I had a meeting on Friday with a senior leader facing a common problem. There are many changes going on and his people have developed the view that ‘head office doesn’t know anything about what we do and their restructures don’t make sense’ along other related non-productive views. He wants his team on the front foot so they are part of the change agenda and avoid have the changes ‘done to them’.

I was reminded of an activity described by Fred Kofman(1) that I use in nearly every leadership program we run. The activity helps show people that their explanations aren’t constructive without telling them so (telling them usually just creates resistance to your message).

The activity aims to illustrate that we can choose how we respond to situations (response-ability). Kofman stands at the front of the room and drops a pen, then asks “what caused the pen to fall?” “Gravity” is usually the first answer. Sometimes people point out that “you dropped it.” Both answers are correct, but Kofman points out that the usefulness of the answer is related to our purpose.

If your purpose is to prevent the pen from falling again, pointing out that the pen falls “because of gravity” will not help you. Essentially this means that as long as there is gravity the pen will fall, and there is nothing you can do about it. On the other hand, if you say that you dropped the pen, there is something you can do about it. The exercise demonstrates the important distinction between self-empowering explanations (“I dropped it”) and explanations that remove your power to influence the situation (“gravity caused the pen to fall”).

In Kofman’s words, your explanation determines if you will be a ‘victim’ or a ‘player.'</>

1. Kofman, F. (2006), ‘Conscious Business: How to build value through values’, Sounds True Press, page 33.