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Mike Hohnen

Coaching for personal growth, change and development

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Work Your Inside for a change

August 10, 2022By Mike Hohnen

I have a challenge for you – watch and see if you  are up for it…

https://youtu.be/KHStn7jZiqk

 

Video transcript

I have a challenge for you.

Its called work your inside for a change.

But before I disclose what the challenge is I want to share with you what has inspired me to create this challenge. 

This summer, I came across a really interesting initiative that has come out of Stockholm, Sweden, a group of consultants, academics, and researchers have asked themselves this very important question. We have this beautiful framework  called the United nation sustainability framework? When you look at them, It very obvious what needs to be done? 

The research is there, the knowledge is there. Everybody knows what needs to be done,

But somehow it’s not happening. Or if it’s happening, it’s in a very small way compared to what is actually needed. So in that sense, this, this sort of classic knowing, doing gap,

We know exactly what has to be done, but somehow it’s not happening.

You could also say that we have a collective blind spot. Somehow we’re not seeing what it is that’s tripping us up and preventing us in actually taking the necessary action.

And so they ask themselves this question, what would it actually take? What are the skills and abilities and attributes that we would need to develop individually and collectively in order to fulfil these sustainability goals.

And they put this question out to a wide range of people and asked for their input. And out of that came what they have now labeled, The inner development goals. Go to their website and you can learn a lot more about them, the way they researched it and process that’s behind developing this framework. 

A lot of interesting companies that are backing up this initiative. It’s, it’s not a two centsstart up  in a basement. It’s a very serious initiative. 

 


Inner Development Goals framework

What that came up with was 21 skills and attributes, including things like openness, how our ability to be open to new things, our ability to take perspectives, humility, trust, empathy, all these kinds of things. 

They then grouped them  in five main categories that they called 

  • being 
  • thinking
  • relating
  • collaborating
  • acting, 

This framework is open source and free to use for anybody who is interested in working in the field of sustainability and leadership.

When I saw the framework I went, hallelujah. 

Those are exactly the same attributes that we would need If you asked someone, what does it take to develop sustainable leadership? 

 

What do we need to develop? 

 

Well, they’re exactly the same skills and attributes. 

This then brought me back to something that I’ve been asking myself for a long time now.

 In    the so-called Western world, we seem to have an over focus on the outside. We are fascinated with skill development that has directed towards task orientation and optimising performance. But that over focus on the outside seems to develop some kind of imbalance in the system  that we are part of.

And the way that imbalance comes out is in things like th is the great resignation people leaving their jobs in droves. Companies having problems with recruitment. Theya little red lamps  popping up that are telling us that somehow our system is out of balance and that imbalance is due to a blind spot or a knowing doing gap. 

We know what it takes to create sustainable leadership. We know what kind of organisations and workplaces we need to develop, but somehow it’s not happening. 

And my feeling is that the main reason it’s not happening is because we are neglecting the inside. We are not working hard enough on achieving a balance by  developing individually and collectively a healthier inside.

I think one of the reasons this happens is because most of us, when we look at these things, humility, trust, openness, whatever they are  and we ask ourselves, am I good at that? And we all go, yes, of course, I’m good at that. I’m a very open person. I’m humble, I’m trustworthy. And so we give ourselves a 10 out of 10 on all of those. But the reality is that when we look at that list of 21 things, we all have some serious blind spots and we cannot work on them until we start exploring them. 

Awareness, proceeds, change remember. 

So what I mean is that you can be the smartest person in the room. You can have the most fabulous education. You can have gone undergone all sorts of incredible training courses. But if you’re inside is underdeveloped, then you will end up getting in your own way. You will not be able to perform as well as you could, if you had a better balance. 

And that’s why I’d like you to join me in this exploration of inner development. 

And that’s the challenge that I want to present you with today. I call it working on your inside for a change.  Over the next five days. I will send you a podcast, one podcast each day. In the podcast, which will be about 25 to 30 minutes. I will take up one of these 21 Inner development goals could be trust, humility, empathy, complexity awareness. 

And at the end of each podcast, I will ask you a question to reflect on. It’s really important to do this reflection, because if you just consume the podcast, then you have just added more knowledge to your knowledge bank, but you’ve actually not started working with the inner development. 

In order to work with inner development, we need some kind of a conversation, a conversation with ourselves or a conversation with somebody else. 

And so the conversation with ourselves could be in the form of answering a reflection question and putting in that reflection question on an email to me. 

In that way, there’s a certain commitment to doing it. 

So that’ll be the rhythm: podcast, reflection, another podcast, reflection at the end of the five podcasts, I will offer you a coaching conversation where we can go over the five inner development goals that we have covered as well as your reflections for each of them. 

There’s no charge for this.

There’s no payment, but there is a catch, a small catch. And the catch is that if you don’t do the reflection, you don’t get the next podcast. You can’t just consume the content because you’re just going to add to the knowing, doing gap. And so podcast + reflection, and that releases the next podcast. 

That also means that if you feel that doing it every day for five days is too fast, or you don’t have the time for it, then you can skip a day, even two, as long as you realize that you don’t get the next podcast before I receive your reflection. 

So that’s the deal. 

So how do I think you might be able to benefit from this? 

Well, I think first of all, and that’s my overall goal with this, I wanna give you a taste of what could it be like to work with your inside?

And in that process, I would also like to raise your awareness of this phenomenon that I’ve talked about, of this imbalance, how we seem to be much more focused on working on our outsides and not paying enough attention to what would actually happen if we start working a little bit more on our insides. 

And I also hope to make it clear to you that the quality of our insides ends up driving the quality of our output –  of our outsides if you like. 

And finally, my larger hope is that this little sequence of podcasts, and the coaching conversation will inspire you to continue working on your own innerdevelopment development. 

So how does that sound? 

Are you up for the challenge? 

I really hope so. I would so enjoy having you board. The next step is very simple. All you need to do is go to my webpage, Mikehohnen.com/inside, and then add your name and email address in the form that’s provided. 

When you are registered as a participant you will first of all, get an email back where I will send you some more material to think about that will inspire you to further consider, your own inner development. 

I expect to be shipping the podcasts around the end of August. 

So that’s when you can expect the first podcast to arrive in your imbox, but in between, I’ll make sure to keep you busy with something else to think about. I really look forward to seeing you on the program. 

Bye bye for now.


Join the challenge here

Filed Under: General

Is is time to get of the dance floor?

June 16, 2022By Mike Hohnen

Over the past weeks, I have been catching up with clients.

Reflecting on these conversations one thing has struck me. Most of them are incredibly busy… and frustrated. When I poke a bit at that busyness it turns out that there is a common denominator. Somehow most of them have got trapped on the dance floor.

By that I mean, they are working on stuff that rightly should be done by someone on their team. That’s how it used to be but after all the confinements, shutdowns and staff shortages, they have drifted into sacrificing their own time for subordinate imposed time.

Let me explain.

Most managers operate within three main categories of time.

Boss-imposed time – used to accomplish tasks imposed by the boss and that can not be ignored without serious negative consequences.

System imposed time, meetings, request for support from fellow managers etc. Also, stuff that can not be ignored without getting into trouble.

Self-imposed time – is the time that the manager gets to work on ‘own’ projects, but a portion of that time will be taken by subordinate-imposed time. So when we deduct the subordinate imposed time from the self-imposed time it leaves us with the manager’s discretionary time.

Often this discretionary time is negative in the sense that it overshoots the number of hours available in what we would define as a reasonable workday or workweek. The manager is then faced with the choice of working unreasonably long hours or not working on their projects. An impossible choice. Hence the frustration.

This was all described brilliantly in a 1999 HBR article called, ‘Who’s got the monkey?’

Seems it’s still relevant.

Because of the ‘situation’ over the past many months, the manager has got into the habit of taking over the monkeys that subordinates are struggling with. This happens in more or less subtle ways.

“Boss, how are we going to cope with x now that y is no longer available to us?” “Hmm, I don’t really know yet, leave it with me and I will think about it.”

“Boss, I am missing two key people on my team, and I still have not sent that activity report for HQ – I just don’t know how to cope at the moment.” The manager thinks… don’t want to lose this lady as well, then responds. “Don’t worry leave it here with me I will sort it out later today.”

And so it goes on and on throughout the day.

In the process, subordinates have learnt that the best way to ease their workload and get home in a reasonable time is to drop by the manager and see if he will take over a monkey or two. It has become the new way of doing things.

It’s a swamp that will suck even the best manager under if not attended to.

But even worse, subordinates are learning to be helpless, it may be easier, but in the long run it is not very stimulating.

It’s time get off the dance floor and onto the balcony.

The first step is to be much more aware of what monkeys are truly yours and what monkeys are not yours. Subordinates who bring problem monkeys to you, need coaching, maybe direct advice, but when they leave your office they take their monkey with them.

It’s their monkey and they need to feed it.

Filed Under: General

Hard skills or Soft skills

May 19, 2022By Mike Hohnen

What is more important?

Neither – its a polarity – they need to be balanced and present

Lots of managers have fantastic hard skills – often that is what got them the job in the first place.

But if there is a lack of soft skills

  • they lose people – lots of people.

“a toxic culture is the biggest factor pushing employees out the door during the Great Resignation” -Sloan Review

Previously we accepted high turnovers. We shrugged it off – ‘that’s the industry’ we said to each other.

It was easy to find replacements.

That is no longer the case

In the future, we will need a better balance

Filed Under: General

You will need one thing and one thing only next year!

April 13, 2022By Mike Hohnen

The courage to act

I promise you

It’s not more planning, bigger goals or even new KPI’s that is going to get you through the coming year.

You will need one thing and one thing only.

Courage

The courage to act

The biggest threat you face at the moment is to get bogged down in passivity while you are waiting for things to get better.

Things are not going to get better or worse for that matter.

‘Things’ are what they are

Uncertain, unpredictable, and continuously evolving. 

This Corona thing is just an accelerator for so much that has been percolating for a while.

On a high level, what is happening is that we are transitioning from a period where things were complicated to a situation where things are beyond complicated – they have become complex. 

In a complex world, there are no known answers – no experts to turn to. Situations are unfolding and developing constantly. There is no longer agreement on how things work or what will happen when we do x y or z.

To navigate this uncertainty, we need to experiment. To test things out. 

That way, if we are smart, we can learn and adapt.

The crucial part is the do part – without the doing, we will lack vital information.

But taking action in the face of uncertainty requires courage.

  • Courage to accept a lot of failures
  • Courage to be critiqued for trying and missing
  • Courage to get up and try again

So you just need to find the courage.

I think I can help you with that.

For years I have operated a coaching system that I call Micro Coaching – it is basically an adaptation of a basic action learning concept.

It works like this

Every Friday morning, you receive an e-mail from me with the following questions:

  • What was your focus this past week?
  • What did you do?
  • What did you learn?
  • What will you focus on next week?

You answer the questions and return them to me before the end of the weekend. Monday – latest Tuesday I will send you my reflections, thoughts and feedback.

We continue the same process every week.

You will be surprised at how much it helps you stay on track. But most importantly, it will help you find the courage to act – and that is your secret weapon for 2021.

Click the link here, and it will take you to the page I created to describe the concept in more detail.

The courage to act

All the best

Mike

Filed Under: General

Your ego loves ‘this’ not ‘that’

April 13, 2022By Mike Hohnen

It’s got to be like this. And if it’s like this, it obviously cannot be like that. This is the world your ego loves.

We have been exploring the difference between to be above the line and below the line in a number of blogposts now. The concept of ‘this’ not ‘that’ relates back to my original video in this serie about how we get trapped in wanting to be right. When we get trapped in ‘this’ not ‘that’, then we also  are trapped in right and wrong and black and white and all the rest of it. And that’s fine. As long as we are operating in a simple world: that car is blue, that horse is moving or appels are fruits.

Video and Soundcloud versions below


‘This’ not ‘that’ works when things are simple

But as soon as we start moving out of very simple situations and into something that starts getting more complicated or even more complex, we start getting into trouble.

Just to recapitulate, computers are complicated. They are difficult but once you figure them out then you know how they will respond. A bowl of spaghetti on the other hand is complex. You have no idea how its is ‘configured’. If you pull a strand what happens next? It is unpredictable and the next bowl will behave differently. 

That’s the beauty of complexity. Things are so interconnected and there’s so much randomness in the system that we don’t really know how things will evolve, respond or perform. In a complex world ‘this’ not ‘that’ is pretty useless. It doesn’t work.

Of all our fears, the fear of the unknown is the greatest

So why do we get trapped in wanting to be right? Well, you’ll see what happens is that most of us get scared when faced with complexity. We have nothing to hold on to, no rules to live by and our little ego freaks out and looks for something to cling to: And there is it is ‘this’ not ‘that’. The moment it does, it drags us below the line. It’s the end of open mind, we no longer see possibilities, we are not open to perspectives. We are fighting for ego-survival. It’s ‘this’ not ‘that’!

In order to stay above the line, we need get comfortable with complexity and we need to be okay with our ‘not knowing’. Complexity means dealing with the grey tones, resisting the black and white solutions. In complexity, we need more options, because we can’t possibly know beforehand which options will actually work out.

That is the world that we’re operating in.

In a complex world this not that no longer works

Great team leaders are not afraid of complexity

And in case you were wondering, anything that involves human beings is not only complicated, it is also very complex. That means the big error we keep on making is, we think we can reduce all those questions regarding our teams and people to ‘this’ not ‘that’. If we do ‘this’, they are going to do ‘that’. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. It just depends. “If we give them a bonus, they will do this”. Maybe, some people will, sometimes. Maybe they won’t. To be a great team leader is also to become a master of complexity.

Here are the previous post in this series

Leadership skills every team leader needs to master

As a leader do you have the courage to examine your mindset model?

Feeling right you are probably wrong

Great team leaders do not get sucked into drama

Because you will drift you need to learn how to shift

Mike Hohnen, MBA is a coach, trainer, author and public speaker who supports leaders, managers and their teams in implementing the principles of the Service Profit Chain.

Filed Under: General, Leadership Tagged With: Team Leadership, team performance

Because you will drift, you need to learn how to shift

April 13, 2022By Mike Hohnen

Maybe you have now decided for yourself: ‘I will never, ever again fall into a drama triangle’. I know I’ve tried that approach more than once . Well, I can tell you something. It’s not going to work. It doesn’t work because we drift. In the post I will show you how we need to shift instead

Here is the video version and the sound track version for thos on the go



We start out with some degree of presence. We are totally ‘here now’ And then something happens. Something that causes us to drift out of presence. It could be beep on the cell phone. “Oh, sorry. Just a minute , oh no, not again. Yeah, sorry. Where were we?”

Or we just, can’t stay concentrated. Our mind starts floating: I wonder what’s for lunch? These interruptions and many more we call drift. And when we drift, we easily slip below the line. ( because left to its own devices our Ego loves to run the show) And before we know it we get caught in the drama triangle again.

Develop your awareness – understand what is going on

And so the issue is not to never ever get caught in the drama triangle because you’re not going to solve that. The real challenge is you need to develop the awareness to realise when that is what is happening.

The drift shift model - how to get back above the line and away from the drama triangle

And then you need to develop the skills to shift yourself back out of the drama triangle and up into presence of being fully ‘here now’. A simple first step of shifting is to take a deep breath, and re-center. Then you ask yourself the key question: I wonder how we could fix/solve/develop that. By activating a ‘creating’ question we come back to the present. A question that seeks to create something that would contribute to the current situation. That’s the core skill and that’s what we need to practice.

More Vblogs in the pipeline

This concludes my first six-post series on leadership skills, based around this model of above and below the line.

I will continue these VBlogs in the future, and will continue to explore the leadership qualities that we need to develop in order to become great team leaders.

Here are the previous post in this series

Leadership skills every team leader needs to master

As a leader do you have the courage to examine your mindset model?

Feeling right you are probably wrong

Great team leaders do not get sucked into drama

Mike Hohnen, MBA is a coach, trainer, author and public speaker who supports leaders, managers and their teams in implementing the principles of the Service Profit Chain.

Filed Under: General, Leadership, Service Profit Chain Tagged With: #leadership # Above The line, team leader

Great Team Leaders understand the difference between respond and react

April 14, 2022By Mike Hohnen


Summary of React or Respond


For the full version watch the video or listen to the audio as you prefer


In every situation there is a space, and in that space you have a choice. The choice to react or respond.

Victor Frankel wrote:

Respond or React will position you above or below the line

Above the line and below the line is also the difference between responding (above the line) or reacting, which immediately puts you below the line. When we are hijacked by our emotional system, we automatically fall into the trap of the drama triangle. And we choose a role for ourselves. When we choose a role for ourselves, we at the same time try and push the people around us or the circumstances of whatever into one of the two other roles to get the drama triangle going. And as we mentioned last time, this only serves the purpose of creating a lot of emotional friction, hot air, whatever you like. But it never leads to any constructive solutions. As long as we are caught in the drama triangle, we have no possibility to, create anything meaningful or useful. We just go round and round in circles like cats chasing our own tails.

List to your own language

Try and listen for your own language and notice how your own language will determine whether you are starting a new drama triangle or whether you already are responding and trying to pull the whole conversation into a completely new sphere above the line where we’re outcome-focused, constructive and trying to find solutions. And if you can manage that, and if you get good at that, then you’re going to see how people love to work with you.

Catch up on previous posts

Previous blog posts in this series on Team Leadership Skills and working above and below the line:

Leadership skills every team leader needs to master

As a leader do you have the courage to examine your mindset model?

Feeling right you are probably wrong

Great team leaders do not get sucked into the drama

Mike Hohnen, MBA is a coach, trainer, author and public speaker who supports leaders, managers and their teams in implementing the principles of the Service Profit Chain.

Filed Under: General, Leadership, Service Profit Chain, Training & Development Tagged With: Leadership, Service Profit Chain, Team, Teamleader

Team leaders don’t get sucked into drama triangles

April 13, 2022By Mike Hohnen

What does a John Le Carré book, the TV series ‘Friends’ and the movie ‘The Lion King’ have in common? What is the common denominator?They’re all created, using a drama triangle. A drama triangle is a key to create a captivating story, a story that stirs people’s emotions and gets you hooked on the plot. Drama triangles are the reason you binge watch Netflix series. Drama triangles, however, never produce any tangible results. That is why when used skilfully and you continue watching the same series season after season. They hook you.

Every time we go ‘below the line’ with our feeling of being right, we also automatically start a drama triangle.

Exploring what it takes to become a great team leader by avoiding the drama

This is the fourth blog post in my series around leadership skills and how we become great team leaders by focusing on followership .

We are using a simple but powerful model that I call above the line and below the line. You may need to go back to this post in the series in order to get the full explanation. Briefly, above the line, we are constructive, we are positive, we are cooperative, we are open to solutions. Below the line we are closed, defensive and not very cooperative.Obviously, below the line we don’t create a lot of followership.

What most of us don’t realise is that we drop below the line and start a drama triangle much more often that we are aware of.

Here is the video version:

And – as a new service to you my reader here is the sound track in case you prefer that version

The principle of the drama triangle

If you take a course in how to write a screenplay for Hollywood, they will introduce you to the concept of the drama triangle. It is the template that nearly everyone uses in order to create a captivating story. It works like this: In order for us to have a captivating story, we need a victim. Somebody who gets hurt, persecuted cheated, whatever.

And in order to produce a victim, we need a villain. Somebody who does something bad to the victim. And then to save the day, we need a hero who will come to the rescue of our victim.

Above the line
How drama triangles hold you below the line

With these three elements we have the basics of a good story. The series ‘House of Cards’ is a great example. It is easy to identify the three roles of Victim, Villain and Hero. Or is it? Because when the drama triangle is used well, the roles shift. Suddenly the hero is the villain; the victim the hero and then it shifts again, the victim is now the villain etc. It’s very, very powerful. The beauty of the dram triangle is that there is never a solution. It just goes round and round creating endless waves of hot emotions. That is what keeps you glued to the screen episoden after episode, season after season.

When you go below the line you start a new drama

When you let your mindset drop below the line, often triggered by your feeling of being right, you automatically start off a drama triangle because you will pick one of the three roles for yourself.

You will choose to see yourself as the victim: Why does nobody understand me? Or you take the villain role: These people are stupid they need to understand that I am right. Or you may choose to be the hero: I am going to save these people from their ignorance. One role is not better that the other they are all toxic in each their way. But that is only part of the story. When you initiate a drama triangle you trigger the people around you to take one of the other roles. It’s a game or a dance if you like and we all know instinctively how to play this game.

And in our blissful state of autopilot switched to ‘survival’ we just click in and take our role whenever someone invites us to have a game of drama triangle.

You come home from work. And yell at the kids for again leaving their bikes in the driveway. You are the villain, they are the victims. Your wife, the hero, jumps in and defends them. Then she switches gear and ask you why you are late again for dinner and gives you an ear full. You favourite daughter throws her armes around you and declares that it is so lovely to have you home… and so it goes round and round. If nobody stops the game it will just continues every evening until the relationship is totally toxic.

Some team leaders are chronic drama queens

Bad team leaders operating below the line also play this game, endlessly. They persecute a team member for doing something wrong (Villain). They complain to the team that ‘upstairs’ has again put pressure on them to get better results or that this week they will be putting in more hours than anyone else (Victim)*, or they take over a task from a team member to do the task themselves (hero) instead of teaching the team members how to do it. And if the team members are not aware of what is going on they just play along – they know how it goes, it’s a well known game and it repeat itself every day. No results. No improved outcomes, lots of frustration and produce no genuine engagement.

When a team leader operates from the below the line in this way the rest of the team is dragged below the line – and so are the customers they are supposed to service with constructive solutions. The negativity spreads.

(*A favourite victim role with team leaders, is to play ‘look how overworked or busy I am…’. It’s also called ‘poor little me’. It a great game judging by how many people choose to play along.)

How not to get sucked into the drama triangle

There is only one way out of the toxic drama triangle and that is to stop the game. It can be done by asking the magic question from previous blog post.

I wonder…

  • how we could find a solution?
  • if you could help me learn how to do it right?
  • what would you suggest we do about that?

The last one is my favourite. It is a real drama triangle game spoiler. With that question you reclaim the high ground above the line and you invite others to join you and stop the game playing.

How much drama can you spot around you?

As your task for the week I invite you to notice how many drama triangles you can identify happening around you, in your team, at home or just watching your favourite soap series. Notice also how clients play drama triangles with us as well. They attack us, they play victim, they play heroes, they do the same thing. They try to draw us into a drama. And the only way again is to ask the key questions for us to break out of the drama and decline the invitation to be part of the drama triangle dance or game.

Next week I will go a bit deeper into more variants of the drama triangle roles and how easily we get trapped below the line in the toxic patterns of communication – some of them are quite subtle and tricky to spot.

Filed Under: General

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  • Work Your Inside for a change
  • Is is time to get of the dance floor?
  • Hard skills or Soft skills
  • You will need one thing and one thing only next year!
  • Your ego loves ‘this’ not ‘that’

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