|| Presence Art

59. Presence Art

Much of the time spent on my own has been to catch up with the data world and the fancy data visualizing tools which I had for years resisted, the tableau, the snowflake, the python ... etc.  It is actually fun and it's amazing how much youtube has developed itself in training the novices.  Yet, the daunting week is ahead of me, so I picked up this book of the Presence to help me as I feel weak and vulnerable.

Many people say that less need for external validation of their self-concepts; stronger listening, observing, and synthesizing skills.

• A truly confident person does not require arrogance; knowing and believing in her identity carries tools, not weapons
• Presence is when all your senses agree on one thing at the same time

Self-affirmation - and expressing your authentic best self

• What are the three words that describe you as an individual
• a curious mind (ask questions, blue, learn new things) to avoid acceptance risks
• analyzing everything, problem-solving (why, causal relationships)
• expansive thinking, like to have choices, options; dislike being in a box, working on a template ... at times it's costing me time because I'm going too far
• what is unique about you that leads to your happiest times and best performances
• conversations that build on understanding human beings, history, future
• situations when I express my core values and they are useful for the listeners
• being surrounded by nature things and freedom of life, farmers market, mountains, and road trips
• independent thinking and decision making, building my own judgment systems and being self-sufficient
• Reflect on a specific time when you are acting in a way that felt natural and right
• 1x1 catch up, what things are you spending time, "how does your day go"
• figured something out, becomes more self-sufficient
• What are your significant strengths, and how do you use them?
• curious ... I always listen first, everyone has a story to tell;
• analyzing ... I always consider that helps me build up the disciplines on decision making, inclusive thinking
• expansive thinking ... obsessed with obtaining context and giving context
• Leadership traits
• everyone has a story to tell and is the leader of himself or herself; vs the chosen one
• distributed power builds a stronger team as everyone creates a legacy and shape the way or the brand of the team
• use the human capital to build on career strengths, eg. learning from your peers, express the point of view and use a personal board of directors to work 
• I value
• being free thinking and having choices in life
• being knowing the whereabouts and the history in the making
• helping to see the future, ie. what's ahead of today

Moments that threaten the self tend to hinge on feelings of social disapproval or rejection: not being admitted to a university, losing a job, a breakup, making a mistake in front of an audience, opening ourselves up to someone who responds judgmentally.

It's about having easier cognitive access to the core value and the story content.  Sometimes you feel like you are trudging through the mud, not getting anywhere, you can't take flight with it.  Then sometimes you just feel like very alive.  When you become present, you allow others to present, be seen, and ask for it.

People prioritize warmth over competence.  It's crucial to our survival to know whether a person deserves our trust.  Presence is the medium through which trust develops and ideas travel.  When you listen to someone, it's the most profound act of human respect.  Real listening can't happen unless we have a sincere desire to understand what we are hearing.  Listening meant resisting the urge to do what they did best - preach or judge.  Then be a part of the problem-solving...

How you carry yourself - your facial expression, your posture, your breathing - all clearly affect the way you think, feel, and behave.  Stand up straight and realize who you are, that you tower over your circumstances.   The slow speech demonstrates a kind of openness, when people speak slowly they run the risk of being interrupted by others.  In speaking slowly one indicates that he or she has no fear of interruption.  Expanding your body language - through posture, movement, and speech, makes you feel more confident and powerful, less anxious and self-absorbed, and generally more positive.  Positive posturing also clears for creativity, cognitive persistence, and abstract thinking.  It overrides your instinct to fight or flee, allowing you to be grounded, open, and engaged.

Slowing down is a power move.  Just as speaking slowly, taking pauses, and occupying space are related to power, so, too, is taking your time to figure out how to respond and slowing down your decision-making process in high-pressure moments.

Doing nothing is doing something.  It tempered my feeling of threat.  Doing nothing reminded me that I do have some power to slow the runaway train.  And it freed me to see and respond to the situation with fully functioning cognitive machinery - better working memory, greater clarity, and the ability to adopt several different perspectives.  Slowing down becomes self-reinforcing.

Nudge myself through countless sludgy days.  Each tiny personal experience of improvement becomes a new source of both inspiration and information for me.  Each time I go through a pressure without panicking when I struggled to cognitively process what I was hearing - a tiny victory.  We encourage ourselves to feel a little more courageous, to act a bit more boldly, to step outside of the walls of our own fear, anxiety and powerlessness.

Nudges are small and require minimal psychological and physical commitment.  They operate psychological shortcuts.  And attitudes follow from behaviors.

Fake it till you become of it.

|| Earnings Insiders and Outsiders

35. Earnings insiders and outsiders

It's the earnings season.  This quarterly earnings call was interesting because there were multiple short dialogues that implied a much deeper context behind some of these questioning and answering that's completely not understood by anyone else.
- we introduced a complex target of operating efficiency, not straight-forward, not mainstream, one that was coined to serve the needs of certain investors' or analysts' needs
- a few analysts reacted with their conclusions on some of the missing pieces to bring back to the mainstream understanding of the shareholder returns.  Hardly anyone could do that on the spot, and certainly, they have not just crunched numbers from any of the newly released earnings reports
- the answers had many pauses, long and very long pauses, searching for answers or searching for the exact words or searching for that sentimental reactions or attitudes to be given

A number of times people tell me that the finance meetings are dreadful and over time, the attendance thins out.  Because the dialogues have a strong connotation of there are untold context, without some of it re-introduced, either on the spot or going back, it would be difficult to follow and to contribute.  Inclusion can be more difficult than what you think you can do, some people continue trying, and others give up.  Now thinking about what I have done in some of these situations, I choose to motivate myself to learn and to climb up and up until maybe the end of life.

|| CEOs and Chiefs

29.  CEOs and Chiefs at the 2019 CBA Live

Four keynote speeches between the CEOs and the Chiefs, and they were impressive. 

• CEOs both end with a mission that is more about humanity than the business, being fair, being accessible, with humanity.  They build their cases from two very different angles, one envokes emotions and inspires with personal stories whereas the other tells stories about the social values for every banking business decision

• Chiefs have very similar regulatory agenda, being fair, being accessible, safety and soundness on the financial systems.  Earlier in the DC random chatter, the commentators had already complained that the new chiefs have been slow, have not substantiated the new imperatives, plenty of overlaps ... here one of them, in playful barbs, says taking the time to have lunches in the cafeteria, baking brownies, and cookies, outreach while the other one says he could do one single metric, could go solo on getting things done.  Interestingly both are on the board of the other agencies

The audience simply finds their own inspirations and virtual mentors.  The world is full of differences, but seeing that differences can co-exist and being somewhat equally effective and thriving, that is priceless for what I really got out of the conference.

|| The Chosen One

26. "The chosen one ..."

These days the chosen one turns off people for not being inclusive, potentially bias driven decision making.  The same may be going on with choosing the computing or reporting tools at the workplace.  Society is full of options for human beings who should master their own destinies.  

In the field of the coding, for instance, there are literally masses of other languages that we can use for data science, but, in comparison with R and Python, they are slightly not so well-suited and general-purposeful.  1) ease of learning the syntax 2) a growing community and open source, the richness of the library 3) applications of both data cleaning, modeling, searching, mathematical functioning, web application, compatibility, etc.

We should understand the choice of a language remains just a tool in a programmer’s hands. Naturally, it is substantial to manipulate it confidently to generate a superior solution. But, in the first place should represent the developer’s skill.  

|| Bias

4. Bias

We’re all biased, but there’s hope.  Eradicating our biases is just about impossible. And that’s likely for the best. We use assumptions based on previous experience to get through our lives efficiently. But, if left unchecked, biases can go too far. While we can’t eliminate our biases, we can keep them under control. One way to start? Spend time with lots of different people and things, Chamorro-Premuzic suggests. The more diverse our experiences, the greater the range of assumptions we can make.

Global Finance bias ambassador program was implemented at the 2018 year-end performance management calibration discussions.  The ambassador calls out where the same behavior, eg. direct communication style, was presented with different connotations or when a certain assumption was applied to the competencies without actual behavioral demonstrations.  The ambassadors help the people managers to focus on presenting the behavioral examples to getting to whether they contribute to results or whether they are opportunities.