Don't forget rule number six

I had a lot of fun in Fife this week presenting at a learning conference for NHS staff in that region. My basic message to all the participants was give yourselves an 'A'.

Throughout our lives and our work we are measured and graded (sometimes necessarily, as I've argued before in these pages - see Measure what matters and The measurement mix.) The downside of this measurement business is that we tend to focus on the deficits, both personally and professionally, and can become easily dispirited.

I guess it starts at school with those dreaded end of term reports. Were those C minuses and Ds really supposed to motivate us and set us off on the journey to improvement? In my experience they did the exact opposite.

My friend Benjamin Zander, who runs an orchestra and a highly regarded music school in Boston, Massachusetts, takes a very different approach. On the very first day of class, before the students have played a note or started an assignment, Ben gives them an 'A'. This is not a grading - it's what Ben calls "a possibility to live into". There is a condition for the 'A' which I'll tell you about in a moment, but first let me repeat a story Ben often tells about one of his students that helps to underline the difference between the world of measurement and the world of possibility.

About halfway through the year Ben asked his class, "How did you feel, being given an 'A' on your very first day?" One of the Asian students put up his hand, a slight surprise to Ben as many Asian students come from a culture that traditionally puts a great emphasis on getting things right. Often the response of the young people is to keep their heads down to avoid the embarrassment of being wrong. So Ben invited this Taiwanese boy to the front to explain how he felt.

"When I was in Taiwan," the student said, "I was 68th out of 70 in my class. Then I come to Boston and Mr Zander gives me an 'A'. I walk around the campus for weeks, very confused. I'm 68th out of 70, but Mr Zander gives me an 'A'. How can I be an 'A' if I'm 68th...? Then one day I decide, I'm much happier being an 'A' than 68th out of 70. Therefore I'm an 'A'!"

He spread his arms out wide and beamed in front of the class and everybody clapped spontaneously. They were applauding the moment he realised that it was a game. There's the measurement game, which we take so seriously, and there's the game of possibility, which can take us on a journey of exploration and discovery.

And the condition for the 'A'? Ben asks all his students, on the first day, to write him a letter dated the last day of class. In that letter they have to tell him about the person and the musician they have become as a result of taking the class. In other words they have to invent their own future, their own possibility to live into. I have read several of these letters - they are positive and inspiring for the reader so they must be doubly so for the writer. They represent a personal vision. They provide a target for the potential released by the giving of the 'A'. It's a technique I've adapted in my own work with groups and partnerships (see my earlier entry Light the partnership spark).

Giving yourself an 'A' and giving your vision an 'A' provide you with the first steps into what I have called before the 'radiating out' environment, the place of possibility. (Sorry for all these references to earlier postings but Radiate out to possibility is worth a look in this context.)

Hold on a second, you might be saying now, this is just recycling all that popular psychology stuff about positive thinking. That reminds me of the jaded executive talking to a colleague as they browsed through the business titles in WH Smith. "I was going to buy one of those books on postive thinking," he said, "then I thought, what good will that do?"

Let me assure you that the radiating out attitude provides real and tangible rewards. An American psychologist called Martin Seligman developed a test of people's native optimism which he called his Hope Scale. He subsequently persuaded the large insurace company MetLife to appoint 100 sales people who had failed their conventional IQ-based recruitment test but scored high on Seligman's Hope Scale.

This group:

 sold 21% more insurance in the first year than the group that had passed the IQ test

 in a sector infamous for its attrition rate, twice as many stayed with the company than the other group

 sold 57% more insurance than the other group in the second year.

So being high on hope (not dope!) really does lead to solid achievement.

I gave all the conference particpants in Fife an 'A' badge to display and at the climax of the session we did a fun test of 'radiating out' using a 'balloonometer'. The guy who won the prize showed so much enthusiasm that he blew his balloon so hard it burst. To close I asked everybody to draw a 'radiating out' face on the front of their balloons and on the back to write the words 'Rule Number 6.'

Rule Number 6? OK, this needs a final story. Two prime ministers were sitting in a room. Suddenly the door burst open and an aide ran in with an urgent message, tearing her hair out with anxiety. The host Prime Minister calmly turned to her and said, "Melissa, don't forget Rule Number 6." Immediately the aide relaxed, smiled and left the room. A few minutes later a junior minister rushed into the room, all worked up about some issue. "Jonathon," cautioned the Prime Minister, "Don't forget Rule Number 6." At which the minister too was pacified and departed cheerily. It happened a third time, as it does in such stories, with the same result.

The visiting Prime Minister was fascinated by these encounters. "This is amazing," he said to his host. "You must tell me, what is Rule Number 6?"

"Oh, that's a simple one," said the resident PM. "Rule Number 6: Don't take yourself so goddamn seriously."

"That's a great rule," said the visitor. "I must remember that. And tell me, what are the other rules?"

The host smiled. "There aren't any," he replied.