It’s an unprecedented situation. Nobody prepared us for it. Nobody COULD HAVE prepared us for it. The strategies and skills that worked last year – and over the past decades – no longer apply. Since the situation is new, and unfamiliar, nobody can know how to handle it most effectively.
People with power and authority are dashing from one meeting to the next … making bold statements about what will and will not happen … and there’s a very strong chance the decisions they are making are deepening the crisis, as they slash staffing, cut production, and print more and more money. For every person that says the crisis will be long, there’s another saying it’ll be short: we can’t even agree about that. What can we do?
One very effective strategy is to learn from others. But who can we learn from when the current crisis is deeper than any in living memory? Do we really have to make it up ourselves?
Here’s a lifeline, a small one, but a small and legitimate one is much better than a guess.
Now, I rarely promote other websites and am very selective, but this post by Ari Galper has outdone all of his previous work: he found a person who experienced the depression, and interviewed her. Her comments are short, and very much to the point, with that unmistakeable ring of life experience. And it’s published with unrestricted access (I love the Internet Age!!) …
You can read it here, it’s quite short, and definitely merits reading more than once:-
This is one I’ve really been looking forward to sharing!
In the series of interviews we did with Dr Dan Harrison recently, he talked just as much about coaching and development as he did about selection and hiring assessment.
Here is a selection where he’s talking specifically about how to help someone develop themselves.
He specifically addresses the issue of how the coaching intervention required can be the exact opposite, depending on whether the person is showing stress behaviour or preferred behaviour. The issue is that if you get it wrong, a coaching session can actually make the situation worse not better!
Using Paradox to understand their behaviour, it becomes very clear how you can help someone most effectively.
… a great video … totally authentic, Dan at his best, there’s even a bit where we think we finished, but he adds more clarification … watch it now!
This is a very important development, especially if you
care about your health
care about your quality of life, and want it to be a long and rewarding one, or
care about other people
want to know what you can do about your concerns
If you are in a hurry, skip this intro and just watch the 3rd video below – it will give you the most valuable conclusions, and stands well in its own right.
But I actually recommend you to watch the three videos in sequence.
They feature Bruce Lipton – a doctor who studied how cells function for decades, including cloning, genetic engineering, and other modern research. He really knows his stuff. What makes him different is he makes it understandable. And he takes a holistic view, incorporating areas of science that medical science has not yet fully woken up to.
The first one – 3 minutes – sets the context for the rest of the knowledge, and answers the question “what can I use this specific knowledge for in the rest of my life?”
Here they are, first the 3 minute intro:
This second one is the first hour of a presentation, in which Bruce shares what he’s discovered about how cells work. Amazingly, he does this in simple words, and makes something that I myself never really understood in school science lessons very simple and obviously relevant. It is a bit dry at times though, so if you hate science go straight to the third video – nerds and geeks, watch this one also. It’ll elevate your understanding!
Here is 64 minutes of how cells function, and the biggest fallacy in modern DNA research:
The third one gets practical. He brings together a very wide-ranging set of discoveries, from physics, maths, biology, chemistry, and medicine, explaining how phenomena such as energy healing, spontaneous remission, and connectedness actually work. What are the implications? What is the one thing that we can do to best help ourselves?
Finally 95 minutes of practical application, including where Darwin went wrong about Evolution and how that discovery helps you live a healthier and happier life, and avoid being abused by companies that have a vested interest in selling you more and more medicines:
You may be wondering what a posting about medical research is doing on the website of a Harrison Assessments Master Distributor?? Of course, there’s social contribution: you need to know this stuff. But yes, there’s more … here’s why this is important to our work here:
Through HA it applies directly to our work in the workplace. Harrison Assessments is designed to measure a person’s belief, and then give a reflection of how those beliefs are likely to result in work-related behaviour, and ultimately to predict success or failure at work. Dr Lipton’s work throws new light on just how impactful our beliefs are, not just changing our behaviour and our results, but even changing the DNA in our bodies.
Look at it this way – work is the single most important survival activity humans do, and is the glue that creates our huge interconnected communities. Our beliefs about work are as important to us as the relationship to your body is important to a cell in your body.
With HA you can get a precise measurement of the impact of your beliefs on your work and on your productivity. With the beliefs Dr Lipton shares, you can change your beliefs, change your biology, and boost your performance at work.
With HA you can even get a view of the impact of ANOTHER PERSON’S beliefs on their work, helping them change their beliefs, and boosting their performance.
Do you need to know what HA shows you? Well, I suppose you don’t need to. I mean, you can live the rest of your life not knowing how your beliefs shape your results. Just like you can live without knowing how your body works and how it connect you with your community – your body knows how to do that and was doing it for you even before you had any awareness of it.
But Is it likely to be useful to you to know? Absolutely. Especially in the light of the understanding that Bruce has shared in these videos.
Enjoy. And please post your reactions below, whatever they are!!
John
PS a big thank-you to Barb, who put me onto these videos with a throw-away comment she made!
Here’s an interesting – and scary – quote from a recent news article:
“Iceland’s krona was yesterday essentially untradeable and its value was impossible to calculate.”
Wow! An entire country’s economy, and everyone in it, completely cut off from the rest of the World. Untradeable currency = untradeable goods = no services, support, or help either. Something that as recently as 4 weeks ago was completely unimaginable. In the modern world, we are more dependent on each other than every before.
What does this mean?
Well, I don’t believe we’re going to see too many examples like Iceland’s implosion. At least, I sincerely hope not! And that’s the reason I’m optimistic: the decision-makers around the World are so afraid of the impact of a complete meltdown and subsequent disintegration, that they will move quickly to restore stability. Of course, there will be winners and losers in the process, but I do believe that the situation is so serious that agreement will quickly be reached about what to do about it. In a crisis, a fast decision is better than no decision, and as a result there will be fewer losers.
But it is a good time to reflect on how we can maximise our potential. Today, more than ever, the answer to the question “who or what can I rely on?” is more clear than ever: focus on your strengths. Your strengths include your own strengths, and they also include the relationships you have with other people’s strengths.
Clearly, interrelationships are important. Equally clearly, relying too much on others to provide for us is a mistake, and being self-sufficient and fully aware of our own abilities is also important.
Someone just wrote in with a question that’s so important it’s worth sharing, and having a wider debate around it:-
“Dear John,
I am wondering if you have any suggestions or ideas how to pass HA successfully. I mean, to have a way to get the best result in my HA evaluation.
My company uses HA results to promote employees.
Look forward to hearing from you soon.
xxxxx”
Here’s my answer:-
“Dear xxxxx,
actually yes, I do …
Have you been through the assessment yourself? It sounds a bit like you’ve either been assessed, or are afraid you might be about to be assessed and failed.
That’s normal by the way. I’ve done the HA questionnaire many times myself, about 6 times in 5 years just for my own interest, and I still have butterflies about the result every time I try it again!
Here’s the thing you need to know about Harrison Assessments:
it’s actually very good at predicting who is likely to be successful and who is likely to struggle … which is (of course) the reason companies choose it for screening promotions and new hires … but the accuracy of prediction can be very high, and is much much more accurate than a traditional process of interviews. Even assessment centers are usually less accurate than a single Harrison Assessments report.
Scary? Maybe, but maybe not. Look at it this way …
You see what THAT means is if Harrison Assessments says you would be better off doing a different job than the one you were assessed for, it is probably right about it. And while that might sound like a disappointment, I actually suggest it’s excellent news. Nothing is worse than having to do a job that you struggle at and end up disappointing yourself and the people who rely on you. Nothing is better than finding out the risks, in advance, before committing your time and reputation or risking damage to your successful track record.
So – worst case – IF you show up as being less suitable for a position you applied for what usually happens is
a) you can see exactly what needs to change in order to be more successful, e.g. next time, and
b) often you can see ways in which you can achieve more in your current job, or
c) you can change your current job just a little to make a big difference …
a big difference not just to your job performance (which your employer likes) but also to your personal job satisfaction. Of course, ultimately doing a better job always leads to more money, more time freedom, and more opportunities self-expression.
I’m being a bit long here. Here it is, simpler:-
I assume you’re genuine, and you don’t want a cheat-sheet. It’s certainly very hard to cheat – much harder than other assessments I’ve seen. I’ve seen a lot of people try, and have tried myself. The reality is even the inventor of HA says he can’t fake a perfect assessment result for a position he wouldn’t be good at … and he’s the guy who knows just exactly what it’s looking for! … he knows ALL the research and the calcualtions it does!! Certainly, I’ve studied HA extensively myself for 5 years – I teach it to experts including psychologists – and have completed the questionnaire 6 times, I still can’t make a perfect result for myself for my own job.
So I won’t say it can’t be cheated at all – in an infinite universe I guess anything’s possible – but frankly if anyone is going to try to cheat they would need to know the right answers in the first place. And that means becoming an expert in the requirements of the job you’re aiming to do … which in itself is a good thing, really … which means their performance in that job would improve. I’ve read a psychological research paper that proved people who learn the right answers to a test do better in the job! That research wasn’t about psychometric testing specifically, but the principle is reasonably general.
The good news (I hope) is that whatever the result is,
- it is likely to be useful to you
- you can learn from it and do better, not just at the assessment but in your job and your career
- it will help your employer recognise hidden talents in you that they may have missed.
Your question was “how can I have the best result in the HA evaluation?”.
My first answer: if you answer it truthfully it will actually tell you exactly what you should do to maximise your performance, accellerate your career success, and achieve your goals. In my mind – as a 40-something year old successful guy – that IS the best possible result to get, even if it means you don’t get the promotion you applied for today.
My second answer: you CAN improve your HA evaluation for a specific job that you want to get. The good news is if you do that your performance in that job will also improve.
You can do it with a course of coaching, which would give you the insight you need into how to succeed in that job and, obviously, in the assessment. Through coaching
- you would know just exactly what are your greatest strengths for the new role,
- you would know ahead of time what are your chances, and what contingency plans to make
- you would discover unexpected ways you can actually perform better in your current role
- you would know just exactly what to do, both short and long term, to increase your chances for promotion
Did any of that make sense? Hope it did – your question is an important one.
Would you like to improve your results?
Please do write to me directly at John.Bower@HumanPotentialGlobal.com with your questions – I promise your identity will be confidential! – and your question might just give an answer to someone else as well. So please do share!!
By the way, I highly recommend the book I’m writing about: Influence – Science and Practice, by Dr Robert B Cialdini.
I bought it because it’s been highly recommend by literally dozens of people I respect, and after just the first chapter I’m already convinced to recommend it! It’s about subtle tricks that make all the difference to persuade people to do things we want them to.
The great thing about it is that it’s balanced: it gives some really surprising facts about how we can be persuaded to do things (or not), which is great for anyone in sales, business development, training or negotiation. But it doesn’t stop there.
It then tells us what we can do to protect ourselves against having those tricks used against us by malicious salespeople. Now that’s not just a great way to level the playing field, but actually helps us make sure that we all get what we want in the first place. Salespeople using the techniques get to sell more – but only to people who want what they’re selling – and customers get to buy more of what they need without being either hustled put off by the techniques the salesperson used.
I only recommend a few of the books I read, and this one is high on the list.
… OK back to the rant.
On page 91 (of the 4th Edition) Dr Cialdini gives a live example of how an effective salesperson ‘trapped’ him into buying something he didn’t want, using one of the techniques of influence. After the example (Page 93) he offers a suggestion for how to counter the technique, which I feel can be greatly improved upon!
Here’s the thing, Dr Cialdini felt trapped by the salesperson for one reason only: he had been making exaggerated claims in his answers. When the saleswoman then took his answers and told him he could save $1,200 with a subscription to their club, she was absolutely correct, and the only reason he felt trapped is that he would have had to admit that he’d been exaggerating. This is the power of the technique by the way, nobody likes to go back and contradict themselves, and to be true to his word Dr Cialdini had to go ahead and make the purchase.
Now, his suggested solution would work: to sense that you don’t want to go ahead and back out nonetheless. IF you have been exaggerating that is. But it’s not really necessary …
Here’s a far more radical suggestion: How about just telling the truth? Wow. That’s challenging isn’t it! But the reality is that if he’d given straight answers to the saleswoman’s questions, her offer would actually have been appropriate to his situation. He would probably have bought anyway, but possibly at a smaller cost and expecting a much smaller benefit, and he would have been happy with the outcome instead of writing a book about it!
Now for many people telling the truth to a salesperson may be less straightforward than it should be – and that’s normal. “Social Desirablity”, or the tendency to adjust what we say in order to make a more favourable impression, is both very human and very common.
But speaking as a salesperson myself, it would be so much more straightforward if our prospects were straightforward with us. If you say the truth, it’s impossible to catch you out, and the only way anyone can take advantage of you is by giving you something that’s even more valuable to you.
So I wish everyone would read the book and learn both how to have a greater influence as well as how to protect ourselves from pressure.
By the way, it’s not just about sales. Chapter 3 covers the situation why it’s possible for people simply to walk on by when you’ve been attacked, had a serious accident, or are suffering a stroke – not because they don’t care but because they are automatically following the herd. Buy it or borrow it, but you must read it. Especially if you are a city-dweller it could quite literally save your life one day.
I love it when I find people who know nothing about our work writing about Paradox. In this one Mark Joyner shares about psychologists’ advice that he’s discovered.
“Let your Evil Twin come out and play for your heart’s sake.”
In a situation he didn’t like, Mark was surprised at the advice he got both from a superintendent with life experience and from a book about anger management. Students of Harrison Assessments will immediately recognise Paradox Theory in action. The best quote is that anger “only gets a bad rap partly because it is often erroneously associated with violence.”
Your friends are great, but are they all great? Do you have any friends who, after all, you like them, but sometimes do things you wish they hadn’t?
How to recognise a “frenemy”, and what are the three steps you can take to protect yourself and your relationship. Mark’s post is short and to the point, so go here to check it out!
I subscribe to quotes from Abraham-Hicks.com – and unlike many others I subscribe to, can recommend their material. If you’ve watched one of the initial editions of The Secret, you’ll have seen Esther Hicks and will know that she originally articulated much of the law-of-attraction thinking the movie is based around.
Here’s a quote that I got from them today:-
“It is not your role to make others happy; it is your role to keep yourself in balance. When you pay attention to how you feel and practice self-empowering thoughts that align with who you really are, you will offer an example of thriving that will be of tremendous value to those who have the benefit of observing you.
“You cannot get poor enough to help poor people thrive or sick enough to help sick people get well. You only ever uplift from your position of strength and clarity and alignment.”
I particularly like that last bit – the bold emphasis is mine.
I’ve not made a post in a while, but this one is worth sharing as it affects us all. I just received the following question:-
“Do you have general wisdom on how to handle insecurities? I usually handle them with positive affirmations, but you are not so hot on those, so I was wondering. I’m fraught with them today.”
Here are my thoughts, which are part of an exchange of ideas I’ll be sharing here:-
Simple enough – insecurities are the mirror-image of confidence.
If you look at both sides of it you see that neither can exist without the other, and yes, that means that “confidence” cannot exist but for the presence of “insecurities”. If there’s nothing to worry about, there’s equally nothing at all to be confident about. From there you can see that insecurities are not just useful, but necessary. You only have them now because there is something that you are actually confident about, now. It may be something you’re not focusing on at this moment but sure as eggs is eggs it’s there somewhere.
In fact, insecurities are a big foundation for our experience of existence. If you didn’t exist there would be nothing to be insecure about, right? So as long as there is a “you” that is conscious of your existence, there are going to be things that “you” – or actually, just your mind – will worry about.
Which is all very well, but the question is not why they exist, but rather what’s an effective way to respond to them?
So here’s another take on it – have a look at the insecurities and see when they reside: Past? Present? Future?
I’ll bet the majority (80%, 90%, possibly more) are connected either with things that happened in the past, or things that have not happened yet. If so, this would be totally normal, as it’s much harder to be insecure about what’s happening right now than about imagined situations!
Sorry if that seems short and simple, hope you weren’t looking for a thesis. The issue is actually a huge one – it’s just that the solution needs to be simple. Simpler than thought.
The best place to start is right here and now. What’s happening now? Look around, and use all 5 of your senses. In particular, look for anything that you might need to be insecure about. To be sure, there might be something, like a bus heading straight at you or a nutcase with a weapon or something. If there is you need to stop reading this and handle it right now OK, you back now? Here’s the thing: even in a real live threatening situation you will find that by focussing more and more on what’s happening right now, there is less and less to worry about. It’s actually quite peaceful, right now. Anytime.
From that position of peace, if you feel like it you can look at your insecurities and sort them out. Memory? Or worry?
If you find a feeling that’s associated with a memory, you can just let it be. Whatever happened has already happened and is no longer happening now. You may be remembering a hurt that was very real at the time, but since it’s only in your memory it’s nothing to worry about, nobody ever died of a memory. BTW if you’re thinking about it happening again, that’s not a memory, it’s a worry! Let the memories be.
Likewise, worries have a life of their own. They exist in a space somewhere or other, but like clouds in the sky they can only actually impact us if something starts to happen here and now. Until it does happen, we’re still free to do whatever we’re doing … here, and now.
Of course if focussing on the present or accepting your insecurities is a challenge any time, you can break it down further into smaller and smaller steps, but it’s still basically the same principle. Regardless of whether it’s easy or challenging, it gets easier when you focus on breaking it down into what’s happening here and now and what’s not.
Practice makes perfect, and with practice it becomes automatic to face fears and difficulties by first focussing on what’s happening now and what you have now, and then working back out from there.
If you look behind the mental chatter about everything that might be going wrong, you can see an underlying belief that you deserve more … which comes from confidence in your own inner worth. You see how one creates the other?
Much more useful is just to notice the pattern. As soon as you’re conscious of a pattern that’s happening the pattern loses its grip on your actions. In that moment you are free to make a new choice, or to continue the pattern, but do so consciously.
Notice that our underlying human nature doesn’t change – we still have the hormones, we still have mental chatter, we’re still reactive to fear / pain / guilt much more strongly than we are to joy / peace / confidence – all of that is still very real and very much going on. But when we’re conscious of them doing the thing that they always do we have more chance of making a different choice. When we do something differently the outcome is sometimes different.
Of course you CAN use affirmations – just notice that you don’t NEED to. Affirmations are by definition out of balance. They may themselves be part of a pattern of swings. Nothing intrinsically wrong with that – you can ride the swings, and swings do tend to naturally follow each other. If they’re working, use them, but watch and notice both sides of the equation.
By the way, if you’ve read this far and have any thoughts, please do post a comment! Say whatever you are thinking of, the best thing to share is your own experience.
OK, you back now? Here’s the thing: even in a real live threatening situation you will find that by focussing more and more on what’s happening right now, there is less and less to worry about. It’s actually quite peaceful, right now. Anytime.