Category: Uncategorized

The Certainty Bias

Posted on by Dr Rob Archer

A fantastic interview with neurologist Robert Burton highlights the mind’s Certainty Bias.

The mind evolved to help us make sense of the world around us, because without that understanding it’s pretty hard to know how to act.  Not many of our ancestors had time to make a list of pros and cons before making important decisions.

But in today’s context the mind’s pull for certainty has different consequences.  The mind likes nice, uncomplicated beliefs which can help us make sense of a situation.  Yet these beliefs often leave us trapped by our own perceptions:

“I must get this right”.

For important events and decisions, our mind will tell us how important it is to get this right.  Yet the mind will be far slower to identify what ‘right’ is.  The unspoken assumption is that right is perfect.  Perfection is hard to achieve… so procrastination ensues.

“I need to know the likely outcome / if I can cope before I start”

The mind likes to dictate terms and the terms are – no movement towards a new project unless certainty is guaranteed!  The trouble is this often stops us from taking action on the things we value most.  Result: the mind’s goal will be achieved…by doing nothing.

“I need to have all my things around me / complete silence / the right people to work effectively”

The trouble is we rarely get the ‘right’ environment.  Deep down we know this and that we need to start right now – even if it is with the wrong pen.

“If I was good at doing this it would be easier / life is about enjoyment”

The great happiness myth!  The problem is life isn’t meant to be enjoyable in the sense that we should enjoy each moment.  Our most fulfilling moments weren’t preceded by feeling good – far more often they were preceded by the most dreadful doubt and fear.  Our intolerance of ambiguity keeps us stuck – which eventually makes us miserable.

So what can we do about it?

As Burton acknowledges, the most important thing with such thoughts is to recognise them.  After all, you do not need “the right result” so much as you are having the thought that you need it.  Even recognising this as just a thought – not reality – is effective.

Once you’ve noticed your thoughts, bring your attention back to your behaviour.  The mind often leaves behaviour unspecified, because perfection is more certain than an imperfect first step.  This makes purpose hard to find.

So try to counteract this by getting specific about what it is you will do:

  • I’d love to get the right result – so I will make a list of what that result looks like in practice.
  • I’d love to know more about the outcome I can expect – and the most important things I need to know are what the client really wants and why they want it.
  • I don’t want to fail – and the main risk to failure is that I don’t revise properly.  Therefore, I will make a revision plan.
  • I want better working conditions – so I will make a specific list of improvements I could make,  starting right here and now.
  • I want to enjoy myself – but I am willing to experience uncertainty now in order to make progress towards my goals.

Is It a Good Idea to Act Authentically?

Posted on by Rachel Collis

Well, it depends how you define authenticity.

Authenticity can be problematic when we define it as freely expressing our thoughts and feelings. I have made this mistake many times in the past. I believed that it was wrong to hide my true feelings, that it was important for me to be ‘honest’ with others. The problems with this approach were:

  • It involved treating my thoughts and feelings as if they were true. I have since come to realise that sometimes they don’t reflect the reality of a situation!
  • It meant that my thoughts and feelings had control of my behaviour.
  • It meant other people had to deal with my ‘stuff’ – sometimes that was helpful, at others, frankly, it wasn’t.

A better definition of authenticity is when:

  • Behaviour, goals and values are aligned.
  • Values are freely chosen rather than imposed by others. They feel like an expression of my best self. The person I really want to be. Working out authentic values can take some time. We have to cut through what we have been taught is good and proper and get to the heart of what is important to us. There are some tips on how to do this here.
  • I am honest with myself about my thoughts and feelings and then choose what to communicate with others. Hiding from thoughts and feelings leads to behaviour that feels inauthentic to others.

This way of behaving is associated with a number of positive outcomes:

  1. I feel like my behaviour is an expression of my true self – which feels important.
  2. Mindfully noticing my thoughts and feelings and then choosing which ones to act upon provides opportunity for growth.
  3. I will tend to put more effort into pursuing self concordant goals that align with my values.
  4. I feel more satisfaction when I achieve self-concordant goals.
  5. Others are more likely to trust someone whose behaviour is both predictable and transparent. Choosing behaviour based on a consistent set of values leads to more consistency than being pushed around by whatever thoughts and feelings show up at any particular moment.
So, yes it is a good idea to act authentically – as long as that means acting in accordance with deeply held values.

For further reading on the research relating to authenticity:
Chapter 11, Character Strengths and Virtues by Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman

The Cult of Busyness

Posted on by Dr Rob Archer

Are you busy?

It feels almost unnatural to think of answering ‘no’, and it is this which Ian Price, a former telecoms CEO and now business psychologist, explores in his excellent book called The Activity Illusion.

Ian’s main thesis is that we are driving ourselves to distraction through technology, and that this is hitting productivity.  I agree, but would go much further.  I think distraction impacts mental health too.

Which further impacts performance.

I have been speaking to Ian about ACT, and how I think it’s essential to help people cope with information overload.  Without some means of dealing with intrusive thoughts and the uncomfortable emotions they can provoke, all we are left with is a bunch of time management strategies and some vague promises not to copy too many people into our e-mails.  Oh and the perennial favourite, employee engagement.

Ian is interested.  He is even showing interest in including elements of ACT it in his training.  Another sign that the business world is beginning to see the extent of the opportunity here.

To give you a flavour of his style, have a look at his talk at the Ted x Granta event earlier this year.

ACT in the Workplace

Posted on by Dr Rob Archer

So many leadership courses are based on the idea that to improve performance we must firstly sort our thinking out.  So we focus on motivation, confidence, self-belief or ways of controlling or removing anxiety and stress.  Sounds logical enough.

The problem is whilst this approach makes such intuitive sense, the evidence does not support it.  Our minds are expert problem solving machines which evolved to scan the environment for threat, propose hypotheses, and then prompt action to avoid, control or get rid of any threats. But when we try to apply the same techniques to our own thoughts, beliefs and emotional states, the evidence is that we make the problem worse, not better.

As Paul Flaxman said at a recent BABCP event, what works outside the skin does not always work inside the skin.

This may sound like a small distinction, but it has profound implications for the way we learn, teach and improve performance  in the workplace.  In short, the evidence suggests that focusing on trying to alter, control or avoid emotional and cognitive states as the means to improving performance is flawed.

From workplace stress to task concentration, innovation, learning, anxiety and even chronic pain management, all are showing that attempting to regulate our own internal states IS the problem.

In contrast, the alternative – psychological flexibility – gives people control over their lives, ironically by letting go of the struggle of trying to control their emotional states.  It is the ability to focus on task-relevant stimuli whilst feeling negative emotions that drives better performance and reduces distress (see Gardner and Moore, 2008).

One recent participant said to me that defusing from his thoughts – treating them with a degree of distance – had been the single most effective change he has made in attempting to build a safety culture in his team.

Rather than more rules and regulations to live by, ACT can help people get unstuck from where they are, and take control of their working lives.  If ACT can reach more people in organisations, it could benefit us all.

Getting Clear About Values

Posted on by Rachel Collis

Having clarity about our values is really important.

Here are some tips Russ Harris gave at a recent Happiness Trap workshop. I found them really useful – I hope you do too!

1. Values are ‘desired qualities of behaviour’. They are about who we want to be in the world. What sort of employee, manager, co-worker, friend, partner etc.

2. Values are not goals. Goals can be achieved whereas values are moment to moment choices. In this moment now, I can be curious but I can never achieve ‘curious’.

3. Values are not rules.  They are qualities we choose freely. As soon as we start to feel we have to follow a value, it loses all it’s vitality. It stops being a value and starts to be a rule. In vital workplaces, people are happy to sign up for the organisational values. In workplaces lacking vitality, staff members follow the organisational ‘values’ because they will get into trouble if they don’t.

4. Values are about my behaviour not what I want to get from others.  In a recent moving post, Rob gave an example of a ‘value’ that lacked vitality:

‘I value my family, for the love and support they offer me.’

Rob wrote about the importance of exploring the feelings underneath this statement to get to something a little more vital. He made an important point. I would also like to add that this ‘value’ is actually a statement of a want or need. And mixing values and needs is problematic. What if my family get preoccupied with their own problems and don’t give me the support I need? Do I then stop valuing them? Whereas, if I can convert this statement into a quality of my own behaviour then it becomes completely in my control.  Each moment I can choose to act on the value or not. Perhaps it is:

‘I value my family. I show this by being affectionate and caring in my interactions with them’

This means that values can be incredibly empowering. They are about how I choose to behave. They aren’t dependent on how others respond to me.  I do need to add a rider here, values need to be flexible. The context determines which values I act upon in any given moment. With a bullying boss, I may choose to act on my values around assertiveness and justice. With an unhappy client, I may choose to act on my values around kindness and compassion. But because it is always about me, I have the power to choose.

What is Better than Work-Life Balance?

Posted on by Rachel Collis

A life dripping with meaning and purpose!

Work-life ‘balance’ is tough.  Does this sound familiar to you? At any moment it is important to me that I: hang out with my kids; spend time with friends; be with my partner; get some exercise; do some marketing; write a blog post; write the session I am to deliver next week; do some chores…..the list goes on and on.

Many of us worry that we are working too many hours. We know that this is a bad idea as it limits time to rest, play, exercise, connect with loved ones etc. But my observation is that just knowing we should work less and spend more time on our health and our relationships, doesn’t seem to lead to change.

For people to take action, a number of approaches seem to be helpful:

  • Exploring what it is about work that keeps us hooked in. For me, work is interesting, challenging and meaningful. Work often gets me into flow.  At work I get to use my strengths. Any meaningful ‘work-life balance’ plan needs to acknowledge this. It is important to recognise that sometimes it is hard to step away from the satisfaction that work can provide.
  • Looking at what painful thoughts or feelings are avoided by spending too much time at work. (‘I am not good enough, if I don’t work long hours I will disappoint my clients.’ If I leave work undone I feel anxious). Again, any meaningful plan must involve developing a willingness to experience those thoughts and feelings.
  • Identifying what is important enough to be willing to tackle this issue over and over. This is a moment to moment choice.  It will involve repeatedly getting it wrong. This issue is unlikely to disappear for many years (and when it does and we have retired, we will probably feel sad about it!).  This is where identifying values helps – The Brief Bull’s Eye activity can be a good place to start.
  • Getting better at mindfully and compassionately noticing both when I am living my values around this and also when I am a long way off. This is a wagon I fall off over and over again. And each time I notice I am out of kilter, I gently and compassionately readjust my behaviour.

When I am 80, I won’t judge my life by how many hours I did or didn’t work. I will judge it by whether my life had meaning and purpose. My hope is that if I keep making small moment to moment choices based on my values, then I will look back and feel pleased.

The Non Verbal Nature of Values

Posted on by Dr Rob Archer

Values are really important with clients who want to make any kind of change.  That’s because values operate like a form of compass, which can help us navigate uncertain or new territory.

I have worked with organisational and personal values for many years, but for a long time  my work with clients in the area of values produced results like this:

  • I value my family, for the love and support they offer me.
  • I value my work, because I love to feel part of a team.
  • I value coming up with new ideas to problems.

Now, these are all incredibly worthwhile.  Yet, somehow they also lack depth or resonance.  My own value of ‘meaning’ in work can sometimes feel like a commodity, a word which begins to lose its meaning over time.

At the last ACT World Conference, Kelly Wilson showed me how limited this verbal view of values was.  Values must be described verbally, but that is only because words are all we have to articulate to others what we are experiencing.

Wilson brought this idea to life by asking us to identify someone in our lives who we really value. He asked us to write a couple of lines that describe what we value in them.  Mine was my Mum, and the description went something like this:

I value my Mum because she has always supported me, and been there for me in difficult times.  Despite struggling with her own problems, she has always given everything to me, and she is kind, human and a real Christian.

This describes well some of the things I really value about my Mum.  Yet, the words strangely lack impact.  They are commodities, well-worn grooves in my mind, like a pre-rehearsed package of sounds.

Then Wilson asked us to think of a specific moment that encapsulates what we value about that person, and then to recall that moment through our senses.

Mine related to a time when my Mum was a single parent and I would hate the time when it came for her to leave to go to work.  I wrote:

I recall the days when you would leave for work early in the morning and I would feel a rising sense of dread as you prepared to leave.  Then, at the moment you came to leave, terror that you might never come back.  Even writing now, I feel it with a beating heart and clammy hands.  You used to sing ‘Save all your kisses for me’ to me, but I can see myself now, a tiny figure consumed by worry that you, like my Father, may simply walk out of my life and never return.

But you always did return.

And when you did, I remember the hug you would give me; deep and long and cold as your winter coat pressed on my hot cheek.  I remember how you smelt of fresh air and the outdoors, and I would breathe it all in with long gulps.  And I would know, I was safe and I was wanted, and it was going to be OK.

Do you see a difference? Values – the things we value in life – need words to describe them but words cannot describe them.  Not fully.

Our human experience is primarily sensual, but over time it becomes more verbal. In some ways we need to de-learn our verbal impulse to experience life at first hand. We need to clear words out of the way to allow life to happen in its rawest, most vigorous and vital sense.

And that’s what values connect us with – not things we think are important, but things we feel as important.  A small but powerful difference.