The At My Best profile – a real game-changer

During my training to be a MindSonar Professional. I did an “At My Best” profile. In this exercise, I completed a MindSonar profile after focussing on a context in which I was feeling motivated, inspired and able to develop and take forward ideas and solutions which enabled me to succeed in what it was that I wanted to achieve. That is, I profiled the thinking patterns, Graves Drives and criteria that I employ when I’m working at my best.

I found it a really enlightening and useful exercise, as it enabled me to identify the metaprograms which were key to taking forward projects that I had put on the back burner for a while.

Some of the shifts I needed to make to move into my At My Best profile from my stuck position were ones I was aware of – such as moving into a more Proactive thinking pattern, rather than a Reactive one. Others had been less noticeable to me. For example, when working at my best I employ a stronger Internal Locus of Control than I did with respect to those projects which were on the back burner. This surprised me as I usually have a strong Internal Locus of Control overall and hadn’t realised how much some projects were being held back because of a concern about what others might think.

At my best I was also much more focused on Towards motivation than Away From, and this shift could also help me identify my desired outcomes and what I really wanted to achieve.

The insights from the exercise went beyond simply identifying the shifts in meta programmes which would help me increase the amount of time I spent in my At My Best profile. Looking at the Graves drives and Criteria also helped me to realise that some of my stalled projects didn’t really meet my needs in terms of my values and priorities. This was a particularly enlightening section of the Mindsonar profile for me. Once I saw that some of my projects were just not aligned to what was really important to me, it was easier to either modify them and even to let some go.

Since doing the At My Best profile, I’ve made some real shifts in what I’m aiming for, and some real changes in the way I identify and approach my plans for the future.

When working with clients who feel stuck or stalled in some way (which is pretty much all of them), I think it’s really useful get the client to do a At My Best profile. The changes it can bring to how they experience working on their plans and dreams can be game-changing.

Have you done an At My Best profile yet? If you have, then please share your experiences and insights from it below. If you haven’t and would like to, then contact your nearest Mindsonar Professional to arrange one – it could make all the difference to your success!

Improving Business Partnerships

Working with small businesses, I often come across partnerships in which the two partners are experiencing some conflict about their business. Recently, I worked with such a partnership using MindSonar to shine a light on the thinking patterns behind the differences. This understanding led to them being able to review the way worked so that each played to their strengths and were able to cover each other’s blind spots.

The partners (whom I shall call Peter and  Carol – not their real names) wanted the following question answering through their MindSonar session:

“How can we best use our different approaches to develop a more efficient business model”.

They described recent disagreements which were mainly down to two things:

  1. Division of the administrative side of the business, particularly record keeping and the organisation of accounting records.
  2. The future direction and growth strategy for the business.

Each partner completed a MindSonar profile in this context.

Interpretation

IWe explored their profiles, noting both the main differences in their thinking patterns as well as the areas in which they shared the same blind spots. Two particular examples of this were:

  1. A large difference between the partners’ approach to change. Carol had a preference for change (spilt between Developmentand Change), whereas Peter had a very strong preference for Maintenance.
  2. They had similar (very strong) scores for the Optionsmeta programme. This was strengthened by neither scoring highly for the BLUE Graves drive.  However, in his criteria Peter had added a caveat about options of “where appropriate”

The partners recognised their profiles as accurate and could identify a number of things which were contributing to their conflict.  In particular, they could see that their different approaches to change created disagreements around the future direction and growth strategy of the business.

They also both recognised their high OptionsMeta Programme and acknowledge that they were good at identifying and constructing procedures, but not at following them. They agreed that this explained the tension around administrative work. However, Peter could identify areas outside business in which he did use a Proceduremeta programme.

After exploring those and other differences in their profiles, the partners identified a number of  actions that they would take immediately. Two key ones were:

  1. Peter would be responsible for identifying the areas of the business that were currently successful and determine procedures to build on this and which could be applied to any new areas (using his MaintenanceMeta Programme and “stepping into” the Proceduremeta programme that he used in other areas). Peter was open to options about some areas of the business, but not his own speciality which he felt was right where it needed to be.  Therefore, Carol would have responsibility for identifying possible options for general business development, including new areas in her area of specialty that she could take forward (Using her OptionsandChangeMeta Programmes).
  2. For administration and other procedural activities, they agreed that they would consider out-sourcing these, recognising that neither of them particularly wanted to spend the time in the business doing these. Again Peter would “step into” the Proceduremeta programme in the meantime.

Following the session, the clients said they were impressed with the accuracy of the profiles and the usefulness of the exercise in which they identified their own and each other’s strengths and blind-spots.  They felt that they now had a great understanding of how they could work to make the most of each one’s strengths.  They expressed an interest in further coaching to develop other areas identified.

Of course, this is a brief summary, and the partners discovered many other things during the session which they felt would enable them to work better as a partnership, leading to greater personal and business success.

If you work with partnerships or very small teams, you should definitely consider using MindSonar to really optimise your working relationships and team efficiency.  You can find a MindSonar Professional near you in the Registry on this site.

MindSonar Benchmarks for Project Teams – I wish I’d known about Them!

In my previous role I was responsible for managing a major programme involving multiple project teams. Part of the programme management involved regular risk management and “lessons learned” meetings. During these meetings, representatives from each of the project teams would discuss any issues that had arisen since the last meeting, and what steps had been taken – or needed to be taken – in order to rectify the issue and prevent it happening again.

The aim of the meetings was to ensure that the systems and processes we had in place were adequate to minimise the risk of problems arising and to enable a rapid corrective response when needed. However, at times these meetings could become quite tense because there was a fine line to tread between good risk management and problem resolution on one side and the development of a blame culture on the other. This was clearer to some members than others. Some members would always want to attribute all problems to individuals, rather than to consider the more common situation of them arising from system weaknesses. Tthe result was that friction would arise between those individuals with a “name and shame” approach and other members of the programme board. This created risks to the programme itself as it could result in people being reluctant to raise issues when they spotted them in fear of being blamed.

As the manager of this programme I had to manage the situation and try to cultivate a systems approach in the individuals concerned, most of whom I had no direct line management of.

How helpful it would have been to have had MindSonar back then. I believe it would have been possible to construct a Benchmark Profile to help identify the members of each project team who would be best suited to be the risk management/lessons learnt representative. This Benchmark Profile could have been constructed in consultation with other project and programme managers to provide a narrated estimation (with consultation).

My first thoughts about this are that this benchmark profile might include the following:

Graves Drives: Ideals; Learning;

Meta Programmes:

High: Away From (for risk management); Past (for lessons learnt);Structure (for systems approach)

Low: People (to avoid blame approach)

There are likely to be others and different views which is why I would prefer a benchmark profile resulting from a narrated estimation with consultation.

It would be great to hear from other MindSonar Professionals about their thoughts on this – and about whether anyone has yet used the MindSonar tool in this context.

It would also be good to hear from project and programme managers who have found themselves in similar situations – they could find MindSonar particularly useful when allocating project roles to their team members.

What are your thoughts?  Use the comments box below to share your experiences and views on this.

Procrastination – not just about Reactive versus Proactive

Procrastination – it affects virtually all of us at some time and I find that it’s a particularly common problem for those who seek a coach. In fact, it’s often the reason why someone finally decides to hire a coach – to help get them moving on ambitions and plans that they’ve had for years.

At the surface, procrastination seems to be predominantly about the person being overly reactive rather than proactive and so not stepping into the actions needed to take them forward.

However, the more I’ve looked at the clients’ behaviours in the context of the MindSonar profile, I’ve begun to notice just how many of the Meta Programmes can contribute to their procrastination. That is to say that I think that being overly Reactive is, in some cases, a result of other Meta Programmes that are in operation. Here are two examples that I’ve come across:

Example 1: A client had relatively recently become self-employed after being in his profession for over 20 years. He loved his profession and was keen to be his own boss. He had always worked hard and had always been happy working on his own initiative . To minimise business costs he had set up an office at home, equipped it well and had everything in place. He soon had a good flow of clients as he already had a good reputation in his field. He was excited by his prospects.

Within a year he found himself constantly procrastinating. He was finding a million things to do before starting his work. He had never experienced this in all his years of working for someone else. He had become demotivated and was rapidly losing his belief that he could be successfully self-employed. Before finally giving up, he decided to hire a coach to help – that’s when he came to me.

What was going on? When talking with this client, it was clear he had not lost his love of his profession, nor had he lost the desire to be self-employed. However, it became evident that in the past, although he had worked independently, he had liked the knowledge that there were others around him. They did not need to be others in the same profession, just people who were nearby with for support. He worked best with a proximity Meta Programme. Without others around he found he couldn’t get into what he called “work mode”. At his home office he needed to work well with solo, and he found he could not.

His solution? He decided to rent an office near to home in a building occupied by other self-employed professionals. He very soon found that he was back on track, enjoying building both his business and his professional reputation. His change from reactive to proactive happened naturally as a consequence of a change from solo to proximity.

Example 2: A client had recently been promoted from a role in which she was a technical expert into a managerial role in a similar team. She had been with the employer for a number of years and had a reputation as a hard worker and an excellent problem solver. She was excited about her new role as it provided a chance to influence senior management and have her say about policy at key meetings in which she had previously only attended as a technical advisor. Shortly after starting her role she found she was getting behind in some areas due to a new habit of frequent procrastination. She came for coaching to help her get over this.

In this client’s case it became clear that she had not previously had to argue her case at meetings, or had ever needed to direct other team members. In her current role she needed to do both. Her procrastination resulted from her being worried about what others would think of her if she disagreed with them or if she had to actively manage a member of her team. She was highly externally referenced which was not a helpful Meta Programme in her new role.

Her solution? Through coaching for assertiveness and confidence alongside employer-led management training she developed her internally referenced Meta Programme and was able to end her procrastination at work.

The lesson for me from such clients is to not simply focus on coaching to change from reactive to proactuve , but to look across a full MindSonar profile and see where the root of the problem is. That way the client is likely to move to reactive quite automatically.

In your experience, what other Meta Programmes might lead to procrastination? I’m very interested to know, so do please comment below.

MindSonar F5 Team Refresh Program – Great tool for Project Teams

Prior to becoming a coach and therapist I was a programme manager responsible for the development and delivery of a complex national programme. This involved coordinating people from teams of very diverse specialties: people who were mathematicians, IT developers, communication specialists and policy developers to name just a few.

On the whole, the programme team members got along well and all were really committed to delivery of the programme. Overall they shared the same end goal and vison for its delivery. However, disagreements and misunderstandings would often arise between different members, some which carried a real threat to the success of one or another area of the programme. More often than not, such problems were caused by the different approaches and priorities of the different areas of speciality. For example, the policy makers hated details and wanted to know that the overall concept was being developed well, whereas the mathematicians were focussed on accuracy and statistical significance. The quality controller was seen as a miserable person, seeing only faults and always raising problems and the communications person wanted simply the good news to communicate to our stakeholders.

If only I had known about MindSonar back then! It would have been a fabulous tool to use with the programme team to enable them to understand their differences better and so appreciate each other’s strengths and see their own blind spots. The Team Refresh programme would have been perfect for enabling each member to see that there was no single right way to approach our programme – that, in fact, it was the range of thinking styles that was the team’s strength.

Within a Team Refresh workshop each team member completes a MindSonar profile in the context of working in that team. Using these profiles, each team member gets the opportunity to discover the “superpowers” and blind spots of every team member (including themselves) and to consider how the different profiles might both cause them stress and be able to help them.

At the end of the workshop the team members have a greater understanding of themselves as well as of the other team members and have also learned how they can work together, complementing each other to the benefit of the programme that they are delivering. As a team they will be able to communicate much more effectively between themselves, and to other teams.

Equally importantly, the MindSonar workshop would demonstrate that in such projects all thinking styles are equally valid, and that each contributes in an important way. In the case of my project for example, the meta programmes Specific, Use and Information were vital for the mathematicians, whereas for those developing the overall policy the meta programmes General and Concept were needed. It was essential that the data quality control individual was operating Mismatching, whilst the communications team needed to be running a Matching meta programme to be able to tell our sector how well the programme was coming along.

Some of these understandings did evolve in my team, but only in a piecemeal way as and when an issue arose. Had I been able to undertake a MindSonar Team Refresh workshop early on in project I believe a lot of the misunderstandings and resulting conflict and delays would have been avoided.

If you lead or coach project teams with a variety of specialisms then do consider arranging for a MindSonar Professional to deliver a Team Refresh programme for your whole team. The improvement in the way the team work afterwards will make it a very worthwhile investment.

Types of Inner Conflict – How to Identify them in a MindSonar Profile

Pavlov: Experimental Neurosis

In MindSonar we work with the distinction ‘towards’ versus ‘away from’ thinking. This distinction has a long history, be it under a different name. In the beginning of the 20th century, experimental psychology already used this distinction when they were researching what they called ‘experimental neurosis’. The famous I.P. Pavlov was one of the scientists involved in this research.

Pavlov created ‘approach/avoidance conflicts’ in dogs. In terms of meta programs we would say: Pavlov trained his dogs to want to go towards and go away from at the same time. First, he conditioned them with one stimulus (for example a bell) to go towards a food bowl where they were rewarded with food. Next, he conditioned them with another stimulus (for example a horn) to move away from the food bowl because if they stayed there they were given an electric shock. Then, both stimuli (sounds) where presented at the same time: the dog was put in an approach/avoidance conflict. He wanted to go towards the food bowl to get the food and at the same time he wanted to move away from it to avoid the shock. When subjected to this conditioning, the dogs started to show strange behaviors; they stayed completely still or they started doing illogical things like running in circles.

This is what was called ‘experimental neurosis’. Human beings sometimes find themselves in quite similar situations. We call them dilemma’s: on one hand I want to give my boss a piece of my mind (towards, approach), on the other hand I don’t want to get fired (away from, avoidance).

Types of conflict

Psychology makes a distinction between three types of conflict:

Approach/approach conflicts (I want two things, but I can’t have them both). We would say: towards/towards conflicts. When we look at the emotions that thinking ‘towards’ and ‘away from’ are associated with, we expect that this kind of conflict will evoke mostly sadness and anger.

Avoidance/avoidance conflicts (I don’t want either one of two things, but I can’t avoid both of them). We expect that this kind of conflict will evoke mostly fear and anxiety.

Approach/avoidance conflicts (I want one thing and I want to avoid something else, but I can’t have the one thing and avoid the other). In this situation we expect a mix of the above-mentioned emotions.

Conflicts in MindSonar work

In MindSonar we are gathering information on someone’s criteria and their counterparts. These are towards- or approach-issues and away from-  or avoidance-issues. The positive criteria the respondent gives us are things they want to move towards. The counterparts are the things they want to move away from. Similar to when Pavlov’s dogs wanted to move toward foor and away from electric shock. If Pavlovs dogs had filled out MindSonar for the context of ‘Being in Pavlov’s experiments’  they could have filled out ‘Tasty food’  as one criterion and ‘Being safe from electric shock’ as another criterion. With a counterparts: ‘Being hungry’  and ‘Getting shocked’.

Here are some things you could do, as a MindSonar Professional, with the criteria-information in terms of these three types of conflict.

  • First have look at the ‘towards’ and ‘away from’ scores.
  • If the ‘towards’ score is high (say 8+), then look for approach/approach conflicts. Have a look at their hierarchy of criteria and discuss with the respondent if they can achieve all of those criteria simultaneously. Are some of them exclusive, meaning they cannot both be achieved at the same time?  Then there is a potential approach/approach conflict. You may find emotions of anger and sadness. Unless the hierarchy of criteria is very clear. In that case (clear hierarchy) it may not be a problem. Sure, they cannot fulfil both criteria at the same time, but is doesn’t bother them, because criterion 1 is clearly more important than criterion 2. So they are happy achieving a lot of criterion 1, even if that means they won’t achieve much criterion 2.
  • If the ‘away from’ score is high (say 8+), then look for avoidance/avoidance conflicts. Have a look at the counterparts in their hierarchy of criteria. Discuss with the respondent if they can avoid all of those counterparts simultaneously. If not, there may be an avoidance/avoidance conflict. You may find emotions of fear and anxiety. Here also, the problem may be ameliorated or prevented by a clear hierarchy of criteria.
  • If the ‘towards’ and ‘away from’ scores are balanced, look for approach/avoidance conflicts along the same lines as the other conflicts.

And what could be a solution?

And if you find any of these conflicts, what’s next? In terms of coaching, helping the client clarify their hierarchy of criteria might be helpful. Or – as a next step – you might help them negotiate between parts, if you know how to do that. How can the two parts of the person, one of which wants to achieve A and the other wanting to achieve a mutually exclusive B, cooperate, in order to achieve new goals that are satisfactory to both of them?