Versatility

In this report we're going to focus on versatility, which means being able to
engage in a range of behaviors not necessarily characteristic of your usual ways
of behaving in order to be more effective in a situation or in a relationship.

The concept of versatility, as it’s presented in this report, was originally
developed by Dr. Michael O'Connor, in the book he and I co-authored, titled
People Smart. Versatility is your ability to adapt. "Ability" – that means you're
able to do it. Versatility is an "aptitude" for adapting your behavior.

Versatility – the ability to adapt your behavior, involves being resilient, having
vision, being attentive, being competent and knowing how to self-correct. The
downside of versatility – the characteristics of the folks who can't adapt their
behavior – involves subjectiveness, bluntness, resistance, single-mindedness,
and taking unreasonable risks.

Of course, few of us are totally versatile; that is, possessing all five positive
traits, or totally not versatile; that is, possessing all five negative traits. But most
of us fall somewhere in between. Also, no one is consistent in their behavior all
the time. We vary our versatility depending on the situation or the person we’re
dealing with.

As we learn more about each trait and what to do to strengthen the positive ones
and reduce the negative ones, think about how each one applies to you. Research
shows that people view themselves as more versatile than they actually are.
That's because we all aspire to those positive behaviors and we judge ourselves
on how we intend to act as well as on how we do act. In other words, we tend to
see ourselves through rose-colored glasses. Try to take off those glasses and take
a hard, cold look at the reality of how you do act.

Versatility involves a set of personal aptitudes which are distinctly different from
simply being willing to adapt. Many people are willing to modify their
behaviors, but they lack the required set of abilities. People with low versatility
opt for maintaining routine ways of doing things – and then they're stuck with
the consequences as change passes them by.

Versatility is something we acquire over time through a variety of resources.
These include formal education, daily life experiences, and observations of
others who demonstrate versatile behaviors. It means approaching interpersonal
situations as a new opportunity for learning and growing. And it means making a
conscious effort to change some of our habitual behaviors and knee-jerk
reactions. Attitudes such as "my way or the highway" or "it'll never work" can
become deeply ingrained and become a part of our basic personalities without us
being conscious of it.

Believe me, I know what I'm suggesting isn't easy. I could say to you: "You
know, the way you express your opinions is pretty blunt and tactless." Bluntness
is one of the negative behaviors we'll be looking at in this section. You could
respond: "I'm not blunt, I'm just being honest."
"No, you're being blunt."
"No, I'm being honest. Well, OK, I may be blunt once in a while. So, what can I
do about it?"
"Stop being so blunt."

You see what I mean? Well-intentioned people may have already told you that
you exhibit one of the negative traits we're considering in this report. But they
don't have a clue as to how to help you change your behavior. With each of the
five negative traits we'll discuss in connection with versatility, I will give you
some tips on how to modify your behavior. And I'll give you help on how to
develop the five positive traits as well.

Let's begin with the five negative versatility traits first. They are: subjectiveness,
bluntness, resistance, single-mindedness, and unreasonable risk-taking.
Possessing these traits is what gets in the way of having the ability to adapt your
behavior.

Subjectiveness
Subjectiveness means seeing everything from strictly your own perspective.
"This is the way it looks to ME." And that's the only way you can look at it. The
versatility aspect here is the ability to see things from other people's
perspectives. A classic situation of differing perspectives exists in companies
that are organized into rigid departments. They often don't communicate well
with one another.

Let's imagine a scenario where the research and development division has come
up with a new industrial strength cleaning product that will remove grease and
stains from cosmetics out of white sheets and towels and make them look like
new. This would be a great boon to hotels, for instance, that have a premium on
keeping the sheets and towels looking fresh without having to buy new ones all
the time. This product will sell! The company has brought together the heads of
the departments. Mack from marketing speaks first:

Mack: This sounds great. We can have ad copy ready by next week. We need to
get the jump on our competitors.
John: Wait a minute. R&D tells me that in order to manufacture this stuff, we
need to import an ingredient from Malaysia. That's the only place to get it and
we can't get enough of it to begin production for at least four months.
Helen: I've got another consideration. R&D says that although this stuff doesn't
have phosphates in it, they're not exactly sure of the consequences of putting this
product into the waste stream. What if it produces problems for the
environment? Then we're in big trouble.
Marge: We're in trouble now. Our bottom line is turning red and there's a
shareholder's meeting next month. If we can say that we have a new product
coming out that's a sure hit, we'll squeak through. But I've got to have sales
projections soon.

Will these people ever be able to see each other's points of view? Each one is
coming from his or her own subjective perspective. What each person is saying
may feel "objective" to that person. It's "objectively" true that marketing needs
ad copy, that manufacturing needs the ingredients for the product, that the
company needs to make money and that someone needs to pay attention to
environmental impact. But unless each person is able to get beyond their own
needs in the situation, there'll never be any satisfactory resolution. It'll probably
come down to: do we come out with it, or don't we? And then each person will
have to solve their problems individually.

That is why some companies are turning to team-based decision-making – that's
where each person has to take the other's viewpoint into account when they offer
suggestions for action.

In our soap example, shifting the decision-making from individual departments
to a product launch team means each person has to go beyond the technical
concerns of marketing, manufacturing and so on. The whole team has to engage
each of the considerations together. In other words, each person has to give up
his or her subjective perspective, and instead focus on what's necessary to make
the whole project a success, not just their part of it.

Subjectiveness doesn't just come up in planning meetings. It's reflected everyday
in statements such as: "Anyone who can't see that we need to do it this way is an
idiot!" "I won't accept anything less than a ten percent decrease in this budget."
And similar statements that make the point of view expressed the ONLY
possible point of view.

This negative trait of subjectiveness is related to the trait of rigidity we looked at
earlier. In rigidity, the person is unwilling to consider any other point of view. In
subjectiveness, the person is unable to do that because he's stuck in his own.

There's a famous old eastern parable that you might have heard about five blind
men and an elephant. They were each asked to describe this beast and one said:
"It's like a tree," as he held on to the elephant's leg. "No, no, an elephant is much
like a piece of cord, "said another. The third said: "I think the elephant is most
like a python." And so on.

Of course, each one had only a piece of the picture. It's easy to see that if they
could share each other's perspective, they'd come up with a whole picture. And
that's the advantage of getting past your own subjectiveness. We tend to get
stuck in limited and partial views of people or issues. We don't make the effort to
"get another camera angle" on the subject and so we make decisions, or have
relationships that create problems. Having only one way of seeing things
automatically means having problems with someone who has a different
perspective. Those kinds of problems could be avoided when we accept that
there's more than one viewpoint on almost every topic under the sun.

But we're back to HOW does one let go of being solely subjective? First of all,
it's fine to have your own viewpoint. The task is to make the distinction between
viewpoint and reality.

The reality is that the baby spilled the milk on the floor. Your viewpoint may be
that this is a mess that you have to clean up. Someone else at the table may think
it's quite funny, or quite cute. And the cat thinks it's a wonderful turn of events.
You can help your versatility in situations a lot by realizing whenever you have
an opinion or reaction, it's only one possibility. Don't confuse your viewpoint
with the reality of the facts. It's a liberating feeling to realize that what you
thought was reality was simply your point of view and THAT can be changed.

You may say you're willing to see things from other people's perspectives, but
CAN you do it is the question. You might try practicing on an issue that you feel
strongly about. Abortion. Gun control. Capital punishment. Universal health
care. Can you really articulate the argument of someone on the opposite side?

In more mundane matters, when you find yourself in a verbal tug-of-war, try this
line: "Now, let me see if I understand your perspective. What you're saying is..."
and finish it with an honest attempt at capturing the other person's viewpoint.
The more often you're able to change camera angles, to separate facts from
strongly held emotions, to articulate the opposite of what you believe, the more
you're exercising your versatility muscles.

Bluntness
The second negative versatility trait is bluntness. If you can't understand this
one, you're pretty stupid. See what I mean? Most of us know better than to call
other people names and insult their intelligence. Being assertive about our
opinions and beliefs is fine, but at some point, assertiveness crosses over into
bluntness. And that means you haven't taken the other person's feelings into
account.

Let's return to the scenario we visited earlier with Harry and Deborah. She's
about to take over the co-director of marketing and Harry's not crazy about the
idea. Let's take a different angle on their encounter:

Harry: Didn't my secretary tell you I'm busy? If you'll wait outside I'll be able to
see you in about an hour.
Deborah: Harry, I can't waste time sitting around in hallways. Everyone knows
why I'm here. You've got a choice. You can cooperate with me or you can lose
any credibility you have in this company.
Harry: If I had as little experience as you do, I'd be careful about throwing my
weight around. But if you think you know it all already, I guess you won't need
any help from me.

That was pretty blunt, on both sides. This relationship is obviously going
nowhere. Let's go to scenario two where Deborah has shot from the hip in
responding to Harry's rude greeting. But, Harry decides to adapt his behavior...

Deborah: You can cooperate with me or you may lose any credibility you have
in this company.
Harry: Deborah, how about if we skip the games and go to work? I want this
department to be a winner, and I assume you do too. Let's figure out how to
manage this transition in a way that's good for your career and good for mine
too.

Notice what Harry did to change his style of behavior. He called attention to the
bluntness by indicating they were both "playing games." His next two statements
included references to both of them in positive ways. In other words, rather than
set them up as adversaries, which the blunt opening had done, he changed the
tone of the conversation by pointing out where they met on common ground.
That's a skill.

Find out if bluntness is a problem for you. To do that, simply ask several of the
people closest to you at home and at work something like: "Do I come across as
too blunt sometimes?" "Do I say things that hurt other people's feelings without
realizing it?" If you get back some "yes" answers, then you need to pay attention
to the ways you communicate. Any one of several things can make your
communication hurtful when you don't intend it. One is obviously your choice of
words. Another is the tone of your voice. The words can be fine, but the tone
conveys hostility. How would you feel if someone said to you: "That's a great
piece of work." [said flatly with a slight edge of sarcasm – could be taken as
positive or negative]

Many people don't realize that their tone is gruff or negative sounding. One way
to tell is to tape record yourself having a phone conversation. Tape your end of it
and play it back. Make sure it's a substantive conversation where you can really
hear yourself speaking at length, preferably to someone you're not trying to
impress. Listen to the tape carefully, pretend it's someone else. How does this
person sound to you? Friendly? Matter-of-fact? Or is there an edge in the voice
that's unfriendly?

Hearing what we sound like to other people can sometimes be a revelation. If
there's a hostile edge to your voice, then you'll need to consciously modify your
tone. That'll take time – weeks, maybe even months. But nationally recognized
speech consultant, Carol Fleming, in her audio program, The Sound of Your
Voice, says it can be done, if you're willing to put in the conscious effort.
Modifying the sound of your voice may be the single most important thing you
can do to improve the first impression you make on people, after your
appearance. One woman I know was told by Dr. Fleming that she pushed the
pitch of her voice down [Say next part in lower pitch] in order to sound more
authoritative. The woman had to consciously work at allowing her voice to find
its natural pitch. It took several months of effort, but it made her speaking voice
sound more alive and musical.

In general, overcoming bluntness in your communication style means becoming
more aware of other people's feelings. The more you can do that, the more
successful you'll be in developing satisfying relationships. If you have a
tendency toward being authoritarian, you can work on recognizing when it's
appropriate to back off. If you listen more to other people's opinions, ideas and
concerns, you're less apt to express your own in a blunt way.

Resistance
When I talk about the next negative versatility trait, the image of a mule comes
to mind. Mules are not very versatile fellows. They may be good for some
things, but they're not good at adapting their behavior to fit the circumstances.
The mule has come to symbolize stubborn resistance. It seems they can't help it.
Any suggestion that doesn't meet with their approval is strongly resisted.

Do you find yourself resisting most suggestions that come from others? One of
my favorite jokes – you might have heard a version of it because it's been around
for a while – has a great moral about resistance to it. One day there were flood
warnings out in this small town and the sheriff went around telling everyone to
get to higher ground before the river overflowed its banks. One man heard the
sheriff riding by his house with the warning coming over a loudspeaker and said
to him: "I'm going to be okay here. I put my faith in the Lord."

The next day the town was flooded and the water had reached the second floor
of the man's house. A rescuer came by in a boat and said to him: "Come on. Get
in the boat. The water's going to go higher." The man refused saying: "I'm
staying here. I'll be all right. I put my faith in the Lord. He'll save me."

The third day the water was still rising and the man was on his roof. A rescue
helicopter came by and saw the man and the pilot shouted down. I'll drop a rope
so you can pull yourself up." "Don't bother," said the man, "I'll be fine. The Lord
will take care of me." A little while later the man drowned. He walked up to the
pearly gates of heaven and he was angry. When he saw St. Peter he said: “What
happened? I put my trust in the Lord to save me, and I drowned!" St Peter said to
him: "We sent you the sheriff, a boat and a helicopter. How come you refused all
three?"

This man would have fared better if he had made one shift in his mindset – he
needed to shift from thinking either/or to both/and. In his mind, he either took
the advice of the rescuers, OR he trusted in the Lord, to use his terms. He
resisted because he saw no way to connect the two. What if he had thought
both/and? Both the rescuer arrived AND his faith was being vindicated.

One of the most constructive and challenging activities our human minds are
capable of is reconciling two seemingly opposite ideas. Rather than seeing things
as either this or that, great minds are often capable of figuring out both/and.
Someone once thought: I want a dessert that's both hot and cold, and the hot
fudge sundae was born. Or maybe it was baked Alaska. I want to send you a
letter, and I don't want to have to go to the mailbox. Voila! The fax machine.
Assuming you have one too. I like to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, AND I
don't want to ingest a lot of pesticides. What's happened? You can find in most
towns today the organic produce store.

You may say: "Well, it's relatively easy to figure out solutions to those kinds of
problems – ones that don't involve people and their feelings." I think it's very
possible to take the both/and mindset into any difficult interpersonal situation.
When you disagree with someone, she can be right in terms of her experience,
and you can be right in terms of yours. You can say to her: "I can see why you
feel the way you do. It's entirely reasonable in terms of the experiences you've
had. But my experience has been different." You can acknowledge another
person's suggestion, or point of view, without agreeing to it or accepting it. That
creates an atmosphere in which both your view and the other person's can
peacefully co-exist.

Letting go of resistance as an automatic response to other people's suggestions or
viewpoints doesn't mean you automatically agree with everyone. No one expects
you to do that. What makes resistance such an unattractive and nonversatile trait
is that it's a knee-jerk, unthinking reaction. The mule reaction. You can still say
"no" or disagree. But you do it by acknowledging that the other person's thought
or feeling can exist along side yours.

Then you can proceed to discuss the two and you might decide to use a phrase
like: "Let me tell you how it looks from my angle..." Or, "What you may not
have considered is..." That's not knee-jerk resistance; it's a considered difference
of opinion. Having the ability to think "both/and" gives you great versatility in
your relations with others. And remember the man on his roof and the helicopter.
Things don't always come to us in the ways we expect them to.

Single-mindedness
The fourth negative trait that indicates a lack of versatility is single-mindedness.
It might also be called narrow-mindedness or tunnel vision. It's typical of the
kind of person who has one goal, one topic, one cause, or only one way of doing
things. It's a little like a musical instrument that can only play one note. It may
be a lovely note, but it's only ONE note. And that makes for a pretty dull tune.

Single-mindedness doesn't mean that you shouldn't totally commit yourself to
something you're passionate about. This negative trait means you can't see that
other people have other goals, passions, causes and ways of doing things that are
also perfectly valid. Not only valid, but necessary to take into account as you
pursue your own direction.

I saw a graphic example of this trait in a story I read about a woman who loved
birds very much and was committed to helping them in any way. That included
setting out poison for neighborhood cats and squirrels. It seems rather narrow-
minded to try to preserve one species at the expense of others. Her neighbors
who loved cats and squirrels might have shared her love for birds as well. What
could have been a neighborhood effort turned into hostile confrontations.

People who are single-minded have firmly decided what's of importance to them
and tend to look for a course of action that allows them to get there. What they
miss are all the allies they could have; they miss alternative ways of reaching
their goals or furthering their causes. They often don't take into account that they
could accomplish their objective AND the objectives of others at the same time.

Let's look at a true story, adapted from the book, Changing Problem Behavior
in Schools, by Alex Molnar and Barbara Lindquist, where a seventh-grade
English teacher is trying to get her student, Charlene, to stop talking to her
friends during class. The first several months of the term, the teacher used the
usual techniques – asking Charlene to be quiet, threatening Charlene with extra
work, and reprimanding her in front of the whole class. This teacher found that
disciplining Charlene was becoming a regular part of the class agenda. So she
decided to try some other approaches. Let's listen...

Teacher: Charlene, I see that you're talking with your friend, Rosanne again
today.
Charlene: Yes, Mr. Howard. I have something very important to tell her.
Teacher: You know, Charlene, in the past I've gotten quite angry about your
disrupting the class with your talking. But I've realized that I just didn't
appreciate how important your friendships are to you. The fact is that you risk
getting poor grades in order to preserve your relationship with Rosanne. Maybe
for some people, good friends are more important than good grades.
Charlene: (a little taken aback) Well, I just needed to tell her something right
then.
Teacher: I understand. I'll try to be more tolerant of your need to do that.

Charlene stayed mostly quiet for the rest of that class period. But the next day
she was just as talkative as usual. The teacher tried to ignore the situation, but
some of the other students were getting annoyed. One said sarcastically:
"Charlene's working on her friendship again." The teacher realized he was losing
the patience of the rest of the class so he tried a second strategy:

Teacher: Class, I know that Charlene is talking again and distracting some of
you from your work. But she's offering us a good lesson in life. She's teaching us
how to survive in a world filled with distractions. If you're finding the distraction
to be too much, feel free to move away from her."

Charlene liked the idea of being compared to a force of nature. But as students
began to move their desks away from hers, she quieted down for the rest of the
class period. However, the next day, Charlene was acting like a full blown
distraction again. This time the teacher tried a third strategy:

Teacher: Charlene, I have to keep your interests and the interests of the other
students in mind. I know you need to communicate with Rosanne and some of
your other friends. Since this is an English class, I'd like you to write down what
you have to say in note form and carry it over to Rosanne.

Charlene liked that idea a lot. The only problem was that her friends didn't want
to take the time to write her answers back. So the communication was one-sided.
After a few days, Charlene talking was reduced considerably, and there was only
an occasional note to a friend.

The lesson we can learn from this story is that the teacher had had a single-
minded approach to the problem of the talkative child: that is, stop the talking.
When he reframed her talking as a positive event, at least for Charlene, he was
able to creatively approach the situation in which his need to have order and her
need to communicate were both met.

If becoming single-minded to the point of ignoring the needs of others is a
problem for you, then your challenge is to find creative ways of allowing for
more possibilities. Again, I'm not suggesting that you give up on your own goals
and dreams. But if you intend to influence people and build support for your
projects, you need to learn how to incorporate the ideas or goals of others into
the picture. The key is always to look for things that connect two different ideas
or goals. People often disagree over means – the way to accomplish something.
But sometimes there can be real agreement on the positive intent of the goals.
Even in the very antagonistic battle over pro-choice versus pro-life in the
abortion debate, people from both sides who are willing to talk to each other find
common ground in wanting to preserve family values.

When you find your mental focus becoming narrower and narrower on one issue
or one approach, remember the one-note instrument. It may be attention-getting,
but all by itself, it gets boring.

Unreasonable risk-taking
The fifth and final trait that inhibits versatility is called "unreasonable risk-
taking." These are individuals who tend to over-emphasize the resources they
have available or can acquire to accomplish their objectives. Or, they're people
who under-emphasize the barriers that are likely to get in their way.

There's been a lot of emphasis in the past decade or so on risk-taking as a
positive trait of high achieving individuals. Most corporate environments don't
encourage risk-taking. Neither do government bureaucracies. So "unreasonable
risk-taking" might not seem like much of a problem, except that we're talking
about increasing power and influence with others. That demands that you take
risks, provide leadership, and create visions for others. So risk-taking comes
with the territory of adaptability.

This is just a note of caution to take reasonable risks. Psychologist David
McClelland and others who have researched high achievers say the most
successful individuals take moderate risks which have a 30 percent to 70 percent
chance of being accomplished. Taking a risk on something that has less than a 30
percent chance of success is considered reckless behavior rather than reasonable
risk taking. This is especially true if you're risking the resources of other people
in the process.

Accomplishing something which has over 70 percent chance of success is
essentially not taking a risk in the first place. Assessing risk involves both
looking at what positive factors are in the plan, as well as the negative factors
that stand to get in the way. There's usually no way to do an ironclad assessment
of a plan. Oftentimes the factor that weights the balance in one direction or the
other is the person taking the risk. How much follow-through do you have? How
much energy are you going to bring to the enterprise? If the going gets tough,
can you count on yourself to keep going?

A great majority of businesses begun by individuals in this country fail within
the first 5 years. Starting a new business is always a risk, but a good business
plan upfront will help assess the chances for success. According to Michael
Gerber, who runs a nationwide training company for fledgling entrepreneurs, the
number one reason for the failure of startup businesses is under-estimation of the
resources it takes to keep a business going. Under-estimate of the capital
required, under-estimate of the time it takes, and under-estimate of the expertise
it takes to run your own business. Yet every year, hundreds of thousands of
people hang out their sign, print their business cards and wait for their first
customer or client.

And the good news is that tens of thousands of those businesses do succeed.
Because they've taken a reasonable risk. And undoubtedly because they've
learned how to be flexible and versatile in meeting the challenges of the
marketplace.

Let me again list the five traits that are deadly if you want to increase your
versatility – or your ability to adapt your behavior to different people and
changing conditions. First, subjectiveness, second, bluntness, third, resistance,
fourth, single-mindedness, and fifth, unreasonable risk-taking.

In closing our discussion on the traits that get in the way of versatility, I'd like to
tell you a parable that conveys an ancient wisdom about being willing, or being
UN willing to adapt your behavior.

Two Buddhist monks were walking through the woods one day when they came
upon a mountain stream that was rushing over large boulders. A peasant woman
was standing at the edge wanting to cross, but she was afraid of getting swept up
in the current. The monks had taken a vow of celibacy which included the rule
that they could never physically touch a woman. One of the two monks offered
to carry the woman across the stream and she accepted. The two monks crossed
the stream, one carrying the woman. At the other side the monk set the woman
on the bank and said goodbye and the two monks continued their journey.
Neither one said a word about the incident.

Finally after a couple of hours the one monk could no longer hold back his
discomfort and said to the other: "How come you picked up that woman and
carried her across the stream? Did you not remember that we've have taken a
vow never to touch a woman? The other monk looked at him for a while and
then said: "I put her down several hours ago. Why haven't you?"

Versatility means being able to adapt your behavior when it makes sense. It
means staying open to alternatives and breaking the rules once in a while. In the
next section of this report, we'll take a look at just what it takes to have those
skills.

Now that we've examined the negative versatility traits, let's move on to the 5
positive ones. The good news is that versatility can be learned. More versatile
people tend to approach every situation in each day of their lives as new
opportunities for learning and growing.

Here's an example of a statement from a person with high versatility:
"One of the things I really like about my job is that every day is different. I'm
always learning something new and having the opportunity to respond to many
types of situations. I either use the talents I have or I have to develop new ones.
In fact, our company gives us a chance to take a variety of training programs
both in-house and through continuing education. They reimburse us for part of
the cost. I'm always on the lookout for ones that fill the gaps for my job in areas
where I'd like to get better."

Now here's a statement from a low versatility person:
"I hate work. It's always the same old thing, day after day, year after year. The
only real good thing about it is I get a chance to meet a lot of people and get
invited to a lot of great parties. They offer me incentives to do in-house training
programs and get some free Continuing Ed courses. But I don't think I need to
learn anything new in order to keep my job. So what's the point?

What's the point? The point is that this person's trapped in a one-dimensional
view of life: What I like. What I think I need. This is the antithesis of versatility.

You may think of yourself as versatile – able to adapt your behavior, open to
change. But are you locked into the same magazines, the same TV shows and the
same flavor of ice cream over and over again? You may think you're Mr. or Ms.
Versatility in your relationships. But what do others think? Ask your friends,
your spouse, your boss, or your kids, if they think you're open to trying out new
ideas, new ways of doing things that someone else suggests. If they say you're
not, ask them to name a few specific situations. Don't get defensive! You're
taking a survey, not looking for an argument. Say "thank you" no matter what
they say.

If you do that survey, chances are you'll discover that you're not as versatile as
you think. Even if you're feeling that a few of the negative traits we discussed
earlier do fit you "once in a while," there's still hope for change. You're not a
prisoner of your own behavior patterns and tendencies. You're in charge of
whether you choose to be a person with lower or higher versatility.

The 5 higher versatility traits are resilience, vision, attentiveness, competence,
and self-correction. Let's look at them one by one and as we do, try to assess,
honestly assess, how much of each ability you possess. We'll start with
resilience.

Resilience
In terms of versatility, resilience means knowing how to cope in spite of
setbacks, or barriers or limited resources. Resilience is a measure of how much
you want something and how much you're willing, and able, to overcome
obstacles to get it. It has to do with your emotional strength. For instance, how
many cold calls can you make in a row that all turn out to be "no thank you?"

Remember Abraham Lincoln? You wouldn't, if he had given up. In 1832 he was
defeated for the state legislature. Then he was elected to it in 1834. In 1838 he
was defeated for speaker of the state house. In '40 he was defeated for elector.
Lincoln ran for Congress in 1843 and guess what – he was defeated. He was
elected to Congress in '46 and then lost for re-election in '49. He ran for U. S.
Senate in 1855 and – was defeated. In '56 he was defeated for Vice-President. He
ran again for the U.S. Senate in 1858 and lost. And in 1860, Abraham Lincoln
was elected President of the United States – one of the best ones we've ever had.
That's resilience!

Your challenge to stay resilient may not be quite the size of Abe Lincoln's. You
might be working on making a sales quota when 90% of your prospects say
"no." You might be pushing for a change in a local zoning ordinance and you
have to fight city hall. You might be trying to get your co-workers to recycle
paper in order to save money and trees. When you're up against obstacles you
can either maintain your resilience, or cave in to defeat.

We're all pretty resilient when we're little. We fall down and pick ourselves up
again. The tent we make with sheets and cardboard gets blown apart by the wind
and we put it back together again. Someone says we can't go to the park 'cause
it's raining, and we find something else to do. But somewhere along the way, we
start to develop a rigidity toward the unexpected, and then toward change in
general. We lose our ability to shift course or to try something else. We lose our
resilience.

In his book, A Whack on the Side of the Head, Roger von Oech tells the story
of when he was a sophomore in high school; his English teacher put a small
chalk circle on the blackboard and asked the class what it was. After a few
seconds, someone answered: “A chalk circle on a blackboard." No one else had
anything else to say, since the drawing had obviously been named.

The teacher told the class: "I'm surprised at you. I did the same exercise with a
group of kindergartners yesterday and they thought of 50 things the chalk mark
could be: an owl's eye, a cigarette butt, the top of a telephone pole, a pebble, a
squashed bug, and so on."

The lesson the teacher was giving was clear. As we grow older, we lose the
ability to imagine alternatives. And the ability to imagine alternatives is crucial
when you've received a setback, or something doesn't work and you need to find
another approach.

Another reason we lose resilience is because we stop playing games. We stop
playing board games, unless it's to entertain our kids. We stop playing basketball
or baseball with our friends. Whether it's checkers or volleyball, games teach us
to stay open to new situations. One-on-one sports like tennis and racquetball can
teach us resilience because we constantly have to react to the unexpected – to
our partner's next move. And that's good training for life in general. But too
often, when we play games as adults, it's a win-lose proposition, not an occasion
to test our resilience.

Remember that we're talking about resilience as an ability. It relates well to two
of the traits we defined as flexibility traits: confidence and positiveness. The
versatility traits build on those flexible attitudes. Having a sense of confidence in
yourself, and maintaining a positive expectation toward people and situations
lays the foundation for the ability to be resilient.

Let me give you a couple of tips on improving your resilience. Here's an exercise
that's fun and can tell you something about yourself. Finish this sentence with
five different endings: When I'm faced with a problem I....
I'll give you 30 seconds to come up with any 5 answers. Be creative. Remember
the kindergartners. When I'm faced with a problem I...

Is there a pattern to your answers? Here are some answers I came up with for
myself: When I'm faced with a problem…
– I generate several different options to deal with it.
– I ask my wife, Sue, what she thinks.
– I listen to music in the dark.
– I say to myself: OK, "this too shall pass."
– I call one of my friends to get their input.
 – I decide it's time to read the sports page.

Now some of those answers are useful and some are silly. But what that exercise
revealed to me was that my attitude is basically one of engaging the problem
rather than running away from it. I hope you have some silly answers among the
serious ones. But I hope that your answers indicate that your basic approach to
problems is a hands-on, can-do attitude. That's the stuff resilience is made of.

Vision
The next positive versatility trait is vision. I think it's easy to see why someone
who has the power to imagine, to be creative, to posit alternatives in a coherent
way that others can understand, is going to be more influential than someone
who can't. There's been a lot of discussion and refinement of the notion of
"vision" in the past ten years or so. A vision is your picture of a desired state of
affairs at some point in the future. A vision provides a way for people to agree on
goals and how they'll be met. With so much change going on, it's become more
and more necessary to envision the way we'd like things to be. Without a vision,
we get lost in the trivia of daily life, or swamped by the feeling of being out of
control.

Let's imagine there are 3 people looking at an open field just outside the city
limits. One person sees a baseball diamond for kids to play on. Another sees a
mini-mall with convenient little shops to stop at on the way home to the suburbs.
The third person sees the perfect place for low-income housing. Those 3 are very
different visions. Yet, assuming that this plot of land is waiting to be developed,
someone's vision will win out.

My point is nothing happens without a vision to guide the way. We all have
visions. They're usually born from some need. You have books and papers lying
all over the floor, and you envision a nice new bookcase against the wall.

You can see that your mail room personnel are very busy at certain times of the
day, and at other times they're all sitting around telling jokes. So you envision a
system where their work is scheduled in a much more productive way.

When the senior management at the Steelcase Furniture Company in Grand
Rapids, Michigan, decided to reorganize their company, they began with a vision
of a company where everyone's talents and energies were fully engaged. They
decided that the traditional corporate building they were in wouldn't allow for
that, so they envisioned a flat, spacious headquarters. Construction on the
Corporate Development Center began in 1986. When it opened in 1989 it had
seven levels with large areas where multi-discipline teams could meet. There
were no separate departments for different functions. Executives are clustered
around the center of the building where everyone has easy access to them. And
there's even an escalator so people can talk to each other while changing floors.
What's important to note is that the Steelcase's Corporate Development Center
began with a vision of how they wanted things to be.

How would you go about developing a vision that would be attractive to other
people? Here's the starting point: "What-if" questions. "What-if questions get
your imagination and thinking going. One thing that all creative thinkers know is
that you don't limit yourself at this first stage. Don't assume any rules or
limitations. Don't say: "What if we could pull off this project with only 4
people," and then immediately stop yourself by saying: "No, that's stupid. It'll
never work." In A Whack on the Side of the Head, Roger von Oech suggests
you start the juices flowing by asking yourself: "What if gravity stopped for one
second every day?" What would happen to oceans and rivers? How would
houses be designed? What would happen if you were eating an ice cream cone
during that one second?

That's a great example of suspending the rules and allowing yourself to play in
the realm of the possible. Von Oech calls it "getting into a germinal frame of
mind." That's like a garden bed with rich, black dirt where seeds get a good start
on germination. What-if questions allow you to free yourself from deeply
ingrained assumptions you have about how things are usually done.

Von Oech also addresses the issue of the impractical. Sure, a lot of your early
"what-if" speculations are going to be utterly impractical. But embedded within
the impractical is often a seed of practicality. He cites one example where an
engineer at a large chemical company did a "what-if by suggesting that they mix
gunpowder into their paint products. Then when the surface needed repainting,
they could blow the old paint off of it.

Now that's not very practical. But it did open up the idea of having something
within the paint that allowed for it to be removed easily. The engineer's what-if
question opened up everyone's thinking about putting additives in the paint. One
additive would be in the paint when you bought it. It would be inert until another
substance was spread on the surface. When the two chemicals interacted – bingo
(!) the paint would come off easily. The company went to work on making that
vision a reality.

Again, the point is stopping your critical judge from coming in too early on the
process. The part of each of us that says: "That'll never work," is always present,
ready to speak up. Let the creative, innovative visionary in you come out and
play.

Visions are born for all sorts of reasons: to make money, to end a problem, to
improve a situation, to create an alternative, to have more fun. Some people have
visions where other people see only problems or nothing at all. What would you
build on that empty field outside of town?

Attentiveness
The next trait we'll consider is actually a very important prerequisite to the
ability to create visions. It's called attentiveness. This means being aware of
what's going on in your environment. It can be as simple as noticing when
someone is getting bored, to sensing that now's not the right time to put your
ideas across. It's knowing when to act and when not to act.
Attentiveness is also the ability to tune into a problem and come up with its
essential components. "What's really going wrong here?" That insight provides
the basis for envisioning something that will truly work better.
To use an earlier example, attentiveness to the problem of the mailroom people
sitting around and telling jokes will reveal the problem is not that people are
lazy, or that they like to goof off. It's that the scheduling is poorly orchestrated.

The fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, who was created by Arthur Conan
Doyle, had legendary powers of attention to detail. Sherlock would notice a
dropping of cigarette ash on the carpet, or a faint smudge of billiard chalk on a
finger, or recognize that a person's accent didn't go with his Middle Eastern garb
and he'd have the clue he needed to solve the case.

Attentiveness means you're open to outside stimuli entering your field of
perception or, if the stimuli are more subtle, entering your intuition. It means
you're open to more information coming in through your eyes and ears, through
your sense of touch and through what's known as your kinesthetic sense. That
means how your muscles and the organs of your body react. Our bodies can tell
us loads about how other people are feeling if we're attentive enough. Earlier we
discussed the trait of empathy, putting yourself in the other person's shoes. The
ability to be attentive to others allows you the access to the other person's
feelings, and sometimes those feelings are mirrored in your own body – feelings
such as fear, sadness and discomfort.

There's an old parable about a very educated English gentleman visiting a well
known Buddhist master to see what he could learn from the spiritual teacher. The
holy man poured a cup of tea for the Englishman and kept pouring and pouring
until there was tea all over the floor.

Finally, the Englishman could not sit silently any longer and asked: "Why are
you overfilling the cup?" The Buddhist master replied: "This cup is like your
head. It is so full that nothing else will go into it. You must empty yourself first
in order to learn anything new for me."

The trait we're discussing – attentiveness – works a lot like that. In order to be
attentive, we need to empty ourselves of other thoughts and set ways of seeing
things. When we use our senses to take in all we can about other people, we can
much more accurately adjust our behavior to the needs of others. When we're
attentive to situations, we can exercise that power of vision we spoke of earlier
to make positive changes for ourselves and others.

Competence
The fourth versatility trait is being competent. Competence goes beyond having
a specific expertise. It certainly means being knowledgeable and skillful in your
field. But it also means possessing a problem-solving ability that goes beyond
your own specialty. If you don't know the answer, or how to fix the problem,
with competence as an ability, you know how to go about getting someone who
does. Competence means having a can-do attitude and following through on it.

We all know INcompetence when we see it. I speak a lot in public and once in a
while I run into a situation where the person handling the technical aspects of the
event – the "AV" as it's called, for audio-visual – doesn't know what to do when
something goes wrong. There's feedback in the microphone, or the projector is
showing the slides crooked, and the person, who obviously hasn't had the right
training for the job, looks hopeless. Sometimes they look at ME to see if I know
how to fix it.

I'm happy to say the great majority of the time I work with people who are truly
competent at what they do. When something goes wrong, like a buzz in the PA
system, for instance, they may not know exactly where it's coming from, but
they know how to troubleshoot to find it. They check one piece of equipment,
and then another, and then another, until they find the problem.

Exhibiting competence in knowing what you're doing, or knowing how to get
something done, is communicated to others in a variety of ways. There's the
obvious level of actually being able to do what you say you can do. But
competence gets communicated subtly too. Let's look at two different phone
conversations:

Female: Hello, Branson and Lamont. Can I help you?
Male: Yes, I'd like to speak with Bill Lamont, please. Is he in?
Female: (hesitant and distracted) Well, he was around here a minute ago. I saw
him walk by. He doesn't always let me know when he's leaving. I'll take a
message for him if you'd like.
Male: (a bit sarcastically) Thanks.

Conversation two
Female 2: Hello, Branson and Lamont. Can I help you?
Male: (same as 1) Yes, I'd like to speak with Bill Lamont, please. Is he in?
Female 2: (focused and professional) I don't believe he's in at the moment. Let
me take a message and I'll have him get back to you.
Male: Thanks.

Now both of those receptionists knew how to answer the phone and take a
message. But which one would you call more "competent?" The second one,
right? Because she sounded more competent, more focused, more in charge.
Your "nonverbals" – how you look, the sound of your voice – go a long way
toward conveying competence. So does the style of behavior you choose -
whether you come across as a very casual person, or as someone who's a
professional and takes herself seriously. Notice I said "the style of behavior you
choose," because you do have a choice.
And that's my tip on competence: you can choose to behave in a way that exudes
competence, or you can choose to undercut what skills you do have by looking
and acting as if you're not sure of yourself.

Your ability to gain influence with other people is dependent on how they see
you, whether they judge you to be trustworthy, and whether they think you really
know what you're talking about, or can manage the tasks you claim you can.
You'll go a long way toward gaining that trust when you're able to impress them
with your competence.

Self-correction
The fifth and final versatility trait we'll discuss is self-correction. That means the
ability to initiate change and evaluate the results. It means you ask for feedback,
and have a mindset that's about problem-solving, not about the need to be right.
It means being able to see when you've developed a non-productive pattern in
your behavior. Or being able to say: "I think this approach isn't working, I'd
better try something different.

Self-correction is based on negative feedback. When things are going well, we
generally don't think about changing anything. It's only when something goes
wrong, or we recognize the potential for it going wrong, that we decide to make
corrections. This is the phenomenon of negative feedback – feedback that's
based on receiving negative information. A very simple example is the big toe on
your right foot. You probably weren't thinking about it until I mentioned it. If
you had stubbed your toe just now, and it was throbbing, you'd be thinking about
it and how to take care of it. That's the principle of negative feedback.

It seems unfortunate but true that we learn mainly by making mistakes.
Buckminster Fuller was an architect, inventor and philosopher – his most well-
known contribution is the geodesic dome. In the many books he wrote in his
later life, one theme was constant. Fuller emphasized over and over that human
beings learn only through mistakes. The billions of human beings in history have
made quadrillions of mistakes – that's the only way we've arrived at the
knowledge that we have.

Fuller pointed out that humans might have been so mortified by the number of
mistakes we've made that we would have become too discouraged to continue
with the experiment of life. But fortunately, we have a built-in sense of pride in
the fact that we can learn, and we have the gift of memory which allows us to
keep somewhat of an inventory on our mistakes. That prevents us from repeating
all of them over and over again.

When you possess the trait of self-correction, or sometimes it's called "course-
correction," you're able to learn from your mistakes. You also get better and
better at spotting the need for change before disaster strikes. It's similar to being
able to monitor symptoms of dis-ease in your body before they turn into serious
problems.

Let's look at an example of self-correction in action:
Dan has decided to give his employees an all-expense paid cruise at the end of
the year as a bonus. He's telling one of them about it now:

Dan: Jim, you know we've had a great year, and it's because you people have
worked so hard. So I've arranged for all of us to take a four-day cruise around
the Caribbean as a gift.
Jim: Wow, that sounds great. I'll talk to my wife about it.
Dan: It's all set. Four days between Christmas and New Year's. I've planned the
whole itinerary – there'll be shopping and sight-seeing stops, and I've planned a
couple of seminars by leading business speakers on the boat itself. Whadya'
think?
Jim: I think you're being very generous, Dan, but I also think it'd be good to
check with everyone on when they're free and what they'd like to do on the
cruise.

Now at this point, our boss, Dan, can either course correct on the plan, or not.
Let's say he doesn't.

Dan: (very angry) I'm giving you guys a free cruise in the Caribbean and you're
telling me you need some time to think about how you'd like it to be!? Who's
footing the bill? You don't have to go if you don't want to, Jim.

Now let's suppose that Dan saw the mistake he was making as Jim suggested
checking with other people before making final plans. Dan could have responded
like this:

Dan: Boy, I'm really getting carried away, aren't I? I got so excited about giving
everybody this gift, I didn't think about how it fit with their holiday plans. You're
right, Jim, let's pull a brief meeting together at the end of the day tomorrow and
I'll present my ideas and we'll try to come up with some consensus on the trip.

That's an example of self-correction in action. Dan recognized that he'd made a
mistake – probably because he was so excited about his idea – but he made a
mistake by expecting everyone to embrace his wall-to-wall plan for the trip. So
he adapted his behavior. At tomorrow's meeting he has a chance to influence
people with his ideas for the trip. He can use many of the traits we've discussed
so far in presenting his ideas -things like confidence, positiveness, and respect
for others. And he'll probably have to stay open to more course-correction of his
own ideas.

"I made a mistake." "I went off on a tangent." "I got off on the wrong foot."
Those are each ways of acknowledging that we tried something that didn't work
out as we'd planned. If you find that you're not saying those kinds of things very
often or at all, it might mean your versatility is low, or it might mean you're not
trying anything new. As Bucky Fuller says, it's the reason we were given two
feet – to make a mistake first to the left and then to the right and over and over
again. It's only by self-correcting at every step we take that we're able to walk in
a somewhat straight direction.

We've covered a lot of ground in this report. Five negative and five positive
versatility traits. What gets in the way of versatility are subjectiveness,
bluntness, resistance, single-mindedness and unreasonable risk-taking. What
enhances your versatility are the traits of resilience, vision, attentiveness,
competence, and self-correction.

Changing behavior patterns that are years, and even decades, old takes time. If
you really want to engage the ideas I've presented and increase your personal
influence with people, I'd choose one negative versatility trait to eliminate and
one positive versatility trait to gain or improve.

When you feel you've made some real progress in lessening that negative trait,
choose another negative trait to eliminate. Then find another positive trait to fill
the space that's created when you let go of an old behavior pattern.

If you're brave enough, ask a close friend to help you monitor changes in your
behavior. Tell him or her that you're working on changing a behavior
characteristic and you'd like their help in watching for it. It's good to keep in
mind that you'll occasionally slip back into the old behavior pattern. After all,
you've done it thousands of times more than the newer positive trait you've
committed to. Just remind yourself, you're on the road to versatility even when
you fall back into your old habits. That's why you have two feet – one to pull
you toward the right, one to pull you back toward the left, then back toward the
right, just course-correcting as you go. Good luck on your journey.