Shipulski On Design

Archive for January, 2024

When we quiet our minds, we can hear our bodies’ old stories in the form of our thoughts.

Pay attention to our bodies and we understand our minds.

Our bodies give answers before our minds know the questions.

If we don’t understand our actions, it’s because our bodies called the ball.

The physical sensations in our bodies are trailheads for self-understanding.

Our bodies’ old stories govern our future actions.

If a cat sits on a hot stove, that cat won’t sit on a hot stove again. That cat won’t sit on a cold stove either.  Our bodies are just like the cat.

Our mouths sing the songs but our bodies write the sheet music.

Our bodies make decisions and then our minds declare ownership.

When we’re reactive, it’s because our bodies recognize the context and trigger the old response.

When a smell triggers a strong memory, that’s our body at work.

Bessel was right. The body keeps the score.

Image credit — Raul AB

The time to start getting ready is before we need to be.

We don’t get ready because the problem hasn’t yet kicked us in the head.  It has only started getting ready to do so.

We don’t get ready because we don’t see the early warning signs.  Like the meteorologist who doesn’t make time to look at the radar and satellite images, if we don’t look, we can’t see.  And if we’re really busy, we don’t make time to look.  What if it was part of our job to look at the satellite images? Who in our company should have that job?

We don’t get ready because we don’t heed the early warning signs. Seeing the warning signs is much different than justifying the reallocation of resources because someone says the tea leaves suggest an impending problem.

We will solve no problem until it’s too late to do anything else.

We don’t get ready because we forget that it takes time to get ready.  We do so little getting ready, we’re unfamiliar with the work content and timeline of getting ready.  We forget that getting ready is on the critical path of problem-solving.

We don’t get ready because everyone is fully booked and we have no excess capacity to allocate to getting ready.  And by the time we free up the resources to get ready (if we can do that at all), we miss the window of opportunity to get ready.

We will solve a problem only after exhausting all other possibilities.

We don’t get ready because the problem is someone else’s.  If we don’t have capacity to get ourselves ready for our problems why would we allocate the capacity to get ready for someone else’s?

We don’t get ready because we try to give our problem to someone else.  Isn’t it easier to convince someone else to get ready than to do the getting ready ourselves?

We will solve no problem until we know we’ll get the credit.

We don’t get ready because problem avoidance won’t get us promoted, though putting out a fire that could have been avoided will.

If a problem is avoided, there is no problem. And since there’s no problem, there’s no need to avoid it.

We don’t get ready because there’s no certainty a problem will be a problem until we have it.  And we can’t get ready to solve a problem once we have it.  Getting ready requires judgment and trust – judgment by the person who sees the early warning signs and trust by the person who allocates the resources.  It’s that simple.

Because we’ve conditioned people to be afraid to use their judgment, they don’t use it.  And because we’ve conditioned people to be afraid to spend the time needed to build trust, they don’t build it.

Now that we have these two problems, how can we make it safe for people to use their judgment and spend the time needed to develop trust?

Image credit — Leonard J Matthews

As leaders of people, we have a responsibility to help people grow. One of the best ways to help them grow is to put them in a position to do so. But what does that look like?

Here’s a process and some questions to help you quantify your efforts to help people grow.

Choose one person on your team and ask yourself – over the last six months how many times you took these actions:

Ask them to work with someone who works on another team.

Create conditions for them to work with someone two levels above them in the organization.

Ask them to meet with your boss one-on-one without you.

Ask them to present their work at your weekly staff meeting.

Ask them to create the agenda for your weekly team meeting.

Ask them to learn about a new topic and present their learning to a group of their peers.

Ask them to present something to a big customer.

Ask them to do work they’d never done before.

Ask them to mentor a less experienced coworker.

Ask them to rough out their personal development plan.

Ask them to come up with a discretionary project that is important to them.

Ask them to use their judgment.

Tell them they did good work.

Tell them you liked their idea.

Give them credit in front of their peers.

Give them credit to your boss in front of their peers.

Ask them to make a decision and tell them you’d support whatever they decide.

Now you have a quantified baseline of the actions you’ve taken to help that person grow.  With that data in hand, meet with the person and share what you’ve done together over the last six months.  Then, agree on the next installment.  Choose two or three areas where you’d more action over the next six months and come up with a jointly-owned action plan to make it so.

Repeat the process for the other members of your team.

It’s powerful to show people the actions you took to help them grow.  And it’s even more powerful to work with them to co-create the go-forward action plan to help them on their journey.

This list of actions isn’t the definitive list, rather it gives you some examples to help you on your way.  Use the ones that work and leave the rest.  And come up with some better ones.  I believe in you.

Image credit — Irene Steeves

If you believe you can’t do something, you can’t.

If you try something and it doesn’t work, you might be able to pull it off next time.

If you believe you’re not good enough, you’re not.

If you try something and it doesn’t work, you’re still good enough.

If you believe someone’s opinion of you matters, it does.

If someone disparages you and you don’t believe it, they’re wrong.

If you believe you can do something, you can.

If you try something and it doesn’t work, try it again.

If you believe you’re good enough, you are.

If you try something and it doesn’t work, you have always been good enough.

If you believe someone’s opinion of you is none of your business, it isn’t.

If someone disparages you, ask them if they’re okay and ask if you can help them.

What do you believe?

What will you try next?

What will you do when someone disparages you?

Image credit — joiseyshowaa

If something’s in the way, call it by name and move it out of the way.

If that something is a technical problem, figure out what’s blocking the solution and move it out of the way.

If that something is a person, try to understand what’s motivating their blocking action.  Don’t call their behavior a “blocking action” but try to understand what’s behind their behavior.  Help them understand what they are putting in the way and why they might be behaving as they are.  And once you both understand their behavior, help them see how their behavior is negatively impacting them.  Usually, that’s enough to break the impasse.

If that something that’s in the way is you, pretend you’re someone else and do the same thing.  Have a conversation with yourself.  Ask yourself what motivates the blocking behavior and then listen.  Believe it or not, if you calm your mind and body, you will hear a reply to your question and learn what’s behind the blocking behavior. If it’s fear of failure, a quiet voice will tell you it doesn’t want to feel the emotional pain or the judgment around failure. If it’s fear of success, a different voice will tell you it doesn’t believe it’s worthy of success or doesn’t think highly enough of itself to give things a try.  If it’s fear of confrontation, a part of you will tell you it’s not confident and it doesn’t want to be judged negatively.  Next, it’s time to fight the aversion to uncomfortable thoughts and get curious.

Feel the discomfort around the fear of failure in your body.  Don’t judge it negatively, just feel it. And get curious about the reason behind the fear of failure.  If you listen, it will likely tell you the reason for the discomfort.  Ask it what it’s afraid would happen if it moved that reason out of the way. Usually, there’s a realization that nothing bad would happen if the blocking action was unblocked and it can be moved out of the way.

Whether it’s the fear of success or the fear of confrontation, the process is the same.  Feel the sensations in your body (without judging) and get curious.  Ask the voice what it’s afraid would happen if it stopped putting something in the way.  And if you can refrain from judgment, the voice will tell you what needs to be moved out of the way so progress can be made.

The process I describe above is based on Internal Family Systems (IFS).  I have found it useful to understand the rationale behind my behavior and help myself make progress.

I hope you find it useful.

Image credit — Joachim Dobler