Feelings about change: the ten second test
Stumble It!Instantly discover a persons main worry about an upcoming change by how they speak just five words: We cant do that here.
I found this in a book a long time ago – “The Secret Language of Success: Using Body Language to Get What You Want” by Dr. David Lewis (1989).
I confess I never got round to testing it properly but it sounded intriguing so I pass it on - "buyer beware".
Imagine you are the leader of a new team or network.
How can you quickly find out what each team member's number one concern is about working in this scenario?
Dr Lewis recommends you get each of them to repeat the following 5 words out loud without thinking about it too much:
"We can’t do that here”
Listen carefully to which of the five words they stress – if its:
- We – they are worried about their Identity
- Can’t – they are worried about their beliefs and values
- Do – they are worried about their skills
- That – they are worried about their behavior
- Here – they are worried about the environment
It might be nonsense, they might laugh at you or you might just learn something important about one of your fellow team members!
Tags: change
Digg | 
del.icio.us | 
Reddit | 
Yahoo! | 
Add to my favourites
Comments
Hi Ken,
This also relates to Robert Dilt's (of NLP fame) neuro-logical levels, which in turn probably came out of Bateson's "Towards an Ecology of Mind". To take it just a little further, change at a 'higher' level, e.g. identity, will effect change at lower levels, but the reverse is not true. So if you are trying to change a team's behaviour, while none of them shares a team identity, it won't work. But instill the identity and the behaviours will then be easier to change. I'm not sure it is that simple and tend to believe (there's that word again!) that sometimes defining behaviours is a good way to start, working up from there.
Posted by: Alex McCafferty | March 6, 2007 6:37 PM
Alex
Thank you - thats very helpful background
For those not familiar with Bateson (or other pioneers such as Maturana) see http://www.oikos.org/psicen.htm
Regards
Ken
Posted by: ken thompson | March 6, 2007 7:04 PM
Bioteams Books Reviews
Mobile business applications framework
In a just published book Work Goes Mobile by Michael Lattanzi, Antti Korhonen and Vishy Gopalakrishnan, authors of Nokia’s mobility master plan, propose a very useful application profiling scheme to establish the degree to which a business could exploit mobile technologies in their broadest sense. This approach would also be very useful for establishing the support requirements for virtually networked teams.
Buy it now from:
Amazon.Com
Amazon.Co.UK
Related Team Leadership Development Articles
Games Teams Play
In 1964 psychiatrist Dr. Eric Berne published a wonderful book Games people play in which he identified the different games people play, often unwittingly, in social situations based on his concept of transaction analysis. People in teams play games too including Freeloader, Pseudo-engager, Chase-me, Senior Partner, Inquisitor, Stop-Starter, Overcommunicator, Email Fixater and Attachmentitis.
Todays teams do not need yesterdays managers
A research report by Henley Management College in the UK on remote and flexible working, Managing Tomorrow’s Worker (MTW) concludes that leaders who successfully manage distributed teams pay attention to some things "traditional team" managers often neglect.
Can a team have just one member
The best team is Me. It might sound like heresy but sometimes the most effective way to produce something is not through collaboration but by just doing it yourself.
