Sharing The Banquet Table (Fierce Behaviour For Better Business Series)
Who: Leader in Global Corporate, playing key role in creation of new products.
Mission: Improve her business of forging influential partnerships within the company; Strengthen her Leadership Presence.
Moment of Truth she wants to work on: The moment when she feels her agenda is threatened by colleagues or those higher in the hierarchy.
Current Behaviour in this Moment of Truth: Tends to grip more tightly, goes into defence-mode, fights for her agenda, doesn’t “take shit” from anyone.
Cost of Current Behaviour: Alienating those with whom she needs to connect. Closing off to new ideas that may have utility. Higher stress levels. Loss of leadership presence and credibility. Summary cost: her initiatives, ideas and career may stall. Company may miss out on added value in final product.
How we went about creating a “New Human*” moment for this person.
We focused solely on this moment of truth, because it is in these high-leverage moments that our limiting habitual responses are most often triggered.
Having confronted the cost of this behaviour, we attacked the problem via imagination: I asked her to craft a vision of new behaviour that she believed would not only produce better outcomes, but also would inspire a sense of pride and joy within herself.
What was the vision?
This new human would feel more poise in those tense moments. Notice that she wanted to feel more poised, not just have an outer appearance of poise.
This new human would feel much more generous to allow others to take center stage when challenging her ideas. She would clearly embody and transmit a feeling of absolute safety in her agenda being questioned.
During the exchange, she’d be able to really hear what was being said and also create a space where the other person felt heard.
As a result of being able to listen with an open heart (an open mind is the natural byproduct of this), this new human would even be able to incorporate ideas that initially would appear to threaten her agenda, thereby creating a greater sense of partnership while also strengthening her own ideas with the suggestions from another.
Finally, this new human would be able to disagree with playfulness. That would simply mean that she could enter into the “game” of negotiation and human exchange and be aware that she was playing this game, instead of seeing it as a do-or-die moment for her sense of self.
How We Activated The New Behaviour.
We started with her Underlying Beliefs. How did she view herself in this Moment of Truth? Did she have equal power with the other humans in the room? Was she safe? What did it mean that someone challenged her ideas/agenda? Was it possible to have meaning-full disagreement that resulted in a closer/deeper connection with her exchange partner? (aside: this touched on a tightly-held underlying belief she’d carried for a long time, that “this kind of challenge usually leads to me losing something). What did it mean to win or lose?
I suggested a new paradigm for her, a new way of viewing this moment of truth:
“If you see yourself as rich in ideas, rich in talent and potential, rich in opportunities to use your skill and move forward, you’ll be very generous with the stage, you’ll feel very comfortable to share your space in the marketplace of ideas.”
“Think of this arena, this stage or space as a banquet table. You’re sitting at this table and you have more food than you’ll ever be able to eat. Someone approaches and says, ‘May I share in this food?’ What would you say?”
“Of course you’d say ‘feel free. Eat as much as you want- I have plenty for myself.’”
“This is how you can behave when your ideas or agenda are challenged. Cede the ground: give the person full rein to express their own opinions and ideas. If you believe in yourself and what you do, there’s nothing to fear.”
How she Activated this new possible Underlying Belief.
She had to practice putting her Attention on the new paradigm. She had to get her Emotion/Feeling involved, focusing on the new possibility until she really felt its potential, felt the beauty of it, felt the pleasure of responding in this new way.
“Reinforce the new belief, every chance you get.” We knew the old habitual belief (when people challenge me, I lose something important) will come up. Her job was to remind herself, frequently, that there was another possibility.
But awareness of a new Underlying Belief was only the first step. Next, she needed to embody it through Behaviour.
Physicality, Self-Expression, Sound, Feeling
How does this New Human with this new Underlying Belief use her body? What language does she use? Is the sound of her voice different, and does she feel it in a different place in her body?
This was a process of going both inside-out and outside-in. Mind-body, body-mind. The outer can activate the inner, and vice versa.
We explored and practiced a new way of physically responding in these moments of truth. In the past, her body would either tense up into fight mode, or go into physical/vocal/verbal retreat.
This new human would practice the skill of physical presence. Really being there for these moments. Embodying a new physical openness and relaxation that signalled availability to the other person.
This new presence required sensuality- getting into a groove that felt self-supportive and pleasurable, such as how we may feel when dancing with another person, or hitting a tennis ball with them… or making love with them. Being in her senses also meant she’d be out of her head, which was vital if she wanted to put her attention on her partner.
We practiced new beginnings to her verbal responses. “Yes but” was out; so was “I understand your point of view, but..” (both of these are received for what they usually are, which is no). We also practiced the difficult art of not going into immediate verbal defence of her ideas; when others present an idea, what they most often want to hear is the other person exploring that idea, taking an interest in it. Defending ourselves/our creations is not a connective act.
A new human with a new Curiosity. We began work to cultivate curiosity. Real curiosity, not something manufactured for effect.
This was not easy- it’s very hard to be curious when we feel threatened. We introduced some questions for activation of curiosity. These questions change with each Use Case, but they’re what actors turn to in order to stay spontaneous and curious on the 54th take of a scene, or the 112th performance of a play: I wonder how/why/what/who/where….
I wonder what this person wants out of this exchange? (usually something positive, just like me)
I wonder how this idea could actually be positive for my agenda/project/idea? (maybe it as a highly useful clarifier, even if we don’t end up adopting it)
I wonder who is this person when they’re not at work? What brings them joy? (maybe I would really like them, if we took these professional agendas out of it. Maybe I can explore our rapport, and not worry for now about my agenda)
I wonder what good could come out of this exchange? What good might come from not reaching agreement? (ah- now I can focus on the longer view, and explore their perspective without reserve)
I wonder where this conversation will go? (any outcome is acceptable because my focus is on finding a shared meaning, on any level. Now I’m even eager to hear what they have to say)
I wonder what will happen next? (ah- I realize that I’ve become cynical about these meetings, assuming I know exactly what’s going to happen. But in fact, I don’t.)
Finally, we worked on her sound.
There is an enormous volume of research that has shown the extent to which the sound of a human’s voice affects us on both the emotional and cognitive levels. The beauty of working on sound is that we must concomitantly work on feeling and physicality, because the sound we make is ineluctably linked to the truth of our emotional and physiological experience.
So we worked on locating her deepest, most relaxed, free and empowered voice.
To do this, we associated this voice with moments in her life when she felt safe, happy, empowered, free. These moments were usually associated with time spent with the people she loved. She began to intuitively link a specific physicality, inner vision and feeling to that voice- and could use these links to positively trigger herself right before, during and immediately after these moments of truth.
Conclusion
These were our initial steps. For professional actors, creating new behaviour is a craft. We’re all actors, participants, in the quest for growth and change.
Our leader found that putting attention a new Underlying Belief, that she was rich, with plenty of room to spare at the Banquet Table of ideas and human exchange, created a new space for her to be more generous, collaborative and innovative. Her leadership presence also increased- thereby changing how people viewed her.
She had started her journey of conscious behavioural work that would lead to doing better business.
- A new human moment can be best summarized by others’ reactions when it occurs: “huh. I’ve never before seen him/her respond that way in this situation. I’m impressed/inspired/interested in hearing more/pleased.”
