Now the fourth stage is very interesting because when you start to experiment and practice with these things, you have to do it holistically. Jane Wheeler who's senior faculty member of Bowling Green State University, in her doctoral dissertation showed that people worked on learning goals at work. Improved on their competencies about this much over a two to five year period. If they worked on their learning goals at work and at home, they improved this much. And if they worked on their learning goals at home, at work, and in a professional or recreational group. They improved this much. As she showed, the more of the spheres or parts of our lives that we engaged in the new behavior in, the better off we were. There's another example that comes to us from, Jim Lair and Tony Schwartson talking about a classic article on Harvard Business Review called The Corporate Athlete In which they said professional athletes practice 90% of the time to perform 10% of the time; most executives practice zero to perform 100% of the time. In cognitive behavior therapy, one of the more effective versions of, forms of psychotherapy, we know that they say you have to have a vision and you have to practice in safe settings. And you have to practice to the point of mastery. Not just the point of comfort. Let me use an example from one of my former executive MBA students. Who gave me permission to use this story, Juan Trubino. Juan was the marketing director of a major international oil company. At the time, about 40, very socially graced, very smooth, very effective. People liked him. And when I was reviewing his dream, Juan wanted, looked forward to a future where he could be a CEO or COO of an integrated energy company. And for his family, he wanted he and his wife, both of them from Caracas, to be able to return to Venezuela at some point. After their children had grown and were out of college they would like to be able to go back. And he wanted to be able to have both his daughter and his son find lives of meaning and build families of their own. It was a very, very holistic image. When Juan got the feedback from his 360-degree assessment, his subordinates were saying he didn't really practice a lot of coaching and mentoring. Now, this was a little bit of a puzzle to me, because when I watched him in class, he was very social, and people turned to Juan for advice and help. Well, he said to me, Richard, I understand what's happening. He said, well, I was trained as an engineer. He said, when people come to me with their problems, all I see is the problem. Actually, he said, truth be told. He said, when somebody comes to me with a problem, I see see people as a problem-bearing platform. Which is. A frame. a way of interpreting this, and of looking at, a perspective that a lot of times engineers use. So he was focusing on the problem, not the person. So as we talked about this issue of how could he practice, how could he experiment with and then practice, coaching and think of the person, not the activity or the problem? It dawned on him, his 11-year-old son was in a, what we would call, soccer team, World Association Football, and when he thought of his son or daughter, he thought about how they were feeling in an activity not just whether they were winning or not. And he said, I got it. Let me coach my son's soccer team for the next season for the Summer because this was happening in the spring said I'll coach him through the whole summer cause whenever he's on the field I'm going to think about how he's feeling about this not just how he's performing and I hope because he's on the field if I say anything to the rest of his teammates I'll think about how they're feeling. We thought that was a great plan. A safe place to experiment before we tried any of this at work. Okay, that was the story told in our 2002 book. I was giving a speech at Northwestern University too their MBAs about it. And one them came up about a year after the book had come out. Two years after the book had come out. And she said, well I work for one Juan Tribino in Sao Paulo. Because the time I got in touch with him for permission, I knew he was working heading up the Singapore office for Booz Allen, Hamilton, the consulting firm. And I said what do you mean Sao Paulo? She said oh yeah, he was a phenomenal mentor. Everybody wanted to go to him. She said actually he had more official mentees, I think he had 23, and the norm for senior partners in the firm was two or three, and he was seen as the most developmental senior partner to work for anywhere in Central and South America. Now I said that, you sure it's the same Juan Trebino? It's not that odd of a name. She said, no. She described him exactly. Well I called, Juan, and we started to talk about it. Now I caught up with him. He was back in the states. And, he said, yeah, He said that worked. He said that season of coaching my sons team really helped. The following fall I started to work with people. In the company. He said, now I got promoted and, and sent to the Singapore office. He said, actually I took that new job and got sent to the Singapore office. He said, and I started experimenting. By the time I got to Sao Palo, I was on a roll with it. And he said, yes, he said, I, I was an official mentor for a lot of people, and people loved it. It really helped. In that way, he was doing what many of us did when we learned a new instrument. You know, when we're taking lessons, we practice to the point of mastery in the sense of, well, actually we don't go to mastery. We go to comfort. Can I get this down, so I can go into my music lesson to show my teacher. But professional musicians, if you're going to go on stage, you practice way beyond the point of comfort, to the point of mastery. And you try to be able to do things so that they're unconscious. That's the esscense of using your experiences. Notice that in all of these examples I'm talking about these changes being driven by the learning agenda. Not going to courses. Because most of the time when we work with people and they develop a learning agenda based on their personal vision, remember that's the emotional driver, that they pursue them through their day to day work and life experiences. And that helps us hit a cycle of the sustained desired change process. An intentional change theory. What I'd you to consider is the action learning assignment from this module. Is, I would like you to pick one thing you could try differently next week. Not a big thing. I mean if you're an introvert don't try to become an extrovert. But one issue, you know, whether it's managing teams or in your interpersonal relations, or in how you're organizing work, pick one thing that you'd like to try. Think about it beforehand. Try it. And then collect some information as to how it came across. If you have the oppurtunity within the week to try it a second time, please do, if not, wait till the following week and try it again. And, I believe, that if you try one thing, one small step, try it a few times, using this ideal, be clear about why you'd love to do this. Know that it's something that you, you aren't doing now but it's not outrageously out of the question. It's close to your tipping point. Have some intentionality around the learning agenda and practice in these small steps. And talk about them with people that have good resident relationships with you. And then I think you'll be having an exciting experience about change. And by practicing this one small thing, you're not going to transform your life, but you will be practicing the intentional change process, and you'll be on your path toward a way of engaging in change, and achieving sustained desired change. [MUSIC]
