How Surprise Frustrations Can Work in Your Favor

by Nina Post

Shortly after we first met, my husband and I (spoiler: Reader, I married him) planned a weekend at Universal Studios.

I was in Orlando at a Cisco conference, which started on a Thursday. He couldn't get to Universal until Friday, after an investor meeting—and he flew from Fort Lauderdale to Orlando because there was no point in us having to drive two cars back.

I came to the airport and met him as he was coming out of the terminal.

I'm sure I started laughing right away (like can't-breath-laughing), because along with his T-shirt, he was wearing jean shorts, white tube socks, and black loafers. He had changed out of his work clothes after the meeting, but forgot to bring along another pair of shoes.

We went to an outdoor mall, where he found a Foot Locker. He was in there forever because they didn't have what he wanted. We went to two or three other stores, then ended up returning to the first Foot Locker, where he bought something he liked enough.

Years later, after we were married, he had a meeting near Portland. He had to leave the house at 4 a.m. to get to the Seattle airport, and I was up, too, because I always get up with him if he has an early flight.

It was too early for public transit, and he was taking a town car service to the airport. He dressed in a suit. I made him breakfast, then when he was ready to leave, I checked if he had his phone, boarding pass, etc.

He arrived at the Seattle airport.

I got an email.

He was still wearing his slippers.

I laughed. I laughed pretty hard.

(His shoes were moccasin-style, so it wasn't obvious before then.) By the time he got into the terminal, he had thought, "Oh crap, I'm still wearing my slippers."

His flight was leaving at 6 a.m. from Seattle, and stores didn't open until 6 or 7. He had to wear the slippers outside twice: walking to the small plane on the tarmac, and getting off the plane.

He arrived in Portland, and thought he'd have to take a cab to a shoe store or a mall and get shoes there, but luckily, since Nike is based near Portland, they had a huge store right in the airport terminal.

He went into the store, found an employee, and said, "I'm looking for shoes that wouldn't look ridiculous with this outfit."

They were pretty amused, but very helpful, and brought out a few options. He really liked a pair called Roshe Run*, which were lightweight, all-black running shoes.

The shoes he found turned out to be his favorite shoes ever. He ended up tracking down another pair later, and always wears them with dress pants. When he goes to any meeting, or any event, he wears the Roshe with dress pants.

And I learned to have a better "leaving for a flight" checklist, including "Wearing the right shoes?"

I like checklists, and didn't like this flaw in my system, so I patched it.

The takeaway here is that when a frustrating thing comes up, totally unplanned, and you have to change your tactics at the last minute or deal with an unexpected situation—ook around. The solution could be closer than you think.

Oh, and use checklists.

*The closest version you can buy today is a Roshe One.

Like what you just read? Sign up for my newsletter! 

What Punk Shows Can Teach Us About Conferences

by Nina Post

When I was in high school, I went to a lot of punk / hardcore punk shows. I saw the Ramones, the Cramps, Danzig, Black Flag, Butthole Surfers, Cro-Mags, some other big names I forget (which I'll think of in the middle of the night)—and a lot of lesser-known bands.

I'm not one for crowds, and I haven't been to see live music in what seems like forever. I get to bed early, rarely go out at night, and have super sensitive hearing (even after all those shows). The most recent live music I've seen was a chamber music quartet. Things have changed, obviously.

But I remember that feeling of belonging and energy. Even jubilance.

That's my new standard for conference events (which is pretty much the least punk thing to say). Don't keep going to one if you don't feel that.

Here's How Metacognition Can Make Your Life Better

by Nina Post

Metacognition is usually defined as "thinking about thinking," or "judgments about thinking." To be more specific, metacognitive competence includes planning, monitoring, evaluating, goal-setting, and strategy adjustment.

Metacogntive competency can lead to greater well-being, especially when combined with the pursuit of long-term goals.

How does metacognition work with your goal strategy? You can define your goal in the planning phase, adapt your strategies and identify weaknesses in the monitoring phase, and assess your progress toward the goal in the evaluation phase.

Accomplishing your goals makes you pretty happy - it brings positive affect to your life. Recent studies have found a significant positive relationship between goal-striving and metacognition. Metacognition can help with your selection of goals by identifying your problem or purpose, the kind of goal that can address it, and your plan to accomplish that goal.

Improving your metacognition facilitates a growth mindset and boosts self-efficacy, or your belief in your capabilities. Continuously challenging yourself to learn new things and develop new skills will train your metacognition and contribute to your happiness and satisfaction in life. You can read more about developing mental strategies in the excellent book Mastermind.

Being metacognitive means acting with more self-awareness, which according to another study may be the link to eudaimonic well-being. Self-awareness helps you create a strategy to respond to obstacles and plan how you think and respond. Awareness is a part of self-control, and self-control is invaluably important for well-being.

You can engage in deliberate practice to train your metacognition, and make adjustments as you observe and evaluate your own process of learning and deducing.

For instance, what time is better for certain tasks? Do you tend to retain more information if you take hand-written notes? Does explaining a newly-learned process to someone else help you internalize the process and enable you to recall the steps more readily in the future? If you're studying for a particularly challenging test, are you getting better at knowing what questions you won't realistically get right and should just skip to make more time for the ones you're more confident with?

To recap: training in metacognition can improve your intrinsic motivation and long-term goal strategy, help you control your thoughts, and make your life better.

Why a One-Person Company is Like a Helicopter

by Nina Post

My knowledge of helicopters is limited to what I researched for one of my books, along with 80s TV (The A-Team; my husband loved Airwolf).

But I liked this metaphor of the relationship between the helicopter pilot and the air traffic controller to show what's like working as a one-person team. Let's hope I don't torture it *too* much. (If anything, you'll learn more about helicopters.)

Helicopters present a particular challenge to controllers. The advantage to working with helicopters is the flexibility, but there's also an unpredictability that requires a unique combination of skills for the controller. The unpredictability of external factors affects you much more as one person, and it requires skills that those working with the fixed-wing don't need.

Last week on the blog, I talked about boosting the efficacy of teams. A larger company is a large team (which has teams within those) that can be likened to a fixed-wing aircraft, which takes longer to get moving because there are many more people involved and it takes a lot more coordination to do even one simple thing. That's the inefficiency of working in a large team. Once you add even one more person, everything gets more difficult to coordinate and make happen.

As I can continue to treat this metaphor like Tim Roth in Reservoir Dogs, here are a few things to keep in mind as a one-person company:

Clarify your destination and the route you're going to take to get there.

Even a basic plan is good. A fixed-wing aircraft operates in a more fixed path, especially when departing the runway, e.g., launching a new product, which requires a lot of energy, people, and sign-offs. When you're one person running a business, getting that many resources together just to leave the runway isn't your concern.

But even though I wrote about how to boost your team's efficacy, the truth is, it's an ideal. It's possible, but unlikely. Most teams are grossly inefficient, and people's flaws typically become more overt and problematic over time. Exceptions to this are rare. They might have built in the values, rules, and system from the very beginning and adapt to new variables. Or their magic is strong enough to overcome the personality conflicts and inefficiency. But most likely, a large team is stumbling all over itself and can barely get through one step of a huge process. This can be to your advantage.  

However, even though your company has agility and autonomy, it can't go in multiple directions at the same time. Usually you have your head down, frantically trying to keep afloat. But it's worth revisiting your plan and see if you might need to modify it from time to time.  

Pick up a little speed to outrun turbulence

A fixed-wing aircraft prefers to take off into the wind so they can use it to climb faster, and it isn't affected by the wind while taxiing because its wheels provide control.

Wind affects helicopters, too. Use "translational lift" to pick up speed and get into calmer air. At a slow speed, the downwash of the main rotor creates turbulence, and as it moves faster, the helicopter can outrun the turbulence and more efficiently generate lift.

When there's turbulence, you can't just sit around and wait. Sometimes things start to close in on you and you can't keep moving slowly--you have to do something to move faster and out of the way. It's times like these when you can't underestimate yourself and what you have the energy and wherewithal to do.

Any given level of turbulence affects you more, but on the flip side, you can pick up speed and push through the turbulence if you just make up your mind about where you're heading and put your resources (time, energy, skills; "blood, toil, tears, and sweat") into that.

At the pilot's own risk

Helicopters can only get clearance from the controller when taking off from what's called a movement area -- taxiways and runways. If a chopper takes off in a non-movement area, the controller can't clear it for takeoff. It's at the pilot's own risk. Sound familiar?

As an example, if a helicopter wants to depart from an FBO ramp, like a hospital helipad on airport space, the departure (or landing) risk would have to be on the pilot. The pilot is solely responsible for avoiding any obstacles in his departure area. That's sort of like the risk dynamic of a one-person company: you're in control, but can't hide behind bureaucracy if things don't go your way. You own the risks, but also the rewards.

Land and Hold Short

In a Land and Hold Short (LAHSO) operation, the controller directs the helicopter to land on a specific part of the runway, especially if the runway intersects another runway. It's not dissimilar from seeing a market opportunity, pivoting towards it, and getting your product into the hands of customers at just the right time.

Even a smaller helicopter can wield strong outwash vortices similar to the wing tip vortices of a larger fixed wing aircraft. That downwash can rock a Cessna, easy. Being the little guy doesn't mean the bigger company is automatically going to win. Don't underestimate your ability to win if a fixed-wing gets too close.

Sources:

Rotary revelations: managing helicopter operations around fixed-wing aircraft demands a little finesse and a lot of clarity on the part of pilots and controllers
Tarrance Kramer, IFR. 33.1 (Jan. 2017)

How a Good Team Functions - 7 Ways to Boost Your Collective Efficacy

by Nina Post

What's collective efficacy? It's a trust among team members who want to achieve common goals.

Here are 7 tips for increasing the collective efficacy of your team:

1. Follow a set of core values. Teams fall apart because of personality conflict, discipline problems, lack of cohesion, and poor motivation. I'm not talking about the core values of your team or company as they relate to the customer, but how your values relate to and resonate with the team. Values are in actions and behavior.

Aside from "don't hire assholes," when you become aware of any of those conflicts, tackle it aggressively from the beginning (in a good way), because once it gets to be a pattern, it's really hard to get people to change their behavior. A bad sign in a team is when people, whether managers or co-workers, aren't responsive to one another's requests.

2. Instill and encourage a culture in which people show one another appreciation, acknowledgment, and respect as individuals and professionals. Promote an environment where people communicate regularly and are responsive to one another.  

There's a basic social contract among co-workers, and if people start ignoring that - not responding, not communicating - it can go downhill fast. I can almost guarantee you that if this is a problem, you won't achieve as much as you otherwise could. It's like an anvil on the motivation and efficacy of your team.

3. Use techniques of transformational leaders to create high levels of self-determined motivation in team members. Give them opportunities for higher skill and challenge.

4. Use techniques of transactional leaders by setting clear expectations and goals, or making sure those are set for the team. This goes back to core values, too.

5. Have your team spend more time together so they can build Transactive Memory Systems, or “shared systems for encoding, storing, and retrieving information.” If your team works remotely, it's good for them to get together when they can, even if it's just once a year. If you're in the same city, it's good to have everyone meet once a week to build that interpersonal dynamic (and TMS) that you don't necessarily get otherwise.

With a Differentiated TMS, people hold different (though possibly complementary) knowledge, whereas with an integrated TMS, people hold similar knowledge. For better collaboration and helping, you want an Integrated TMS.

6. Make your team more of a distributed cognitive system ("The Borg don't ingest food. Their implants can synthesize any organic molecules their biological tissues require. What they need is energy.")

To do this, take an extended cognition perspective and use a variety of visual representations.

External cognition posits that the brain relies on the external environment, especially for complex tasks. (I'm a huge proponent of taking notes by hand - I think it allows for much better retention and recall of information - and this is one example of external cognition.)

Boundary objects as visualization tools act as a bridge to communication and collaboration. These can be concept maps, charts, prototypes, project management tools, etc. Using these tools increases the sharing of information among people in the team and supports problem solving.

7. Use the Resonance Performance Model (RPM), a tool that covers the following four components: (a) The Way You Want to Feel, (b) Preparation, (c) Obstacles, and (d) Revisit The Way You Want to Feel.

If the team is procrastinating (or you are), try boosting your self-regulation with a pre-planned strategy and self-talk.

Pay attention to your internal responses as a part of self-regulation—it gives you a greater sense of control over how you perceive and handle obstacles. Plan a reference point of a desired way to feel when working with your team, and a way you don’t want to feel (when responding to obstacles).

I hope your team isn't dysfunctional, and instead, that it functions more like the Chicago Bulls from 1991-1993.

gifs by giphy.com

Sources:

Determinants of Prosocial Behavior in Included Versus Excluded Contexts
Personality and Social Psychology

An Investigation Into the Coaching Approach of a Successful World Class Soccer Coach: Anson Dorrance
International Journal of Sports Science and Coaching

Taking positive psychology beyond the individual
Positive Psychology: Harnessing the Power of Happiness, Mindfulness, and Personal Strength

Technology as Teammate: Examining the Role of External Cognition in Support of Team Cognitive Processes

A view from the inside: an in-depth look at a female university student's experience with a feel-based intervention to enhance self-confidence and self-talk
The Qualitative Report

With a little help from your friend
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships