Author: Kathleen Doyle-White

The Beauty of Small Meetings

Good day, team.

This week’s challenge comes from an interview I read in The New York Times business section with Paul English, the co-founder and chief technology officer at Kayak. Conducted by Adam Bryant, the interview, titled “Ten People in a Meeting Is About Seven Too Many,” reveals why English believes that any more than three people in a meeting actually stifles creativity rather than enhances it.

Here are a couple excerpts from the interview that stood out to me:

“[At Kayak,] we’re known for having very small meetings, usually three people. There’s a little clicker for counting people that hangs on the main conference room door. The reason it’s there is to send a message to people that I care about this issue. If there’s a bunch of people in the room, I’ll stick my head in and say, “It takes 10 of you to decide this? There aren’t three of you smart enough to do this?

“I just hate design by consensus. No innovation happens with 10 people in a room. It’s very easy to be a critic and say why something won’t work. I don’t want that because new ideas are like these little precious things that can die very easily. Two or three people will nurture them and make them stronger, give them a chance to see life.”

Reading the interview made me think of the times I’ve worked on teams that came up with great ideas which eventually turned into a product or innovation. I can count on one hand the number of times this happened, and when it did, it was always a small team of people. We often felt like we had to keep our little project a secret — we referred to it as “skunk works” because we knew if too many people found out about it, they would tell us to stop working on it and do our regular jobs. I recall working for a high-tech startup that had grown from 12 people to 1,200 in four years. Once it got to more than 50 people, suddenly meetings became laborious. It took much longer to hear everyone’s opinions on projects, and a lot of the discussions didn’t lead to any result. It seemed to me that people went from being creative and focused to argumentative and confused. Everyone talked about the need for people to be more cooperative, but the more people who were added, the less cooperation occurred.

I’ve had an opportunity to work with many software engineers over the years, and I’m always curious about what type of environment they feel fosters creativity and innovation. When I was recruiting, I would ask them what kind of team atmosphere they enjoyed working in. Without fail, they would always tell me that smaller, more flexible teams were their favorites. They wanted to work in an environment where others encouraged them to experiment and test their ideas. One engineer told me, “I’m a geek, for sure, and my idea of the best place to work is a place where geeks are encouraged to be as geeky as possible. That is, take your creative ideas and see if you can make them work to enhance our product or design. Don’t get bogged down by having to follow processes or procedures — be hyperproductive and don’t be afraid to try things.”

In The New York Times interview, English went on to say the following:

“We’re a bit reckless in our decision-making — not with the business, but the point is that we try things. We give even junior people scary amounts of power to come up with ideas and implement them. We had an intern last summer who, on his very first day at Kayak, came up with an idea, wrote the code and released it. It may or may not have been successful, but it almost doesn’t matter, because it showed that we value speed, and we value testing ideas, not talking about them.

“It’s all about fast iteration. When you push down decisions and you don’t require people to write up plans and do designs by consensus, enormous amounts of work disappear. We cut out all the middle layers and let the designers talk to the customers. Otherwise, something gets lost in the translation with a lot of layers.”

I believe that different meetings serve various purposes. I agree with English when it comes to design and the exchange of creative ideas — smaller teams get more done. However, if you’re holding a meeting to deliver information about your company or about an issue that effects larger teams, then a larger meeting makes more sense. Know what your intention is for a meeting. Is it to get a better design or is it to communicate information out to a larger audience? Maybe you need to include all the relevant stakeholders, even those who are not necessarily touched directly by the project. Making a clear distinction about what you’re trying to achieve in a meeting — or setting an intention — helps to determine who needs to attend.

All too often I hear people say, “I can’t believe they didn’t include me in that meeting!” However, upon further reflection, people often realize that they actually didn’t need to be there and that an e-mail update about the meeting is enough. Understanding what role you play on a team and the importance of your participation is the sign of a mature person who doesn’t think they’re so special that they need to be in all the meetings.

This week, see if your meetings are actually producing the kinds of results that will move your company forward. Are people spending way too much time talking about things and ideas but never actually delivering anything? What about your most creative and innovative people? Are you encouraging them to test their ideas? Or are you extinguishing their creativity by telling them all the reasons their ideas won’t work? Are you piling on too many processes that weigh down their desire and commitment to create something new and exciting? Are your intentions and expectations about meetings clear to everyone? If you want people to come together to exchange ideas, state that up front. Also, don’t add people into a meeting just because you’re afraid they’ll feel slighted if you leave them out. Do they actually have a significant role to play in the outcome of the meeting?

What about the amount of time it takes your company to go from an initial design concept to the actual delivery of a product? Does it take weeks, months or maybe even years? Do you see your competitors whizzing by you at lightening speed as you sit in meetings talking about how to get things done?

Try encouraging your most creative people to meet up with just a few others who can help put their ideas into action. Encourage more agile ways for people to work together in smaller pods of people that can stay focused on a few things that excite them. If you have a larger team of managers who normally all meet together, try splitting them up into groups of three or four. Give them a subject to talk about or a problem to solve and then bring the groups back together to share their ideas. Run a contest between groups or encourage managers to ask their people to take a day to focus exclusively on their innovative ideas.

Think of ways your meetings can be a more positive experience for team members. Large, lengthy meetings are not fun, and they are often boring. People don’t tap into their creative spirits when they are bored and not having fun. No one wants their job to be a drag, and subjecting people to hour after hour of meetings only encourages them to stop paying attention. This week, try coming up with creative ways for your people to meet and exchange ideas. It may actually increase your company’s productivity, your people’s innovation and everyone’s ability to have more fun!

Have a good week!

Kathleen

© Copyright 2013 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search Inc., all rights reserved.

Getting The Message Across

Good day team,

This week’s challenge is entitled “Getting the Message Across”, the second entry in my horse sense series. It illustrates the importance of having a strong intention about what you want to have happen and then a very clear message to go along with it.

I arrived at my horse lesson last week determined to have a frank conversation with my teacher about how to get my horse to keep a safe distance from me. The last time I’d worked out with Treasure, my horse, she acted like a disobedient adolescent. As much as I tried, she wouldn’t do anything I asked her to do. She snorted and scraped the ground with her foot. She went the opposite direction of where I was trying to lead her, and wouldn’t look me in the eye or even in my direction. She seemed completely distracted by everything else around us – the owl in the rafters of the arena, the other horses in the stables, and any person that walked by. But, what was most irritating was that I couldn’t get her out of my space.

I tried everything to get her to back away. I jiggled the rope. I tapped her with my stick. I waved my hands up in the air. I even resorted to doing jumping jacks to get her to back up. She’d back away a bit, only to come right back. I finally reached the end of my patience when in trying to get her out of the round pen, she came right up upon me and attempted to shut the gate as I opened it. “YOU NEED TO BACK-UP”, I yelled at her. She looked at me and yawned.

I went away from that day very discouraged. As my lesson began, I explained to Debby, my teacher, what was happening. She asked me a few questions about what had I done to send the message to Treasure that I needed her out of my personal space. As I began to explain, Debby was suddenly right on me. Her body was right up against mine and her face was no more than a ½ inch from mine. “What are you going to do about this, she exclaimed, do you want me in your space, do you want me here, what are you going to do about it?” I squirmed, I struggled to push her back. “I weigh 1100 pounds,” she said, “you can’t move me… I’m not going anywhere. What are you going to do about it?” I tried to grab my stick to put it up between the two of us. I wanted to run away but the wall of the barn was right behind me. “MOVE BACK”, I yelled, but still, she stayed right where she was. I finally acquiesced. “I don’t know what to do”, I said meekly.

Debby backed up. “OK,” she said. “This is going to look ugly to you but if you want to get a message across to your horse, you need to mean it. If you give the lead rope a little wiggle and she doesn’t back up, you have to continue to strengthen the movement of that rope until she does. Give it a huge yank if you have to. You need to have a strong intention about what you want from her so your energy is also saying, ‘Hey, you’re in my space and that’s not ok, move back.’ It’s not angry or mean, it’s effective.”

As I worked with Treasure that day, I found that if I had a strong intention for her to move and made one swift circle with the rope, she backed right up. As soon as she did, I stopped to give her an opportunity to understand what I wanted. Pretty soon, all I had to do was give the rope a wiggle with some intention and she was backing up.

Here’s the lesson I learned. If you say it and don’t really mean it, the message doesn’t come across the way you need it to. Your intention must be strong and the message needs to be delivered without hesitation. If you doubt what your saying, that doubt comes across in your message. Horses, like people, need to know who the leader is. They actually enjoy being led and getting clear direction.

I saw an example of this in my work recently with a client. She needed to deliver a tough message to one of her staff. Her team member had dropped the ball on a big project and her disengagement was putting the whole project team in jeopardy of meeting its initial targets. To make matters worse, the manager and team member were also friends. It’s hard to wear multiple hats, e.g. one as the boss and one as friend, when you’re trying to manage someone.

The manager had already had one conversation with her team member where she told her, “Look, I’m not sure what’s happening here. But you’re responsible for making sure this project gets done on time. You seem to be disengaging. What’s the problem?” Her team member explained that she was having problems at home and it was affecting her work. The manager immediately put on her ‘friend’ hat and the rest of the conversation was about ways to resolve the home situation.

Now, the manager needed to have another conversation because the first meeting with her team member didn’t change anything. This time, she needed to get a strong message across that dealt specifically with her team member’s lack of focus on the project. Here’s how it went:

“I know you’re having problems at home, but I really need you to re-engage here. We have some definite delivery dates that can’t change and you’re in charge.” Her team member agreed that yes, she needed to take charge of this and the meeting was over.

After a few weeks, I asked my client how it was going with her team member. She replied that things were a little better, but she still wasn’t seeing what she needed. I asked her if she thought her messages about the project were clear enough to her team member. She replied that she was trying to get a clear message across but was also being sensitive to her team members personal situation. What I saw here was that the managers intention was two-fold. One, she wanted her team member to re-engage and work on the project. Two, she wanted to be sensitive to her team members personal situation. Thus, her team member was getting two messages.

In this example, you can clearly see that there were multiple factors weighing on the manager that were impacting her messages to her team member. I’m not advocating that managers not take into account the factors that effect their employees but, if you start off a meeting by giving one message, “I know you’re having problems at home” and then state the real message, “I really need you to re-engage here”, then it sounds like your priority is the first message rather than the second. This immediately takes away the power of the most important message.

This week, ask yourself if you’re getting the message across to your team members. Are you being direct and clear? Do you find yourself starting off a tough conversation by filling in with unimportant information just to ease the tension? Are you trying to get too many messages across at one time that are confusing? Maybe you’re trying to lead the person into giving you the right message by asking them questions, when in fact, you already know the answer? The real question is, what’s your intention? If you need something to change quickly, is that sense of urgency clearly in your message? Perhaps you need to have a more exploratory conversation with someone. How do you state that intention? Or maybe you simply need to give someone directions. How does that message sound and look?

This past week, I learned about the importance of giving my horse a clear message. If I need her to move away from me, then I have to let her know that without confusion or hesitation. If my intention about what I want is strong and my message is clear, I’m going to have much more success in getting my message across. I’m going to try doing more of this in my day-to-day interactions with people, too. Your challenge this week is to do the same.

Have a good week!

Kathleen

© Copyright 2013 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search Inc., all rights reserved.

How Quickly We Lose It

Good day, team.

The theme of this week’s challenge is how quickly we can lose our cool in challenging situations.

My husband and I recently took a 10-day vacation to Great Britain. Inspired by our godchildren, who are spending the summer in Europe, we concocted a plan to surprise them in England, in an incredibly beautiful area called the Cotswolds. After a few days in London, we rented a car and took off for our destination, which was a few hours drive from the city.

Thus commenced one of the most trying three hours of our marriage. To start, our motorcar, as the Brits call them, was small, had a standard transmission and very little power. Second, getting into the driver’s seat on the right side of the automobile was disorienting. As we settled into our seats, my husband instructed, “I need you to be the navigator. It’s going to be challenging enough for me to drive on the left side of the road without having to worry about how we get there.” Little did I know how challenging it would be for both of us to fulfill these roles.

Getting onto the motorway was easy enough, although as we approached our first roundabout, trying to remember to stay to the left and watching other cars sail past us on what seemed to be the wrong side of the road gave both of us a hair-raising preview of what was to come.

Once off the main motorway, we drove along country roads that were no more than 9 feet wide, surrounded on both sides by hedgerows that were sometimes 12 feet high. How were we supposed to navigate our way down these roads when we couldn’t see what was coming up or even when another car was approaching from the opposite direction? Each time a car approached, it struck panic in both of us. The amount of jockeying that had to go on in order to pass the other car was a complex set of maneuvers. After both cars came to a screeching halt, we were never quite sure if we should back up, drive forward, move sideways or what. Once we managed to get past another car, I often found an assortment of broken plant matter in my lap from the hedgerow because we usually swiped the hedges in our attempt to get past the opposing traffic.

All this, and I had to navigate as well. Those of you who know me may be thinking, “Never make this woman the navigator.” I am good at a number of things, but navigation is certainly not one of them. I don’t think in terms of direction, and I have a hard time envisioning which direction I’m going at any given time. If the sun’s out, and I can look up and see if it’s not high noon or dark, then I can tell you which way is east or west. That allows me to then determine north and south. But short of that, I am lost.

So I’m in the passenger seat (in what I think should be the driver’s seat) with two maps open on my lap, my cell phone (hoping to use my GPS), the map my husband has copied for me on his iPad and a compass (as a last resort) in my hand. I won’t go into the sordid details, but suffice it to say that after 2½ hours of struggling to read road signs (which were cute but not accurate), trying desperately to figure out where we actually were, and lots of shouting and accusations, eventually we ended up completely lost. As my husband pulled over to the side of the road — a space that could not have been more than 2 feet wide — we realized that this situation had taken us to the limits of our ability to get along. I remember thinking, “I can’t believe I married this guy!”

This was a humbling situation. I saw how quickly I can lose it — even after all the meditation and spiritual work I’ve done over the years. Despite all of my attempts to be more “Buddha-like,” there was definitely no Buddha in the car that day!!

Herein lies this week’s challenge. It’s easy for us to be calm, cool and collected when we’re not feeling challenged. But in situations where our abilities are in question, it’s easy to descend into backup behaviors. How quickly we move into negativity and resentment!

This week, observe how tense situations change your state of mind and actions. What can you do about it? Maybe it’s appropriate to argue and express your thoughts. Or maybe you need to step back a bit. Is it really so important to try and prove your point or convince someone that you’re right and they’re wrong?

When I get angry, I try to breathe through it. This technique helps me have more perspective. That day in the car, however, I couldn’t neutralize my anger. I was completely caught up in trying to defend myself. At one point, I thought, “This is one of those times when I could say something I really don’t mean, and it’s important right now to be aware of what I’m saying.” In the heat of an argument, we often say and do things we regret later. I didn’t want that to happen. Fortunately, my husband and I managed to not do any lasting damage. But I know that a trusting relationship can be threatened pretty quickly by viperous words and actions.

Try stopping in the midst of an argument, if possible. I recall having a heated discussion with a co-worker when suddenly she said, “Wait, let’s stop for a moment. I’m not sure this is worth arguing about.” We just stood there in silence for a few minutes and realized that we were making a mountain out of a mole hill and that trying a different approach in the discussion was going to work much better for both of us.

However you choose, take a look at what happens when feel you need to defend yourself or want to argue your position. Is it worth it? If you do need to express yourself that strongly, are you prepared for the consequences?

As my husband and I continued our journey in the car that day, we reached an intersection that I thought would tell us where we were. There we sat, at a crossroads surrounded by high hedgerows on all sides, without a sign in sight. In complete frustration, I looked at the compass. My next statement truly summed up the entire experience as well as my ineptitude as a navigator: “This must mean that north is west of here!” In disbelief, my husband just shook is head.

This week, do your best to see how you lose it in challenging situations — and if it’s really worth it. And if you never lose it, well, that’s worth looking at too!

Have a good week,

Kathleen

© Copyright 2013 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search Inc., all rights reserved.

Success in Recruiting

Good day, team.

This week’s challenge is about the evolution of the recruiting process and tips for finding a new job — or the right candidate.

Here’s a snippet from a recent Business Insider article, “Moneyball at Work: They’ve Discovered What Really Makes a Great Employee” by Max Nisen:

“Hiring decisions have always been limited to a few imperfect factors, including what appears on a resume and what impression a candidate gives off in an informal interview.

“That’s all changing.

“As Dan Shapero, LinkedIn’s VP of Talent Solutions and Insights puts it, ‘Recruiting has always been an art, but it’s becoming a science.’

“Using new tracking and analytic tools, researchers have learned to value things like adaptability, social and emotional intelligence, resilience and friendliness, as well as raw intelligence.

“Companies are scouring the Internet for data about potential employees’ professional lives, applying the big data technology to years of employee surveys and tests, and even picking up new data from specifically designed games.”

In my years as a recruiter, I always new that a person’s resume only addressed what a person had done with a small indication of how they had done it. It gave me information about someone’s education and the different jobs they’d held. What it didn’t address was who the person was, how they reacted in different situations, what motivated them, what happened to their behavior when they were under pressure, what really engaged them and so on. If I was lucky, I might get a small indication of who a person was at the bottom of their resume if I found a line like this: “Personal Interests — hiking, bird watching and cribbage.” That line provides an opportunity to get into a very different kind of conversation with a candidate. You can learn a lot about someone if you ask why he or she loves to play cribbage. Does he enjoy the competition? Perhaps he likes moving the pegs and counting up his points. Maybe his grandfather taught him how to play and he loved spending that time together. Regardless of what the personal interests were, as a recruiter, I was often relieved to see that line on a resume because it gave me a way to discover something meaningful about the person.

In today’s world, recruiters use all kinds of tools and modes of discovery to find out who someone is and how he or she behaves. Many companies use behavior assessment tools to understand more about candidates’ motivations and preferred behaviors. Having candidates participate in games as part of their interview process gives employers much more information about how someone thinks, reacts and succeeds. Asking candidates to make a live presentation to team members reveals a lot about how they compile information and deliver it to a larger audience.

A company called “Knack” has a variety of games that help companies find the behaviors and personality traits that boost productivity and performance.

“Cognitive ability is a small fraction of what we measure,” says Guy Halfteck, Knack’s CEO. “We measure everything from creative abilities to emotional and social intelligence, to how you think and make decisions … how you interact with emotions, understand emotions, how you learn new information, how curious you are about the world.”

Educational background has always been a key element in hiring decisions. But today, having an advanced degree from an elite university doesn’t mean you’re a shoe-in for the job. It’s not how much you’ve learned that’s important but how agile your mind is and how adaptable you are. It’s the ability to pick things up quickly, to learn on the job and to take initiative. Anyone who can get thrown into a new situation and figure out how to thrive is the candidate companies select.

Resiliency is another factor. It’s the ability to hear “no,” time after time, and still return to try again.

Having strong emotional and social intelligence is also key to anyone’s success, no matter what industry you’re in. I used to tell my candidates, “You may have great ideas, but if you can’t explain why someone needs your ideas or products to succeed, if you can’t sell them, they won’t matter, and neither will you.”

The Business Insider article goes on to address what companies in today’s world are looking for in selected candidates. Here’s a sample:

A diverse background — Exposure to other cultures, languages, customs and traditions far outweighed many other traditional factors such as what college you attended when it came to someone’s success.

Friendliness — Enjoying people is a big factor in service-oriented jobs. Companies have found that when someone is a happy person, other people want to be around them because happy people enjoy sharing their happiness with others. One study done by a movie theatre chain found that the most successful theaters had the happiest employees. They smiled at customers when they came in, talked with them about the movies and made an attempt to emotionally connect with them in a positive way.

Raw processing power — At the end of the day, how sharp you are still matters. Being able to quickly process information and conscientiously apply it is key to anyone’s success. These two aspects of someone’s baseline attributes are an indication of his or her raw potential.

Professional presence — Today, companies expect you to have a professional profile online that exemplifies your professional brand. Most recruiters are looking for passive candidates. That is, people who aren’t actively looking for a job but keep their professional backgrounds updated on sites such as LinkedIn or Vizify. Through research on these sites, recruiters are able to see people’s background details and more — what their interests are, examples of their presentation skills, lines of code they’ve written, software they helped design, their strengths and behavioral styles, etc.

Your challenge this week is to consider your presence in the digital world regarding your personal brand. Do you have an old resume that is outdated? Do you have a LinkedIn profile? Maybe you use other forms of electronic media to let the world know who you are and what you’ve done. Whatever it is, make sure it’s updated and that it addresses the kinds of things that recruiters are looking for in today’s world.

If you’re looking for good candidates, using the old method of poring over stacks of resumes, either on paper or online probably won’t get you great results. Try researching candidates’ backgrounds on the Internet and finding better ways of screening applicants. Work out a set of good behavioral interview questions that you can use to find out more about who your candidates really are and how they act on the job. Investigate companies such as Knack and others that are using games to find out more about how candidates problem solve, think creatively and take initiative.

The recruiting world has changed dramatically in the past 10 years. Many more tools are available to all of us for finding the right candidate or finding the right job. What we used to call “chemistry” between people is still an unpredictable factor, and I suspect someday, someone will find a way to scientifically quantify that element as well. Until then, get smarter about the way you present your professional and personal brand and don’t rely on chemistry or college GPA to get you the job you want.

And when interviewing candidates, make sure you understand who a person is before you hire. It’s often that “who” factor that makes or breaks a person’s ability to be successful in your company.

Note: The coach will be on vacation until July 7, 2013. The next challenge will be published on July 14.

Have a good week,

Kathleen

© Copyright 2013 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search Inc., all rights reserved.

Horse Sense #1 – Dealing With Fear

Good day, team.

Today’s challenge is about fear and what to do about it. It’s also the first of many challenges that I’m categorizing as “horse sense.”

What started out as a way for me to overcome my fear of heights has become a doorway into an entirely new presence in my life: horses. Eighteen months ago, I thought that learning how to ride a horse would help me overcome my fear of heights. When you sit on a horse, you are pretty far off the ground. Not only that, but they move. The idea of combining these two things turned my stomach into knots. Still, for some reason, it seemed like the right antidote for my fear of heights.

Over the past year, I have persevered by attending horse clinics and exposing myself to some calm and friendly horses. Last week, I finally took a leap of faith and leased a horse named “Treasure” for the summer. I’m not quite ready to own a horse (it’s a big commitment and expense), but I realized that if I’m going to learn about natural horsemanship, I needed to have a partner to help me. Treasure is 15½ hands tall. She’s black with brown eyes and has a very sweet disposition. She’s a Tennessee Walker, which means she should be a very smooth ride if I can ever get up enough courage to get on her!

Over the summer, I’ll be writing about the horse sense I’m learning from Treasure and our ongoing experiences with each other. Experts say that a horse mirrors its owner, and if that’s the case, I’m in for a journey of self-realization and reflection as well as some lessons in my limitations.

Yesterday, I went out to the stables where Treasure lives and had my first lesson. I was excited. I got up early and decided I would get to the stables 30 minutes early, put on her halter and take her out of her stall to spend some time getting to know her. I arrived at her stall, halter and lead rope in hand with positive expectations. She immediately stuck her nose through the stall door to greet me. She seemed happy to see me, too. With great confidence, I opened her stall door. As I approached her with the halter, she took a step toward me, stuck her head in my chest and wouldn’t back up. No matter how hard I tried to push her back, she wouldn’t budge. With 1,200 pounds of four-legged animal pressing on me, fear coursed through my body. I quickly removed myself form the stall and shut the gate as quickly as possible. Treasure’s ears pricked up and stretched backward as if to say, “What just happened? I thought we were going to do something fun, and now I’m afraid of you.” I stood outside the stall and looked at her while my heart pounded in my chest.

“I can’t do this,” I thought. “What was I thinking? I’m too afraid to learn how to ride. I’ll never be able to train or ride this horse.” I had to take a walk and settle myself down. After walking nervously around the stables for a while, I approached her stall again. She was still standing where I’d left her. We looked at each other. “Who are you?” she asked. She stomped her foot as if to say, “I want to move my feet, let’s get out of here and go do something.” As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t get up the courage to open the stall door again. I stood there paralyzed.

Pretty soon, an elderly lady walked toward me in the barn. “Hi there,” she said. “How ya doin’?” “I’m scared to death,” I admitted. “I’m brand new to all this, and when I went to halter her earlier, I couldn’t get her to move away from me, and it frightened me so much I just rushed back out of the stall and haven’t been able to get back in since.”

“Well, Treasure sure does love attention,” she explained. We stood in silence for many long minutes as my heart rate settled down. “This will get easier over time,” she reassured me. Then she held out her hand, “My name’s Kathleen,” she said with a broad smile. “Good to meet you.” “Gosh,” I said. “That’s my name, too!” As I shook her hand, I felt the waves of fear begin to disappear. “You know,” she said, “I’m in my 80s, and I’ve been around horses since I was 5 years old. I’ve learned a lot from them over the years. I’ve made lots of mistakes with horses, but I’ve learned that it was usually my fault and not the horse’s. You and Treasure will learn a lot from each other.” I pondered this as we stood in the barn together listening to the horses in their stalls.

Later on during my lesson with Kathleen’s daughter, Debby, my instructor for the summer, I felt my fear ebb and flow. Each time my heart rate speeded up, Treasure seemed more upset, more anxious. Each time I calmed down, so did she. There must be something to this mirror business, I thought.

What did I do in my first lesson? I sat on a half-barrel in the middle of the round pen with a bucket of carrots hidden under my shirt. Treasure ran around and around me until she finally slowed down and came over to check me out. She sniffed me and nudged me a bit with her nose and then just stood there making full eye contact with me. Each time she fully acknowledged me with no fear or anxiety, I gave her a carrot. And each time she took a carrot from my hand, she became a bit more confident, as did I. I didn’t bribe her. I just gave her a treat for treating me the way I wanted her to. I congratulated her for calming down and getting to know me. And she rewarded me by getting over her fear and allowing herself to approach me.

You may be reading this thinking, “What kind of horse riding lesson is that? You just sat in the middle of a pen for an hour and let the horse run around you?” But I can’t begin to explain how important that hour was for me. I’m setting a foundation of trust with my horse, and every little thing that happens between us will be a reflection of many more moments to come. As Debby instructed, “You don’t want any surprises with your horse.” I couldn’t agree more. I also know that if I ever do own a horse, surprises will come. The real question is, how prepared am I when they do come?

This week, notice where your fear comes up and how it impacts those around you. Are you being asked to do something you’ve never done before? Are you feeling paralyzed? Maybe you have to have a difficult conversation with someone, and you’re experiencing a mixture of fear and dread. What are you doing to embrace the fear and then move past it? You could take a walk like I did if the fear becomes too much to contain. Or you could engage in a conversation with someone who can help you see your fears from a different perspective. Perhaps you’re lucky enough to learn from someone who’s dealt with these same fears before and can walk you through steps to help you gain your confidence. Does your fear strike fear in others? How can you help neutralize your own fear so that others around you calm down and see that everything is going to be all right?

I suspect that Treasure and I will learn many valuable lessons from each other as the summer progresses. I’ll share more horse sense with you as I learn it.

As Ray Hunt, the famous horse trainer and natural horsemanship clinician, said, “My goal with the horse is not to beat someone; it’s to win within myself. To do the best job I can do and tomorrow try to do better. You will be working on yourself to accomplish this, not on your horse.”

Have a good week!

Kathleen

© Copyright 2013 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search Inc., all rights reserved.

6/9/13 “Body Language”

Good day, team.

This week’s challenge comes from the New York Times editor, Adam Bryant. Bryant’s column “Corner Office” runs every Friday and Saturday. He also writes a blog where you can read his editorials and make comments.

I’ve been thinking a lot about body language lately, and when my good friend Jan Foster sent me this article, I realized how well it expressed what I’ve been observing in myself and others.

In that vein, today’s challenge is about the messages we send with our expressions and body language in the work environment. This week, become more aware of the impact your body language and facial expressions have on others. See if you can alter them to evoke better responses from your co-workers.

Are You Mad At Me?

“Are you mad at me?” That surprising question packs a powerful lesson.

A colleague I have worked with over the years came up to me in the hallway and asked if we could talk in a conference room. Sure, I said, wondering what was up. We sat down, and the question came out of the blue: “Are you mad at me?” Of course not, I responded immediately, since I had to no reason to be.

I was puzzled, but I realized later what was going on. As an editor, I faced a lot of tight deadlines, and I would often have just a short window to get a story into shape for the next day’s paper. I’m guessing I was thinking hard about some story as I walked through the newsroom one day — probably furrowing my brow, my mind a million miles away — when I briefly locked eyes with my colleague, who was startled enough by my body language to later pull me into a conference room to wonder if the air needed to be cleared between us.

That colleague did me a huge favor because I learned a memorable lesson that day about how people can read so much into subtle, often unintended, cues. From that moment on, I found myself making much more of an effort to be aware of my body language, particularly with the team of reporters I was leading, and to always show energy, confidence and optimism, even if I was on a tight deadline and wrestling with a difficult problem.

Many CEOs have told me similar stories about moments when they realized how much they were, in effect, constantly under the bright lights of a stage, intensely scrutinized by employees who often pay more attention to the nonverbal cues than what their leaders are saying. Do they look concerned? Is something up?

The leader who best crystallized this notion for me was Linda Hudson, the president of BAE Systems. I’ll let her tell the story, which comes from my interview with her a few years ago. I asked her about important leadership lessons she had learned. Here was one of them:

“It was when I first became a company president, and it was the first job where I was truly responsible for the performance of a company. I had mastered the day-to-day mechanics of running organizations. But I don’t think the leadership part of it had settled in quite as profoundly as it did when I took over a company.

“I was the first female president of the General Dynamics Corporation, and I went out and bought my new fancy suits to wear to work and so on. And I’m at work on my very first day, and a lady at Nordstrom’s had showed me how to tie a scarf in a very unusual kind of way for my new suit. And I go to work and wear my suit, and I have my first day at work. And then I come back to work the next day, and I run into no fewer than a dozen women in the organization who have on scarves tied exactly like mine.

“And that’s when I realized that life was never going to be the way it had been before, that people were watching everything I did. And it wasn’t just going to be about how I dressed. It was about my behavior, the example I set, the tone I set, the way I carried myself, how confident I was — all those kinds of things. It really was now about me and the context of setting the tone for the organization.

“That was a lesson I have never forgotten, that as a leader, people are looking at you in a way that you could not have imagined in other roles. And I didn’t see that nearly as profoundly when I was leading a functional organization or a smaller enterprise. But to this day, not only the awareness of that, but the responsibility that goes along with it, is something that I think about virtually every day.”

It’s a challenge that every leader faces. Here’s a smart tip that Jeffrey Swartz, the former CEO of Timberland, told me he learned from his father:

“I remember him saying, ‘Pick a face. If you want to be serious, then you have to be serious all the time. Because if you’re serious one day and happy the next, people will be confused. They won’t be able to figure out where you’re coming from and that’ll be threatening.’”

Pick a face. Ever since that colleague asked me the surprising question about whether I was angry, I’ve tried to pick a face — no more furrowed brows — and be consistent. If leaders are consistent, then their employees can spend more time focusing on their work, and less time searching for clues in the boss’s body language.

***

This week, try “picking a face” that is appropriate for your situation. I don’t think this suggestion was meant to imply that you should only have one expression all the time but that finding the right face for a particular situation is important for sending the right message to your team members. Try noticing how other people’s expressions change when you talk with them. Often, they will imitate what they see on your face. So if someone starts furrowing their brow when you’re speaking to them, check it to see if you’re also furrowing your brow. Perhaps you’re smiling while someone is speaking to you about a difficult situation. This makes it look as though you’re laughing at them or not taking them seriously. Or maybe you often roll your eyes when you’re frustrated and you didn’t even realize it.

Whatever the case may be, pay attention to your own expressions or body language first and see if you can adjust them so they appropriately convey your attention, your concern or your levity. Have the presence and confidence to convey the right message and not one that’s mixed up and confusing to others.

Have a good week!

Kathleen
© Copyright 2013 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search Inc., all rights reserved.

6/2/13 “Birthday”

Good day team,

In honor of my birthday this past weekend, I am celebrating by sharing one of my favorite poems with you. I hope you enjoy it!

Love After Love

The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other’s welcome

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was yourself.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you have ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

~ Derek Walcott

Have a good week!

Kathleen

© Copyright 2013 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search Inc., all rights reserved.

5/19/13 “Bullies”

Good day, team.

The coach’s challenge this week is about dealing with bullies in the workplace. Prompted by a request from a client to write about this subject, I am re-publishing the challenge dated 7/23/2006. It is a applicable today as it was then.

First, let’s define what constitutes bullying behavior at work. Here’s the definition of “workplace bullying” from Wikipedia:

Workplace bullying, just like childhood bullying, is the tendency of individuals or groups to use aggressive or unreasonable behavior to achieve their ends. When perpetrated by a group, it is often called “mobbing.” Unlike the more physical form of schoolyard bullying, workplace bullies often operate within the established rules and policies of their organization and their society. For instance, a workplace bully might use the office’s “rumor mill” to circulate a lie about a co-worker. An employee who dislikes a co-worker for personal reasons may incessantly criticize everything that co-worker does. Such actions are not necessarily illegal and may not even be against the firm’s regulations. However, the damage they cause, both to the targeted employee and to workplace morale, is obvious.

According to the *Workplace Bullying and Trauma Institute (WBTI), workplace bullying is “the repeated mistreatment of one employee targeted by one or more employees with a malicious mix of humiliation, intimidation and sabotage of performance.”

“Statistics show that bullying is three times as prevalent as illegal discrimination and at least 1,600 times as prevalent as workplace violence. Statistics also show that while only one employee in every 10,000 becomes a victim of workplace violence, one in six experiences bullying at work. Bullying is also far more common than sexual harassment and verbal abuse.”

Following is a list of common tactics of workplace bullies listed by the WBTI:

“Constant criticism. Bullies attempt to undermine the target’s self-confidence. By exaggerating the target’s mistakes, bullies intend to make the target look incompetent in the eyes of co-workers, make their own work look better by comparison or divert attention from their own mistakes. Often, bullies will expand their criticism to the target’s private and social life. Since criticism can become habitual, the target will be criticized by the bully no matter how well the target performs.

Isolation. This tactic used by bullies is intended to separate the target from the workplace’s social circles and information networks. Cut off from all social and business interaction, the target is more vulnerable to threats and verbal assaults. Bullies then take a “divide and conquer” approach.

Monopolizing. Bullies try to work their way into a position in which they are the only source of certain supplies or information. The target is thus given a choice between submitting to the bully or doing without necessary facts and supplies. In this scenario, a target gets what he or she needs only if the bullies get what they want.

Gossip. Gossiping is perhaps the most common tactic of workplace bullying. Simply put, bullies start a rumor about the target. As the rumor moves through the workplace, the target becomes the object of suspicion. Since bullies often control the target’s contact with co-workers, the target has no way of knowing what’s being said behind his or her back. Co-workers who have little contact with or were hired after the target may make judgments based on a bully’s gossip rather than by the target’s performance. By spreading rumors about the target, bullies are turning co-workers against that person. This is a form of mobbing.

False documentation. Also known as “ghost gripe,” many bullies find this to be an effective tool. Bullies claim that complaints have been filed about the target’s behavior or performance. Next, they will either fabricate an incident or misdocument a real event to place the blame on the target. The bullies then will refuse to identify the complainants, citing the company’s confidentiality policy and saying that they want to prevent retaliation. In reality, the bullies are preventing the target from investigating the complaint and disproving the allegations. The bullies use the company’s policies to achieve control over their co-workers. Countless targets have been disciplined and even fired over ghost gripes. False documentation is most common in companies that do not have at-will hiring and firing policies, since the manager must give a valid reason for firing employees he personally dislikes.

Stealing the credit. Bullies commonly use this tactic. Bullies place themselves in a position to claim credit for a target’s efforts and ideas. The target is unable to document his or her efforts, so the bullies get the rewards and the target is stuck with all of the work.

Verbal abuse. Bullies often use language to attack the target personally. Verbal abuse includes—but is by no means limited to—profanity, shouting and racial or ethnic slurs. It can consist of giving the target a disrespectful nickname or subjecting him or her to a constant stream of insults.

Passive aggression. Lazy bullies can be passive aggressive. By leaving certain jobs undone or incomplete, they force the target to do their work for them. Also, if they discover behaviors that irritate the target, they will be certain to repeat those behaviors until the target loses his or her temper, thus giving the target an undeserved reputation for violent behavior. Procrastination is a common form of passive aggression.

Sexual harassment. Bullies also commonly use this tactic.

Violence. As a last resort, bullies may turn to violence. Unlike schoolyard bullying, surprisingly little workplace bullying involves physical violence. Since violence is illegal, such behavior will usually cost the bully his job and perhaps his freedom. While violence makes headlines, most other acts of workplace bullying aren’t considered newsworthy. Thus, the public is frightened by stories of violence in the workplace while the causes of the violence are ignored.

Note that bullies seldom rely on just one tactic. Most have learned to combine several different tactics in an organized assault on the target. For instance, many bullies will effectively combine isolation and gossip.

Here are some common mistakes made by management:

Appeasement. Managers commonly try to appease the bullies they are dealing with. This approach assumes that the bullies’ aggressive behavior will cease when they are given what they desire. History has proven this approach to be counterproductive. People who use aggression to satisfy their desires have no logical reason to stop being aggressive. They may calm down for a while when given what they want, but they will resume and possibly escalate their aggressive behavior when they want something else.

Blaming both parties. When a manager blames both parties involved, the manager punishes the bullies for aggression but also punishes the target for failing to get along with the bully. The manager ignores the possibility that the bullies are purely to blame.

Blaming the target. This mistake is even more serious. Instead of acting against the bullies, the manager may simply order the target to stop complaining. If the target continues to complain about the bullies’ behavior, the manager will discipline the target and may even come to the bullies’ defense. Thus the target is made to suffer twice, once at the hands of the bullies and once at the hands of management.

Ignoring the issue. Sometimes management is deluded into believing that problems will vanish if the bullies’ behavior is ignored. Thus the bullies go unpunished. Bullies who go unpunished have no logical reason to relent. Their aggressive behavior will continue and may even escalate to physical violence. This approach involves wishful thinking on the part of the manager.

Emphasizing teamwork and ignoring individual effort. This mistake plays into the bullies’ hands. Often, the target is a creative, productive individual whose ideas work. In today’s workplace, the emphasis is on team effort. Management tends to dislike subordinates who think for themselves, regardless of how good their ideas are. This makes it easy for bullies to accuse the target of “not being a team player.” ”

Your challenge this week is to ask yourself if you can identify any type of bullying behavior within your environment and if you’re willing to deal with it. More important, ask yourself if you manage others by bullying them or if you’re making some of the common mistakes management makes in dealing with workplace bullies.

Each of us has a responsibility to create an atmosphere in the workplace that is free of hostility. We do this by adhering to the human resource policies that are already in place in our companies or, if they don’t exist, by creating good, sound policies that are very clear about which behaviors are acceptable in our work environment and which are not. As managers, we need to work together to ensure that the workplace is safe, not just physically, but also emotionally.

Have a good week!

Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249

For more information about workplace bullying, please go to http://www.workplacebullying.org/

© Copyright 2013 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search Inc., all rights reserved.

Facing Your Fears

Good day, team.

Today is Mother’s Day, and in honor of the day, I want to share a wonderful piece of writing that my stepdaughter Sari, shared on Facebook recently. It was written by her friend Angela Schuler. Sometimes the very thing we fear most happens and changes everything. I am grateful to Angela for her heartfelt and honest message and to Sari, my stepdaughter for sharing it.

“Before I had my children, I never wanted children. I also was frightened by other people’s children. I knew they were smarter than me and would see right through my insecurities and blurt them all out to everyone in their precious, honest-to-a-fault little voice! Man, I’m glad my life isn’t up to me! I started to transform into the person I should have always been once Linc came along—not while I was pregnant with him (I was still petrified) but the second he was born. I could feel it happening. People who had been around me before and after commented on it, and all I could say was, “I love being a mom.” It wasn’t what I wanted, but it turns out it was what I wanted. The movie “Waitress” with Keri Russell shows my transformation in movie form. Just take out the affair, the deadbeat husband and the pie-making skills.

These three amazing people that live in my house and depend on me, I have no doubt, they are my angels. Happy Mother’s Day. “

This week, think about how your fears hold you back from experiences you might actually want. Try stepping out of your comfort zone for 20 seconds to do something completely different, out of character or frightening. Maybe say something to a work associate you’ve always wanted to say but have been too afraid. How about standing up and speaking out in a group, when normally you would sit quietly? Perhaps call a relative and have that conversation you’ve always avoided. Or maybe find a way to approach a homeless person on the street, look them sincerely in the eye and ask if you can help them.

Whatever the scary thing is, see what happens when you jump into it rather than avoid it. You may discover, like Angela did, that it wasn’t what you wanted, but it turns out it was what you wanted.

Life offers us gifts in so many ways, and we often get in the way of receiving them. In Angela’s case, she was moved out of the way of her fears, and it brought her three children and more joy and happiness than she could have ever imagined.

Have a good week!

Kathleen

© Copyright 2013 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search Inc., all rights reserved.