Story Mélange

The truth: you do not focus on accomplishments, and you do not empower others.

Maybe you have picked up a leadership book or visited some talks? Great! You know what makes a good leader? Fantastic!

Did you wonder why nobody tried to teach you better leadership skills?
My confession to you: I did not.

Then I faced an astonishing statement in C. Maxwell’s book “21 laws of leadership”: leaders are taught by other leaders.

After this, I started to wonder why nobody taught me.

We, leadership midgets, face two explanations:

1. We have not met any other leaders.
2. Other leaders did not consider us worthy of their time.

Let’s explore these two options and how they go together with you not focusing on accomplishments and not empowering others.

If you already wonder, please send me a message as I am curious about your thoughts.

You have not met any other leader.

Why do you think you have not met any other leader? The law of magnetism provides a possible explanation: “Who you are is who you attract.” In other words, try to lead people, and other leaders will be attracted to you by social dynamics.

Maybe other people in your organization face the same issues. They struggle to build up influence. Hence positional leadership is dominant. Positional leadership is not real leadership as it relies on extrinsic motivation: we all need to earn money from somewhere.

Another option is that you did not perceive other leaders as leaders.
“The more leadership ability a person has, the more quickly he recognizes leadership — or its lack — in others.” Not spotting any other leaders maybe means you are an incompetent leader yourself.

But I am doing so much to be successful, says the little voice in your head.

If you are already active, think that “activity is not necessarily accomplishment.” Reflect on Requirement, Return, and Reward. Map your activities to the three Rs.

1. What is required of me?
2. What gives the greatest return?
3. What brings the greatest reward?

How to meet other leaders

First and foremost: be yourself. “Leaders go their way.” Only by doing so can they maintain direction when a group comes together.
Being a better leader for yourself will attract other like-minded people.

The essential difference is also a leader is initializing the connection.
Even though you do not perceive somebody as a leader, you can still connect to him. Think about if you think they have value for the organization and your cause.

In a hierarchical organization, that also includes leading upwards. What can you do for the person above you to help them grow as leaders and in their careers? This approach is tricky as it requires balancing their needs and your own goals. Once you have identified their goals, look for your side’s best effort/reward action. Be aware that their goals are not necessarily as transparent as they seem.

You are not considered worthy.

In the second case, you have identified somebody as a leadership person. Sadly she/he remains ignorant of your existence. The law of the inner circle means that a leader will surround himself with people that he thinks are capable of helping him with his vision. A strong leader will surround himself with other leaders.

But looking a little closer, your “leaders” may not be “secure leaders” who “give others power.” Perhaps the leaders you have met try to foster their position first by building a good team. Growing a team of teams might not be in their interest. These leaders may not follow a strategy of “explosive growth.” Instead, they aim at linear growth by keeping things under control.

How to improve

Start with yourself. Foster your character strength and then build up relationships. Character is defined by being consistent with your principles. Easier said then done. Get up and do the work.

These three steps can help you:

• Relationships are fundamentally relying on respect. Without respect, you can not build trust. Without trust, there is no relationship. Pay respect to others, especially those with even less power than you. Try to give away power yourself. Everybody has some little influence.

• Follow your development plan; for example, one book a month, one youtube talk a week, and one conference a year.

• Help others follow their development plan. Do they have one? Why not? Be their mentor in the first steps or by navigating complex issues.

Leadership and the knowledge economy

The management literature has known it for a long time. The management consultants realized it quite some time ago. And finally, the cooperate management world itself seems to have noticed:

Leadership is not identical to management.

The number of presentations about good leadership increases steadily. Leadership is the new buzzword. The leadership team is everywhere. Even though often it is little more than the core/top management. Often, leadership translates to being in the lead—the responsible person.

However, slowly but increasingly, the new reality seems to dawn on many people:

Leadership ≠ Management.

Why is that so?

Effect of the knowledge worker

As Drucker already pointed out: The number of knowledge workers is steadily increasing. Today’s work organization work is a recent invention of a mere 200 years. Before the industrial revolution, professionals organized themselves in guilds and were often still doing a lot of manual labor. The most experienced worker was leading the others and showed the ropes.

Only when unskilled labor started to increase did another work organization become necessary. The foreman was born. The job consisted mainly in telling others what to do. As the jobs became more specialized, knowledge work steadily increased. It was enough for a steel worker in the 19th century to have big muscles. Today he needs to know metallurgies. What has remained constant is the way we organize people.

This managing of people has produced ever-larger hierarchies. Commonly, the person at the top is utterly unfamiliar with the work at the bottom. Over the last 100 years, our society has accepted this paradigm. Chief executives are excused from having a profound IT background in the IT industry by saying their work requires another skill set.

But if we started with a clean slate, how should we organize the work if only skilled people would be working in the trade?
Direct supervision only allows organizations of limited size, like in the middle ages.

The solution is clear, and everybody is already talking about leadership. Authentic leadership understands the problems of the simple craftsman as it is not too far away from his problems. At the same time is far enough above his daily trials and has a broader scope and vision.

The essence of leadership is to influence

In the book 21 Laws of leadership C. Maxwell talks about the principles that enable good leadership.

For him, the essence of leadership is influence. With influence, you can create positive change.

Influence requires good communication. One aspect of communication is searching for answers outside yourself and your team. This search can happen verbally, but you must also listen to non-verbal language. How do people behave? How do people act in groups? You need to tune into the room. Are people attentive, or is everybody just on duty?

Good communicators search for stories.

The most prominent of being a good communicator is listening to other people’s stories and retelling those stories. By retelling their stories, you act on the emotions of everybody.

“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

Let’s assume you know a lot of details about a new cross-platform programming framework. You are convinced your audience should start using this framework.

These three steps will make your undertaking a success.

1. Know the audience and discover their stories. Discover if they need your framework.
2. Find the correct formulation of your message. What is the one thing about your framework everybody needs to know?
3. Adapt the message to the audience by using their stories
   
   

Using the audience’s stories allows them to see the framework from their perspective.

Today everybody talks about leadership. Just do a quick search on Medium. But is everybody talking about the same thing?

Is leadership about the position?

I recently finished my summary of 21 Laws of Leadership. The book by John C. Maxwell is one of the canonical books in the leadership field.

Maxwell, too uses an ambiguous meaning. Sometimes he says leadership is not positional. In other passages, he assumes someone found his way into a leadership position without knowing how to lead. Such a situation is only possible with positional leadership.

Maxwell already structured the book into 21 easily digestible chapters. Everybody has to see for himself which laws are most important for him. Maxwell offers a simple evaluation questionary, which for me, proved helpful.

Read on if you want to use four of the laws to build up your leadership on a platform like Medium.

In the future, we will all be influencers.

The law of influence provides the definition I would agree with: “The true measure of leadership is influence.” Having experienced many positional leaders, I agree with his. However, there certainly are people who have no position and whose wisdom I follow, and who I seek out for advice. Connected to this law is the importance of relationships. Influence requires successful relationships.

For the medium user or users of any other platform, it is essential to engage in discussions of other content. Through the comments, we build up relationships.

Strive to become better.

The second important law is the law of the process. Do every day some small steps to advance. Write and read every day. There is not much to add here, and the most challenging part about it is the execution.

Who you are is who you attract.

The other laws are connected to these two laws. They describe more how to build up the influence or apply a process.

For someone without followers, some laws address the creation of a follower base. I found the most striking the law of magnetism “Who you are is who you attract.”

Constructing fruitful relationships requires one critical thing: respect. Therefore, the law of respect is essential to building up those relationships.

And that’s it—four laws to start growing your follower base.

I completed by summary articles for influence by R. Cialdini.

Everyone wants their ideas to strive, even engineers.

Skip to the end for some tips for your next presentation.

Engineers are often depicted as uncommunicative cavemen. The talking is best left to other people, isn’t it? Rarely would one assume that a non-lawyer leads a law firm or a non-medicine a hospital.

I currently write about how storytelling can help to communicate, even engineers.

Many of the storytelling topics deal with getting people to work together better.
Currently, it is fashionable to use the BAPO acronym for business organization.

In B, P, and O, it is clear how to use storytelling, but how the A?

All software engineers should aim to become better in the business topics, the people, and the organization domain. But in their core domain, are there any benefits to using storytelling? After all, these are often technical topics. They should be as objective as possible. Shouldn’t they?

Science is truth

In school, we are getting taught that information and knowledge should be presented as factual as possible. Natural science focuses on this approach. It seems like a worthy goal, but a drawback is the ability to spread the idea. Many dissertations are pretty dry. In contrast, the best scientific presentations are not. There is a difference.

Mixing facts and emotions

This difference often comes from elements that break with the facts. The use of comics and memes is just the tip of the iceberg. In my opinion, one of the reasons for the success of Dilbert is that he plays with factual and emotional context. Uncle Bob also successfully relies on these. He interweaves technical topics with small anecdotes from his life.

Many technical workers are forced to deal with human-related topics, even though their crucial work is factual. Why is that so?

The two screws

There are usually contradicting ideas. Take, for example, the two designs for screws (picture). From a factual level, they both have their advantages and disadvantages. But they are from different inventors. Every inventor wants his idea to win. So to convince, we will address the emotions behind a problem.

In this sense, every technical discussion is like a business discussion. The same techniques can be applied. What is different is the currency.

Tips for your next technical presentation

These tips allow you to inflate the importance of every message.
You can share a lot fewer details than without this auxiliary information.

• be like the audience: dress more or less formal. Speak similar in language and tone.
• point out common identity/goal: recall past events
• stress your experience: profit from expert credibility
• engage the audience and trick them into commitment
• present a complex problem, like climate change/ your primary business goal, then relate your problem artfully to it, show that you can solve it
• stress that the results are the latest and nobody has seen them, creating a feeling of scarcity

Just separate the participants into groups and let them sit for a while in their own juices. Then mix together over the flame of continued competition. And there you have it: Cross-group hatred at rolling boil. – R. Cialdini

Today, the cross-functional team and entrepreneurial organization are one of the stock solutions to solve complex problems.

• But how do you set up such teams?
• Is it enough to define the teams, define the topics and then let everybody run wild?
• How do smaller teams interact with larger groups?
• Is self-organization sufficient to handle the process?

The genesis of the team identity

I have yet to come across a genuinely self-organized organization. At least in big companies, there is still some top-down decision structure.
Teams are set up and staffed by a person who frequently is not even part of the team.

But once the team members are there, they pick up the ball and play. As a result, team identity usually starts a life of its own.

Teams do not act in a vacuum. They usually need to interact with our teams.
They quickly become competitive and less productive in achieving an overarching goal.

Complaints about other teams are the result:

Team tiger is just not working with us!

The environment fosters team competition.

Identification with a team name goes along with the increased commitment to the team. However, groups with a character can automatically lead to low-level competition amongst teams.

What makes the difference is the environment. If the environment enforces competitive behavior, team identity acts as a multiplier. The competitive character provides a selection criterion for the top-down entity and enables competition.

Today, the two most competitive environments are school and work.

In school, cross-class competition is done in science contests, treasure hunts, or sports events. At work, measuring team performance metrics is a source of constant unrest.

Children are usually more open than adults. The disgust of the other school will be phrased quite clearly: “You know class 7b are crazy”.

These conflicts are usually only visible at work in a lack of cooperation, blaming, and disapproving remarks: “You know, team lions are always sabotaging our efforts by caring about their own goals.”

Provide a cooperative environment

The first thing is to avoid measuring metrics across teams and compare and sanctionize. Do not even get into the situation. But what to do if the case has already deteriorated?

Enter group therapy! Group therapy bears many names. Bring groups together in a pleasant atmosphere and allow people to familiarize themselves with each other.

You will hope for a miracle to occur. Alas, the problem continues. No external force will move team members’ disposition in such a setting.

The second frequent mistake: “Please work together and figure it out.” At best, there will be some superficial results, and everybody will be happy that they can work alone afterward.

The problem to overcome must threaten the entire organization. Cross-team collaboration is the only solution that has a chance to work. The cooperation allows experiencing a rival as a reasonable fellow and friend. It is difficult to uphold hostility if a triumph is shared.

In contrast, in group therapy, no real triumph is shared. The victory will be experienced as a false triumph. While therapy might improve the attitudes toward each other, it will not allow lasting success.

Avoid getting into the unhealthy team competition

• Do not force people who do not get along well together.
• Instead, define the problems in such a way that the skills of everybody are required to solve the issue.
• The real problem comes with people with no skills in the team.

How do you unify a bunch of random people to follow a common cause?

Quick answer: provide a common identity and, at best, a shared history.

Read on to discover how to form the team’s history and find stories at the workplace.

Let’s have a party

Everybody likes a party. And everybody feels afterward connected to other people who attended the party. Why? Because we perform activities together in a pleasant environment.

In his book “Influence” R. Cialdini describes how compliance techniques move people. Commitment is such a compliance technique. Commitments that are active, public, and effortful are the most successful.

A party is just that, active and public. However, it is not necessarily effortful (apart from the next day’s hangover).

Why group workshops can be destructive

Now let’s look at your last group workshop. Hopefully, it took place in a pleasant atmosphere. Sometimes the venue alone makes up for memory.

The three factors in detail:

• Activity: everybody was active. The organizer imposes the activeness, but this does not matter.
• Publicity: Most people were talking in public. Many techniques like feedback boards and break-out sessions are public commitment tools.
• Effort: last but not least, planning is hard work and effort.

But did you feel fulfilled and energized? I remember many planning sessions that left me bewildered, exhausted or both.

The principle of commitment can work against you. A hostile atmosphere from the onset and pressure leads to estranging of the team. Even though you might have initial success, later planning rounds might carry the burden of team internal conflicts. People will be there because they have to be. There will be endless discussions as no one wants to drop his stakes and align with a common cause.

So what’s missing?

The three silver bullets

Okay, everybody knows there is no silver bullet, but let’s try.

Start small

If you want to foster a feeling of belonging together, let everyone commit to low threshold goals. If these small goals are achieved, everybody will feel good at later planning meetings. The familiarity principle comes to play, and a “We always made a good plan work so far” can become the foundation for more challenging goals.

The coalition of the willing

Let’s face it. The workplace can sometimes be chaotic. Many people do what they want. Others do not have a clue what is going on. Finally, some give a *****.

Work-life features its social network. We all orientate ourselves towards each other. We all want to know what Harry is doing, how he is doing it, and who he knows. Team dynamics are governed mainly by the principle of social proof. It relies on

• group size
• familiarity
• and confusion

New projects launch with small teams, and everybody knows everybody. Team events occur naturally, which further bolsters the team spirit.

Now you know what you will do in your next greenfield project.
But what when your project is already in the taskforce hell? Many projects get on the slippery slope as they struggle to address uncertainty and limit task complexity correctly.

Focus on the willing people. Try to find similarities between people – their everyday problems. Assemble a coalition of the willing.

• Deal with any conflicting points.
• From this comes a group strength.
• And from strength comes momentum.
• And from momentum come the stories that push you forward.
• Stories and momentum attract more followers.

Confusion is a critical fact that keeps people from being engaged. Try to show an exact attitude and propose a direction.

Instant Gratification

Like and like attracts. The same applies to team creation. However, today diversity is king. That means your team has a diverse background. Diversity opposes familiarity, and if you let your group run wild, they will certainly discover their differences and hate each other.

Enter the “party factor.” Allow the group to get familiar with a calm atmosphere. The book “Peopleware” features a chapter called “A spaghetti dinner.” The team’s first task was to have a nice dinner.

Similarly, the luncheon technique connects the memory of a shared meal to a person’s face. We shared a good meal that filled our stomachs and made us feel good. We then identify the other person with this meal.

Sometimes organizing a dinner party is not possible. The key is not the dinner party but the shared experience. This piece of memory will serve as the seed of the group identification. The best experiences are experiences of shared victories. Group workshops try to employ this by letting a team build something or overcome an obstacle.

With your coalition of the willing, try to find the smallest possible thing that you can fix quickly.

We all give presentations, talks, speeches, or dinner toasts. Sometimes we fail to engage with our audience. Try to remember these tips for your next presentation.

Get away with your weak points

Let’s admit it, our chain of reasoning often has a weak point. The art of persuasion consists in getting around those weak points.

A common strategy is first to explain the most significant negative point and then some smaller ones later. The less negative will stand in the shadow of the bigger. You can use this to your advantage by artificially inflating a negative point. Let’s call it the most obvious negative point. Be prepared to have some solution for this negative point. Then you can reap the reward of hiding your other negative points. However, the most critical part is to focus on the positive news, even if the positive news weighs little. What counts is that you talk more about the positive aspects of your solution than about the negative.

If you want to trigger a particular action, but the actual reason to do so is small:

1. Exaggerate the problem.
2. Contrast it to ridiculously high numbers if the argument is expressible in numbers.
3. Present your solution to the small and unimportant problem.

“Millions of students drink milk, 1000 alone in our community school. Therefore I want to offer free milk.”

A quick win: use the word “because” in illogical reasoning. The term indicates causality, and its use might make the listener accept a flaw.

Give something to get something

Providing free stuff is one of the pillars of the influencer economy. Once your audience is engaged, ask for something in return: a product purchase or a newsletter subscription. The person accepting your offer will feel obliged to return you a favor.

The identical process applies to oral presentations. Ask the audience to influence the story. You offer the audience an option. As this seems like a concession on your part, the audience feels obliged to believe you, and you get better buy-in. The trick is that you set up the choices and thus heavily influence the direction.

Be a dealer of stories

There is no one big success in growing your influence. On the contrary, it is better to use many small stories to build a following. Many people only follow to be consistent with their past behavior. Be the dealer who brings the new stuff.

Bonus point: raise expectations. Ask what the reader wants to raise his attention. The receiver of your story thinks he was waiting for it as he committed to it early. It is less important whether he still would decide the same.

It is the number of followers that count

Social proof is the driving force behind social media. This was a great secret a few years ago, but today everybody knows it. News with followers attracts attention, regardless of truth or importance.

Sadly, little can be done to be better than the rest of the crowd. Regularly delivering valuable content is the only way to success.

The chameleon effect

If you want to persuade someone, it helps to be perceived as similar.
Your message is of secondary importance; what counts is the messenger.

You often need to create a bond with the audience before placing your actual message.

Research the audience. Be one of them. At best, you are already known to the audience. If necessary, introduce yourself to the audience. Be dressed appropriately.

This tip is the essential discipline for every politician. The more varied your audience becomes, the more adaptive you need to be. Important for politicians.

The bonus tip: Watch your language. Collectivize any fact using the pronoun “we” instead of “I.”

The fear of missing out

The main mantra of the advertisement industry: “7 things you never heard of but need to know.” “Unique chance to learn something.” You need to create an illusion of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

If your arguments oppose another topic, you can create a sense of oppressed followers. Instead of providing your opinions, raise the issue that nobody wants to oppose the topic. It seems like false censorship. As a result, the listener feels that your information is more precious than other information.

Did you ever wonder why you have problems getting your point across? On the other hand, somebody else quickly confers the message? 

It is not about the message. It is about the messenger.

In good old Persia, the messenger was either rewarded for good news or killed for bringing bad news. Even today, the messenger’s image influences the message. The other way round, the messenger draws influence from the message. This relationship is known as the halo effect.

It is crucial to have a positive image in other people’s heads. We are all messengers of our ideas. So how can we be liked more?

The good news: there are some marvelous tricks. These are known as compliance techniques.

The bad news: they largely depend on the predisposition of your communication partner. Do not try them with your arch-enemy. All techniques work best if applied in a neutral or a positive setting.

The Bad

Use false concessions to trick the other person into a reciprocating action. This approach certainly is a technique for the master manipulator.

How it works: ask for a big favor. If the favor is declined, ask for a much smaller favor. The smaller favor is usually performed. The trick is that the smaller favor was your intended outcome all along. If applied subtle enough, you can increase the gains every time.

The marathon

Be around long enough, and people will be your friend, just because you were always there. Many countryside neighborhoods work this way: A newcomer is always a stranger, and a long-living inhabitant is always a friend—the essence of many club membership friends.

How it works: Every time you meet someone, you create a shared experience; many people stick together because it always used to be like this.

The chameleon

When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Be familiar with the other person. The mirror and match technique of salespeople falls in this category. An advertisement convinces many people to buy something because it addresses their specific way of living.

How it works: familiarity makes us lower our guards and throw away any caution. Most people trust their family and friends without question.

The predator

If you want to be a friend of someone, it is best to single him out and create an extra room where the two of you spend time together. You might not become friends if you are together at a massive concert hall. On the contrary, there is a much higher chance that you will become friends in a small art venue.

How it works: Direct personal communication is most effective if you want something. Group ignorance kicks in if you request something from a group.

The classic socializer

There are, of course, the good old classic tips. Dale Carnegie has written an extensive list about this category. Be similar to the other person or appear to be (a chameleon). Be well-groomed and make compliments.

How it works: This is purely attributable to the halo effect. Because we behave friendly and polite, we certainly are nice and trustful.

The team player

Be in a team with the other person and strive to achieve a higher goal.

How it works: This alone will make many principles work for you. The collaboration principle is undoubtedly the most important. You are working publicly and effortful towards a common goal.

The specialist

This stereotype is one of the more controversial ones. Sometimes people seem impressive because they hold a fancy title or a called an expert in something. We all need a friend we can call if our computer stops working. Who does not ask his doctor-friend about some illness?

How it works: Obeying an authority can make life easy. And such authority symbolizes power. Associating us to power rubs some of it on ourselves.

The Dressman

The shiny uniform of the policeman seems more attractive than the rags of the hobo. Dress to impress.

How it works: This is another classic. Because we look lovely, we certainly are a pleasant fellow.

The Diva

Present yourself as a rare resource. You only have time this very day. It is extraordinary that you are even in town—some people’s dating technique.

How it works: Be available for some time. Then suddenly be less present, creating a scarcity of you. The desire for you will increase.

Learning from other people

Do you recognize yourself in any of those? Go to a well-frequented coffee shop. Sit down and do some people-watching. Do you recognize any of those stereotypes? Try to be inspired by other people.

In my previous blog post, I asked different questions.

I want to start with the last one: 

Why apply the principles of psychological influence in your communication?

There are two reasons why to use them.

1. By getting more familiar with their application, we get more sensitive if other people want to exploit us.
2. We can use these principles can also be used to help other people understand our viewpoint better. As Cialdini originally stated, there are too valuable to be abused to our disadvantage. But we can use them with a more positive intention that enables a win-win for our partner and us.

And with this, I want to answer the two initial questions:

 How to apply these principles? How to defend against triggers?

The principles have many applications. Therefore, I want to look to the purpose of this blog: storytelling. I came up with the following questions:

• How to use these principles to become a better storyteller?
• How to form stories at the workplace from a social context?
• The messenger’s image influences the message and vice-versa. It is therefore vital to be likable. How can we be liked more?
• How to use the principles to transport business ideas better? How to use them to promote our ideas in technology and social engineering?