What makes customers take notice of a brand? How do brands make it to the top? How do they fail? Did all the top brands in today’s market start out with huge marketing budgets, unique concepts, and a pre-existing, ever-loyal customer base?
Definitely not!
Then how do brands occupy premier market positions, bringing their companies success?
The answer lies in telling a great story.The Fortune Cookie Principle (2013) by Bernadette Jiwa focuses on building successful brands that have a clear purpose and a compelling vision while making a brand add meaning to the buyer’s choices.
Jiwa takes us through the art of crating great brand stories that resonate with the customer, ultimately influencing their choices.
Making A Fortune Cookie Company
Let us consider an example of Company A with a new product – a razor. It is no surprise that within a few days, there will be a Competitor B, with better features. Therefore, how will Company A, make their product a success, and set themselves apart from the crowd?
These days there’s more to marketing than selling bigger, better, and cheaper. That’s simply because there will always be a competitor waiting to outrun you. The factor that really pushes a brand to the forefront is the story of the brand. Therefore, if we consider a fortune cookie, the service or product is the cookie, whereas the fortune inside the cookie is its story.
The product or service comprises of the tangible aspect and the story is the intangible aspect that makes customers believe in the story of the product or service. It resonates with their values, vision, and purpose, and forges a connection between buyer and brand.
For example, Apple can be called a fortune cookie company. Their iPod revolutionized the market of carrying music in the pocket in a more compact, smarter, and stylish manner.
The fortune cookie principle is all about turning a company into a fortune cookie company by means of creating a valuable, purposeful, visionary brand story.
The Fortune Cookie Principle (2013) by Bernadette Jiwa
What’s The Purpose Of It All?
Every company should have a clear purpose. It should define the vision and the values of the company.
Does the company exist to make money? Or does it exist for some other purpose?
This purpose – whatever it is – defines the operations in the company, right from the vision and mission, to the business model, product specifications, design, recruitment style, etc. In addition to defining a purpose, it is essential to stick to it. Many brands fail because they either set a purpose and are unable to follow it, or because they do not have a clearly defined purpose and end up with poor decision-making processes.
For example, Proctor & Gamble’s Jim Stengel, along with Millward Brown found that in the past decade, there has been fifty business that has grown three times faster than their competitors. Google and Jimmy’s Iced Coffee are examples. They found that these companies had a clearly defined, set, mission that they carried out to the tee. For example, Google gives its customers more than just a search engine; they give them the satisfaction of curiosity. The fortune in the cookie!
Lego, on the other hand, was facing a whopping $300 million budget deficit in 2003. They lost sight of their mission with projects such as the Lego Land theme park, and computer game ventures. This led to an irregularity in their supply chain and poor customer service.
When Jørgen Vig Knudstorp joined as CEO in 2004, he managed to turn the ship around with a $110 million profit. How? By simply adhering to the mission of the company – to inspire creativity in children across the world. He stuck to his mission and carved a vision for the future from it!
Having Vision With Openness To Change and Growth
Having a strong vision makes a company strong. It powers successful marketing strategies and guides a company towards the bigger picture – how does the company/product/brand impact the world?
To understand the concept of vision clearly, companies should answer 3 important questions –
How does the company/product/brand affect the future?
Does the day-to-day working in the organization align with the vision?
How will these changes impact customers?
The answers to these questions will be a guideline for making decisions that will support the vision and define the focus of the company. For example, the Californian not-for-profit company Room to Read follow their mission of ensuring that children all over the world have access to decent education, and are able to contribute to their respective communities. They help to construct schools and libraries in developing countries.
However, one should be prepared for changes along the way and make space for growth too. Airbnb’s initial vision was to create an easy way for people to book and advertise accommodation while traveling to conferences in the United States. The popularity of the website grew to the extent that they had to change their vision to include the world! Soon, anyone could book right from a bunk in New York to an exotic hotel in Bali!
Getting Those Elusive Loyal Customers
When it comes to building a strong brand story, values play a very important role. The values of the company should reflect in each and every aspect of the brand and its marketing. Values tell the customers what the brand stands for, and resonates with their own beliefs. Once they have that common connection of shared values with the brand, they start expressing these beliefs via the product or brand.
The outdoor gear company Patagonia actually urged their customers to think of the ecological implications of purchase with their ‘Don’t buy this jacket’ campaign. They resonated the values of sustainability with their customers.
However, while creating values, companies should be wary of lying to customers and of steering away from setting values. Such actions can make customers question integrity.
Consider an example of a quaint café on a street corner, catering to loyal customers. These customers come in for authentic home-baked goodies and fresh coffee, as well as to enjoy the cozy ambiance. All of a sudden, the owner decides to revamp the interiors, introduce outsourced bakery goods, and installs a coffee machine to increase the speed of service and thus, profits.
In an instant, the café loses its old-world charm. It no longer resonates with the once-loyal customers who walked in and stayed for hours enjoying the ambiance and the freshness of home-baked goodies.
Location, Location, And Content!
Let us, once again look at that quaint café. Now imagine placing that café in the middle of a swanky, hi-end mall. While the café would still meet its numbers, it would lose its story of quaintness that resonated with customers. It would lose its localness and its ambiance of having coffee on the street.
Location is essential to a brand story. It should align with the story, or ‘the fortune in the cookie’ will get lost. Similarly, the content that surrounds the brand and the story should be aligned as well. If a brand’s content – text, video, audio, etc. – isn’t in sync with the story it wishes to tell, the brand, the product, and the company won’t sell. The customers won’t resonate with it.
So if the quaint café on the street uses industry jargon for a newspaper ad, they wont be able to attract loyal customers.
Conclusion
When it comes to branding, having a unique selling point no longer makes the cut for success. Creating a successful brand depends on a great brand story that is intact with a resonating mission, vision, values, purpose, and clarity. It takes more than just a cookie to make a fortune!
While there are enough leadership experts, there isn’t any one-size-fits-all manual for leadership. That is because every team is different, every employee is different, and every leader is different. Leadership by definition means working with people, and people are more unpredictable and inconsistent than we might like to believe.
It is easier to cause damage as a leader by ignorance than it is to improve performance by deliberate intervention. Here are 6 things that you must avoid doing if you want to be a successful leader.
1. Do not accept mediocrity or low standards. Whatever standards you accept will become the norm.
In your desire to please people or avoid conflict, if you end up accepting low standards, then you are not doing justice to anyone in the team. People will fall down to the level of performance you expect from them.
In addition, nothing pisses high performers more than lowering your standards. If you let your standards slide, the first people to get frustrated and demotivated would be your best performers. If you continue to tolerate mediocrity, the high performers will soon start looking for other jobs.
Use the below guidelines when looking to raise performance standards in your team:
Lead by Example
Are you maintaining high standards in your own work? Your team is always looking up to you for guidance and motivation, modeling their performance to yours. Therefore, if you are not performing at a high level, you will likely notice the same in your employees. As such, model your behavior and performance to what you want to see in your team.
Make Your Expectations Clear
Making your expectations clear is one way of ensuring that people uphold high standards. This will allow you to hold everyone accountable to your expectations. Make sure people have deadlines and milestones for the various stages in the assignment. Moreover, have a clear and precise way of measuring performance standards.
Appreciate
Compliment high performers for a job well done. Doing this not only boosts that individual’s confidence but also communicates your standards to the rest of the team.
Coach
If a particular employee is performing poorly, try to determine what the barriers to their success are. Set small, achievable goals and provide support along the way. Make sure to acknowledge even the smallest of improvements. More often than not, you can help the employee improve their own performance by coaching them to see their own potential.
As former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell tastefully put it, “The more you tolerate mediocrity in other people, the more mediocre you become.” Therefore, as a leader, you should not only hold yourself to high standards but also ensure that your employees are doing the same.
6 Things You Must Not Do As a Leader To Ensure High Team Performance
2. Don’t treat people with disrespect. Even when they mess up.
How do you feel when someone disrespects you? Chances are you are not going to be too excited about collaborating with them. In the workspace, unfortunately, some leaders feel that their position allows them to treat their subordinates with disrespect.
Whether it is saying good morning to the janitor or cleaning up after yourself, showing respect goes a long way. The following are some of the benefits of being a respectful leader:
Increasing Job Satisfaction
According to a 2014 survey done by the Society for Human Resources, up to 72% of the survey participants rated respectful treatment as being the most important contributor to job satisfaction. Employees who love their jobs are more productive since they want to be there. The reverse is also true; employees who are not treated with respect tend to have more conflicts at work, in addition to being more likely to miss work.
Increasing Employee Engagement
According to findings from a Gallup study involving more than 350,000 employees in the U.S., only 30% of the participants felt engaged with their jobs.
One of the easiest ways of increasing engagement is by treating people with respect. As mentioned earlier, employees consider respect to be the most important behavior in a leader. Therefore, by treating them well, they will be more likely to make your vision a reality.
Minimizing Conflict in the Workspace
Mutual respect creates a positive work environment and reduces gossiping, harassment, and other types of negativity. This ensures people work collaboratively and there are healthy disagreements rather than friction and conflict.
Reducing Stress
By treating your staff with respect, they will be more comfortable, as they do not have to worry about being ridiculed or humiliated. Being stress-free not only increases engagement but also goes a long way in promoting their mental well-being.
Improving Collaboration
Collaborative meetings often give birth to big ideas. When employees feel respected, they won’t shy away from sharing ideas. If employees always have to watch out for being humiliated or ridiculed, they tend to keep their ideas to themselves. This not only hurts them but also the entire organisation.
Disrespecting anyone, leave alone the people helping you to realize your goals, is a behavior that has no place in the 21st century. Nothing good comes from such behavior except pleasing the so-called leader’s ego.
3. Don’t force people to commit to deadlines or take on work that would mean spending time away from their families or ignoring their health.
Working during the weekend has become the norm in some countries. A survey of 1000 working Americans found that up to 67% of the participants typically worked during weekends, with 63% revealing that their employers expect them to do so.
This means that the typical boss sets deadlines that require their employees to work on weekends, which leaves them little time to spend with their families or embark on activities that refresh them both physically and mentally.
Sick or worn-out employees are hardly the most productive workers. As such, it is important to allow them time to reset. According to psychoanalyst, performance coach, and author of “Be Fearless: Change Your Life In 28 Days,” Jonathan Alpert, “Reset time is critical, as it allows them to recharge and redirect their energy to other interests.”
Pushing people to work in their free time might lead to short term productivity benefits, but it leads to nothing but harm in the long term. Not only the business suffers due to a lack of engagement and productivity, but people’s health and well-being also take a hit.
The Challenge of Leadership
4. Don’t put profits over employee well-being. Don’t push people to stress and burnout
Employees are people, not machines, meaning that they are susceptible to burnout. Human beings need regular periods of rest, rejuvenation, and play to recharge their batteries. Good leaders understand this and give their people the flexibility to work at their own pace. They encourage people to take their vacation days and make sure they stay energized and happy instead of only focussing on productivity.
Employee well-being and profits are not mutually exclusive. Often the most productive companies over the long run are those which prioritize employee well-being over profits. If your team has to meet unrealistic expectations, your team will be forced to cut corners and rush work. As a result, you will end up with low quality output.
Low Employee Morale
Hitting set targets is a big morale booster. However, if the goal is simply unattainable, people start feeling like they are not capable of achieving set goals. This can dampen their motivation, self-esteem, and productivity.
Increased Turnover
If an employee feels like they are not capable of meeting your expectations, they are likely to resign and look for other options, resulting in a loss of valuable expertise.
5. Don’t bias your decisions because of who and what you like.
Conflict among employees is bound to happen in the workplace. As a leader, it is your job to make decisions free of any bias or favoritism.
While most misunderstandings usually end up with the parties involved solving it among themselves, sometimes they don’t. It is in such cases where you have to step in with proper conflict management skills.
However, leaders often find themselves struggling to stay impartial when solving disputes, sometimes showing bias. This is because, as humans, we tend to take sides with opinions that resonate strongly with ours. Therefore, if the grievances of one of the parties in conflict have opinions you identify with, you might find yourself showing bias to their side of the story.
The effects of being partial when solving conflicts can be far-reaching. For starters, you undermine your own integrity as a leader. And then, you risk losing the respect of the rest of the team.
It is very important to hear the contrary position to what you believe in. This will make all sides feel heard, and you might even discover some new information that might change your mind.
6. Don’t micromanage. Trust people and let them do the work they were hired for.
Micromanaging is extremely detrimental to productivity, as it signifies distrust, thereby causing over-dependence and stress. According to Forbes Coaches Council, micromanaged teams are typically rebellious or incapable of making independent decisions.
As a leader, the last thing you want is to have people who are not confident in their abilities, as you will have to hold their hand every step of the way. The lack of belief in their skills coupled with the time lost verifying everything with you is the perfect recipe for wastage of energy and effort.
Instead of micromanaging, therefore, be a leader and trust people to do the job they were hired for. Give them the training and support required to do their jobs, and then get out of their way.
Conclusion
While there are a lot of guides on what to do as a leader, these above 6 things are a simple reminder of what you should not do. Sometimes it is easier to cause damage to team morale and engagement with one small misstep. If you keep the above guidelines in mind, you will set the foundation for a strong team.
Welcome to the Deploy Yourself Newsletter. Every two weeks I share what impactful leadership looks like to show you how powerful you are. I also share the most insightful lessons and stories I encountered in the last two weeks. You can also read this issue online.
Hey,
We are much more powerful than we think we are. I shared the first of the three main ways we can tap into this hidden power in the last newsletter, and the second is the subject of today’s e-mail. I will share the last source of power in the next newsletter.
The Power Of Your Emotions
Emotions are usually seen as a weakness – something that we must hide or suppress if we want to progress and succeed. Yet I have found that they can be our biggest strength and motivator. Emotions can overwhelm us occasionally, but without them, we would have no joy or happiness either.
Here are 3 ways you can make your emotions work for you, rather than against you –
Each Emotion Tells You What You Care About – Often in life, you don’t know what you care about and what matters to you. As a result, you end up accepting the standards and values which other people (parents, society, culture, etc) decide. However, trying to live your life by others’ standards is akin to surrendering your own will and judgment. If you listen to your emotions, they can reveal what you care about. They can reveal what makes you unique.
Don’t Try To Fit In When You Are Made To Stand Out – People too often hate that they are different from everybody else and try too hard to become someone they are not. No two people are the same, just like no two flowers or no two birds are the same. Your uniqueness comes from what you care about, and your emotions are the gateway to understanding that.
Respond To Your Emotions, Don’t React – Your emotions can impede your ability to think and act rationally if you allow yourselves to be overwhelmed by them. They can hold you captive, dictate your actions, and prevent you from Deploying Yourself. However, there is always a gap between emotion and your response. And that gap allows you to “choose” your response aligned with what you care about and the future you want to see in the world.
Understanding your emotions and understanding what they conceal enables your unique light to shine upon the world, instead of following the path others have decided for you. This way you can achieve what you always knew you were meant to do.
Reply to this email right now if it sparked something for you, or if you want to know more…
Articles and Stories Which Have Fascinated Me
One
Jim Rohn on the disappointments of life:
“Let’s face it … people and events are going to continue to both hurt and disappoint you. Among the people will be those you most love, as well as those you least know. Seldom is it their intent to purposely hurt you, but rather, a variety of situations mostly beyond your control will cause them to act, speak, or think in ways which can have an adverse effect upon you, your present feelings and emotions, and the way your life upholds. It has been this way through six thousand years of recorded history, and your hurt or grief is not the first time a human has been deeply hurt by the inappropriate actions of another.
The only way to avoid being touched by life––the good as well as the bad––is to withdraw from society, and even then you will disappoint yourself, and your imagining about what is going on out there will haunt you and hurt you. Knowing this, there is but one solution that will support you when people and events hurt you, and that is to learn to work harder on your personal growth than anything else. Since you cannot control the weather, or the traffic, or the one you love, or your neighbors, or your boss, then you must learn to control you … the one whose response to the difficulties of life really counts.”
“Perhaps there is no more important component of character than steadfast resolution. The boy who is going to make a great man, or is going to count in any way in after life, must make up his mind not merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses or defeats. He may be able to wrest success along the lines on which he originally started. He may have to try something entirely new. On the one hand, he must not be volatile and irresolute, and, on the other hand, he must not fear to try a new line because he has failed in another.
Alike for the nation and the individual, the one indispensable requisite is character—character that does and dares as well as endures, character that is active in the performance of virtue no less than firm in the refusal to do aught that is vicious or degraded.”
We can’t stop thinking, can we? Therefore, thinking is a natural, on-going, uncontrollable process, isn’t it?
But is it really? Can one not train the brain to think in a better manner, think only of particular things, and take active steps to change the way one is thinking? Therefore, thinking can be classified as a skill that can be improved and enhanced.
During group discussions and debates, it is important that people think individually, yet cohesively enough to make winning decisions. Six Thinking Hats by Edward De Bono teaches us to be able to group different manners of thinking to bring out the best in those group debates, discussions, and brainstorming sessions. De Bono gives a method in which thinking can be compartmentalized and effectively give time to each thought to make thinking, especially when there are many thoughts vying for attention, extremely efficient.
The Six Thinking Hats And Their Rules
When too many thoughts crowd our mind, or there are many thinkers in the group, we need a process to de-clutter the mind and be able to think clearly, categorizing the emotional thoughts from the logical ones and the creative ones. The Six Thinking Hats are color-coded to make categorizing easier.
How does one apply the concept of thinking hats?
Let us see how the ‘hats’ method comes in handy in an organizational setup. A manager in a group think tank wants to know how his team is emotionally reacting to some piece of information. Since he knows that they will be hesitant to show true emotions in public, the manager can say, ‘let us put on the red hat.’ It becomes a signal to the team that they can openly discuss emotional thoughts, etc.
One has to keep some rules in mind while using the six thinking hats concept. Using the six thinking hats becomes easier when the people in the group become well versed with the terminology of the six thinking hats.
The hats can be for single-use as well as be used in sequence. Single-use of hats denotes concentration or focus on one type of thinking. For example, if the leader of the group says, ‘we need to use green-hat thinking for this problem.’, the group will know that they need to use alternative ideas for their discussion.
When it comes to sequential use, one should remember that only the leader of the group can decide the color of the hat that needs to be used, and in which sequence. The leader however must keep in mind that he should be able to understand clearly which hat needs to be used when. Moreover, hat-users need to be disciplined and avoid idle talk. Their focus should be the thinking hat and thoughts in question.
Using the hat well is a matter of practice and gets better with time. Therefore it is important that all the members of a group get a chance, and spend at least a minute wearing the hat. Let us discuss each hat color individually.
Six Thinking Hats by Edward De Bono
The Neutral White Hat
If we imagine ourselves as a robot, applying algorithms and calculating outputs neutrally, without necessitating interpretation, we can actually visualize a robotic voice even!
White Hat thinking is akin to the robotic manner of functioning. It deals with facts and figures rather than opinions. While donning the white hat, one works with the information that is available and identify any information that will be needed. White-hat thinking has no room for arguments.
In white hat thinking, one also ascertains what information is missing and how to get it. Since white indicates neutrality, the aim is to be objective, neutral and stick to statistics and hard facts.
White-hat thinking is best used right at the beginning of a discussion when the speaker provides the group with information. It is also used at the end when the speaker wants to debrief the group to confirm that everyone is on the same page. White-hat thinking works best when one wants to discuss strategies, scope, budget, etc.
The Emotional Red Hat
The emotional red hat is the absolute opposite of the objective, neutral white hat. It allows group members to be able to express emotions, feelings, and intuitions. Emotions such as dissatisfaction, satisfaction, enthusiasm, ambivalence, can be conveyed without needing to justify or explain.
When it comes to donning the red hat, one has to be careful, especially with intuition, because though it is an accumulated experience, it is not always correct. Additionally, one must also be careful of mixed feelings that do not fit any particular category.
When in a group, donning the red hat is an opportunity that everyone must get, as it’s only fair to know what everyone feels about the topic. Just as everyone gets involved in expressing their emotions, it is essential that everyone’s emotions are truly respected. This is done when each and every person in the group actively listens to the speaker to avoid condescension.
The Cautionary Black Hat
Staying within, and keeping the group within the law, adhering to values, rules, and ethics, as well as keeping a vigilant eye on difficulties and problems, is the role of the black hat. This hat is all about being cautionary and warns against foreseeable dangers and any negative outcomes that one could face.
The black hat enables one to scrutinize all available information and evidence to weed-out mistakes and to be prepared for any other errors. The black hat helps in finding elements in the policies, strategies, ethics, etc that could contradict each other and thus create a functional error.
While the black hat makes one cautious, one has to be careful to not make finding errors an obsession. Just as too much of anything is not good, donning the black hat for too long and too often can be detrimental. At the same time, the black hat is essential for decision-making.
The Optimistic Yellow Hat
The yellow hat focuses on positivity, having an optimistic outlook, and potential benefits. Our brains are wired to be wary of danger and be on the lookout for trouble. Therefore it is difficult to naturally master the yellow hat.
To master the use of the yellow hat requires one to develop value sensitivity that is, to see positivity even in the most futile idea. Positivity isn’t easily apparent, especially when the benefits of the idea aren’t clear to the group. That is why donning the yellow hat is most beneficial when thinking of marketing strategies for brand image, advertising strategies, etc.
The yellow hat, however, can also be deluding. Keeping it on for too long can make one stay in a cocooned world of fantasy. Therefore, it is essential to remember to stay tied to reality and see the positive infeasible, achievable ideas. The yellow hat encourages and motivates teams to make things happen.
The Creative Green Hat
Donning the green hat allows a group to get creative, open their minds to new concepts and ideas, and look for alternatives to existing ideas. It is a free ticket to crazy, zany ideas where one can put faith in the most impossible ideas that one would otherwise never consider.
The green hat opens doors to new possibilities that can create a vision for the future. Moreover, the green hat is a great change from the black hat difficulties the group could be facing. For example, if the black hat points out a big risk in the new marketing campaign, the green hat can help in coming up with new creative ideas or make creative improvements in the existing strategy.
The creative hat, most importantly, encourages everyone in the group to be creative, even the ‘non-creative’ members. It helps bring out the most unexpectedly successful ideas!
The Controlling Blue Hat
The blue hat is the remote control of the thinking hats. It defines the aim of the session, helps gain perspective of how to conduct the thinking or brainstorming session, gives an overall perspective of a discussion, and is thus most commonly worn by the leader of the group or the facilitator. The blue hat is donned to understand or address the parameters of the session.
Donning the blue hat enables one to chart out which other hats will be needed for the discussion. Furthermore, it is donned by the leader or facilitator throughout the discussion or session and is thus a permanent hat. Being a procedural hat, the blue hat announces the procedures of the discussion, changes of hat colors, and most importantly oversees the discipline in the group.
The blue hat seeks an outcome, conclusion, decision, or solution at the end of a discussion and lays the course for what actions need to be taken after the session.
Time, Money And Solution
The Six Hats theory is successful due to 3 main reasons. Because it saves time, saves money, and most importantly leads to a solution. There are examples and testimonials of people who have benefitted by using the Six Hat theory.
A couple, after reading about the theory in the Financial Times, wrote a letter to the author about how the theory helped them sort out an argument they were having about buying a large country home. They compartmentalized each idea and thought, and came up with a mutual decision within ten minutes flat!
The ABB Corporation was able to reduce their 20-day multinational project team discussion to only 2 days after they incorporated the Six Hat theory.
Statoil, the Norwegian multinational oil and gas company had an issue with a $100,000-a-day oil rig that was sorted by a certified trainer in just 12 minutes with the Six Hat theory. It saved them a lot of money.
The Six Hat theory offers solutions. For example, if four people in a car do not see eye-to-eye where the route is concerned, the Six Hat theory will help them choose the best route.
The Six Hat theory is a formidable thinking tool that can point out solutions anytime group thinking or brainstorming is involved. It removes disorganized thought process and makes thinking more efficient. It is the solution to thinking about a solution!
Our emotions play a major role in determining the quality of our lives. Have you ever asked yourself why some people live a life full of joy and contentment while others struggle with anger and depression?
It all comes down to how you cope with life’s stressors and unexpected events. No one is immune to emotions like cynicism, anger, and disappointment. While some people go into a frightful or depressive state when faced with stress, others see the same situation as an opportunity for growth.
In this article, let me share 5 research-backed ways to befriend your emotions so that you can navigate through life with choice rather than just being a spectator. Make your emotions work for you, rather than the other way round.
1. Get Good Sleep
Sleeping is a biological function that is as necessary as eating. And when it comes to sleep, the quality does matter.
Sleep deprivation alters the way both your body and brain function. Studies reveal that individuals with chronic sleep deprivation are more susceptible to a host of psychological and physiological issues such as anxiety and depression, memory loss, decreased brain function, weakened immune system, diabetes, obesity, hypertension, lower fertility rates, among others.
How Does Sleep Affect the Brain?
Sleeping allows your brain and body to do more than rest; it allows them to clear out waste byproducts of daytime activities, balance hormones, and repair tissues. Since all those processes are vital for brain health, sleep deprivation has a tremendous effect on brain chemistry and emotions.
Considering how sleep deprivation affects your brain chemistry, it does not come as a surprise that it affects your emotions too. It is the reason why most people tend to be irritable or more vulnerable to stress after a sleepless night, only to get back to normal after a good night’s sleep.
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania conducted a study on this subject where they had the subjects sleep for only 4.5 hours each night for one week. Findings from the study revealed that the subjects reported experiencing mental exhaustion, higher stress levels, as well as increased feelings of sadness and irritability. When the volunteers resumed regular sleep, they reported experiencing a drastic improvement in their mood, supporting the notion that lack of sleep affects emotions.
According to the Journal of Sleep Research, people with sleep deprivation also tend to be less empathetic. That should not come as a surprise since you are less likely to be understanding when you are sad, irritable, or angry. This means that your lack of sleep will affect how you connect with others.
Studies also reveal that insomnia is one of the core symptoms of depression. 20% of people diagnosed with insomnia end up developing major depression. However, scientists are still trying to determine which comes first between stress and insomnia. For example, it is hard to find sleep when you lose your job. Conversely, the stress is more likely to develop into depression the longer your sleep deprivation continues.
How Well You Sleep Decides How Your Day Goes. Be Mindful of That
Address Sleep Issues
Considering that lack of sleep has a direct link to higher levels of stress, developing healthier sleeping habits can help you curb your sleep-stress relationship. Therefore, even though your lack of sleep might be due to life’s stressors, you should try to put yourself in an environment that allows you to drift off to sleep without a lot of hassle.
Start with making your bedroom a sleep sanctuary. Consider the following tips:
Comfortable Bedding 🛏
For starters, get a comfortable mattress. A good mattress does not have dips or lumps, supports your preferred sleeping style, and does not overheat. Bedding made of linen or cotton is an excellent option since it is breathable, thus preventing overheating.
Keep Your Room Cool 🆒
Cool rooms are more comfortable to sleep in. Consider keeping your bedroom’s temperatures between 16-19 degrees celcius.
Keep the Room Dark
The circadian rhythm – your sleep wake cycle – is controlled by light exposure. Light tells your brain that it is time to be up, while darkness lets your brain know that it is time to rest, thus resulting in the release of sleep hormones such as melatonin. Therefore, by keeping your bedroom dark, you will be allowing your body to follow that rhythm. Use heavy drapes or blackout curtains to keep outside light from entering the room.
Do not Use Screens in Your Bedroom
In the matter of keeping your room dark, you should also avoid using electronic devices when going to sleep. Unfortunately, most people are guilty of this habit. The blue light that electronic devices emit has the same effect as sunlight, thereby inhibiting your brain from releasing melatonin. If you are suffering from chronic insomnia, avoid using any devices at least two hours before bedtime. Read a book instead.
Get Regular Exercise
The fatigue that comes with physical exertion puts your body in a state where it desires to sleep. This is why physically active people are less prone to insomnia.
Good sleep hygiene reduces your susceptibility to stress. Therefore, make sure to get at least seven hours of sleep every night. You will find yourself having better control over your emotions.
2. Language – Thoughts and Words
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words cannot hurt me.” While that saying sounds good when using it against naysayers, you must be very careful about how you interpret it.
Words are powerful. In fact, one could argue that words, and thus language, is the tool that made humans the most powerful species on the planet. Alone, a human is a puny creature that cannot stand its ground against most animals. However, as a team, it is a completely different ball game. Our ability to communicate effectively is what allows us to strategize and use the environment to our advantage.
When used appropriately, words can engage, encourage, and persuade. In the same light, however, words can also dismiss, discourage, dissuade and cause damage.
Using words, therefore, you can plant the seeds of success or failure in your mind or that of another. The words and the language you use also end up defining you, as they reveal your thoughts and attitude.
Words & Language Impact Your Emotions
What are Words?
“We translate experience into language and mistake the language as the actual experience.” – Joseph O’Connor.
Words are labels or descriptions you give to your emotions or feelings. They allow you to express what you are feeling inside so that you can have a better understanding of your circumstances. However, just because you feel a particular way about something does not mean that that’s the reality; it is simply your perception of the situation, or better yet, your assumption.
As such, words can also be described as your biased perceptions of both your internal and external environments. These perceptions or interpretations are biased since they are based on your history, values, beliefs, thoughts, rules, and more.
Therefore, words are simply psychological anchors for emotions. For example, by saying that you are afraid of something, you will fear whenever you come across that situation. Perhaps a past confrontation went bad, leaving you with a fear of confrontations.
However, that is no way to live life, as confrontations are part of everyday life. The problem lies in using certain unhelpful or disempowering words to describe your emotions.
Changing Your Language Patterns
Using positive language is linked to experiencing an uplift in emotions. In one study, the researchers had a group of volunteers write down at least three positive things about their day for three months. By the end of that period, they all revealed feeling happier and better about their lives.
If simply jotting down positive words makes you feel better, it means that you should start becoming conscious of your thoughts and the language you use daily. You will also need to identify how those affect your emotions and thus, your decisions, choices, and actions. It is only when you have a clear understanding of how your language patterns affect you that you will be motivated to make the necessary changes.
Consider the following examples:
“I’m angry” vs “I’m disappointed”
Simply admitting that you are angry will trigger your body to display the necessary neuromuscular response to match that emotion, thus ruining your mood. However, when you say that you are disappointed, your brain will interpret that you are not happy about the situation while not being particularly bothered by it. This means that you will not feel the same impact on your emotions, allowing you to handle the situation more effectively.
“I can’t” vs “What if I could”
Saying that you can’t do something is extremely dangerous, as you will be admitting that the challenge at hand is beyond your abilities. While there are challenges that you might not be equipped to handle, admitting defeat signals your subconscious that it is okay to quit.
However, saying, “what if I could” is extremely empowering, as it is a refusal to accept defeat.
Your words influence your experience of reality. They influence your perceptions, thoughts, evaluations, beliefs, attitude, actions, patterns, behavior, body language, and more. This means that your language influences not only your emotions but also your actions and results. Choose your words wisely.
“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” – Rudyard Kipling.
3. Breathing/Presence/Mindfulness
How many times have you said to yourself, “I should never have said that or I should not have done that?” This happens to everyone, as you simply cannot live without emotions. However, as mentioned, there is a difference between how we perceive things and what they really are.
Therefore, to avoid knee-jerk emotional reactions, you must learn how to calm yourself down in the heat of the moment so you can analyze the emotional-trigger logically.
One of the best ways of retaining control of your emotions at all times is by practising mindfulness.
Mindfulness can be defined as ‘observing your emotions as they are with openness, curiosity, acceptance, and non-judgement.’
This means that you must first accept that you are susceptible to emotions. Next, you must accept what you are feeling at that moment without judging yourself. Once you do that, you will be in a better position to reframe yourself into a more logical and positive state of mind.
Tools for Mindfulness
Taking control of your emotions, especially in charged moments, can be incredibly difficult. However, it is imperative that you do so to avoid making regrettable choices or decisions. The following tools will prove useful in that quest:
Conscious Breathing
When you find yourself in an emotionally charged state, immediately turn your focus to your breathing. You will find that it is shallow since you are tensed-up, which is a response to stress.
By breathing, therefore, you will loosen yourself up and let go of that stress reaction in the process. You do not have to change how you breathe; simply breathe in slowly and deeply until you feel relaxed.
The benefit of focusing on your breathing is that it allows you to lower your heart rate and release tension from the body. It should be your go-to tool when looking to regulate your emotions in an instant.
Meditation
Regular meditation allows you to take control of your emotions and thus, yourself. Unlike breathing, meditation is not a short-term solution; it requires you to practice it regularly. The biggest advantage meditating has over-breathing is that it puts you in a blissful state where you observe your emotions without even having to think about it.
Meditation, therefore, allows you to escape the reactivity prison and become a conscious creator instead. The beauty of meditation is that you can perform it anywhere, anytime. As such, it will give you a tremendous psychological edge when going into a tense situation.
If you have never meditated before, here is a simple meditation routine to get you started. Consider performing it at least twice a day for five minutes each:
Benefits of Meditation
Find a comfortable sitting position
Sit with your back and neck straight
Relax all your facial muscles including eyes, mouth, and jaw
Close your eyes
Pay attention to all the sounds you e.g. the AC, birds chirping, or cars going by
Gently shift your attention to your breath but do not attempt to alter it
Notice how your breath rises and falls
If your thoughts or emotions keep coming up, do not try to avoid them, as that is not the objective. The aim of meditation is to become mindful; to be present at the moment; to observe your thoughts and emotions, not to wallow in them.
Keep focusing on your breath
Allow your emotions and thoughts to be
That’s it! You have meditated! While it sounds simple, it is crucial that you keep focus on your breath while observing any emotions and thoughts without judgment.
In the beginning stages, you might find it difficult. This is because it is not easy to observe one’s own emotions without having the urge to judge them. What’s more, your brain might trick you into thinking that you are being careless or losing your self-awareness by not judging every little thing you experience.
Nevertheless, to achieve internal peace and, ironically, to heighten your self-awareness, you must learn to let go of the need to judge your emotions by letting them be. For instance, if a situation makes you experience emotions of anger, simply observe it without doing anything.
The more you practice mindfulness, the less susceptible you will be to feel overwhelmed by your emotions.
4. Environment
Owing to the lack of large physical size, early humans were often on the menu of larger carnivores such as sabre-toothed tigers. As such, we evolved to be sensitive to our environments, as one never knew where a predator could be lurking.
Safety and security, therefore, are the primary attributes we look for in an environment so that we can be comfortable. In addition to physical comfort, we also want it to be psychologically comfortable to keep our stress levels low.
Since your surroundings affect your mood, the environment where you live or work plays a big role in your emotions and thus, your mood and productivity.
In today’s world, however, we have different preferences when it comes to the ideal environment. These differences result from factors such as personality, social status, education, cultural influences, professional or personal circumstances, and more.
Make Your Environment Work For You
Common Stressors in Environments
Nonetheless, while we may react differently to environments, there are certain elements in any environment that can stress almost everyone. They include:
Loud noises
Low ceilings
Poor air quality
Glare
Unpleasant scents
Uncomfortable temperatures
If you work or live in an environment with such stressors, you will always find yourself on edge. There is a reason monks choose to live in serene environments.
Therefore, if you want to maintain control over your emotions, it is important to ensure that your immediate environment is not one of the causes of stress.
4. Body – Gestures / Postures / Exercising
Feeling moody? Try to smile. Believe it or not, it works. In one study, researchers had the subjects adopt a facial expression that mimicked a smile then asked them to fill a questionnaire. Findings revealed that the participants experienced higher levels of amusement than those that attempted other expressions.
The facial feedback hypothesis says that the state of your facial muscles has a direct relationship with the emotions you feel. Variations of facial muscle contractions not only communicate what an individual is feeling to others but also to themselves.
Your Body Posture And Gestures Shift Your Emotions
Therefore, the state of your facial expressions has a direct influence on your mood.
Try this experiment: alter your expression to mimic that associated with displeasure or anger. Do that by creating tension in the area between your eyebrows. It should result in your eyebrows being pulled down and a wrinkle forming on your forehead.
How do you feel? A furrowed brow is a signal to your brain that you are displeased, which is why it is impossible to experience feelings associated with happiness when you are in that state.
The takeaway? Adopting a facial expression or a body posture associated with a particular emotion allows you to experience feelings associated with that emotion. Therefore, being mindful of your body language is a key element when it comes to influencing your emotions.
Conclusion
Emotions are the spark of lives. Think about how dull life would be if you did not experience any emotions. However, as much as they can create beautiful experiences, they can also be the cause for stress if you allow them to overwhelm you.
By making use of what I have shared in this article, you can befriend your emotions, learn from them, and make them work in your favour rather than against you.
We often encounter situations where we feel it is our duty to give advice. We become compulsive at doling out free advice to people, often at the cost of ending up alienating others from us due to this compulsive habit and end up stifling curiosity and innovation amongst others. This inner voice, our advice monster, can do more harm than intended, especially to a leader who jumps up with solutions.
The Advice Trap (2020) by Michael Bungay Stanier shows that listening to others’ problems and asking them questions about it, can have far better outcomes than immediately giving advice to them. Moreover, it shows that developing listening skills help in developing skills such as empathy and humility, values that are a must in leadership.
Why Don’t We Find The Solution?
Isn’t it good to offer solutions and help people who are facing problems? While the answer is resounding ‘Yes!’ there is a catch to it. Often, in our enthusiasm to share our advice and offer the solution, we tend to miss out on listening to important little details. Because, sometimes, it could be that the opposite person didn’t take enough time to really explain what the problem is, and jumping with the solution could result in giving wrong advice.
On the other hand, if we do understand the problem, our eagerness to be the one to solve the problem could result in handing out mediocre advice, or solutions that could have been better with a little refinement. We end up giving a ‘quick fix’ rather than thinking of a few options and choosing the best fit.
Additionally, no one likes to be at the receiving end of unsolicited advice. While giving out advice can mentally relieve the advisor, it can make the receiver feel incompetent and can even at times seem to undermine their ability to solve their own issues.
In all this eagerness, often, the actual solution is lost.
The Advice Trap (2020) by Michael Bungay Stanier
Get That Monster Under Control
Everyone has an advice monster lurking in the shadows of their thoughts. The monster is a part of one’s personality and it raises its head when one is stressed and wants to believe that they are in control of the situation. These monsters were developed as defense mechanisms against stressful situations and difficult emotions. What people often do not realize is that this monster needs to be controlled.
The advice monster has 3 personas, the Tell-It Type, the Save-It Type and the Control-It type.
Tell-It Monster – The Tell-it monster persona loves to hog the limelight. It convinces you that your opinion is the most important one and the correct one. It convinces you to be the leading authority.
Save-It Monster – While the Save-It’s are more subdued voices, they, like the Tell-it’s believe that they are the saving grace for all problems. Save-It’s don’t jump to give out their ideas, making them more difficult to recognize, however, feel that it’s their moral responsibility to give others advice.
Control-It Monster – This monster persona is most manipulative of the lot. According to the Control-It Monster, all is lost if you are not controlling things. It believes that others cannot be trusted and convinces you to take the lead on everything.
All the monster types pose a big problem. They limit other’s capabilities and prevent us from being open to them. Moreover, they make us perceive ourselves as superheroes, capable of accomplishing anything and make us pile up an enormous amount of responsibilities on our shoulders. They make us think that we can save the world with our one piece of advice.
Unfortunately, these monsters are part of our personalities and cannot be eliminated altogether. However, they can be controlled, tamed, and made to work in our favor, by understanding what triggers them.
What Triggers The Monsters?
To understand why the advice monster stir-up, we need to ascertain what in our minds triggers them. Most commonly, these monsters get triggered in stressful situations; yet, these situations, experiences, and events are unique to each individual.
For example, for the author, his ‘Control-It’ monster gets triggered whenever he spends time with his younger brother. For others, the advice monster could rise in the presence of someone with lesser experience than him or her. Some get the compulsion to dole out advice at the workplace.
Giving advice- solicited or unsolicited – gives us a reward and a feeling of instant gratification. Whether it is the feel-good factor, or sense of achievement and accomplishment, or simply feeling smarter, compulsive advising comes at a cost. The highest cost a person can pay for compulsive advising is losing one’s own credibility due to affected relationships at the workplace.
To fix this compulsive advising, one should let go of the need for instant gratification and understand when they are doling out advice due to fear or as a reflex action. Controlling the compulsive habit can help in stopping one from ‘controlling the situation every time’.
Questions Before Solutions
While our childhood instinctively pushed us to ask a lot of questions, we lost our instinctive questioning habit, as we grew up. The need for questioning things around us morphed into the need for telling others what we thought. Over a period of time, this need becomes a habit and soon into a compulsive habit.
Breaking this habit is essential, just as it is essential that we learn to ask more questions. Moreover, as leaders, it is better to give an employee a listening ear, rather than beginning with advice. It is better, to begin with questions such as, “What do you think?” or, ‘What’s on your mind?” Such questions give the other person more room to steer the conversation in any way they want, thus helping them to be open and true.
At every stage in a conversation, where a person is trying to determine the solution to a problem, it will be natural for the advice monster to want to jump up and offer advice. This is the time to get the monster under control.
Ideally, leaders should prod the employee with questions that will force them into thinking of the solution themselves. Nurturing curiosity and listening to people before giving them the solution are great qualities a leader can possess.
Nobody Wants That Vulnerable Question
Asking questions leads to a very important shift – the shift from advising to coaching. This makes a big difference in the larger scheme of things considering the fact that one becomes more inclined to help find the answer rather than just blurt it out all the time.
However, there are exceptions even to the best of intentions. It could be possible that the answer to the challenge is elusive, and one lands in a conversation trap called a foggy-fire – a type of conversation akin to a fog that hides what should be in plain sight.
At times, vulnerability is the culprit, because no one wants to have that uncomfortable conversation and people stay in shallow waters. As a manager, one could end up ‘coaching the ghost’, or get stuck in a ‘pop-corning’ session, or get distracted by ‘big picturing’ or ‘yarning’. These are different types of conversation traps one could encounter while trying to help someone face a challenge.
Coaching the ghost – Coaching the ghost refers to analyzing a person who is not even in the room. This happens when the person getting coached unconsciously deflects the problem by focusing on another person entirely. Here, as a manager, it is important to ask the person, “Why does this person really matter in the larger scheme of things?”
Pop-corning – Pop-corning happens when a team member comes in with a barrage of unrelated issues, confusing you about what the actual challenge is. Here managers should ask the person needing coaching, which problem is most important?
Big picturing – This refers to people talking in the abstract, not being clear about the issue at hand.
Yarning – Yarning refers to getting into long stories and detailed descriptions that could be a waste of time.
As a coach, one should be able to identify these traps and guide the person towards the actual problem, by asking probing questions.
Transformative coaching
Once you move from advising to coaching, it is essential to understand that a coach should first make a person feel safe. Our human brains are wired to fight and survive against threats. It perceives vulnerability and an uncomfortable or challenging conversation as a threat too and can either go into the defensive ‘fight’ mode or completely shut down and go into a ‘freeze’ mode.
The Fight or Flight Response
To ensure that the opposite person does not get on the defensive during a critical discussion about their challenges, managers need to make them feel safe. There are four tactics to make people feel safe during tough conversations.
Be On Their Side – This entails being empathetic, and using gestures like nods, encouraging words, and positive language. Words such as ‘we’ and ‘us’ show support and tell the opposite person that you understand and feel the same, and are there to take on the challenge with them.
Respect – Showing respect to the person facing a challenge is a very effective way to get them to open up. As a leader and a coach, giving up power to show the opposite person that you have vulnerabilities as well, and face your own insecurities, brings them closer and helps them open up.
Autonomy – When it comes to facing challenges and being open about them, many people feel the need to be equal. That gives them a sense of autonomy. Being able to have their say in matters will make them ease up.
Managing Expectations – It is rude to spring a surprise, especially with heavy conversations that expose a person’s vulnerability. Such conversations should be structured and pre-planned in order to succeed.
As a coach, engaging these tactics will help people open up to you and share their challenges without raising defence mechanisms.
Morphing The Advice Monster Into a Coach
Finally, one realizes that the process of controlling the monster and learning to be a coach is a gradual process. No one gets it right in the first go.
Coaching takes practice, and it can be practiced in any ‘every day’ situation and interaction using any medium – the phone, email, video call platforms, text messaging, etc. One simply needs the patience to listen to what the other person has to say and be curious by asking more questions.
Just as learning to coach is important, so is making oneself coachable. This means that coaches should take feedback and work on the feedback to make improvement, just as they should find a coach for themselves too. Taming the advice monster can at times be a life long process and also prove to be a life long boon as well.
Welcome to the Deploy Yourself Newsletter. Every two weeks I share what impactful leadership looks like to show you how powerful you are. I also share the most insightful lessons and stories I encountered in the last two weeks. You can also read this issue online.
Hey,
Two weeks ago I talked about how each of us is much powerful than we think we are. I have discovered 3 main ways we can tap into this hidden source of power, and the first of them is the subject of today’s mail. I will share the other two sources of power in the next two emails.
The Power Of Your Mind
The human mind is often called the most sophisticated machine in the universe. Yet we are never taught how to best use it to our advantage. And guess what, the human mind can also lead you to damaging behaviors if you are not conscious about its usage.
Social media (seen this?) and e-commerce websites work hard to exploit your brain’s unconscious wiring to get you addicted to their products. If we don’t take proactive action, the constant bombardment on advertisements and notifications can take our attention from things that really matter – like friends, family, and results that are important to us.
Here are 3 ways we can make our brains work for us, rather than work against us –
Build Your Own Conscious Habits – Every time you upload a photo on social media and get notified of a like, you are getting a dopamine hit and building a habit. Similarly, most of our habits are unconscious and formed by others. The first step is to form your own habits that serve you, not the other way round. Become aware of your own biases and limiting patterns, and take control of your life rather than just relying on willpower. Design your life, rather than let it be designed by external circumstances.
Don’t Choke On Your Thoughts – Don’t believe the endless loop of internal thoughts that gives you a running commentary on everything in your life. If you’re not careful, you can choke on this never-ending stream of random thoughts. So much so that it can block the rest of your thinking. Or you can do more deliberate thinking to be more conscious of your life choices and results. As with most things, the choice is yours.
Dream and Play Big – Playing small is easy as we don’t get unwanted attention and questions. We play small as everyone around us is doing the same. We settle for too low. And then we blame ourselves for achieving less than what we know deep inside we are capable of. We deprive ourselves of the true joy and happiness which comes from going after what really matters to us. We think we are scared of failure when we are in fact more scared of our own hidden greatness. We are scared to show this hidden greatness in front of the world.
Your unconscious and limiting beliefs stop yourself “to be” in the world. It is not “you” if you are not free.
You might be breathing but you are not living. Give yourself the freedom to play, laugh, and fully express yourself .
Act in a way that allows your own unique light to shine upon the world, instead of following the path others have decided for you…
Reply to this email right now if it sparked something for you, or if you want to know more…
Articles and Stories Which Have Fascinated Me
One
Ripple of Hope
When nothing around you is going your way, When nobody is hearing what you have to say.. Times like these are the real test of your will, For amid storms is the challenge to stand still..
When your life will take a sudden turn, When you will reach a point of no return Just keep moving ahead despite of every hurdle, For there is always light at the end of the tunnel..
When all you get is blow after blow, When every hope and promise seems hollow You have to decide how high you want to rise, For you know in every crisis there is a prize..
When nobody around you knows what to do, When everybody is searching for a clue That is the time for you to stand strong, For every night ends no matter how long..
When everything looks like falling apart, It is very important not to lose heart For every step you take against the slope, You are giving rise to a ripple of hope...
(this is a poem I wrote around 10 years ago. Interesting trivia – I coined the name Deploy Yourself only in 2016, but I was already writing on the idea behind DY for more than a decade)
That’s it for now. If you have any questions, just hit reply. All the best,
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