Articles - Albert's Learning Log

The Summer of Podcasting

Albert Wolfe — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 08:16:07 +0000

Disclosure: This post may contain “affiliate links,” meaning I get a tiny commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. (It helps pay for the cost of running a website, which is more than it used to be. Thanks!)

It was a summer filled with podcasting for me. Although best practice says to roll these out as individual posts one by one, I’m going to just list a few here to get the ball rolling.

Most exciting was launching our own company podcast, The Adaptive Journey, which is available wherever you get your podcasts or at our Adaptive Leaders Youtube channel. If you do happen to listen or watch, please leave a review or rating, which really helps us get discovered.

Also most exciting was appearing on my aunt’s podcast EXTRAordinary Lives with my dear wife, Eva. We recorded it late after all the kids (and there were many in the house) went to bed.

Finally, and most exciting, was the final day of our trip to the US recording on The LoCo Experience (short for Local Colorado) a podcast with Curt Bear in Ft. Collins, CO which was a long-form chat that touched on my story, adaptive leadership, and even The Great China Quest got a mention!

More news to come soon, but for now: happy listening!

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Happy 2026

Albert Wolfe — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 02:37:24 +0000

Welcome to 2026!

As our other favorite blog reminds us, the New Year is a time to pause and reflect as well as look forward.

One of my big learnings this last year writing here at Albert’s Learning Log was seeing what topics I’m most interested in and which topics seemed to be most helpful to others. My summary:

Self Leadership

Although I feel the term “self leadership” can be misunderstood in many ways, it is generally the official category that a lot of my writing fits into. Here’s how I would define it:

Self Leadership = taking responsibility for adjusting your own actions, mindset, or relationships in order to achieve your goals.

Below is a little summary of where we went together last year on this blog, which can serve as a refresher or encouragement to click through if you missed one of the articles.

Self Leadership Articles from this past year

3 Alternatives to Making New Year’s Resolutions

This one may be especially timely right now!

How I Reduced Procrastination (A Personal Adaptive Challenge)

A personal story about how changing a habit needs more than just self-discipline. You need to figure out why you haven’t already changed it.

Buying Motivation

It is possible to purchase a motivation boost for yourself with the right mindset. Which I didn’t have when writing my new book.

New Book: Performance Leadership released!

A huge milestone that required innovations in Self Leadership to reach

Motivation Hack: Keep Your Plans Secret

Why not telling anyone what you’re planning to do can keep motivation high.

The Dark Corner: What are you avoiding?

The start of a new series dealing with scary things we put off

My Personal Dark Corner (and how I dealt with it)

The discussed process I went through to cut white sugar from my family’s diet (arguably the most widely read and shared article last year)

Symbolic Dark Corner (it’s more than it seems)

How dealing with a small Dark Corner can have big implications beyond the surface level issue.

Looking Forward

2025 was a great year for getting back into a semi-regular writing rhythm. I’ve got a few big ideas for where I want to go with this website this year. But I can’t really say what those ideas are, can I?

Thanks again to everyone who faithfully reads and reacts. Feedback helps fuel my motivation to keep the articles a-flowin’!

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A Symbolic Dark Corner (it’s more than it seems)

Albert Wolfe — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 22:00:00 +0000

This is a continuation of the Dark Corner series about things we know we should do. But… just… don’t.

I was delighted that the personal example I shared helped and encouraged readers. So, today I’ll give another personal example, but the power of this example is it shines a light on something I call the Symbolic Dark Corner.

For the sugar example, it didn’t really represent anything deeper (for me). I needed to cut added sugar from my diet for health reasons. I cut it. Health improving!

Although there are deeper implications and reasons for NOT doing it all these years, it’s kind of what-you-see-is-what-you-get. It appears to be about sugar. And it actually is about sugar.

That’s not the case for today’s example:

Deleting draft posts from this very website.

Background

Almost 20 years ago, I started a different website all about learning Mandarin without a formal class. That writing style and content was optioned by a publisher and became the book Chinese 24/7.

That website has been merged into this one, but now I’m writing about self-leadership (while still living in China) and communication in general. So the pile of draft posts about linguistics and Chinese language learning needed to be deleted.

But I just… haven’t… ever been able to bring myself to do it. It’s a Dark Corner. But a weird one.

My process for dealing with Dark Corners (explained in more detail here) is:

Compare benefits (apples-to-apples)
Delete “would be nice” draft plans
Assemble your team
Identify what you’re waiting for (no really, what is it?)

What’s funny is that it’s basically a really big Step 2 of actual drafts.

For this one, I’m going to work backwards and tell you the end of the story first.

The Ending

I had 90(!) draft posts and I deleted almost all of them (I saved 7). They fell into the following categories and reasons for deletion:

Bonus Tasks

I gave myself 2 extra jobs while working through those 90 drafts. The first one you already know about:

Categorize and count which ones I’m keeping/deleting
Track emotions (How am I feeling at each point in the process?)

Before I share the emotional map, I want to say it was great to have bonus “research tasks.” Not only was it somewhat distracting, but it gave me a “sure fire win” at the end. No matter what I found, I would end up with some interesting data about myself and the drafts.

Emotional Map

As I went through the drafts, I had a whole range of emotions. Here’s the key detail: because of the way the technology works, I didn’t actually know how many draft posts there were. I knew it was more than 20, but I could only see the first 20. Maybe there were only 21…?

At first, honestly, it was drudgery. I really did not enjoy it. But I enjoyed that SOMETHING was happening.
When I clicked Next Page and saw “Oh! It’s not 21, it’s actually over 40.” I started feeling worse. But I was impressed that I didn’t consider giving up. Something about having started, I knew I’d finish.
About the 30th item I started laughing at some of the ideas (wow, was I young and foolish)
There were a few surprisingly good ideas. Two. But still that was really amazing to see.
In the 50s: “How deep does this well go?!” (not feeling good, but sort of curious)
In the 60s: “I’m really moving fast now!” (filter got more liberal to delete posts)
In the 80s: “I can’t go on forever. We’ve got to be nearing the end. I’m excited that it’s got to be less than 100 so I’m getting close!”
Done: “I have 10 keepers? That’s still too many. I’m going through those 10 to delete more.”
Really Done: “I feel good about 7 and REALLY good that I’ve faced this. And also sad.”

Compare Benefits (Apples-to-apples)

What were the benefits of NOT dealing with these draft posts all these years (some over 10 years old!)? This is an easy one to summarize, but I want to emphasize that it was a tough one to figure out and eventually face.

Grief.

I didn’t want to go through the grieving process of saying goodbye to the old version of:

My website
My writing style
My direction
My view of myself as expert

It’s really that last one that hits hardest.

When I was mostly writing about learning Mandarin, I was one of the few bloggers writing in this style (chatty and sympathetic). I was an expert in my little niche. Whether I face it or not, I’m not anymore. There are lots of really great resources for learning Mandarin sitting right there on everyone’s smart phone.

They don’t… need… me.

That’s a sad thought.

But it’s true, and powerful enough to stop me from dealing with these draft posts all these years.

This is what I call the “Symbolic Dark Corner.” To face this Dark Corner is to face something deeper and symbolic in my life that I’m happier (in the short term) just not facing. The Corner symbolizes a past version of myself and my place in the blogosphere that is gone.

It would have been fine to leave those drafts there. They’re not costing anyone anything.

Then Why Deal with This Dark Corner?

While it’s true these virtual drafts weren’t costing money, space, or time. There was still an emotional cost to their existence. I knew they were there. I would see them (some of them) when I logged in to my website.

They were a painful reminder of something past that I’m not letting go of. For all the reasons people don’t want to face grief, I didn’t want to face this.

And the cost of that was: depriving myself of emotional healing.

I’ve been walking around with an emotional limp, no matter how slight it is. The benefit to allowing myself to grieve is it allows healing to happen. By truly letting go of this previous version of myself, I can be more fully present and empowered to do my current job.

Life is moving forward, and so am I. So I need to throw off anything that hinders or encumbers progress. No matter how small it may seem, it may have large symbolic value.

Result

There are several levels to the result.

On the practical level, I no longer see a pile of draft posts on my website control panel. That’s nice, but probably the least important.

On an emotional level, I feel good that (a) I dealt with the Dark Corner, but more importantly b) I can really, REALLY start to move on. I’m feeling lighter and more free. I’m feeling less guilty that there are drafts I “should” either write into real posts or delete.

On a practical level again, the 7 drafts that I saved are real candidates for future articles. I had no idea they were there. Instead of “losing” 83 drafts (which I couldn’t remember), I actually feel I “gained” 7 pretty good ideas.

Transferability of this learning

Regardless of what the readers of this article are taking away (which I’d love to hear about, by the way!), I’m taking away a very simple lesson:

Dark Corners are worth dealing with regardless of how “insignificant” they feel.

This is probably the smallest of all my Dark Corners, and it was actually profoundly meaningful for me to sweep it. I learned something about myself that was both scary and energizing.

I’m building “success muscle” by practicing on small(ish) Dark Corners, so when I need to face a really scary one I’ll have more than zero positive experience to recall.

What’s your smallest Dark Corner? Could it be symbolic of something bigger?

There’s only one way to find out: face it.

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My Personal Dark Corner (and how I dealt with it)

Albert Wolfe — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 03:40:50 +0000

This is a continuation of the Dark Corner series about things we know we should do. But… just… don’t.

I wanted to give a deep-dive example to show how it can work and some of the potential pitfalls to applying my advice (explained in more detail here):

Compare benefits (apples-to-apples)
Delete “would be nice” draft plans
Assemble your team
Identify what you’re waiting for (no really, what is it?)

At the risk of distracting everyone with a controversial nutrition debate (why ARE discussions about nutrition so prone to strong feelings?!), I want to talk about how I finally dealt with the Dark Corner of my eating habits: white sugar.

Background and Confession

I’ve known for a while that I eat too much sugar. For example, I know eating a whole pack of Oreos is not healthy. I think I’ve avoided disputable nutrition claims so far, right?

But I have been unwilling to actually take any action to reduce my sugar intake.

The fact is, I didn’t eat as much sugar as many people, and I felt pretty good about that. But whenever we walked by a donut shop (yes, there are a few in China), or McDonald’s, or even just a normal supermarket, I would always have the thought:

“But shouldn’t we just treat ourselves to a well-earned dessert?”

Never mind there was nothing at all in the record book to justify what we’d done to “earn” that dessert. (The best I could come up with was: “Well, I got out of bed today and I didn’t really feel like doing that, so let’s celebrate THAT at least!”)

So while sugar wasn’t a big problem, it was still a problem. And I knew it.

When my recent physical results came out they were not “bad.” But also not the outstanding scores I was expecting. So, I finally turned and faced the Dark Corner: sugar. I looked it straight in the eye and said, “It’s going to have to be you or me.”

And then I sprung into action.

Let’s Take a “Why now?” Interlude

Before we talk about the action, I want to discuss why, after all these years, I suddenly took action. The short answer is: I don’t know.

I think it was a cumulative effect:

Years of knowing this was a Dark Corner (guilt snowball getting bigger and bigger)
Health check result (but, again, that was about half a year ago, but I never forgot)
Health problems reported by people close to me (again, not a direct connection to sugar, but to health in general)
In a generally self-efficacious mood (probably because I was feeling good about other goals getting done)

I think the takeaway is that it’s ok to not really understand why you do things and size the opportunity if you’re suddenly in the mood to deal with a Dark Corner. Strike while the feeling is hot, and especially get to the “assemble your team” step ASAP!

Compare Benefits (Apples-to-apples)

The first thing I did was clear the family whiteboard. I always feel great erasing a whiteboard. “Something is HAPPENING around here,” I tell myself. I then started writing an action plan.

But really, what I should have done first (and didn’t) was compare the benefits to cutting white sugar from my life with the benefits to KEEPING white sugar in my life. Remember this is NOT a pros/cons list of cutting sugar. That would be a list of good things and maybe hard things about cutting sugar. I’m interested in the pros of doing it, and the pros (benefits and incentives) of NOT doing. While that might seem like the same thing as a pros/cons list, I assure you it’s very different.

Here’s what I had internalized and explained to my wife:

Benefits to CUTTING white sugar as a family:

Better health results
Cheaper / save money on desserts (although… not necessarily if we get fancy sugar-alternative stuff)
Establish a sugar-free culture in my family
Stabilize kid’s emotions (we noticed the “sugar crash” is very real, especially for our daughter)
Feeling I’m finally doing the right thing (sweeping the Dark Corner!)

And this is usually where we stop.

Rather than outline the “cons” (what will be hard about cutting sugar), here’s the next list.

Benefits KEEPING white sugar brings to me and my family:

Easy way to “reward” myself and family with an exciting treat (“Hurray!” the kids shout when I announce an ice cream cone is coming)
Feeling superior that I can eat lots of sugar and not gain weight (just a quirk of my metabolism)
Nostalgia (chocolate chip cookies, ice cream, etc. all have happy childhood memories)
Connection to tradition (holiday-based treats like hot chocolate or pumpkin pie make those events special)
Can always be polite when offered a sugary snack by a guest or when I’m a guest

Isn’t that so very interesting! Sugar is actually solving lots of problems for me: saves me from thinking too much (#1), gives me lots of nice feelings that I like (#2-4), and it’s actually better for OTHER people for me to eat sugar (#5). Wouldn’t want to be rude, right?

Never mind it tastes good. I’ve left that off my list because it just doesn’t explain anything helpful for facing the Dark Corner.

Why is it so important to deal with the second list? Because each of those 5 items needs to be addressed specifically and directly in the Action Plan.

Delete “Would be nice” Draft Plans

This step was basically skipped. I knew this was a draft plan that I wanted to do. No reason to delete the plan to get rid of sugar.

The guilt is based on something I really should do, not something that would just be nice. This plan made the cut and didn’t get deleted!

Assemble Your Team

One reason I wrote on a whiteboard is so that the whole family (wife and both kids) would feel part of the project. Here’s how it worked:

Albert: (in a loud and grand voice) “I declare this family shall stop eating sugary snacks and desserts!”

Wife: (clapping and failing to ask any questions at all) “Yeah!!!!”

Kids: (confused but appreciating hype of any kind) “Yeah!!!” (and jumping around)

The emotional support of people telling me I’m on the right track is so crucial to sweeping out the Dark Corner.

But more than that, I actually can’t do it without their input and support.

The Action Plan Itself

Although it’s not the main point of this article, I’m willing to share the exact action plan we made together for the following reasons:

To show how we combated each of the benefits to KEEPING white sugar (had to deal with them)
To share that this evolved over 3-4 weeks (we kept thinking of new things and adding them)
To show it’s a work in progress (lots of progress made, but a bunch not done yet)

A few things to note:

It was easier than I thought it would be to find sugar-free recipes (and we still can make our own ice cream!)
“Hero Snacks” are defined as “eat as much as you want anytime they’re brought out”

Visiting policy is supposed to deal with the “rudeness” issue:
- Preventative: try to bring our own dessert
- In the moment: Allow 1 small portion (of sugary dessert)
- Parents eat the same as kids
- Preventative: try to give away all leftovers
Holiday policy
- Day before / of / after holiday everyone is allowed one small, seasonal treat
- Parents eat the same as kids

We’re making steady progress, and we’re feeling good!

The Biggest Surprise

The plan is a big, messy combination of social elements (tell people we know, get buy-in, etc.) and the practical (list everything we need to get rid of). The order is a mess. The handwriting is a mess. And the progress was immediate. But also ongoing (we just gave away all our hot chocolate packets yesterday).

The biggest surprise was just how easy it has been for everyone to adjust. We got a lot of buy-in and support from friends and family (I guess sugar is a pretty easy common enemy to agree on). The “cold turkey” approach has been excellent. But it’s cold turkey in resolve, with a little bit of grace for implementation.

Bonus Tip

In case you can’t read my handwriting, there’s one item in the plan that’s very different than the other ones:

October 8: evaluate how this is all going and anything we missed

That’s super important because it’s an admission that this is a work in progress and we’re not expecting ourselves to be perfect on day 1 (which was October 1). Building in some self-compassion is always important!

So what are you waiting for before facing your Dark Corner? You might consider jumping directly to assemble your team by sending a message: “Hey! I want to ask for your help dealing with a tough thing for me. Are you open to that?” Maybe you’ll have a big surprise too!

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The Dark Corner: What are you avoiding?

Albert Wolfe — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 08:24:15 +0000

We all have things we know we should do. But… just… don’t. There’s something in that “Dark Corner” we just don’t even want to look at.

The main problems with this are:

Benefits: It would be good. We usually don’t think we should do more unhelpful or unhealthy stuff (I used to joke about never hearing anyone say, “I’m thinking of taking up smoking.”)
Guilt: The longer we put it off, the worse we feel. I know the best time to plant a tree was yesterday and the second best time is now. But that’s only helpful if I’m for sure going to plant a tree today. If I STILL don’t, then there’s a kind of “compound interest” around feeling bad about not doing it, which drives me farther from doing it.
Passivity: Often we feel the only way out is for something to HAPPEN. Maybe I need to get a scary health checkup report. Maybe I need the bill collector to threaten me. Maybe I need to hit “rock bottom” somehow to get me out of this mess.

So we’re missing out on the benefits while sinking deeper into guilt, and the only way out is… what exactly? Some unknown crisis in the future that will be the wake-up call I needed.

I’d like to offer a new approach to leading yourself out of this type of mess that doesn’t rely on a major crisis.

Compare Benefits (Apples-to-apples)

For example, I knew I should STOP procrastinating preparing for my presentations, and I knew all the benefits to doing that:

More relaxed during the week
More confident during the presentation
More margin to deal with emergencies that come up and eat up time (“No problem! I’m already prepared!”)
Feeling more like a responsible adult

And this is usually where we stop. We know we should quit smoking, exercise more, speak more kindly, or delegate more. And we know most of the benefits. What we don’t look at are the benefits to NOT doing that.

Here are the benefits to PROCRASTINATING (yes, you read that right. We need to compare benefits to dealing with the Dark Corner and NOT dealing with it):

More time for “inspiration” to strike (letting the cement stay wet longer)
Not feeling “locked in” (see above)
More time for emergencies that come up NOW (yes, not future ones, whatever is urgent at the moment)
Feeling less like a responsible adult

If I’m really honest, there are a huge amount of benefits to procrastinating. Maybe even so many that I don’t want to give them up. When I dealt with the feeling of “loss” that goes along with preparing in advance, I was able to stop procrastinating (read all about it here).

Delete “Would be nice” Draft Plans

Once you have an honest apples-to-apples comparison of benefits, you can also see what things really aren’t that beneficial for you to actually do.

In other words, not all Dark Corners are created equal.

For example, I should remove duplicate files on my hard drive. I have a lot of pictures saved in two places, etc. And I’ve been avoiding doing it. And feeling a little guilty about it.

The amazing thing is: I don’t really know why I should do that. Yes, it is technically a “waste” of computer space, but am I running low on disk space? No. Is it hard to find the files I need? No, just search for them. Is it causing me any problems at all, really?! Actually, no. It would be nice. But that’s it.

So this is on my to-do list, taking up brain space and fueling the guilt engine, but when I take a good honest look at it: I don’t need to do it. Draft plan deleted!

There is a lot of writing out there about prioritization and urgent vs. important matrix, etc. I want to give this one piece of quick advice: what is a Dark Corner of something you’ve not been facing that you can just say, “I’m never going to do that” and just delete it from your list?

Assemble Your Team

A few years ago I had a government process that was really daunting to me to even look at the paperwork for. I’d been putting it off for years. Was it essential? No, but it wasn’t “nice to have” either. I couldn’t avoid it forever and I couldn’t delete it. For me, it was the darkest of all corners. And part of what made it scary was I didn’t know what the result would be.

So, rather than waiting for a wake up call, I decided to take the only step I could bear to take: I told someone about it.

That was it. I simply told a few supportive people: “I need to do this.” That opened the door to accountability, questioning assumptions, cheerleading, and even technical support.

It only took a few months (!) after that to have completed the process!

And I felt so victorious!

Guilt-focused Summary

Sometimes, we’re feeling guilty for no reason. Those are “nice to have” plans that should be deleted. Maybe if you were younger, had unlimited energy, or were still in the same place now as you were when you made that plan it would work. But it’s just not going to happen and you can feel fine with that. Sometimes you just say, “It would have been great to plant a tree in this patch of dirt. But I’m just not going to. It shall forever stay a patch of dirt!”

You might be amazed at how that unlocks a bit of energy, brain space, or even time for other things.

However, there are times we feel guilty for good reason. The only solution to that guilt is to do the right thing. Bite the bullet. Face the Dark Corner, but face it with a team. You may need to outfox yourself by dealing with the benefits of NOT facing the Dark Corner. Or you might just need some good old-fashioned accountability: “If I haven’t done ___ by tomorrow, I’ll pay you 1000 bucks.” Whatever works for you.

The common thread is: no need to wait.

Bonus Tip

Sometimes the reason we haven’t faced the Dark Corner is we’re waiting for something. That’s really important to identify. I frequently ask my clients: “What are you waiting for?” and they say, “You’re right. I should just do it.”

And I have to correct them, “No, I’m genuinely curious. What are you lacking (information, someone else’s action, etc.) that would help you take action on this?” They often haven’t thought about that, but sometimes there is something.

If that’s the case, you need to identify EXACTLY what questions you want to ask (and to whom) if you’re going to move forward.

But the great thing about this is it can be a guilt pressure release valve: “Ahhh… so I’m not a terrible person. I’m a reasonable person who needs some questions answered before I can take action.”

Just be careful that doesn’t become a new excuse not to do anything!

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Delivery Door Sign (for China)

Albert Wolfe — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 02:09:55 +0000

Download the sign here (PDF)

Take charge of where the deliveries end up (without noise) by posting this sign.

Translation:

请放在此 = please put here
请勿敲门 = please don’t knock

We put it on the WALL beside the door.

The packages no longer block us opening our door, and we don’t get knocks or shouting in quiet times of the day!

Credit: Inspired by a sign Pete Reid had at his house (his looked better, but this works!).

Download the sign here (PDF)

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Motivation Hack: Keep Your Plans Secret

Albert Wolfe — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 09:59:38 +0000

Back when the Peizheng Writers Guild was meeting weekly to read each other what we’d written (more about that story later), one of our rules was:

Rule #1: You can never talk about what you’re going to write. You can only read what you’ve ACTUALLY written.

On the surface, this rule may seem draconian stifling of collaboration and brainstorming. It may also appear to be foolish because it deprived us of advance feedback to find out if we were “on the right track.”

Those points may be true.

The rule was also a turbo-charger for motivation.

Understand Your Own Payoffs

One of the reasons this rule was so effective is we all understood our own “payoff” systems. A huge part of why we were writing was to see the reaction from the other friends in the group.

When we’d read a new short story, poem, or chapter of a novel we relished the laughs, “ah ha” moments, and even bewilderment from the listeners.

Now, if we had told each other what we were planning to write, even in the vaguest terms, we would have immediately gotten some of the payoff… but without doing any of the actual work.

Imagine this:

Albert: “I’ve got an idea about a story where everyone is always on social media all the time through high-tech hologlasses.”

Friend: “That sounds great! Can’t wait to hear the first chapter!”

Albert: (thinks to himself) It DOES sound great doesn’t it?! What a great idea.

And just like that, I’ve lost some of the will to write the story.

Now, that didn’t happen. Ever. Because we were very strict with this rule. We protected our motivation by actually doing the work before getting the payoff.

(By the way, that story became my novel faceless)

Reporting vs. Promising

I’ve found this rule and the idea of getting a “payoff” without doing the work applies to any creative project or thing that requires hard work sustained over time.

Imagine telling someone “I’m going to quit smoking.” What do they usually say, “Oh, that’s great! Good for you! Go for it!” But then what happened to your motivation to actually do the hard work over time? It probably went down.

What I’m suggesting is not quite as simple as “Keep everything you ever do a secret until it’s done,” because there are times when you actually do need feedback and input.

But I suggest you report rather than promise.

It’s better to say, “I’ve recorded the first episode of my new podcast, and I’d like some input on it,” than to say, “I’m going to start a podcast.”
It’s better to say, “I’ve written chapter one of a novel,” than “I’m going to write a novel.”
It’s better to say, “I’m on day 4 of my new diet,” than “I’m going to lose weight.”

While it may seem counterintuitive, I’m suggesting you keep your next big thing a secret until you’ve actually made SOME progress on it. Otherwise, you might find you got too much payoff without actually doing the tough stuff.

See what you think. Oh, and be sure not to leave a comment about your next big thing!

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New Book: Performance Leadership

Albert Wolfe — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 23:59:27 +0000

Performance Leadership: 4 Keys to Extraordinary Results available in paperback and Kindle.

As I mentioned here, I suddenly started writing a new book last quarter.

Well, it’s done now!

This Was Wild

A few weeks ago the main contributors to the book and I had a “wrap party,” which was a Zoom call where we virtually toasted to the completion of the book (we’re in 6 different locations). We thanked each other for making it all happen but there was one theme that stood out:

None of us had done anything like this before

From my own perspective, I shared how I’d co-authored other books before, but this was the first time an entire TEAM was listed as co-author. This was also the first time I have written a book based on someone else’s idea (other coaches in our team came up with the original framework, but I flushed it out into a whole book). It felt like developing a novel based on a screenplay.

It was also the most accelerated timeline I’ve ever been a part of for a writing project. I want to share some of my learnings about the collaboration and timing as well as my biggest takeaway from the whole process because I think there are probably some broader applications to other areas of life and work.

Although the final case study in the book gives details about how we applied our same Performance Leadership framework to ourselves to write the book, this article is like “behind the behind the scenes” from the primary author (me).

Collaboration

It was very important for this project to get way more input at all stages than I’m used to. The key to doing this was to identify very quickly (we’ll get to timing later) what adaptive challenges would stop me from doing this. It was basically these:

Fear of people not replying (hating the feeling of chasing people)
Fear of people not liking what I’d written (“wasted” words on the page)
Fear of slowing down the process (we had an ambitious timeline)

These 3 fears really slowed me down until I designed experiments and tested how true they really were. They turned out to be somewhat true! But not as true as I thought.

The bedrock of adaptive challenges is often times connected to fears and identity. For these, I realized I see myself as the kind of person who:

Collaborates well with others
Writes good… stuff… (you know what I mean)
Gets stuff done

These adaptive challenges threatened the way I saw myself. If people don’t reply, and I have to chase them, I feel like I’m maybe NOT a good collaborator. Maybe I’m not a good writer. Maybe I can’t actually get stuff done. Ah! These challenges are chipping away at the core of who I think I am!

The solution?

Again, I had to test the limits of how true the specific assumptions were and see how much impact that really had on my identity.

One quick example: there was a great case study I wanted to include in the book, but the business leader needed to reply to tell me it was ok to use. I was getting nervous that I never heard back. My experiment was to see if this person would reply to someone else we both knew. If so, the problem is me and I’m a terrible collaborator! But if not, maybe it’s not just me.

In the end, neither of us got a reply so I felt much better. The case study didn’t go in (sad), but the experiment was a success (happy). I basically never ask someone to ask someone else something for me. Even that sentence just then feels overly complicated and not what I’m used to. “I’m the kind of person who communicates directly!” But for this project, I had to push my limits on what collaboration means to me.

One of the core concepts in adaptive leadership is:

What worked before, won’t work this time.

Timing

In the end, I used 25 days to write the whole book (35,000 words). That is still crazy for me to comprehend. How could I do that?

For me, that fear of not being productive enough was a great motivator, but also my worst enemy. There were days when I needed to do things besides write (such as research, or even MY OTHER JOBS) and I felt anxious taking a break from the writing.

I’d written many other things before but not on a timeline this tight. So remembering the mantra:

What worked before, won’t work this time.

helped me focus on my actual anxiety: “If I take time off writing, the book will fall behind schedule.”

The test for this was a new one for me: a writing dashboard that tracked words written against projected words needed (we were aiming for 30,000). Since I knew the deadline, I was able to see if I was “on pace” like a marathon runner checking his clock every mile.

It would be ridiculous for a marathon runner to think: “I can’t stop to tie my shoe because then I’ll fall behind!” Obviously, the pros find ways to minimize all unnecessary stops. But the real key is knowing whether you’re on pace all the time.

I had never designed anything like this for myself for a writing project before and it was a huge help (I actually finished the writing a few days before the deadline).

Lessons Learned

I had to stretch my personal productivity to the max to get this book done and it was only possible because of:

Constant checking for assumptions (best phrased as “If… then…”)
Systematically checking how true those were (“Am I REALLY falling behind pace? Wait a second, what even IS my pace?”)
Chanting (mentally) “What worked before, won’t work this time.”

Now, that last one isn’t 100% true. The fact that I’d learned how to do a bunch of cool stuff in MS Word really did help me this time (for example, I can’t recommend the Reference Manager enough, flawed as it is).

But I’ve found those past wins that really do help are not worth thinking too much about. When a past win is helping, you can see it’s making the result better. For example, I could see that my familiarity with MS Word was helping me make progress faster.

The biggest danger I was paranoid about was “What old ways of writing a book am I subconsciously relying on that are hindering my progress?”

That one sentence seemed to be the biggest help and continues to guide my work in other areas (including marketing the book, and doing all the other stuff I’m doing).

For example

Normally I wouldn’t put two links to the same book in an article, but I’m going to try that now.

Here’s the book if you want to read it and get more behind the scenes about how we were able to produce it so quickly:

Get the Book

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Buying Motivation

Albert Wolfe — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 06:24:23 +0000

I’ve spent my (double) holiday working on a new book which will be very exciting to share more about soon! It’s a leadership book about how to unlock team’s motivations.

So motivation has been on my mind recently… a lot! Especially: how do I keep MYSELF motivated to write this book about motivation?

The Sad News

My favorite part of the work day used to be cycling to work. I’ve always lived near enough work to bike there. At most I was doing around 20k on a workday.

But now I take the bullet train to one job, car to another, and work from home for the rest. It makes me sad, but at the same time I’m thankful for the extra time with my family.

Here’s what I didn’t realize: one of my primary work “motivators” is:

cycling to work

This is so key: I do love cycling around in general, but there is a special place in my heart for “cycling to work.” Just cycling doesn’t feel the same.

Why is that?

Hard to say. I think I like the feeling of superiority of zipping past people stuck in traffic on their way to work. I also love the accomplishment of having “achieved something” (gotten some good exercise) before the work day technically started. There’s probably more. I don’t pretend to understand all about my motivations!

The point is: there is something deep inside me that is charged up when I get to cycle to work. Doesn’t matter what the work is. Cycling there puts me in a great mood for the rest of the day, and I can’t wait to cycle home afterwards! This isn’t on any of the lists of “how to motivate employees to get stuff done.” It’s my own “secret list” (of 1 thing) that no one knew but me… until now.

Sadly, my career has “advanced” me right out of the chance to do something that fires me up.

Working from Home Guilt

At the same time, I’m very grateful I can work from home and spend so much time with my children…

…that is, when I’m not annoyed, worried, or distracted by my children.

It turns out working from home has one major downside for me: I feel guilty that I’m “home” but not with the other people.

This is on my own secret list of “demotivators.” My work gets objectively worse when I’m at home. (I could address the guilt as an adaptive challenge to overcome, and I shall, but there’s another solution in the meantime.)

You can already see where this is going…

Expensive Coffee

Back when I had a very young (always crying) child and a deadline to prepare for my TedX talk, I went to a local coffee shop to get away from the noise and pound out the script. It worked that one day and then I never did it again.

This holiday, I decided to try the same thing but without the reason of running away from a crying child. I was running away from the guilt of working from home and all that.

And an amazing thing happened: I started looking for farther and father coffee shops. I was cycling a few minutes to the closest one and realizing: “Hey! I wish I were cycling more.”

So today, I just got home from one that takes about 17 minutes to cycle to. Just far enough to get the cardio going, but not so far that I can’t zip back and meet everyone at home for lunch.

The only downside: paying for expensive coffee (almost $5 for a cup).

And here’s the lesson: what else am I going to use that money for?

What I’ve purchased is a huge piled of motivation that I can tap into to write a whole book. I have written several other books but they were written at what looks like a snail’s pace compared to what I’m cranking out now. Yes the coffee must help with that! But I don’t really drink it! I take a sip and then get back to work.

What I’ve purchased is unlimited daily use of an office space (with it’s own bathroom) and very few other people to distract me. I don’t mind the background music they play. I don’t mind the occasional coffee grinding noise. And I’m free from my demotivator of feeling guilty working from home.

What I’ve purchased is a massive productivity boost.

I’d pay $5 / day for that! What’s that you say? It even comes with a free coffee! I’ll take it!

Mindset Shift

The previous sentence is an example of a reframing or a mindset shift.

I grew up helping my mom cut out coupons and search for the best deals to feed our family of six. My economic situation (while nothing to brag about) is much better now. But my mindset is still stuck in the 1980s.

Why didn’t I do this bike-ride-to-coffee-shop thing earlier? Why didn’t I repeat the TedX coffee shop experiment?

I didn’t want to spend the money on “overpriced coffee.”

But now that I see what I’m really buying, I’d pay much more per day (don’t tell the coffee shop).

Buying motivation is one of the best investments I can get, especially when it comes to doing work that might even have a literal “pay off.”

Here are some of the assumptions I had to overcome to unlock this motivation boost:

Cycling to work was an indulgence for the younger version of me, but there is no place for it in my current life.
If I can avoid leaving the house for work, I should stay home.
If I spend money on coffee, I’d better really like that coffee.
The closer the coffee shop, the better.

Now I’m paying money to ride far away, take one sip of a coffee I don’t want, and work from my cell phone hotspot instead of my fancy home internet. And I love it!

What other ways could I just pay cold hard cash and get more motivation?

Upcoming Book

If you want more info about the upcoming book, send me a note and I’ll put you on the list!

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How I Reduced Procrastination (A Personal Adaptive Challenge)

Albert Wolfe — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 22:50:14 +0000

In my coaching work we talk a lot about overcoming “adaptive challenges.” These are deep changes (to habits and default operating modes) that are super tough to actually make.

Clue: The way to really make them is not to just try harder. Self discipline won’t work. Or another way to look at this is: why didn’t I already make this change? Ah ha!

So how do you make a deep, adaptive change in your life? I’ll share my own story from last year as a case study for how the process works.

Step 1: Identify the Adaptive Goal

This is possibly the most important step. Think about what you want to change in your life and narrow it down to something in your control (remember the New Year’s Resolution tips).

For me, at the beginning of the year I was dealing with more work for more different clients/employers than ever before. I was feeling overwhelmed and anxious.

So my goal was NOT: feel less anxious.

Obviously, that was my real goal, but I didn’t really feel in control of that. So I focused on what I could change about my own behavior (not feelings) that would lead to that more relaxed life.

I settled on this:

I must finish my preparation work for clients/workshops/etc. much more in advance.

As vague as that still sounds, it was actually a great place for me to focus.

It isn’t as simple as “stop procrastinating” because I actually didn’t feel I was procrastinating. I also needed to phrase it in a way that shows what I must DO (rather than NOT do).

Step 2: Identify the Fear of Success

This is also possibly the most important step. Most times, when you set a goal for yourself, you spend most of your time thinking about how great it would be to accomplish it.

For me, I thought if I could finish prep work far in advance, I would:

Feel less anxious
Spend more quality time with my family
Do higher quality work

Those are no-brainers.

Here’s the brainer: when I imagine doing 100% of the things necessary to REALLY accomplish my goal (preparing more in advance), what are the worries and fears that creep up the back of my neck?

When I thought about it from that perspective, I realized I’m worried that by finishing my prep work earlier, I would:

Feel “locked in” to my preparation
Stifle creativity and ignore spontaneous (yet vaguely defined) “inspiration”
Become less responsive to the clients’/participants’ needs
Do lower quality work

Isn’t that remarkable? By accomplishing my goal, I believed I would end up doing LOWER quality work!

Those are the assumptions running the show, and I just shone a light on them!

Step 3: Test the Assumptions

(This might also be the most important step.)

Once I saw that list of assumptions, I designed a very simple test to see how true they were:

I will prepare 1 workshop far earlier than usual (7+ days) and see how many changes I go back in and make in the remaining days.
- If the number of changes is 0, then maybe my assumptions are true
- If the number of changes is 1 or more, then maybe I’m not really locking myself in, stifling creativity, and becoming less responsive, etc.

The result was very interesting. The day before the workshop, I went back in to review all the materials and made more than 10 changes.

What did the evidence tell me?

Those are 10+ changes I would not have had time to make if I’d done the exact same preparation too late.

I basically provided evidence to myself that early preparation has no negative effect on stifling creativity and responsiveness. Just the opposite: it gave me space to be more creative because I was more relaxed and had a “good enough” presentation ready that could go from “good to great” due to the advanced preparation.

Step 4: Rinse and Repeat

I was very happy with the result of my tiny experiment, and I found I just naturally started preparing more in advance than ever before. I wasn’t trying harder. I simply stopped standing on my own subconscious garden hose.

But I also noticed that there was still something blocking me. What other assumption might be lurking?

Now that I’d cleared the main one (making my preparation worse), the dust had cleared to show me another one.

I was afraid by preparing too early, I wouldn’t be as familiar with the material and my delivery would suffer.

This one actually did appear to be true. I already had data on this: the number of times I clicked to the next slide and was surprised to see “Oh yes! Before we move I, I wanted to mention…” or lost my place temporarily.

Ah ha! So I was right! Preparing too much in advance WAS a bad idea after all.

Not so fast there, buddy.

The benefits of super early preparation were too great to just chuck out because of a little delivery issue. In order to combat this new (and quite correct) assumption, I simply needed to change how I prepared.

Here’s how:

Actually use the off-screen speakers notes section (I never needed to before)
Bring to the delivery a printed overview of what we’re doing (again, didn’t need that before)
Review the presentation the day of (no matter how early I need to wake up to do that)

Those were all fairly minor tweaks and solved the delivery issues. And I could still keep preparing way in advance for things!

But without doing the deep dives into the assumptions and then the next level of assumptions, I would have just gone right back to last-minute preparation.

So Now…?

Now I’m easily managing the increased workload because I’m so far ahead of schedule I even have some margin built in for unforeseen emergencies.

In recent days I was able to take whole or half days off for (unplanned):

Getting sick
A family member’s illness
A visit from a friend before he moved away
Home equipment breaking and needing immediate repair/attention
A sunny day which required a family hike

Again, seeing that list alone wouldn’t have solved the problem. We all know why we should change.

The real adaptive breakthroughs come from addressing our subconscious reasons we shouldn’t change and asking the question: “Really? Yes, I know but… really, though?” And the only way to answer that is with data/evidence and a big bright flashlight on the real assumptions running the show.

Note: ADAPTIVE LEADERS coaches are all trained in the Immunity to Change tools from Minds at Work. We didn’t invent all this!

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3 Alternatives to Making New Year’s Resolutions

Albert Wolfe — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 01:09:53 +0000

It’s the time of year when everyone thinks about the question: “What do I wish were different next year?” The point of making a New Year’s Resolution is usually something like:

Have a clear goal / direction for myself
Motivate myself to change
Become a better version of myself

Yes! All that is great. But…while I love the reflection and planning aspects of that question, I want to caution against doing things that I so frequently see (and maybe used to do myself!) at this time of year. Basically, don’t make a typical New Year’s Resolution. Try a new thing instead.

Avoid

Here are a few things to avoid when making your New Year’s Plan (as they call it in Mandarin):

1. Avoid “whole year” goals

A friend’s plan was to do a whole year of podcast episodes. That’s tough because once you miss one, you’ve failed the whole thing.

He wisely reframed it as a much more attainable “produce 365 podcast episodes, in as short a time as possible.” Even though it took him 13 months, it still feels like a great accomplishment because it was reframed to be achievable. Well done Paul!

2. Avoid “infinite” goals

I once had a goal to “drink more water” every day. This is even worse than the whole year goal. I can NEVER miss a day for the rest of my life!

A much better goal would be: “See how many days next week I can drink an additional cup of water than normal.”

3. Avoid stuff mostly out of your control

Goals like “get a promotion” or “get my big break” or even “lose weight” or “quit smoking” are really tough and can be really demotivating. They feel so distant, so out of my control. Here are some ways to question these:

What percent is in my control or someone else’s? (If it’s less than 90% in my control, I ditch it).
Why didn’t I already accomplish this? (If there are some deeper issues, i.e. nicotine addiction is hard to kick, then I ditch it).

Again, we’re going for high motivation here, so avoid things that you can already predict will torpedo your motivation.

The Common Thread: Motivation

Remember, our goal is usually to motivate ourselves to be better. But “whole year” and “infinite” goals and things out of my control do exactly the opposite. They will probably fail and that will be super demotivating.

Instead Try

1. Look back before looking forward

Before planning for a better you, let’s see how much better you already got in a year! People have been writing about the benefits of a “done list” (vs. a “to-do list”) for a while, but the New Year’s Holiday is a great time to try it.

Remember the key: motivating! Write as much or as little as is exciting and motivating to you. Big themes. Little wins. Whatever makes you feel great about last year!

But you really have to write it. There’s something about pen on paper or text on screen that’s magical for motivation.

2. Set a mini “driver” goal

If your goal is “lose weight,” that sounds too infinite. (Lose how much? By when? And keep it off FOREVER?!)

But the deeper problem of being kind of out of my control is worse. I don’t have a “lose weight” knob that I can simply turn to the right or left. It’s complicated and an “after the fact” result of other behaviors. THOSE are the behaviors to focus on.

How about set a goal that’s something you can control, but is super tiny? Something like:

Eat one fewer Oreo for the week of Jan 5-11 than the week before.

This is something we at Adaptive Leaders call a “driver.” When you’re driving a car, you can control where it goes. The previous “lose weight” goal is more like the result or destination of a bunch of these sorts of mini goals stacking up.

One of the best ways to fuel your motivation: lots of tiny, quick wins that stack up. And if you miss one, it’s a “quick loss” that doesn’t sting so much because you can just set a new one next week.

I do recommend going weekly for these rather than monthly.

3. Design Experiments

One of the most motivating things for me to focus on is learning rather than accomplishing. This means experimenting!

Experiments have these characteristics:

You learn something specific about yourself you didn’t know before (e.g. “How many Oreos am I eating each week?”)
You can do it extremely quickly (e.g. “For the next 7 days, I will count how many Oreos I eat.”)
You are excited to try it (if you’re not, then the experiment needs to be redesigned)

Again, I recommend a 7 day (max) window for these.

They can be about almost anything, but these are the main categories:

My behavior (e.g. “I will try going to Starbucks to work and see if I’m more/less productive than at home.”)
How I’m perceived (e.g. “I will ask my friend John, ‘What’s one thing I’m really good at and one thing I need to get better at?’”)
The past (e.g. “I will use the Screentime app to total how many hours I spent on the Youtube app on my phone for the past 3 weeks.”)
The future (e.g. “I will ask 5 questions before giving my opinion in the meeting on Tuesday.”)
(and more!)

This is WAY more fun than a vague goal to accomplish something because I learn something I didn’t know before that can inform a) my next experiment, b) the next mini driver goal (not THAT Minnie Driver!).

Happy New Year and happy goal setting for the next 7 days!

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How to Reply when Someone Compliments Your Chinese

Albert Wolfe — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 22:00:00 +0000

The moment I started speaking Chinese (“ni hao”), I started getting compliments from the extremely generous Chinese people who were thrilled I was even trying.

While things have changed in the last almost 20 years, and I’m no longer such a rarity (lot’s more “laowai” speak Mandarin now), the compliments do keep on a-flowin’.

So how do I reply?

My Favorite Reply

Chinese Person: 你中文说的很好！
Nǐ zhōngwén shuō de hěn hǎo
You speak Chinese so well!

Albert: 没有你的好
méiyǒu nǐ de hǎo
Not as good as you

Recording

(email subscribers see original post for audio)

Albert gets complimented Albert Wolfe

Transcript

Guy: 中文说得非常棒了你。
Your Chinese is really good.

Albert: 没有你的好。
Not as good as yours.

Guy: 咦?！说得很好了！真的。
Seriously?! Yours is super good! Really.

(Click hanzi links for pinyin and word-by-word translations)

Why This Is the Best

I can’t believe it took me over 10 years to come up with this! (My old approach is described in Chapter 59 of my book Chinese 24/7)

The above reply is now my go-to reply every time because of its many benefits:

Humor: I’d say 9/10 times people burst out in laughter or end up with a huge smile on their face.
Honesty: When I get to a native-speaker level, I’ll stop using this reply.
Modesty: It taps into the deep Chinese culture of being 谦虚 qiān xū when complimented.

But there’s an additional element that I love: it turns the focus from me back to them.

Often, they will then answer with:

Of course my Chinese is better!
Well that’s true!
I’ve been speaking Chinese my whole life!

Or something like that, which solves another issue: transition to what to talk about next.

I love to get people talking about themselves, but that’s tough in Chinese culture. Asking “So where do you hail from?” or something like that feels much more natural after the tables have been turned and the attention is on the compliment giver.

I also love how it blows open the modesty topic and I get to hear people genuinely say how much better their Chinese is than mine!

Again, I can’t believe it took me so long to come up with this, I had to share it. Merry Christmas!

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“Change the Channel” as a Communication Strategy

Albert Wolfe — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 05:55:14 +0000

I was at a doctor’s appointment recently and I felt she was not listening to me. I was speaking fluent Mandarin (as was she) and yet, we weren’t communicating well.

Instead of blaming communication problems, I decided to “change the channel” and figure out a bit more about WHO I was talking to. This was very different than my typical American approach: clarify, clarify, clarify my message.

Who Was She?

With no warning, I suddenly started asking questions about how long she’d been in town. It turns out, she’s new to this city and took this job to be the newly promoted department head. One of her new responsibilities is letting med student sit in on her consultations.

“Hi!” I waved to the student who had been sitting behind her the whole time.

I felt it explained everything about the communication difficulties.

Who was I talking to?

Stranger to the City
New Leader
Teacher/advisor

And what do those people need to do when communicating?

Prove themselves to be valuable
Show their expertise
Make a strong (and good) impression

What was not on her priority list: listening in great detail. That took a back burner to giving a decisive diagnosis as quickly as possible.

End of communication problem diagnosis: it’s, once again, about the “who” rather than the other “wh” words.

After we’d had this “chit chat” (which, thankfully, her schedule allowed), we jumped back into talking about “business” (my ailment). It was a night and day difference (or “sky and earth difference” in Mandarin).

“Changing the channel” briefly helped her slow down a bit and listen to me, and also helped me feel more compassion for her situation!

The Angry Van Driver

It reminded me of years ago when traveling in Xi’an with my parents and friends.

We had hired a van for the day and the driver seemed extremely annoyed at everything we were doing:

He didn’t want to wait for us while we did things (even though we’d hired him for the whole day).
He disliked the routes we suggested (even though I’d been willing to accept his suggestions).
He used rough language under (and over) his breath when responding to us.

I looked at my friend Stacy who had understood all the complaints over the course of the day and we raised eyebrows at each other in disbelief.

What I did next surprised me as much as the driver: I climbed into the empty front seat and sat right next to him while the van was in motion.

“You seem upset with us,” I said. “Did we do something wrong?”

“I’m not upset with you,” he said in shock at my sudden appearance. He still sounded very upset.

“Oh! That’s a relief,” I lied, not feeling relieved at all.

“There are so many THINGS to think about,” he continued.

I honestly didn’t know what he meant, so I said nothing.

He continued, “I’ve been out of the army for 4 months and I just can’t get used to civilian life. In the army they tell you what to do, what to eat, when to sleep, where to go… EVERYTHING!”

The scales fell from my eyes and I saw who I was talking to:

A struggling ex-soldier dealing with the chaos of unstructured life

“That sounds really hard,” I said.

He spent the rest of the 20-minute drive telling me all about his struggles. There was still an undercurrent of anger, but I knew it wasn’t directed at us.

The “change of channel” in this story was a physical change of location (I jumped into the front seat) plus a new topic, which was basically “How are you doing?” That was something I hadn’t ever asked him.

Don’t Talk about the Problem

The most amazing thing is: sometimes not talking about communication difficulties can actually resolve them quicker. But you have to know what to do instead.

My approach with the doctor and the driver was get to know the person a bit more than is typical for patient/doctor or driver/passenger relationships in China.

That was also my approach to dealing with my daughter’s sudden running into the rain: figure out who I’m communicating with.

Sometimes that can be a great approach: talk about the person rather than the problem.

Why am I advocating doing something besides talking about the problem? Because you’ve tried that already. It’s madness to keep trying more of the same and hoping it’ll work THIS time.

Then What Should We Talk about?

Rather than talking about communication problems (when they happen), here are some other counterintuitive approaches to “changing the channel” that might just end up indirectly solving communication issues:

Ignore the misunderstanding and just focus on what outcome you want
Give your own “roles” a name and admit how they’ve been complicit in the miscommunication
Name the “template” between the parties involved and ignore the specific communication breakdown
Send a real “I message” focusing on your own feelings
Ask for advice (not necessarily about communication)
Bring in a 3rd party
Offer a SCARF chat

Each of these deserves its own article, which I’m looking forward to sharing!

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Stop Blaming Communication

Albert Wolfe — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 02:35:24 +0000

In our work with lots of different types of teams, one of the most common issues we hear about is a need to “improve communication.”

As a linguist and husband in a cross-cultural marriage, I am naturally passionate about communication. There is a lot that can go wrong with simply delivering and receiving ideas!

However, I’ve noticed that what appears on the surface to be a communication issue, might actually be distracting us from deeper more important issues. Let me switch gears for a moment to share a story from my family to show what I mean.

The Rainy Day

Guangzhou has been in the news recently for massive rains and flooding. Last Sunday as my family was getting ready to leave the house we realized the literal wall of water falling outside the building presented a major problem getting the four of us to the car.

My wife and I hatched the same plan you’ve already thought of: she and the two kids wait in a covered area while I dash to the car to drive it closer. Genius.

We talked about it all the way down the elevator, through the lobby, and right to the place where the stroller with the baby and all the bags would wait. I said, “See you soon!” and started my 50 meter dash to the car.

Halfway to the car I heard my 3-year-old daughter shouting behind me. With a mix of shock and fury, I turned and shouted “No! What are you doing?! Go back!” She was chasing me through the torrential rain because, for some reason, she hadn’t gotten the message to stay with mom and wait.

To my great dismay, the communication epic fail had led to the exact situation we were trying to avoid: a soaking wet child, wasting extra time to go home to get dry clothes for her.

Communication Epic Fail?

As we drove away, I fumed and reflected on what had gone wrong.

“I guess we didn’t explain the plan to you, right?” I asked my daughter.

“Right,” she confirmed.

“Mom didn’t tell you to stay with her?”

“No,” my daughter said.

Silence. I was furious with myself for not seeing this glaring hole in the plan. But how was it possible? We had been discussing it the whole time and my daughter (like all 3-year-olds) is always on high alert for whatever mom and dad are talking to each other about. (My theory is she’s vigilant for when we might be making a plan to get ice cream without her.)

Finally my wife asked her a question: “Did you know the plan was for dad to run and get the car and the three of us wait in the shelter?”

“Yes,” my daughter answered.

WHAT?!

“And why did we make that plan?” my wife asked.

“So I don’t get wet,” my daughter said.

“See?” my wife said to me. “She knew the plan.”

Hey wait a minute! If she knew the plan, the problem wasn’t communication at all. She just simply didn’t do what I expected.

The Alternate Universe

When we communicate with other people, we all naturally assume they share our view of the universe. We assume their priorities are the same as ours. We assume what we consider to be reasonable and acceptable is the same for them.

But really, everyone is living in alternate universes. I don’t mean your reality is completely different from mine, but there are key areas where the Venn diagram does not overlap the way I expect.

In my story, here are the adult’s priorities:

Keep the kids dry.
Keep the kids from catching a cold.
Arrive on time to our destination.

But as I drove along in silence, I only needed to play back in my mind the tape of what happened to discover how different my daughter’s reality was.

“Jack, wait!” is what she had called out to me while she chased me through the rain.

My name is Albert.

Or better yet, Dad.

She calls me Jack when she has become “Annie” and we’re the protagonists in her favorite book series: The Magic Treehouse. She has listened to dozens of the stories.

I then recalled her style of running through the rain: she was running in a sort of dramatic slow-motion, which is not even close to her usual athletic form. She was living an adventure story in which Jack must heroically face a storm, and Annie will be right by his side the whole time!

She didn’t fail to get the message: “wait her with mom.” She simply ignored it.

My Plan v. Her Story

The more I thought about it the more convinced I became that my “plan” and her “story” were in direct conflict.

Why would Annie stand idly by while Jack gets to have a great adventure?

“Did you want to go with Jack into the storm?” I asked for confirmation.

“Yes,” was her immediate reply.

That explains everything!

When forced to choose between the two, her story beat out my plan.

Typical Postmortems Miss the “Who?”

When misunderstandings and communication breakdowns occur, so often a leader’s response is to analyze where messages got dropped. Then policies (even informal ones) are made to “avoid this sort of thing next time.”

But what “sort of thing” is it, really?

In my story, the way to avoid this sort of miscommunication next time is for me to be totally in tune with what reality my daughter is living in.

For me this is as simple as asking “Who are you right now?” (a question I’m asking constantly now).

Her answers include various princess’ names, a whole range of animals (especially kittens or koalas), and even herself BUT in a made-up story about her cousin coming to visit her in China (which he has never done).

Communicating with a 3-year-old starts by entering her world.

Is it so different for leaders in a Fortune 500 company?

If I were to go back to the latest communication breakdown in your company, I would see a lot of discussion about “what” and “how” and maybe even “why” things didn’t work.

A conclusion might sound like this: “So next time we’re going to be sure to include these steps/people in the process.”

But what if I went back and asked the people involved: “Who were you at the time of the communication breakdown?”

I’d get a blank stare or maybe a (very honest) reply: “I was myself.” That’s true. But don’t we all have multiple versions of ourself?

How to ask “Who are you?”

In addition to asking my daughter “Who are you?” I should be asking myself that. In the rain story, who was I? I didn’t think I was Jack, but I was more than just Dad too. I thought of myself as:

Children’s Health Protector
Car driver
Master planner
Fast mover

It’s the last two that got me in trouble. And as I reflected on the “Fast Mover” role, I can see that’s actually a consistent source of conflict in my family. I’m trying to move too fast, get things done, and reach a destination at a rate that’s counterproductive. I think if I can slow down a bit, maybe even get rid of that last role all together, it might automatically solve what appear to be communication problems.

This is so revolutionary for me: when trying to solve communication problems, I’m basically never asking about “who” people are. I think I know, but probably I don’t.

But I’m also not thinking about who I am in the moment. “I’m myself,” yes. But what “role” am I playing in this situation?

What am I “defending” or “fighting for”?
What cause am I the “champion” of?
What am I willing to sacrifice for the “prize”?
What unique “superpowers” or “gifts” do I think I’m contributing?

These “who” questions, while they might just seem like reframing of a “goals” discussion actually feel different to me. They get at my sense of identity in a way that really sheds new light on communication breakdowns. And when I’m dealing with the identities of the parties in a communication breakdown, I think I’m finally on the right track to make some real breakthroughs to avoid “this sort of thing” in the future.

The next article will include a story from a recent doctor’s office visit where I was able to apply this “who” approach to great avail!

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I Know Your Name 我知道你的名字

Albert Wolfe — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 06:45:47 +0000

Long time no post!

I'm delighted to announce that a song I wrote with the inimitable Galen Crew (Instagram | Weibo) came out yesterday! What an epic decision Galen made to sing an entire, original song in Mandarin!

It was so fun to write Chinese lyrics based on his vision for the song. Despite the ease of rhyming in Mandarin (which I discuss here), it was still quite a challenge to do a collaborative co-write from across the ocean and try to make it sound good to the native-speaking Chinese audience. I have to say I was a bit nervous about how it would go over, but a skimming of the 1000+ comments the song got in the first 24 hours of its release helped set my mind at ease [sigh-of-relief-emoji].

I have to take this opportunity to congratulate Galen on his very, VERY good Chinese pronunciation (more on this in a future post)!

I must also give a huge special thanks to my dear wife, Eva, for all the editorial suggestions and for being the first focus group (of one) to hear the song with Chinese ears. Galen and I couldn't have pulled this off without you! [sappy-heart-emoji]

Listen to 《我知道你的名字》wǒ zhīdao nǐ de míngzi "I Know Your Name" for free on NetEase (if you're in China) or Spotify (if you're NOT in China).

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The Useless Suggestion Box

Albert Wolfe — Thu, 19 Mar 2020 05:38:29 +0000

Image credit: https://hb.sina.com.cn/news/b/2017-03-14/detail-ifychhuq4540564.shtml

As an American who highly values efficiency, I've always been annoyed by the huge number of suggestion boxes at businesses in China. They seem to be:

Everywhere
Always empty
(Also, there are usually no pencils or paper provided.)

Because these seem so useless to me, when I took over as general manager of my current company 4 years ago, one of the first things I did was decide not to have a suggestion box. It had been sitting there empty for ages, the HR manager couldn't remember it being used, the decision seemed obvious to me.

A few months ago, I reinstated it. We now have a digital employee suggestion box (it's a QR code you scan with your phone). How much I've learned!

Explanation

The main purpose of the suggestion box is, surprisingly, not to get suggestions. Its existence is symbolic and sends an indirect message from the leader to the rest of the people, whether they be customers or, in my case, employees. The important thing is that there is a box and it's visible to everyone.

By NOT having a suggestion box, I was sending the indirect message to my staff: "I don't care about your needs" or maybe, "I'm too high above you to listen to your opinions." In the high power-distance of Chinese culture, the normal people can easily forgive the leader for not wanting to listen to everyone. But it would be better if he would.

Installing a suggestion box (with the leaders conspicuously nearby) even makes the news in China.

When I realized this (which is a different story), I asked our Chinese HR manager, "Do you think by NOT having the box, the staff feels like I don't want to hear from them."

She smiled slightly and said, "Maybe." I took that to mean "yes," but wanted to confirm so I changed tactics.

"I'm thinking of having a digital suggestion box that goes straight to me. Do you think the staff would be happy about that or would it make them uncomfortable?" She immediately replied that they would be happy and the fact that I, the general manager, would be the only one checking it is a big plus.

I discussed with her the culture of open communication we've worked so hard to cultivate here.

"Isn't it kind of a failure to need something like this?" I asked her. "Shouldn't people who have suggestions feel free to talk directly to their teammates or supervisors? Why would they need a special box to make suggestions to me, when the best person to hear the suggestions is almost certainly NOT me?"

She then confirmed my belief that it promotes goodwill to have the opportunity to submit things this way, even if no one ever does.

"Do you think anyone would use it?" I asked as a final confirmation question.

"Let's put it up and see!" she replied enthusiastically. So we did.

The Chinese word for "suggestion box" is yì jiàn xiāng 意见箱 which also means "complaint" box. My experience has been mostly complaints or negative suggestions go in these boxes (if any). Constructive or positive complaints don't need to be put in a box. Chinese are happy to give those directly and be associated with giving them.

For ours, I actually used the slightly more positive word jiàn yì 建议 for "suggestion" which helps convey to my staff what I hope they'll use it for.

The 3rd Culture

When working across cultures, sometimes the result is that a new culture is created. That is known as the "3rd Culture" since it isn't either of the original two.

Actually, our digital suggestion box for employees violates one of the primary principles of the Chinese view of the whole point: it should be anonymous. But ours is automatically linked with your name and work ID.

This is a compromise because of theunique corporate culture we are trying to cultivate here. In my company we haveexplicitly said we prize honesty and communication very highly. We are willingto accept criticism and complaints if they include action steps or suggestionsfor how to improve.

But we have also explained that wedo not value anonymous complaints because they are difficult to follow up on,and maybe inaccurately skewed because of the protection provided by criticizingsafely.

In a low trust culture like China's, any criticism carries with it a fear or retaliation. "If I say something bad about my boss, then my boss will find out it was me and I will ultimately suffer for it."

That is true everywhere. But in China, the default is not to trust anyone until he/she has slowly and consistently proven to be trustworthy. The high power-distance of the leader, makes building that trust even slower. Also, in complaining to the leader gets progressively scarier the more "levels" are skipped in the process: that many more people to retaliate.

However, I have hopefully built enough of a strong track record with my staff for them to know that they will receive as much protection as possible when lodging a formal complaint. Of course, some may feel it's too risky even so and may decline to use the current system I've setup. I'm willing to miss a valid, anonymous complaint for the sake of this culture building. (Besides, if someone's really desperate, he can just slip a note under my office door late at night.)

Results

During the first 6 months of having our digital suggestion box, 3 people wrote notes to me. One was an actionable piece of advice (and complaint), the other two seemed to be just venting frustration. One even admitted at the end, "I don't have any suggestion, but I feel better not that I've expressed this."

My reply was the same to all 3:"Thank you for your message. I received it!"

I did follow up with the actionablepoint, and the staffs' anonymity was protected. I went to the department headinvolved and said, "I got a note in the suggestion box that said..."I tried to make it clear that I expected the manager to investigate and makehis own decision, rather than just doing whatever the suggestion box said. Inthe end, I think a small adjustment was made to the procedure in question.

So with so few suggestions submitted, do I feel it is a failure? On the contrary. I'm very happy we have it. I even want to put one up for the customers now!

My Chinese Wife's Perspective

"We won't usually be thinking about whether we have a suggestion box or not. But there are 3 times when we will realize we want it, and if we don't have it, that will be perceived as the leader not caring:
1) If we want to complain about something, and don't have a way to do it.
2) If we hear someone else complain, and we want to refer them to use the suggestion box.
3) If it gets pointed out that everyone else's companies all have a suggestion boxes, and we're the only ones who don't."
- Eva

Analogy and Summary

In my home culture, it feels similar to a wedding invitation from a family member. Do I really need to receive a wedding invitation from my own sister? No, but I might notice it ifother people got one and I didn't. I would think it's sending me an indirect message that I'm not as welcome to attend as others are. The point is not to convey information about the time and place (although it does that too),the point is to make me feel sure I've been officially invited.

My mistake was thinking about the suggestion box as an information gathering tool. The Chinese, on the other hand, justify the existence of a suggestion box not because it can convey information (although, it is occasionally used for that!). It is primarily an invitation, a public sign of good will from the lofty boss to the normal people. And if it's not there, it's felt.

As Oscar Wilde would have said: "The Chinese feel the only thing worse than having an empty suggestion box, is NOT having an empty suggestion box."

From the series "In Chinese Shoes," all about decoding and sympathizing with cultural topics that baffle Westerners. See other articles from this series below.

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The Importance (and Sneakiness) of Culture

Albert Wolfe — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 03:20:22 +0000

This is the start of a new series: "In Chinese Shoes," where I will explain bizarre and baffling occurrences in Chinese culture to help Westerners understand and sympathize.

The more I reflect on my past 15 years in China, the more I see the importance of invisible yet powerful cultural forces on my success and failures (but especially the failures). I also believe there are few good explanations for Westerners (particularly North Americans, like me) to help us understand the Chinese perspective. That's why I'm going to try writing some, with a special focus on very specific applications.

3 Analogies about Culture in General

Beach Currents

Have you ever been swimming at a beach with strong currents? You think you've just been staying in the same place until you try to find your towel. It's only then that you realize you've been pulled along the shore, ever so slowly and imperceptibly, away from where you started.

The current sneakily pulls you.

Cultural forces are invisible and powerful like that. They're always working, pulling you one way or another, but it's difficult to perceive unless you have a point of reference. If you don't know about currents when you go to the beach, it can be shocking, frustrating, baffling, and even scary. These are the same feelings I've felt dealing with Chinese culture.

But I mustn't forget that my own culture is like the invisible current as well. I'm not entirely sure what I myself think or feel until I've run into something that strikes me as odd or unsettling. The more I understand about the currents in my own culture, the better equipped I am to understand the Chinese culture.

The Soccer Goal Keeper Rule

When I was seven (or maybe less) I joined a soccer team. I remember being really baffled that the number one rule is "You can't touch the ball with your hands," and yet there is a player who's whole job seems to be "Touch the ball with your hands." What kind of a game IS this?!

Hey! Why does she get to use her hands?

Culture is similar: there are "rules" for how the game of living in a society is played, including: the best/worst thing to do in situations, or who has authority to do various things. But there are also surface-level contradictions that can leave us feeling cheated, dismayed, and at best like we're taking crazy pills. The greatest trap for me is to feel superior because I'm the only one smart enough to see how foolish this all is. Alas! If only the 1.5 billion people around me would arrive at the enlightenment I've reached!

I would call the goalie rule in soccer a "paradox," because there actually IS a reasonable explanation for it, but it's not obvious at a glance. In other words, to the players who really know the game of soccer and play it all the time, the fact that one player can always use his hands, makes total sense.

The REAL rule is: "You can't touch the ball with your hands, unless it's an accident and your arms are at your side or you're clearly in the process of running, OR unless you're the goalie, who has a different position than the other players." But if you don't have the attention-span or the guidance to get to the complicated version, you'll probably just think "The no-hands rule is stupid and inconsistently enforced!" (as I did when I was young).

Twist Endings

Have you ever seen a movie with a great surprise ending? I won't spoil it for you, but one of my favorites is The Sixth Sense. You actually have to watch an interview with the director M. Night Shyamalan to know the full sneakiness of the trick he played on you (including the little clues like what the color red represents).

The Sixth Sense has a great twist ending.

When you finally get the secret, there's a great feeling of relief, achievement, and delight. "Oh! Wow! That explains so much!" Where there once was confusion, tension, and fear, we know feel the universe is back in order and we can move forward.

That's how I feel when I finally get a really good explanation of the cultural forces at work in a given situation. And I've been on the other end again and again as I pass on explanations to other Westerners who are baffled by the Chinese way of doing things. It's re-frames past and future experiences to be more meaningful and comprehensible.

In Chinese Shoes

As you probably didn't notice, I changed the tagline of this website today.

Old: Tips and Strategies for Speaking and Understanding Mandarin

New: Tips and Strategies about the Chinese Language and Culture

The goal of my new series "In Chinese Shoes" is to create empathy for the Chinese way of doing things.

By labeling these cultural forces (like the beach current), I hope to provide relief that "You're not crazy."
By recognizing paradoxes (like the goalie rule in soccer), I hope to give you confidence that you can master these cultural "rules," as long as you have a sufficiently nuanced explanation. The rules make sense to Chinese people, even if they don't make sense to us at first.
And by using analogies, as I have done all through this article, I hope to bring delight (like a twist ending) as you say "Oh, THAT'S why they do that!"

It's Never Too Late

One final word of encouragement. I learned many of these things very late in my time in China (and I'm still learning!), so don't worry if you've been missing some important clues when dealing with Chinese people. Everything's obvious once you know it.

The Chinese version of "the have 20/20 hindsight" is to be a shì hòu Zhū Gěliàng 事后诸葛亮. In other words, everyone can be a genius on the level of Zhu Geliang once the event has already happened!

Chinese Southern Charm

Albert Wolfe — Fri, 05 Oct 2018 06:04:07 +0000

In the United States, the charming southern accent is all about vowels that get swapped around or changed. I still remember this great game of Catch Phrase where the southern belle mother gave this clue "It's long and thin" and someone guessed "pin!" She was delighted and passed the thing to the next player (her own child). "Mom! This is 'pen' not 'pin'." But the mom didn't understand, "That's what they said!"

It was funny to everyone because her own children (growing up in Arizona) had lost the southern accent but their mother pronounced "pen" and "pin" exactly the same.

In Southern China, the accent comprises not vowel differences, but rather consonants that the locals can't distinguish. There are many vocabulary differences between the North and the South (and everywhere in China, for that matter), but the biggest challenge to learning Mandarin in the South is the pronunciation.

One example is: "s" and "sh" sound different to me because in my native language (English) they are different sounds (it matters very much which one you use when you tell some to "sit."). But in Southern China "s" and "sh" sound the same to them (they are what linguists call allophones).

This makes for many misunderstandings, but also some cute jokes that are only possible in the South. For example this fruit shop's name:

The hanzi is 随果 suí guǒ which is a mispronounciation of 水果 shuǐ guǒ (meaning fruit). You can see the "s" and "sh" switcharoo. But there's one other thing that makes the joke possible: "shui" in the real word for fruit switched to sound like a 2nd tone because of the "double 3rd tone rule." So these two words would sound exactly the same with a Southern Chinese accent. Clearly this is a tongue in cheek mocking of Southern pronunciation that most Chinese people I've talked to find pretty cute.

There are several other features of the Southern accent (enough for a whole post or book chapter just on that), but I'll give just one more, this time, unintentional evidence of a 分不清楚 fēn bù qīng chu sound: "-n" and "-ng" at the end of a word. In English this is important because we want the church choir to "sing" not "sin," right? But in Southern China they can't always tell the difference. Look at the login info for a local "Lanzhou" restaurant's WiFi:

The really interesting thing about this is: Lanzhou is in the north and you would think those running the restaurant would be too. We can only surmise that the internet was installed by a local.

If you live in Southern China, and you have some printed material showing the local pronunciation of Mandarin, please feel free to leave a comment and tell us about it!

Lucky Money for Big Kids

Albert Wolfe — Sat, 20 Feb 2016 00:11:59 +0000

Since this is my first year working in business in China, I was introduced to a new tradition this week.

Everyone (well, almost everyone) came back to work on Monday after being home with family for the Spring Festival holiday. I was told by the CFO that we need to do 开门利事 kāi mén lì shì (also apparently written 开门利是), and the responsibility fell to me to do it. This (of course) made me very interested to know what in the world it means.

Basically, it's a 红包 hóngbāo (often translated as "lucky money") for adults.

The standard "red envelope" tradition goes like this: unmarried children can get lucky money from their parents, relatives, or close friends at Spring Festival time (but the kids often give all the money to their parents who then give some of it back to the kids to buy things... it's complicated!).

But the "open door lucky money" that I handed out to employees is more about the symbolism of starting the New Year right rather than financial gain (which I'm sure is how the kids think about their hongbao-s). It means good wishes for our working relationship this year, and also for the company's business, oh and also for your own personal health and success.

Since I'd never done anything like this before, I actually did a little rehearsal with the CFO. I asked her what to say and what they employees might say in response. That's when I learned this new phrase:

开工大吉 kāigōng dàjí = (wishing you) an auspicious start of the work year

Replies ranged from standard ones (more here):

恭喜发财 gōngxǐ fācái = get rich
身体健康 shēntǐ jiànkāng = have good health

to simply thank you (usually double dose 谢谢谢谢 xièxie xièxie).

But one thing is for sure: everyone was really, really happy to get it.

It was fun for me to do because it was so clearly important to everyone.

One guy wasn't here on Monday and he came in to my office on Thursday for me to sign some other thing. After I signed it I saw he was still just standing there. I said, "Was there something else?" and he kind of looked nervously around and didn't say anything so I asked again. He cleared this throat and said, "Uhhh... hongbao?" "哦！太不好意思了！对，你周一不在，我忘了！对不起！" I replied and quickly got his hongbao and wished him a (retroactive) auspicious start to his work year. He laughed and left the office smiling.

I also smiled to myself as I realized (for the thousandth time since starting this new job), just how much I still have to learn!

I'd be interested to hear about anyone else's business traditions for the New Year. Also, for the native speakers out there (if there are any that read this!), do you usually see this written 开门利事 or 开门利是? Feel free to write here.