-1252 or send an inquiry e-mail to [email protected].

The Language of Transformational Leadership: Inspiring Change

Transformational Leadership

Are you working in a company or law firm where executive coaches help develop transformational leaders who inspire change?  Does your company or law firm provide executive coaching and leadership development for their leadership talent?

One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is “Do I inspire people to want to change and innovatively solve significant problems?” Emotionally intelligent and socially intelligent organizations provide executive coaching and leadership development for leaders who make decisions at all levels of the organization.

“Human communication has its own set of very unusual and counterintuitive rules.” — Malcolm Gladwell

What does it take to transmit bold new ideas to people who don’t want to hear them? How does the language you use facilitate enthusiastic, energetic implementation?

Effective language involves more than short-term motivation and inspiration. It must be transformational.
Transformational leaders:

• Generate enduring enthusiasm for a common cause
• Present innovative solutions to solve significant problems
• Catalyze shifts in people’s values and ideologies
• Demonstrate a willingness to sacrifice personal interests for the greater good
• Help others get through crisis moments
• Inspire people to want to change, creating a positive energy that sustains the change
• Generate followers who will ultimately become leaders

The what of transformational leadership is reasonably clear. It’s the how that’s usually obscure. How exactly do leaders communicate complex ideas and spark others into enduringly enthusiastic action?

What words do they use to inspire others to become new leaders?  Why are some leaders able to accomplish the feat while others fail miserably?

Stephen Denning, a senior scholar at the University of Maryland’s Burns Academy of Leadership, makes the case for transformational communications in his book The Secret Language of Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2007). He provides real stories of how successful leaders communicate to motivate people into action.

More than anything, it’s what leaders say — and the way they say it — that generates sustained energy and exponential results.

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i and CPI 260 can help you become a transformational leader. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become fully engaged with the vision and mission of your company or law firm.

I am currently accepting new executive coaching and career coaching clients. I work with both individuals and organizations. Call 415-546-1252 or send an inquiry e-mail to [email protected].

The Brain Science of Bad Decision Making: The Importance of Safeguards

The Brain Science of Bad Decision Making

Are you working in a company or law firm where executive coaches help leaders become more capable decision makers?  Does your company or law firm provide executive coaching and leadership development for high performing leadership talent?

One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is “Do I have safeguards that red-flag conditions that may lead to bad decisions?” Emotionally intelligent and socially intelligent organizations provide executive coaching and leadership development for leaders who make decisions at all levels of the organization.

Safeguards

The brain’s way of working makes it particularly difficult to correct our own mental processes. Like a goldfish in a bowl, how can we know we’re wet?

When no red flags exist, the decision-making process can be fast and simple. When we spot red flags, we can design appropriate, effective safeguards that are less likely to demotivate everyone involved in the decision process. We enjoy targeted processing, instead of suffering increased bureaucracy and time-consuming conflicts.

Safeguards reduce the risk that red-flag conditions will lead to a bad decision. While it may not be possible to eliminate all risks, we can greatly improve the odds of making sound decisions with fewer mistakes. Four types of safeguards counterbalance and defend against errors:

1. Experience, Data and Analysis: In business, there are many ways data can be collected and experience broadened. Discussion with key customers can provide valuable feedback. Consultants can be hired to offer objectivity and outside perspectives.

2. Group Debate and Challenge: The process of debate can help expose assumptions and beliefs. It’s vital to choose the right participants, as the group must identify appropriate challenges that meet organizational goals.

3. Governance: It may be necessary to set up a separate governance team if one doesn’t exist apart from the decision-making team. The new team should be designed as a vital backstop to stand in the way of any flawed judgments that make it past the decision team.

4. Monitoring: The monitoring process tracks the progress of the decision. Awareness of monitoring encourages decisions makers to think carefully before making their recommendations. If decision makers know the outcome will be recorded and publicized, they will be motivated to think—and rethink—their positions.

Monitoring offers a quick solution to a bad decision. Early progress reports let you know if course corrections are needed. Monitoring can catch any problems the first three safeguards miss.

Identify Biases and Implement Safeguards

Most large organizations already have structured decision processes with built-in safeguards, which were likely implemented to correct past mistakes. Decision processes, however, must be tailored to flag conditions that may distort perceptions. By identifying biases, we can select specific safeguards that target our cognitive and emotional vulnerabilities.

There aren’t any foolproof guarantees against bad decisions. Life’s complexities ensure we’re never going to get everything right. Keep these summary points in mind:

• It’s possible to improve your decision-making abilities and continually grow.
• There are specific, identifiable steps you can take to prevent bad outcomes and reduce your risk of making bad decisions.

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i and CPI 260 can help company leaders develop safeguards to red-flag poor decision making. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become fully engaged with the vision and mission of your company or law firm.

I am currently accepting new executive coaching and career coaching clients. I work with both individuals and organizations. Call 415-546-1252 or send an inquiry e-mail to [email protected]

The Brain Science of Decision Making: The Importance of Emotional Tagging

The Brain Science of Decision Making

Are you working in a company or law firm where executive coaches help leaders become more competent decision makers?  Does your company or law firm provide executive coaching and leadership development for trusted and transparent leaders?

One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is “Am I recognizing emotional tags when making decisions?” Emotionally intelligent and socially intelligent organizations provide executive coaching and leadership development for leaders who make decisions at all levels of the organization.

The brain uses two processes that enable us to cope with complexities:

• Pattern recognition
• Emotional tagging

Both help us make excellent decisions most of the time. They have survived evolutionary selection precisely because they give us distinct advantages over lesser animals in the food chain.

But in certain conditions, these processes can mislead us, resulting in poor judgments and bad decisions.

Emotional Tagging

Emotions are essential in decision making. While most of us pride ourselves on our ability to be analytical and rational, our brains simply do not work this way. We depend on emotional input to focus our thinking and make choices.

Emotions primarily work on our bodies in unconscious ways, and we cannot eliminate their effect, as hard as we may try. Most of the time, emotions are helpful, but they can sometimes lead to disaster. We need some way of anticipating when our emotions may cause a problem.

If we are forewarned and can identify potentially misleading emotional tags, we can strengthen the decision-making process while combating the influence of emotions that worry us. Our decisions will ultimately be more sound.

Here are four sources of emotional tags that can interfere with sound decision making:

1. Intense emotional experiences: We may have powerful memories of successes, failures, fears or pleasures that we’ve experienced in the past. These emotions usually help us, but strong memories can also mislead us. Remember that our brains use pattern recognition, matching previous memories with current situations. Our brains fill in missing information and gaps, but there’s plenty of room for misleading experiences to influence current thinking.

2. Previously made judgments and decisions: We can tag previous judgments and decisions with strong emotions. When these judgments are sound, our emotions help us focus. But if the judgments are misleading, our emotions can cause us to cling to them.

3. Personal interests: We often have personal interests at stake in the decisions we make. If these decisions affect only ourselves, our emotional tags will help us reach the right answer. But when our personal interests conflict with our responsibilities to others, our judgment can be unbalanced.

4. Attachments: As social animals, we are designed to become attached to other people. We can also become attached to a group or tribe, places and even possessions. If the decision we’re about to make is likely to affect one of our attachments, the emotions generated can impair our thinking.

We tag our memories with emotions. These tags, when triggered by a pattern-recognition match, tell us whether to pay attention to something or ignore it.

Emotional tags enable us to decide and act with speed, but they can cause red-flag problems that disrupt our thinking and convince us our erroneous point of view is sound:

1. Misleading experiences
2. Misleading prejudgments
3. Inappropriate attachments
4. Inappropriate self-interest

We require clarity to identify these issues and rethink our position.

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i and CPI 260 can help company leaders recognize emotional tags and improve their decision making capability. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become fully engaged with the vision and mission of your company or law firm.

I am currently accepting new executive coaching and career coaching clients. I work with both individuals and organizations. Call 415-546-1252 or send an inquiry e-mail to [email protected].

The Neuroscience of Decision Making: The Importance of Pattern Recognition

The Neuroscience of Decision Making

Are you working in a company or law firm where executive coaches help leaders become good decision makers?  Does your company or law firm provide executive coaching and leadership development for their authentic leaders?

One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is “Am I recognizing patterns when making decisions?” Emotionally intelligent and socially intelligent organizations provide executive coaching and leadership development for leaders who make decisions at all levels of the organization.

The Brain Science of Decision Making

The brain uses two processes that enable us to cope with complexities:

• Pattern recognition
• Emotional tagging

Both help us make excellent decisions most of the time. They have survived evolutionary selection precisely because they give us distinct advantages over lesser animals in the food chain.

But in certain conditions, these processes can mislead us, resulting in poor judgments and bad decisions.
.
Pattern-Recognition Flaws

Most of the time, pattern recognition works remarkably well. But when something looks familiar—yet truly is not—we can be fooled into thinking we understand it.

This problem is called a “misleading experience,” and it’s a major contributor to faulty reasoning. Our brains house memories of past experiences that connect with inputs we are receiving. But when the past experiences are not a good match with the current situation, we form wrong conclusions.

Another problem arises when our thinking has been primed before we receive the inputs. For example, we may have made previous judgments or decisions that connect to the current situation, but they may, in fact, be inappropriate. This causes us to misjudge the information we are receiving — faulty thinking known as a “misleading prejudgment.”

Pattern recognition is fallible, but we heavily rely on it because it saves us time in a complex world. We are hardwired to gather information quickly, match it to previous experiences and knowledge, and make decisions.

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i and CPI 260 can help company leaders recognize patterns and improve their decision making capability. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become fully engaged with the vision and mission of your company or law firm.

I am currently accepting new executive coaching and career coaching clients. I work with both individuals and organizations. Call 415-546-1252 or send an inquiry e-mail to [email protected].

Executive Coaching for Improved Decision Making: Old-School Decision Processes

Improved Decision Making

Are you working in a company or law firm where executive coaches help leaders become better decision makers?  Does your company or law firm provide executive coaching and leadership development for their valued leaders?

One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is “What process do I use to make better business decisions?” Emotionally intelligent and socially intelligent organizations provide executive coaching and leadership development for exceptional leaders at all levels of the organization.

Old-School Decision Processes

Traditional decision-making processes are supposed to follow several logical steps:
1. Lay out the problem.
2. Define the objectives.
3. Generate options.
4. Evaluate each option against the objectives and other relevant criteria.
5. Choose the option with the best outcome.
6. Monitor progress and change course, if necessary.

Many people work under the illusion that if these steps are followed, little can go wrong. But these steps do not take into account what goes on in people’s brains when they weigh options and make judgments.

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i and CPI 260 can help company leaders improve their decision making capability. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become fully engaged with the vision and mission of your company or law firm.

I am currently accepting new executive coaching and career coaching clients. I work with both individuals and organizations. Call 415-546-1252 or send an inquiry e-mail to [email protected].