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Decades ago, Sloan School of Management professor Edgar Schein developed a model for understanding and analyzing organizational culture. His model divided an organization’s culture into three levels:

1. Artifacts are the things you can see–behavior, office layout, work product, etc. Artifacts are easy to see and hard to understand. The Egyptians built pyramids (artifacts). Those are easy to see. Why they built them though is harder to understand.
2. Espoused beliefs & values are what you say you stand for. Values theoretically prescribe how people act.
3. Basic assumptions are the foundation of culture. They are the beliefs that are so deeply embedded that most people don’t even know they are there. They are just taken for granted because essentially “this is the way the world works” or “this is just the way it is”. As long as values are not simply aspirational, they arise because of basic assumptions. Values come to be because you have encountered a certain situation enough times to eventually recognize that X or Y behavior in that situation is important to the group. Basic assumptions only appear as espoused beliefs or values when they have been recognized, but they always show up in artifacts as behavior. When that occurs, it is not always easy for outsiders to understand the behavior because they cannot see and certainly have never felt the basic assumption that led to the behavior.

Encountering culture

When you first encounter a culture, you are presented with the artifacts and have almost no ability to understand them. For example, if you visit your partner’s family for dinner for the first time and find that they fight constantly throughout the meal despite the fact you were told they are a very loving group, you likely cannot understand how fighting and being loving go together if you come from a family that perhaps did not argue through meals.

At the level of value, the idea of being a loving family sounds the same, but because of your experience, you define loving through the behavior of not arguing. The reason for this might be a basic assumption that your family has that is that you can demonstrate your love for a person by being concerned about their mental well-being in the immediate moment. Does your family ever talk about that though? Probably not. They more than likely avoid arguing because “that is just what you do” or “that is the way it is.”

This group though might have a basic assumption around love that runs more like, “You demonstrate love by focusing on the long-term outcomes.” So for example, if you’re about to make the wrong decision, I need to tell you so, and if you won’t listen, I need to make you listen. That is love in my world.

Understanding culture

In order to understand artifacts, you cannot just understand the values. You have to have enough experience with the culture to feel (if even you do not recognize) the basic assumptions.

Having moved numerous times in my life, I have encountered this many times. I would move to a new place, see someone do something that would not be a typical response where I’m from, and wonder more or less “what is with these people”. The thing is that–when you’re from a city in the west and you move to the south for example–you might find that the average person generally lacks the ability to deal with a disagreement head on and instead will just think or say to themselves “bless their heart”.

To you, it looks like they’re just avoiding conflict. When in reality, it might be that for example people in Seattle or New York or whatever other city have learned that you don’t get anywhere avoiding confrontations. And, people in Atlanta have learned that you don’t get anything out of most confrontations. They might value the same things–such as getting their jobs done or working toward a better future for their communities–but their experiences have taught them that their way of getting to those end goals is better than the alternative.

Hiring and culture

When you hire someone, they might very well align with your organization on values, and the artifacts you and they see might appear to align. For example, your company–like mine–values diversity of behavior and thought, and your candidate says, “That’s so cool. I’ve worked with some really valuable people that weren’t like everyone else in the company, but we never really got anywhere with them because our management treated everyone like a cog in a machine. So, those different people just didn’t fit in.” On the surface, all good, but once the person starts, you find that something is not working. This is where basic assumptions rear their ugly heads.

It turns out that–while your company values diversity of behavior and thought–it has an underlying assumption that it’s okay to go down a lot of unsuccessful paths on projects because those multiple failed attempts will result in arriving at the best possible outcome. Coming from the cog-and-machine environment though, your new hire might very well have learned through experience that you arrive at the best possible outcome when you limit all of the brainstorming or trying new things and instead stick to schedules and best practices. You both value diversity of behavior and thought, but your experience has led you to the conclusion that there are different times and places for those things.

Your best chance of avoiding hiring problems related to culture alignment is to ask questions that get to the candidate’s worldview. Don’t just talk about what you value or believe. Get down to why things are the way they are. Why is it better or worse to do X? Why is it better or worse to communicate in Y way? And so on.

Leadership and culture

Unlike when you are a worker, you must have an explicit understanding of basic assumptions when you are in leadership. One reason is what I’ve already said about hiring. You can align around values and beliefs, but basic assumptions dictate how those values and beliefs are acted out. Additionally, as a leader, you must have a clear understanding of your company’s basic assumptions, or else, you will struggle to understand why your people act the way they do sometimes.

As a worker, you have no need to have explicit awareness of your company’s basic assumptions. To do so would be like the difference between simply knowing that gravity acts in a certain way versus knowing why it acts in a certain way. In my example of the arguing family, most families almost never talk about arguing or not arguing. Arguing, or not, is just what they do. They have learned that that is the best way to act.

From the leader’s position though, you must get down to basic assumptions and have a clear understanding of them. Otherwise, you and someone else can seemingly agree on espoused beliefs and values, but still be in conflict that it seems is not resolvable.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about “The Innovators Prescription”. It’s a good book and worth your time. What has been on my mind though has been the dichotomy between–and process of going from–a primary care physician to a specialist and how we do not follow a similar model in the business world.

In healthcare, we can expect to go to a primary care physician, have some level of diagnosis performed, and then be recommended to a specialist if appropriate. For example, you had a cold back in November, your cough persisted, you saw your primary care physician, they prescribed something and said to come back in X weeks if it did not get better, it did not get better, you went back, and they referred you to a pulmonologist.

In business, we self-diagnose and go straight to the specialist. When you have a revenue problem, you diagnose it as a website or brand issue, go to the website or brand solutions provider, get your prescription, and go on your merry way.

Unsurprisingly then, many organizations never overcome the challenges that they face because they really are not very good at diagnosis–unlike a primary care physician that might not specialize in for example knee or lung issues, but who does specialize in 1) dealing with the most common challenges and 2) knowing how to identify a problem and point you in the right direction. This is one reason that so many businesses jump from problem+solution to problem+solution.

They have a problem. They misdiagnose it. They go to the solutions provider they think they need to solve the problem they believe they face. They get that solution. And 6 months later, 1 of 2 things occur. Either, they move on to the next problem+solution set (which more than likely is just a new manifestation of the previously unsolved underlying challenge) or they blame their solutions provider for not fixing their problem. When more than likely, the work they got was appropriate for the price and circumstances, but it was not what was needed in order to address the actual challenge.

Some businesses try to build their version of the hospital, where you have all specialities under one roof, but you still face a challenge here. In most cases, you go to for example a big marketing agency for a specific job like an ad campaign or a new brand. You do not go to them for diagnosis, and having worked at marketing agencies, my experience is that they generally are not good at diagnosis…even if they have people within the business that could do that job. And, even if you are open to being diagnosed and the one unicorn employee in the agency is able to provide that diagnosis, that hospital (marketing agency) is incentivized to keep you in house rather than to recommend you to a specialist, so you often cannot even trust the diagnosis.

The same thing happens in management consultancies, specialty business service providers (like accounting or HR shops), and more. Those are all either the equivalent of going directly to the ophthalmologist and telling her you need a specific eye surgery (which she provides of course) or going to the hospital and having them try to keep your options limited to only the services they provide under one roof.

What most organizations need is a primary care physician.

Rarely, do the trusted advisors in the business world provide all services. The best ones though specialize in diagnosis so that your business can get the challenge it faces actually resolved rather than doing what I have experienced both as an employee in some businesses and also as a solutions provider for others, which is jumping from problem+solution to problem+solution, getting everyone’s hopes up that this is the thing that will unlock your organization’s potential, and then wearing down your social and leadership capital due to never getting to the other side where people can just buckle down and focus on the challenges in the business’ mission and vision rather than the challenges that just get in the way of actually doing the job.

A little self-promotion

Incidentally, this is something that originally attracted me to my company Bigwidesky, something we specialize in, and something I’d like to think I have gotten better at over the years, so if you are open to exploring if the challenges you face have underlying causes that you might not be seeing, I’d be happy to chat.

Most people treat their company culture like it’s something that is inevitable, like something that will arise or change regardless of what they do. This occurs at both the leadership and the worker levels.

At the leadership level, not seeing that culture is something that you do rather than something that just happens crushes the ability of the group to move toward a preferred future, toward a better culture.

George Washington Carver said:

Where there is no vision, there is no hope.

George Washington Carver

At the worker level, not seeing that culture is something that you do rather than something that just happens contributes to a sense of helplessness, to a sense of victimhood.

Paraphrasing the Bible, Ralph Waldo Emerson said:

Where there is no vision, a people perish.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

And both of these contribute to finger pointing. Leadership points to the workers, saying they just won’t do or be the way they are supposed to do or be. And, workers point to leadership, saying they lack vision, are tyrants, don’t want things to be better or different, don’t care about the staff, etc.

Most of the time, both are wrong. Most people want to be part of a strong culture, but because they lack the understanding that culture is not inevitable–it is something you do–they fail to realize that they contribute to the undesirable situations they wish would change.

The culture problem is multifold.

One

If you believe that something is inevitable, you lose the understanding of and motivation for doing the work that actually brings that thing about. Why work on your company culture when it’s just going to be (or become) what it is (or will be) regardless of what you do?

The reality is that a culture becoming something good was often the result of people in the past struggling to make it so. Rarely, do good things like a healthy culture just happen.

Two

If you believe that culture (or anything) is inevitable, you lose your sense of the past and the future. As far as the past goes, none of the struggle that occurred to make your culture what it is today matters because essentially “it would have happened like this anyway”. Sadly, a consequence of this is that you lose the opportunity to learn from the lessons of the past, because again, the struggle didn’t matter, so why worry about doing anything better or different moving forward?

As far as the future goes, you see only one possible future. Your culture is going to be what it’s going to be regardless of what you do. So, you’ve lost the ability to see, discuss, or work with others toward multiple possible futures, which invariably would require work from you in order to realize one over another. No work is required for you to realize the inevitable future, so you do not need to engage with others in any culture-related struggle.

Three

This all leads to an inability to process facts. If you see something as being inevitable, you will move or interpret facts to suit the narrative that supports your view of the past, present, and future. And when the facts cannot be moved or interpreted, you will simply disregard them.

We can see this in our broader culture in our inability to focus on anything, but narratives. When a fact challenges a narrative and we refuse to even admit that fact into consideration, this degrades our trust in “truth”, authority figures, and facts on the whole. It’s as if you can have your facts, and I can have mine. Mine are right. Yours are wrong, so yours aren’t facts. When in truth, mine are potentially Facts In Name Only.

Often, we’re not actually talking about facts, we’re talking about narratives. And narratives cannot generally disprove one another. Facts disprove narratives.

The most obvious early examples of this played out in authoritarian and communist countries decades ago, but you see it increasingly in the west now. So many things are about what I believe and not about what is demonstrably true.

Four

If you lose the sense that culture is something that you do and instead see it as just happening, you lose the ability to understand why others would act in some greater interest. You cannot understand why they struggled the way that they did in the past.

In fact, you have to embody the spirit of the culture you wish to be a part of, and part of that embodiment is participating in the work it takes to make the culture a reality. The culture you see as inevitable actually won’t come about if you do not live both the spirit of the struggle to realize it and also the spirit of that future in which it has come about.

Not living the spirit actually is a large contributor to people espousing a desire for a different culture, but unintentionally working against its realization. This is because their actions support the current paradigm or the alternative futures that they themselves refuse to see. This leads to people thinking that they supported something the whole time (for example, a movement toward a different culture), it didn’t happen, and that the reason it did not happen was that someone else did something to stop it…when in reality, the individual’s non-participation here was part of what stopped it.

What to Do About Company Culture

From leadership’s seat, you have to develop a vision and communicate that it takes everyone to make a culture.

Whether you’re in leadership or anything else though, the key thing to realize is that you are a part of culture and a part of change. Your company’s culture does not just happen to you, and it certainly does not just happen on its own. It is a combination of the people, how they work together and interact, how they make each other and clients feel, and more.

Culture is an active process of cultivation and practice. You live it everyday. If you are not happy with your company culture, you play a role in making it what it will be tomorrow.

To do anything less is to lose sight of the struggles of the past, the lessons you can learn from others, and the understanding that tomorrow can be better than today.

Are you struggling to find the employees you need? Like me, do you constantly hear from executives that “no one wants to work anymore”? You’re not alone. In nearly every meeting I attend with executives around the U.S., these issues come up.

But, what if the real reason is something that no one is talking about?

The real reason ‘no one wants to work anymore’

The problem is poor alignment between what a job is advertised to be and what the employee actually experiences. On the outside, companies present an inspiring mission or vision.

Look at almost any organization’s website, and you will see an inspiring mission or vision:

1. Nike – To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.
2. Harvard – To advance new ideas and promote enduring knowledge.
3. Salesforce – To empower companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way.

What most companies present on the outside is a Call to Adventure. It’s the inspiring message that tells you there is a dragon out there that needs to be slain, you’re the one that can do it, and when you come back from that adventure, you and your community will be better for it.

But, what most employees experience is far from that.

One solution – Make the work mean something

The solution is to make the work mean something. Companies need to help employees see the part they play in realizing the company’s mission. This can be done in a number of ways, but the most important thing is that businesses need to show their employees that their work matters.

You don’t have to make everyone’s job exciting per se. You don’t have to give your call center manager the most innovative work in the business.

But, you do need to help your employees see the part they play in realizing your mission.

The most obvious contributor to employees not seeing this–and some potential employees not wanting to work for you–is that most businesses don’t bother to show their employees that their work matters. Employees all too often feel either like their job is meaningless or that it should mean something and no one realizes that.

When you feel like you are a cog in a machine, you feel unseen. You feel like you are just one of many. And, you likely cannot see what your purpose really is. So while you’re spinning and doing your job, you do not sense any greater connection to a larger purpose or that anyone recognizes your value.

You can change this for your employees by better communicating what your company makes real in the world and how each person plays an important part in that. And if you can do that, you stand a better chance of actually being able to get people to want to work at your company rather than just seeing you as another paycheck that maybe they’re no longer so motivated to seek out.

Are you looking to create the ideal job that aligns with your strengths, interests, and abilities? Writing your own job description can be a powerful way to take control of your career and create a position that benefits both you and your employer. I’ll walk you through the steps of how to write your own job description, including identifying a need for a new position, creating a job title, describing the role’s alignment with the company’s mission, and listing the job duties and qualifications. I’ll also provide a template and example to help guide you through the process. Follow these tips and take the first step towards finding your dream job.

The steps to writing your own job description

1. Identify the need for a new position.
   • Explain how your job solves a problem or meets a need that is currently not being addressed.
   • Use research and your own experience to back up your argument for why this position is necessary.
2. Create a job title and description.
   • Choose a descriptive and professional title for your job.
   • Write a brief summary that outlines the purpose and main responsibilities of the position.
   • List the specific duties and tasks that you will be responsible for.
3. Explain how the job aligns with the company’s mission and values.
   • Include a statement that shows how your job will support the company’s goals and values.
   • Explain how this position contributes to the company’s success.
4. Describe the required qualifications and skills.
   • List the education, experience, and skills that are necessary for someone to be successful in this role.
   • Explain why these qualifications are important for the position.
5. Provide a plan for pitching the job to your employer.
   • Identify who the appropriate person or group is to pitch the job to.
   • Outline the steps you will take to present your proposal, including any materials you will use (such as a written proposal or visual aids).
   • Consider possible objections or concerns that your employer may have, and prepare responses to address them.
6. Follow up after the pitch.
   • If your proposal is accepted, thank your employer and follow through on any next steps that are necessary to implement the new position.
   • If your proposal is not accepted, consider whether there are any changes you can make to increase the chances of it being approved in the future.

Step 1: Identify the need for a new position.

For you to really take control of your career and have the best opportunities, you need to demonstrate vision, passion for that vision, and an understanding of what your organization needs to achieve its goals. In 20 years of my career to this point, I have been lucky to have the freedom to both explicitly write my own job description at times and also to develop my own job without writing the job description other times. What responsible owners and managers generally need to see though is how what you do–or will be doing–solves a problem for the organization.

For example, my manager left the company I worked at years ago, and I was left as the most senior member of the team, but not by much. After discussing with my management, I crafted a job description that helped them to see how their overt need for a manager of that team aligned with both my current skill set and the skills and experience I could acquire if given the right support over the coming months.

To do this, I research what managers of that type of role did at other organizations, what responsibilities they typically had before taking on a managerial role, and what I would need to do to develop from where I was to where the company needed me to be. I did this using job board searches and by reaching out to connections of connections on LinkedIn to ask if I could do an informational interview with them.

Step 2: Create a job title and description.

Picking a job title

After clearly identifying, documenting, and being able to make the argument for your position, it is time to choose a descriptive and professional title. To do this, I recommend surveying titles at your existing company and performing searches on job boards.

While Wizard of [pick a topic] or Head of Excellence and whatnot might all be applicable and interesting, they also might present some difficulties for colleagues, clients, and the market to understand. For example, let’s say that you are a high-powered project manager with the Head of Excellence title. Will you colleagues know to come to you for high-level project management guidance versus going to someone with a title like Head (or Director, VP, etc) of Project Management? And while I hope you stay at your current employer forever, the reality is that you might very well move on, but will potential future employers be able to quickly get a sense of what you do if you have a wacky title?

Writing the job description

At this point, keep your job description as brief as possible. You’ve hopefully searched job boards for similar roles, and you likely have pages of examples of roles, responsibilities, descriptions of what the day to day looks like, and so on. Those are all valuable, but the shorter you can make this the better at this point.

You have the need and how it aligns with the company. You have a professional and descriptive job title. Now, write 1-2 paragraphs that outline the purpose for the job and the main responsibilities of the position. For example:

The Chief Futurist role exists to leads the practice of Futurism and establish a consistent company viewpoint on this practice. The main responsibilities for this role are establishing the vision for what Futurism is and how we deliver it, leading high priority client projects in this area, and mentoring and managing our team of Futurists.

Someone reading your high level description should be able to walk away with a strong understanding of what they can rely upon you to accomplish. This is not the How of your job. It is more like the central themes and goals.

Next, you get into the How by describing the specific duties and tasks you will be responsible for. This is where your job board research comes into play again.

Most job listings have innumerable bullet points listing everything people in those roles might have to do, skills they should possess, and so on. Pick the most relevant ones for your new roles and then adjust and add to them based on your vision for the role and how you see it aligning with what the company needs. The length of this list depends on what is appropriate for your company and role. As with many things though, I recommend you keep it as short as reasonably possible.

Step 3: Explain how the job aligns with the company’s mission and values.

By this point, you’ve explained the need for the role, established a descriptive and professional title, written the brief role summary, and documented duties and tasks. The next step is for you to explain how your job supports the company’s goals and values.

Goal Alignment

Thankfully, while many companies lack actual strategies to achieve their goals, few lack goals themselves. Many are unrealistic, more like dreams, but they still exist. So whether your company’s goals are to grow 10% in revenue this year, become the premier provider of paper products in the Northeast, or something else, your responsibility is to explain how your job will help the company achieve those goals.

If for example your company’s goal this year is for revenue to grow 10%, but your job is largely an internally facing role, you can still impact revenue by ensuring that your work is delivered with such high quality, on time, and more that clients want to spend more money with you. Additionally, you might be able to ensure that your company has higher efficiency and/or saves money somehow around your work, so while you might not deliver more revenue, you can deliver more profit.

Value Alignment

Next, you have to align your new job with the company’s values. This can be difficult because most companies lack real values. They more than likely have unrealistic dreams or generic platitudes, that can be read any number of ways, such as “Respect” or “People First”. Still though, if you want success in this endeavor, you have to align your role with the company claims to value.

My company for example has a value about consulting your network. The basic idea is that we want people that are always learning and who will build networks around them that make them and us better. As a result, if I were making an argument for a new leadership position, I could align it with this value by saying that a key aspect of me being in this job will be finding new ways of doing our work and new partners so that we are always improving and constantly bringing new things to the market.

How you contribute to success

You have likely done this throughout your job description, but you need to ensure that you have a clear statement about how your job will contribute to the company’s success. Will you being in your new role generate sales? Will it improve work product quality? Will it open new markets? Is there a need in the business not currently being met?

State clearly how your role will contribute to the company’s success, and you will help executives imagine how what you are asking for aligns with greater company needs.

Step 4: Describe the required qualifications and skills.

Next up, it’s time to list the education, experience, and skills that are necessary for someone to be successful in this role and why they are important for this role. Thanks to you job board searches, you should have a large list of options. This is the space where you list “Bachelors degree in Marketing, Business, or a related field required” and so on.

You cannot reasonably pitch to have a job if you do not have the qualifications, so ensure that the education, experience, and skills are both appropriate to you and also actually necessary for the role. There is no value is listing for example that a BA is required when it’s not. Similarly, if you have 20 years of experience, but someone could do the proposed job with 5 years, you need to list 5 not 20.

Step 5: Provide a plan for pitching the job to your employer.

At this point, your job description itself is likely complete or nearly complete, so beyond editing and refining, your next steps are to:

1. Identify who the appropriate person or group is to pitch the job to.
2. Outline the steps you will take to present your proposal, including any materials you will use (such as a written proposal or visual aids).
3. Consider possible objections or concerns that your employer may have, and prepare responses to address them.

If you have a boss already, but maybe you are pitching a role that would not report to them anymore, you might need to take political or power dynamics into account. There is no use for example pitching a role to your CEO if they’re going to go talk to your current boss and hear that that person knows nothing about your pitch. That might not look too good for you.

As you prepare, ensure that you understand the need, how the company will benefit, and so on so that you can make a cogent and compelling argument. Also, prepare for any objections so that you are not stopped in your tracks at the first question.

Assuming that the person you are pitching to has little knowledge of what you will talk to them about, begin the conversation with a statement of why you want to speak with them such as, “I have identified a need and an opportunity in [this area] and have a proposal for how to address that I would like to speak with you about.” Once you have described the need and opportunity, explain your understanding of how this aligns with the company’s goals and values, and be sure to ask if the person you are speaking to sees the issue in the same way.

If they do not see the issue in the same way, take the time to understand how they see it because you might not still be able to move forward with your pitch. You need information about their perspective though before deciding.

If they do see the issue in the same way you do, explain your pitch for a new role at a high level and then ask if they have any questions and/or would like you to get into details. This is not the time for you to give them a monologue. It would be better to let them talk as much as they are willing to so that they feel heard.

Step 6: Follow up after the pitch.

If your proposal is accepted, thank your employer and follow through on any next steps that are necessary to implement the new position. Typically, this involves an action plan with specific deadlines, and it might very well include a plan for how to replace you in your current role or otherwise cover the work you are currently doing.

If your proposal is not accepted, consider whether there are any changes you can make to increase the chances of it being approved in the future. If at all possible, ask why your proposal was not accepted so that you understand if there is anything to be done and/or where you might not have been in alignment with the needs of the company.

Conclusion

1. Identify the need for a new position.
2. Create a job title and description.
3. Explain how the job aligns with the company’s mission and values.
4. Describe the required qualifications and skills.
5. Provide a plan for pitching the job to your employer.
6. Follow up after the pitch.

To conclude, writing your own job description is a great way to take control of your career development and find job satisfaction. By identifying a need, creating a job title and description, and presenting your proposal to your employer, you can create a position that aligns with your strengths, interests, and abilities. This can lead to more motivation and engagement in your work, as well as the opportunity to develop new skills and add value to the company. Take the time to create a job description that works for you and your employer, and you may find yourself in a fulfilling and enjoyable job tailored just for you. Encourage readers to share their experiences with creating their own job descriptions in the comments below, or to contact you for more information on how to do so.

If you are writing your own job description and have questions, please shoot me a line at eric@inboundandagile.com. I would be happy to help if I can point you to any resources.

Business is drunk on personality testing.

You take Myers-Briggs and find out you’re an INFP or some such nonsense. You take Enneagram and learn that you’re a Challenger.

And, thanks to this. Your behavior suddenly makes sense.

“No wonder I don’t always get along with people. My personality test says that I tend to be aggressive.”

“Big surprise that I get overlooked at work. I’m an introvert.”

Never mind that a supposedly aggressive person might be tame around their grandmother or that that introvert likes to get loud when playing poker with their buddies. We’ll just overlook that.

The reality is that numerous studies over decades have shown that personality tests predict <10% of behavior. The reason for this is fivefold:

One, context matters more than supposed personality traits at the level of individual situations. For example, maybe you argue hard in the board room or a court of law, but are easygoing around your kids. Why? The context requires different behavior from you.

Two, you cannot reduce many things in life down to a single variable and have much reliability. Can you judge your health based solely on your cholesterol level? Sure, it’s important, but what about your physical activity, blood pressure, diet, stress level, and so on? Or, how about IQ? Raw brain power is important of course, but is a high IQ all it takes to pick out a “smart” person, a hard worker, or something else?

Three, the trait has to be limited in scope and very specific to predict anything well. If you were seeking someone to model swimsuits, you would be better off asking someone with high body-esteem, because that is more specific, than someone with simply high self-esteem, which is simply too multi-faceted.

Four, a person has to be pretty extreme in a trait for it to predict well. If for example you are a 95% in extraversion, we are more likely to be able to predict how you will act in most situations than if you are a 75% in extraversion. The reason is that your trait is less likely to be dampened by any situational specifics.

Five, traits predict general patterns better than individual actions. It’s a little like the difference between weather and climate. Just because your climate has gotten warmer or dryer does not mean that you will not have colder or wetter days. The same is true of traits. Hire someone that tests high in flexibility, put them in a chaotic situation, and you might find that their reaction is to try to build some stability by implementing prescriptive or restrictive rules. But when they go home, they might very well revert to being flexible with their family.

I share all of this because you are not as simple as a single measurement or personality trait.

Your height does not describe you with any level of confidence that I could make real judgments about you.

Your hair or skin color does not describe you well enough that I can draw conclusions with high confidence.

The same is true of your cholesterol level, your waistline, or any number of other things.

And, it is most definitely true with personality tests.

Yet, employers seek to reduce the evaluation of job candidates–and even current employees–down to very few measurements so that they can simplify how they think about us, and we invite that because we’ve bought this line that our Myers-Briggs or DISC or whatever explain so much about us.

Slowly but surely, we can change this though by refusing to others and ourselves people down to simplistic and broad measurements. You are not just a number or a skin color or a personality type. You are more than that, and so is everyone else.

Human beings are hardwired for threat detection.

Some more so than others. And, some have whatever genetic level of anxiety or neuroticism they were born with amped up by the circumstances that brought them to today. So, some people might actually be predisposed to be, let’s say, risk takers, but for all intents and purposes, what you or I see is someone who is risk averse, skittish, pick-your-particular-flavor-of-threat-detection-behavior because maybe they grew up without a stable home, were in an abusive relationship, have been attacked, or something else.

Again, at the end of the day, we all have some level of predisposition for avoiding threats, but some have that level amped up by their experiences.

Imagine a young mother 5,000 years ago needing to decide if this stranger that just walked into her village might be a threat to her child. Or, imagine that child’s young father seeing that stranger and not knowing if he can leave for the hunt that day or if he needs to stay close for protection. Some people in those circumstances decided they were safe and left to do what they needed to (hunt, farm, barter, whatever), and their child (or whatever they were protecting) was harmed. Others stayed close to home, did not get done what they needed to, and suffered due to for example their family not having food or income.

They could not predict the future. They could only place a bet. Some of them made the wrong bet by leaving, so maybe they didn’t pass on their genes because their child was murdered. And, some of them made the wrong bet by not leaving, so maybe their child starved because food was not brought home for the day when it was really needed, and again, their genes were not passed on.

Ultimately though, if your child went hungry or your household had a little less income for a single day, you stood a chance of recovering, but if your child was–let’s say–killed by that stranger, there was no recovery from that. As a result of the ability to recover being different from one choice to the next, human beings are on average more averse to threats than we are attracted to opportunity because permanence of opportunity is unreliable. The permanence of death is quite reliable though.

This is just one small contributor to the extreme attention we now pay to levels of protection that would seem odd to someone from decades or centuries past. That is not to say that for example seatbelts are unnecessary or that there is any problem with making bottles BPA free, but every potential threat piled on top of the next–no matter how small–creates a slippery slope, where we increasingly come to think of these threat avoidance measures as being necessary, and we forego potential benefits in favor of staving off threats.

You or I might think for example that it’s harmless to just walk my daughter around the corner to play at the neighbor’s when she could have just walked by herself, but society leads me to believe it’s not acceptable to just let my daughter walk alone, so I go along with that expectation despite not feeling it is necessary. It’s safer and harmless right?

But, as Todd Rose says, “Today’s collective illusions (the thing that no one believes, but goes along with, because we think everyone else believes it) become tomorrow’s norms.” And those norms just get built upon with more collective illusions, which again become norms. It’s a positive feedback loop.

We’re working our way toward a society that values protection at all costs. No risk taking. No weighing of the costs and benefits. It’s like the extreme version of Dick Cheney’s 1% doctrine. If there is any chance of threat, that’s too much.

And sadly, the media through which we increasingly engage with and understand the world amplify the collective illusions because that natural, human threat detection tendency reacts more strongly to the negative stories we encounter than the positive stories. This is why Hans Rosling said, “Good news is not news.”

All of your information (let’s call them “news”) outlets are selling something. TV and websites need visitors so that they can sell ad space. Forum and social media users are selling a viewpoint. And, so on. If they weren’t selling something, they wouldn’t care about getting your attention.

And sadly, if you’re one of those people that actually does not follow the collective illusion, if you think there are some gambles worth taking, you are now put in a position of being seen as untrustworthy because obviously you’re just not concerned about the environment or animals or children or God-knows-what. You’re too cavalier, but they (someone else) care even though you don’t. Clearly.

In today’s environment, that “compassion”, that moral high ground wins in all arguments even if it’s over-protection and comes at the cost of other benefits that could be gained, such as for example teaching my daughter within a relatively safe setting how to navigate the world alone. No, protection today over long term protection or competence in the future, right?

Within our businesses, this manifests not as an environment in which people can say and do hard things and where they can be safe to make mistakes while working toward our collective goals. Instead, this manifests as workplaces where you cannot say certain things because they make others uncomfortable, where–instead of being encouraged to do–you are mandated to no do.

The downstream implications of this are workplaces in which most people do not feel comfortable being themselves because they have been told making the wrong joke, using the wrong phrase, looking at someone the wrong way is an unforgivable offense. So, people do not open themselves up and fully commit. Why commit when you cannot be yourself? And certainly, if I’m not committed and if I fear punishment for making mistakes, why work hard to try new things, to innovate?

At the societal level, I don’t expect this to change. This is human nature, and the machinery we have built around us support it. The structures and the collective illusions we have built within most businesses support it.

What you can do though if you question some of this security-at-all-costs is not stay silent.

If you’re silent, that makes the collective illusions even stronger and more likely to become norms for the next generation. If you at least say something though, you create the opportunity that other likeminded people can find you and that–maybe, just maybe–someone predisposed to avoid that threat starts to question the value of avoiding it over the value they could get from spending their time and energy elsewhere.

Within a business, that gives you the opportunity to build a culture in which people can be themselves, commit, find the mission and people they truly align with, and achieve something that every other organization foregoes in the interest of immediate “protection”.

I joined a mastermind network earlier this year and began guesting in meetings outside of my market in May. With 44 total guest appearances, that is an average of 5.5 90-minute meetings per month.

The format for these meetings varies from group to group, but one of the most consistent things is that it is a 90-minute meeting once each month rather than for example the half or full day that some groups put in.

After having guested in 44 of those groups, this is what I have learned about what it takes to both run and also be a solid contributor to a mastermind meeting.

Leading a Great Mastermind Meeting

Undoubtedly, it is more difficult to lead and build something than it is to take advantage of it after-the-fact. And, there are many more ways to do something poorly than there are to do it well. Fortunately, if you are motivated by opportunities for improvement, this is why the statement that the path to success runs through failure is so true. Hopefully, if you are a mastermind leader, you can use some of this information to make your investment return as much as possible.

Without further ado, what I believe it takes to lead a great mastermind meeting:

Respect the participants’ time.

It is difficult to start meetings or anything else on time. I get that. We’re all running from one thing to the next, and it is nice to be able to ease into things with some personal conversations, discussions about the weather, or whatever else, but most mastermind groups are made up of people that are executives and CEOs, whose time is expensive. And, they’re paying to be there, so start your meetings on time, set an agenda, and stick to it. If anything I already mentioned, like personal conversations, are valuable to your potential outcomes, make a deliberate and overt decision to have that be part of the agenda.

Prepare for the meeting.

Unlike most participants, the meeting leader has to prepare. If you’re meeting in person, you have to secure the space and likely food or beverages. If it’s virtual, you still need an agenda and featured topics, members, or guests. Sadly, no one is going to take care of these things except the meeting or group leader or someone they delegate to.

While not having food or beverages is not the worst thing in the world, not having a feature and having to ask, “Does anyone have anything they want to discuss?” is nearly always a meeting and value killer. It can occasionally result in valuable conversations, but that is far from guaranteed. And in my experience, that almost always results in a wasted meeting.

Do not go into the meeting without a planned and prepared feature member, speaker, or topic.

Establish continuity.

In addition to developing a consistent format that you stick to, one of the least common, but most valuable, things I have seen group leaders do is a checkin at the beginning and end of every meeting. Typically, this takes the form of going around the room, asking for a 1-10 score/status on your personal and business life (lives?), and then soliciting an answer to a general question like, “What is the biggest news at home or at work from the last month?”

The continuity piece comes in the ability to extend a conversation about one of these issues over multiple meetings. For example, I experienced one group speaking with a participant about what was going on in their business because their score had been low for months, but in this particular meeting, they finally raised it.

Rather than just having a topic-of-the-month and not much more than the individuals or the format that tie things together, this checkin allows for participants to extend consideration of and discussion about a topic over a longer time, which also helps with the next item.

Build community.

The best groups I have guested in had members that demonstrated that they were invested in the group, the time, and their fellow members. This exhibited itself in how open and vulnerable some of the featured members were and how frank, but clearly caring, the other participants were with their questions and recommendations.

The worst groups I have guested in had members that knew little to nothing about one another, featured members that had not prepared, and discussions that rarely got beyond the feedback that you could get from anyone on the street. Additionally, some of the worst groups typically had a majority of members that said that they wanted to be in person more, wanted greater depth of conversation, and so on. But as far as I could tell, they were not making an effort to drive to a meeting place, really focus on giving genuine help, or otherwise investing their time and effort. They might have wanted those things, but the individuals had either gotten tired of making the effort without it being reciprocated, or they simply talked the talk and never followed it up with action.

I believe that a large portion of the potential for community in a group of 10-20 people from different industries, who often have no pre-existing connections to one another, comes from the natural predispositions of the members to genuinely invest in one another and connect one on one rather than for example from some already existing community standards that the members opt into or adopt when they join. That being said, the behaviors and activities that I could see fostered a strong sense of community were:

1. The group leader investing in each new member. Getting to know them, helping them understand how to make the most of the group, and so on.
2. Members working to build relationships outside of the meetings. Setting up one on one coffees, working to understand how they could help each other, having social times such as parties or happy hours, etc.
3. Members investing their time and attention.
4. Members being open, honest, and vulnerable.

Set standards.

Years ago, my wife and I went to Thailand. At one of the temples, they would not let us in because we were both wearing shorts. The fact that we had to purchase and don pants in order to enter the temple felt like an unnecessary restriction, but by enforcing a certain dress code, officials at that temple were working to establish a specific environment that generated certain outcomes.

At any point in life, we can feel that some rules are silly or unnecessary, but in most cases, groups have rules and standards because those things facilitate achievement of the group’s goals. The same should be true of a mastermind group.

Some of the basics should be:

1. Stick to a schedule.
2. Prepare an agenda.
3. Ensure that your featured speaker or member is ready and equipped for their time.
4. Enforce a discussion format. Generally, asking questions before moving to recommendations is a good idea for example.
5. Encourage deep, genuine, and vulnerable conversation. I don’t mean vulnerable in the sense that people just talk about their weaknesses, but rather that the speakers are open and transparent in an effort to get to the best possible solutions.The encouragement part of this also involves members, or at least the leader, courageously calling out when for example someone veils a recommendation as a question during the question portion.
6. Make sure that everyone shows up on time, stays the whole time, and pays attention. Unexpected things happen, and there are times when for example someone has to leave early for something they cannot miss, but the number of times I’ve been in bad meetings due to people multi-tasking, showing up late, or showing up just to pitch their company and then leaving is astounding.

Being a Valuable Mastermind Participant

Let’s be honest. It’s not that difficult to just show up and follow some rules. It is more difficult to be completely open and honest about personal flaws, insecurities, or sensitive topics, but that is also manageable if trust can be established.

After guesting in 44 groups, this is what I believe it takes to be a good participant in a mastermind meeting:

Invest your time and attention.

It does not matter whether you’re a CEO, a hairdresser, or a stay-at-home parent. We’re all busy. We’re all short on time. Don’t disrespect your fellow participants by showing up late, not sticking around, or not paying attention. You and I have both paid to be here. Don’t waste my money and time because you don’t value yours.

I get it that–especially with a virtual meeting–you’ve got your email and Google and who-knows-what-else right there. And for in-person meetings, you have your phone and smartwatch or whatever else. But, we’re all paying to be here, and some of us are really investing a lot in you and ourselves. If you’re multi-tasking, you’re not invested. If you show up late or leave early, that detracts from the flow and the quality of conversation. And if you really aren’t invested in being helpful, I could just as easily have talked to anyone. Why pay to be a member of a group of leaders if I cannot get better advice than what I might otherwise find on the street?

Love the problem, not your solution.

I have a bad habit, a common one but still a bad one. When I think I have the answer, I so want to be right. And when I think I have the solution to your problem, I tend to forget that maybe there are important details I don’t know about. And, I probably stop asking questions that might help me better understand the issue. Unfortunately, the same is true of a lot of people.

Some of the best run mastermind meetings I have been in ask for the featured member to answer a standard set of questions in advance so that the other participants do not come in blind. They can have spent some time reviewing the topic or issue and letting it rattle around in their heads so that they come to the meeting prepared. Then at the meeting, the member is asked to give a synopsis of the issue and what they are seeking from the group. And finally, the group has two time blocks dedicated first to asking clarifying questions and second to making recommendations.

Two of the most valuable aspects of the time for clarifying questions are that this often helps break the featured member free from their existing way of thinking about the challenge, so that they might actually solve the problem themselves, and it aids in the other members getting a better understanding so that they can give advice that might actually be unique and useful.

Ask questions.

If you think you know better than someone else, if you think you have the answer, you stop asking questions and demonstrating curiosity. And most of the time if you just tell someone what to do rather than having them come up with the solution themselves, you make it much more difficult for them to take responsibility for their actions.

The reason is that, if what you recommend does not work, it’s your fault not theirs. It was your idea. And if what you recommend does work, you’ve encouraged that they seek creative solutions from others rather than believing that they can solve their own problems.

Let’s be honest. In a group that includes a CPA, a lawyer, a banker, a management consultant, a marketer, and so on, there are a lot of challenges that each person might encounter that are unique to that industry or vertical. And if you are outside of the issue, it is unlikely you will have a better solution than the person that brought the challenge to the group. That being said, you might have a new way of thinking about the situation, so rather than saying, “Try this,” or, “Do that,” consider asking, “Have you thought about…” and, “What do you mean when you say…”

Stick to the format and structure.

My goodness, people. It’s not that hard. Almost no groups that I have guested in have been able to successfully follow through on this though.

Group leader: “We spent a lot of time on introductions last meeting, so even though we have a few guests this time, let’s just do the shortest elevator pitch description of yourself you can do. Name, role, and industry. That’s it.”

Inevitably, one or two people follow the format at first, the third forgets and doesn’t follow the format, the fourth tries to get back on track, and from the fifth on it’s just abandoned altogether. So, what could have been 20 people introducing themselves in 10 minutes or less turns into a 30-minute segment in which a feel people at first said 10 words over a 30-second intro and some of them say hundreds over 5-minute soliloquy.

There is such as thing as positive constraints. These are generally defined as limitations that benefit the situation. Whether you are in a debate club, the NFL, or a court of law, an agreed upon set of rules that we all follow allows us to get more out of the engagement than we would without those constraints. The same is true in mastermind groups.

If your group–or your group leader–provide some guidance for the benefit of the group, just follow the damn rules.

Don’t sell. Help.

Whether in the meetings themselves or in one-on-one discussions, the number one reason participants ever gave me for feeling the meetings were not valuable was that other participants were too salesy. While I hesitate to judge too much because I honestly did not experience much of that, I can imagine what it would be like. And as it relates to some of these points more broadly, you as a member of a group–and your fellow members as well–simply are not going to get as much out of the time as you could if you are more focused on overt lead generation than on actually trying to help your fellow meeting participants deal with the challenges they face.

I hope this has been helpful–whether you are considering joining a mastermind, you’re a leader, or you are just a participant yourself. If I can help you with anything mastermind related, shoot me a line at eric@inboundandagile.com.