First, I’ve noticed a tendency to blame the fact that cameras are off in remote meetings. While I think this certainly makes the problem worse, I don’t think the cameras are the cause of the problem. I think the ability to turn cameras off just makes it easier to hide when one of these other factors is in play. Therefore, forcing cameras on won’t actually fix the underlying problems, and might actually make things worse.
The factors I usually see are:
Let’s look at each.
Not speaking up when there’s a problem is the classic behaviour we expect to see when lacking psychological safety.
I’ve written before about the SAFETY model of psychological safety. This explains the neuroscience of what we need to ensure safety. If we want people to participate, they must feel safe enough to do so. Refer to that article for more.
A key indicator that psychological safety might be the problem is when we observe that people participate less when their management is in the room.
Self-Determination Theory (SDT) describes six different levels of motivation, ranging from fully intrinsically motivated on the far right to completely unmotivated on the far left. The further we are to the left, the less likely we are to speak up in these meetings.
If we want active participation, we need to find a way to shift people to the right on this chart, which requires them to be more self-motivated.
No matter how important a topic might be, if we feel that someone else is going to handle it, we often step back. The psychological phenomena social proof shows that we’ll often step back even when it isn’t clear that someone else will to handle it.
I recall that when I took first aid training, I was cautioned to never just call out “someone call for an ambulance” because often nobody would, and this is social proof at work. Instead, we were instructed to point at one specific person and say “You, call for an ambulance” because that snaps people out of that social proof and increases the likelihood that anyone will do it.
We can use this same approach in our meetings by asking specific people to do tasks, rather than asking if anyone will do it.
If we have hero culture in our environment then it’s highly likely that everyone except the hero will step back, with the expectation that the hero will do it all. This is unsustainable, of course, as no one person can do it all, and the hero will ultimately burn out.
There are several reasons why this might be true.
The Law of Mobility from open space states: “If you aren’t learning or contributing, then you are expected to go somewhere else where you can do one of those”. This makes it the responsibility of each individual to use their own time effectively.
In today’s business climate, we almost always have multiple competing priorities all the time, and the participants just may feel that this meeting isn’t the best use of their time. See the Law of Mobility above - perhaps this meeting isn’t the best use of their time and they should be elsewhere.
It’s become common today to sit in one meeting while doing work from something completely different. Strangely, many people feel this is an effective use of their time to have their attention split like this. The science on multitasking would disagree that it’s useful for the individual, and the other members of the room would probably prefer to not having to repeat themselves for the people who weren’t paying attention.
We’re all human and sometimes we have days where we’re just not that productive. The fact that someone is quiet once, could just be an off day. It’s only when it becomes a pattern that we need to worry about it.
Burnout, however, is a real thing that can take months to recover from. If we’ve burned out our people, we should expect they won’t be productive again for a long time, and that’s usually a failure of management.
I leave this for last because it’s often hard to hold up the mirror to ourselves. The truth however, is that no matter how interesting the topic is or how important it is, a poorly facilitated meeting can destroy any motivation to participate.
We’ve all been to a lecture on a fascinating topic and lost all interest just a few minutes in when the speaker spoke in a monotone, or kept wandering off topic, or completely misread the room. The same applies to working meetings that are poorly facilitated. If people are regularly disengaging from our meetings, it’s time to consider if we might be the problem.
The simple way to test this is to invite other people to facilitate the meetings for you. I encourage you to have guest facilitators anyway, as you’ll always learn something new from watching someone else do it, even if what you learn is how not to do something.
If people aren’t participating in your meetings then step one is to figure out why that might be. There are so many things it could be, and knowing which one is in play is critical to knowing how to fix the problem.
]]>Well if saying the words isn’t enough, what would we have to do to actually make the space safe?
The SAFETY model of psychological safety tells us that there are five main categories that we have to satisfy, plus a grab bag of hard to pin down factors that are unique to each of us.
It’s worth noting that everyone is different and will have different levels of need for each categories. For example, one person might have a high need for security but a low need for autonomy while another person might be reversed. The point is that in order to provide safety across a large group of people, we need to satisfy all of these, not just pick and choose the ones we like.
See also: Polyvagal Theory, the science of feeling safe
]]>If I were to say to you that “I’m going to put my manager hat on now”, you would immediately understand that I’m looking at the current situation as a manager. I’m adapting my view of the problem and focusing through a specific lens so I see those things that are relevant to a manager.
If I then said that “I’m going to take off that hat and put on my parent hat”, you would immediately understand that I’ve changed my perspective and am now looking at the problem in a different way.
This is the essence of Six Thinking Hats. We have six very specific hats that offer up one specific view into the problem space. We consider the problem from that one perspective and take whatever learning we need from it. Then we try on a different hat and do the same from a different perspective.
As I’m writing this, I’m wearing the Blue Hat. I’m talking about process and the bigger picture. Any conversation we have, will generally start and end with the blue hat.
As I put on the White Hat, I focus on what we know. What data might we have about the process? Well we know that we write our ideas on sticky notes of the appropriate colour. That a fact. We know that as a group, we’re focusing on only one colour at a time before moving on to the next. That’s also a fact.
Now I put on the Red Hat and consider how I feel about that. Perhaps I love the idea of colour coding or maybe it makes me feel uncomfortable. Perhaps I get frustrated at being constrained by the rules because I want to do all colours at once. All of these are feelings and belong in the red.
When I put on the Green Hat, I consider alternatives. We know we can do thinking hats with paper on a wall and perhaps we could do that in an online tool as well. We’re often considering constraints when wearing the green hat so I might realize that not everyone will be in the same room so an online tool is better. Or I might want to find an alternative that is faster or cheaper. All of these are looking at alternative ways.
Now I put on the Yellow Hat and consider all the positive things. As humans, we’ve evolved to be really good at spotting the negative and it can sometimes be hard to find the positive. So we have a hat devoted to that. With the yellow hat on, I can see why that’s so good. I can also see that the hats are driving conversations that might otherwise not have happened. That’s a positive.
Then with the Black Hat, I consider all the downsides, and judgements, and risks. I realize that even with a facilitated session, there is a risk that important topics won’t be brought up. I also realize that finding black sticky notes1 will be difficult and black markers won’t write on them so that adds complexity.
Lastly, returning to the Blue Hat again, I can start to look for patterns and lessons that we can take from the information we’ve put down.
To recap, the hats are below. Note that the approach does not mandate any specific order of walking through the hats, although I generally do it in the order below.
Hat | Purpose |
---|---|
Blue Hat | The high level process view. |
White Hat | Just the data. What facts do we know? |
Red Hat | How do we feel about that? |
Green Hat | What else is possible? Looking at alternative ways, often with a constraint. |
Yellow Hat | What’s the positive side that that? |
Black Hat | What are the downsides and risks? |
So how do we incorporate this into a retro? The short answer is that there’s no right way to do this. What’s described below is my approach but there are many ways you might incorporate it.
The steps that I follow through any retrospective are described here so I’m not going to repeat all of that. The steps that are unique to this retrospective are diverge, converge, and actions so I’m only going to talk through that part.
If we’re in-person, I ask people to write their name on a blue sticky note and put it in front of themselves. This makes it more likely that they’ll actually interact with the sticky notes once we start.
I give the preamble of what Six Thinking Hats is, as described above, but stopping after talking about the blue hat. I explain that I’m wearing the blue hat now.
If there’s a specific topic or some ideas that I want to seed then I talk about that at this point.
Unless I have a specific reason to start somewhere else, I start with the White Hat. Focusing on data and facts will tend to defuse any tension or strong feelings that might have been brought into the retro. In the case where I’m expecting heated arguments, I’ll really stress the notion of data and facts without emotion and may spend more time in this section.
I will often have to point out that what someone wrote is a feeling and we only care about facts here. Encourage them to rewrite the sticky to be just the data.
I encourage people to spread the white stickies out as we may need room between them. I also ask them to move similar things closer to each other and to remove duplicates as they see them.
When I see the pace slowing and fewer cards being written, we’ll move on to the Red Hat. This is where we talk about how we feel about things. If the feeling is related to a white card then I ask them to move the cards to be overlapping, as you can see in the picture below.
If it’s unrelated to any data currently on the board then just put it out on its own. In the case here, we see “had been worried this would happen” is a valid feeling and yet there is likely a fact that we should have captured. If I feel that the feeling cards have uncovered a lot of missing data then I might move back to white for a while. If it’s only one or two things then we’ll get back to that later.
We sometimes find that they didn’t leave enough room between white stickies so I remind them that it’s ok if they move things to make room.
When activity on the red hat slows, we move on to green. What alternatives can we identify? In this case, we could have added extra checks at one step. There’s only one green on this board but that’s because I’m trying to keep the example simple. We usually have a large number of sticky notes for every colour.
Next we move on to yellow - what’s the positive. Some groups need some help getting started with this and others just flood the board with yellow cards. Every group and every situation is different.
Then we put on the black hat. Judgements, risks, negatives of all kinds. Most teams are really good at finding the black hat items.
At this point, we want to fill in anything we might have missed. If I feel there is one area that is particularly uncovered then we might go back as a group to that hat. Otherwise, I might just ask people to write down anything they might have through about on the way, asking them to use the correct colour for each card.
This might require multiple passes or reminders. For example, someone might start by adding a data card for “nobody raised any concerns”, as shown here.
… and someone else might then add a feeling card for “didn’t feel safe to speak up”, which could indicate psychological safety issues.
While people are filling in any remaining cards, I ask everyone to look through the board to see patterns and understand what’s there.
What we have now is a large collection of interconnected ideas. The next step is to try to identify potential actions that we might take out of this. I ask people to write the actions on blue cards because blue is process and we’re now back to that hat.
We’re still trying to be creative at this point so there are no bad ideas. Write down whatever actions you think might be possible. The fact that we’ve written down an action doesn’t mean that we’re going to do it.
When all actions are visible, we cluster and remove duplicates just as we would for any other kind of retrospective. We vote on the actions to see where the focus should be and we start talking through possible actions from the highest voted item first.
When we’ve determined at least one action (and not more than three) that we’re going to do then we’re done. There will be far more ideas still on the board than we’re going to actually do anything with. If they’re important they’ll come up again in future retrospectives.
That’s it. Try it out and see how it works.
For more information on Six Thinking Hats itself, see Edward Debono’s book on the topic.
Black sticky notes do exist but they’re rarely stocked in-store so I’ve always ordered them online. You’ll also need a different colour marker. I like silver markers for the black sticky notes but the silver doesn’t write well on some of the other colours so you’ll need a mix of markers. ↩
If you haven’t watched this video before then watch it now before reading on. There will be spoilers below.
Many people can’t even agree on how many balls were passed but that’s not the real lesson from the video.
The key is whether or not you saw the gorilla and about half the people won’t. Interestingly, even if you did see it on your first viewing, you may not see it in future viewings, if your attention is focused enough on the passing of the balls. I’ve had that happen myself - most of the time I see it but sometimes I didn’t and that’s even after knowing what was going to happen. It’s all a matter of where my focus is.
Then even if you did see the gorilla, did you notice the colour change? Both of these are examples of inattentional blindness.
Attention bias causes us to see what we expect to see, rather than what’s actually there.1 There is good reason for our brains to work in this way. The sensory data that we receive is incomplete and so our brain fabricates a significant amount of what we think we perceive around us. Our eyes in particular have multiple blind spots and yet we think we are seeing clearly without obstruction all the time. This is the magic of our brains fabricating information.
There are two important facts that the gorilla study highlights about our brains.2
Interestingly, some more recent research3, identifies one exception to results of the gorilla study. It turns out that if the gorilla was moving fast enough then we do tend to notice it. Fast moving objects draw our attention, likely because they’re more of a survival risk.
Let’s look at another fun example — the hilarious “people swap” by Derren Brown. My favourite is still the very last one in the video.
Although rarely as amusing as the videos above, inattentional blindness happens all the time in a business setting. We get so focused on the new feature we developed that we didn’t notice where it didn’t solve the right problem or wasn’t working in some cases. We get all focused on the technical challenges that we miss the actual business objective that we’re trying to meet.
Two, or more, people working collaboratively are less likely to miss the obvious than one person alone. If three of us were watching the gorilla video together, it’s likely that at least one of us would have questioned “Why is there a gorilla there?” and drawn everyone’s attention to it.
Focusing on delivering small pieces and collecting feedback quickly, can help reduce the effect of this. It’s all too easy to miss the gorilla when we’re not getting feedback.
Inattentional blindness is a side-effect of our brain trying to optimize it’s own behaviour. There’s nothing we can do to stop it entirely but there are ways we can minimize the more negative effects.
“Coaching the Brain: Practical Applications of Neuroscience to Coaching”, Joseph O’Connor, Andrea Lades ↩
“Thinking Fast and Slow”, Daniel Kahneman. ↩
The visible gorilla: Unexpected fast—not physically salient—Objects are noticeable, Pascal Wallisch, Wayne E. Mackey, Michael W. Karlovich, and David J. Heeger https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2214930120 ↩
There are three different kinds of cognitive load:1
If the intrinsic and extraneous loads have taxed working memory then there won’t be enough capacity to push information back into long term memory. This means that while we may solve the problems we were working on, we won’t remember what we did and certainly won’t be able to take any learnings out of it.1
When the cognitive load of the work we’re doing is too high then we stop writing to long term memory. Effectively, we stopped learning.
To ensure that we are learning all the time, we need to adopt strategies that will lower each of these kinds of cognitive load.
In the context of programming…
The intrinsic load is about the problem itself. Can we split the problem into smaller pieces to make it easier to understand? Can we look at other times we’ve solved similar problems to see if there are hints or “recipes” to follow? Could we work with another person to get a different perspective?
The extraneous load is about the outside distractions that add to the problem. If we have accumulated technical debt then this will add to the cognitive load.
We know that linguistic antipatterns, code that implies one behaviour and then does another, will increase cognitive load. “Furthermore, the results from the fNIRS device indicate that the presence of linguistic antipatterns in the source code significantly increases the average oxygenated blood flow that a participant experiences (ie the cognitive load that is induced by the snippet is higher)”1
Code smells also increase extraneous cognitive load.1
If we take the time to pay back that technical debt, we will lower cognitive load for all work we do here. Not only will that make us more efficient at working with this code base, it will also increase the likelihood that we will learn from the work we are doing.
Complex code, linguistic antipatterns, code smells, and other things we collectively lump under “technical debt” all increase cognitive load. There is a real cost to allowing these things to continue.
Multitasking will also add extraneous load. What if we focused on just this one problem until it was done?
Lastly, germane load is the cost of writing to long term memory. We either have enough capacity for that and information is saved for the future or we don’t, and we forget everything we’ve been working on as soon as we need short term memory for something else.
In conclusion, it’s not bad to work on cognitively challenging work. The problem only occurs when it so demanding that we no longer have the ability to write back to long term memory and therefore don’t learn anything from the experience. Any steps we can take to simplify the problem will be a win in these cases.
Related: SonarQube offers a cognitive complexity metric in their reports. While their approach seems reasonable, I haven’t been able to find any studies around the accuracy of this metric. That shouldn’t be taken as a reason to not pay attention to it, however. It’s very likely that the things it identifies, really will help.
The Programmer’s Brain: What every programmer needs to know about cognition by Felienne Hermans ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4
There are a variety of roles that we might hold as we assist someone. The role we hold will be dependent on where the client is in that moment.
What we generally call “Agile coaching” is really focused on the bottom three, and sometimes the fourth, and so the roles we’re most concerned about are caretaker, guide, coach, teacher, and sometimes the mentor. A professional coach will help with all of those and may also focus on sponsor and awakener.
See also: this video of Robert Dilts explaining the roles in the context of therapy.
Let’s look at how the bottom levels map to the things we do as an agile coach.
At the level of environment, there are two roles that we can hold.
Preparing for an event or activity is an act of caretaking. We are creating environment that will support change or learning. We’re creating the space within which things will happen and are preparing all the things that the participants might need. If this is an in person event, then the caretaker might ensure there is a room booked and markers and stickies available.
The layout of the space will prime people’s behaviours in that space.
“If someone enters a room that is set up with a blackboard at the front of the room, and chairs arranged facing the front of the room in ‘theatre style’, he or she is likely to interpret it as a context for a presentation, and be prepared to sit passively and listen. If that person enters a room win which a small group of chairs is arranged facing teach out in a ‘round table’ format, he or she will most likely interpret it as a context for discussion and be ready to be more proactive and participative”
– From Coach To Awakener1
Actively facilitating that event or activity is the job of the guide. The guide is providing structure without injecting their own opinions or bias. If the guide is facilitating story mapping exercises, for example, they will establish the rules for story mapping and hold the attendees to those, but will remain impartial with regards to the actual content being created. The guide is facilitating, not participating.
A common thing that the guide will do is facilitating mapping sessions where the participants create a representation of some territory or domain. In the agile space, we commonly see this with story or feature mapping, value stream mapping, workflow definition, and even retrospectives. Any exercises where we attempt to visualize the problem space and the relationships between items so that we can then work with them.
If you haven’t seen Tom Wujec’s TED talk on How to Make Toast then go check that out now. This is an excellent discussion of mapping and the value we can get from that.
At the level of behaviours, we assist in the role of coach. We help someone achieve a specific behaviour by drawing out and strengthening abilities through observation and feedback.
We might do goal setting or establishing desired outcomes. “In what ways do you want to get better?”
We’re helping the client identify how they want to improve so that we can help them get there.
We certainly observe and provide feedback, so that the person we’re coaching can improve. “I noticed that this happened during the standup.”
We also provide suggestions for new behaviours that might give better results.
At the level of skills & capabilities, we assist as a teacher. Here we are helping people develop cognitive skills and capabilities. We help them develop new strategies and focus on new learnings rather than refinements of past ones.
At this level, we’re working with the skills and capabilities that form our basic competence, one of the key three psychological needs as defined by Self-Determination Theory (the others being autonomy and relatedness).
At this level, we are the teacher, giving the student new concrete skills that will improve their competence. We might be running a formal class or just giving one-on-one training.
These skills also include “softer” skills such as state management, so that they can control themselves better in difficult situations.
In values & beliefs, we use the role of mentor. The mentor guides people to discover unconscious competencies and overcome internal resistance1.
At this level, we might be a role model. “Let me show you how I do it, so that you can try it next time.”
Prioritization techniques fall into this level. How do we effectively prioritize our own time as well as the myriad of things we have to do.
We might help with reframing. Helping our mentee see the problem from a different angle.
These are normally outside the realm of an agile coach, although if you’re also a professional coach then you may touch on these.
With identity, we act as a sponsor. The sponsor seeks and safeguards potential within others, focusing on the development of identity and core values.1
Lastly, at the level of purpose, we use the role of awakener. The awakener focuses on vision, mission and spirit.1
In order to help others, we must understand their context and take on the role that is most appropriate for helping them in that moment. The logical levels model helps identify where they are now and what helping role is most appropriate in this situation.
Coach to Awakener is an excellent book that goes into far more depth on all of this then I could possibly do. Buy this one. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4
It should be obvious how Polyvagal Theory is relevant in therapy, but why is it relevant in business? The business world sometimes forgets that they and everyone who works for them is also human and is impacted by everything here. They’re not just cogs in a machine, no matter how much some people would like to think. If we don’t take care of our people then we aren’t taking care of our business.
And there are things in our environments today that push people into, and keep them in, the states that are least productive.
“We now live in a world in which too many people spend far too much time in autonomic states that evolved to temporarily help us survive fleeting danger - and far too little time feeling safe and achieving homeostasis1“2
Polyvagal Theory describes three states that we can be in, that will affect our behaviour. These are social engagement (Green), mobilization (Yellow) and immobilization (Red). Interestingly, it’s possible to be in more than one state at the same time and we’ll look at that a bit later.
Green is when we feel safe. Here we activate the ventral vagal complex, a component of the parasympathetic nervous system.
It’s social engagement, health, growth, and restoration. It’s in the green state that we have our best social behaviour, the most compassion, and critical thinking. We’re at our most calm and are at our best for being effective co-regulators. That means that not only are we good, but we’re helping those around us also be good.
Our ability to physically heal will improve when we’re in the green, as well as our ability to digest food and recuperate.
Yellow is when we feel danger. We activate the sympathetic nervous system and prepare for fast movement (fight or flight). We may feel panic or restlessness. We may react poorly or exhibit rage or anxiety.
Our physical mobility and defensive systems improve, our blood pressure, heart rate, adrenaline, pain tolerance, and reactivity all increase.
At the same time we lose many of our social behaviours and our ability to accurately understand the emotions of others. Our facial expressions become very flat and we start to speak more in a monotone. Our physical and mental health are impacted, as well as our digestive systems, and our ability to co-regulate with others.
Our ears tune themselves to be more receptive to low frequency sounds (such as predators make), which makes it harder to hear human speech. At the same time, we’re hyperfocused on activity around us. These combine such that people in the yellow cannot pay attention effectively, even if they wanted to.
Red is when we feel threat to life. During Red, we activate the dorsal vagal complex, another part of the parasympathetic nervous system. This is the oldest part of our survival mechanism and intends in part to keep us out of danger by appearing already dead, and also to numb us to any pain should we be actually be dying.
It’s here that we have fainting, bodily shutdown, blacking out, dissociation, numbness, depression, hopelessness, helplessness, and an inability to socially engage and communicate with others.
This is the freeze response.
Our heart rate, blood pressure, depth of breathing, body awareness, awareness of others all decrease. So does our ability to socially engage and communicate.
Interestingly, it’s possible to be in more than one state at the same time, even though that might sound contradictory.
In our business context, Green by itself or a Green/Yellow combination are good and productive states. Anything else, indicates that we have a problem.
Label | State | Behaviour |
---|---|---|
Social communication | Green | Social communication |
Play or dance | Green, Yellow | Social engagement & mobilization |
Fight or flight | Yellow | Mobilization |
Intimacy | Green, Red | Social engagement & immobilization |
Appeasement | Green, Yellow, Red | Social engagement & threat detection |
Fawning | Yellow, Red | Compliance without co-regulation |
Shutdown or dissociation | Red | Immobilization |
So let’s talk about how this works in a business environment.
“If we need to be a bit cynical and focus on the bottom line to make our argument, we’ll posit that a worker who feels safe is likely to be more creative, productive, and stick around longer. The modern workplaces’ tendency to be dismissive of this fact is shortsighted and self-defeating. It is a lose-lose for both employers and employees.”2
Polyvagal Theory is clear that the human nervous system craves social interaction. That we must interact with others to be in the Green state, and it’s only in the Green that we get the productivity we want. That might lend credence to the calls to return to a physical office and yet, it also calls into question so many of the things that are in our current offices that happen to be detrimental. Open plan offices, in particular, with their complete lack of privacy, force us into a constant state of Yellow.
“The sound of constant chatter funnels through our brains and demands our attention, forcing us out of a state of focus into the alertness of the Yellow zone. The low-frequency background noise that often emanates from fluorescent lights, ventilation systems, and equipment such as copy machines is interpreted by our neuroception3 as a sign of danger. A complete lack of visual privacy forces us into a constant state of high alert”2
When we factor in the commute, it’s likely to be worse. A commute where we are driving will force us into the Yellow. A commute where we are on a bus or train may allow us to remain in the Green, if it isn’t too busy or chaotic.
Micromanagement will also drive us into the Yellow, as can measurement of individual productivity. It seems that every month we have some new idea for how to measure the productivity of our people and managers understandably are interested in that. The problem is that doing this measurement can actually make productivity worse by forcing people into the Yellow.
“But this feeling of having eyes over our shoulders is an alarming one. On a primal level, it triggers our survival instincts. When we know we aren’t being watched, we are instinctively activated into a state of alertness – and the Yellow system. This isn’t to say that employers shouldn’t monitor employees’ performance or keep an eye on them. But they should know that micromanaging these metrics comes with a real price. The need to be alert and on guard at all times takes a toll on us and prevents us from access the creative and productivity-costing powers of the Green system.”2
True social interaction is definitely going to help though, whether we are physically together or not. We have a tendency, particularly in IT, to put everyone into silos and encourage them to work by themselves.
Polyvagal Theory tells us that this can’t be the way we work all the time. Yes, some people do require solitude and introverts do need time on their own to recharge, but we also have a biological imperative for social interaction. We have to find that right mix that keeps everyone in the Green.
Polyvagal Theory explains so much of the behaviour that we see, and exhibit ourselves, on a regular basis. I encourage you to check out some of Dr Porge’s books on the subject. I particularly enjoyed “The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe” and “Our Polyvagal World: How Safety and Trauma Change Us”. It’s the latter that touches on office spaces and the commute.
]]>Actual hypnosis has been used to remove fears and phobias, to heal trauma, and increase confidence or happiness. It’s provided pain management, even during dental work or surgery. It’s been used to change behaviours, to improve sports performance, and to help people quit smoking and other, more serious, addictions.
It’s also a set of foundational skills that underpins much of what we do in the coaching world, even though we almost never discuss it in those terms.
First, it’s a normal and natural state. You are in and out of a hypnotic trance all day long, and this is a good thing.
At a physical level, a hypnotic state uses different nodes in the brain and operates at different brainwave frequencies. We are physically using the brain in a different way than when we’re not in trance.
Ultimately, hypnosis is a form of communication. It allows us to talk to the unconscious mind, and when the conditions are right, to give instructions to that unconscious mind.
You may find that concerning, the thought that people might be able to leave instructions in your mind. There is some good news here though - there’s a part of your mind called the critical faculty whose primary purpose is to intercept instructions that would be bad for you and not let them through. You cannot be made to do anything that violates your core beliefs and you won’t accept instructions from people you don’t already trust.
Well, everyone. You are hypnotizing the people around you, even if you aren’t aware of it or don’t have any training, and they are hypnotizing you. We all affect those around us, all the time. The only way to avoid that would be to avoid all contact with other humans.
What’s different about a trained hypnotist is that we’re aware of what we’re doing; we’re doing it deliberately and consciously.
We can trace the use of hypnosis back four thousand years to the Egyptian sleep temples, even though it’s only recently, with the rise of the field of neuroscience, that we’ve begun to understand how any of it works.
Many of the things that we do in Agile are already leveraging hypnotic techniques, even though we don’t call it that. Many professional coaching skills find their roots in the hypnotic world, as do many of the facilitation techniques like LEGO Serious Play or Training from the Back of the Room. Every time I’ve seen a demo of Co-Active Coaching or ORSC, I see techniques that I first learned in a hypnosis class.
These are foundational skills that you’re using, without even being aware.
There are some people in the agile space who deliberately learn these foundational skills directly but there still aren’t many who talk about it. Today, on World Hypnosis Day, perhaps we should.
]]>This is only one part of the larger approach1 to conserving energy that our brain uses when faced with decisions, but it’s a part that is seen repeatedly so it’s worth calling out.
Attribute substitution will occur when three specific conditions are satisfied2
Let’s look at a couple of examples, to see what that really means.
Consider this problem: “A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?”
Most people will answer 10 cents, which is wrong.
This problem satisfies all the criteria above. The real solution is complex, while there’s a simpler problem of chunking that we can substitute. Finally, our System 1 is willing to go along with the simple answer. And so attribute substitution happens and we very quickly get the wrong answer.
“The surprisingly high rate of errors in this easy problem illustrates how lightly System 2 monitors the output of System 1: people are not accustomed to thinking hard, and are often content to trust a plausible judgment that quickly comes to mind.”2
In the Stroop test, we’re given a series of written colours, some of which are written in the colour that’s spelled out and some that aren’t. For example, we might see the word RED written in red and the word BLUE written in blue. Then we might see YELLOW written in green. When the word and the colour it’s written in are different then this is a computationally complex problem and lends itself well to what we’re doing.
Interestingly, our System 2 tends to catch our errors here and so it’s more common that people get correct answers but slow down dramatically as their System 2 keeps overriding System 1. Try it yourself here.
So in the case of the Stroop test, we tend not to get attribute substitution because we fail the third criteria.
When meeting someone for the first time, determining their intelligence or character is a complex problem while noting the colour of their skin or physical characteristics are not3. Attribute substitution causes us to make many poor “first impressions” and will take time to overcome.
Since System 2 is fairly slow, it can be overwhelmed with time pressure. For this reason, we are more likely to see attribute substitution when time pressure is present.
On the other hand, we can reduce the incidence of attribute substitution by alerting people to the possibility that their judgement can be contaminated.
“For example, sunny or rainy weather typically affects reports of well-being, but Schwarz and Clore (1983) found that merely asking respondents about the weather just before the well-being question eliminates the effect – apparently by reminding respondents that their current mood (a candidate heuristic attribute) is influenced by a factor (current weather) that is obviously irrelevant to the requested target attribute (overall well-being).”2
Attribute substitution is an ongoing phenomena that happens all the time. It’s not necessarily bad, as it allows us to be far more efficient with our energy usage. However, it does have the potential to result in very poor decisions, and so we should be aware of it.
Shah, A. K., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2008). Heuristics made easy: An effort-reduction framework. Psychological Bulletin, 134(2), 207–222. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.134.2.207 ↩
Kahneman, D., & Frederick, S. (2002). Representativeness revisited: Attribute substitution in intuitive judgment. In T. Gilovich, D. Griffin, & D. Kahneman (Eds.), Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment (pp. 49–81). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511808098.004 ↩ ↩2 ↩3
https://psychology.fandom.com/wiki/Attribute_substitution#cite_note-revisited-2 ↩
One of my clients has a kudos channel in their Slack instance, which is a practice I really like. The intention is to draw attention to, and to celebrate, the good things that people are doing.
Over a few months, they noticed that the tone of their kudos had changed. They’d started with comments like “Thanks to Amy and Bob for all the creativity they showed during the last demo.” and “Thanks to Carol for always having our backs.”
Over a period of a few months those had changed to “Thanks to the Dragon team for working all through the weekend to get the release out.” and “Thanks to Don for putting in the hours even when he was sick.”
You can see that they’d originally started as kudos for character and positive outcomes and had quickly devolved into rewards for heroic and unsustainable behaviour.
In a hero culture, we rely on typically a small number of people to take extreme measures to make things work. When they demonstrate that they’re able to do that, we pile more work on them.
The heros often take this work on willingly as demonstrating competence provides strong intrinsic motivation1. When it really needs to be done, we give it to the hero because we rely on it getting done. The problem is that this quickly becomes a self-fulling prophecy. The more we give to the hero, the less the rest of the team takes on and the less the team takes on, the more the hero is required to step up.
Over time, what happens is that the hero inevitably burns out and that the rest of the team disengages so completely2 that they no longer enjoy the work they’re doing. It’s common for both the hero and the others to start quitting at this point. Nobody is enjoying it any more.
I’ve been the hero before and I’ve seen it happen over and over again to others. The good news is that this is an avoidable problem. We can break the cycle as soon as we recognize what’s happening.
The way to break this is for the hero to stop doing work by themselves. Their job is now to ensure that other people on the team are capable of doing the work. They should be working with others and not working by themselves.
In the beginning, this will be painful for the hero as it will take longer to get the work done. It won’t take long though before we have many people who are capable of doing the work and the team is far more productive than they used to be.
We want those heros to start demonstrating leadership, rather than heroics.
While I’ve been talking about the hero as a single person on a team, heros can also happen as teams within an organization. I’ve seen hero teams that take on all the really important work and we get the same problems as they burn out and other teams disengage.
Hero culture is seen as positive by many companies, and yet it is destructive over the long term and should be avoided wherever possible.
See also: The Karpman Drama Triangle, which has similar ideas but is not exactly the same.
Intrinsic motivation is the most powerful of the various forms of motivation. More about motivation ↩
“Amotivation” is when we lack the motivation to do the work. More about amotivation ↩