Christine Comaford

Peter: Great, so what I think would be fun is let’s take an example of one of your projects, one of these 1,000 projects, and use it to illustrate these five SmartTribe accelerators. There’s five and a half things that help accelerate our move from the critter state to the smart state from scared at looking out in an industry that’s changing to engaged and excited. Maybe you could take us through a journey of shifting an organization from the scared critter state to the smart state and use that to illustrate each of the five and a half SmartTribe accelerators.

Christine: Okay, great, so we’re going to … This is a mid-size manufacturing company. Let’s first go over what the SmartTribe accelerators are: focus, clarity, accountability, influence, sustainability. When leaders can operate at those five levels and streamline those five levels … I should let everybody know you can test yourself by going to smarttribesinstitute.com/lead, like leader: L-E-A-D, smarttribesinstitute.com/lead. You can test yourself. It’ll be about seven minutes, guys. It’s 35 questions, so give yourself some thoughtful time to do it.

This company had always grown at 10% to 15% annually, and they wanted to bust out. For starters, to be more focused, we had to use high value, low value activities. We had to really look at wow, what are all the things we’re doing with our time in an average month. [What are 00:05:03] the high value activities, the things that really make a difference, working with clients, cultivating leadership, doing whatever you’re uniquely great at.

Then separately, in the next column, what are the low value activities? Things that you know you probably should ditch or delegate or defer. They are things that leave you feeling drained or irritated. Why am I doing this? Oh, it’s just easier if I do this than if I train Susie Q, but we know that those hours add up. When we do a list of high value, low value, and then we look at the total of each column, the whole table equals 100%. Do you have 100% for the high level, low value combined? Maybe you have, I don’t know, 40% low value, 60% high value, whatever is true.

Peter: That actually sounds ambitious. Most people I know have much lower high value activity than low value activity.

Christine: Okay, and I’m really glad you said that, Peter, because here comes the punch line: exactly. You lay out the high value, low value, and many of us have far more low value than we’d like to admit. It’s a critter state meter. Check this out. If we have 70% or more high value activities, hooray, we’re spending more time in our smart state. If we have fewer than 70% high value activities, we’re spending more time in our critter state. If we’re spending more time in our critter state, doing low value work that’s irritating, that’s draining, etc, that doesn’t help us really shine, we’re then passing that down to our people. Chances are really good they’re in their critter state.

When people use all the SmartTribes tool, what we find is that we get 35% to 50% more productive, because we’re putting our energy in the high value activities. A lot of low value activities can be automated, ditched, delegated, deferred, if they don’t tie to your needle movers. Support your needle movers. Why are you doing them? More needle movers in a couple of minutes.

Peter: Is that connected to focus?

Christine: Yes, so start to focus then and our manufacturing client started to focus on, “Okay, we’re not going to do as much as we used to do. We’re going to focus in and do the high value activities and put our energy there.” That is one of the ways that they got the result that I’ll tell you about in just a few minutes.

Peter: Let me ask you a question. If we’re already in our critter state, isn’t it hard to let those things go, because when I think of the low value work that I do, yes, it’s annoying, but sometimes it’s comforting because the high value work leaves me in a space of a lot of ambiguity. I’m trying to make decisions. The high value work is high value and so challenging and difficult and without a clear answer. Yet, when I reconcile my bank account, that’s actually not very high value work. Somebody else could do that, but there’s a right answer. There’s a yes or no. Things add up and it’s easier. If I’m already in my critter state, to spend more time in my high value work absolutely makes sense, but I imagine it would be really hard to get there, because it’s unbalancing in a certain sense. Does that make sense?

Christine: Okay, I see where you’re going. Here’s the thing. We all have certain things that we do that actually are recovery type tasks. Like for me, sometimes I like to open the mail. It’s kind of fun. I don’t want to do it on a regular basis and I don’t want to balance my checkbook and somebody else does that. But there are certain tasks that I do that are low value, but are okay. I’m okay to have 15% low value activities. No one can have 100% low value activities. It’s just not honest. I always strive for 80%, 85% high value activities. The rest are low.

Some of the low value activities support the high value activities coming to be. Example: sales people are always saying, “Christine, I don’t want to put data in the CRM. It’s a low value activity.” I say, “Ah, tell me the following. How important is pipeline visibility, high value, low value?” “Oh, high value.” “How do I get pipeline visibility?” “Well, I have to have the right data in the CRM.” “Thank you.” Maybe putting data in the CRM is not a low value activity. We can start using voice mail to put the data in and we can have an admin type the data in, but the data’s got to get in or we not going to have pipeline visibility.

Whatever you need to shift out of critter state … For instance, when we’re in critter state, fight, flight, freeze, amygdala hijack, our system is flooded with norepinephrine. We have no enzyme in our body to break down norepinephrine, which is why we’re here. If we could break it down easily, the cave people [before us 00:09:41] wouldn’t have been able to run so fast to escape the saber tooth tigers. It’s not a bad thing, but when we are flooded with norepinephrine, we must start to get it out of our system. If we’re super in critter state, take a moment, do seven, seven, seven breathing, seven inhale, seven hold, seven exhale, do seven of those, and you’re good. Because the cardiovascular system is how we start to break down norepinephrine. Or do 15 vigorous jumping jack or take a walk around the block. We have to get some physical movement to start to break it down.

Peter: So we physically change the state of our body by physically changing the state of our body.

Christine: Yes.

Peter: We don’t do it be just focusing on the high value activities. Sometimes we need to manage our own presence so that we can focus on the high value activities.

Christine: Yes, and every year, we send out a … We don’t send out holiday gifts. We send out a gratitude gift to all of our clients. This year what we’re sending out is a process to make sure that our folks can shift out of resistance to choice. For example, when we’re resisting something and we’re really irritating about it, that puts us in critter state. This year, we’re sending out a 15 minute process that takes you through what we call maneuvers of consciousness to go from resisting and er, negative evaluation, to curiosity to amazement to full appreciation. You can shift your entire emotional state in 15 minutes. We show them exactly how.

Peter: That’s great.

Christine: Then once the manufacturing company zoomed and started focusing in and focused on high value activities, then they had to say, “Hey, wait a second, let’s find out who we are. Let’s get really clear on who are we as a tribe.” The vast majority of companies I work with do not have an emotional foundation. When we come into a company of any size, we’re surprised at how the mission vision values are not emotional. When we have really emotionally charged, passionate mission vision values, a mission, a purpose that matters, a vision that’s a cool place that we’re going together, that’s aspirational, when we have values that tell us what the tribal code is, and how we will know that we are being a good tribe member, then we get clarity, we understand who we need to be here, we understand where we’re going. It makes all the difference. We can boost emotional engagement.

The part of the brain, the hippocampus, where we have learning, where we have memory, is all about attaching emotion to them. Think about your life. The most powerful memories that you have are tied to a positive or a negative emotion. People don’t remember their company values because they’re not emotional. People don’t remember their company mission and vision because they’re not emotional, so it’s our job as leaders to tell powerful stories, to help people aspire and have insights. Once we have powerful mission vision values, now we know who we are together, we know what the code of conduct it, makes all the difference. Now we can actually come together as a cohesive tribe instead of being a bunch of individuals that are just working in the same office, clarity.

Peter: You describe five types of communication and you say only two drive results: info sharing, debating and decision making, sharing oneself, requests and promises. It’s the requests and the promises that I guess we need in the context of the vision mission values that allow us to move forward as an organization.

Christine: Will you do this for me by 8:00 a.m. Friday? Yes, I will or no, I won’t, but I can do it by noon on Monday. Okay, yeah. So often when we don’t have the handshake, a lot of leaders do what we call drive by delegation. “Hey, will you do that, that, that for me? No questions? Good, bye.” The person’s like, “Ahhh, what just happened?”

Peter: It’s clarity. It’s big picture clarity, but it’s also very specific small picture clarity.

Christine: And communication.

Peter: And communication.

Christine: And it’s also the congruence of is the person being congruent? Is the way that they are communicating congruent with their body posture, gesture, vocal tone, pace, pitch, because we know from Mehrabian’s research only 7% of our communication is the content. We’ve got 55% is the body posture, gesture. 38% is the vocal tone, pace, pitch. If we’d say, “Oh yeah, that was a really good presentation.” You know? Who cares what the content is? I don’t believe that person. But if they say, “That was a really good presentation,” I’d believe them. As a leader, we’ve got to be congruent. Make sure that your words and your body posture, gesture, vocal tone, pace, pitch line up or you’re going to break trust, you’re going to break that safety, belonging, mattering that’s so rich and important in the culture.

Peter: I wonder if it has to be consistent with the societal norm or whether it has to be consistent with your norm, meaning I know people who are very mellow who would actually say, “Hey, that was a great presentation.” You would look at them and in society, you would say that doesn’t sound very exciting, but for this person, you would go, “Wow, that’s the biggest compliment I’ve received from this person in ten years.” I guess the question is how much of this in your research or your experience is societally based versus how much of it is individually based.

Christine: Okay, so when I work in Asia and China, Hong Kong, Beijing, they don’t emote like we do in the US. Canadians don’t quite emote as much as we do in the US, but here’s the thing. If it’s a general person that you don’t know, then yes, you’ll look at society and you’ll map that person. If it’s your leader and someone that you do know and they’re like, “Uh, dude, that was really good,” and they’re a super mellow person, you’ll be like, “Yeah, right on!” So depends on the context.

Peter: Got it.

Christine: Is this someone I know and I have a frame of reference or is this a stranger? If it’s a stranger, look at society.

Peter: As leaders, when we’re expressing ourselves, we have to be thoughtful about whether we’re expressing ourselves with people that we know and who know us or whether we have to better understand societal norms and play to those norms in order to really convey the energy and enthusiasm that we want to.

Christine: Exactly, so when I’m in China, I’m more intellectual and serious and I throw lots of facts out. Whereas in the US, I can emote and just frankly be who I am.

Peter: Number three, what’d you do with the manufacturers around accountability?

Christine: Needle movers, woo! Here’s were things break down. The leader says, “Will you do such and such?” The owner, we’re going to call them the owner, says, “Yep, I will.”

Peter: Request, promise.

Christine: Yup, request, promise, but if there isn’t tracking or if there aren’t any consequences for dropping the ball, often we don’t have high ownership and high accountability. With the manufacturing firm, guys, you don’t [have to get 00:16:56] fancy about this. We just set up a bunch of Google sheets. Google sheets are free, okay? We set up a whole set of Google sheets where we have the needle movers. Now, the needle movers are like goals, but they’re more effective. If you look at NYU’s research, which is awesome because they validated it with our work, which is great, when we set a goal, we set a minimum, minimum acceptable performance, target, what we want to get, mind blower, the stretch goal, it would be awesome if we got it, but it’s a stretch.

When we set those three levels based on your systolic blood pressure in your body, what your brain does is it says, “Minimum, I could totally nail that. Target, if you’re really excited about that. Mind blower, well, that looks like of hard.” We have higher systolic blood pressure, which is the good kind of blood pressure. It’s our focus and our readiness to act. On that middle level of the three minimum target mind blower. When we start to set our goals as needle movers that we talked about in chapter five in SmartTribes, we start to see people achieve their goals far more effectively.

Here’s the thing. We have to set up tracking mechanism to make sure that people remember what their goals are and check in. We used Google sheets with the manufacturing company. Everybody now is measuring their performance. They didn’t really do it before. Everybody sees everybody else’s. It’s all very transparent. Everybody can see how Joe’s affects Sue’s and Sue’s affects Karen’s. Now people feel more connected, because they get if they dropped the ball, it really hurts the tribe overall. Having needle movers, laying out the minimum target mind blower, improves goal achievement and it moves that goal closer.

Peter: It’s an extension of clarity. Because it’s the clarity of consequences. It’s the clarity of expectations. It’s the clarity of the promises and the requests.

Christine: Thank you for saying that, because also it supports focus, right? Now, we look back at our high value, low value and we say, “Hey, these low values, they’re not supporting my needle movers.” They’re out, because so often we do more work than we need to, because there’s an infinite amount of work. There are bright, shiny objects that are floating past all the time. We have to stay focused. If there’s a bright, shiny object that we do due diligence on, and we really should do it, great. We’ve got to go back to our needle movers and revise our low value, high value.

Peter: Your next one is influence.

Christine: Yes, influence, so here’s the thing. To influence, to enroll, engage, align, to loop arms with people subconsciously and go forward to a win-win future, two tools make all the difference. One, safety, belonging, mattering: we need to foster safety, freedom from fear, as much certainty as we can have in an uncertain world. Belonging, we’re in this together, we’re a tribe, equal value for everybody. Mattering, we see you, we acknowledge and appreciate your unique gifts. When we have that safety, belonging, mattering, we start to begin the process of what’s called same as. If my creature brain, my reptilian mammalian combination, not my prefrontal cortex, the best part about being human, that’s not online yet, if we can talk to the creature neurology and give it the experience of I’m the same as you, I get what you want, I’m here with you, I’m next to you, we’re equal, we get much better engagement.

If we can layer on top meta programs discovered by Leslie Cameron-Bandler in 1980’s, very powerful. Once you learn meta programs, you see them in advertisements all over the place. They’re really popular on Madison Avenue. If personality tests are on the third floor of the building, Briggs, Myers-Briggs, Disc, meta programs are in the sub-basement. Meta programs are the motivators for a behavior. Meta programs are the structure of our belief system. Meta programs hold our identity together. They’re that powerful. We talk about them in chapter seven in SmartTribes. Once we start to understand a person’s meta programs, then we speak to them in their meta programs, not in Christine language, in Peter language, Peter then can say, “Ah, that makes sense. I’m on board with that. I want to do that. I’m curious about that. I at least want to learn about that.”

Peter: Share an example. How would you talk to my meta program?

Christine: Good. You and I have some similarities. Let me pick somebody who’s different.

Peter: Okay, great.

Christine: I’m just going to pick two meta programs. I am toward get, attain, achieve. I’m active, high bias to action. Let’s go do it, rock and roll. Let’s say that Joe Blow is the opposite of me. He is away, mitigate risk, solve problems, prevent disaster.

Peter: Like a lawyer?

Christine: Yeah, a lawyer, somebody in compliance, somebody in the insurance industry. Good, good, you’ve got it. Then also, let’s say that he is reflective. He likes to consider, ponder, understand, analyze before he takes action, okay?

Peter: Great.

Christine: I would say to him … Let’s say the behavior that we want to achieve with Joe Blow is let’s get the final budget for 2017 laid out. Because he’s reflective, he’s probably done 20 million drafts of it. I would probably do one or two drafts of it, and I’d be too hasty. This is why Joe Blow and I would be a good team on this particular project. I’d want to say, “I’ve really been thinking about the draft budget that you sent me, and in order to solve these certain problems that we have, what if we get together next week, Tuesday at noon, and we [stepped 00:22:51] through the budget and we look at all the ways that we can mitigate risk, all the key problems, make sure that we have factored those into the budget, and then by Thursday, we’ll have the final draft to the budget, Thursday at 9:00 a.m.” We have to drive him to finality. We have to make sure that we’re not talking about all the great things Christine wants to get. We’re talking about all the problems that we’re going to solve.

Peter: For somebody like that, you actually don’t want to be visionary. We often talk about visionary as the hallmark of what we do as a leader, but what you’re saying is being visionary would not be speaking to his meta program, that speaking to his meta program is much more about the detail and the specific and what is the road that we need to get to. Maybe you mention the vision, but that’s not what hooks him. What hooks him is the process.

Christine: Thank you, that’s the third meta program that I didn’t tell you about, but that I spoke to him in, which is procedures. The opposite of that is the options, the world is my oyster, lots of choice and possibility. He’s not that way. We’re talking about risk mitigation, solving problems, considering, pondering, understand, then taking action and doing a proven step by step process.

Peter: Got it.

Christine: Now, if I used that with someone who was high action, decide now, get me what I want, goals, goals, goals, hurry up, the world is my oyster, they’d be like, “Christine, you’re slowing me down here. What are you talking about? I don’t feel any same as with you.”

Peter: They also might conflict with you. They might say, “Hold on, there’s a lot of things you’re not thinking about. We’ve got to go slow here.” Not just you’re slowing them down, but they may need to slow you down in order to make sure that all the t’s are crossed and i’s are dotted.

Christine: And they’re not going to be having the experience of safety, belonging, mattering. They’re going to be like, “Whoa, wait a second. We’re not in this together. You’re not getting my perspective.”

Peter: I see this so often where leaders have a style and one of the things they might say is, “Look, I’m this kind of leader. I’m a visionary leader. I’m a fast moving leader, and people need to learn how to work with me. That’s how we’ll be successful.” What you’re saying is that does the opposite of creating safety, belonging and mattering. It makes people feel peripheral to what it is that’s happening. It disengages them and it reduces the alignment and the clarity of what it is you’re trying to achieve.

Christine: Okay, thank you for queuing up that perfect example. Let me give you a perfect example of exactly that. The leader does get to be who they are when they’re leading the company overall. They need to speak in the meta programs of the person when there’s conflict, when they need to enroll and engage them, when they need to build a deep bond. The human brain deletes, distorts and generalizes. What if I’m talking to a group of people, I’m a visionary leader, I’m talking to a group people, and I need to engage and enroll all of them, all of them. Doesn’t matter what meta programs are in the room, I need to get them all on board. This is where we’re going to speak and all the meta programs.

Well, 2017, let’s say that we’re heading into the new year and I’m the CEO and I’m talking to all my hundreds and hundreds of employees. This is what the manufacturing CEO did. Listen for the safety, belonging and mattering as well. “Hey, everybody, I’m so glad that you’re all here. I’m so glad that you’re a part of our tribe. Each of you brings unique contributions to our tribe. Thanks for being in this together with us. As we head into the new year, we’ve got some really lofty, very cool goals. We’re going to achieve them in best practices, in standard procedures, in a safe and sane way. We’re going to really carefully consider and understand where we’re going before we make those decisions. We’re going to make those decisions then swiftly. We have lots of choice and possibility and we find that we’re most efficient when we follow a proven process. As we go to these lofty, fantastic goals for the new year, thanks to all for being here, thanks for all your contributions. We’re going to rock this quarter and we’re going to do it based on our fantastic historical past.”

Peter: You’re tapping into everybody’s meta programs. You’re taking each of the main meta programs and you’re making sure that you’re hitting them in a way and they’re going to pay attention to the stuff that makes them feel comfortable.

Christine: Here’s an example of removing deletion. Everybody listening, all of you have at a certain point decided to buy a certain car. Did you notice that suddenly how weird it was where suddenly you saw that car everywhere. Before you had been deleting a silver Prius, let’s just say for example, suddenly when you decide that you wanted to buy a silver Prius, you started seeing it everywhere. The human brain has to delete because there’s so much stuff coming at us. We delete the things subconsciously that aren’t relevant. That’s why the leader can speak in a bunch of meta programs, weave safety, belonging and matter in there and we’re all okay.

Peter: Let’s come into home base here with sustainable results.

Christine: Fantastic, okay, to continue to get results, we need to continuously help people focus on the outcome they want to create, not the problem that’s stressing them out. Problem focus puts us in critter state. Outcomes focus keeps us in smart state. When someone is swirling around what they don’t want, one of the tools we want to use is called an outcome frame. What’s so cool about this, Peter, is you can actually see the person’s state change. You can see their eyes get wider, their physiology changes and becomes more open. The outcome frame has a series of questions. The purpose is to take the brain from looking at a problem or from being in confusion or from being in uncertainty and to bring them to clarity and sustainable energy so we can actually get results.

The questions are: what would you like? What would you like as something that you can create and maintain? What would you like? World peace. Too big. Okay, what would you like? Peace within myself. Ah, I can create and maintain that. A sizeable chunk that’s realistic you can create and maintain. What would you like? What will having that do for you? When you have what you would like, what would you get? What are the benefits? How will you feel? We want to get as emotional as possible, because we’re pulling people into their desired state and we’re helping their brain say, “This isn’t a dream. I can actually have this.” How will you know when you have it? That’s the proof. You can’t just say, “Oh, it’ll be a feeling.” No, no, no, how will you know when you have it?

I’ll give you an example in a sec. Fourth, what of value might you risk or lose? What’s the trade off going to be? Then fifth, let’s make it short. What are your next steps? Example, what would you like? A more strategic time, I really want that. Good, what will having that do for you? Well, I’ll feel more engaged. I’ll feel more energized. I’ll feel like I’m really making a difference for the organization. I’ll feel more peaceful. I’ll feel more powerful. Good, good, how will you know when you have that? More strategic time, how will I know when I have that? When I have two hours every Friday morning to plan strategy, when I cut my meetings by 25%, when I get these three folks to rise up in leadership and take a bunch of my low value activities off.

Good, what of value might you risk or lose? I’m going to have to resist the temptation to dive in and rescue. I’m going to have to not let it be in the weeds. I’m going to have to invest time in cultivating my people. Okay, yeah, there might be some [ego risks 00:30:20] there. It might not feel as important temporarily during the shift. What are your next steps? Meet with the three people I want to offload work to, set up a recurring appointment in outlook to make sure I have my strategic time, look at the meetings that I need to ax out of my calendar and put a person in charge of running them.

Peter: It’s coaching yourself in very concrete ways to move forward on the stuff that’s important to you.

Christine: Yes, yes, yes, so what happened? What happened to the manufacturing company? Using these SmartTribes tools, using SmartTribe accelerators and a bunch of the other tools that are in SmartTribes, really building a rich, powerful culture, really helping people rise up into leadership, we went from a historical 10% to 15% growth each year, in the first year working together, 30% growth. They didn’t hire a ton of extra people to get the 30% growth. They got their people in their smart state. If each of your people could be 35% to 50% more productive, what would that mean? That would mean you don’t need the head count that you thought you needed. Let’s take the people that we have and get them in their smart state so we can actually get more done. Higher top line, higher bottom line.

Peter: Thank you so much, Christine Comaford. The book is SmartTribes: How Teams Become Brilliant Together. Christine, thank you so much for being on the Bregman Leadership Podcast.

Christine: Thank you so much, Peter.

Peter: If you enjoyed this episode of the Bregman Leadership Podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes. For more information about the Bregman Leadership Intensive as well as access to my articles, videos and podcasts, visit peterbregman.com. Thank you to Claire Marshall for producing this episode and to Brian Wood who created our music. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next great conversation.