All Posts by Ann Tardy

When I biked from Key West to Maine in 2012, I hired a young woman to drive my RV and support me as I pedaled up the East Coast. In New Hampshire, she flooded the RV and destroyed my computer which had been on the floor.

It ruined an otherwise fabulous experience for me. I couldn’t get past it. I was obsessed with “why” it happened. Why did she forget to empty the tank? Why did I leave my computer on the floor? Why didn’t she feel contrite?

I was stuck – I needed an explanation, a story, a lesson to be learned. As a result, I wasn’t making the shift from “why?” to “what’s next?”

Why are we fascinated with why something happened? Because we all love a good story! The world does not make sense to us without identifying a cause-and-effect. The Black Swan author Nassim Nicholas Taleb says, “Explanations bind facts together. They help them make more sense.”

Behaviorists call it “Narrative Fallacy” – our tendency to look at a sequence of facts and weave in an explanation to give a situation meaning. This mental game seduces us into thinking that identifying the cause-and-effect actually makes a difference.

But the problem is that we get stuck in the backward-looking story instead of using the facts for forward-looking action.

Many bosses are obsessed with explaining the story behind their results instead of just looking at the results (the facts!) and moving forward.

“Why something happened” is merely a distraction from taking action.

By shifting our language from “Why?” to “What’s next?” we can shift our focus from the story to the facts, thereby freeing us to determine the only thing that actually matters: what are we going to do next?

Movie star Mae West (1893-1980) was famous for her fearlessness. She’d walk into saloons and say, “Who here needs to know me?”

The rest of us walk into rooms of strangers and look for anyone we tangentially know to save us from the dreaded awkwardness of appearing alone.

But navigating new people is not about looking like we already belong.

Research by the University of Waterloo reveals that the best way to make a great impression and get new people to like us instantly is to believe that the people we are about to meet will like us.

In other words, the secret is self-confidence.

When we expect to be accepted, we behave warmly and people want to connect. But if we expect to be rejected, we behave coldly and people don’t want to connect. Face it, who wants to talk to the frosty, standoffish new person in the room?

But confidence isn’t a networking skill like strong handshakes, eye contact, and listening. Confidence is an emotion. And like all of our emotions, we just need to manage it. How? Through self-talk, emotional intelligence, and practice.

My favorite strategy? Don’t tackle the entire room. Start with the first person you meet, like the receptionist, the waiter, the meeting planner, the executive assistant. Smile, connect, share a laugh, and get ready for the next person.

Boost your confidence one connection at a time, like stepping stones.

Some easy ideas:

• Practice with strangers everywhere
• Ask, “What’s the biggest difference I can make with this one person right here?”
• Find something to compliment right away
• Remember they’re struggling with confidence too
• ps. Wear what makes you feel great!

If you want to progress your ideas, your career, and your opportunities, walk into a meeting or a room of strangers from a standpoint of contribution, not fear. 

In 1989 college senior Wendy Kopp wrote her senior thesis proposing a national teaching corps to recruit college grads to teach in underserved schools. To launch Teach for America she needed money. She knew that successful businessman Ross Perot was passionate about public education and could fund her idea.

Wendy wrote Perot 11 letters before he finally called her. She pitched her vision and he gave her $500,000. Today Teach for America has a $300 million budget and 50,000 alumni.

Most people would have concluded Perot was disinterested, and then start to doubt themselves.

But Wendy’s perseverance demonstrates the power of separating ourselves from other people’s actions.

The secret is to ask, “What about this is about me?”

What about Perot’s initial lack of response was about Wendy personally? Nothing. Perhaps he didn’t receive the letters, got busy or distracted, was confused about the value, needed more information, or was stuck under a rock.

We tend to assume there’s something wrong with us rather than assume there’s something wrong with the other person or the situation… or nothing wrong at all!

Consider all the situations where we could instantly apply “What-about-this-is-about me?”

• Lousy customer service
• Aggressive drivers
• Bad bosses
• Ridiculous company policies
• Opposing political or religious views
• Rude, unkind people
• ”No!”

None of that is about us personally. And yet we often act like it’s a personal affront, triggering our defensiveness, frustration, or resignation.

What-about-this-is-about-me? can break the proverbial chains that stop us from operating with excellence and pursuing our passions. 

Wendy Kopp was so determined to launch Teach for America that she deemed everyone’s response as informational, not judgmental.

Once we stop making it (other people’s behavior) about us, we will find interesting experiences, valuable information, and insights.

As Shark Tank investor Barbara Corcoran remembers, she didn’t do well in school. But her mother always celebrated Barbara’s wonderful imagination.

When a teacher once told Barbara she’d always be stupid, her mother said, “Don’t worry about it! With your imagination, you’ll learn to fill in all the blanks!”

Always curious how far she could go in life with that imagination, Barbara launched her real estate firm in 1973 with a $1,000 loan. To generate leads, she created a quarterly report of real estate data trends called The Corcoran Report... because no one else did. She mailed it to The New York Times which published it, affording her instant credibility.

Barbara sold her firm in 2001 for $66 million and became an investor on the television show Shark Tank.

In her words, “It’s not that I was great at real estate. I’m just really great at marketing.” That’s her creativity at work!

Creativity Research
In 1968 systems scientist George Land, Ph.D. conducted a research study to test creativity in 1,600 children at age 5 and again at ages 10 and 15.

He discovered that their creativity plummeted from 98% creative at age 5 to 12% creative at age 15.

His conclusion: non-creative behavior is learned.

Likewise, psychologist Louis Mobley launched the IBM Executive School to ignite innovation in leaders. His approach: creativity is an unlearningprocess, not a learning process.

So how can we unlearn our own non-creative behavior?

• Ask radically different questions
• Question assumptions
• Self-knowledge (become aware of those assumptions!)
• Grant permission to be wrong
• Surround ourselves with creative people
• Play games, solve riddles, tackle puzzles
• Experiment, explore, experience
• Celebrate imagination!

We don’t need to learn to be creative – we already are! We just need to unleash that superpower from years of atrophy.

In 2006 Lady Gaga had dropped out of NYU to pursue music, but then Def Jam Recordings canceled her contract. After crying on her grandmother’s couch, her father gave her one year to figure it out.

Also in 2006, music manager Troy Carter’s star client canceled his contract. Carter’s business suffered, his home was foreclosed, his car was repossessed. He teetered on the brink of bankruptcy.

Right after signing with Interscope Records, Gaga hired Carter to be her manager. They worked nine months developing her music, but Interscope kept giving Gaga’s songs to other artists to perform,relegating her to a songwriter.

Carter and Gaga fought for control of some songs that she would perform, like Just Dance and Poker Face. But radio stations wouldn’t play them.

So they took her songs and performances to global audiences directly via Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. In Carter’s words, “We super-served underground music communities” on these fairly-new social platforms and in clubs until her music caught fire.

And their perseverance paid off.

• To date Lady Gaga has sold over 27 million albums and 146 million singles. She has won Grammy Awards, Golden Globe Awards, and an Academy Award.
• Since signing Gaga, Tory Carter has managed music stars like John Legend and Meghan Trainor, and launched his own investment company, Atom Factory.

Throughout their journeys, Lady Gaga and Troy Carter faced many opportunities to claim defeat, blaming a myriad of excuses.

Instead they found a way.

We all have excuses:

• Lack of time, money, resources connections
• Battling bad bosses, peers, technology, traffic
• Suffering injustices, trauma, and drama

But at our core, we are not unlike Lady Gaga…

• When we want something, we find a way.
• When we don’t, we find an excuse.

What lies between the excuse and the way is our conviction!

In 1999 I jumped out of an airplane and I quit a great job. Why?

• I was not afraid to go skydiving
• But I was afraid to confront my boss (so I left the company instead)

How could I be fearless and fearful at the same time?

Marketing guru Robert Middleton said it best: Fearlessness is not a place to get to. It’s a place to come from.

• I came from fearlessness when I strapped that parachute on my back.
• I came from fear when needing a difficult conversation with my boss.

Makes sense. Fear is designed to protect us against disappointments and failures that we’ve experienced in the past.

I had never jumped out of an airplane so I didn’t need protection from past disappointments and failures that involved a parachute.

But I had struggled with “difficult conversations” in the past, so from my perspective that seemed scarier that jumping out of an airplane.

Which explains why kids approach many situations fearlessly… They aren’t carrying around decades of disappointments and failures.

So how can we (adults!) come from fearlessness instead of fear?

Purposeful Practice.

• Focus on past triumphs; downgrade past failures
• Talk to Mentors for fresh perspectives and advice on the situation
• Study role models
• Experiment with a pilot, a trial, a test (“Hey boss, I’m piloting a new conversation with you. Let me know what you think!”)
• Find something to want so badly that fear becomes irrelevant

Even Olympic Gold Swimmer Michael Phelps admits he was afraid to put his face in the water when he was seven. But then he came from fearlessness and his journey to greatness sparked.

Insights, learnings, and even good stories emerge when we walk out of our comfort zone and into an adventure. Fear be damned.

Research from Professor Paul Zak at Claremont Graduate University reveals 8 boss behaviors that foster trust:

1. Intentionally building relationships
2. Facilitating whole-person growth
3. Showing vulnerability
4. Sharing information broadly
5. Inducing challenge stress
6. Encouraging autonomy
7. Recognizing excellence
8. Enabling job crafting

And of these, Zak discovered that our lowest trust scores occur in:

1. Recognizing excellence
2. Sharing information

Let’s pause to digest this… as bosses we are better at encouraging autonomy and enabling job crafting than we are at simply recognizing excellence and sharing information with people on our teams.

But when we dig into the reality of our jobs, here’s what’s happening:

• We’re busy so we forget to say “woo-hooo!”
• We’re obsessed about the happiness of our boss and our customers which has us constantly focused on what’s wrong or could go wrong (thereby neglecting to notice what’s going right).
• We filter information to ensure our people have exactly what they need to do their jobs.
• We think we’re bothering our already-busy teams.
• We believe they don’t really care – they just want a paycheck.

But they do care! In fact, Zak’s research shows that high-trust teams are more productive, have more energy, collaborate better, stress less, and stay longer.

So what should we do? Institutionalize recognition and information-sharing:

• Set a weekly calendar appointment to send appreciation emails
• Organize a daily huddle to exchange updates
• Write 1 thank-you card a week
• Create a peer-recognition program
• Solicit and post testimonials about the team from boss/customers/peers
• Add “recognize excellence” and “share information” to 1:1/team agendas
• Dissect quarterly shareholder reports with the team to explain the organization’s direction, goals, strategies, and tactics

Arguably recognizing people and sharing information should be organic leadership skills. But until they are…

We need intentional structures that help us strengthen these valuable, best-boss-ever, trust-building muscles.