Professor Dan Cable's teachings focus on employee engagement, change, organisational culture, leadership mindset, and the link between brands and employee behaviours. Here he writes about chemotherapy and says the stories we tell ourselves can have a huge effect on our behaviours
Every other week for six months, I needed to receive chemo for Hodgkin’s lymphoma. At first, I told myself a “poison story”— because chemo is really toxic. It can’t even touch your skin because it will burn you. And I felt like I was letting a medical team inject poison into my body. It was invasive, and I felt strong negative emotions: anxiety, fear, dread, and disgust. I fought back panic as the chemo slid into my port. It made my chest cold and I tasted metal in my mouth.
You can see why my poison story made me feel that I had to fight the chemo. It was hard to get out of bed on chemo days, and I fought back a flight response as I walked into the Cancer Center. I can remember how hard it was to work in this emotional state. I had my computer with me, and there was no logical reason why I couldn’t use the time to work. But it was hard to make progress when I felt that way.
Lee Berkowitz, my doctor and hero, helped me craft a different story. He helped me see that the chemo was medicine, and helped me feel lucky to have it. Chemo was invented the year I was born, and doctors hadn’t figured out how to treat Hodgkin’s lymphoma successfully until about 1980. If I had been born ten years earlier, I would have just had to watch the life drain out of me. The medicine story changed a lot for me. It was the same chemicals, but I focused on how it was going to let me see my kids grow up.
Chemo sessions still weren’t fun, of course. But the purpose of the sessions seemed different and my emotions changed from anxiety and dread to hope and gratitude. My reactions to the chemo slid from resistance to commitment, and my resilience and energy improved. I used the sessions to make progress on my work.
My chemo experience taught me something I’m trying to not forget: The story that we generate and tell ourselves can have huge effects on our behaviors and the results that we create.
If we can craft a better story about the meaning of our circumstances, then we can change the way we relate to those circumstances. The result? Better emotions and better outcomes.
Best self-activation, Prof. Dan Cable
When we believe in the why of our actions, we have greater resilience and stamina when the going gets tough. As Friedrich Nietzsche said, “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.” It’s all about the meaning that we assign to our actions. For example: what do you think you are doing right now? You could say, “I am moving my eyes,” which focuses on what your physical body is doing. Psychologists would call this a low level of construal -- this interpretation emphasizes the how of our behavior, in terms of how you are moving your physical self. These types of responses don’t assign much higher-order interpretation about why we are doing what we are doing, so quitting has no costs. You could answer, “I’m reading,” which shifts the emphasis from your physical body into an activity with a purpose. “I’m reading this article for a required MBA class” is an even higher level of construal because there is more of a why and not just a how.
Or you might say, “I am learning how to help people be more alive at work.” This answer focuses on learning -- comparing ideas with what you already believe, and updating – and the learning is focused on making a positive effect on others. The why is very strong in this story, prompting you to stay actively involved even if distractions became available.
There are three steps that any of us can use to get more inspired by what we do all day long, and improve our resilience. And let’s face it: It’s going to be hard to inspire anyone else if we are not feeling inspired.
Make a life not just a living, Prof. Dan Cable
We have stories running around in our brains about all of our actions. But that doesn’t mean that we have actively chosen the stories around our values. For example, I wanted to be a professor since my first year as an undergrad at University. I loved the concept of getting paid to read and teach. But four years later, when I was pursuing my PhD, I “learned” that being a successful professor is all about publishing, and that teaching was a waste of time. I didn’t believe that when I started my PhD, of course, but after consuming a steady four-year diet of “The important thing is publishing research in obscure journals” I heard myself start saying it myself, and even began to believe it. Sometimes we start to believe in the things that people around us say, especially when extrinsic rewards, like job offers and status, are on the line. When I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, I stopped teaching. One day I realized, with the clarity that life-threatening illnesses can provide, that my story about teaching was not inspirational to me. And later, when I was lucky enough to not die, I wondered: “what if I can use the platform of my teaching to show leaders how they could help employees get more living out of life?”
I tried it and I found that my new story about teaching was not only more inspirational to me, it was more true to my own past and more consistent with what I had learned: Life is short, and we should get the most meaning that we can from it.
Here is an exercise that can help you identify your existing story (because they can be slippery and subconscious), and can help you find a story that is more true and more inspirational to you. The exercise is based on construal level theory by Antonia Freitas and her colleagues, and consists of considering each task or behavior on your job, and then asking “why?” four times.
This exercise nudges us to (a) recognize what story we currently are telling ourselves about the why of our behavior, and (b) develop a more high-level and meaningful way to interpret our activities.
First, locate the different activities that you invest your time into. There may be 4-5 “big” activities that devour 70-80% of our time, and then lots of smaller activities that are less frequent and less consuming. Use your calendar to make this realistic. Take a week or two that are representative of your activities and write them down. If you like to work visually, put the activities into “buckets” where the size of the block reflects the time you spend on that task. Now, for each of the buckets, ask why you do it 4 times. For example, one of your activities might be holding performance review discussions with employees. So, ask “why do I do this?” -- and then really listen to the answer that you hear running around in your head. You might hear back: “because I have to… twice a year.” Or you might hear: “I want to let my people know where they stand.”
Prof. Dan Cable on engaging employees and bringing our best selves to work
Whatever the answer is, write it down and then ask “why” a second time: “Why do I have to?” or “Why do I want to let my people know where they stand?” The answers you hear might not be inspiring, such as “because it’s part of the job (this is such a low level of construal that you really can’t even ask why again).
Or “because HR withholds my raises unless I turn them in signed.”
Or, the answers might start to sound inspiring to you: “so that people can know how they can reach their career goals.” And a third time: “Why do you care if HR withholds your raises?” or “Why do you care if people know how to reach their career goals?” And so on, for one last iteration.
There is “a” right or a wrong answer, there are many alternatives. What we are trying to do at this stage is figure out what story you have imported from your environment, across time. It doesn’t mean that the story is “true” or that you can’t change it.
But the sad thing is that many of us are not even aware of how we are construing our behavior, and we might not be very impressed by our stories when we hear them.
Andrew Carton, a professor at Wharton, revealed a similar process when he analyzed NASA during the 1960s.
He found similar steps that, at the time, helped employees ladder between their work and NASA’s higher-level purpose and ultimate aspirations. Consequently, employees were able to construe their work not as lower-level, short-term behaviors and tasks (“I’m building electrical circuits”), but as the pursuit of longer term objectives (“I’m putting a man on the moon”) and the greater purpose the objectives (“I’m advancing science”).
(e.g., “because I have to”) which leaves us uninspired and not very resilient in the face of adversity. Other stories might have shown you a high level of construal is possible and more stimulating (e.g., “I’m not building circuits, I’m advancing science”). You might find that the higher your level of construal, the more “buckets” can be interpreted at means to those meaningful ends.
The same behaviors and activities take on very different meaning to us depending on the stories we tell ourselves about what we are doing. If we choose more meaningful stories about our work based on personal values, perspectives, and experience, we can interpret our impact in better ways and light up our selves up. The story that inspires you only has to be true to you -- you do not need to “sell it” to anyone else for it to ignite your own positive emotions and resilience.
Ironically, however, it will be these positive emotions and resilience that inspire the people you lead.
Take Candice Billups, for example. She has worked for over thirty years as a janitor at the Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Michigan. On the one hand, Billups could focus on the low level of construal -- mopping floors and refilling soap dispensers. However, Billups interprets her work in a different way. She says: “I am basically there for the patients . . . my relationship with the families is really important to me . . . I see myself as a positive force at the Cancer Center.” Billups focuses on the why of the work in a way that is meaningful to her (helping patients through a difficult time) rather than repetitive physical tasks. Of course, both are true—but we have latitude to focus on one story or the other. Which story helps more?
She invests in getting to know patients and their families to understand their needs. She brings a positive attitude to help them smile even in the difficult circumstances. Billups says she humanizes the hospital for patients: “You have to understand that when they come here they are very sick. They don’t want come to an environment where everybody is frowning and pouting, and there is a fighting amongst each other. So I try and always, always have a smile.”
As a leader, you could focus on getting promotions or making more money. This construal is sometimes effective in the early stages of our careers, but many of us find that it is not very inspiring once we have our promotions and lots of money. The goalpost on “financial freedom” just keeps getting higher as we make more and more. This story might not leave you very resilient in the face of adversity later in your career. Another story you could adopt is: “As a leader, I help people put more living in their lives.” This is a very high-level construal for your leadership activities.
and as I describe in Alive At Work, you don’t need money to help your team experience more excitement, enthusiasm, and purpose in their work. This is a powerful way for many to think about the why of leadership — as a chance to light up employees.
Alive At Work, Dan Cable
So far, we have identified task buckets and then found the highest level of construal that you can believe in to make the work more stirring to you. The final step is to allow your story to affect your work behaviors. That is, in addition to “re-purposing” the meaning of your activities, you can change the activities themselves.
We know that different employees in the same job have different interests and strengths. With the speed of environmental change increasing, job descriptions and job titles are becoming less standardized, and more personalized. The way that one employee or team best interacts with customers and produces a final product or report may be very different from another employee or team -- even when they hold the same job title. But it is not just the organization that benefits through job crafting. The research shows that when employees find personalized ways that their jobs can add more to internal and external clients, it ignites them. It builds their enthusiasm, engagement, and sense of purpose. As individuals change the boundaries of their jobs around their strengths and interests, it affects the way they define themselves as workers and as people.
It is so common to assume work is something that we have to do because we need the money. Many of us forget about the possibility that we can do more without being asked or paid, just because it boosts our enthusiasm. For me, this step was simply a matter of talking with my classes more about the power of purpose, and sharing evidence-based ways of putting more living into life instead of teaching students “best HR practices” like SMART goals and annual incentives.
Or consider Charles, who was in one of my classes. Charles started off in sales at the beginning of his career. When he interacted with people and made a sale, he got a rush, and he felt alive. He was so good that after only 18 months he was made a sales lead, with 4 people on his team. Mostly, he still was a salesperson, but occasionally this role meant he did a bit of managing, but he said it “didn’t get in his way too much.” So Charles still liked what he was doing and was still very good at sales, so he was promoted again two years later, to sales manager. Now, 20 people reported to him.
The good news for Charles was that he was making about 3x more money than when he started; he had a nice new Mercedes. The bad news is he wasn’t very enthusiastic about his job anymore. He didn’t really get out into the field often, maybe only twice a week. He missed talking with customers, he spent the majority of his time in what he called “bullshit meetings” about sales cycles, or performance management, or new product launches, or market segmentation, or the new organizational structure.
Charles grew bored at work -- as his income was his highest, he felt like an “order taker,” just processing things that didn’t mean much to him.
Each week, he went into the field to visit one client. Not with the intent of selling anything, just with the intent of connecting with clients. So he would go to a supermarket and talk with the manager about what was selling, what was new, what was surprising. Or he would go to a distributor and talk with people about the trends, what was moving in bulk, what was being returned. He didn’t do this because it was part of his formal job description. His supervisor didn’t ask him to do this. He did this on top of all his regular deliverables.
Charles learned two things from his experiment, which moved from one client a week to several clients each week. First, he was surprised by how many of his other tasks took on more meaning for him when he applied the higher level of construal. For example, if he was interviewing a job candidate, he found he now had fresh stories and new examples to talk about. If Charles was meeting with a salesperson about their performance, he could identify more with the market and what they were facing, and he felt more relevant in helping them develop better relationships with their clients. If he was sitting in a new product meeting, he could connect the product to the trends he’d talked with people about, and would get back in touch with clients with the new information.
Second, Charles learned that he could still make sales. He found that the best way to make sales is not to try and make sales, but talk with people about the problems they are facing, just because you want to know. Talk with people about what they’re excited about, and really listen.
This “off the job” investment connected Charles to the market, but ultimately he increased the share of wallet with many existing customers and he enjoyed doing it. He got that salesperson’s buzz when he was driving back to the office with a new order, which made him feel more enthusiastic.
Or, consider Dr. Dorothee Ritz, the Microsoft country manager in Vienna. Dorothee matched her leadership behavior with her construal of helping employees learn about the purpose of their work. She selected a set of key customers across industries ranging from car manufacturing to retailers to hospitals. And then fifteen people from Microsoft— a team ranging from senior leaders to associates— went on- site at each company and asked lots of people at lots of different levels: “What are your challenges?” They talked to people in IT, of course, but they also talked with business decision makers across different functions.
Nobody told Dorothee that this was her job. This was an experiment that aligned with her own construal of what leadership is for. Dorothee says that these immersion experiences were enlightening for people and increased their sense of purpose. Employees dove into their projects with more energy and enthusiasm after they had witnessed the clients’ needs themselves. And, these investments have been good for business, because clients like to be listened to and many good ideas emerged from the meetings.
Is chemotherapy poison or medicine? Of course, the answer is both. But interpreting chemo as a weapon in the fight against cancer improves patients’ emotions and resilience Your story about why you do what you do is not objective— you can’t see it or touch it. You might not even be aware of the story that you’re telling yourself about the why of your work activities. But your story is very real in one sense: it affects how you act and how others respond to you. You will find that it is possible to change the story you tell about your work activities, and the evidence suggests that you will feel more inspired, energized, and resilient. Change your behaviors to match the best story you can believe in, and you are more likely to inspire others and make your own work more meaningful.
Finding your purpose: A less intimidating approach, Dan Cable
