Ben Norris

📖 Crocodile on the Sandbank

By Elizabeth Peters

📖 The Bassoon King

By Rainn Wilson

I believe that the most important roles a leader must serve are to protect and provide. I want to explore this further by considering how a leader can provide support, clarity, and results.

Note: This is part of a series sharing my thoughts on leadership. Read the introduction here.

In my last installment of my series on leadership, I explored the role of a leader to protect. In my opinion, this comprises half of what a leader must do in order to be successful, with the other half being to provide. This may be an oversimplification, but it has been helpful for me to think about leadership in simpler terms so that I can better understand how to work to improve.

Again, these thoughts are set to the backdrop of my favorite definition of leadership by Niel Nickolaisen, our CIO at O.C. Tanner:

A leader is someone others choose to follow

Provide

Another archetypal leader that comes to mind for me is a kind of trail guide. I picture someone who has experience with the terrain, knows how to prepare for success, and is out in front of a group, showing them the way. The guide leads the group through crowded forests, up mountain passes, past precarious cliffs to an end destination that is fulfilling and rewarding for all. Along the way, the guide gives encouragement, performs first aid, assists in gathering nourishment, and ultimately is responsible for the group arriving safely.

In business, and in life, the role of a leader is similar, although perhaps less rugged at times. There are many ways that a leader can provide, and I will focus on these three:

• Support
• Clarity
• Results

When I originally thought of these principles, I paired them together with those from the role to protect. So, a leader will protect individuals and provide them support. A leader will protect the team and provide them clarity. And a leader will protect the company and provide it results. After thinking about these more, I have realized that all of the concepts are more intertwined.

Support

One of the first things that a leader must provide is support. Thinking first of providing support to individuals, a leader can do that through scheduled time. If the leader is also the reporting manager for an individual, that scheduled time should take the form of a regular one-to-one meeting. It is the leader’s responsibility to carve out that time, but the time belongs to the individual. This should be a time where the leader can learn how more about the individual and how to better support them. These meetings work best when regularly scheduled in advance, and when both participants can contribute to the agenda beforehand.

For those situations when the leader is not the direct manager of an individual, having scheduled time might look a little different. It could still take the form of one-to-one meetings, but it could also look like regular time to review work or to ask questions. The key is that the individual knows that they have your attention for a certain time, preferably undivided.

This can feel both overwhelming and comforting at the same time. It can be overwhelming if you are a leader responsible for many people. You may be wondering how you will ever find the time to devote to each person individually. As a father of seven children, I am familiar with this particular form of overwhelm.

On the other hand, there is comfort in the fact that scheduling time for your people doesn’t require any special skills. You don’t actually have to be the best listener, or the most personable, or any superlative at all. You just have to be willing to put in the effort to show that you care. Just by scheduling the time, and muddling through as best as you can, you are clearly communicating to your people that they are valuable to you—valuable enough to displace other things that you could be doing.

Clarity

Clarity strikes me as a concept for which we all naturally yearn. As the book of Proverbs says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” I have learned, through my experiences with mental illness, that uncertainty is a major trigger for many people. It gets exaggerated in those who struggle with some form of mental illness, but it affects all of us. A leader can do a great deal to instill calm and assurance that we can deal with the uncertainty that must exist, while simultaneously removing whatever is unnecessary.

For a team in particular, one of the greatest ways that a leader can provide clarity is through defined work. When a team can come together around a shared mission that they all understand and can see a path to accomplish, or at least to begin, something magical seems to happen. No longer are people spending mental energy grappling with the unknown—instead they are able to apply themselves completely to implementing the vision. People are more engaged and excited to come to work. As a software engineer, the lack of defined work is perhaps one of the largest factors I have seen in people leaving an organization.

This clarity can come to individuals in ways that unlock their potential as well. When someone knows exactly what is expected of them, and is empowered to take steps to fulfill those expectations, they often thrive and excel. When we don’t really know what success looks like, the situation can become demoralizing because we never know if we are making progress, treading water, or backsliding.

Companies also benefit from a leader who is able to provide clarity. Sometimes, the greatest service one can do is to say no to the right things at the right time. If a leader can be clear on what is included in a particular endeavor, and what needs to wait for the future, a company can relax and trust that things are going to work out. Of course, this requires the leader to provide the final piece as well.

Results

A leader is most often judged on what the people they lead can deliver. As an individual contributor, you are evaluated based on your personal results, but as a leader, you are responsible for the results of others. This can be disorientating and intimidating to new leaders. Earlier in my career, I found the lack of personal delivery a challenge in my creative fulfillment. Over time, I found greater joy and satisfaction in seeking to unlock others in their potential, and to see what we can accomplish as a group.

One of the best tools that a leader has to influence the results that are delivered is process. This can be an unglamorous view, but it is the simple, almost unseen structures that a leader puts into place that can truly facilitate people’s achievement. As a leader becomes more comfortable with process, and understands better how to shape and mold it in such a way to empower and unblock others, that leader becomes capable of more influence than ever.

One of the ways in which process can influence the delivery of results is through the safety and stability that it can provide. As humans, we are not thrown by difficult circumstances nearly as much as we by unanticipated circumstances. If we have a plan to attack an obstacle, then it becomes an opportunity rather than a hinderance.

As we as leaders come to embrace our role in honing and tweaking the process, we become invaluable to our organizations for our ability to influence and drive results. Our team and others can look to us for guidance on how to approach a given situation, and we can find the small points of friction that slow a team down and adjust to make improvements.

Conclusion

Protecting and providing work seamlessly together to enable us as leaders to perform all of our necessary functions better. As we provide results, we are better able to protect our team, our people, and our company. We can serve as a beacon to follow as well as a shield to defend our people from distraction or outside pressure. Leadership is more important than ever, and I hope that it is helpful for you as it has been for me to distill the role of a leader down to simple terms.

In the next article in my series on leadership, I will be exploring the three stages of leadership.

This was a big moment for me. 😁 🕹

I completed all 180 goals in Alto’s Odyssey!

In my opinion, the most important functions a leader fulfills is to protect and provide. There are many ways in which a leader can do those, and I will first explore how a leader can protect people, the team, and the company.

Note: This is part of a series sharing my thoughts on leadership. Read the introduction here.

As I mentioned in my article on trust, I enjoy attempting to distill a complicated topic to the simplest terms I feel still capture its essence. In considering all of the many important functions a leader performs, I settled on categorizing them in just two groups: protect and provide.

As a reminder, when I speak of a leader, I do not refer just to those with positional authority. Anyone can be a leader, as illustrated by this definition from Niel Nickolaisen, our CIO at O.C. Tanner:

A leader is someone others choose to follow

Protect

When I think of an archetypal leader, an images that jumps to mind comes from warfare. I think of the leader as the person who is out in front, inspiring the troops to follow and rally to a cause. In that sense, the leader is literally protecting people, whether those that immediately follow, or those who live in increased safety because of the leader’s actions.

Of course, leadership does not necessarily require conflict, and certainly does not require bloodshed. Protecting can take many forms. There are three that I want to consider:

• People
• Team
• Company

Protecting people

As with almost everything that is work-related, leadership is primarily a personal matter. When we seek to protect others, we need to first see them as people, and focus on their individual needs. There is great opportunity for us to learn about the people who have already chosen, or who we hope will choose, to follow us.

One way in which we protect people is to ensure safety for them. This can take many forms, especially in the workplace, one of which is psychological. Anxiety is a natural response to a fear stimulus. If coming to work, or attending a meeting, or submitting code, or engaging with a certain person has the likelihood or potential to result in danger, our stress response will kick in. When we live in a constant, or even frequent, state of heightened tension like this, our health and productivity will sharply decline.

We need to create environments where people feel safe and secure. When they are able to let go of that fear response, their mental energies can be put to better and more productive use. When people feel free to speak up and share their thoughts, or to take risks and try new things, we unlock potential that is not accessible in any other way.

Protecting a team

While I have made a point of emphasizing that a leader can be anyone, my current role is a manager of a small team of software engineers. Because of that, much of my focus around leadership is from the perspective of a manager. When I think about what a leader of a team can do to protect them, the first thing that comes to my mind is shielding them to be able to focus. Deep work is a concept that I consider crucial, particularly for individual contributors, such as the programmers on my team.

So much of what we can do for our teams is to protect them from distraction or from undue outside influence. My experience is in the realm of software, and I have seen that people outside of the team often want to step in and push for certain features to be built. As a leader, we need to help our teams resist the urge to chase the new and the shiny. Much of that work comes in preventing direct access to our team members. Most people, especially developers, have an innate desire to please others and solve problems, and presented with the opportunity, will jump at the chance.

Another area in which teams often face pressure is in timelines or deadlines. Part of the challenge here is that the people who apply this pressure are typically in positions of authority. If the culture of an organization is unhealthy, a manager may not have the ability to protect the team. Hopefully, as leaders we can find ways to shape the environment so that our team can work without fear that they will be forced to release before they feel ready.

Protecting the company

Especially as a manager, but also as any kind of leader, we have the responsibility to protect the interests of the organization in addition to protecting the people and the team. One of the main ways in which we seek to strike this balance is through discipline. As with some of the other topics we have explored, there are multiple facets to consider.

Naturally, one aspect of this is the disciplinary action or conversations that a manager is required to handle. For those leaders who are not in positions of people management, disciplinary action may not be of the official variety, but they still can exert influence in ways to help others grow and improve. This kind of discipline can be challenging to administer, and requires a willingness to hold difficult conversations. In this way, we protect the company from possible negative consequences of poor performance or other issues.

Additionally, we protect the company by defining and executing a process with discipline. This requires personal discipline, as well as the ability to lead and inspire others to stay focused in their execution as well. As we work to instill professionalism in others, and help them stay connected to the objectives of the organization, we protect the company’s interests and ensure that, at least in our area of influence, things will continue to move forward.

Conclusion

There are so many more things that could be said about the role of a leader to protect, but I am going to stop here. While this is not a comprehensive summary of everything that a leader needs to do, I feel that it is a helpful distillation of one half of the most important functions.

In my next article in my series on leadership, I will explore the other half of a leader’s role: to provide.

📖 Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters, by Ryan Singer

As a leader, your most important commodity is trust. Every action you take, every word you say, every success you notice or ignore affects the trust others have in you.

Note: This is part of a series sharing my thoughts on leadership. Read the introduction here.

One thing that I like to try and do is distill a complex topic down to a single salient point. As I thought and thought about leadership, I decided that the most important aspect is trust. I want to explore how I landed on that, and what the implications are.

Leadership and following

In order to simplify leadership down to a single idea, we must first describe what we mean by leadership. My favorite definition comes from Niel Nickolaisen, our CIO at O.C. Tanner:

A leader is someone others choose to follow

When we consider whom to follow, there are logical and also emotional reasons at play. Logically, we seek assurance that choosing to follow someone will lead to positive outcomes. Emotionally, if we fear that our choice might cause us harm or bring great uncertainty, we are unlikely to pursue that option.

As we seek to become a leader, we have to realize that every action we take either increases trust in us or erodes it. When we cause uncertainty, those who might follow us will lose trust and will choose someone else. As trust wanes in us as a leader, we can only lead through positional authority. The only people following us then are those forced.

Trusting others

One of the simplest ways to earn trust is by demonstrating it in others. Too often, when we are placed in leadership roles in the workplace, we become insecure in ourselves and our ability to lead and influence others. We recognize that a result of good leadership is good output from those who report to us, and we narrowly focus on the end while ignoring the means. Ironically, this often drives us to micromanage or even redo work done by others in our quest for perfect results. This kind of behavior on our part may deliver short-term improvements, but as we overly control our people, we undermine our future success.

It is worth considering the different ways we can show trust or a lack of it to those we seek to lead. We may think that we trust our people, and not even realize that our actions communicate the opposite.

In a professional setting, one of the most common ways that leaders demonstrate a lack of trust is by requiring that work is done in a certain way. This may look like excessive check-ins, or stringent guidelines that spell out exactly how something must be accomplished. Naturally, there are times when exactitude is required, but most of the time, we can provide clear guidance of the outcomes that are desired, and leave up to those who will implement to determine the outputs necessary to achieve those outcomes.

Another common form of communicating a lack of trust is requiring that work happen in a specific location at specific hours. It is true that some activities are best performed in a face-to-face synchronous form. However, many professional activities, particularly those performed by an individual contributor, can be accomplished anywhere and at anytime. When we require that all work happen in the office during designated work hours, we effective communicate to our people that the time they are at their desk matters more than the work they do. We don’t trust them to get done what is needed in the right way, and so we have to monitor them constantly.

Trusting others is the right thing to do. In this way we honor the humanity of others and their right to learn and grow. They matter like we matter. Trusting them, and communicating that trust, is crucial to our development as leaders. This is also one of the best ways to develop the trust of others.

Building trust

In addition to trusting others, there are a couple other key things we can do to help foster others’ trust in us: competence and care.

Competence

Most people yearn to follow someone who actually knows what they are doing and is good at it. As we develop competence as a leader, we become that person others choose to follow. In future articles, I will explore in more detail what competence as a leader looks like. For now, it is enough to say that focusing on improving in our job is a great way to help instill confidence in others that we are likely to succeed as a leader and help them succeed as they follow us.

Care

Unfortunately, there are many brilliant jerks in the world, and especially in the workplace. These are people who may be extremely hard-working and competent, but have a negative influence on people around them. They care much more about results than they do about people, and this ironically often leads to poorer results in the end.

A good leader builds trust by genuinely caring about other people. When we encounter someone who is skilled and competent, and also who clearly sees us as a person who matters like they do, we are much more likely to have confidence in what they might tell us. Our fears of ulterior motives dissipate, and we can trust that they are not putting their own interests above ours. This frees us up to follow without reserve and to accept direct, even harsh feedback at times, which can help us improve at an exponential rate.

Conclusion

Trust is the most precious coin a leader possesses. It must be careful cultivated and consciously spent. Almost every action contributes to an increase or a decrease in the trust others have in us. This makes the biggest difference in whether people will choose to follow us, or will reluctantly do what we ask out of obligation.

In the next article in my series on leadership, I will explore the role of a leader.

In my job as a software engineering manager, I was recently asked to speak about leadership. As I prepared the presentation, I realized that this topic is a passion of mine, even rivaling my passion for mental health awareness. I will share my thoughts over a series of articles.

Leadership is a complex idea that means different things to different people. Often, we are thrust into roles in which we are expected or required to lead others. Many of us find these situations uncomfortable and find ourselves unprepared to take up the mantle laid upon us.

At the same work event where I presented, Niel Nickolaisen, our CIO at O.C. Tanner, gave the most concise definition of a leader I’ve ever heard:

A leader is someone others choose to follow

One thing that I love about this definition is how it highlights that anyone can be a leader regardless of role. We often think that leadership equates to having a position of authority, but this is a limited view. All of us can be the type of person whom others want to and actually decide to follow. Because of this universal applicability, I feel that the idea of good leadership is important and worth exploring further.

As I worked on my presentation, I was helped immensely by my good friend Jessica DuHadway. She asked many clarifying questions and even agreed to rework some of the content and co-present with me. In this writing, I went back to the topics as I had developed them to make sure I wasn’t stealing her words or ideas.

Articles

(Each title will be a link when the article is published)

Leading through trust

As a leader, your most important commodity is trust. Every action you take, every word you say, every success you notice or ignore affects the trust others have in you.

A leader’s role: protect

In my opinion, the most important functions a leader fulfills is to protect and provide. There are many ways in which a leader can do those, and I will first explore how a leader can protect people, the team, and the company.

A leader’s role: provide

I believe that the most important roles a leader must serve are to protect and provide. I want to explore this further by considering how a leader can provide support, clarity, and results.

Stages of leadership

Most people transition through three stages of leadership, whether consciously or not. These stages are the cruel tyrant, the benevolent dictator, and the servant leader.

Effects of stages

Leadership permeates our lives. Good leadership has the ability to uplift, just as poor leadership corrodes. We will consider the effects in terms of team makeup, team perspective, and team health.

I came upstairs and realized my hands were super cold. I put them under people’s shirts on their backs, and it was fascinating the different reactions.

7yo boy: Writhed and twisted to get away

6yo girl: No reaction

11yo boy: Yelped and jumped

12yo girl: Yelled and melted on the spot

Wife: An exclamation, “What is that? It’s cold!”

2yo boy: Reached back with his hands to move mine. Commented, “That’s cold!” Two minutes later, said, “Dad, that’s coldy!”

15yo girl: Turned and asked, “What are you doing? Go away!”

The 12yo wanted to leave the table and was told not yet. She sat and glowered, and the 2yo tattled on her. “Excuse me, Mom. Mary’s mean.”

Then he went over and hugged her until she started smiling again. He announced to everyone, “Mary is happy.” 😂

In other news, not sure if it was the quarantine or what, but I made a drastic change this weekend. 💇🏻‍♂️🪓

This was a special weekend, and I felt blessed to participate in General Conference with my family. I sketchnoted each session and am happy to share them for free on gospelsketcher.org. May you and your family feel peace and love during this Easter season.

I was changing the 2yo’s diaper and he was talking about drinking cocoa with his older brother.

Me: “And you’ll read some books!”

2yo: “No! I hate books. I hate all of them books. Get me new books!”

😂

I loved this delightfully written article by Craig Mod: Who Would Have Thought an iPad Cursor Could Be So Much Fun?

This is where the iPad’s support for the trackpad comes in—a middle ground between laser and potato, and a reinvention of Engelbart’s pointiness. Apple has taken the desktop cursor’s familiar thin arrow and replaced it with a translucent circle. This circle has the ability to change form not only with context but with the “physicality” of the object beneath it.

Move the pointer above a button and the circle morphs into the button itself, “snapping” into it, enveloping it like an amoeba, causing it to glow in a pleasing way. What this means is that the usual precision of a trackpad isn’t required to get exact hits on navigational elements. If you own an Apple TV, you’re already familiar with this vibe—it’s how the cursor on the TV “jumps” from icon to icon with a kind of sticky momentum. Similarly, on the iPad home screen, you can “lazily” slam the cursor around and have it lock onto applications with an eerie telepathy not experienced on a desktop OS.

I have used an iPad Pro as my primary machine for nearly a year now. I usually only go to my MacBook Pro when I need to work in Xcode, or do serious work in Jira. That’s the life of a software manager.

I actually have enjoyed using the Smart Keyboard Folio available with last year’s model of iPad Pro. But when I saw the new Magic Keyboard announced last week, I was ecstatic. Alas, like everyone else, I have to wait until May to really try it out.

But I installed iOS 13.4 yesterday and immediately connected a Bluetooth trackpad to try out the new support. I remember last summer when mouse support was announced as an accessibility feature. At the time, I dismissed it as something that I wouldn’t really need or use. When I saw the new demo video, my interest was piqued, and I gave it a try.

All of my doubt was swept away in an instant. In a way that I never expected, the cursor feels right at home. It appears when I touch the trackpad, and disappears when I type or touch the screen. Hovering over buttons or apps is intuitive and delightful. I never wonder where the cursor went or what is happening. As Craig Mod said,

And yet somehow, the overall effect of using a trackpad with an iPad is more convincing than direct manipulation, less exhausting, and simply more fun.

I look forward to using the newest Magic Keyboard in a few months. Until then, I will happily use my iPad with a trackpad sitting next to it.

I wrote this is my journal this evening, and then thought it would be nice to share more broadly:

This has been a crazy week, and it’s nice to feel the safety and stability that comes from a company with people who really care. Our Salt Lake office sustained some damage in the earthquake yesterday, and they had everyone stay home except for a few in today to inspect and try to make sure everything is safe. Crises highlight what people truly value, and this has shown the true colors of O.C. Tanner. I’m proud and grateful to work there.

😂 The 7yo brought the baby in to my wife for a diaper change, and composed a poem on the spot:

“Cough, cough,
I can’t breathe air;
She‘s got poopy underwear.”

With church meetings canceled, it was a neat experience to gather with my family in our home for a worship service. It gave new meaning to this scripture:

Worship​ God, in whatsoever place ye may be in… and live in ​​​thanksgiving​ daily

One of the ways I was profoundly affected by my recent trip to our India office was in observing the manner in which the people worked. I am still considering how to apply what I saw and learned.

As I wrote about recently, I had the opportunity to travel to India last week. We were able to visit some amazing historical sites, and to work with our colleagues in our office there. I had previously visited India, but never before with my current company. So this was my first opportunity to meet some of my colleagues in that office.

I was able to travel together with the product manager working with my team. When we arrived, we found a meeting room marked for our use. There were a few meetings rooms set off of a main room where the bulk of the office employees sat to work. Outside of the main room was a moderately sized area with a reception desk, couches, a gavel table, an eating table, and a food preparation area.

We found that while people were in the working room, a sense of quiet prevailed. If anyone spoke, it was in hushed tones. People were not antisocial—many conversations took place, but always in the outer room. On a few mornings, as we arrived, trainings were occurring with most of the staff in the office. During these trainings, some people were quietly working at their desks, but most were engaged in the training. So we saw that in general, either everyone was engaged in a social activity, or they were all quietly working.

While I worked in this environment, I found it highly conducive to deep work. It was much easier to be productive when people were not regularly interrupting or distracting with loud conversations. No one ever said anything or asked anyone else to be quiet. There was no need. Everyone seemed to already understand the environment they wanted to create, and even as intruding visitors, we could immediately sense the proper behavior, and acted accordingly.seemed to already understand the environment they wanted to create, and even add intruding visitors, we could immediately sense the proper behavior, and acted accordingly.

Deep work is facilitator in different ways for different people. In my experience, for most individual contributor work, quiet periods of uninterrupted concentration is ideal. The approach taken by the employees in our India office is the best I have ever seen at mitigating the many drawbacks of cubicles or open office layouts. I hope I can find ways to emulate some of what I witnessed and create deep work opportunities for myself and my team.

One of the surprising inspirations I have found in traveling to India is the traffic. At first glance, it seems scary and chaotic, but a subtle beauty emerged as I better understood life with almost no traffic lights.

India is a fascinating place. I visited Mumbai in 2008 for work and loved the experience. This past week I have spent in Hyderabad working with our Android and API teams. There are a number of things that have struck me in my time here, and I wanted to reflect more on the traffic.

Driving (or rather riding as I have no desire to drive here!) is an almost indescribable experience. We heard stories of other colleagues who had to cover their eyes to avoid panicking. The first couple days, my anxiety was spiking regularly. It seemed as if we were constantly within seconds of crashing into someone, and the din of the honking horns started to make my head split.

People seemed to have no respect for rules of the road, or stop signs, or lane markers. At every turn, cars would pile up and somehow merge five cars side by side into two lanes. Motorbikes flowed incessantly through any gaps in the cars, blocked only by rickshaws trying to do the same. On top of all the vehicular chaos, people threaded their way through the remaining spaces.

It was easy to criticize what we were seeing as organized and unruly. To our Western, regimented minds, the lack of structure was unsettling, even appearing barbaric. We couldn’t understand how people could function without the safe guardrails of enforced rules and regulations. The stress seemed overwhelming.

And then something beautiful and magical occurred.

As we spent more time in the traffic, patterns began to emerge. The cacophony lost its harshness as individual sounds took on new meaning. Instead of random honking, an intricate auditory signaling system became evident. Instead of barely avoided accidents, an elegant dance ebbed and flowed. At the root of what appeared to be chaos was a tranquility that nearly everyone shared along with an understanding of their mutual purpose. There was a total lack of irritation displayed.

The hyper-efficient part of my brain recoiled first at the perceived disorder and the inefficiency that must surely result. Every drive we took seemed to snake back and forth through the city. I finally realized that the ubiquitous u-turns and lack of traffic lights were connected, and were a feature, not a defect. Avoiding traffic lights meant that there was a continuous flow of motion. Side streets opened on to main arteries in a single direction, and regular openings for u-turns facilitated speedy course correction.

One fascinating aspect of the u-turns was the impact on opposing traffic. Gates or cones obstructed the outer lane to make room for turning vehicles. Instead of causing problems or congestion, traffic seamlessly merged from four cars abreast spanning the two lanes to a car and a rickshaw or a couple motorcycles squeezing through. As vehicles turned and people crossed and lanes collapsed, the people calmly adapted. There was a complete lack of frustration and selfish insistence on priority.

As our group of Americans came to see the beauty beneath the chaos, we realized that understanding traffic was a key to understanding the people and their culture. Harmony and cooperation vastly exceed individualism and competition.

As I return back to where I am more comfortable driving, I hope I can take some of the lessons I have learned from Indian traffic.

Found these instructions outside our office in Hyderabad. The first step seems appropriate for any emergency and generally good life advice.

A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to catch the sunrise at the Taj Mahal on a work trip.

📺 Seinfeld

Finished watching all nine seasons for the first time

Behavior exists in the realm of time because it requires action, but mindset exists in a timeless realm of thought. We can change our mindset in a split second.

I recently had the opportunity to participate in some trainings by the Arbinger Institute. These trainings were hugely impactful on me, in both a professional and personal sense. They have published a number of books that include the same basic principles, such as Leadership and Self-Deception, The Anatomy of Peace, and The Outward Mindset. The foundational principle is that mindset drives behavior.

At times, it is easy for us to remain unaware of this truth. We often see problems that arise and look to address them through behavioral changes. This will never be successful in the end because any behavior can be performed with any number of mindsets.

In my latest training, a fascinating point was raised. One of the aspects of behavior is that it is necessarily linked with action. As such, it exists in the context of time. All action takes time, both to enact and even more to modify.

On the other hand, mindset exists in the context of thought. The implication of this is that time is not a factor. In the realm of thought, changes can occur instantaneously. Often, small and subtle adjustments can develop imperceptibly over time. We sometimes are completely unaware of the final nudge that pushes us to reconsider a previously held belief and change our mind. But that actual change of mind can occur in an infinitesimal moment.

Confusion can arise because time enters into the picture in the implementation of any mindset change. Although a shift in mind can happen instantaneously, the behavior that results from the shift will naturally occur over time.

Furthermore, even when our mindset changes, we often fall back into previous ways of thinking. It is to be expected that we will have to make repeated efforts to change our mindset when we realize that we are no longer acting in ways consistent with our previous adjustments.

As we approach our lives, it is important to remember that underneath behavior sits the foundation of mindset. Our thoughts and beliefs shape us in many way, both large and small, overt and imperceptible. When we realize that our mindset needs an adjustment, we can take comfort in the fact that this change can occur in an instant, even though it could take the rest of our lives and repeated efforts to put that change into practice.

Fun day of college basketball! Loved watching Oregon win in overtime and BYU dominate Gonzaga on senior night. 🏀

Feeling pretty happy with the newsletter I set up for the latest articles on MentalWorkHealth.org. Sign up and let me know your thoughts on the format or the process at mwh.is/subscribe. 🧠