YW INTERVIEW: Peter Jensen

Developmental Bias: Helping people excel

INTERVIEW BY BONITA SUMMERS
PHOTOS BY STEPHEN WILD

Peter Jensen, founder of Performance Coaching Inc. and instructor at Queen’s School of Business in Kingston, Ontario met with Your Workplace to discuss his new book, Igniting the Third Factor. Jensen has worked with Fortune 500 companies in eight countries, teaching top executives to become leaders who inspire others to reach their full potential. Jensen encourages managers to use developmental bias—the desire to help themselves and others excel—for personal and professional growth while building enthusiasm and commitment in their workers to reach their personal best. Jensen’s approach to leadership is informed by his experience as a coach for six of Canada’s Olympic teams.

YW: Please tell me what you mean by the “third factor”.

PJ: Well, Dabrowski, who coined the phrase “third factor”, actually got the idea from his own mentor. Dabrowski was a contemporary of Freud and Jung. The first factor is nature. The second factor is nurture. What I mean by “third factor” is the role a person plays in his or her own development.

YW: What does it mean for a coach or manager to have “developmental bias”?

PJ: A developmental bias is taking off our current glasses that may be “supervisor” or “manager”… and putting on another set of glasses that look at the person and see what might be possible for this person. What is s/he interested in? What’s blocking him or her? Sometimes people think that taking on a coaching role is more about learning certain techniques and skills that good coaches use, but actually, it’s more of a philosophy. It’s a belief that everybody has an up side, everybody can get a little better, and we all play a role in that.

The other day a woman said to me, “One of the reasons I want to take on the coaching mantle is the caring part of me is beginning to wither in this climate.” And I love that! Somebody else talked about how the number of layers is diminished in the organization, so they wanted to make more out of their layer. That’s what we’re talking about with the developmental bias; not saying, “I’m stuck. I’m not going anywhere.” If your job is the same this year as it was last year, you’re not growing, you’re not developing, and you’re not trying new things.

YW: Do you think that there is a hunger in the workforce now to have that human connection?

JP: More than ever. I really believe so, and one of the reasons is technology–it’s building walls between people. There are technological walls between people. I think people are thirsting for face-to-face contact. You’ve got people six feet apart, a wall between them in an office, and they’re emailing each other.

YW: How does one reconcile emotional responses in a workplace environment where feelings are expected to be kept in check? In other words, how do you validate people’s emotions and still keep them focused on the task at hand?

JP: What Dabrowski would do is quite amazing. He’d say, “Oh my goodness, this has really upset you. This has really bothered you. How wonderful! What a gift you have, this ability to feel,” because it’s never acknowledged. Now, how are we going to harness this? How are you going to start to work with this gift?

YW: What you’re talking about is the antithesis of what we normally see, which is a society that wants us to dumb down our feelings and bury them instead of taking that passionate energy and using it as a focal point to create and to change a situation.

JP: Yes, and that’s so true. What I’m constantly telling the young athletes I work with, and I say ‘young’, some of them are in their 30’s, “Any emotion that you are experiencing, where did it come from?” It came from the stories we’re telling ourselves and the images, as a result, that are created from the stories. Slip beneath the emotions, and what do you find? You find the energy to transform them.

YW: Why is igniting the third factor particularly important when engaging the younger generation of workers?

JP: Generally speaking, the younger an individual is, the canvas is a little easier to work with. Somebody once said, if we could raise one generation of children properly, 90% of the world’s issues would go away. This is why I think sport is such a good metaphor for the business world right now.

Take a highly skilled performer who can’t deal with the pressure. We’ve had to actually say, “What can we do developmentally for this person who is technically very good—psychomotor unbelievable; great coordination, grace, balance… but not mentally tough? We don’t say, “Toughen up. Get in there and do it.” We say, “What kinds of things can we do on the inside to make you stronger on the outside?” That’s the developmental bias.

…you’ve got to allow people to have disappointments and be honest with them; otherwise, they’re never going to find out what they’re really good at.

YW: You stated that workers shouldn’t have to adapt to the mood of the coach/manager. What do you say to managers who work in environments where the pressure is on them from higher management to get results without providing an opportunity for introspection?

JP: What would I tell them? “Wake up!” So there’s a rush (pressure). So what? Does that mean we have to mistreat people? Does that mean I have to yell at anybody? No. Take responsibility for your actions. We are morally responsible for ourselves as human beings, that we do not have to become our feelings, we do not have to become our mind, and we do not have to become what we are experiencing at the body level. That we can go to a place where we can observe and make choices.

YW: You talk about being sensitive to the self-esteem needs of employees. How do you find the balance between pandering to a worker’s self-indulgence and helping employees find their confidence?

JP: This is always the big trick. How to build people up so it’s not phoney and, at the same time, be able to tackle the difficult issues? I’m sorry but I’m going to come back to the developmental bias again, because I think this is where your intention is so important. They have to be able to trust you and know that you have their best interests at heart, and when you give them feedback… you’re only giving it to them for developmental reasons.

YW: I think there’s some real challenges in that we are in a society that’s really pushed us to cushion young people from adversity.

JP: That’s the one thing I see in the school system today that’s different than when I went to school. It was harsh when I went to school. It didn’t have to be as harsh as it was. You fail one subject, you repeat your whole year. Well that didn’t make much sense, but neither does the fact that nobody fails (today) make much sense. The fact of the matter is, you’ve got to allow people to have disappointments and be honest with them; otherwise, they’re never going to find out what they’re really good at.

Here’s how I sum it up: there are too many parents who think their job is to make their children happy. And that’s not their job. Their job is to build the competence up in their children across a wide array of things. Some of them are the parents’ responsibility; some of them are the school’s responsibility. Some of them will only learn if they put themselves out there and fall down. [Parents need] to provide those opportunities so that if they drop dead tomorrow, and their child is 17, s/he’d be okay.

YW: You mentioned that managers may have to admit at times that they’re not the best fit to address challenges with an employee. Isn’t there a lot of pressure on managers to be all things to all people?

JP: Oh yes, very much so, but the biggest strength you can have is knowing what you’re not good at. I believe that one of the things about a developmental bias that’s important is if you’re in an organization, you should get to know everybody and all [of their] strengths…. And that’s the mentoring side of coaching in the sense that I know what capabilities exist in a workplace and who could best address a certain issue.

A good coach, good leader, always looks at the talent he or she has and then designs what he or she does based on what the various people in the room can do. The bad one simply pigeonholes everybody and says, “This is the system. This is the way we’ve always worked.”

YW: How much potential do we miss in developing people in the workplace, because we’re trying to put a square peg in a round hole?

JP: If we actually got to know our people, as we used to years ago, we’d know their hobbies, we’d know what they do. Suddenly something may come up in the workplace, and I’ll say, “Let’s get Bonita to do that, because I know she has this capability,” which is good for your self-esteem, and good for us as a team.

I was Athletic Director at York University for 15 years. A woman named Ruth was my secretary. She was near retirement. I had this office budget which was a pain in the butt to me, and finally I said to Ruth, “Would you have any interest at all in learning the office budget?” … She was 64 at the time. She took it over. Oh my God, you’d think I’d given her the crown jewels. It got rid of something I didn’t even want to do. She ran it with efficiency. We had new purchasing power. It was just win-win.

The irony is that none of the coaches can do what the performers can do… There was a woman at one time who actually went down to the library here (Queen’s University) and looked up the word “coach”, and it said, “A vehicle that takes people of value from where they are to where they need to go.” And I thought, “That’s perfect.”