StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 27 – An Interview with Chris Edgar, author of Inner Productivity
StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.
Special Edition 27 – An Interview with Chris Edgar, author of Inner Productivity explores how to eliminate the mind’s distractions that diminish work productivity, heighten stress, and limit personal happiness. During our discussion, Chris Edgar, author of Inner Productivity: A Mindful Path to Efficiency and Enjoyment in Your Work
- how mental distractions cause individuals to unknowingly multitask; reducing their work productivity
- practical activities to eliminate one’s internal distractions thereby increasing focus on the task at hand
- steps an individual can take to overcome a creative blankness such as writer’s block
Additional Information
In addition to the outstanding insights Chris shares in Inner Productivity
Chris also offers an insightful six part video series on eliminating the inner distractions that limit personal productivity. These include:
- How I Came to This Work (above)
- Why is Inner Productivity Important?
- From “Fight or Flight” to Acceptance
- Dealing with Writers Block
- Disolve Your Distractions
- Focus on Your Contribution
About the Author
Chris Edgar, author of Inner Productivity
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Putting “You” in the Denominator: The Renaissance of Self
The Oracle of Delphi told Socrates that he was the wisest man in all of Athens. After many years of reflection, Socrates had the answer. He was the wisest, because he knew he wasn’t the wisest. Pretty cool, huh? Leaders know the road of self-knowledge and self-discovery are never ending. This yellow brick road leads to many rewards, but not pot of gold. The rewards found here are contained within the journey, not the destination. You see, there is no destination for leaders. Knowing yourself means separating who you are and who you want to be from what the world thinks you are and wants you to be. Most of us, including myself, lived up to other people’s expectations for years before discovering the power of the space between stimulus and response, and the freedom and responsibility of choice.
There are four lessons of personal renaissance:
[wcm_restrict]First lesson: You are your own best teacher. No one knows how best you learn than you. Even if you’re not consciously aware of your learning style, you likely gravitate to it anyway. Learning is experienced through personal transformation, a literal transformation of brain architecture. Your brain actually alters its connections when you learn something new. The new chemistry, the new expression of the learning process is what allows self-understanding, and ultimately leads to your ability to express your new self. This is how reinvention really takes place on a cellular level. Any personal renaissance for a leader is almost always motivated internally – meaning that leaders have an intrinsic motivation to teach themselves, what I call intrinsic insatiation. And that motivation is always influenced by a leader’s sense of role in any situation – because no matter the situation, as a leader, you always have some role to play in every situation (this role is usually defined as a perceived gap in where you think you should be and where you think others think you should be). That internal drive and the perception of role drive leaders to never stop learning.
Second lesson: Take ownership. A personal renaissance takes place when people assume ownership. All of the sudden the stakes are higher – the pain of failure is more palpable. And yet for an authentic leader, failure is not an option, so the responsibility then of ownership… breeds success. And for great leaders, they create their own success – they take the building blocks of life and experience education in their very own self-designed university – the school of life.
Third Lesson: Learn from everything. I learned in executive coaching school that we can learn from everything – it’s absolutely true if we allow the perspective to saturate our understanding of how the world works. If we can develop a tolerance for every conceivable experience, then we have set the appropriate table, the right platform that allows you to learn from everything and gain perspective from everyone. For leaders, learning is seeing the world simultaneously as it is and as it can be. This is where the term we use here at WealthBridge comes into play – intervision – the ability to see the future and the past at the same time. It’s not about being present (that’s one dimension). It’s about being in two places at one time. Taking an honest stock of the present situation while understanding how those implications influence our vision, and how they were impacted by our past. Leaders understand what they see, and take appropriate action on that understanding. The holy grail of learning from everything is making connections. Leaders connect disparate ideas from many different industries and make the application work in their own business. This is the synthetic mind that Howard Gardner tells us will be so vital in the next 25 years. Learn how to connect. Practice taking ideas from other disciplines and apply them in your business. Mental gymnastics are very important.
Fourth Lesson: Reflection on experience leads to understanding. Reflecting on experience is a means of having a Socratic dialogue with yourself, asking the right questions at the right time, in order to discover the truth of yourself and your life. What really happened? Why did it happen? What did it do to me? What did it mean to me? Reflection is asking the questions that promote self-awareness and true understanding of an experience, so that it can inform the future. So then the importance of reflecting on experience, the idea that reflecting leads to understanding is a main component of a leader’s mind. Learning and understanding unlock the ability of a leader to move forward à to be self-directed – to be proactive. To look forward with acuity means we must have reflected, or looked back, with brutal honesty. Leaders learn from others, but true Authentic leadership is not emulation. – leaders don’t simply copy another person’s creed and actions. They take the distinguishing characteristics from others that allow them to differentiate, and then synthesize the other with self, and in the process of reinvention, the leader with a distinctive voice all their own emerges from the experiment.
We began this article with Socrates; we end with Socrates…He said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Leaders use their experiences, and the examination of those experiences, instead of being used by them. They remain in control and at choice. When you consider the prevailing equation that most people subscribe to: Family + Friends + Workplace + Society = You. But to undergo a personal renaissance of self, stick yourself in the denominator [Family + Friends + Workplace + Society / You]. The denominator is all powerful…rather than being designed by your experience, you become your own designer. You become cause and effect rather than a mere product of your environment. The process begins with Self-awareness = once you accept yourself and your uniqueness, it fosters self-knowledge = knowledge always leads to confidence and ownership = what you own, you can control = what you control, you can express à awareness that ultimately results in Self-expression. You make your own life by assuming ownership of the space between stimulus, what happens to you, and your response to it. What lies in the space is the freedom to choose your response. Choose to know yourself better than anyone, and learn to lead the most important revolution in your life – the personal renaissance of the leader in you.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]
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About the Author
Dr. Greg Gillum is the Chief Learning Officer of WealthBridge Connect (www.WealthBridgeConnect.com). As CLO, his primary role is writing leadership and management curriculum for the international faculty of WealthBridge Connect that helps members drive their business to new heights. In addition, his role at WealthBridge Connect includes lead executive coach and trainer, specializing in leadership development applications, business performance coaching, emotional intelligence, and guiding transformational change in individuals and organizations. Dr. Gillum has also served as the CEO of the humanfusion group of companies (www.humanfusion.com) since 2004. He is a frequent keynote speaker in the areas of human performance and potential. Dr. Gillum spent six years on the faculty of the Medical College of Virginia, and eight years in marketing and senior management with GlaxoSmithKline. To read Dr. Gillum’s complete biography, click here.
Leadership Inspirations – Showing Up
“Only some people get what they want. Those are the people who show up to get it.”
Dianne Houston
American director and screenwriter
Customer Satisfaction: A Flawed Measure
Your customers want more than “satisfying” transactions – they want engaging relationships
To master the new discipline of the emotional economy, business leaders need a new way to think about “customer requirements” and a new set of tools to help structure their businesses around them. But exactly how should they construct a new definition of customer requirements?
Traditionally, the customer’s perspective has been evaluated by assessing “conformance to requirements,” often (though not always) by using a generic measure of customer satisfaction. Early practitioners of the quality movement postulated that customers would be satisfied with and would continue to purchase a product or service if it met their functional specifications and fulfilled their requirements.
[wcm_restrict]The origins of how “customer satisfaction” emerged as the preferred measure are a bit murky, but, for better or for worse, it seems to have been selected primarily based on its intuitive appeal. In other words, customer satisfaction seems so plausible that surely it must be the correct thing to measure. As a result, the issue of whether customer satisfaction actually measures anything of value appears to have been overlooked.
Because the bulk of the work that laid the foundation for this perspective originated in manufacturing and process-intensive businesses, customer requirements have generally been specified in functional terms: Did the product have any defects? Did it conform to specified manufacturing tolerances and parameters? Was it delivered on time? And so on.
But as our knowledge of psychology, behavioral economics, and neuroscience has matured, we now recognize that this rational-functional view of human decision making is flawed and incomplete. To date, only advertisers have paid much attention to the essential non-rational and emotional dimensions that define what it means to be human — and a customer. As a result, it’s not surprising that executives and managers continue to struggle to understand why customers who appear to be satisfied defect to competitors — and why authentic, organic growth remains elusive.
Customer satisfaction is not enough
Business leaders, researchers, academics, and management consultants alike have expressed concern that though customer satisfaction may be a necessary foundation for building strong customer relationships, by itself, it’s a relatively poor indicator of future customer behavior. Our data support this concern.
Empirical results from a large and growing number of case studies suggest that customers who are extremely satisfied – those who provide the highest rating of overall satisfaction with a company’s products or services – can be classified into two distinct groups: those who are emotionally satisfied and those who are rationally satisfied.
- Emotionally satisfied customers are extremely satisfied with the products and services the company provides and have a strong emotional attachment to the company.
- Rationally satisfied customers, in contrast, are also extremely satisfied with the company but lack the strong emotional connection of customers who are emotionally satisfied.
When we examine the indicators of customer behavior within these two customer groups, such as customer attrition, frequency of use, share of requirements/share of wallet, and total revenue and spending, among others, a clear and striking pattern emerges. Emotionally satisfied customers deliver enhanced value to a company, for example, by buying more products, spending more for those products, or returning more often to or staying longer with the business. Rationally satisfied customers, on the other hand, behave no differently than customers who are dissatisfied.
Consider the following case study from a large U.S. retail bank. When we assessed this bank’s customers using an 11-item metric of customer engagement… we found that over a six-month period, emotionally satisfied customers ended their relationships with the bank by completely closing their accounts at rates that were 37% lower than rationally satisfied customers’ rates. Dissatisfied customers, on the other hand, scarcely differed from rationally satisfied customers in their attrition levels.
Similar results emerged for an international credit card provider. Over a six-month period, emotionally satisfied cardholders spent on average $251 per month and used their cards an average of 3.1 times per month. Rationally satisfied cardholders, in contrast, spent on average just over half this amount ($136 per month) and used their cards less often (an average of 2.5 times per month) during the same period. Again, dissatisfied customers were virtually indistinguishable from rationally satisfied customers in their actual purchase behavior: Dissatisfied customers also spent on average $136 per month and used their cards an average of 2.2 times per month during the same period. And, emotionally satisfied cardholders increased their spending by 67% over a 12-month period, compared to an increase of just 8% among rationally satisfied customers. Once again, dissatisfied customers were virtually indistinguishable from rationally satisfied customers in terms of spending increases.
This general pattern is consistent across every industry we have examined, leading us to this powerful conclusion: Customer satisfaction is not enough. Merely satisfying customers by delivering on their rational requirements represents a minimum point of entry for today’s businesses; managing to satisfy customers will not drive the enhanced financial performance today’s business leaders seek.
To build the strong customer connections that produce enhanced financial benefits, a more complete view of customer requirements is needed, which incorporates an understanding of the emotional dimensions of customer commitment. Customers want more than transactions – they want relationships.
Excerpted from Human Sigma: Managing the Employee-Customer Encounter (Gallup Press, November 2007)[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]
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About the Authors
John H. Fleming, Ph.D., is Principal and Chief Scientist – Customer Engagement and HumanSigma for Gallup and coauthor of Human Sigma: Managing the Employee-Customer Encounter
Jim Asplund is Chief Scientist, Strengths-Based Development and Principal, Performance Impact Consulting with Gallup and coauthor of Human Sigma: Managing the Employee-Customer Encounter
The Ethical Executive
Hardly a month goes by – or so it seems – without yet another headline about apparent unethical behavior in the executive suite: from criminal misrepresentation, to tax evasion, manipulation of accounts, and a whole smorgasbord of fraud. Not surprisingly, as investors, employees, legislators, or simply bemused observers of human behavior, we all want the answer to one question, “Are today’s corporate leaders unusually corrupt?” The disconcerting answer is that these leaders are no different than you or us. Even if we have good ethical values to begin with, given certain situational or internal pressures, every one of us can become unethical.
[wcm_restrict]When I was in graduate school, my professor of social psychology, Dr. Dalenberg, told my class that early in her career, she had considered walking up and down the isles of the classroom during exams to catch students cheating. She ultimately decided not to do this. Why? She knew that after awhile, her behavior would shape her attitudes – she would probably become – to some degree – more suspicious of her students.
Eric Storch at Columbia University administered a questionnaire to 244 students. Answering the questionnaire anonymously, the college students were asked how often they had copied other student’s work, plagiarized, and cheated on exams. The questionnaire also asked the students to rate their approval on a scale of 1 to 5 (“strongly disapprove” to “strongly approve”) of these three transgressions.
Results indicated that students who reported more academic dishonesty gave significantly higher approval ratings of their dishonesty! When we act unethically, we automatically begin to view our transgressions in a less negative way.
In 2001, Enron deceived California customers during the energy crisis. The federal government had ordered power plants to maintain full output capacity. Enron created false electrical shortages by shutting down plants and in so doing ran up prices. The company made billions of dollars from the illegal scam. The main players in the scam were the West Coast energy traders who bought and sold electricity and scheduled its delivery. “The attitude was, ‘play by your own rules,’ says a former trader. We all did it. We talked about it openly . . . We took pride in getting around the rules.” [Italics added.] Notice in this example that unethical behavior became so frequent that traders were proud of their actions. It’s possible that one of the reasons why they “took pride in getting around the rules” is that they became trapped in Doing is Believing.
How can executives protect their organizations and themselves from these traps? First, it’s essential that executives have a firm knowledge of the 45 traps. Voyagers who know the location of quicksand navigate around it. When we clearly identify danger, we can prepare for it and avoid it. Second, “the most important thing an executive can do is hire a psychologist to be part of their ethics and compliance team.” Many of the traps incite powerful emotions that in turn pull victims toward wrongdoing. In general, emotions provoked by traps are: fear, anxiety, distress, shame, anger and sadness. Emotions this strong can bring us all to our knees. It’s important to know that we all have the capacity to shut down our emotions. If we don’t feel anything, it doesn’t always mean our emotions are gone. A psychologist can assist executives deal with their intense emotions.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]
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About the Author
Robert Hoyk is a Clinical Psychologist and has conducted research in several institutions. He has taught communication skills to executives, physicians, and couples. Robert lives in Laguna Beach, California with his wife, author, Julie Brickman.