May I have your attention . . .

A few weeks before the National Basketball Association begins their season, all the rookie players meet for a mandatory orientation session. One year, a group of provocatively dressed females were hanging out in the hotel bar drinking and flirting with the young NBA players.

The next morning, as the rookies assembled for their first session, they were surprised to see the same group of young women from the night before. Each woman then stepped to the front of the room and introduced herself: “Hi, I’m Donna, Cynthia, Karen, Michelle - and I’m HIV positive.”

That one carefully designed experience had more impact on the players than a dozen cautionary lectures on the risk of AIDS.

What has this got to do with managing change?

Plenty!

There is a section of the brain known as Broca’s Area, which is a sort of filter for sensory input, sifting through everything we see and hear and read to separate the useful, the pertinent, and the unusual from the rest of what we can call background noise. In other words, Broca’s Area looks at all input and lets pass what is familiar and commonplace, but stops to examine what is novel or surprising. When something is described as having arrested our attention, the phrase is more than apt: some piece of input or information has in fact been detained for questioning.

Have you noticed that it is getting increasingly difficult to get people’s attention when you are announcing an organizational change? Maybe that is because change has become such a common occurrence that speaking about it has become part of the corporate background noise. It simply slides right through the Broca’s Area.

As a leader of change - if you want to grab someone’s attention, you may have to move from announcements to creating an experience (a product fair, a panel of customers, a “secret shopper” visit to a competitor, etc.) in which people learn for themselves that which you would have told them.

Do you focus on strengths or weaknesses?

Here is a question I often ask my audiences: “If your boss told you that she noticed something about your performance and wanted you to come to her office to discuss it, would you assume that she had noticed an area of your special competence and wanted to bring it to your attention?” Among the majority of audience members who respond with nervous laughter, only a few hands raise.

Bosses tend to notice and comment on weaknesses and mistakes more than they comment on talents and strengths. Bosses feel it is their role to criticize because the old model for employee improvement is based on what one middle manager refers to as the “If-I-don’t-say-anything, you’re-supposed-to-know-you’re-doing-fine. I’ll-let-you-know-if-you-screw-up.” mentality. While continuous learning and self-improvement are valid concepts for future success, focusing solely on what is lacking leads to an unbalanced evaluation of employees’ worth and potential. It is no wonder then that most workers have problems taking risks and confronting uncertain situations. The focus is on weakness, not competence, and without an awareness or confirmation of their strengths, workers lack the confidence required to embrace change.

Todd Mansfield, Executive Vice President of Disney Development Company, found that his company had been spending too much time on employee weaknesses: “When we’d sit down to evaluate associates, we’d spend 20 percent of our time talking about the things they did well, and 80 percent on what needed to be improved. That is just not effective. We ought to spend time and energy helping people determine what they are gifted at doing and get their responsibilities aligned with those capabilities.”

Participation is not just a “nice” thing to do for employees, it is a sound business strategy. Here’s how one senior executive put it: “Our work force will run through walls for you, if they perceive that we’re all in it together. Participation unleashes behaviors and passions that I think leaders sometimes miss by trying to look strong and omnipotent -- as if that is what a leader is all about. It isn’t. It’s not about having all the answers. It’s about being open to other people contributing, providing their insights and offering diverse perspectives so that you get to the best decision, not just the leader’s decision.”

A Different View of Empathy

Supreme Court Justice David Souter is retiring and President Obama is looking for a nominee who has, among other qualifications, "empathy for ordinary Americans." I assume that the president has his own definition of empathy, but in my programs on "The Nonverbal Advantage" and "The Silent Language of Leadership," I use the term to describe the human ability to internalize the emotional state of others by simply observing or mirroring their body language.

We are hard-wired to connect with others. The brain's mirror neuron system gives us the ability to create an image of the internal state of another person's mind. The moment you see an emotion expressed on someone's face - or read it in her gestures or posture - you subconsciously place yourself in the other person's "mental shoes," and begin to sense that same emotion within yourself.

And notice what happens naturally the next time you are talking with someone you like or are interested in. You'll find that you and your partner have subconsciously switched body postures to match one another - mirroring nonverbal behavior and thereby signaling that you are connected and engaged. A recent research study observed two different teachers as they taught students. One used mirroring, the other did not. The students' reactions were substantially more positive toward the teacher using mirroring techniques. They believed that teacher was much more successful, friendly, and appealing.

There are other forms of behavioral congruence in which people imitate each other without realizing it. Interactional synchronizing occurs when people move at the same time in the same way, simultaneously picking up coffee cups or starting to speak at the same time. This often occurs when we are getting along well with another person, and it can feel as though we are “on the same wavelength.” In fact, synchronizing is once again the result of our subliminal monitoring of, and responding to, each other's nonverbal cues.

One executive told me that in a negotiation session he often mirrors the posture of the person he's dealing with. He noticed that doing so gives him a better sense of what the other person is experiencing. I've noticed this as well. Our bodies and emotions are so closely linked that by assuming another person's posture, you are not only gaining rapport, but are actually able to “get a feel” for his or her frame of mind.

In his book, On Becoming a Person, psychologist Carl Rogers wrote, "Real communication occurs when we listen with understanding - to see the idea and attitude from the other person's point of view, to sense how it feels to them, to achieve their frame of reference in regard to the thing they are talking about."

Reaching that goal of real communication -- of understanding, of empathy -- this is why nonverbal literacy is so crucial to our profession relationships.