Thought it might be helpful to list, with a one-line descriptor, each of the free tools which are now in the archives. Here goes:

Liberating Yourself From Repeated Emotional Grabs (tool for recording your upsets as first step to more effective behavior under duress)
Breakdowns in Communication (tool for fewer breakdowns in communications and tasking people)
Future Hindsight: Life Is No Dress Rehearsal (tool for analysis leading to better time management)
Cover Story: You (tool for appreciating your own success and translating into your personal brand, tool for visioning your dream job)
First 90 Days (tool for an action plan including relationship development and personal branding)
Signal Acts (tool for changing beliefs toward those which enlist people in pursuing your agenda)
Better Supervision (comfort zone tool for managing upward and downward)
Priorities: What Matters Most to Me (Part 1) (tool for transcending daily tasks and putting more meaning in your life)
Priorities and Time: What Matters Most to ME (Part 2) (time management tool companion to Part 1)


As always, please share your stories about using these tools.
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Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:29:23 -0400

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We have previously written about moments when something someone says or does “grabs” us -- provokes an emotional response and behavior that is not really in our own interest or helpful toward our agenda. We are in a fight or flight mode instead of staying centered and responding with a more “blending (collaborative)” or detached exchange which might have served us better. We backed away or came on strong when there were other choices.

Here is a tool that my chief executives are using to get a handle on this through self-discovery.

Keep a couple of index cards in your shirt or jacket pocket at all times. In advance, write the tabs below on the cards (or print out cards with the tabs already on the cards). The first chance you have when you are alone after someone says or does something that sets you off, fill in the blanks with at most one or two lines:

- Who (name of person who grabbed me)
- Where (location and who else present
- What (was said or done that grabbed me)
- What I said or did in response (my behavior)
- Why (why I was upset )

At the end of the day, throw the completed card or cards in a drawer. At the end of a week and after two weeks, take some quiet time when you are calm and read the cards.

Are there any patterns to the “grabs” in your answers to 1 through 5? Did some grabs stay with you for more than a day? Were there consequences for your responses that you don’t like, either in business results or relationships or your own emotional state? What are they? Write up a summary of your analysis (one page, headline style).

Now examine the summary and dig into your “mind map:” what long-standing, deeply-held assumptions or beliefs were threatened? What “fear” or “no fly zone” was inflamed? Did you feel your integrity was impugned? that your worth was challenged? your intelligence questioned and you felt you would appear stupid? Can you identify moments long ago when you first had these feelings? How much of what you felt was driven by your own assumptions and beliefs?

With the learning that comes from this exercise, you should be able to begin to get “early warning” of grabs, take a breath and classify the grab and treat the incoming with more detachment. If you do, it will save you time and energy and emotional distress not only in the moment, but in cleaning up the aftermath that letting grabs control us often create.

If you have a story to tell after you try this tool, share it with us.
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Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:57:33 -0400

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Dr. Val Curtis, an anthropologist living in Burkina Faso decided that extreme measures are necessary to save millions of children in Africa from death and disease. What is unique is where she found a solution: consumer marketing. What is powerful, is how this applies to restoring integrity and transparency to American business landscape.

As Charles Duhigg of the New York Times (July 13, 2008) indicates, half the deaths are preventable simply by frequent washing of the hands with soap. The catch? Getting people to do this has been near impossible.

Curtis turned to “soapers” like P&G whose expertise now includes understanding what messages cause new habits to be created. “Our products succeed when they become part of daily or weekly patterns,” said consumer psychologist Carol Berning, retired from P&G.

What causes a new habit to be created? Understanding the cues that underly current habits like checking email or brushing our teeth. In particular, the cues operating in (1) a specific location or time of day, (2) a certain series of actions, (3) particular moods and (4) the company of specific people. Now I wont say I know the list of cues that cause people to eat more or eat the wrong foods or to check email. What I do believe is that when our memory stimulates a desire associated with a specific activity or place or mood or people we do things habitually. And when we know enough about people’s daily activities and associations, we can create new habits.

Numerous health campaigns failed to persuade Africans of the benefits of hand-washing. But an ad campaign selling “disgust” -- sh0wing mothers with unwashed hands emerging from the toilet with a purple stain that contaminated everything they touched including their children -- the result was 41% increase in washing before eating and 13% after visits to the toilet.

We have an epidemic in America -- a lack of transparency and integrity in our institutions (government, corporations, religious organizations). It is destroying trust in the system, respect for law and any benefit of the doubt that we used to give other people. For years I have believed enough CEOs to act with good purpose that their own authentic behavior and occasional Signal Acts (ceremoniously expelling violators from the ranks, recognizing and rewarding someone whose information or action led to the cessation of unethical practices), but no longer.

We need a campaign to instill a habit of ethical behavior and peer pressure for that habit by connecting the dots: the most frequent violations of ethical standards with daily activities, daily locations, daily meetings and daily moods. Developing such a campaign will take research, insight and determination. But it will pay off far in ways that fear of regulations cannot.
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Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:50:40 -0400

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Sun, 13 Jul 2008 17:22:01 -0400

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