Transcription
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Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. The words of Leo Tolstoy still echo loudly as we live in a world that requires so much change, but so little of it seems to happen. In their best-selling book, *The Three Laws of Performance*, Zaffron and Logan explored just how we can make change in situations where it seems not only unlikely, but impossible. And that, my friends, is worth the price of admission, if anything ever was.
Warren Bennis has said that this book may be one of the most important written in many years, and I agree. But here's a prediction and a challenge: your mindset right now, as you're sitting there in your chair, or in your car, or wherever you are, will completely determine what you get out of these ideas. It might even be the difference between your world being transformed or leading the same old life that you always had. I'll ask you, for just this once, to check whatever thoughts you might have about what you hear in the next 10 minutes at the door, and truly try on these ideas for size. If you do, you will literally rewrite your future. Here we go.
Law number one: How people perform correlates to how situations occur to them. Consider this: when you do something, it always makes complete sense to you. On the other hand, you'll often find yourself thinking, like I do, "Why the hell are they doing it like that? It doesn't make any sense."
Here's an example we'll use throughout the episode. Consider that your company CEO just got shown the door from the board of directors. In her place comes a young hotshot from a smaller but more innovative company. Bill, your co-worker, somebody who has been in the trenches with that CEO and firmly believed in her vision, thinks that this is a dramatic step backwards for your company, and it might even doom it to failure. On the other hand, you, 10 years younger than Bill, look at this new CEO and see a bright future filled with new opportunities. These two interpretations are how the situation occurred to you and Bill. Consider how your performance under this new leader would differ depending on your interpretations of the facts. And all of this occurs before the new CEO even speaks a word to you.
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If you think about this for a second, you start to see something profound. Both interpretations of the facts are valid interpretations, right? But these interpretations are colored by so many things: our upbringing, our social status, our gender, our culture, and a multitude of other factors. The problem is, we don't treat them as interpretations of the facts; we treat them as the facts themselves. For Bill, that the company is doomed to failure is not an interpretation of the facts; that's just the way it is. And as soon as we've decided that, we've written our future in such a way that we'll do anything we can to make sure it comes true.
The authors state in the corollary to this law that leaders have a say and give others a say in how situations occur. This is a tough one to swallow because it puts the complete responsibility of how a situation occurs to others directly on your shoulders. If you accept this, you now have the responsibility not only for your actions, but how other people interpret your actions. This is a large responsibility to take on, but one that can produce results beyond what you imagined. Today, ask yourself these questions as you wrestle with this idea: How can I interact with others so that situations occur more empowering to them? What processes, dialogues, or meetings can I arrange that people feel like the co-authors of a new future, not merely the recipients of others' decisions?
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And that brings us to law number two: How a situation occurs arises in language. Let's go back to our example. The facts are that a CEO got fired and somebody else took their place. The thing that brought your interpretation of the facts to life was language. Consider the example of Helen Keller, who, before she learned how to use sign language at the age of eight, "knew only darkness and stillness. My life was without past or future." As the authors say, she saw language for what it is: a force that makes us human, that gives us a past and a future, allows us to dream, to plan, to set and realize goals. Keller made this dramatic shift when she was only eight years old, an age where she was old enough to remember. However, for the rest of us, language is just something that has been always with us, so we don't pay attention to its presence and we don't realize the true power that our words and conversations have in the world until now.
A lot of these conversations we have with ourselves and others are what the authors call rackets. There are four elements to a racket. First, there is a persistent complaint. A constant complaint in this situation might be, "He isn't leading the way the old CEO did." Remember, Bill would be looking for all the ways this new CEO is different from the old one, so this shouldn't be surprising. The second element is a fixed way of behaving, which for Bill might be resigned, sad, isolated, and detached. Third, there's a payoff. The payoff for Bill in this situation might be that he gets to be right, and he gets to make that new hotshot CEO wrong. In fact, he'll probably have a file folder full of all the stupid mistakes he made since he took over. Have you ever felt like proving somebody wrong? It feels good, right? Well, that's the payoff. The last element of a racket is a cost. The cost in this situation should be obvious: Bill's effectiveness and drive will plummet, and he'll probably drag down others in your department in the process. Overall, the effect is disastrously negative for Bill; he'll probably get fired, and your company, for as long as people like Bill are kept around. Do you see any constant complaints in your life or in your organization?
The corollary to this law states that leaders master the conversational environment. This means that as a leader, you realize that anything and everything that happens in your company begins as a conversation. Mastering these conversations so they do not focus on persistent complaints, but instead help you create a new future, brings us to law number three.
Law number three is: Future-based language transforms how situations occur to people. Consider this: that people, including you, live into a future they see coming at them. For Bill, the future is bleak and hopeless. For you, the future is bright and full of opportunities. And Bill's future is just as real to him as yours is to you. The authors call this the default future, and we all have one. We live into that default future every single day of our lives until we change that default future and create a new one. How we do that is through future-based language. This doesn't merely modify the default future; it completely and wholly replaces it. This type of language is responsible for the turning points in history, like Churchill's "fight them on the beaches" speech that replaced the default future of death and destruction, and Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech that displaced the default future of racial segregation.
Before we create a new future, we have to get rid of the old one that we've created. For instance, you and Bill would have to give up the futures you created when you heard there was a new sheriff in town. There are three dimensions to doing something that we call "blanking the canvas." First, we need to see that what binds and constrains us isn't the facts; it's language, in particular, it's descriptive language, and it merely states interpretations of the facts. For Bill, it's pretty clear that he's constrained by this language. The second step is to articulate the default future and ask, "Do we really want this as our future?" For Bill, this would be a powerful question to ask. Lastly, to create a blank space, we need to take on the most powerful and difficult subject: completing issues from the past. This means that you clean up any messes that your racket has created. For Bill, it might mean reaching out to the members on his team and addressing the reason for his aloof and detached behavior, and take whatever action necessary to give up the racket.
Now you're ready to create a new future. There are three principles that exist in generating new futures: they inspire action, they speak to everyone in the process, and this means your entire company, and they exist in the moment of speaking. Like we talked about earlier, everything exists in language and conversations. And here's the question you need to ask if you're going to create a future that inspires action: What conversations in the organization are missing that, if created and implemented, would leave people with new pathways for action?
As you're starting to have these conversations, your new future will start to generate itself. As you start to pick up steam, you'll encounter people like Bill, who are still resigned to a default future of failure, and it seems like nothing you can say will make a difference to him. So instead of trying to keep inspiring him, ask him this question: "What is your counter-proposal?"
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Your job as a leader is to keep on working until the entire organization says, "This speaks to me," and they commit to this new future.
Had the opportunity to talk to Steve Zaffron and asked him our million-dollar question: "Why does the world need your book?" This is what he said:
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"Well, I think our commitment in writing the book, and the request we had from the people asked us to write the book, such as Warren Bennis, who was one of the real, uh, real thinkers about leadership. They thought when they heard the ideas that we had been using in our consulting work and working with organizations, Warren thought these were incredible ideas and important to be understood by others, to make be made available. Um, and he says in his, uh, editor's notes that he thinks these ideas are critical for people and communities and organizations to utilize, to have things be better, to work better. So our commitment in writing the book was to make the ideas available to people in general, to people who are interested in leadership, having things work in their own life, organizations that want to do more than just get by or just make a profit, but really want to make a contribution, and to communities that are engaged with organizations to be able to be part of the creation of what's happening in their, in their life. So, to agree, the book communicates those ideas. I, that was our commitment, to get the ideas out there, basically."
So, remember: how people perform correlates to how situations occur to them, and you are responsible for that. How a situation occurs arises in language, and leaders master the conversational environment. And lastly, future-based language transforms how situations occur to people.
Hi, I'm Rhonda, and this is an exclusive audiobook video recorded for the Audiobook Master channel. Enjoy your audiobook and have fun learning. Don't forget to subscribe and hit the notification button so you'll get updated on our next upload. If you liked the video, give us a thumbs up and say your thoughts about the book we just covered. Do you want to listen to a summary or review of a book that we haven't covered in the past? Say it in the comments below or send us a message. Don't forget to check our other uploads. Enjoy listening.