Published monthly by Sharon Eakes, Hope Unlimited, LLC
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FOCUS: Playing PEANUT
Disciplines: Personal Mastery, Systems Thinking

"Appreciate that which you want to multiply"
Bill Veltrop

EXAMPLES:

Here's are two examples of how people play PEANUT.

1) You decide your new neighbor is a bit strange. Your wife agrees. You ask another neighbor if he's noticed this strangeness. He says, "yes" and adds some things you missed. You laugh together. You watch for evidence and share it with a widening circle of neighbors.

2) You and your fellow workers think the top management is incompetent. You watch for their missteps. Then you find people who agree, and in the cafeteria or the bathroom, you share your evidence. You roll your eyes, shake your head, throw up your hands. You had similar conversations yesterday and will have similar conversations tomorrow. At the moment it feels good. But over time, it becomes a negative spiral and drains your energy.

THOUGHTS:

Many years ago my friend Lois Perelman created a model I've found enormously helpful that captures the behavior described in these examples. She called the model PEANUT, which is an acronym for this very human, natural, automatic behavior.

Here's how it goes.
P = we take a Position, then
E = we gather Evidence, then
A = we find people who Agree with us,
And then we run
N = Non-
U = Useful
T = Tapes with each other, sharing our Evidence, strengthening our Position.

Playing PEANUT helps us feel like part of the "in crowd." The trouble is it also gets and keeps us stuck in a negative rut.

Where are you playing PEANUT in your life?

COACHING TIPS:

1) Next time someone brings you Evidence and looks for your Agreement on some Position you've both taken, tell her you're experimenting with a different way of looking at things.
2) Begin to notice and appreciate even the smallest positive thing that comes from top management (or your wife, neighbor, colleague, child, or whomever is the subject of your PEANUT.)
3) Share your positive observation with anyone who brings you Evidence.

INVITATION

Please join me for a 45-minute telegathering to share ideas about the implications of playing PEANUT. Call Thursday, July 7 at 12 noon EDT (11:00 a.m. CDT, 10:00 a.m. MT, 9:00 a.m. PDT)
1-425-818-9401 X925 No need to register....just call at that time!

Reach me: 1-888-907-HOPE (4673)or e-mail sharon@hopellc.com. I am a personal and executive coach. Are you ready to be coached?

Each month FRESH VIEWS focuses on a single topic, relates it to one of the five disciplines of a learning community, and offers a coaching tip and a follow-up telegathering. Please forward it to friends and colleagues. My purpose in writing FRESH VIEWS is to nurture, prod and encourage readers to think and talk about these topics with their families, friends and colleagues. Mine is only one view. Multiple conversations may deliver us to insights only hinted at here. Such a process sustains the vitality of learning relationships, learning families, learning organizations and learning communities.