December 28, 2016
Interview with Heidi Grant Halvorson, author of the book Focus
Mike Carruthers:
There are 2 ways of approaching any goal.
Heidi Grant Halvorson:
One way of looking at a goal is sort of in terms of the things you can gain the good things that will happen if you’re successful. And we call that way of talking about our goals promotion focused.
Heidi Grant Halvorson, author of the book Focus…
When you instead think about those same goals in terms of what you might lose if you don’t succeed. The things that might go wrong if you don’t keep things running smoothly – then we call that a prevention focus.
And it’s important to understand which way you approach each goal are you promotion focused or prevention focused?
I think once they hear there does seem to be an immediate, “Oh OK I get it, I know which one I am, I also know which one my husband is or my colleagues at work”. There’s a kind of ah ha moment where people often realize oh the reason why my husband and I fight about this is because we’re differently focused. So we’re looking at the same problem but we’re looking at it in 2 very different ways.
When you understand whether you’re promotion or prevention focused…
There’s several things you can do now that you know this. 1 (is again) learn to work with your focus. It feels right to them to work very differently and so you can kind of embrace that. You can also learn to make choices based on your own focus. A certain kind of careers, a certain kind of people that you might be in a relationship with are going to be a better fit for you depending on your focus.
