Vedere Consulting

What to Do When You Can’t Solve the Problem

2009-07-02T14:00:00.000-07:00

Many of the executives I work with are terrific problem solvers. They are inventive, determined, intelligent. It’s one of the main reasons they got to where they are today. But what happens when the problem isn’t one that can be solved—like death or a terminal illness? Or someone doesn’t want you to solve the problem for them? Or you don’t have the experience or skills or resources and don’t know where to turn? How can an inveterate problem solver be effective?

The answer is simple, really. Stop talking. Give the person your full attention. Listen with all your heart. Tell the truth about your experience. Trust that resolution will come without you and that your caring and presence is enough. Lao Tsu called this experience “non-doing.” Non-doing doesn’t mean doing nothing, it means paying attention to your experience and to what another person is experiencing without doing anything to “fix” it. It is also recognizing that paying attention is often enough.

All of us have heard the jokes about married couples experiencing the frustration of problem solving gone wrong when one of them (often the woman) discusses a problem she’s having. Her husband, with a sincere desire to help, gets out the proverbial toolkit and starts troubleshooting. “Did you try x,” he’ll say. She, a little frustrated because of course she tried x, will continue on but with an edge to her voice. “How about y,” her husband says. Now his wife is getting really frustrated and maybe a bit insulted. Because she doesn’t want his advice. She just wants him to listen. If he listens she can figure out the problem herself. Or she just needs to know someone cares and understands.

The same thing happens between parents and children or bosses and subordinates. It happens sometimes in really difficult situations when we want to help someone we love through all illness or the death of a loved one. We give advice, or we try to problem solve. And sometimes that’s the worst thing we can do.

Experts, as well as people who have experienced great tragedy, tell us that the people who were most helpful were the people who gave support through being there to listen when the sufferer wanted to talk. It is non-doing. It is not interfering with the flow of life but supporting it.

This is a tough stance for a chronic doer. I recommend acquiring the gift of non-doing in small steps. First, simply pay attention to your reactions to problems. What does your body do? Does your heart rate increase? Do you feel tension or release anywhere in your body? What are your thoughts? What emotions are you experiencing? By observing yourself, you delay doing. You have some time to think. Second, ask yourself if the person wants—or needs-- your help. Is non-doing going to be more productive than doing? Third, breathe deeply and into your belly. It will relax you and help you respond more slowly. Fourth, lean back and down (you are probably leaning forward and up—that’s a common problem solving stance). Allow yourself to relax into the conversation. Notice when your mind starts to wander and repeat the steps.

When you practice non-doing you are giving the other person a tremendous gift. And perhaps you’ll find that you’re giving one to yourself as well.

Plum Cluverius is a leadership and executive coach practicing in Richmond, Virginia.

Focus on the Opening, Not the Wall

2009-06-26T15:32:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered how NASCAR drivers manage to squeeze between two cars at 200 mph? or keep from hitting the wall through all those turns? They focus on where they want to go, not on what they don’t want to do. As one NASCAR driver in an interview said, if you drive thinking you don’t want to run into the wall, then you’re going to run into the wall. When you’re passing cars or weaving between them, you don’t focus on the cars, you drive for the opening you want to go through.

It’s the opposite of what we often do when we’re faced with a tough situation—whether the danger is physical or it’s a difficult conversation or decision. We focus our attention on what could go wrong—the boss will get angry, the employee will file a complaint. We become more tense, and our ability to think clearly diminishes. Because we’re obsessing about not running into the wall, we make it more likely that’s exactly what will happen. But focusing on what we want to happen, on where we want to go frees up our minds to think creatively and to act wisely. We see the opening between the cars and we go for it.

Because this behavior is unnatural to most of us, we have to practice it. We have to be aware of ourselves and our tendency to focus on the danger. And when we notice that our attention is turned to what we don’t want, we have to shift our attention to what we do want. For example, one of my executive clients had an employee who wanted a plum assignment. In other projects, however, this employee had alienated other members of the team by taking on most of the responsibility and then complaining about the team’s lack of participation. My client was concerned that the employee would become de-motivated if he didn’t get the assignment and she wasn’t sure how to approach him. But when she turned her attention to what she did want, which was to help her employee learn how to delegate effectively, she quickly decided to give him a portion of the assignment on the condition that he work with a mentor who was good at delegating. Once my client had her eye on the prize she was able to create viable solutions—and to communicate them more effectively.

It was another client of mine who discovered the information about the NASCAR driver. He uses a computer wallpaper featuring a race car to remind him that he’s much more effective when he looks for the open space instead of focusing on the cars. It’s a reminder most of us could use.

Plum Cluverius is an executive and leadership coach located in Richmond, Virginia.

To Be Truly Respectful, Start With Yourself

2009-05-23T13:08:00.000-07:00

“You are a complete idiot.” “How could you make such a stupid mistake.” “You’re always messing up!” You probably wouldn’t say any of these things—at least out loud—to someone else, but how many times have you said them to yourself? This type of language is violent and damaging, yet when we do something that causes us to feel guilty, ashamed or embarrassed, this is often the language we turn to. We don’t even think about it, it’s automatic.

Why do we do it? Because we’ve been conditioned to believe that guilt and shame provide the impetus for learning and positive behavior. Parents often use this tactic as a learning tool. I know I did. But shame and guilt often produce the opposite result. Instead of prompting action, they prompt resistance. How many people have you heard say, “I really should start working out” or “I really should lose weight” or “I really should control my temper better,” and then nothing ever happens.

I agree with Marshall Rosenberg, who in his book Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life (Puddledancer Press, 2003) says that when we use the word “should” with ourselves, we resist learning because “should” implies we don’t have a choice. He goes on to say that human beings have a strong need to control their own destiny, to freely choose, so we resist attempts, even internal ones, to force us to change against our wills.

What can we do differently? Rosenberg says that a more productive response is to ask ourselves what unmet need is behind our punishing language. For example, I often get angry with myself when I wait until the last minute to get something done. I’m feeling a lot of pressure and I keep asking myself, “when will you ever learn to plan ahead!” In this instance, my unmet need is for calm and composure.

After identifying the unmet need, the next step is to examine the needs we were trying to address with the actions that produced our guilt or self-punishment. If we also identify our unmet needs there, we can see that there was a positive intent for those actions. Then it’s easier for us to truly forgive ourselves for that mistake and to examine how we can better meet our needs the next time.

When I’m doing something at the last minute, I’m usually doing it because I’ve made too many commitments and I’m running behind. I made those commitments because I wanted to help someone or get something done that was important to me or I wanted to be seen as a competent professional or I wanted to continue building my practice. All those things are important to me. When I remember why I made those commitments, I understand how I got into such a bind and I lose my anger.

Interestingly, forgiving myself this way frees up energy for rebalancing priorities or using the time management techniques I know so well. Perhaps I think of someone to delegate to or I decide something can wait or I renegotiate with a client. Punishing myself just makes me feel guilty. Nothing changes.

I firmly believe that if we are ever to build organizations that are truly respectful and affirming, we must begin with ourselves. By learning to change the way we talk to ourselves, by turning violent language into the language of learning, we can see ourselves and consequently everything else in new and more productive ways.

Plum Cluverius is an executive and leadership coach in Richmond, Virginia. Contact her at plum@vedereconsulting.com for a free half hour consultation.

Carpe Diem

2009-05-12T11:54:00.000-07:00

You’ve probably been inundated with advice about how to weather economic turmoil. My friend and mentor, John Scherer (www.scherercenter.com), gave some of the best I’ve heard. He said that in tough times, we need to carpe diem, seize the day. That is, use the uncertainty to re-examine and re-invent. To think differently about old problems. John calls it breakthrough thinking. In his March 19 newsletter, The Scherer Report, he gave a great example of what this means. I’m going to let him tell you about it.

Recently a client company’s ‘Help Desk’ was falling far behind, taking 15 to 20 minutes to even answer the phone. The Breakthrough Action Team working on the problem was trying to figure out how to justify the cost of doubling the number of people answering the phones. They had tables of research and estimates of how many calls a person could handle in an hour, multiplied by the number of calls coming in each day, etc. I was consulting with the team and I suggested they were working very hard at ‘First Order Change’—that is change within the existing paradigm that doesn’t fundamentally change anything.

‘The way you SEE the problem is the problem,’ I said, quoting the ancient Yogic tradition.

What would happen, I challenged them, if they shifted to a breakthrough mindset? I asked them, ‘What would be the ideal number of calls coming into the Help Desk?’ They again started calculating the number of calls that could be handled by six people, then 12 people. I stopped them and asked again, ‘What would be the ideal number of calls coming into the Help Desk?’ Some team members started getting irritated with me. ‘We’re working on it, John!”

Finally one person said, ‘Well, the ideal number would be zero! But that could never happen.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘For one thing the sales team would have to do a much better job of selling, letting people know certain things they are reluctant to tell clients.’

‘OK,’ I said, ‘someone write this stuff down.’

Another person chimed in, ‘Then the installation team that goes in to build the system would need to do a much better job of listening to the client and their needs. Oh, and the training team would need to take the time to make sure the participants actually understand the system. They just come in, do their program and leave.’

‘Ok,’ I said, ‘there’s your focus, not on the number of people you have in the Call Center Help Desk.

They went to work, invited people from sales, installation and training to be part of a special cross-functional breakthrough thinking team and came up with a set of innovative action recommendations for consideration by the key decision makers.

The result? Three months later I was there for a follow up meeting and I wandered downstairs to the Help Desk to see how many people they had hired. There sat a lone telephone operator at her desk, reading a book! I said, ‘How’s it going?’ She replied, ‘It’s a little boring sometimes . . . but I can’t say I miss those days when six of us were here, frantic and overstressed. I get about ten calls a day now, and they’re usually pretty easy problems to solve. I don’t know what you did, but it worked!’

Now, that’s finding the opportunity in a crisis. Whether you’re a CEO, a small business owner or someone who’s lost a job, this kind of thinking makes lemonade out of whatever lemon you were handed.

John has just published a great new book, Five Questions That Change Everything: Life Lessons at Work. Click here to learn about it (http://www.amazon.com/Five-Questions-That-Change-Everything/dp/0979531527/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242068594&sr=8-1 ). I’ll be reviewing it in a later post.

Plum Cluverius is an executive and leadership coach located in Richmond, Virginia.

Don't Spread the Suffering

2009-03-27T07:38:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite clients is Celes Glover. As an administrative assistant to a vice president, Celes is in a unique position, as she puts it, to “spread something.” She literally sits in the middle of the department. People come to her all day long, usually because they want her help. She has to stop what she’s doing and take care of them. One of her insights, she told me, is that she can choose what she spreads. If she’s having a bad day, she can choose the spread the suffering by being short with people or ignoring them. Or she can decide to spread good will. She can listen, she can respond respectfully--even when she’s feeling irritated at an unreasonable request.

Celes has learned something every boss needs to know. Each person who supervises someone else is in a position to “spread something.” Their responses to the people around them are contagious. If they choose to spread the suffering by being short-fused, critical or ignoring others, their behavior will set the tone for the whole office. Their people will shut down, will be less creative. If they choose to spread good will, the office mood is more relaxed and supportive and creativity can flourish.

Let me hasten to add that supportive doesn’t mean soft. There are still too many bosses out there who confuse the two. Soft means you don’t rock the boat. You don’t confront when you need to. You sweep problems under the rug. Reacting with good will means you control your temper, you respond respectfully, you wait until you calm down to act. When President Obama said he wouldn’t “govern out of anger” he was paying attention to what he was spreading.

Right now, there’s plenty of suffering going around. There’s no need to add to it if you can help it. Calm yourself, then act. Say you’re sorry if you make a mistake. Listen. Managing your emotions is good for business.

Plum Cluverius is an executive and leadership coach located in Richmond, Virginia.

One Bad Apple

2009-03-15T05:00:00.000-07:00

Got a bad apple on your team? Read on to find out what you can do about it.

In one of my first jobs out of college, I had a co-worker who was the classic drama queen. She complained—about management, about clients, about her co-workers. She was chronically late and often absent so that others were stuck doing her work. She gossiped and was usually mad at someone or taking up their time with her tales of woe.

Three things make her interesting. First, she did all this in such a way that she was able to skate right below the surface of actionable offense. She drove management crazy, but it took them forever to address her issues because her excuses were good enough or she managed to do enough to get by. Second, she had a huge effect on morale. She managed to keep the office stirred up—when she was around someone was always upset about something or people weren’t speaking to each other. We all started complaining and gossiping. Third, there are far too many people like her in offices around the country. Maybe there’s one in yours.

The American Public Radio program, This American Life (www.thisamericanlife.org ) chronicled an experiment that offers hope to any office stuck with a dysfunctional drama queen. In the show, host Ira Glass interviewed Will Phelps, currently an assistant professor of management at the Rotterdam School of Management. Dr. Phelps wanted to know if one person could destroy the productivity of a group. He set up a series of experiments where he paid an actor to engage in one of three “bad apple” behaviors in a group. The “bad apple” behaviors were attacking or insulting others, doing less than they could, or acting depressed and pessimistic.

The results. Every group—but one—where the actor was present performed 30-40% worse than the control groups. Even more surprising, people in the group—initially enthusiastic and engaged—started taking on the actor’s behaviors. If he was insulting and attacking, they began attacking each other. If he slacked off, they did too. All this took place within the 45 minute time allotment for each group.

That’s powerful stuff, isn’t it? But if you’ve ever been in an office with a drama queen or a bad apple, the results of this study aren’t surprising. Bad apples can spoil the whole bunch.

But wait. One group managed to resist. What happened there? Dr. Phelps said that in this group, one person, a natural leader, turned the whole thing around. During the group exercise, he asked questions, listened, engaged others. He was able to diffuse the conflicts that arose. That group performed well, despite the bad apple behavior.

So what could this mean? It means that listening to each other, making sure everyone is heard, soliciting opinions, trying to understand each other is powerful too. It means that it’s as possible to reach our better selves as it is to appeal to our baser instincts. And it takes leadership. Someone willing to step up to the plate to help the group perform.

Plum Cluverius is an executive and leadership coach in Richmond, Virginia. Contact her at plum@vedereconsulting.com for a free half hour consultation.

2009-02-25T13:46:00.000-08:00

This is the ninth and final post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

Did you know that up to 95% of what we do during the day is done automatically? Our brains work hard to create habits because it takes a lot less energy to function that way. As we know intuitively, exercising self control is much more draining! Since so much of our behavior is habitual, the more our habits serve our deepest values and our life’s purpose, the more satisfied and fulfilled we’ll be.

I wrote earlier about the importance of creating new habits if you want to manage your energy more effectively. Today, I’d like to expand on that a bit. Creating a new habit is hard, but the sooner the new behavior becomes automatic and effortless, the more likely it will become permanent.

Many of us have negative energy habits, automatic behaviors that drain us of the energy we need to perform at our best. Here are some examples of common ones:
• Skipping lunch or other meals
• Checking e-mail throughout the day
• Working long hours without a break
• Staying up late and then relying on caffeinated beverages to get us going

You will be most successful in changing your negative energy habits if you create a positive habit to replace it. And you will be more successful in creating and maintaining a positive habit if you:

• Make sure the new habit is precise and specific—that is, you decide on a specific time of day and a very clear behavior. For example, when I wanted to change my eating habits to maintain my energy, my dietitian recommended I eat small meals or snacks at 6:00 a.m., 8:00 am, 10:00 a.m., noon, 3:00 p.m. 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. Eating at those specific times (or close to them) kept me from getting hungry and kept me on track. A couple trying to find time to talk about their deepest thoughts to each other were unsuccessful until they agreed to start at 8:00 a.m. on Saturday morning.

• Make the sure the new habit you create is about something you want to do rather than about something you don’t want to do. One of my clients found that checking e-mail all day long was interfering with her concentration. She made her day much more productive by scheduling 3 times a day when she responded to e-mail. Because she created a new habit for checking e-mail, she was able to let go of checking it constantly.

• Revisit the reason you’re creating the new habit regularly and occasionally change it up so it doesn’t get boring.

• Make your changes incremental. You can overwhelm yourself with too many changes at once. Try one or two, gain some success, and then try something else. One of my clients felt she was unproductive because she didn’t get enough sleep. She was a night owl and sometimes stayed up until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning and then got up at 7:00 a.m. She first created a bedtime ritual that would end at midnight and then gradually moved it backwards until she was able to go to sleep regularly at 11:00.

• Monitor your progress. It’s important that you know how well you’re doing. Many people find using a simple tick sheet or a brief journal entry at night is enough to track progress. After all, although it’s great to know what you want to do, it’s much better if you’re actually doing it! Monitoring yourself is not about beating yourself up if you’re falling short of your goal. It’s about looking for hidden barriers to your success. Perhaps your goal was too ambitious and you need to scale back. Perhaps the new behavior isn’t tied to what’s truly important to you. Or perhaps the old behavior has benefits you don’t want to let go of. In any case, recording your progress is intended to be instructive.

The goal of creating a new habit is the embodiment of what you hold most dear. Cultivating the habits you want is key to a satisfying life.

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your performance:
contact Plum for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.
or
read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:
Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .
Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

Change Happens When You Face the Truth

2009-02-09T12:37:00.001-08:00

This is the eighth post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

As noted in my last post, change is driven by a purpose so powerful it overcomes our inertia. Yet purpose alone isn’t enough. You also have to recognize the truth of the present. You have to take a hard look at your current behavior and how it falls short of your values. You have to recognize it’s you who are creating the gap. You have to acknowledge the consequences of your actions. When you do that, the gap between reality and the ideal creates the impetus to act.

This happened to me recently. Although my family, my friends and my colleagues are very important to me, I am chronically late—to everything. Family gatherings. Meetings. Movies. I have driven my husband crazy with my lateness for the 33 years we’ve been married. One day, I asked a friend who is always on time how she did it. She said it was hard, but she believed keeping people waiting is disrespectful so she made a conscious effort to be on time. She also said, in a very gentle way, that she had learned to expect that I’d be late when we were getting together.

Well, that got my attention. I had to acknowledge how my behavior communicated a lack of respect to the people who matter most to me. I felt ashamed. The gap between my values and my behavior couldn’t have been clearer. And I decided right then that I would be on time from now on. And so far—at least six weeks into it, I’ve been fairly successful although not perfect. To achieve this, I had to take a hard look at my behavior. I learned that I tried to squeeze in one more task when it was time to go. I learned that I hated to wait so I would leave at the last possible minute and get caught in traffic. I learned that I would let what was in front of me take priority over my commitment to a friend. This scrutiny helped me clarify what I had to do differently to change my behavior.

Loehr and Schwartz identified typical executive dysfunctional behaviors and their consequences (as well as the short term benefits that reinforce the behavior). I’ve listed three of them here. To see the whole list, look on pps. 154-155 of The Power of Full Engagement.

Expedient Adaptation	Benefit Now	Cost	Long Term Consequences
Poor Work/Life Balance	Accomplish more at work, less emotional risk, avoid responsibilities outside work	Lack of time for intimate connection, resentment of family and friends	Unfulfilling relationships; tendency to impatience and anger; burnout; regret; guilt; and loss of passion
Multi-tasking	Get more tasks accomplished; feel productive; high excitement	Divided attention; less fully engaged with people; lower quality of work	Shallowness of connection to others; less capacity for absorbed attention; lower quality of work
No Exercise	More time for work and other obligations	Less energy, strength, general well-being; lost source of recovdery from mental activities; more susceptibility to sickness	Undermines health; lowers concentration and access to high positive energy; increases chance of early death

Are any of these behaviors familiar to you? Finding your gaps pays off. Ask people for feedback. Pay attention to yourself. Where do you fall short of your ideal? What are the consequences? What actions are contributing?

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your performance:

contact Plum for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.

read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:

Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .

Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

Change is Driven by Purpose

2008-12-16T04:12:00.000-08:00

“He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.”
--Friedrich Nietzsche

This is the seventh post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

In my November 12 post, I discussed how difficult it is to change a habit—even one that no longer serves us. Our brains are wired to resist change. Without sufficient energy and focus to move in a new direction, we remain inert. What gives us the strength to change—to exercise more, become more organized, to listen to others more carefully, to run more efficient meetings—is the power of purpose. Purpose is connecting deeply to the values that are driving us to change, recognizing what we are doing now that is disconnected from that value and creating a clear picture of where we want to go.

Purpose creates resolve and gives us the motivation and energy we need overcome inertia. Loehr and Schwartz write about an overworked executive who was overweight, flabby and irritable because of the long hours and weekends he put in at the office. It was only when he was able to reconnect to the deep love he had for his wife and children and recognized how he was failing them by his constant absences that he was able to change his ingrained work habits. In essence, he found something important to say yes to that enabled him to say no to his old habit.

According to Schwartz and Loehr, purpose becomes a more powerful and enduring source of energy when it is positive rather than negative—it moves toward something you want rather than something you fear, it is internal rather than external, and it is focused on others rather than on yourself. In another example from Schwartz and Loehr, a lifelong smoker was only able to quit when she recognized the harm she was doing to her children by smoking and she became clear about how she wanted to be there for them as they matured. It was her love for her children that was strong enough to overcome her addiction. No external motivation, not even her own health, was as powerful.

Purpose is more motivating when we see for ourselves how the old habit or behavior is no longer serving us. No habit is created in a vacuum. The behavior served a purpose and that’s why we did it often enough to create a habit. Once we recognize the original purpose and decide it’s less important than our new goal, or that we can achieve the original purpose in a different, more nourishing way, we can make a more conscious choice about our behavior in the future. Sometimes this takes a while, and it requires honest introspection and evaluation, but it makes a permanent behavior change possible.

Finally, purpose is more powerful when we have a clear picture of where we want to go. A question I often ask my clients is “what will be different when you make this change.” The more specific and clear that picture is, the more motivating it becomes. Visualizing success over and over, as elite athletes do in competition, actually anchors that picture in our brains. We rehearse the new behavior in our minds, we can see, hear and feel the results, and it actually becomes easier to do in reality.

So yes, we can change even ingrained habits when we recognize them for what they are and decide the purpose they serve is not worth the cost. We can change when we create a powerful new purpose that gives us the energy, focus and resolve to stick with it, even when we temporarily revert back to our old ways. We can change when we focus on that purpose, visualize our success and practice the new behavior one day at a time.

Good luck!

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your performance:
contact Plum for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.
or
read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:
Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .
Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

To Solve Problems, Go With the Flow

2008-11-30T19:17:00.000-08:00

The Master acts without doing anything and teaches without saying anything. Things arise and he lets them come; things disappear and he lets them go.
--Lao Tsu

A client of mine—a physician with a thriving practice-- was feeling overwhelmed. She was struggling to meet the demands of her work, a husband and two active children, a large network of friends, and service on a non-profit board. On top of this, she was planning a 50th wedding anniversary for her parents. She was sacrificing her exercise and meditation routines in an effort to get everything done and she still felt important things were falling through the cracks.

My client is, like many of us, is trying to juggle a multitude of priorities. Her job, her family, her friends, community service, her parents are all important to her. Exercise and meditation had been keeping her sane. What was she to do?

The typical response to such a dilemma is to either keep putting one foot in front of the other or to start problem solving. I find neither response works well. As Albert Einstein famously said, “The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.” Instead, I encouraged my client to pay attention to her current experience. What emotion does being overwhelmed evoke? What does she feel in her body when she experiences being overwhelmed? What does that feeling tell her about what she needs to feel less anxious?

These questions might sound strange at first, but they help a person observe their current experience rather than becoming stuck in it. The person is able to get some distance from the experience while still staying connected to it in an immediate way. Attention is focused on the experience rather than the myriad of theories our minds create to explain our dilemmas. And because our experience is more closely connected to the core of who we are, it becomes easier to let go of preconceived notions and allow our creative core to suggest new ways to solve the problem.

My client’s creative solution was to hire a stay-at-home mom who wanted a few hours of work to help her organize her home office. She felt her current system of sticky notes and piles of bills on the foyer table was contributing to her sense of chaos and that if she could get that organized and a system in place it would be easier for her to stay on top of things. She also decided to look at all she had on her plate to see if there were tasks she could let go of, delegate to others, delay, or diminish in some way.

Lao Tsu calls this process of problem solving “non-doing.” Non-doing doesn’t mean doing nothing, it means becoming fully aware of one’s current experience, accepting it and seeing what it has to offer, in other words, going with the flow of life rather than trying to change it. It is counter-intuitive to those of us taught that the best way to solve problems is through effort and hard work. Yet non-doing unleashes a creative force that promotes better “problem solving” simply from paying attention and remaining curious about our experience. I invite you to try it and see for yourself.

I'm Convinced. I'll Change. Now What?

2008-11-12T10:50:00.000-08:00

This is the sixth post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

When I coach people who want to manage their energy more effectively, I am often shoulded upon. As in, “I know I should exercise,” “I know I should spend more time with my family,” or “I know I should take more time to develop my staff.” Of course, we all recognize that knowing we should often doesn’t equate to doing what we should or even doing what we want.

There’s a good reason for this. We form habits consciously or unconsciously. According to David Rock (http://www.davidrock.net/ )in his interview with neuroscientist Jeffrey Schwartz, our brains are responsible. When we first start doing something (like learning to drive) that activity is controlled by our “working memory,” which is responsible for new activities. There isn’t a lot of storage in our working memory and it’s easily fatigued, so once we start doing something over and over and we get used to it, that activity gets stored in the basal ganglia, which is located near the brain’s core. The basal ganglia functions a bit like automatic transmission, it works without our conscious thought. Once an action gets to the basal ganglia, it becomes a habit. It’s comfortable and we just do it without thinking. The same thing happens when we begin a new behavior, like turning on the TV as soon as we get home or checking voice mail on the way to work—do it often enough and it becomes an unconscious habit.

Two other brain functions make habitual behavior stronger. First, as actions and thoughts occur, they form connections between the brain’s neurons. The more frequently the action and thought occurs, the thicker and stronger the connection. Habits form really strong connections. Secondly, the brain is built to detect anything unusual in the environment and to alert us to the change. This alert is closely connected to the emotional brain, so a feeling, often anxiety or uncertainty, accompanies the alert.

What all this means is that once we form a habit, like checking e-mail before going to work, we start doing it without thinking, we have a strong tendency to keep doing it, and our brain sends out an alert when we do something different! No wonder change is so hard. We know we “should” do something, but just knowing we should isn’t enough to break past the brain’s reliance on the habits we’ve already formed.

So are we doomed to follow the same old behaviors forever? Of course not! We add and subtract habits many times in our lives. But it isn’t easy. First, we have to wake up to the habits that are no longer serving us. We have to become conscious we have a habit. We then have to recognize what we truly want, what is really important to us and why we want do something badly enough to get past the brain’s alert system. Next, we have to create a new habit—a ritual that can quickly become automatic itself, so we don’t have to continue relying on our working memory to get us going.

The next two blog posts will go into successfully changing your habits in more detail.

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your performance:
contact Plum for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.
or
read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:
Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html

Going to the Source: Spiritual Energy

2008-10-31T09:11:00.000-07:00

This is the fifth post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

In earlier posts, I’ve discussed the physical, mental and emotional wellsprings of our energy and the importance of balancing and developing each source to maximize performance. The fourth wellspring, our spiritual energy, flows from our deepest values and purpose. This energy is the most powerful source of our motivation and perseverance. Without it, we run the risk of living expedient, dissatisfied and, paradoxically, less productive lives. To tap it, we must be connected to the things we hold most dear—giving them our time and attention, and to a purpose that extends beyond ourselves.

In his Harvard Business Review article, Tony Schwartz identified three important sources of spiritual energy: doing what you do best and enjoy most at work, allocating enough time to the areas of your life you think are most important, and living in accord with your deepest values. In each of these areas it’s important to become conscious of what matters most to you and to align your life in a way that nourishes those areas.

In the work I do with executives at the Federal Executive Institute, one of my favorite exercises is to ask participants to look at how they spend their time in a typical week and to determine if they are spending it in a way that’s consistent with what they value most. It’s a pretty sobering experience to identify something like your family as the most important thing in your life and then to see how little time you devote to them. But it’s an important realization. For some, it’s discouraging. For others, it’s life changing, because they realize that the way they spend their time matters deeply. Newly conscious of their unconscious choices, they have more control over what they do in the future.

As with the other wellsprings of energy, it is making small, incremental changes and forming new rituals that are most successful in boosting your spiritual energy and making higher performance possible. To spend more time at work on things you do well and enjoy most, you first have to find your “sweet spots”—the areas of work that are almost effortless, inspiring and productive for you. You then design ways to do more of these things and less of the work that bores and tires you. For example, a former colleague of mine enjoyed public speaking so much that he began conducting workshops for Dale Carnegie. That led to increased opportunities to do training in his regular job and finally to a role that was much more aligned with his passions.

Other rituals support connecting yourself to the things you care about most and your deepest values. One of my clients, a busy executive who wanted to devote more time to making pottery, a source of great satisfaction for him, worked two hours later one night and left work two hours early the next afternoon so he could have several hours of concentrated time in his studio at least one day during the work week. A client who deeply valued her relationship with God took 20 minutes each night to read the Bible before going to bed.

Because it is more intangible, we don’t realize what an important source of energy the spirit is to us. Even if we do, it is easy in our fast-paced lives to let external demands rather than internal callings dictate our actions. However, cutting ourselves off from this energy source is ultimately debilitating. The deep, spiritual part of our being is our connection to the Divine, to something greater than ourselves, to all life. What Schwartz and Loehr tell us is that tending to our spiritual selves is also practical. We become more productive.

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your mental energy:
contact Plum for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.
or
read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:
Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .
Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

Mental Energy: Focus on Focusing

2008-10-21T17:11:00.000-07:00

This is the fourth post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

If there’s one thing that gets my clients (and most of the rest of us) in trouble, it’s the myth of multi-tasking. We believe that if we do several things at once, we’ll get more done. It simply isn’t true. Our brains are wired to focus on one thing at a time. When we switch from task to task, for example when we interrupt writing a report to answer the telephone or read an e-mail, it takes time for the brain to refocus and we lose concentration. Tasks take up to 25% longer to complete.

Concentration and focus are the key components of mental energy, the third energy wellspring Loehr and Schwartz describe in The Power of Full Engagement. Like physical and emotional energy, mental energy relies on exercise mixed with intermittent recovery. We are better off concentrating on one task at a time, taking a break when we complete it and then switching to the next task. Following this strategy allows us to get far more done in less time.

If that seems impossible in today’s world, think again. Tony Schwartz, in a Harvard Business Review article, talked about a group in a national accounting consulting firm, whose boss, Michael Henke, announced at the beginning of the winter busy season that he was turning off his instant messaging system for periods of time during the day so he could concentrate on his work. During those times he would be unavailable to his staff, unless it was a true emergency.
He also encouraged his staff to take regular breaks throughout the day and eat more regularly. According to Schwartz, the group finished the busy season, “under budget and more profitable” than other teams who didn’t follow the same program. They got more done in less time.

Many people begin the work day checking phone messages and answering e-mail. That’s a recipe for inefficiency because it’s so easy to get caught up in other people’s deadlines and emergencies. Julie Morgenstern, in Making Work Work, tells clients to block off the first hour of the day to concentrate on the most important thing they need to get done. Making progress on or completing that task produces a feeling of accomplishment that powers the rest of the day. Morgenstern also recommends setting aside regular, concentrated times to do e-mail, maybe 2-3 times during the day. The duration depends on the volume and urgency of one’s inbox, but clients find that they can empty their in-box at each session.

Mental energy is also impacted by oscillation. As I stated in an earlier post, we can concentrate fully for up to 90-120 minutes. After that point, we begin to lose focus and tasks take longer. Regular breaks, even if they are brief, can do much to restore our mental energy. A brisk walk, listening to music, deep breathing, stretching, eating away from your desk, a conversation with a friend—anything you find refreshing—will restore your mental energy and concentration.

Physical, emotional and mental energy all impact each other. Research shows that exercise sends more blood to the brain, which enhances our capacity to think. Negative emotions can interfere with concentration. Eating small, healthy meals at regular intervals fuels the brain’s capacity to work.

If you want to get more done in less time, it pays to focus on how you’re focusing! Take a break. Eat right. Do the most important thing first. Resist being sucked in by e-mail. You’ll be glad you did.

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your mental energy:

contact Plum for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.
or
read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:

Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .

Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

Emotional Energy: It's the Quality That Counts

2008-10-14T15:52:00.000-07:00

This is the third post in a series on maximizing performance through managing energy based on the work of Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement.

You’ve got an important deadline. You try to work on it but you keep getting interrupted. You’re finding it hard to concentrate. The pressure is starting to build. You’re getting anxious. You may not be aware of it, but your breathing is getting shallower, your muscles are starting to contract. Your system is getting flooded with adrenaline and cortisol. Blood is being diverted from your brain and you no longer can think clearly. You are under too much stress.

Ladies and gentlemen, your negative emotions have taken over and your performance will suffer. Emotions are the key to the quality of our energy just as our physical state is key to the quantity of our energy. If we are to manage energy to maximize performance, we must learn to manage our emotions—to turn from negative emotions like fear, depression, anger and impatience to positive emotions like joy, excitement and challenge.

According to Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, optimum performance requires high amounts of positive energy. This is not about being naïve or unrealistic, it is about recognizing we have more control over our emotions than we realize. It means looking at any reality—even a harsh one—honestly, and then choosing your reaction to it. A successful sales manager I know didn’t get a job promotion he wanted. He was given a training assignment instead. He found an aspect of the new job that played to his passions and strengths and turned it into an award winning program. He looked for the hidden opportunity in the hand he’d been dealt, found it and then exploited it. That's realistic optimism.

Schwartz and Loehr point out that we can run down our emotional energy just like we can exhaust ourselves physically if we constantly spend emotional energy without recovery. Negative emotions are more costly to our energy levels than positive ones just as a gas guzzling car uses more gas than a hybrid.

We build our capacity to respond optimistically and confidently to challenges when we seek out and maintain sources of emotional renewal. Spending time with people who are important to us, building friendships that are truly give and take, and engaging in activities that are enjoyable, affirming and/or fulfilling are important sources of emotional renewal. Because they are more that a pleasant activity, we must treat the time we devote to them as sacrosanct if we are to perform at our best.

Another way to build our emotional capacity is to develop ways to build optimism. Tony Schwartz, in an article in the Harvard Business Review, suggests developing rituals such as taking time to express gratitude for what you have, taking time to express appreciation to others, and reframing. Reframing means examining your interpretation of an event and determining if another interpretation is plausible and more “hopeful and personally empowering.” For example, if I contact a client and they don’t call me back I can easily interpret their silence to mean they are uninterested in my services. I get discouraged and maybe write them off. On the other hand, it is just as plausible and more empowering to interpret their silence as they are busy and/or out of town. If I wait, they will probably call me back, or I may choose to follow up in a week or two. In either case, I’m going to be more confident when I talk with them and if I’m more confident, I’m more likely to respond in a way that will win business now or in the future.

As always, the key to building emotional capacity is to make small incremental changes. For example, one client of Loehr and Schwartz’s decided to call his parents at least one time a week during his commute home. Another client made it a habit to take a bike ride with his son every Saturday. Another took a report to lunch once a week and told them something about them she appreciated. Still another asked himself when faced with a tough situation “how will I see this in 6 months?” Another started taking a dance class once a week.

Take a look at your emotional energy. Do you need to build it?

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your emotional energy:
contact me for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.
or
read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, go to these websites:

Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .

Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

Physical Energy: The Foundation of Energy Management

2008-10-03T13:44:00.000-07:00

Physical energy is the foundational energy source. Without it, we have difficulty maintaining focus, positive emotional energy, creativity or even a sense of mission. It literally fuels everything we do. Because we work primarily in sedentary jobs that require mental capacity, we forget that our capacity to think and act is rooted in our bodies—in our brains and circulatory systems, our muscles and our respiratory systems. How we care for our physical selves either creates or depletes the energy we depend on.

We don’t have to be marathoners to work at our best, but we do have to bear in mind the principles of full engagement discussed in last week’s post (and based on Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr’s book, The Power of Full Engagement): oscillation, overuse and underuse, change in one energy source produces change in all, and small changes produce the best results. The point of paying attention to our energy sources (of which physical energy is one) is that we ultimately can do more in less time—much more so than if we focus solely on managing our time.

The first challenge in developing our physical energy is to pay attention to our bodies’ physical needs:
· A steady source of high quality energy
· Oxygen
· Sufficient balance between work and rest
· A sufficient level of cardiovascular fitness
· A sufficient level of strength

A steady energy supply comes from eating several small meals a day (i.e. breakfast, lunch and dinner with a small, 100-150 calorie snack between each meal) and from eating foods low in simple sugars and with high nutritional value like proteins, whole grains, fruits and vegetables.

The idea is to keep your blood sugar at a steady level and to avoid the spike and drop pattern that comes from eating sugary foods and skipping meals. Another important factor is eating the right amount—to little and we are starving ourselves, too much and we are sluggish.
We all take oxygen for granted. Who goes about their day thinking about breathing? Yet controlling our breath helps us calm ourselves in tense situations and brings us energy when we exert ourselves. A yoga practice first begins with a focus on the breath-- learning to pay attention to this life force and use different breathing to serve different purposes.

The balance between work and recovery encompasses two key dimensions. We are rhythmic beings—that is our bodies have several rhythms we must support if we are to perform at our best. The first is our circadian rhythm—the balance between the time we sleep and the time we are awake. Research shows that most adults need between seven and eight hours of sleep a night, although many of us don’t get anywhere near that much. Over time, sleep deprivation affects our moods, our ability to concentrate, etc. The best habit is to go to bed early and wake up early. However, we can increase our performance with a short nap (10-20 minutes) or two when a full night’s sleep is impossible.

A second rhythm is the ultradian rhythm, where our energy level oscillates every 1 ½ to 2 hours from high to low. If we try to work longer than 2 hours without some form of recovery, our energy level suffers. That’s why those 3 and 4 hour meetings are such a challenge. It’s impossible for people to retain a high level of concentration over such a long period of time. However, a short break, even if it’s only 5-10 minutes, will produce sufficient recovery to restore energy if one truly disengages from the work at hand. It doesn’t do any good to take a walk around the block if you’re still thinking about the problem you need to solve!

Put these dimensions together and you see the need to balance work with recovery—working long hours with no time for rest ultimately reduces productivity and effectiveness. In addition, our fitness level impacts our ability to manage stress. Our bodies need exercise to handle daily and long term pressures—both cardiovascular and strength training. Again, at least 20-30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise 3 days a week and 2 days of strength training are optimal, but research has shown that any exercise improves our capacity to handle stress, even if it is a short amounts of exercise spread throughout the day.

The second challenge is to increase our physical energy if this is one area we tend to under use. Fortunately, small, incremental changes work best and if we develop new habits that enhance our physical energy, we will see enhanced capacity in the other energy sources (emotional, mental and spiritual) as well. The important thing is to make a small change that you enjoy. For example, if you normally skip lunch or eat at your desk, think of something simple you’d enjoy doing that would get you out of the office for a few minutes. You might bring your lunch and eat it at a nearby park, you might bring a protein smoothie and sip it while you window shop for half an hour, you might take a half hour at lunch to read a favorite book. The idea is to do something enjoyable that allows you to completely disengage from work for a little while. Instead of reducing the amount of work you get done, you’ll actually increase it because you can be more focused.

For more ideas on small changes you can make to increase your physical energy, read The Power of Full Engagement, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+power+of+full+engagement+
or
Contact me for a free brainstorming session: plum@vedereconsulting.com or 804-261-6483.

For a free or an inexpensive Full Engagement Profile, see: http://www.lgeperformance.com/assessment_diagnostic.html

For more information about the authors of The Power of Full Engagement and their work, see:

Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .

Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

You Can Work Less and Do More!

2008-09-29T08:54:00.000-07:00

The year is 1999. I’m working for a health insurance company as an internal OD consultant and trainer. I’m supposed to work a 32 hour workweek so I can spend more time with my family. But I’m working five days a week instead of four, and putting in many late nights and weekends in an effort to keep up with everything I have on my plate. I’m tired and depressed. I often can’t sleep and I have a difficult time unwinding when I am at home. My husband is complaining about my long hours. I’m missing my children. I’m getting desperate but I don’t see any way out.

Does any of this sound familiar? If so, you, like me, have fallen into the trap of working longer and longer hours in an effort to be more productive. The result? We get so tired and unfocused that work takes longer and so we have to spend even more hours at work and then we’re even more tired and unfocused—well, you get the picture.

The solution, according to Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr in their book, The Power of Full Engagement, is to learn how to manage your energy rather than trying to manage your time. Energy is “the capacity to do work.” Schwartz and Loehr contend that by managing your energy you become more productive because you can do more and higher quality work in less time. Energy is expansive while time is finite. The secret is creating the optimum balance between expending and recovering energy.

You see, when you work longer and longer hours, you expend energy that is never recovered. Without recovery, your energy becomes depleted and you lose the ability to concentrate, your emotions become more negative (irritation, depression, etc.) and the quality of your decisions deteriorate. Your productivity suffers because you can’t focus.

Optimum energy (or engagement) is achieved when energy is high and positive. There are four “wellsprings” of energy—sources of renewal and places where energy is expended: your body (physical energy), your mind (mental energy), your emotions (emotional energy), and your core self or soul (spiritual energy). In subsequent blog posts, we’ll explore how understanding and building strength in each of these wellsprings contributes to your energy capacity and therefore to your productivity. The result is a greater capacity to do more and higher quality work, and to stay focused, motivated, and balanced.

Loehr and Schwartz identified four principles that are critical to energy management. First, as I stated earlier, energy relies on a balance between stress and recovery. After a period of work, we must rest and recover. This is true whether the work is physical, mental (as is most of the work we do today) or emotional. Work and recovery are cyclical—they oscillate between each other. Too much work or too much recovery causes a loss of energy.

We have to build in recovery periods if we are to work at our best. We also have to work each of the four areas of energy. This leads to the second principle, overuse or underuse of any of the four wellsprings reduces our energy capacity. Most modern Americans overuse their mental and emotional energy and underuse their physical and spiritual dimensions.

Third, a shift in one dimension produces a shift in all of them. If we decide that we need to strengthen our physical capacity, this will impact our mental, emotional and spiritual well being. For example, regular exercise often gives us more mental energy, a more positive outlook and often leads to a deeper commitment.

Finally, small, incremental changes work best. Schwartz and Loehr suggest developing “positive energy rituals.” These rituals (or specific routines) are new habits you develop to increase your energy. They are carefully designed to fit easily into your current routine and to provide enough enjoyment to keep doing until it becomes a habit. For example, one of my clients spends the first hour on Monday morning reviewing her to do list, estimating how long her tasks will take, and scheduling them into her calendar. Because of this, she approaches her week with a greater sense of control and calm. To improve her mood, another client thinks of 10 things she is grateful for when she first wakes up in the morning. These rituals, which are developed using the principles outlined above, have produced dramatic productivity improvements in Loehr’s and Schwartz’ clients.

More next week!

Jim Loehr is the Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of the Human Performance Institute, http://www.lgeperformance.com/index.html .

Tony Schwartz is Founder and President of The Energy Project, http://www.theenergyproject.com/home.html .

The Power of Full Engagement is published by The Free Press: http://www.simonsays.com/content/destination.cfm?tab=1&pid=427723 .

How to Deliver Good News in a Bad Way

2008-09-20T06:03:00.000-07:00

Not long ago a client was struggling with a tough conversation she wanted to have with a new associate in her law firm. She believed he was having a difficult time hearing the clients’ concerns and it was impacting his ability to build relationships with them. She wanted to send him to a training program but didn’t know how to tell him in a way that wouldn’t be insulting. Many of the executives and managers I’ve worked with have faced a similar dilemma.

The problem with my client’s approach is she was focused on the solution to the problem. What she wasn’t focusing on was the conversation itself—how to send a clear message, how to ask good questions, how to involve her sales rep in the exploration of and solution to the problem.

What is interesting about this dilemma is that coming into a conversation with the solution already figured out makes having the conversation so much harder. Your subordinate is more likely to feel threatened and resentful. You have something—your solution—to sell now, and the stakes are a bit higher.

My client saw this immediately. She, like many of her peers, focused on the solution because that’s her comfort zone. She’s a problem solver and when faced with a problem she automatically does what she does best. The more effective alternative is to focus on the conversation. The question becomes, “how can I approach this person in a way that allows both of us to analyze and resolve the situation?” It’s a whole new problem to solve!

I love the way my client solved it. Here are several of her solutions:
· Find a casual time to have the conversation when she and the associate could be alone
· Offer her insights as a hypothesis, focusing on the facts first and then her analysis
· Ask the associate to offer other hypotheses and insights
· Support his insights when she can honestly do so
· Listen completely to what the associate has to say
· Brainstorm solutions together. Make her solution only one in the mix

You might find another approach more useful. The point is that my client turned her attention to the conversation and thought carefully about the impact of her words and actions, what could be effective and what would work for her, given her skills and comfort zone. I have a lot of faith that this conversation will go much better than it would have. I believe yours can too.
There are a number of great resources that can help you prepare for tough conversations. Several of my current favorites are:

Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, by Marshall Rosenberg, Puddledancer Press.
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When the Stakes Are High, by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler, McGraw-Hill.
Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life, One Conversation at a Time, by Susan Scott, Viking Press.
Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work, by David Rock, Harper-Collins.

Feel free to explore the “Tools and Resources” page of my website to link to these and other helpful resources.

Leaders Must Have the Faith to Move Mountains

2008-08-29T08:47:00.000-07:00

Three years ago In New Orleans, Kimberly Rivers Roberts, a drug dealer who “did anything I had to do” to get enough money for rent and food, commited an act of faith. She bought a video camera from a friend. She had no idea what she would film. "My state of mind was like, this could come in handy," Rivers Roberts told Steve Inskeep on NPR’s Morning Edition. "My plan was just to film something I could sell."

You might think Rivers Roberts was crazy. What were her chances of making money with a video camera? Then, a week after she bought her camera, Hurricane Katrina struck. Rivers Roberts filmed the storm’s harrowing progress as the waters rose through her house. The family moved to the attic. “I was praying and shooting,” she said in her interview with Inskeep, “that’s what got me through.”

Rivers Roberts’ powerful footage has been included in the documentary, “Trouble the Water,” which won the best documentary award at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival (www.troublethewaterfilm.com). The film crew came through New Orleans shortly after the storm, met the Robertses, and were so taken with their footage that they decided to follow the couple and capture their story. The documentary features a rap recording by Rivers Roberts, who has started a record label (http://www.bornhustlerrecords.com/bornhustler.htm) and is releasing her album, titled “Troubled the Water” today.

In 2001, I facilitated a retreat for the School for the Performing Arts in Richmond (SPARC). SPARC’s mission is to use the “triple threat”—teaching singing, acting and dancing—to build children’s self esteem, confidence and poise. When I worked with them they had grown to the point where they were teaching classes in many different locations. Those many locations created an administrative nightmare. The Board decided SPARC needed to own a permanent home, and although the dream seemed impossible, they pledged to make it happen. It took seven years, false starts and many disappointments. But the Board and SPARC’s leadership, Jennie and Larry Brown, persevered. This summer, SPARC moved into its new home, a spacious building they can call their own.

These stories illustrate that faith takes many forms. It takes acting on an idea without knowing the outcome. It takes persisting even when the odds seem to be against you. Faith works because without it you can’t see the opportunities to move forward that always exist. Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, in his speech last night before the Democratic Convention, reminded us “the Gospel of Matthew says, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to the mountain ‘move mountain’ and it will move.” Leadership means having a vision, and moving others to believe in and work for that vision, as Martin Luther King did with his “I have a dream” speech, delivered 45 years ago yesterday. People who were present at that march were able last night to see a black American accept the nomination for president by a major party. It was something many of them said they never believed they would live to see.

I am seeing today with these examples how faith really does move mountains. That people who believe that in the end right prevails ultimately will be successful. Not always in their lifetimes. But ultimately, the goal will be achieved.

You can learn more about Kimberly Rivers Roberts at www.npr.org .
You can read the full text of Tim Kaine’s speech at http://www.demconvention.com/tim-kaine/ .

What Looks Easy Requires Discipline

2008-08-18T16:32:00.000-07:00

"Creative work is first prepared for and only then realized. Improvisation requires preparation; spontaneity requires preparation. The very ability to approach a blank canvas or computer screen is contingent on the artist's inner preparations, contingent on the alignment of his heart, mind, and hands in the direction of his task. The artist who does not get ready will never be ready: an artist must prepare like any ardent apprentice to achieve mastery."

--Affirmations for Artists by Eric Maisel

I was in my late 20’s when I attended graduate school at the Leadership Institute of Seattle. The program was innovative and experiential and attracted a lot of bright, intuitive students. Many came because they wanted to make a difference. Many, like me, were impatient to make our marks on the world. We expected to do well.

We didn’t know as much as we thought we did. We understood, as Greg Johanson and Ron Kurtz say in their book, Grace Unfolding, that “those who are best at what they do are not bound by the axioms, rules and limits of their fields, but allow themselves to be directed by their open, intuitive imaginations.” That was us--ready to break the rules, to be guided by our intuitive sense of what would work. What we didn’t see was a principle vital to the mastery of any discipline—freedom to innovate requires minds “primed . . . by studying widely and deeply.”

The person who made this principle clear to me is a man named Ron Short. A faculty member at LIOS during my time there, Ron created a simple model that illustrates the importance of discipline to freedom. He helped me see that instinct and good intentions are not enough. He has given me permission to create my own version, which preserves, I think, the spirit of the original. It appears at the bottom of this post.

If you have ever watched a great musician, you’ve seen how effortless they make it look. They are spontaneous, interpreting the music in their own unique way, making it soar in a way no one has done before. Yet that freedom is the result of hours and hours of dedicated practice. Without that discipline, the intuitive imagination has no vehicle for expression. It’s the difference between art and throwing a few blobs of paint on a canvas. True freedom requires spontaneity and discipline.

Spontaneity without discipline produce chaos. Listen to a child sit down to the piano without music lessons or practice, and what you’re likely to hear is a discordant mess. Taking on a new job or changing careers requires discipline and practice before you master it. When I tell people I'm a coach, they often tell me they think they belong in that field because people tend to come to them for help. They confuse helping with the discipline of coaching. It takes years of practice and study to coach well.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, discipline without spontaneity, the result is a rigid adherence to the rules—getting all the notes right, but the music has no heart or soul. When one is disciplined without spontaneity, one is lost when the unexpected happens. Think of organizations or people mired in the rules or in past ways of thinking.

Finally, when someone is new to a field or task, they have neither discipline nor spontaneity. They are dependent on a master or a set of instructions or a guide of some kind. They have to learn the basics-- scales and fingering, before they can make any kind of music.

This model has stuck with me for almost 30 years. It helps me remember when I learn something new to be patient—that there are disciplines I need to master before I can soar. It helps me remember that in this coaching field I love, there is always the discipline of learning something new, of paying attention to process, of maintaining balance so I can be a “centered presence” to my clients. It helps me advise others who are stuck or impatient with themselves or impatient with learning. And it helps me remember to be patient with others who are just beginning to learn.

To Change Behavior, Help People Think

2008-08-03T08:07:00.000-07:00

As a coach, my job is to help people improve their performance. There
are a lot of people out there trying to do the same thing--parents,
executives,teachers, doctors, supervisors, you name it. Maybe you.

Doesn't it feel great when you're successful, when a conversation or
something you did helped someone else turn it around? Isn't it
frustrating when nothing seems to change?

David Rock in his book, Quiet Leadership, (www.resultscoaching.com )contends that coaching someone to better performance is harder than we think. We often get it wrong.
Most people, he says, try to change performance by giving advice. According to Rock, that rarely works.

Why? First, it's really hard to change a habit. Behaviors create a neural pathway in the brain. The more you engage in that behavior, the stronger the pathway becomes. Habits have strong pathways. The brain wants to use that pathway. The only way the pathway disappears is through disuse. To do that, the brain must create a new pathway and the only way to do that is to create a new behavior. The more the new behavior is used, the stronger its pathway becomes. The old habit fades as its pathway no longer is utilized. Finding a new behavior you are motivated to pursue is critical to changing behavior.

Second, no two brains are alike. What might help you make a shift won't
mean anything to someone else because your brains are different. However, most people assume “what works for me will work for you.” It doesn’t.

Third, it takes a lot of emotional energy to change a habit. It goes
beyond just wanting to change. It's energy that accompanies the sense
that you want it, you see the solution, you know you can do it. No one
can tell you these things. The energy is generated from within. Having
an "aha moment," an insight, creates this energy. But there's a catch.
My insight probably won't provide enough energy to change your
behavior. Your insight will. Giving advice to someone else is pretty useless.

So there are two small things we can do differently to be more
helpful, more influential. We can help others create new habits
instead of trying to break the old ones, and we can help others think
for themselves instead of doing the thinking for them. Helping others
think for themselves means shifting the way we approach developmental
conversations--changing the questions we ask and the responses we
make.

We must ask open questions rather than closed ones. We must resist giving advice and listen. We must give the person our full attention. We must encourage rather than discourage. Sometimes it means we must replace our old habits of helping with new ones! It’s worth it, though. You’ll see the person’s eyes look up as they begin thinking, you’ll see the energy released as they get an answer, and you’ll experience the connection that comes from helping someone solve their own problem.

When Change Threatens to Go South

2008-07-22T09:37:00.000-07:00

I’m dedicating this blog (my longest one yet!) to a fabulous group of people with whom I have been privileged to work the past several months, and to my esteemed colleague, Kathleen McSweeney.

Plum Cluverius

It was a tough week for the admissions department of a private university. As the director said: “Change is hard!” He should know. His department is undergoing a significant reorganization due to continued staffing shortages and financial constraints. As implementation of the new structure got underway, and even though staff was involved from the start, tempers flared, water cooler whispering resumed, and some of the hard won trust and cooperation within the group began slipping away.

This behavior has caught the managers and staff off guard because the group has worked so hard to create a collaborative environment. The reorganization occurred in part to rectify staff concerns about uneven distribution of work, less than efficient processes, and confusion about leadership roles. Everyone in the department had opportunities to share ideas for the new structure—in meetings, in writing and one-on-one. Changes and their reasons were explained. Staff and management learned together how to communicate, resolve conflicts, work together as a team. They talked together about the future they wanted for the department.

When this department had done so many things right, why did things seem to be going wrong? An answer, I think, lies in William Bridges seminal work on transitions, detailed books like Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes, and Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change. ( www.wmbridges.com ). Bridges helps us see that our emotional response to change, our adjustment to change, what he calls “transition,” is pivotal to the success of any change effort. Each person goes through, at their own pace, three stages of transition.

The first, which Bridges calls “endings,” is the process of saying goodbye to what we must leave behind in the change. Even with positive changes, there is some sense of loss—and loss produces a host of emotional reactions. In the admissions department, this meant saying goodbye to familiar work teams, processes, student groups, roles.

Once we recognize what’s going away, we enter a period that Bridges call “chaos” or “the neutral zone.” I’ve always preferred “chaos” because that’s what it often feels like! In the “chaos” stage, you know what you’ve left behind, but you don’t know where you’re going. Someone from the admissions department said, “you don’t have the picture yet, you don’t know what it’s going to look like.” You’re kind of groping around in the dark. All of us like some sense of certainty, and in “chaos” there usually isn’t much. People experience a variety of emotions—confusion, fear, anger, exhaustion. It can seem hard to get going. It doesn’t sound very pretty, does it? But there’s an upside. In “chaos,” all the old rules go away; it’s easier to be creative. When things are going smoothly, it’s easy to get into a rut. But in “chaos,” there is no rut. You can try new ideas, new ways of doing things.

In the third phase, which Bridges calls “new beginnings,” you begin to get the picture. You see where things are going; you understand what you need to do to thrive in the new world. You form new habits that work. It’s not always an easy phase, but you start to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Every individual, every group, every organization goes through these phases. We don’t go through them together—everyone has their own pace—and we don’t go through them in an orderly way. We wander all over the place—one day hopeful, the next day discouraged, the next day angry, the next day excited, etc. etc. Leaders, often because they are more involved in the planning, are often further along in the process than the staff, and they can forget what it’s like to not know, to be in the dark.

Bridges helps us see that all these reactions are normal. In a transition, both people and process benefit when individuals are tender with themselves, tender with each other and patient with the process. The admissions department has learned the value of discussing progress and setbacks with each other, celebrating successes, staying involved in planning the future, speaking up and offering solutions when something isn’t working.

Any team, department, or organization contemplating a change, or finding themselves in the midst of one can learn from the admission department’s experience. Change is hard. But when you understand the process of transition, you can move through it more smoothly and successfully.

What's Wrong With Wisdom?

2008-07-14T07:32:00.000-07:00

“Abandon sageliness and discard wisdom
Then the people will benefit a hundredfold.”
-- Lao Tzu

This quotation hits me like a thunderbolt. Because my secret longing is to be wise. I’ve trained for it and read for it and worked for it and sacrificed other goals for it. To my mind, wisdom is the ultimate accomplishment. It goes beyond being savvy or smart. It means knowing how to use what you know, how to respond to the moment, how to help.

But there’s a dark side to my pursuit of wisdom. The dark side is having to know, having to respond rightly. If I’m wise (like the many “sage” characters we see on TV) I have to know what to do, what to say. That can be nerve wracking. Because I don’t always know. When I don’t know something I or others expect me to know, I feel incompetent. I lose my focus. As a coach, my attention shifts from my client to myself. “What do I do now?” I ask myself. I become conscious of my hesitations. I wonder what my client is thinking of me. In the worst moments of unknowing, I imagine that everyone will somehow know about this and think I’m completely hopeless. My mind is running a mile a minute.

The last thing I’m doing in such a moment is what Lao Tzu calls “non-doing.” For Lao Tzu, there is a flow of life that is ever-changing, ever-creative. If we trust in the creativity of life, our job becomes one of doing nothing that interferes with that flow. Paradoxically, if one is focused on being wise, one cannot be aware of the flow or trust that flow. Whatever one does will interfere with the creative process. When I struggle to be the sage, I act unwisely. When I let the process unfold, when I don’t grasp for the solution or the right thing to say, when I focus on what’s happening and don’t worry about what I “should” be doing, the right answer comes.

Many of the executives I know are the same way. After all, aren’t they paid to have the answers? These executives believe, sometimes at an unconscious level, that they have to know what to do when subordinates come to them, when their bosses come to them, when the organization demands an answer. They are great problem solvers, great visionaries. And, like me, sometimes the external or internal pressure to know gets in the way. Just like my brilliant insights sometimes get in the way of my client’s discovering something even more brilliant for themselves, the go-to VP with all the answers gets in the way of their subordinates solving problems for themselves. Or they solve a problem too quickly and miss valuable information that would have informed a better decision. Or they solve the problem the same old way and lose out because the old way is no longer sufficient.

There is such pressure for us to know, to be right, to be wise. Yet to be wise and helpful, we have to let go of our desire for wisdom, our need to be right. We must wait for the right time, trust that others will find the answer, tune in to what our senses, our bodies and our emotions are telling us, let go of what we know so we can trust the unknown. All this requires a certain faith, not in ourselves, but something larger. Call it God, call it the Tao, call it the Universe. If we trust in the flow of life, we don’t have to be right. We simply have to be present.

"Let's Make the Department Shine"

2008-07-03T11:57:00.000-07:00

“The manager’s unique contribution is to make other people more productive. He may be charged with other responsibilities . . . but when it comes to the managing aspect of his job, he will succeed or fail based on his ability to make his employees more productive than they would be working with someone else. And the only way to pull this off . . . is to make your employees believe, genuinely believe, that their success is your primary goal.”
--Malcolm Buckingham, The One Thing You Need to Know

I’d like you to meet my friend, John Hudson. John’s had an interesting career, primarily in healthcare. He’s moved around a lot because he gets bored after a few years on the job. But he’s always able to find another job (usually a more responsible one) because he has a track record of taking troubled work units and turning them around. Over time, he’s developed a system for doing that. It’s not the system that might first come to your mind. John’s no slasher out to fix the unit by firing everyone and bringing in the replacements. His philosophy is simple and he makes sure his employees hear it soon after he arrives. Basically it’s this:

• His employees are the experts. They know more about their work area than he does.
• It’s the organization’s systems (and by systems he means everything from processes to workflow to technology to the work unit’s structure) that keep his employees from doing their jobs
• It’s his job to fix the systems

Can you imagine what that sounds like to a troubled work group or organization? There’s no blame. There’s only acknowledgment of what the group can do. There’s the promise of support. The result is, as John puts it, “they warm up to me.”

John doesn’t stop there. He shares with them his vision for the organization—his sense of the positive future it will be possible for them to achieve. He sees the vision as “his best stab at it.” It’s not immutable or perfect, but simply a place to begin. He tells the group that he will need to create a strategic plan to make the vision a reality and he needs them to help him create it. He then follows through with a series of management retreats and staff meetings. At the management retreat, department managers do a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis. John brings in consultants to talk to the group about best practices used elsewhere. From all this information, the managers develop a tentative action plan. Then in a series of all department meetings, the action plan is presented and employees have the opportunity to give feedback on the plan. Their feedback is considered and incorporated where it makes sense. The plan is implemented. An important part of the process is mixing up the groups so that silos are broken down and communication is enhanced.

It’s a fairly simple formula, really. Many management books suggest something similar. What struck me about John, when he was sharing this with me over drinks one evening, is his passion. His strategy works. It works, he says because he believes that almost everyone comes to work wanting to do a good job. He sees his role as harnessing that energy, in giving people a chance to succeed by focusing on the things they can control to make the work better. He told me a story about a group who were complaining that a major impediment to success was another department’s sloppiness. John’s reply to them is telling, “Here’s my struggle about that. They’re a moving target. We can’t fix them. Let’s try to fix what we can control, let’s focus on making our department shine. Then everyone else will have to come up to our standard.”

I think John does a great job helping employees see that he’s there to serve them and that by serving them the company’s goals are also served. Then he delivers what he says he will. He works hard with his employees to make sure the department will “shine.” I believe we could all take a page from his book.

Why Salvage the Corporate Story

2008-06-20T07:29:00.000-07:00

I did something a while ago that I regret. I joked about Richmond (the one in Virginia) being a place where the Civil War is still taken very seriously. If you know Richmond you are probably wondering why something like that would bother me. After all, the Civil War is taken very seriously in this former capital of the Confederacy. But it’s not all about unreconstructed Rebels wishing the South would rise again. It’s a complicated conversation that stirs many emotions. At its best, though, the conversation about the Civil War is an attempt to “integrate and salvage the national story.”

I first saw that phrase in an interview in the Richmond Times-Dispatch with University of Richmond President Ed Ayers. It captures perfectly what I believe is a necessary step in the evolution of our nation and, importantly, in every organization faced with difficult and long-ranging decisions.

I’ve heard people say that we just “need to get over it and move on.” Moving on is a good thing, but moving on without understanding how we got here in the first place keeps our understanding incomplete, our focus small and our options narrow. This is true because the world we live in is the result of decisions made and actions taken in our collective past. We assume many things are simply “the way they are” without understanding that something happened to make them that way in the first place. If we know what that something is, our minds are often opened to new ways of thinking.

Dr. Beverly Fletcher and Dr. Billy Wayson offer a course at the Federal Executive Institute called “The Long Shadow of Slavery.” Their goal is not to rehash old wounds, but to help us look at our past with open eyes so we can see the policies and the reasons for the policies that shape our way of thinking today. Such an examination makes it possible to “heal the future” –to create solutions to long-standing problems. If we see our problems as decisions made long ago, it makes it easier to see the decisions we can now make, individually and collectively, to make things better. Such an honest examination makes it easier to see how our opponents (as well as our friends) came to draw the conclusions they’ve drawn, and then to see new and creative options.

All organizations have difficult, knotty issues to tackle. Often there are conflicting viewpoints about how those issues can be best addressed. I believe that executives need to understand the collective past before they decide on the corporate future. They need to know, not the rosy corporate history fashioned by the communications department, but the organization’s unvarnished understanding of itself.

How can they get this viewpoint? The best way is to ask. Not one person, but lots of people. Marv Weisbord and Sandra Janoff (www.futuresearch.net )created a strategic planning methodology, the future search conference, which brings all the stakeholders of an organization together to create a picture of its future. During the first part of the conference, participants create a collective timeline detailing the significant events and decisions in an organization’s history. This timeline creates a collective understanding of “how we got here” and begins to spark conversations and ideas of how to go forward.

Future Search Conferences are one way an organization can learn about its past. It’s not the only way. However, executives would do well to learn from the Federal Executive Institute. FEI is devoted to developing executive leadership in the federal government. It believes that federal executives need to understand our “national story” if they are to understand the context, the environment, in which they have to lead. Such understanding makes leaders—government and corporate—far wiser and far more effective.

The Power of Non-Responsiveness

2008-06-13T16:43:00.000-07:00

One of my clients, a regional marketing vice president for a mid-sized insurance company, has been negotiating a difficult agreement between her division and the underwriting department concerning concessions for an important client. It was a particularly tough negotiation because the SVP of underwriting and her boss in marketing see each other as rivals within the senior leadership group. Both men are also known for their large egos and arrogant behavior.

Despite these difficulties, my client was feeling pretty good about the results of the negotiations. Then she got a call from the underwriting SVP. Though he wouldn’t have engaged in such behavior with her boss directly, while on the phone with her, he lambasted her boss, he made additional demands, he screamed at her about how incompetent her boss was. She saw the agreement she worked so hard for going down the drain. What was worse, she said, was that he couldn’t see how unreasonable his demands and accusations were, no matter what she tried.

Does this sound familiar to you? It does to me. It reminded me immediately of the times my then 2- year-old sons would have a temper tantrum over something they wanted. They usually picked a very public place, say the grocery store. They would scream, cry, yell at me, “I hate you, Mommy!” because they wanted something I wouldn’t let them have. The choices parents believe they have to counter such behavior are pretty limited and mostly ineffective. Do you placate the child by letting them have what they want? Do you threaten them with a spanking if they don’t behave? Do you try to reason with them, (i.e. “But Bobby, that candy will ruin your supper.”)?

None of these strategies work. Yet it’s these same strategies dressed up in more sophisticated clothes that people in organizations use to manage powerful people who explode or scream to get what they want. I’ve even encountered bosses who try them with demanding (or brazen) employees. Like my client, we are thrown by the unreasonableness of the demands and the behavior. What can we do?

I did many things wrong as a parent, but one thing I learned to do right was managing my children’s temper tantrums. I didn’t do any of the strategies most parents use. When my children were screaming at me, crying and kicking, I simply said in a calm voice, “I’m sorry you feel that way.” I then walked away, leaving them without their favorite audience. Within seconds the tantrum stopped. After a couple of times, my kids never had a tantrum again.

This strategy worked because all tantrums are about power. If I refuse to get in a power struggle—to acquiesce or resist—then the tantrum goes away because it isn’t working. The principle is calm non-responsiveness. One need do nothing but remain calm and remove oneself from the tantrum as quickly and gracefully as possible. How one does that in an organization is different for each situation. The key is to not take the tantrum seriously and to stay calm and uninvolved.

My client’s new strategy for dealing with the SVP’s tantrums is to simply listen for a few moments, thank the person for calling, say “I think _____is the best person to discuss that issue with” and find an excuse to get off the line or change the subject. She feels that if the SVP is forced to confront whoever is offending him directly, he will be more restrained since he won’t have the third-party “audience” for his tirade. I like her plan. Do you? I invite you to tell us your strategy for coping with office tantrums.