Category: Personal Development

“Patience is the primary virtue needed in order to reach your destiny.” Tony Evans, Detours

We use the DiSC model in leadership training.  As you can see below, the first question asked of people when they are trying to determine their DiSC style or the style of another without the assessment is, “Are you cautious and reflective or are you fast-paced and outspoken?”  I’m so fast-paced and outspoken, you don’t even need to ask the next question (questioning and skeptical or accepting and warm?). I am a Di or an iD all day long.

So, it’s obvious that patience is not one of my virtues.   In fact, it is quite contrary to the way I am wired.

I’m used to driving forward to meet goals without ever pausing to think about is this goal really what I want or need anymore.  This has led to some positive results, but also an increasing inability to enjoy the process of getting there, not to mention stopping to examine if there are better goals to be pursuing.

This year, I’ve been learning the power of the pause. Through trying to force some things to happen in order to launch a new business we had set out to do this year, I have learned that oftentimes pausing to re-valuate the timing of and need for things is critical.

If you, like me, have trouble with pausing and patience, here are some things that have helped me self-reflect on whether or not a pause is needed:

1. Are the right people, circumstances and resources available to drive forward? In my experience trying to launch this business, one of these things fell off, then another, then another. Yet, I was still trying to push forward because I had the goal written down on paper.  When I realized that everything I thought I had at my disposal when I set that goal was no longer there, it was time to pause.
2. Are you enjoying the pursuit? And enjoying it enough to push through resistance? If you don’t know whether you are coming or going and/or can’t stop and reflect on a few things each day you enjoyed doing as a part of the pursuit, it is probably not right.  Also, if the first “no” and/or questions and skepticism come your way and you cave, it is probably time to pause and question is it worth it?
3. Are other things put in front of you that need your attention more? A large volume of current client work, a son who needs a lot support and time from my husband and I right now, and my husband being promoted into a role he loves but that is more demanding of his time, I have realized are all more important priorities (sometimes not as fun, but always more important) and have led to the need for pause in this area of pursuit that I thought would be a large part of my focus for the year.

 

I love this thought by Tony Evans from Detours:

“Training for greater things always takes place in lesser things.  … always-always-always be faithful where you are..,Far too often, we are chasing our destiny so much that we forget to maximize the location where we are right now.”

My pause has been such a blessing.  And the pause, I believe, is now making way for this pursuit to, at the right time, become a more fruitful reality.

How are you pausing to maximize where you are right now?

One of my favorite things to do for companies is to help them understand what distinguishes high performers from average and/or low performers in their organization. The purpose of this could be for a variety of reasons, but oftentimes, it is to help companies create a profile and tools to select the right talent.

We ask the clients to provide us with the opportunity to talk to high, mid and low performers.  We ask them a series of job analysis questions and watch them work for a bit.  While we watch them work, we ask them questions about what they are doing, why they are doing it and ask them to explain what is going on in their head to understand what mental processes they are engaging in to complete their work.

Recently, we’ve been working on this type of project for a client.  And we’ve uncovered one of the most interesting things I think I’ve seen so far in doing this kind of work.

Overwhelmingly, the high performers talk in metaphors.  They explain things, often complex things, through metaphors instead of direct or literal language.

For example: “So, when we do this, it is like we are headed out on a trip from here to Nashville, and we decide half way through that we need to change our tires and our oil.”  This was used to explain how poor planning hurts the company.

Another way this came out was high performers using song lyrics to describe what they were doing, how they were doing it, or why.

In this particular example as well as in other workplaces, people who talk in metaphors seem to be better teachers. (Think Jesus, arguably, regardless of your religion, one of the best teachers ever.  How did he usually talk to his followers?  In parables, which is simply another word for metaphor.)

Metaphors help us:

1. Make more than one point with less language. There is often the points and THE POINT that can only be expressed through metaphors instead of specific or descriptive dialogue.
2. Describe often complex things in simple terms.
3. Commit things to memory. We remember the song lyrices or the analogy more than we remember the work instructions.

In this instance, the behavior of talking in metaphors will be related to the overall competency of teaching.  Teaching will be one of three to four competencies we will design selection criteria and assessment around for this client.  The ability to teach in order share knowledge across employees is a critical competitive advantage for this organization.

So how can we assess for teaching ability?  Well one way is to see if candidates talk in metaphors. Do candidates engage in the behavior that the high performers use?

To do this we will train hiring managers to pay attention to these things:

1. In interviews, using “tell me about a time” questions, does the candidate explain things or answer the questions and use metaphors to describe?
2. In interviews, ask them to explain the last time they described how to solve a problem to someone. Ask them to actually walk through the description.  Are metaphors or analogies present?
3. In a work sample, we will ask candidates to teach someone how to do something. We will score this work sample, among other things, to see whether using metaphors was present.

Another way to look at metaphors is to more broadly see if people tell stories to explain things instead of simply describing what is.   Assess if storytelling is present in your candidates.

Is your workplace full of metaphors?  If so, your organization may be better at teaching than others.