Steffan Antonas » Psychology & Philosophy

It’s Not Who You Know…

Steffan Antonas — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:15:31 +0000

When it comes to getting things done, the old adage “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” is deceptively over-simplified. OK, sure, it’s pithy and it captures why being connected to others is important, but there are a lot of assumptions built in to the expression that we have to implicitly accept to make the rule work broadly.

The thing is, it’s not really just who you know that makes the difference, is it? If you’re going to seek the help of others repeatedly to get things done, they’ve got to know you too, and like you and trust you and actually want to help you when you need them. Not so simple.

Building relationships with others that you can count on to go out of their way to help you when you need it most is hard work. It takes doing the right thing and treating people fairly and going out of your way for others and delivering what was expected of you over and over again that builds trust and gets you what you need in the long run. It’s almost never the single favor that makes the difference. Rather, it’s consistency where the people that matter most differentiate themselves.

Maybe we should change the adage to “It’s not who you know, it’s who wants to help you”

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

It’s Not Who You Know…

Autonomy In Your Work

Steffan Antonas — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:40:04 +0000

When it comes to our work, wouldn’t we all be happier and more motivated if we were given the freedom to chose what we do, how we do it, when we do it and who we work with? What does having autonomy at work mean to you and where’s the sweet spot?

Special thanks to Daniel Pink for inspiring me to doodle this in my moleskin this morning. I’m half way through his new book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us and the “4 T’s” he discusses in the context of autonomy has got my brain buzzing. I thought the sketch I did was worth translating to powerpoint for a discssion this morning.

This makes me wonder if the desire to get to that red dot sweet spot is the very essence of what drives people to become entrepreneurs. What do you think?

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

Autonomy In Your Work

Depleted vs. Spent

Steffan Antonas — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:50:08 +0000

I spent a couple of happy, quiet hours last night with my nose in Pamela Slim’s book Escape from Cubicle Nation. She makes some powerful arguments for why passion is a necessary ingredient to a happy work life. This well worded bit of wisdom stood out:

“What many people don’t realize is that when you force yourself to do something you don’t want to do, you have to deplete the energy from your body to do it. When you make it through a week where you have forced yourself to do work you don’t enjoy, you will feel exhausted, drained, and in need of martinis, industrial-strength aspirin, and/or face-planted-in-pillow rest.”

“When you do things you love, your body generates energy naturally. You may work an equal number of hours, or more, than when doing work you don’t enjoy, but the difference is you will feel spent, not depleted.”

You can’t really say it better than that, can you?

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

Depleted vs. Spent

When There Is No Manual

Steffan Antonas — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:12:42 +0000

It’s not always easy to tell who’s really leading when an entire team is just going through the motions and following procedures in a manual that they’ve all used before for similar projects. When all the variables for a project are known and the expectations and plan are clear to everyone from the very beginning, all it really takes to move things forward is keeping people motivated and on task. If everyone knows their role, and team members direct themselves to get their part done, you really only need someone to organize and report, which isn’t necessarily leading. It’s managing.

Effective leaders are the ones who take charge in a group when a task or problem is completely new, the next step isn’t obvious and there is no manual. When others hesitate and look to their peers for answers, the leaders are the ones who are busy breaking the problem down, creating structure where there is none and developing a plan that they can communicate and act on. When new problems that require novel solutions come your team’s way, take a moment and observe who everyone looks to when someone asks “what do we do now?”. Those are the people who are really leading.

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

When There Is No Manual

Achieving Empathy

Steffan Antonas — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:13:54 +0000

There’s a reason people say “try walking a mile in their shoes“. Achieving empathy isn’t just about putting yourself in someone else’s position, it’s also about seeing that position from someone else’s perspective. True empathy is being able to strip away your own thoughts, feelings and judgment in order to clearly see a situation through someone else eyes, with their heart, filters and experiences taken into account. Most people make the mistake of just putting themselves in another’s position and saying “what would I do if I were in this situation?”. This approach often leads to poor judgment calls, misunderstandings and bad advice. Why? Because experiencing empathy isn’t about how you think or feel at all. It’s about simulating what they are experiencing and relating to it. Even in an identical scenario, they’ll never think, feel or behave quite the same way as you would.

Of course, we’ll never get perfect at achieving empathy – our brains are (sadly) wired to put ourselves at the center of the action. The good news is that we can take steps to improve our approach to get better insights into the hearts and minds of others. It starts by first taking ourselves completely out of the equation and then asking “what is this person feeling/thinking based on their experiences, and how can I relate to that”. This is hard to do, but it’ll get you off on the right foot. Once you focus on the shoes, you’ll be in a much better position to know what it really feels like to walk the mile.

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

Achieving Empathy