Yiks – I have my first gig as a self-help writer! It’s at the School of Life in Central London. I’m a speaker at the Self-Help Summit on January 15th – part of the afternoon session entitled “Help Yourself: How Does Self-Help Help?”
This is exciting stuff. External confirmation (as everyone with high fear of failure needs) that this isn’t all nonsense. That I have a point worth listening to – or, at the very least, worth appraisal from a cerebral and engaged audience. Yet I am immediately posed with a problem (beyond, that is, the obvious terror such a gig presents to someone with fear of failure). The School of Life prides itself on its enquiring agnosticism, as well as its wit and intelligence. Certainly, I hope What’s Stopping You? (TBP 2011) has lashings of all three, but I’d be sharing a platform with speakers that do enquiring agnosticism, wit and intelligence for a living. What can I possibly add?
In fact – with respect to the progamme at least – my potential positioning becomes clear after a quick scan of the speaker biographies. Among the speakers are psychologists, philosophers and writers. This is no more than one would expect from the philosophical and inquisitive School of Life crowd – all no doubt scarily tutored in the ways of dialectic debate. One expects searching questions regarding the true intent of self-help and lots of cynicism regarding its outcomes.
Although this is sympathetic to the positioning of the book, which is critical of the self-help industry for over-promising and offering near-instant cures for innate mental conditions, it provides me with little scope. I hardly add much to the debate if I stand up and say: I agree with the last speaker (at least the bits I understood) almost as wholeheartedly as I’ll no doubt agree with the next. It’s clear I'll have to take a different position: I'll have to defend self-help.
This shouldn’t be so hard. After all, I have written a self-help book, even if I seem to be in denial of the fact – largely because of the genre’s somewhat cheesy reputation.
Here are my notes so far:
Self-help sells...
In an age when everyone demands everything, instantly, a genre of books has emerged to tell us we can, indeed, have it all now. Shock, horror! They may be raising our expectations, sure, but they are also a response to the raised expectations of affluence. Isn’t this Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in action? Having become materially secure, we seek self-esteem: cue self-help. At least that’s the majority position – to have reached the next level. Some in the audience may have progressed further and now seek morality (the top level, according to Maslow). Self-help is harder to defend from this height (though not impossible) because it can sometimes appear to be (and sometimes is) a false promise made to the afflicted desperate for a cure.
This is self help at its worst. Yet, even here, self-help can be defended as capitalism doing its job – creating and fulfilling demands for our general human improvement. For instance, as a kid I watched my dad do lots of jobs around the house. Meanwhile, I put an advert on gumtree.com and some Polish guy or Aussie sorts it out while I take the kids to Dad’s Club. In my view this is progress – both the Polish guy and the kids are better off and I’m using my time more enjoyably. And just as my Polish handymen improve – as long as the supply side is held up – so the bad side of self-help should over time be eclipsed by the good. At least that’s the theory.
...but the hyper-titles are off-putting to some.
The first title for my book was How Not to Fail. Yet my number one target publisher – John Wiley & Sons – suggested that this rather tepid promise was off-putting and wouldn’t sell, so I changed it to the more dynamic What’s Stopping You? In the end I agreed with their view, not because I wanted my advertised outcome to be more than the avoidance of failure – although I did – but because this is a crowded market place and you need to compete. And the title of the book is key.
Another example of hyper-titling comes from one of my heroes: Allen Carr. He wrote The Easy Way to Stop Smoking, a book I loved because it explicitly states there are no instant cures. Carr focused on self-awareness of the triggers trapping nicotine addicts and how they can navigate them. Yet look at the title – you’d think there was a frontal lobotomy kit included. Even Anthony Robbins – cheesy self-help king-of-the-gurus with hyper-titles such as Unlimited Power and Awaken the Giant Within – quickly settles down to offer strong methodologies for practical employment. Indeed, with most of the genre, the over-promising is usually mellowed within: it’s the over-hyping title and cheesy grin from the author that really gets rational eyes rolling.
Self-help helps...
Sourcing answers to problems has to be good for society. All advances require experiment and analysis and, if the self-help industry helps popularize this endeavour, so much the better. For instance, my father was good with a drill and screwdriver but was a pretty hopeless dad. He didn’t think he was hopeless – he’d just swallowed the accepted thinking of his age that small boys had to be toughened up through emotional rejection and mental barbarism (or they'd end up "soft").
Fine, except that we now realise this is utter codswallop. A recipe for low self-esteem and high fear of failure, although such an upbringing probably helped when it came to dealing with restive natives. Yet it took self-help writers such as Steve Biddulph to finally destroy the myth of “tough love” with respect to the treatment of young boys. Sure Biddulph is a psychologist but, make no mistake, Raising Boys is a self-help book aimed at popular consumption. And it took a popular book to change the way people thought about parenting boys. Without him dads would still be in the Dark Ages.
Certainly, my dad never read a self-help book in his life – would scoff at the very notion. Yet this did little for his parenting skills, which was not his fault: bless him. But in our more enlightened age – where self-awareness if more encouraged than self-discipline and where just about every endeavour talks about "best practice" – this is unacceptable.
Meanwhile, I defy anyone to read Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and not become more efficient, or Richard Carlson’s Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and remain as angry and irritated by tiny annoyances, or Mark McCormack’s What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School and not become more effective in their career pursuits. Each contains great truths to help mere mortals navigate the modern jungle. Yet all belong on the bookshop's equivalent of a cheese counter.
...and knowledge is always a benefit.
Why is ignorance to be cherished, with respect to anything – even self-help? It amazes me the number of times I hear people declare their ignorance with pride, usually when such knowledge is unfashionable. For instance, although a southerner, I like the North of England. I went to Manchester University and have a passion for football, so perhaps that helps. Yet I’m constantly amazed by the number of southerners that say: “Oh I’ve never been up north,” usually with a dismissive wave of the hand as if this somehow makes them a better person. It doesn’t – it makes them small-minded and ignorant of their own country.
Dismissing anything – especially something aimed at expanding our understanding of ourselves – is for those with very short horizons. American educator Derek Bok said: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance” and that is just as true for self awareness, of which self-help is the frontline.
Self-help has a perception problem, especially in the UK...
If you ask someone if they believe in self-development, most right thinking people will of course say “yes”. Self-improvement is also likely to be answered in the affirmative as is self-awareness, self-confidence, self-respect and even self-control. Yet all are alternative names or potential outcomes of self-help. Only the term “self help” generates cynicism – largely because it brings to mind angst-ridden under-confidents lurking in the wrong part of the bookstore and being sucked in by the hyper titles and surgically-whitened grins on the cover. It all seems so embarrassing – like asking for something horrendous at the pharmacist. Yet it also appears synthetic: a bit trashy, sleazy – dare I say it, even a bit too American for us stiff-upper lipped Brits. We’re happy being crap thanks – especially when it comes to our emotions.
...which makes even the self-help writers a little defensive.
In fact my book is no more than a self-help book that begins by dissing the genre. It then nicks its best ideas. Isn’t this how everyone muscles their way in? Certainly, I remember from my political theory and philosophy classes at university each guy demolishing the thesis of the previous thinker before adding his or her view on top. Given this, just maybe I shouldn’t be so embarrassed at the notion of being a self-help writer and, indeed, should use the School of Life talk to “come out” as a wannabe self-help guru. Either that or be “outted” by the other speakers, it seems.
Showing posts with label Abraham Maslow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Abraham Maslow. Show all posts
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Developing compassion: bankers
A reposting (and re-editing) of old-blog posts I like.
On several occasions recently, I have found myself defending bankers. This goes way beyond my day job of running a PR agency that’s focused, to a large extent, on banks. In reality the agency positively profiles the products and services of banks (and others) to sophisticated audiences such as corporate treasurers, financial institutions and other banks. In this defence I was defending bankers themselves. Like Gordon Gecko in Wall Street, I was even defending greed.
To many this really will seem like the ultimate exercise in trying to develop compassion, as recommended by Don't Sweat The Small Stuff author Richard Carlson (and as explained in my previous posts). Yet for me – as an ex banker – it is probably more the other way around. It is me asking others to examine their – perhaps stereo-typical, perhaps (even) a touch prejudicial – views on a section of society currently the target of a great deal of loathing from all “right-thinking” people.
First let’s defend bankers themselves. Much of my defence focuses on my view that the typical banker is a long way their unsavoury media stereo-type of shouting yobs in red braces or arrogant and braying fools at a race track or in a nightclub. Of course, those types exist but they are a tiny minority compared to the thousands upon thousands employed in the financial services industry, even on the trading floors. In fact the vast majority of bankers are very normal people – perhaps even too normal to many of their detractors.
If I was to paint a stereo-type of a City banker, therefore, it would be of a conservatively-dressed, state-educated, family man or woman travelling in from their newish home in one of the nicer suburbs in the Essex or Kent commuter belt (or New Jersey or Connecticut if in New York). They undertake highly-technical, highly-specialised work – often working long hours. They don’t smoke, drink only moderately and don’t know the first thing about recreational drugs. Their main passions are golf, squash and maybe Tottenham Hotspur or West Ham United at the weekend (though probably not since the kids were born).
Of course they are ambitious. These are the children of working-class Londoners (or Scots or Northerners or Asians for that matter), seeing the financial services industry as their route to advancement. Indeed, my father would often state that his generation of post-war working class men advanced into the respectable middle classes via the sciences. Well, for our generation, the same can be said of the City (or Wall Street). While most creative careers (at least the lucrative ones) remain the preserve of the privately-educated elite, those seeking advancement from the sometimes painfully-low horizons of a poor education and an inept social training now focus on the financial services.
But what of the greed that was supposed to have nearly destroyed the banking system in 2008? Indeed, saying someone has the stereo-type wrong does not undermine the concept of greed, or its role in the banking crisis. And while I could put a technical spin on the crisis – in part blaming the “law of unintended consequences” from previous rounds of regulation (Basel II and IAS-39 being two regulations worth examining in this respect) – it would be stupid to say that greed played no part.
So can I defend greed in order to try and evoke a compassion for bankers? I can try – perhaps by turning the debate around and examining those that detest bankers and their greedy ilk. For this I need to make reference to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Abraham Maslow was interested in exemplary people and their motivations (Eleanor Roosevelt was a particular focus), which turned into a “ theory of human needs and self-actualisation”. Usually expressed as a pyramid, Maslow – in his 1954 book Motivation and Personality – states that humans move up from the basic physiological needs for food, water and sleep, to require safety in the form of shelter, employment and health. Above that humans need friendship and love and above that self-esteem, confidence, achievement and respect. And at the very top of the pyramid are attributes such as morality and creativity.
The important point here is that, at all levels, money is simply a means to an ends. Material advancement is no more than a ladder up to the next level. Certainly, Maslow contends that we cannot graduate up to the next level without satisfying the needs of the lower level. Only once we have food and water can we think about shelter and security. Only once we have safety can we think about love and belonging. Only once we are loved can we think about self-esteem and respect. And only once we have self respect do we crave morality and seek to express ourselves creatively. Interpret this into career ladders, ambitions and a focus on material advancement and it is easy to come to a view regarding why some people still seek wealth (if only to get their children to the top of the pyramid via a private education) while others seek more spiritual rewards.
And it might also be the case that, once at the higher level – perhaps thanks to the efforts of a previous generation – it is difficult to develop compassion for those in the immediate level below, while compassion for those well below us in Maslow’s hierarchy comes naturally. Certainly, it is easier to be compassionate about those seeking food or shelter than those seeking material advancement so their kids can also reach the podium of creativity and morality. But that doesn’t preclude us from at least trying – even if, to adopt a very Carlsonian concept, it is just for fun. And if even if that won’t work? Even if we still hate those “greedy” bankers? Never mind – we can at least comfort ourselves with the thought that that their children may be more to our taste.
One last note on this. In no way is this a judgement or a condemnation of those that attack bankers or greed – or those that have made it to that happy place at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy (however they got there). It is simply a plea, in the best Carlsonian tradition, to “develop our compassion”. The point being that the harder this seems, the more worthwhile the exercise.
On several occasions recently, I have found myself defending bankers. This goes way beyond my day job of running a PR agency that’s focused, to a large extent, on banks. In reality the agency positively profiles the products and services of banks (and others) to sophisticated audiences such as corporate treasurers, financial institutions and other banks. In this defence I was defending bankers themselves. Like Gordon Gecko in Wall Street, I was even defending greed.
To many this really will seem like the ultimate exercise in trying to develop compassion, as recommended by Don't Sweat The Small Stuff author Richard Carlson (and as explained in my previous posts). Yet for me – as an ex banker – it is probably more the other way around. It is me asking others to examine their – perhaps stereo-typical, perhaps (even) a touch prejudicial – views on a section of society currently the target of a great deal of loathing from all “right-thinking” people.
First let’s defend bankers themselves. Much of my defence focuses on my view that the typical banker is a long way their unsavoury media stereo-type of shouting yobs in red braces or arrogant and braying fools at a race track or in a nightclub. Of course, those types exist but they are a tiny minority compared to the thousands upon thousands employed in the financial services industry, even on the trading floors. In fact the vast majority of bankers are very normal people – perhaps even too normal to many of their detractors.
If I was to paint a stereo-type of a City banker, therefore, it would be of a conservatively-dressed, state-educated, family man or woman travelling in from their newish home in one of the nicer suburbs in the Essex or Kent commuter belt (or New Jersey or Connecticut if in New York). They undertake highly-technical, highly-specialised work – often working long hours. They don’t smoke, drink only moderately and don’t know the first thing about recreational drugs. Their main passions are golf, squash and maybe Tottenham Hotspur or West Ham United at the weekend (though probably not since the kids were born).
Of course they are ambitious. These are the children of working-class Londoners (or Scots or Northerners or Asians for that matter), seeing the financial services industry as their route to advancement. Indeed, my father would often state that his generation of post-war working class men advanced into the respectable middle classes via the sciences. Well, for our generation, the same can be said of the City (or Wall Street). While most creative careers (at least the lucrative ones) remain the preserve of the privately-educated elite, those seeking advancement from the sometimes painfully-low horizons of a poor education and an inept social training now focus on the financial services.
But what of the greed that was supposed to have nearly destroyed the banking system in 2008? Indeed, saying someone has the stereo-type wrong does not undermine the concept of greed, or its role in the banking crisis. And while I could put a technical spin on the crisis – in part blaming the “law of unintended consequences” from previous rounds of regulation (Basel II and IAS-39 being two regulations worth examining in this respect) – it would be stupid to say that greed played no part.
So can I defend greed in order to try and evoke a compassion for bankers? I can try – perhaps by turning the debate around and examining those that detest bankers and their greedy ilk. For this I need to make reference to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Abraham Maslow was interested in exemplary people and their motivations (Eleanor Roosevelt was a particular focus), which turned into a “ theory of human needs and self-actualisation”. Usually expressed as a pyramid, Maslow – in his 1954 book Motivation and Personality – states that humans move up from the basic physiological needs for food, water and sleep, to require safety in the form of shelter, employment and health. Above that humans need friendship and love and above that self-esteem, confidence, achievement and respect. And at the very top of the pyramid are attributes such as morality and creativity.
The important point here is that, at all levels, money is simply a means to an ends. Material advancement is no more than a ladder up to the next level. Certainly, Maslow contends that we cannot graduate up to the next level without satisfying the needs of the lower level. Only once we have food and water can we think about shelter and security. Only once we have safety can we think about love and belonging. Only once we are loved can we think about self-esteem and respect. And only once we have self respect do we crave morality and seek to express ourselves creatively. Interpret this into career ladders, ambitions and a focus on material advancement and it is easy to come to a view regarding why some people still seek wealth (if only to get their children to the top of the pyramid via a private education) while others seek more spiritual rewards.
And it might also be the case that, once at the higher level – perhaps thanks to the efforts of a previous generation – it is difficult to develop compassion for those in the immediate level below, while compassion for those well below us in Maslow’s hierarchy comes naturally. Certainly, it is easier to be compassionate about those seeking food or shelter than those seeking material advancement so their kids can also reach the podium of creativity and morality. But that doesn’t preclude us from at least trying – even if, to adopt a very Carlsonian concept, it is just for fun. And if even if that won’t work? Even if we still hate those “greedy” bankers? Never mind – we can at least comfort ourselves with the thought that that their children may be more to our taste.
One last note on this. In no way is this a judgement or a condemnation of those that attack bankers or greed – or those that have made it to that happy place at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy (however they got there). It is simply a plea, in the best Carlsonian tradition, to “develop our compassion”. The point being that the harder this seems, the more worthwhile the exercise.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Motivation needs purpose, but don’t forget fear
Dan Pink is the author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. If you want to know the answer to this, however, a quicker route than reading the book is to watch this highly-engaging YouTube animation (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc) from the UK’s Royal Society or Arts (and tagged by Leigh Carrick Moore – thank you!).
In the animation Dan Pink explains that higher incentives do not always lead to better performance. In experiments conducted by the MIT and funded by the Federal Reserve Bank it was discovered that, while non-cognitive (i.e. manual) tasks can be incentivised in a traditional way – meaning that more money equals better performance – cognitive tasks that require thought and creativity can’t, at least at the top. For cognitive tasks, it seems, once people are being paid “enough” paying them more does not lead to more in terms of output or performance.
What explains this? In the animation (and I assume in the book) Pink projects that we are dealing with a concept similar to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, in which material gain is not the key driver to human motivation, it is simply a means to an ends. Once people are comfortable, concepts such as creativity and morality become more important than mere zeroes added to the bottom line. Pink explained this by stating that our motivations are driven by autonomy (we want to direct our own lives), mastery (we have an urge to get better at stuff) and purpose (we want to make a contribution).
And, in case people concluded that this was fine for rich countries like America that can be seen as having more than enough and so would graduate into the sunlit uplands of morality and “purpose”, they also conducted the same experiments in India, with even more startling results. While low and middling incentives did, indeed, improve performance large incentives had the opposite impact, causing a major reversal in performance.
This is, of course, fantastically revelatory. But is it true? I have not read the book but throughout the animation I was expecting a different conclusion, or at least another factor to be taken into account: fear. I was expecting Pink to at least mention fear of failure, which must surely be an alternative reason why incentives failed to improve performance once the stakes are raised above a certain point and, as with the case in India (where higher incentives will have an even higher impact) actually had a detrimental effect on performance.
In fact the experiments were not dissimilar to those carried out by John W. Atkinson of Stanford University, David McClelland and others in the 1960s. Also focused on motivation, they set children reward-incentivised tasks and noticed that they approached them in one of two ways – either motivated to achieve the task (i.e. to succeed) or motivated to avoid failing the task (mostly through avoidance of undertaking the task). Atkinson concluded that those motivated to avoid the tasks had a high fear of failure. They were concerned by the prospect of public failure and, where they could, avoided even intermediately difficult tasks because of it.
Is there resonance with MIT’s experiments on incentives, as explained by Pink and animated by the RSA? Yes, I believe there is. The rewards on offer at the low end are enough to focus the mind on the task and its achievement. Yet at the high end the rewards change behaviour. In India particularly, these may be life changing rewards, making the outcome of the task a much larger focus than the task itself. Just ask any sportsman suffering from “choke” or Poker player suffering from “tilt” – both behavioural changes based on fear – and it is easy to see how high-end rewards can detrimentally-impact performance. The stakes have been raised to the point where we can no longer ignore them in order to focus on the task ahead, making our efforts edgy and fearful.
I am not stating that the MIT experiments came to the wrong conclusion and Dan Pink’s book may well take fear of failure into account (as may the MIT). My only opinion on this is that, once you are in tune with the concept of fear of failure (which my Reticular Activating System clearly is thanks to my forthcoming book What’s Stopping You?), you can’t help looking at the experiments in a different light and potentially coming to a different conclusion.
In the animation Dan Pink explains that higher incentives do not always lead to better performance. In experiments conducted by the MIT and funded by the Federal Reserve Bank it was discovered that, while non-cognitive (i.e. manual) tasks can be incentivised in a traditional way – meaning that more money equals better performance – cognitive tasks that require thought and creativity can’t, at least at the top. For cognitive tasks, it seems, once people are being paid “enough” paying them more does not lead to more in terms of output or performance.
What explains this? In the animation (and I assume in the book) Pink projects that we are dealing with a concept similar to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, in which material gain is not the key driver to human motivation, it is simply a means to an ends. Once people are comfortable, concepts such as creativity and morality become more important than mere zeroes added to the bottom line. Pink explained this by stating that our motivations are driven by autonomy (we want to direct our own lives), mastery (we have an urge to get better at stuff) and purpose (we want to make a contribution).
And, in case people concluded that this was fine for rich countries like America that can be seen as having more than enough and so would graduate into the sunlit uplands of morality and “purpose”, they also conducted the same experiments in India, with even more startling results. While low and middling incentives did, indeed, improve performance large incentives had the opposite impact, causing a major reversal in performance.
This is, of course, fantastically revelatory. But is it true? I have not read the book but throughout the animation I was expecting a different conclusion, or at least another factor to be taken into account: fear. I was expecting Pink to at least mention fear of failure, which must surely be an alternative reason why incentives failed to improve performance once the stakes are raised above a certain point and, as with the case in India (where higher incentives will have an even higher impact) actually had a detrimental effect on performance.
In fact the experiments were not dissimilar to those carried out by John W. Atkinson of Stanford University, David McClelland and others in the 1960s. Also focused on motivation, they set children reward-incentivised tasks and noticed that they approached them in one of two ways – either motivated to achieve the task (i.e. to succeed) or motivated to avoid failing the task (mostly through avoidance of undertaking the task). Atkinson concluded that those motivated to avoid the tasks had a high fear of failure. They were concerned by the prospect of public failure and, where they could, avoided even intermediately difficult tasks because of it.
Is there resonance with MIT’s experiments on incentives, as explained by Pink and animated by the RSA? Yes, I believe there is. The rewards on offer at the low end are enough to focus the mind on the task and its achievement. Yet at the high end the rewards change behaviour. In India particularly, these may be life changing rewards, making the outcome of the task a much larger focus than the task itself. Just ask any sportsman suffering from “choke” or Poker player suffering from “tilt” – both behavioural changes based on fear – and it is easy to see how high-end rewards can detrimentally-impact performance. The stakes have been raised to the point where we can no longer ignore them in order to focus on the task ahead, making our efforts edgy and fearful.
I am not stating that the MIT experiments came to the wrong conclusion and Dan Pink’s book may well take fear of failure into account (as may the MIT). My only opinion on this is that, once you are in tune with the concept of fear of failure (which my Reticular Activating System clearly is thanks to my forthcoming book What’s Stopping You?), you can’t help looking at the experiments in a different light and potentially coming to a different conclusion.
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