Thanks to David Gurteen’s  May 2009 Knowledge Letter, I recently discovered Nancy Dixon, a knowledge management (KM) consultant who specializes in the personal/human aspects of KM. In a post on her blog, Conversation Matters, she described the value of conversation:

“The greatest benefit of conversation is that it produces five categories of responses [answers, meta knowledge, problem reformulation, validation and legitimization], not just the answer. We get so much more from conversation, e.g. an unexpected insight, a sense of affirmation that inspires us to new heights or, equally useful, having to confront a realization that we’ve been trying to avoid; deepening the relationship with a colleague or the introduction to a collaborator we would never have discovered on our own; and on and on. The multiplicity of benefits addresses the very real problem of not knowing what we don’t know. A problem that is so frequent when the issues we are addressing are ambiguous and complex.”

Suddenly a conversation with the right person is laden with possibilities. Could change-ability really be so simple? Let me know how conversation has increased your change-ability.

Change-ability tip #21 is also the title of the wonderful 16 minute video below: Validation. “Validation” is defined as an official mark of approval or worthiness… meeting the requirements or standard. To feel validated as a person is to receive acknowledgement of our value and worth. As we go through our day we have many opportunities to “validate” our family members, neighbours, and co-workers. And of course, receiving validation can make all the difference in how we experience our day. Validation creates the positive emotions and self-esteem so essential for facing change. Watch this short video for a wonderful demonstration of validation at work.

Kernel: Life is filled with opposites. If you’re facing darkness (stress/change), what is the opposite now visible as light?

From creativity consultant and author Roger von Oech:
“Heraclitus is saying that we don’t fully appreciate something until we have thought about or experienced its opposite. For example, success is more rewarding if we’ve tasted defeat, life more precious if we’ve been close to death, and love dearer if lost and regained. … So, the questions this insight suggests are: What’s ‘dark’ or missing in your current situation? How does it shed light on what is there?”

Roger von Oech’s books include:
A Whack on the Side of the Head (New York: Warner Books, 1998.)
A Kick in the Seat of the Pants (New York: Harper & Row, 1986.), and
Expect the Unexpected (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2002.)

There is something magical about visual thinking strategies such as Mind Mapping, clustering, concept mapping, or FutureScapes™. Each approach varies somewhat and personally, I like to use Gabrielle Rico’s “clustering” simply because I’ve had the most experience with it. I rarely begin any project at work without doing a cluster map of my thoughts, ideas, resources, goals or needs, and connections, etc.

Simply described, clustering begins with a “focus” word or phrase written in the centre of a large, unlined sheet of paper (at least this is my preference–you could create a cluster in the sand… or on lined paper). Circle your focus word and then capture your thoughts, ideas, and related topics, letting them pour onto the sheet in representative words or phrases. In my use of clustering, I circle thoughts and connect them to related or hierarchical thoughts at the same time or later as I reflect on the cluster topic. In Mind Mapping, developed by Tony Buzan around the same time as Rico’s clustering technique, use of colour and images is considered very important.

FutureScape™ is a technique that I’ve learned about recently and instantly appealed to my librarian sensibilities in that it incorporates information gleaned from environmental scans and intuitive insights. It is a visual thinking strategy developed by T. Irene Sanders for organizational strategic planning, but has been used for many purposes including career development. It is described in her book Strategic Thinking and the New Science: Planning in the Midst of Chaos Complexity and Change (New York: The Free Press, 1998).

I was especially interested in Sanders’ use of what she calls “perking information”–new developments occurring just below the surface that will impact your situation in future. She notest that FutureScape™ is different from Mind Mapping in that it “helps you see the self-organizing behaviour of the big-picture context in which your decisions are being made.” (p. 157)

More information is available at the links below:

T. Irene Sanders: Washington Center for Complexity & Public Policy

Mind Mapping video with Tony Buzan

Clustering developed by Gabrielle Rico, author of Writing the Natural Way

Review of Dan Roam’s book, The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures. at Paul Baker’s blog, EducationPR: Social Media for Communicators In Education

Chuck Frey is the founder and editor of InnovationTools.com (check out the Mind Mapping Resource Center here) and the author of The Mind Mapping Software Blog. The Mind Mapping Software Update newsletter includes excerpts from the blog.

For information about online or electronic visual thinking tools, check out Innovation Tools and Chuck Frey’s Mind Mapping Software Product Guide

Nurturing contentment fosters future change-ability

Kernel: Nurturing joy, interest and contentment = strength, resilience and well-being

According to psychologist, Barbara Fredrickson, “Cultivating positive emotions produces an upward spiral that not only counteracts negative emotions but also broadens habitual modes of thinking and acting and builds personal resources for coping.”

Negative emotions narrow a person’s repertoire of thoughts and actions, Fredrickson explains. “This effect is clearly adaptive in life-threatening situations that require quick action to survive.” Positive emotions broaden and expand this thought-action repertoire. Over time, this broadening creates an “upward spiral” which builds personal strength, resilience, and well-being.

Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory applies to three distinct positive emotions—joy, interest, and contentment. “Joy creates the urge to play and be playful in the broadest sense of the word … encompassing not only physical and social play, but also intellectual and artistic play.” Even though it is often aimless, play has several reliable outcomes, including strengthening friendships and attachments, and developing physical and cognitive skills.

Relaxation therapies, including imagery exercises, progressive muscle relaxation, and meditation, are effective, she maintains, because they cultivate the positive emotion of contentment.

Read more at: “Happiness, joy and other positive emotions”
University of Michigan Press Release (May 9, 2000)

Barbara Fredrickson at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Fredrickson’s blog: Positivity: Insights from Science on the Art of Living

Fredrickson’s recent book: Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive (Random House: Toronto, 2009)

According to Butler, “Impasse means that we need to change our whole approach to the problem. We need to change our understanding of the problem. We have to change our repertoire of ways in which we approach life challenges.”

In Getting Unstuck, Butler describes six phases in the “impasse process” and notes that progress through the stages is not linear but is a back and forth process. The first phase is the “arrival of a crisis” when we put our head down and keep doing what we’ve been doing. In phase two, we “realize that our old ways are not working.” Our “inner critic” becomes very vocal during this period.

In the third phase, we begin to examine the situation more carefully and honestly and in the fourth stage we become receptive to new kinds of information and “begin to appreciate complexity and metaphor in underlying themes.” The fifth stage takes some time and involves recognition of patterns in our life. Phase six occurs when we take action based on what we’ve learned in the previous stages and move forward.

“Feeling Stuck? Getting Past Impasse:” Q&A with Timothy Butler by Martha Lagace (April 25, 2007)
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge: A First Look at Faculty Research

Hang on for the ride!

Photo: Mary R. Vogt

Researchers have found that people who approach stress-filled workplace experiences with a specific mind-set can weather difficult times with improved performance and happiness and even greater enthusiasm for their jobs!

In the early 1980s, a 12-year study by psychologist Salvatore R. Maddi and others at the University of Chigago was already in progress and included workers at Illinois Bell Telephone (IBT). In 1981, IBT downsized from 26,000 employees to a little more than half that number in one year. Not surprisingly, two thirds of the workers experienced negative consequences such as “heart attacks, strokes, obesity, depression, substance abuse and poor performance reviews.”

Interestingly, the other one third did not experience negative consequences and according to Maddi and his team, even seemed to feel “renewed enthusiasm.” The researchers found that workers who thrived during this stressful experience were people who held three significant approaches to life that helped them “turn adversity into an advantage.” They all had attitudes that could be described as: commitment, control or challenge.

Commitment meant that these workers made every effort to remain involved in events, thus avoiding isolation. Control is the descriptor researchers used to describe an on-going effort to influence decisions and events. By continuing to be involved and trying to ensure some control over final decisions, these workers maintained a sense of power.

The third “C”–challenge–refers to interpreting stressful changes as an opportunity to learn. By incorporating new understanding gained from positive and negative experiences, the more resilient IBT employees were able to move on with increased knowledge and wisdom.

One or more of the three Cs, commitment, control, and challenge, can offer a life raft in the midst of chaos. They are outstanding change-ability tips because they are so powerful … and entirely within our control. We’ll see more of the three Cs appearing in various forms in future change-ability tips.

For more about this research, read: Turning Lemons into Lemonade: Hardiness Helps People Turn Stressful Circumstances into Opportunities at the APA Online website.

Notice facial expressions when listening

Photo: L.M. Solonynko

In my opinion, listening is so critical for resilience that it should really be change-ability tip #1. We all spend much of our daily lives listening. If you live with another person, pets, or even a radio, listening starts when you wake up in the morning. However, if you’re concerned about your resilience and change-ability rating right now, I propose that you consider fine tuning your listening skills.

Well developed listening skills (also called “active listening”) affect our resilience in two significant ways. First, active listening facilitates learning and information exchange–essential for navigating change. As soon as we’re feeling stressed or anxious, listening becomes more difficult. We’re preoccupied, probably fatigued, and often afraid of what is happening or what we think could happen. However, when we engage in active listening, we take in information from all sources available, including the speaker’s tone of voice, facial expressions, body language, pauses, etc. We take note of what the speaker chooses NOT to say as well. We encourage the speaker to continue by nodding or saying “uh huh … ” at appropriate moments and by resisting the urge to complete sentences for them. We look at the speaker and may lean forward slightly as occurs naturally when we’re interested in what is being communicated. Active listening provides the space for the speaker to communicate without being rushed or fear of being judged before completing a thought. Active listeners encourage free information flow, ask questions to clarify, and paraphrase to confirm their understanding. When in need of change-ability, never miss an opportunity to gather critical information as efficiently as possible.

The second way that active or “empathetic listening” as it is sometimes called, can make us more change-able is less obvious but perhaps more powerful. People who hone and practice high level listening skills are perceived as providing extraordinary value and leadership to others–probably because they do! Marshall Goldsmith, one of my favourite bloggers at HarvardBusiness.org, wrote in his book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There (p. 153): “The ability to make a person feel that, when you’re with that person, he or she is the most important (and the only) person in the room is the skill that separates the great from the near-great.” This quote is from his chapter on listening.

Change-ability tip #11 is challenging but essential. Active listening is like glue that builds relationships, networks, and community. You can never have too many friends and connections when you’re in the throes of change!

I’d love to hear your tips for developing better listening skills or ways that active listening has helped you be more change-able.

I was reminded of the importance of our environment while reading a recent post by Peter Bregman, a blogger at Harvard Business Publishing, called “The Easiest Way to Change People’s Behaviour.” Using personal stories, Bregman points out that human behaviour has more to do with our relationship to the environment around us than nearly anything else. “So don’t fight yourself to change your behaviour in the midst of the wrong environment; just change the environment. In the case of food, using a salad plate instead of a dinner plate might be all the diet you need.”

Most of us are familiar with strategies like using a smaller plate or putting treats “out of sight out of mind,” but it seems that our environment also affects us on a deeper level. Rachel Kaplan and husband Stephen Kaplan are psychologists and researchers in a new field called “restorative environments.” In an APA Monitor on Psychology article called “Green is Good for You,” author Rebecca A. Clay writes that the Kaplans and other psychologists “are exploring nature’s impact on people’s mental functioning, social relationships and even physical well-being.” Rachel Kaplan’s research revealed that workers with a view of nature felt more positive about their work and experienced better health and greater satisfaction with life.

Clay also describes Roger S. Ulrich’s research at the Center for Health Systems and Design at Texas A&M University where he found that “patients whose hospital rooms overlooked trees had an easier time recovering than those whose rooms overlooked brick walls. Patients able to see nature got out of the hospital faster, had fewer complications and required less pain medication than those forced to stare at a wall.” Research he conducted in Sweden found that heart surgery patients could reduce their anxiety and need for pain medication by looking at images of trees and water.

So where do we start? Look around and become aware of environments that make you feel positive or relaxed. If you are unable to change daily taxing environments, can you refuel during breaks or by regularly visiting more calming surroundings? Try pictures of scenes that help you relive more zen moments. Let me know what works for you.

According to a 2007 press release, memorizing a series of facts is one thing, understanding the big picture is quite another. A new study demonstrates that relational memory–the ability to make logical “big picture” inferences from disparate pieces of information–is dependent on taking a break from studies and learning, and even more important, getting a good night’s sleep.

According to lead author Jeffrey Ellenbogen, MD, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School and sleep neurologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), “People often assume that we know all of what we know because we learned it directly. In fact, that’s only partly true. We actually learn individual bits of information and then apply them in novel, flexible ways.”

Research done with 56 healthy college students to test knowledge following various time periods and periods of sleep led Ellenbogen to the understanding that “sleep is actively engaged in the cognitive processing of our memories. Knowledge appears to expand both over time and with sleep.”

Matthew Walker, PhD, Director of the Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School (HMS), concludes, “These findings point to an important benefit [of sleep] that we had not previously considered. Sleep not only strengthens a person’s individual memories, it appears to actually knit them together and help realize how they are associated with one another. And this may, in fact, turn out to be the primary goal of sleep: You go to bed with pieces of the memory puzzle, and awaken with the jigsaw completed.”

Now, as an insomniac, this does concern me. However, at the very least, this information lends support to the notion that “sleeping on it” is beneficial in decision making and that work-life balance is a positive goal to work toward. More importantly, though, recent research confirms that our brains produce new pieces of knowledge from existing information supplies. We should not underestimate our ability to generate solutions to life’s challenges from the ingredients we currently have on hand.

To quote Mark Jung-Beeman, cognitive neuroscientist at Northwestern University, “At a certain point, you just have to admit that your brain knows much more than you do.” [in "The Eureka Hunt: Why do Good Ideas Come to Us When They Do?" by Jonah Lehrer. The New Yorker July 28, 2008 p. 40-45.]