Imagine this nightmare scenario: You show up at a meeting where you’re the speaker and you suddenly realize only half the group received the memo about who you are and the purpose of the meeting. The only notice most received was “this is a mandatory meeting,” and it is 6:30 p.m. on a Monday Night Football night, no less. Needless to say, at least 10 of the 20 people are upset. How would you change this anger and frustration (fear) in order to free minds and have a productive meeting?
In my case, I didn’t have a choice: I had to find a better solution than a fear reaction. This meeting was the start of a new class to help male inmates at a local prison learn how to free their minds. In addition to some attendees not getting the memo, the class was accidently overbooked. This situation quickly outpaced all the tough changes I have ever had to implement in corporate America. Yet in less than 30 minutes, participants were laughing and engaged. It is the perfect demonstration of how a leader can shift/change just about any situation to a more positive outcome if he or she knows what to do.
There was a time in my work life when I would have been unhappy to have one person in my office upset with me, much less 10 at once. I would be stressed (and admittedly reptilian-fear-minded) almost immediately. Perhaps you’ve noticed that, when just one person is upset, others can quickly be pulled into the upset-black-hole tractor beam. At that point, there are two (or more) people in fear-based anger/frustration reptile mode stuck together. It’s safe to say that the behavior that results from acting out of this part of the brain usually gets worse before it gets better.
The challenge is that some organizations accept this reactive “duke-it-out” mode as a natural part of doing business. What if it is not a natural way to respond to things we don’t like, such as mandatory meetings, a new manager, upsets, or change? What if we’ve been conditioned to think that it is an okay way to respond, even though there are many, many more steps we can take to improve the outcome?
Here are the three steps that helped (saved?) me:
Step 1:Do something unexpected
I immediately walked up to each participant, shook his hand, and happily said, “Hello, great to have you here, come on in!” It is unlikely they had heard anything like that for some time at the institution. A little unexpected shock to the nervous system creates an opening for new information, creating space to shift people into their higher brain centers. And as parents with small children know, if a child interrupts you during a task, you are likely to forget what you are doing. This same principle is extremely valuable when you want someone who is angry to forget what he or she is doing in that moment!
It can be applied specifically in a meeting by saying something unusual or humorous, taking a quick break, or dropping your pen. It is advisable to act quickly while being caring and elegant, or people’s reptilian minds will lock down into fear-based mode. It is also useful to have a variety of ways prepared to break the other person’s train of thought. You may need to use a few before the upset shifts.
If you think you can’t do it, remember the boatload of unproductive meetings you’ve lived through that cost your company time and money because people got “stuck” in an unhappy pattern and/or resisted change. And if you would find practice helpful before you take it to work, the element of surprise may be worth applying once or twice at home with your kids.
Step 2: Get ’em moving
Brains function differently (at a higher level!) when people move. You cannot run a fast mile and think about what a bad day you are having. Movement creates energy and changes focus. Whenever I have a change to announce or am working with a potentially unhappy group, I always have some kind of physical activity ready. In this case (knowing the audience, if not the specific challenge I would face), I had a game with a circle of chairs set up ahead of time. The game got them moving and laughing.
Limited movement also results in a significant loss of brainpower, and unfortunately, in most organizations, meetings are held in small rooms with no space to move. Even worse, people sit still all day at a desk, limiting access to the power the entire body has to stimulate creative thinking. Google, on the other hand, holds team meetings while walking because the company recognizes the power of movement to help people access more creative centers of the brain. This principle of taking a walk is powerful for transforming any challenging conversation you need to have with a colleague. Even a walk to the water fountain may be enough to cause a shift in thinking that creates new opportunities to resolve differences.
Step 3: Ask ‘up and forward’ questions that engage people in future possibilities
In the prison example, I asked, “What would it be like to know how to use your brain better to get more of what you want in life?” That prompts the brain to fill in the answer to the question asked rather than other questions they probably were asking themselves, such as “Who is this woman and why is she keeping me from watching Monday Night Football?” Similarly, when you introduce a change at your company, some of your employees may be asking, “Why do we have to change this, again?” People who are “stuck” in a reptilian-based emotion like anger or frustration are asking negative questions about what is “missing” or “wrong” or are using the “why” question, which is unlikely to produce a happy answer.
A leader who asks “up and forward” questions about future possibilities can quickly engage the cerebral cortex so that people start thinking of solutions. Examples include “What do you think needs to happen to make this change work?” and “How can we work together to reach a positive solution?”
The most important contributor to a positive outcome is a leader who commits to stay in his or her cerebral cortex to find creative solutions and avoid a personal reptilian-fear black hole. This skill can be learned with practice. Without that practice, I would have been thinking how big those guys are compared to me, and I don’t think my solutions would have been quite so creative. Most people do want to be creative and behave well. An extremely valuable role for a leader is to free others to return to the part of the brain where creative solutions are most likely to arise.
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