Are You a But Leader?

Posted on 2013/01/212013/01/23 by Jason Hensel

The first rule of improv is “yes and.” There are other rules, or rather guidelines, however “yes and” is the one and only rule that truly matters. Without agreeing to the reality presented to you, progress trips over itself, and you and your co-performer are left staring at each other.

Much like improv performers, company leaders and managers should learn the “yes and” rule and stick it in their hearts. I’m flabbergasted at the number of times over the years I’ve experienced a “yes but” manager. Maybe there’s a “yes but” class at MBA schools, or maybe mentors train managers in the art of “yes but.”

Stop the “yes but” cycle of abuse, I say!

No one likes to have an idea agreed to with conditions. When you do that, you stop progress. The employee starts immediately placing restrictions on ideas. It’s more fruitful to agree and add to the proposal.

Of the following examples, tell me which is better:

Employee: “I plan to recycle all the aluminum cans in the break room.”
Manager: “Great, but that’s a lot of cans and you’ll have to do it all yourself.”

Employee: “I plan to recycle all the aluminum cans in the break room.”
Manager: “Great, and I know a place you can take them that offers the most money.”

If you’re truly a leader, or want to be one, you’ll see the benefit of contributing to an idea and moving forward rather than holding back and letting fear, doubt, or pessimism dictate your decisions.

The great improv teacher Del Close once said to “follow the fear.” What he meant by that is you should go toward what makes you uncomfortable, do things that scare you. For a lot of leaders, agreeing to an idea wholeheartedly scares the snot out of them. That’s exactly what they should do, though. Agreement isn’t the endgame, however. You have to add to the conversation, move it forward.

Do me a favor. This week, with everyone you interact with, make “yes and” a part of every conversation. It will seem uncomfortable and forced at first. Over time, though, it will become instinctual. After the week is over, reflect and let me know if you feel happier with your decisions and that life is moving forward.

If you’re creating an atmosphere of agreement, I can guarantee that your employees will agree to follow you. If you’re a but leader, though, employees will find any excuse to counter your decisions. Don’t be a “yes but” leader. Be a “yes and” leader.

(Image via Flickr: visualpun.ch / Creative Commons)

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Five Ways to Have Happy Employees

Posted on 2013/01/152013/01/15 by Jason Hensel

Fast Company recently published an article by Lydia Dishman titled “The Secrets of America’s Happiest Companies.” Dishman covers a lot of ground about the ways different companies keep employees happy. For those that like bullet lists, though, she broke it down to five good best practices.

Variety: Happy employees experience different roles within the company, which can create a feeling of improvement.
Meaning: Employees want to feel like they’re making a difference in the world, or at least for their company.
Praise: Employees like regular praise and public acknowledgement for a great job.
Individual: A people-first policy will go a long way in keeping employees happy. No more widget makers. They want recognition as humans.
Integration: The term “work-life balance” is no longer applicable in the 21st century. Focus on how to reasonably integrate work and life within an employee’s daily activities.

Check out the full article for more about how to keep employees happy, and let me know in the comments what makes you happy at work.

(Image via Flickr: Dice.com / Creative Commons)

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Review: How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

Posted on 2013/01/142013/01/14 by Jason Hensel

Navel-gazing, or the art of self-reflection, hit its high point on the Internet around the turn of the century. Then, every third blog you came across was an exploration of an individual’s daily habits and thoughts. Letting strangers have a glimpse of their lives didn’t bother the authors, because either they wanted the attention or they sincerely wanted to know themselves better. Both options played a role, I’m sure.

In the 16th century, Montaigne was the ultimate navel-gazer. His only aspiration was to learn how to live, the proper way to conduct one’s life. He set out to discover this by writing essays, pieces that are about one subject but would meander or jump to another thought. His goal wasn’t order, but to present life as it is so that he (and the reader) could learn from it. Many readers claim that when they read Montaigne, they feel that he’s writing about them on a personal level. It’s because he was honest with himself, and that we’re all connected, we all feel the same things, experience the same joys and griefs. Many, though, try to rein in their thoughts and feelings, creating a systemic narrative. That’s not life, which really can be compared to a game of Pong. Sometimes you move in a straight line, sometimes you move diagonally. A lot of the time you move back as far as you move forward, and the speed of it all is random. Montaigne knew this and embraced it.

In How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, Sarah Bakewell offers readers a portrait of a man clearly ahead of his time. Even now, Montaigne’s raw honesty would be frown upon or mocked. One only likes a mirror when it’s there to please.

Bakewell organizes the book in 20 chapters, each with such headings as “Q: How to live? Question everything” and “Q: How to live? Give up control.” Each chapter covers a period of Montaigne’s life while at the same time exploring the topic at hand. It’s a clever progression. Throughout the book, you learn a lot about French history, nobility, and philosophy, both Montaigne’s accidental attempts at it and Greek and Roman thoughts.

It’s clear that Bakewell loves Montaigne. The writing is at times energetic, humorous, and balanced, much like her subject’s essays. If you’ve never read any Montaigne, you’ll be inspired to after finishing this book. You may even be inspired to contemplate your own existence, perhaps begin a journal or create a blog. If anything, you’ll definitely think about not only how to live, but what it means to live.

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The Rewind Button: Seven Album Wrap-up

Posted on 2013/01/122013/01/12 by Jason Hensel

The Rewind Button is a group blogging project that I’m participating in. We’re taking on Rolling Stone‘s Top 40 albums of all time and writing our own reviews of them.

I tried for many months to avoid writing a multi-album post. I wanted to focus each entry on an individual artist or band. However, I’ve learned a lot about myself and music during this project. Primarily, I don’t enjoy writing about music that much. I mentioned that in a previous Rewind Button entry, and here at the end, upon reflection, my feeling still holds true. That means for a lot of these albums, I struggled to write about them. Perhaps I tried to make the reviews harder than they needed to be. The reviews I enjoyed writing the most were the ones that I let the words tumble out of my head, unconscious of where my thoughts were going.

Maybe I do, then, enjoy writing about music if I can do it the same way I listen to albums. That is, totally immersed in feeling. In the end, I’m happy that I took part in this project, and I’m grateful for the invitation to do so. I’ve discovered other blogs and writers that are now saved in my bookmarks, and I’ve listened to some albums that I had never heard before that I now love (Stevie Wonder) and ones that I can’t stand (Joni Mitchell). It’s been a fun project, and I’m finishing it with these final seven albums.

The Band — Music From Big Pink

The song “The Weight” is a staple at karaoke spots in these parts. It’s an okay song, and it’s the only original song on this album that I liked. The other song, “Long Black Veil” is a cover song, and The Band does a good version of it. Overall, though, I found this album uninspiring. It’s not one that I will listen to again.

David Bowie — The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars

Bowie rarely fails me. I appreciate that he pushes himself and the art of music, and Ziggy Stardust is a winner for me. In our current age of singles and quick hits, it’s refreshing to go back in time and listen to an album that told a story, that provided a narrative to the music, that tried to show there was more you could do with rock music. This a top 20 album for me.

Carole King — Tapestry

Carole King is one of the world’s greatest songwriters. Tapestry, though, was just an okay album for me. I had never heard it before, and I kept seeing it on best-albums-of-all-time lists, so I was curious about what made it so great. And as with several albums on this list, I found it not that great. Perhaps at the time it was groundbreaking or inspiring or something. Now, however, I find it pedestrian.

The Eagles — Hotel California

The Eagles are my dad’s favorite band, so I grew up listening to their albums. Hearing this one again took me back to the late 1970s, sitting in my dad’s apartment patiently waiting for this album to finish so I could listen to KISS. Today, I notice The Eagles’ influence in my music, and that’s a good thing, because the band were solid songwriters in both lyrics and hooks. That’s something I work on emulating in my writing.

Muddy Waters — The Anthology

Muddy Waters is a great blues artist, and I found myself liking this album more than I imagined I would. For those who write or edit for a living, The Anthology is great background music for working. The blues’ rhythm and repeating of lines lulls one into a calm state where focus and imagination reside side by side.

The Beatles — Please Please Me

It’s no secret that I love The Beatles. Please Please Me, while not my favorite, still stands far and above many of the other albums on this list. Please please let me listen to it over anything that Van Morrison or Joni Mitchell ever puts out. How this album arrived at No. 39 and not higher is a mystery to me. It deserves higher, and in my personal list, it is.

Love — Forever Changes

This is a great, strong finish for the top 40 list. I had forgotten how much I enjoy this album. You can definitely hear the late 1960s vibe, but I also detect elements of punk, post-punk, and balls-out rock. I’ll have to remember to listen to this album more often, because it’s inspiring and a good-time experience, which is exactly what music should be.

Please visit these other blogs participating in The Rewind Button project:

Betty Livin

Musicqwest

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You’re More Creative When Bored at Work

Posted on 2013/01/092013/01/10 by Jason Hensel

I would never say I’m bored at work (hey, boss!), but I will say that there are times when my productivity voyage encounters the horse latitudes.

That’s not a bad thing, because according to a recent study, boredom at work can increase creativity since it gives us an opportunity to daydream.

Dr. Sandi Mann and Rebekah Cadman, both from the University of Central Lancashire, presented the study this week at the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society Division of Occupational Psychology at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Chester.

They conducted two studies. The first one asked 40 people to complete a boring task (transcribing numbers from a telephone book) for 15 minutes. They were then asked to complete another task (imagining various uses for a pair of Styrofoam cups). This second task evaluated their creativity.

The results showed that those who transcribed telephone numbers were more creative in their uses of the cups than a control group that just worked on the cups.

The second study investigated the role of daydreaming by adding a different boring job to a group. Thirty people transcribed telephone numbers; however, another group of 30 participants read the numbers rather than write them.

Mann and Cadman found that the reading group was more creative than those who had to write the numbers out. This raises the possibility that boring tasks, “like reading or perhaps attending meetings,” leads to more creativity.

“Boredom at work has always been seen as something to be eliminated, but perhaps we should be embracing it in order to enhance our creativity,” Mann said. “What we want to do next is to see what the practical implications of this finding are. Do people who are bored at work become more creative in other areas of their work–or do they go home and write novels?”

When I read all day at work, the last thing I want to do is go home and work with words more. That’s just that immediate day, though. During work lulls, I do come up with ideas that turn into writing projects at a later time, so maybe there is something to this study.

Are you more creative when you’re bored at work?

(Story materials from the British Psychological Society. Image via Flickr: eggmergency / Creative Commons)

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Hot Chocolate’s Taste Influenced by Cup Color

Posted on 2013/01/032013/01/03 by Jason Hensel

Color is a powerful persuader. Red cars appear faster than other cars. Blue rooms are relaxing and help spur creativity. Now you can add that orange or cream-colored containers cause hot chocolate to taste better.

“The color of the container which serves food and drinks can enhance some of its attributes, such as taste or odor,” said Betina Piqueras-Fiszman, a researcher at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. The researcher worked with Charles Spence of Oxford University on the study.

The researchers conducted an experiment where 57 participants had to evaluate samples of hot chocolate served in four types of plastic cups, all the same size but of different colors: white, cream, red, and orange with white inside.

The results, published in Journal of Sensory Studies, showed that participants liked best the hot chocolate served in orange and cream-colored containers.

However, the sweetness (not the flavor) and aroma were not influenced by the cup’s color.

“There is no fixed rule to say that a taste or flavor is enhanced with a particular color or tone,” Piqueras-Fiszman said. “This actually varies with the type of food, but the fact is that, as the effect occurs, more attention should be paid to the color of the packaging, as it has more potential than you can imagine.”

This should encourage chefs and hospitality professionals to think more about the color of the tableware and packaging. For example, blue cups seem to quench thirst better, while pink packaging makes items seem more sweet.

(Story materials from SINC. Image via Flickr: Smokers High Life / Creative Commons)

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How to Finish What You Started

Posted on 2013/01/032013/01/03 by Jason Hensel

My friend, L-, wrote me an email the other day that included no greeting or closing. It only said, “Finish what you started, Jason.” I know exactly what it’s about. Nevertheless, it was ominous.

What L- wrote about was a play that I’ve meant to revise for a few months. L- was prodding me to complete the script so that it could be performed soon. Still, when I received the email, I thought, “Oh no, if I don’t finish everything I’ve started, something bad will happen to me. I may, in fact, die before reaching my goals.” Dramatic? Yes. Warranted? No. There’s no reason to freak out over every goal not met. That’s why we’ve been endowed with the good gift of justification.

There are some steps, though, you can take if you’re really bent on finishing what you started, courtesy of Ali Luke, a writer and writing coach.

Stop starting new projects
Access your current projects
Choose one project to focus on
Decide what “finished” will look like
Set some milestones (and start hitting them)

Those appear reasonable and doable. For this play I’m writing, I’m going to focus only on it the next two weeks, concentrating on producing at least two polished pages a day. Then I’ll be ready to send L- the script. Of course, I’ll attached an equally ominous note, something like, “Read carefully what you’ve been given, L-.”

Please read Ali Luke’s blog entry on writetodone.com for in-depth analysis of each step, and please let me know in the comments the best ways you finish what you started.

(Image via Flickr: marcus_jb1973 / Creative Commons)

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Greed Is More Often Paid Forward Than Generosity

Posted on 2013/01/022013/01/02 by Jason Hensel

Paying it forward is a great concept and one that should be practiced more often. However, it’s more common to find people repaying greed with greed.

“The idea of paying it forward is this cascade of goodwill will turn into a utopia with everyone helping everyone,” said lead researcher Kurt Gray, PhD. “Unfortunately, greed or looking out for ourselves is more powerful than true acts of generosity.”

The study, published online in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, is the first of its kind to examine the notion of paying forward generosity, equality, or greed.

“The bulk of the scientific research on this concept has focused on good behavior, and we wondered what would happen when you looked at the entire gamut of human behaviors,” said Gray, an assistant professor of social psychology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, who conducted the study with researchers at Harvard University.

According to the study:

In five experiments involving money or work, participants who received an act of generosity didn’t pay generosity forward any more than those who had been treated equally. But participants who had been the victims of greed were more likely to pay greed forward to a future recipient, creating a negative chain reaction. Women and men showed the same levels of generosity and greed in the study.

In one experiment, researchers recruited 100 people from subway stations and tourist areas in Cambridge, Mass., to play an economic game. They told participants that someone had split $6 with them and then gave them an envelope that contained the entire $6 for a generous split, $3 for an equal split, or nothing for a greedy split. The participants then received an additional $6 that they could split in another envelope with a future recipient, essentially paying it forward.

Receiving a generous split didn’t prompt any greater generosity than receiving equal treatment, but people who received nothing in the first envelope were more likely to put little or nothing in the second envelope, depriving future recipients because of the greed they had experienced. The average amount paid forward by participants who received a greedy split was $1.32, well below an equal split of $3.

The results confirmed the researchers’ hypothesis that greed would prevail because negative stimuli have more powerful effects on thoughts and actions than positive stimuli. Focusing on the negative may cause unhappiness, but it makes sense as an evolutionary survival skill, Gray said. “If there is a tiger nearby, you really have to take notice or you’ll get eaten,” he said. “If there is a beautiful sunset or delicious food, it’s not a life-or-death situation.”

The study also examined whether people would have similar reactions involving work rather than money. In one online experiment, researchers told 60 participants that four tasks needed to be completed, including two easy word association games and two boring, repetitive tasks that involved circling vowels in dense Italian text. They explained to the participants that someone had already split the work with them, leaving them the two fun tasks in a generous split, one fun task and one boring task in an equal split, or both boring tasks in a greedy split. The participants then had to complete those tasks and split an additional four tasks with a future recipient. The results were the same, with greed being paid forward more than generosity.

“We all like to think that being generous will influence others to treat someone nicely, but it doesn’t automatically create a chain of goodwill,” Gray said. “To create chains of positive behavior, people should focus less on performing random acts of generosity and more on treating others equally — while refraining from random acts of greed.”

(Story materials from the American Psychological Association. Image via Flickr: Scabeater / Creative Commons)

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Take One Step at a Time on Stairs

Posted on 2013/01/012013/01/01 by Jason Hensel

My office is located on the 17th floor of a glass building in Dallas. There are four elevators that can take me to my floor quickly, depending on the time of day. During times that I’m waiting for an elevator’s doors to open, I’ve often considered taking the stairs and walking up all 17 flights to my office. Then, of course, an open elevator appears.

Starting tomorrow, though, I’m walking up those stairs one step at a time. Sure, I can bound up them and reach my floor quicker, but according to recent research in PLoS, taking them one at a time burns more calories.

“The advice to those seeking to utilise stair climbing specifically as a method to control or reduce weight is to ascend stairways one step at a time; more calories are burned through this form of stair climbing,” the study’s authors wrote. “For example, climbing just a 15 m high stairway five times a day represents an energy expenditure of on average 302 kcal per week using the one step strategy and 266 kcal using the two step strategy.”

If you’re using a two-step strategy, you’ll have a much harder and quicker workout, expending more energy. However, if you take one step at a time, you’ll expend less energy but take longer to reach your destination, thus ensuring burning more calories.

What exercise routines are you starting this year?

(h/t to Scientific American. Image via Flickr: Dan Eckert / Creative Commons)

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Are You Awakening Possibilities in Others?

Posted on 2012/12/312012/12/31 by Jason Hensel

The year is winding down, and I’m sure many of you are making plans and promises for next year. For example, like many writers, I’m planning on writing more.

However, there is one plan I will work hard at achieving next year, and that is to help awaken possibility in people. No, this isn’t some New Age-Kumbaya goal. It’s simply an effort to help others see how powerful they can be on their own. It’s a positive take on my philosophy that we don’t need hierarchies (in business or life) in order to be productive or better people.

I thought of this resolution yesterday when I was re-watching a classic TED video (embedded below) from musician and conductor Benjamin Zander on the transformative power of classical music. Toward the end of his presentation, he talks about you can tell if you’re awaking another’s spirit.

Now, I had an amazing experience. I was 45 years old, I’d been conducting for 20 years, and I suddenly had a realization. The conductor of an orchestra doesn’t make a sound. My picture appears on the front of the CD, but the conductor doesn’t make a sound. He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful. And that changed everything for me. It was totally life changing. People in my orchestra came up to me and said, “Ben, what happened?” That’s what happened. I realized my job was to awaken possibility in other people. And of course, I wanted to know whether I was doing that. And you know how you find out? You look at their eyes. If their eyes are shining, you know you’re doing it.

I think we’re all searching for excitement in life and avoiding routine when we can. Perhaps if we all help awaken possibilities in each other, we’ll have much more fulfilled and happier lives. That’s my goal for next year. What’s yours?

(Image via Flickr: Chris James / Creative Commons)

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Best Songs I Heard in 2012

Posted on 2012/12/262012/12/31 by Jason Hensel

Here are the songs I discovered in 2012 that I either listened to the most, forced others to listen to, danced around alone to in my room, or wished I had written.

Some, like Rihanna or Kendrick Lamar, are artists I’d not normally listen to on a regular basis. Rihanna’s performance, though, of “Diamonds” on Saturday Night Live, complete with a green screen from the 1980s, caused me to listen to the song in a whole new way. Kendrick’s Lamar’s “Backstreet Freestyle” reminds me a lot of late 1980’s rap, a la 2 Live Crew.

Of course, I’m a sucker for power pop, and Ben Kweller is a master of that style. But this past year has been more of a rediscovery of my love of shoegaze. I’ve fallen in love with almost anything that the label Captured Tracks puts out, and DIIV‘s “Doused” is the best song I’ve heard all year.

DIIV was also one of the best concerts I saw this past year. They played at Club Dada with Frankie Rose and Lonesome Ghost, a Dallas band that I look forward to seeing more of in the next year. For the record, the other concerts that topped my list were New Order, Die Antwoord, and The Faint.

I hope you enjoy this playlist, and please let me know of any songs you loved this past year. I’m sure I missed many other great songs.

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The Most Popular Posts of 2012

Posted on 2012/12/252012/12/28 by Jason Hensel

I’m a sucker for year-end lists, so I’m going to let you in on what have been my 10 most popular posts of the last year. Judging from this list, I should do more music reviews. Those appear to pull in the page views. Thank you to everyone that has visited.

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