I recently took my daughter to see Julie & Julia.  I was seeing it a second time and was excited to share it with her because I think the messages in the movie are just great.  Julia Child’s story is so inspiring and offers many lessons for anyone who wants to dedicate their life to something meaningful and beautiful.   (For those of you who aren’t foodies, you may think I am exaggerating, but Julia’s dedication to and passion for French cooking will inspire even the most utilitarian of eaters!) 

I find her story inspiring because she found her calling later in life, worked hard to master her profession, and was inspired enough to pursue her love of cooking even when confronted with obstacles and naysayers.   It’s also a great story because rather than focusing on her heroic journey as a solo act, the movie, which is based on her memoir My Life in France, also shows how her husband Paul’s love and support were instrumental to her success.  I think these are messages that every young person would benefit from hearing. 

I’m often looking for the parallels between inspiring cultural icons and my work, and Julia's life is no different.   I notice that the most successful and fulfilled people I know have qualities similar to  the ones demonstrated by her.  There is no more powerful combination than finding work that we have a talent for and then working hard to master that talent.  And most truly great people recognize that anything worth doing requires the support of others.  In the movie, Julia not only receives the love and encouragement of her husband during the many challenges (and 8 years!) that it took her to co-write and get Mastering the Art of French Cooking published, but she also cultivated positive and powerful relationships with her French cookbook co-authors.  The synergy of their partnership created the bestselling book that introduced the art and science of French cooking to Americans and revolutionized our relationship with food and cooking. 

I recommend this movie to anyone who wants to laugh out loud and be inspired by one woman’s journey from the kitchen to the table.  Bon Appétit! 

Many of my executive coaching clients hire me because they understand the value of relationship building and want to increase their capacity to have influence and reach in their organizations.  Many of these managers and executives are already quite influential in their role, but recognize the importance of continuing to develop and hone their interpersonal skills. 

One of the most effective ways to get better at relationships is to increase your emotional intelligence, (EI.)  This term has been bandied about in organizations and popular culture quite a lot ever since Daniel Goleman’s bestselling book, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ, was published in 1995.  While most OD and HR professionals now agree that emotional intelligence is an important if not vital leadership trait, teaching EI to leaders still remains somewhat elusive.  I believe this is because most of the literature and training still focuses on emotional intelligence from a cognitive rather than an emotional frame.  In my own life, I have learned little about my own emotional response or the emotions of others from books.  Most of us don’t learn that way.  Children are a great example of this. 

As I’ve observed my own kids learn how to navigate relationships, I notice that most of what they learn, they learn on the playground in their interactions with friends.  (Hopefully, they also learn something from how we interact with them when they are experiencing strong emotions.)   As adults, we often self manage by dialing our emotions down – we marginalize our feelings as irrational and therefore unimportant. Or, we attempt to suppress negative emotions in order to cope in an already stressful world.  Ironically all of this marginalization and suppression eventually has a cost in terms of more stress and an ignorance of how we are actually feeling moment to moment.  

It can feel risky, not to mention unproductive, to experiment with our own or others emotions as an adult.  Here are a few safe ways to tap into your emotional awareness. These exercises are effective, and dare I say fun, ways to expand your EI. 

Journal writing  - take time each day to write about what you are thinking about and how you are feeling. Journal writing not only increases self awareness, it’s a great stress reliever and outlet for getting in touch with what’s most important to you, what drives you, even what bothers you.  By creating a dialogue with yourself, you can begin to see patterns of thought and feelings that help and hinder you in achieving what you want in your life. 

TV watching -  Throughout history the arts have played an important role in exploring self expression and emotion.  And while we can argue whether TV is an art form, it is an easy access point for accessing both drama and comedy.  The next time you are watching your favorite show, whether it’s Grey’s Anatomy or CSI,  observe the emotions being expressed by the actors, the emotional field being created by two or more characters.  See if you can identify their emotions and what they are trying to express beyond the words being spoken. 

Music -  Music is another art form that can evoke strong and powerful feelings.  We don’t often recognize that we listen to music to have an emotional experience. So, whether you like Beethoven or the Bodeens, the next time you are listening to music, play closer attention to the emotions the music evokes in you. 

Mindfulness Practice – The simple act of pausing in your day, taking a deep breath and focusing your awareness on your physical state can be a practice in increasing emotional awareness. Where do you hold tension in your body?  What is your emotional state in this moment?  Apathy? Sadness? Excitement?  So many of us go through the day fighting or avoiding how we feel.  The simple act of observing and experiencing our emotions in real time can be a powerful and enlightening exercise. 

These are just a few ideas; there are many more!  For now I simply want you to know the benefits of spending more time being with and exploring your emotions can have a huge impact on your career and your ability to navigate your own and others emotions at work.  More importantly, EI can help you have a more peaceful and fulfilling life.  

I’m reading “What Happy Companies Know” (WHCK) by Dan Baker et al.  I was excited to find it at the bookstore because I’m a big fan of Baker’s other bestseller, “What Happy People Know.”  I recommend the latter to clients a lot because the author offers a great explanation of the importance of moving away from fear-based thinking and towards what’s possible in order to create a happier life.  The author also offers a great list of happiness traps (such as looking for happiness in money, pleasure or status) and tools for finding more happiness.

In WHCK, the authors’ premise that a company’s happiness is as important as, or at least complimentary to, profitability resonates with me though the book is longer than it needs to be and could have used a second editing. (The definition of a happy company itself feels like a long-winded elevator speech, and the authors seem to be trying too hard to make the business case for why you should care if your company is a happy one.) 

To summarize the authors’ definition, a happy company is an organization where individuals are fully engaged, find meaning in their work and through their productive and collective efforts make a difference in the lives of others while also making a profit. 

I like the book best when the authors are unapologetic about why a happy company is worth pursuing.  Particularly, when they make the case for work not only being satisfying, but fun. It reminds me of the book FISH! from Charthouse Learning, which is a more accessible, albeit less academic book about how to create a corporate culture that is fun, people-oriented and meaningful.  WHCK also has some great best practice examples for ways to create a happier company like focusing on a Return on People as well as a Return on Investment and finding ways to engage and empower teamwork as well as individual achievement. 

In my own work I see firsthand how my most successful organizational clients thrive by not only focusing on creating innovative products and services, but by creating a work environment where people find work both fulfilling and meaningful.   I recently heard a colleague assert that companies will be successful in the future by making meaning as well as money –  I think this has been true for awhile and the more mature corporate cultures are already doing just that.

What do you think?  Do you work for a happy company?  Would you like to?

I saw “Kung Fu Panda” with my kids a couple of weeks ago.  I enjoyed the characters and the story line and loved the messages that I found in the movie – that leadership comes in all shapes and sizes, the importance of following your passion, and how true strength comes from self belief.   

Po the Panda as voiced by Jack Black was so funny with his big jelly belly, his enthusiasm for Martial Arts, his vulnerability and love of life.  It may not have been a new story line, but I found it refreshing to see the hero myth get fresh legs by incorporating values like diversity and inner purpose.  After all it’s easy to see why Prince Charming got the girl, but I love how Hollywood has finally figured out that we actually want our heroes to be real.  The myth becomes so much more powerful when we see Po achieve mastery by finding his inner fire (in this case food ;) and believing in himself despite his imperfections. 

What current movie heroes resonate for you?  And what do they tell you about your leadership values?

I just picked up the classic peak performance bestseller “The Inner Game of Tennis” by Tim Gallwey.  Published over 30 years ago, I'm struck by what the author knew about how people learn.  Gallwey doesn’t speak specifically to left and right brain capabilities, but many of his principals and tips point directly to the power of using your whole mind to improve in a specific area, in this case tennis.   What I find most fascinating about the book is how Gallwey’s principals apply to my own experiences with leadership development. 

In 2003 I experienced many of these principals at work when I completed a ropes course as part of a year-long leadership program.  I remember my first challenge quite vividly.  I was on a platform 15 yards up in the trees preparing to cross a vertical rope and wood ladder with, what seemed to my over-anxious mind, like pretty flimsy belay gear between me and the hard forest ground.  Navigating this course successfully taught me so much about myself and applying Gallwey’s ideas to my experience brings it all back in a new and meaningful way.  

Before each ropes event, the facilitator spent time with each of us helping us get a clear vision for how we wanted to cross the challenge.  In the book Gallwey talks about this in terms of focusing on results rather than process.  Now with this first obstacle, I was not able to be present to my vision once I was up in the trees. It was only on the third challenge that I began to see how much more powerful the experience could be if I not only focused on making it across, but focused on the result I wanted to create.

While the control centers of my brain instructed me to “just get across the *#%~ structure as fast as you can!”  I somehow knew that forcing a crossing would be neither elegant nor effective.   I remember trying to break my walk down into each precise movement that I needed to make. It quickly became apparent that this wasn’t helpful either.  (Gallwey writes in his book about how breaking a skill down into its component parts actually puts your analytical mind to work in a way that is not helpful to increasing your skill level.) Instead, I discovered that when I relaxed and let go enough for my body and instincts to find their way, I was able to find a more natural walk to make the crossing.  In letting it happen rather than forcing myself across, I was much more present to my own experience and ironically more centered and in control. 

I also learned new things about how much my judgments get in the way of what I want.  As long as I was listening to the voice inside my head that was telling me all the reasons why I wasn’t strong enough, brave enough or agile enough to cross that rope ladder without falling, I was paralyzed at one end of the structure.  Yet if I listened to my own advice, the best antidote to my internal critic is curiosity and observing rather than judging my experience.

Now I can’t say that I was able to get truly curious about my experience, but by ignoring the voice of my critic, I was able to increase my awareness of the magic in the moment.  I was able to notice the beauty in the day, the smile on the face of the ropes instructor standing across the way and the encouraging words of my colleagues below. And with these things foremost in my mind many of my fears and judgments about what I could or couldn’t do melted away.  

My ability to get across each structure with some grace and agility became less important than how good it felt to test myself and learn that I can get over my own fears.  At the time I didn’t realize that my intuitive, holistic right brain was my ally throughout this process – I simply decided to trust what my body already knew about walking and ignore what my logical mind thought about being 30 feet off the ground.  It was a truly powerful, life-changing experience.  My key takeaway was that my ability to relax and trust myself is a key catalyst for me in creating what I want in my leadership and my life. 

In sharing this story, it strikes me once again how physical challenges, whether navigating a ropes course or improving in tennis, are so instrumental to me in learning about myself. 

In my work I often have the opportunity to observe leaders in action.  I notice over and over again, that the leaders who are most successful are the ones who consistently demonstrate emotional intelligence (EQ.) According to Daniel Goleman, bestselling author and expert, EQ consists of five factors:  knowing one’s emotions, managing emotions, motivating one self, recognizing emotion in others, and relationship management.   

Each of these factors has competencies and skills attached to them, but I believe that the catalyst for all of them is self knowledge – understanding your own motives and the impact that you have on others.   

This creates a paradox for developing your leadership because it means that the journey to powerful leadership begins with a focus on self.  It may seem self absorbed to spend time examining your own attitudes and actions.  Yet I notice that the more my clients learn about themselves, the more they are able to read others, experience empathy and self manage during difficult situations. 

One way to increase self awareness is to take time for reflection every day.  When you pay attention to your thinking patterns and inner dialogue, you become more aware of your own biases, motivations and self-imposed obstacles.  This self knowledge gives you more skill in managing yourself and influencing others in stressful or ambiguous situations.

It’s Valentine’s Day and a great opportunity to write about matters of the heart.  No, I’m not talking about romance, but about the importance of bringing heart and emotional awareness to your change initiatives.   

Much of my work focuses on helping executives create positive change within themselves and their teams.  One of the main obstacles to change is focusing on what’s logical and excluding what is meaningful or heartfelt for people. 

What changes are you in process with?  Whatever they are, make sure you are getting to the heart of the matter! 

I’m been reading a great book called Presence by Peter Senge and his colleagues.  The authors make a great case for the importance of paying attention to what is emerging in a team or organization rather than forcing or trying to make things happen.  I believe this approach is vital to the health of organizations, communities and dare I say our planet.  

A business leader who takes a softer focus on what is trying to happen is in direct contrast to the current focus on measurement, scoring and evaluation in the workplace.   This is because by the time you have measured it, your ability to act on what is emerging is likely to have already  passed. 

One of the things I’m taking from the book is that presencing is about paying attention not only to your intellect but to your emotions and your intuition when making decisions.  (For those of you who’ve been reading my newsletter or blog for awhile, my attraction to this idea will not come as a shock.)  I would hazard a guess that when you think back on significant decisions that you have made in your own career or life, your gut feeling and your emotional well being had a strong influence on your ultimate choice.

But how does one measure a gut feeling?  Or put a value on the emotional well being of employees?  Employee engagement and satisfaction surveys are one way to measure these things.   Yet, it’s also about increasing emotional intelligence by paying attention to the climate of each meeting and taking time to notice how the emotional mood of a meeting informs the process and the decisions being made. 

I highly recommend Presence for any manager or executive who wants to understand and balance the need to measure and direct their team with a greater awareness of what is trying to happen in a team or organization. 

In a coach approach the focus is on maximizing strengths rather than correcting weaknesses.   This doesn’t mean that I encourage clients to ignore their weaknesses.  To the contrary, self awareness includes knowing what you don’t do well so you aren't sabotaged by these things.  Here are four strategies for minimizing weaknesses.   

• Make it safe to talk about them.  In many organizations the biggest obstacle to a strength-based approach is that it can be a career killer to be honest about what you don't do well.  Our focus on individual achievement creates the myth that a manager or executive needs to be good at everything.  By making it safe for people to talk about both strengths and weaknesses, you will be able to design work to allow each person to work at their best.  
• Trump a weakness with a strength.  At the risk of repeating myself, the first step to minimizing weaknesses still lies in your strengths.The more you focus on weaknesses, both yours and your teams, the more disengaged and ineffective you and they become.    If you are terrible at details, the worst thing you can do is view your in-box as a million little details that you are terrible at addressing.   Instead, find the strength you can use to manage your in-box effectively.  You may have a strength for completing things or perhaps you are good at prioritize. When you approach the task from this frame you will feel much more empowered to do the job well.
• Select team members with complementary strengths.  If you are a great strategist but people skills aren’t your forte, than make sure you have someone on your team who is good at building and sustaining relationships.
• Develop new skills.  Just because you are an extrovert and do your best thinking by talking out loud, doesn’t mean you can’t also develop the skills of a good listener.    The executives that I work with who have the greatest influence in their organizations not only know how to exploit their strengths, but consistently look for ways to round out their leadership tool kit.
  

When new clients call me for a consultation, it’s often because their team or department is in conflict.  The first question asked is usually “How do we improve office communication?”    Many times managers want to focus on the skills necessary to communicate better. While skill development is important, it’s only the tip of the iceberg.   To improve office communication you not only need to change the behaviors that lead to poor communication, but the assumptions that lie beneath the surface. 

Assumption One: So-and-So is the problem.   Teams often want to attribute their communication problems to one or two “bad eggs.”  In my experience, poor communication is rarely about one person.   Instead, assume that each person has good intentions and focus on agreements for how to communicate with one another.  This will create more sustainable changes in not only individuals but your work culture. 

Assumption Two:  I don’t need to improve or change.  A close cousin to the Assumption One: if someone else is the problem, than I am not part of the solution.  Communication will improve immeasurably if each person on the team takes personal responsibility for their part in the communication process.   By encouraging people to be introspective and accountable for their impact in conversation, your team will move away from fault-finding and toward joint-problem solving. 

Assumption Three:  If Only You Heard What I Said.  Many communication breakdowns stem from each person attempting to persuade, cajole or argue the other person into their version of what was said in any given interaction.  Because each person comes to conversations with different filters based on their background and unique set of experiences, you will never get a completely clear picture of who said what to whom.  Instead, assume that the impact of your communication is the response that you get.  This will get you much closer to creating more positive and productive interactions.   

Assumption Four: If only everyone would agree!  It can be tempting to think the solution to improving communication is to get everyone to agreement.   In reality good communication begins with getting people into dialogue.  Many of the problems I see in teams stem from people’s inability or unwillingness to say what’s on their minds.  By encouraging dialogue rather than agreement, you improve communication by increasing what the authors of Critical Conversations call the “pool of shared meaning.” 

What assumptions are getting in the way of good communication on your team?  Before you begin any communication training, identify and get rid of the ones that don't serve your team.    

I sometimes get the question, “What’s the difference between a coach and a consultant?”  On the surface the two roles are quite similar.  Both coach and consultant are often hired because of their “outsider” status and ability to bring a fresh perspective to what’s happening in a business or with a team.  Both coach and consultant also have specific expertise such as strategy development, team effectiveness or leadership that they bring to their clients. 

So what is the difference between a coach and a consultant?  It’s primarily about the approach that the coach takes in working with you.  Here are the unique paradigm shifts that a coach makes in supporting individuals and teams in getting results. 

1.      You have the answers or can find them.  Most consulting contracts are based on the assumption that the consultant has the solution.  In contrast, coaching begins with the premise that you, the client, have the answers or can find them.  By asking open-ended questions that invite introspection, a coach can empower you to come up with your own solutions.  This expands your capacity to ask the right questions long after the coaching engagement ends.

2.      The focus is on you rather than your circumstances.  In most consulting relationships, primary focus is given to fixing a problem: lackluster sales performance or a team in conflict are two examples.  The coach, on the other hand, stays focused on the client – what you want to create and who you want to become (either individually or as a business.)  This stance is useful for two reasons.  It gives you the ability to be proactive rather than reactive, and it allows you to focus on the bigger picture rather than getting stuck in the problem. 

3.      You are responsible for the agenda and results.  In consulting, the focus and outcomes are driven by the outside expert.  In coaching, you are responsible not only for identifying what will be achieved but the steps to getting there.  This may seem like a disadvantage; after all, what are you paying the coach for?  The reality is that you know yourself and your business better than anyone.  By keeping you in charge of both the process and the results, you are more likely to get results that are effective and sustainable.   

A good friend of mine shared the following story with me. It demonstrates the coaching stance beautifully. 

A man had moved his family to a farm to get them to a more wholesome setting.  One day, he and his daughter were watching a duckling hatch and break loose from the shell.  The little girl helped the duckling by cracking the shell free and setting the duckling free.  An hour later the duckling was dead. From this experience, the father and daughter learned that the struggle to break from the shell is part of the process that equips the duckling with the skills necessary to succeed.  Without breaking through its own limitations and barriers, it doesn’t build the strengths to survive.

A coach approach maximizes the success of individuals and organizations by increasing their capacity to solve problems and get positive results without an outside expert.  When we learn how to break through our own barriers, we truly internalize both the process and the reward. 

Summer is one of my favorite seasons.  I enjoy being active and making more time for outdoor exercise.  It reminds me of how important it is to be fully engaged in whatever I am doing.  There’s a lot of talk these days about employee engagement - increasing the amount of discretionary effort that employees give to their work. 

Research shows that if we improve the quality of each person’s inner experience while they are on the job, they will naturally want to expend more of that energy in their work.  In other words, the better we feel at work, the more discretionary effort we are willing to expend. 

This seems pretty common sense, so why don’t more employers focus here?  Most likely it’s partially because it seems invasive to monitor how people feel at work.  It can also seem like we need to become “mind readers” in order to have a positive impact on employee engagement. 

One point of leverage is the impact each manager or supervisor has on his or her direct reports’ quality of work life.  Managers have a direct impact on climate in the workplace.  Think about a time in your career when you were happy and fulfilled. Chances are you had a manager who motivated and inspired you.   Now consider a time when you felt disempowered.  There’s a good chance that your manager had something to do with that, too.  So how do we help managers and supervisors engage those they supervise? 

First, we focus on strengths rather than weaknesses.  People are more motivated and inspired when they know what they do well.  Conventional wisdom tells us focusing on strengths won’t improve performance. To the contrary, we create more leverage for improvement and excellence when we help people maximize their talents and skills, rather than trying to improve upon what’s missing.

Next we teach managers coaching skills, which gives them new tools and awareness for how they expand or limit the creativity and problem solving abilities of direct reports and others in their circle of influence.

Finally we teach people how to adapt or change.  Many professionals reach a point in their work and lives where they feel like they are no longer learning new things.  In my work with clients, I notice that this occurs less because of opportunity or a lack of desire to grow, and more often because their work environments have a low tolerance for risk and failure.   Yet the rapid pace of change today makes it vital for professionals to be able to not only navigate change, but embrace it.  Most of us are most fully engaged when we are learning something new. When we move away from fear and focus on the excitement and pleasure in learning new things, positive change becomes a natural and almost inevitable outcome.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you are increasing employee engagement in your organization, so post your comments by clicking on the button below.

For more about a program that can help you or other managers in your organization increase employee engagement, go here. 

One of the things I enjoy most about my work is the constant opportunity to learn new things.  I am fascinated by how people learn - not the intellectual learning that is emphasized in our educational system, but how people develop new capacities to create productive and meaningful lives. 

My kids are my best role models for how we learn the more practical stuff of life.  My three-year-old son is constantly experimenting and trying new things.  He is openly curious and intrigued and seems to view life as one big experiment. Whether he is pouring water on the floor or putting his shoes on the wrong feet, he delights from each experience. 

In contrast, my 5-year-old daughter has quite a different relationship with learning.  Whether she is tying her shoes or learning to read, she seems to be motivated more by mastery than experimentation.   Her dogged persistence (often accompanied by outraged howls when she gets stuck) may be difficult for me to watch as a parent.  But when I catch my breath and view her strong will as a natural hunger to do things well, I am inspired.  

I don’t know whether my son and daughter’s different approaches to learning are due to temperament or age, perhaps it’s a little of both.  What I do know is that there is something wonderful about the example that each one sets for me. 

When I take my son’s approach and view each failure as a delightful surprise and an opportunity to try things differently, I feel more connected to life itself.  I am able to stay open to my own and my clients' experiences rather than judging each one as a success or failure.   When I take my daughter’s approach I tap into my own strong desire to not only learn new things but to do them well. 

I’m also reminded of how important it is to honor our natural gifts and passions when we are learning something new.  This allows us to not only excel, but to enjoy ourselves along the way. 

April 18, 2007

When clients begin coaching with me, they often come with the assumption that our work will be about improving upon their weaknesses.  Nothing can be further from the truth.   In my experience people grow and learn best when they focus on what they already do well.

This is born out in research.  You may have already heard of the book “Now Discover Your Strengths.” The authors, researchers at The Gallup Organization, analyzed results of interviews conducted by Gallup of over 1.7 million employees from 101 companies and representing 63 countries.  One of the things they found is that great managers focus on strengths and manage around weaknesses. 

The authors call this a radical approach, but I believe its something that we actually know intuitively, but somewhere (perhaps as early as 1^st grade) we lose the wisdom to start from what’s working.  That’s when we begin the serious work of “problem solving” and train our brains to analyze what is wrong and focus on what needs to be fixed.  While this orientation has helped us make great strides in mathematics and science, it goes awry when we apply it to relationships.  That’s because people aren’t problems.  

I volunteer in my daughter’s Kindergarten classroom from time to time.  I do it partially because I want to know her classmates and understand more about what she is learning.  I also look forward to these times because they remind me of the inherent goodness of human beings.  There’s a reason Kindergarten is often viewed with an almost mystical awe.  Adults are so much more forgiving of the behaviors of young children.  We are still able to see the essence of what is good at this age. When a 5-year-old interrupts, we see her eagerness to learn. When a Kindergartner is quiet, we recognize his need to concentrate rather than assuming he has nothing to offer.  If only our orientation toward developing ourselves and others were more like our experience in the Kindergarten classroom. 

“Coaching is the art of creating an environment, through conversation and a way of being, that facilitates the process by which a person can move toward desired goals in a fulfilling manner. It requires one essential ingredient that cannot be taught: caring not only for external results but for the person being coached."

- W. Timothy Gallwey

The definition of coaching that I use is maximizing performance by uncovering a person’s potential.  Notice the focus is on potential rather than weaknesses.  The leader as coach sees the talent, positive qualities and potential in others and is skilled in bringing these strong points to the forefront.  This ability to see the best in others cannot be taught, but it can be learned.