I’ve learned a valuable lesson from the AFL. Well, actually four of them that will help improve your business.
You see, I’ve fallen in love with the Australian Football League (AFL). “Aussie rules” isn’t rugby and it isn’t new (the first game was in 1858). Here’s my truth – when you first watch Australian rules football it looks silly. The opening bounce, the short shorts and sleeveless tops, the waving of flags following a score, and the sideline throw-ins. They all create a sense it’s more spectacle than sport. But when you understand the objectives and strategies, you realize these are superb athletes suited to this particular contest. Players run between seven and 12 miles per game. Miles. A half-marathon while 18 opponents seek to tackle or otherwise harass them.
A lesson from the AFL is that your business makes sense to you because you are immersed in it every day.
New team members need to understand the objective and strategies of your business. Understand why its silliness has significant historical or cultural roots. Don’t assume it makes sense to the casual observer or your first-year intern. Like any sport, players in the AFL are slotted into particular roles based on different factors – kicking or handballing ability, speed, and size.
Mason Cox is an anomaly. A marginal D1 basketball player, he is an AFL star. His size and acumen for the game have made the Texan a celebrity in his adopted country. Even so, there are far more Australians in American football than Americans in the AFL.
A lesson from the AFL is that you should look for talent without succumbing to presumptions about personality types, education, or previous experience.
Each may contribute to a team member’s success, but shouldn’t be determinative when hiring. After onboarding, develop strategies for slotting talent into the right seats. And evaluate whether this was done successfully. The team member you think is the wrong person may just be in the wrong seat.
When a player in the AFL scores a goal, team members run to rub the scorer’s head, hug him, high-five, or express another form of affirmation. Older players encourage young players and teams celebrate professional debuts (“day-boos”).
I don’t know if it is cultural, but I’ve never seen Americans quite as expressive in their support of one another. Certainly not at the professional level where the emphasis is often on individual performance and compensation. Despite well-rehearsed answers written by PR experts about the importance of team.
A lesson from the AFL is that you should develop HR-approved ways of expressing affirmation
People have different preferences for receiving praise that should be honored. But don’t miss the opportunity to celebrate as a team. Encourage seasoned team members to mentor newer team members. And recognize the excitement of a professional “day-boo.”
The AFL is evolving. I’ve seen rule changes the brief time I’ve watched it and COVID impacted the 2020 season in significant ways. This year the “man on the mark rule” was changed, which enraged purists. Just Google “change to the man on the mark rule in Australian Rules Football.” And you’ll see many were not happy. But when the season began, most commentators agreed the game was faster and the scoring higher. Two keys to growing the sport’s audience.
A lesson is to remember that change is never-ceasing
Try to anticipate consequences from proposed changes (laws usually suffer from unintended consequences). And train team members on the why’s and how’s of new processes. Don’t refuse to evolve. And never lose sight of your customer or let purists prevent you from thriving as your industry changes. I don’t know that you’ll love “footy” like I do. But I hope you’ll gain insight from the lesson from the AFL that I’ve learned by watching it.
About Julian Consulting
Dr. Stephen Julian is President of Julian Consulting, a firm specializing in team health, effective communication, and leadership development. He has worked with leaders and their teams for nearly 30 years in a variety of settings – including Africa, South and Central America.
FDIC is the guarantor of emotional intelligence for an organization. It helps you address and navigate emotional challenges and evaluate your progress as an organization.
During Coronavirus we binge-watched Scorpion. The storyline is built around a team of geniuses who solve large-scale threats while struggling to have healthy interpersonal relationships.
The plots are ridiculous – you repeatedly suspend disbelief as they hang from helicopters, fall from space, sink in quicksand, all while defeating threats to individuals and, at times, the entire planet.
Why did we keep watching? Because we enjoyed the character development. Walter, the leader of Scorpion, struggled with EQ or Emotional Intelligence.
When Dealing With Emotional Intelligence Sometimes Being Right Isn’t Enough.
You have to win people over and convince them to do what is right. Leaders and managers face the tension between what is true and what is effective daily. You need to be right and persuasive, not merely right.
So, to that end, I introduce you to FDIC.
This is not the organization that insures your bank accounts, but an acronym for addressing interpersonal challenges and expressing EQ.
When you face behaviors that you want developed or changed in yourself or others, the FDIC helps you evaluate your progress.
How often does this behavior happen? If it is a negative behavior, you look for frequency to decrease over time. If an employee is sarcastic during meetings and is pushing other team members away, then you need to coach this employee that sarcasm is rarely the appropriate response in a professional setting.
The Frequency Of Behavior Related To Emotional Intelligence
It is unlikely that someone who has spent years honing his art of sarcastic wit will be able to turn off this spigot on the spot. More likely the frequency of sarcasm will drop with repeated encouragement and drawing his attention to the behavior when it emerges instinctually.
For positive behaviors you are often seeking the increase in frequency. Following a checklist for a repeated process may be tedious, but when your team members do this with increasing frequency the number of errors plummet.
Those demonstrating emotional intelligence will exhibit behaviors with the appropriate frequency.
The Duration Of Behavior Related To Emotional Intelligence
How long does the incident last? Can team members have productive healthy conflict to resolve issues without it becoming personal? Many people say they can do this, but they are still drawn in personally and feel attacked or diminished.
Can they abandon this defensive posture quickly or do they get stuck there, unable to hear the issue that is actually the focus of the conversation? Do they continue to freeze out their colleague over the subsequent days and weeks?
Of course, there are behaviors you want to last indefinitely. Commitment to the team should not wax and wane, but should remain consistent or grow over an extended period.
Duration is a reliable indicator of emotional intelligence. Someone who holds a grudge for months or years is not sufficiently mature.
The Intensity Of Behavior Related To Emotional Intelligence
How quickly does a team member ramp up emotionally? Do they turn it up to 11 when 7 would be more than sufficient? How intense is the exchange?
Some people react quickly but are able to harness their emotions rather than allowing them to gallop out of control, trampling everyone around them.
Some personality styles can react with intensity because they are attempting to persuade, others because they feel that values or relationships are being threatened.
Intensity or passion is desirable at times, but can be inappropriate when the reaction is more than is called for and becomes threatening or repulses others rather than drawing them in. You want people who can be intense, passionate at the appropriate times.
Being emotionally flat can be an inappropriate lack of intensity. Some personality styles need to express their strong emotions by naming them because they tend to appear disinterested in most situations.
“I’m so excited” even if said with little emotion is better than not letting people in at all so that they are left to wonder if you care. Intensity needs to be calibrated to the topic and audience. Ability to calibrate intensity effectively is a sign of emotional intelligence.
The Context Of Behavior Related To Emotional Intelligence
Frequency, duration, and intensity are each part of the equation. Understanding the context is also essential. I’ve alluded to context in describing each of the other three, but it is its own element that needs to be considered.
Can you read the environment around you to know the appropriate mix of frequency, duration, and intensity that will produce the desired outcome?
When your boss conducts a regularly scheduled performance review, it is probably not the context for airing your grievances with the organization and leadership. Sometimes it feels good to be completely honest but rarely is that the appropriate strategy, regardless of context.
Coaching team members to read contexts is a skill essential to professional success. It is part of emotional intelligence because it reflects a judgment about what is wise rather than what is convenient or emotionally satisfying.
Summarizing The FDIC
Put these four elements together and you will demonstrate emotional intelligence. This isn’t the stuff of genius, but of ordinary human beings. You may not save the world but perhaps become more persuasive, more productive, and more relationally effective. For most of us, that is enough.
About:
Dr. Stephen Julian is President of Julian Consulting, a firm specializing in team health, effective communication, and leadership development. He has worked with leaders and their teams for nearly 30 years in a variety of settings – including Africa, South and Central America.
“Sleeping at last” – a phrase that applies in different ways to babies, young adults, and aging parents. I trust you find it meaningful in your current life stage and the ones to come.
Sleeping At Last Related to Babies
My wife Judy mentors young moms. And one of the consistent challenges are babies without sleep schedules or with schedules unaligned with family function. I still remember the first nights we allowed our son to cry himself to sleep. We were challenged that growing babies have expanding lung capacity and letting them cry themselves to sleep will only take longer and be louder the more we waited.
We were assured this would not damage our child’s health or psyche. Now that he is a young adult, I’m happy to report that if he is in therapy one day, crying himself to sleep will not be the focus of those sessions. You have to find your way as parents and you may prefer a different route to the one we traveled. I’m good with that. Just know that I celebrate with you when your child is sleeping at last.
Sleeping At Last Related to Young Adults
I’ve talked about our young adults’ interest in Enneagram – a personality assessment and framework. My initial resistance to Enneagram was reduced, in large measure, by my exposure to the work of Ryan O’Neal who writes, records, and produces as “Atlas.” O’Neal wrote nine songs, one for each of the Enneagram styles and he has a podcast, “Sleeping at Last,” where he describes the creation of each song.
Encouraging Parents
I encourage parents to find a personality assessment that helps you understand your child’s bent. And raise your child with that bent in mind. I’m still learning Enneagram, but I’m thankful for the additional insights it provides into the lives of our young adult children. “Sleeping at Last” is a wonderful resource. Our daughter-in-law is an Enneagram Nine. And I still cry when I hear her song because I see her (as well as our three children by birth) becoming who she is and is meant to be.
Sleeping At Last Related To Aging Parents
Each year, I write a family letter and send it to a broad range of friends and relatives. This past year’s letter has still not been sent. It began as follows: Some years this letter is easy to write, others it is more of a challenge. This year is a bit of both.
We had a great year as a family but are struggling with new realities as my mom had a stroke on Dec 15. Today, on Dec 21, she began her life in heaven. We were encouraged by her confident faith and knowledge she was ready to shed this body for an eternal one.
Shared Experiences
A week before her stroke, a client shared that his mother-in-law suffered a massive stroke. I listened, prayed for him and his family, and genuinely cared. But about 10 days later I had an entirely different appreciation for what he is facing. Empathy is like that. We borrow from other life experiences to feel with those who are going through events we’ve never experienced. Then as we move through our own events, the closer those two become (the event in the life of the other and the event in our own life) the deeper the empathy we can share.
The mom I knew is sleeping at last. But the woman she truly is lives in an unending, pain-free reality where she has/is becoming the person she was created to be. That is our faith and our encouragement. I miss Mom and celebrate the woman who allowed me to cry as needed, encouraged me to understand my wiring, my bent, my personality. She will greet me again one day when this body is sleeping at last.
About:
Dr. Stephen Julian is President of Julian Consulting, a firm specializing in team health, effective communication, and leadership development. He has worked with leaders and their teams for nearly 30 years in a variety of settings – including Africa, South and Central America.
There’s a song that speaks about life’s ups and downs.
I get nervous when I’m happyI get nervous cause what comes up must come down (“Nervous” by X Ambassadors)
A client shared the story of a professor he had while studying at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. The professor talked about the seasons and cycles of life. And how to manage life’s ups and downs.
His challenge to the students about life’s ups and downs
When you are in the ups, don’t live in fear of the down times to come, but use the ups to prepare for the downs.
My childhood in a minister’s home exposed me to the stories and principles of scripture.
Joseph comes to mind. He interpreted Pharaoh’s dream of the skinny cows swallowing up the fat cows as seven years of plenty to be followed by seven years of famine.
Pharaoh asked, “What should we do in preparation for the seven lean years?” Joseph told him to gather excess grain during the years of plenty to distribute during the lean years. Pharaoh saw the wisdom in this suggestion and put Joseph in charge of the project.
A quick aside about life’s ups and downs
Sometimes sharing wisdom leads to responsibility and authority to bring that wisdom to reality. Just keep that in mind as you prepare to speak. I didn’t see Coronavirus coming and my 2020 plans didn’t account for a global pandemic. Evidently this is true of my clients as well.
But some of my clients had used their years of plenty to prepare for lean years they knew would come. In prosperity, they were preparing for unknown challenges they knew were coming.
Other clients have been casting about to come up with plans to meet the evolving challenge they now face. Both will survive, but those who were preparing are thriving in spite of the body blows they have taken along with the rest of the world’s economy.
I’m not sure where you find yourself, but it is not too late to apply this wisdom to your present as well as to your future. The ups will be followed by downs. We know this. Just make sure that next time you are up you are preparing for the downs, not living in fear, but in anticipation.
My Challenge To Clients
I’ve been challenging clients to celebrate during this pandemic, not a celebration of denial, but a celebration of recognition. So many clients are making good decisions, wise decisions that will prepare them for the future.
My point…
These good decisions don’t just happen.
This isn’t luck. This is the result of effective leadership, healthy cultures, and determined preparation. Many businesses that were counting on luck are no longer operating. The fact that yours persists is not an accident, and is worth celebrating. Don’t allow happiness to make you nervous. “What goes up must come down” is a truism. How we manage those ups and downs is what matters.
About:
Dr. Stephen Julian is President of Julian Consulting, a firm specializing in team health, effective communication, and leadership development. He has worked with leaders and their teams for nearly 30 years in a variety of settings – including Africa, South and Central America.
To find normal is tough during these co-vid times.
If you know the 1970 song by Chicago referenced in my title, then you may have hummed the next line: “Does anybody really care?”
On a recent Tuesday evening, I was among the same four people who have been trapped inside our house for the past two months. I said, “Well, at least tomorrow is Friday.” The other three sat there for a moment and finally someone asked, “Wait, is tomorrow really Friday?” I screamed, “NO. Tomorrow is Wednesday.” (It wasn’t a scream of anger, but of emphasis.)
Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?
What’s normal?
Prisoners of war found that keeping track of time was both difficult and essential to find normal. Losing track of time contributes to a sense of malaise, confusion, and lack of motivation.
As Karen Carpenter sang, “What I’ve got they used to call the blues. Nothin’ is really wrong.”
While parts of our world are reopening, much of what we considered normal will not be experienced for some time to come. Some portions of the old normal are gone, never to be part of the new normal that is emerging.
It’s interesting that the way we watch TV today compounds this challenge because we rarely associate shows with days of the week. Growing up, we knew that The Brady Bunch was on Fridays. Today shows are on whenever you have time to watch them.
My encouragement? To find normal keep a normal track of time.
We have taken to ordering out on Wednesdays, “hump day.” The funny thing is that I’ve never cared about hump day because I have had significant control over my schedule for most of my adult life. But in the midst of this pandemic we’ve discovered that having some markers throughout the week help to maintain a sense of momentum.
Here are three quick ideas to be adapted to your situation. I hope you’ll create your own responses that are effective for you.
To find normal keep a natural rhythm to each day and week.
We are going to bed later and getting going later. But we are trying to keep our weeks in rhythm by attending church each Sunday and looking to Saturdays as a day for home chores.
To find normal reflect on what you were doing one year ago and predict what normal one year from now may look like.
Place today, this week, this month within the context of your life flow.
To find normal, weather permitting, Judy and I walk in the mornings.
This is a way that we can exercise while discussing a wide range of topics from parenting to planning. This allows us to get the day off on the right foot (so to speak). Don’t lose track of time. The consequences are real and they aren’t pretty. Find and maintain your rhythm. A normal. When that socially distanced neighbor asks, “Hey, do you know what time it is?” you can smile and respond, “As a matter of fact, I do.”
About:
Dr. Stephen Julian is President of Julian Consulting, a firm specializing in team health, effective communication, and leadership development. He has worked with leaders and their teams for nearly 30 years in a variety of settings – including Africa, South and Central America.
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