12/20/10 “Human Connection”

Good day, team,

A few years ago, I had a memorable experience with a wonderful young girl while traveling on a business trip.  I wrote about it for the weekly challenge and it evidently, made a strong impression on a number of subscribers.  In the past few weeks, I’ve received e-mails from  them asking if I would re-publish the challenge about the ‘girl on the plane who could not speak’. After re-reading it, it seems particularly appropriate for this time of year.  I offer it again with a grateful heart.

While flying back to Portland, I sat next to a 10-year-old girl named Bailey. She seemed just like any other little girl, but as I sat down next to her, the flight attendant informed me that Bailey was a “challenged child” (an odd term) in that she could not speak. However, the flight attendant went on to say that Bailey would understand everything I said to her and could communicate with movement and expressions.This news made me immediately uncomfortable, as if she were made of fine porcelain and, if I wasn’t careful, she might break. I was also confused, unsure whether I should speak to her or not, since we usually receive some type of response in communicating.

Fortunately, Bailey immediately put me at ease with her beautiful smile and sparkling blue eyes. When I said hello to her, she smiled and waved hello. The plane took off, and I began to read a magazine. The many Christmas advertisements featured pictures of snowflakes, stars, icicles, presents, etc.

Each time that I turned a page and a picture of a star appeared, Bailey pointed to the star and looked at me and smiled. I would then say, “Yes, that’s a star.” Before long, I noticed that I was actually looking for more pictures of stars so we would have a way to communicate with each other.

Coincidentally, there was a boy sitting behind us about the same age as Bailey. I realized before long that he talked pretty much continuously, first about the Game Boy he wanted for Christmas, then about his friend’s new cell phone, then about school, then about his Dad, and so on and so on.

After awhile, I realized I had toned him out. I may have been open to hearing what he had to say in the beginning, but after so many words, I was no longer interested. And yet every movement and expression of the little girl sitting next to me, who couldn’t speak a word, kept me keenly interested in what she was communicating.

This experience made me think about our basic need to connect with each other as human beings, and the importance of allowing our emotional beings to reach out to each other in any way possible. When we take up all the space by talking about ourselves and don’t allow the other person room to respond, the connection is lost, and the speaker becomes a nuisance rather than someone we want to know.

Bailey taught me something fundamental about our true nature as human beings. Wordlessly, her communication came through loud and clear. Her loving nature spoke volumes, and our communication had a quality that I don’t often experience when I talk with another person.

This week, try connecting with others in ways that you don’t normally use. Experiment with being more present to someone who is speaking to you so that you can not only hear her or his words, but can also notice expressions and gestures. Perhaps you’ll try greeting someone with a smile and some eye contact instead of a hello. If you find that you tend to talk a lot about yourself, try to ask other people questions about themselves instead. Practice listening more, especially to the words that are not being spoken, so that you can have a different experience in your communications.

And finally, be grateful that you have the amazing ability to connect and communicate with others in so many ways. By meeting Bailey, I understood that some of us are not so fortunate and that many of the things we take for granted, like saying our name, are not possible for others.

This holiday, be thankful for your ability to let others know what you think, how you feel, and who you are. And don’t be afraid to really connect by allowing the beauty of your heart to speak out, whether it’s in words or silence.

* Please note:  The coach will be enjoying the holidays over the next two weeks. The next challenge will be published on 1/3/11.  May the New Year bring us all more prosperity and peace!

Have a great week,

Kathleen

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

12/13/10 ‘Stilettos and the Dalai Lama’

Good day, team,

The other day I walked into my walk-in closet (which I had to have built because 
my other closet was way too small) and looked at all the clothes hanging there. 
I saw the bright pink sweater I've never worn and remembered the craving I 
experienced when I bought it. I just had to have it! I looked down at the bright 
gold stiletto sandals on the floor and reflected on how I've worn them only 
once, at my friend's wedding reception, and nearly damaged my ankles permanently 
by dancing in them. And really, how many pairs of black pants or blue jeans can 
one woman wear? I thought about all the craving and aversion that closet 
represents and how much space it takes up in my life.

This time of year, the world seems like one big advertisement, creating lots of 
craving for holiday gifts. But what happens once we satisfy that craving? We 
then react with a predictable aversion to having so much stuff! After all the 
gifts have been opened, we’re left with a mess of trash that we have to recycle.

Sometimes I feel as though craving and aversion act on me like waves on the 
seashore. When I want something, the desire builds in me like a wave as it comes 
crashing toward the beach, the water rushing up into the dry sand. And then in 
the next moment, my aversion is the receding wave, pulling me away from the 
shoreline, so to speak, taking all the shells and pebbles—the trinkets and 
baubles of my desires—with it as it pulls back into the wider sea.

This repetitive cycle makes me yearn for simplicity. (Am I craving yet again?) I 
envy the Dalai Lama. His entire wardrobe consists of two robes, one pair of 
shoes and one pair of sandals. He's not plagued by the question “Should I wear 
the gold stilettos or the purple flats?” I would imagine that he is troubled by 
other things, but he probably doesn't lose his inner peace over what shoes to wear.

This week, try seeing what happens when you crave something and when you 
experience aversion. Maybe you have a lot of trouble with one particular 
colleague. Or perhaps you're craving a new job or a promotion or just sweet 
things to eat. Lately I've been craving homemade chocolate chip cookies, but I'm 
afraid to make them, knowing I'll eat too many and then have the predictable 
aversion to the few pounds I might gain. Perhaps you just have to have a new 
car, or an expensive watch, or a better house, etc. See what happens when your 
craving starts to take over and verges on becoming an obsession.

Pay particular attention to these states as they rise up and fall away. Does it 
make you feel better to satisfy your craving? Or do you find that once you've 
satisfied one craving, another quickly rises up. What happens when you feel the 
opposite, for example, when you receive the credit card bill that reflects the 
results of satisfying your craving?

If you find, as I have, that craving and aversion make you feel like you're 
being pushed and pulled by outside forces, try letting these states pass before 
you act on them. Allowing a craving to pass before I give in to it also saves me 
from having to feel any aversion afterward.

As Bishop Thomas Wilson said, “The fewer desires, the more peace.”

Have a good week!

Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White

Pathfinders Coaching

(503) 296-9249

© Copyright 2010 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.

12/6/10 “Being Present”

Good day, team,

Years ago, when I first learned about being present, I had some vague
intellectual idea of what the phrase meant. I had heard that it was the key to
self-awareness and becoming more conscious, so I asked a number of gurus,
meditation teachers and people who claimed to know a lot about awareness, “How
do you do this, I mean, how do you be present?” I received answers like “You
just be in the moment” or “Just allow yourself to be where you are” or “It’s
your natural state, just allow it to happen” that frankly didn’t give me any
specific help. It wasn’t until someone suggested that I try to feel my breath or
feel my feet that I began to experience my attention in my body, which brought
me into the moment.

This week’s challenge is about the experience of being present and some good
reasons and suggestions for doing it. A client* of mine sent me this recent
article from ‘The Huffington Post’ that addresses some of the benefits of being
present. It’s written by Soren Gordhamer, the author of ‘Wisdom 2.0’. Take a look:

“Researchers are slowly coming to the same conclusion. Harvard researchers, in a
study of over 2,200 people, asked them how they were doing at various random
times. The researchers found, as reported in ‘The New York Times’
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/science/16tier.html?_r=1&ref=science>, that
what mattered more was not /what /people were doing but rather the degree of
attention that they were bringing to what they were doing. According to the
article, ‘Whatever people were doing, whether it was having sex or reading or
shopping, they tended to be happier if they focused on the activity instead of
thinking about something else. In fact, whether and where their minds wandered
was a better predictor of happiness than what they were doing.’”

We’re used to thinking that sitting on a beach in the Bahamas is much better
than sitting in rush-hour traffic in New York City. And while there may be some
truth to the fact that is easier to pay full attention while in a relaxed
environment, according to the researchers, “The location of the body is much
less important than the location of the mind, and the former has surprisingly
little influence on the latter.”

But where is our attention during most of the day? It is generally lost in
thought. According to the researchers, “On average throughout all the
quarter-million responses, minds were wandering 47 percent of the time.” But we
do not need researchers to tell us that our mind wanders just about all the
time: We can watch and see for ourselves. As Eckhart Tolle has said, “Compulsive
thinking has become a collective disease.”

And now we have all kinds of gadgets that, essentially, help us stay in our
minds, disconnected from our bodies and actual experiences in a given moment.
Walk down the street of any major city and you’ll notice that most people are
essentially somewhere else, either because they are on their phone or are
daydreaming about some future moment or reliving a past one. This moment, the
one we are living now, is often missed.

As Ram Dass used to say, “We become human doings instead of human beings.” How
do we connect with being? For Eckhart Tolle and others, one simple way is to
“focus your attention away from thinking and direct it into the body, where
being can be felt.”

Even now, reading these words, can you bring attention to your body and see
thoughts arise and pass without riding the train of associated thoughts that
take you away from this moment?

Try this: for today, whenever you notice your mind wandering, invite attention
back into your body. Focus less on doing and more on being, and see if the
actions you do take come more often from that place of ease and focus, what in
sports they call “the zone.” Prioritize not what you are doing as much as the
quality of attention you bring to what you are doing, as if what you are doing
right now deserves your full attention.

This week, see what the experience of being present is like and if it makes a
positive difference in your life.

Have a good week,

Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White

Pathfinders Coaching

(503) 296-9249

© Copyright 2010 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.

* Many thanks to Mark DeWald from Move Inc. who forwarded this article to me
while he was feeling his feet!

11/29/10 “The Benefits of Failure and Imagination”

Good day, team,
This week, I bring you part two of last week’s challenge, the second part of J.K. Rowling’s commencement speech to Harvard’s 2008 graduating class, about the importance of imagination. I’ve printed most of it below because, in all honesty, I couldn’t leave out anything she said: It’s so compelling and beautifully written. It’s lengthy, but worth it.

“You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

“One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

“There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

“Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.

“I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

“And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

“Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

“Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.
And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

“Amnesty mobilizes thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

“Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.

“Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathize.

“And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

“I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

“What is more, those who choose not to empathize may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

“One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

“That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.
But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

“If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”

Your challenge this week is to allow your imagination to envision how your life and the lives of others could be better. Give yourself free license to dream.  When we spend most of our time checking off our to-do list as we get things done, we become efficient and boring. Take a moment to give your heart and mind free time to imagine what you would be doing if you were sublimely happy.  Maybe you think about creating something beautiful for yourself and others, like raspberry tarts!  Or maybe it’s something much larger, like the woman who decided that every child should have a pair of pajamas to wear to bed and at last count had collected 8 million sets to distribute to kids who didn’t own a pair.

Whatever it is, listen to your imagination and allow whatever flight of fancy you conjure up to take wing! Give the power of your imagination an opportunity to become reality.

Have a great week!

Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White

Pathfinders Coaching

(503) 296-9249

© Copyright 2010 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.

11/22/10 “Benefits of Failure & Imagination”

Good day, team,

At a client’s request, I’m resending a piece that I originally sent in 2008, from J. K. Rowling’s commencement address to Harvard’s graduating class. This is part one; I will send part two next week.

In 2008, J.K. Rowling, acclaimed author of the Harry Potter novels, gave the commencement address at Harvard University. She called her talk “The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination.” When I read it, I found it so inspiring that I wanted to share some of the best parts with you.

First, a bit about her background, as context. J.K. Rowling’s parents both grew up poor, so they insisted she study subjects in college that would land her a great, high-paying job. She, on the other hand, wanted to write fiction. The two parties compromised on her pursuing a vocational degree in modern languages. But once in school, Rowling quickly switched to majoring in classics.

Though the decision weighed heavily upon her, her passion was so great that she continued to write stories during her lunch hours. Unlike her parents, who feared poverty, Rowling feared failure, and she actually ended up attracting it in significant ways. Here is an excerpt from her speech:

“Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.”

However, the author found a light at the end of the tunnel when she ended up in the most dire conditions. And, in doing so, she was able to realize her destiny.

“So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

“You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.

“Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

“The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.”

Your challenge this week is to face your fear of failure and decide not to let it overtake you. Take your fearful state of mind and heart and use it propel you into doing something you love or to find alternative ways to live. For example, a friend of mine and her neighbors recently planted a city garden to offset the cost of food. She never realized how much she loved getting up early in the morning and going out to plant or harvest what she grows. My neighbor has already lost 10 pounds and is feeling better than ever now that she bikes and walks to work. A client has finally quit a job she hated for years to pursue her dream of painting watercolors full time.

If we take Rowling’s words to heart, we can begin to see these changes in fortune as an opportunity to gain something new rather than to lose or to fail. Decide for yourself what path you would like your life to take based on your passion for it, rather than the fear of failing at it.

At the end of her speech, Rowling quoted from the great Roman philosopher Seneca. As you face your fear of failure this week, remember his words:

“As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.”

Stay tuned for next week‘s challenge for the second subject of her speech, the importance of imagination.

Have a great holiday week, everyone. We all have lots to be grateful for!

Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White

Pathfinders Coaching

(503) 296-9249

© Copyright 2010 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.

11/15/10 “Choose your Battles”

Good day, team,

The coach’s challenge for this week is to pick your battles wisely and examine what you’re fighting for. In our determination to prove ourselves “right,” we often lose our ability to see the big picture and in turn lose sight of our ultimate goal. That is, we may win the argument, but lose something more valuable in the meantime. I remember my high school debate coach saying that if you use all your energy to win one argument, you may run out of resources for the rest of the debate. It may also be the wrong argument to sacrifice to the competition and, in the end, you will have won the battle, but lost the war.

Each day at work, we face many challenges and opportunities with our fellow team members. We often agree on the ultimate goal but have completely different ideas about how to achieve it. We often find ourselves arguing about different ways to do things or become irritated because we think someone is doing something the wrong way. It’s our natural instinct to try to correct mistakes. This impulse leads us to compete or lobby for what we think is right. But do we consider the ultimate price we pay just to be right? Are we distancing ourselves from our team members as we try to prove something to others?

Focus this week on where you’re currently at odds with someone or something at work. Ask yourself these questions:

1.  What am I really fighting for?

2.  What am I trying to prove or win?

3.  How does this altercation relate to the overall goals we have for our team?

4.  If I win this battle, does it get me closer to achieving my ultimate aim?

5.  How can I think about this differently, so that my actions are more productive and less confrontational?

6.  What can I do to neutralize this situation rather than escalate it?

Consider other approaches that may be more beneficial in the long run. Sometimes restraining ourselves on matters we feel strongly about requires much more effort than allowing ourselves to fight for what we think is important. In the end, it’s the consistency of our efforts and desire to have the whole team succeed that wins the day!

Have a great week!

Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White

Pathfinders Coaching

(503) 296-9249

© Copyright 2010 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.

11/8/10

Good day, team,

I have a confession to make. I’ve rewritten this week’s challenge numerous times and still don’t feel satisfied with the quality of what I’m writing. So rather than send out a piece that is not particularly good, I’m now exploring my real challenge: following through on the commitment I made six years ago, to publish one every week, even when I’m not inspired to write.

Years ago I took a writing workshop with the poet and writer David Whyte. I remember him saying, “If you commit to being a writer, then you need to discipline yourself to write. Each morning, I return to my desk and writing pad. Sometimes I sit for an hour or so with nothing written on the page. Other times, I can’t write the words down fast enough. But what’s important is that I return each morning to write.”

His advice surprised me. How could that daily discipline exist in the same mind as the incredibly powerful images his poetry evoked?

I had thought of artists and poets as people who went though their lives waiting for a moment of inspiration to overtake them. Then they went into a frenzy in some cold, cramped, solitary space, drinking gallons of coffee and working feverishly late into the night with no regard for food or sleep so that their masterpiece could emerge before their inspiration was gone. It never occurred to me that they could apply the discipline of showing up each day to create with the same energy others would use to show up at a regular job.

Recently, I heard this same message while sitting in a large conference room surrounded by hundreds of bank employees. We were listening to a speaker who was the first woman at the bank to achieve the high position of executive vice president. She talked about what she had done over the years to succeed. What she said struck me powerfully:

“At the end of the day, the most important thing I’ve done in my 26 years with this organization is to keep showing up. When I worked as a teller, a supervisor, a manager, a vice president, a senior vice president and now as an executive vice president, each day, I just show up, sometimes without the slightest idea of what I’m doing or how I’ll get through the day.”

Although it came from two completely different sources, the advice is the same. And so each week I sit at my computer, and sometimes the words come so quickly that my fingers can barely move fast enough to keep up with them. Other times, I sit and gaze out my office window at the lovely wisteria that frames the windows, or the brilliant coral leaf maple trees that show off their seasonal colors of brilliant greens in spring and summer, deep ochre and reds in autumn, and the delicate, woody, bare boughs of winter, waiting, waiting for the words to come.

Your challenge this week is the same as mine: to have the discipline to continue to show up in whatever work you do so that if the inspiration comes, you’re there to experience it.

Upon winning one of her many Wimbledon titles, the great tennis star Steffi Graf was asked, “What’s the most important thing you do to be such an excellent player?” Graf replied, “I practice. For as long as I can remember, I go out each morning and I practice. Some days I play reasonably well, and some days I can barely make the right shot. And then, on rare occasions, I just throw the ball up to serve, and something else takes over. I’m no longer in charge. Some energy takes over, and I watch myself, as if in slow motion, move in exactly the right way to hit the ball in the sweet spot, with the perfect swing. Then I watch the ball sail through the air and land in the perfect spot. In that moment, I know that every hour of practice has made that magical moment possible.”

My challenge is to keep practicing, to keep writing in the hope that, one day, magic will take over and the perfect words will write themselves onto the page. I know I can’t make it happen, and I know I can’t hold onto it if and when it does. But I also know that if I don’t show up every day, I’ll miss it.

Have a good week,

Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White

Pathfinders Coaching

(503) 296-9249

© Copyright 2010 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.

11/1/10

Good day, team,

This morning I read a quote from Charles Darwin on which I’d like to base this week’s challenge:

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

I think it’s safe to say that I have seen more radical change happen to my business clients in the past two years than ever before. In some cases, they’ve had to completely change how they operate to stay in business. In others, they’ve had to downsize their workforce considerably or completely reorganize to meet the demands of their customers. And in some cases, they’ve gone out of business altogether.

This kind of radical change causes a natural response of fear and negativity. Most of us know that change can bring about many new opportunities. But, as creatures of habit, we loathe the actual experience when we’re going through it. The uncertainty as we cross into unknown territory can be paralyzing.

Because I’m often brought into organizations to help support them while they’re going through transitions, I admire what GE did four years ago to teach its senior managers how to lead change via the Leadership, Innovation and Growth program it introduced in 2006.

GE’s CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, had decided to grow the company by focusing on expanding existing businesses rather than by making acquisitions. Thus his senior managers had to take a good look at their business segment to see what needed to change in order to grow. Here’s what they did:

* The LIG training was delivered to all the senior members of the business management team to give them an opportunity to reach consensus on the barriers to change and how best to attack them.

* Participants were encouraged to consider both the hard barriers to change (organizational structure, capabilities, resources) and the soft (how the leadership team members individually and collectively behave and spend their time).

* The challenge of balancing short-term and long-term goals, that is, simultaneously managing the present and creating the future, was explicitly addressed.

* They created a new and common language of change, words that became part of their daily vocabulary.

* The training was not an academic exercise: It was structured so that a team would emerge with the first draft of an action plan for instituting change in its business.

All participants accomplished three things before attending the training. They updated their three-year business strategy, or what they call their growth playbook. They underwent 360-degree reviews to get feedback about their behaviors and leadership abilities. And they were assessed as to how well they had created an innovative climate for their employees to be creative and evolve.

GE identified the following attributes of an innovative organization:

1) Team members feel connected to and challenged by their work; they are free and encouraged to try new approaches.

2) Team members feel safe sharing ideas and working with one another (trust).

3) Time is made to share new ideas.

4) Team members see their workplace as easy-going, fun and relaxed.

5) Conflict is seen as part of the reality of work, and team members are encouraged to deal with it openly and constructively.

6) Team members are encouraged to share ideas with each other.

7) There is healthy debate between team members.

8) Team members can made decisions and take action in the face of uncertainty (take risks).

In the training, GE’s senior management team spent a week doing in-depth reviews of each of their businesses, examining what they would need to change to become more profitable and how to become better leaders. They asked themselves questions that would help them reset the bar and start to coalesce around the changes that needed to be made: How do we stack up? Are we really as good as we think we are? Are we walking the talk? Are we leading this business the way we think it should be led in order to optimize growth?

As they worked together, GE’s leaders started changing their ideas, their attitudes, the way they saw their business units, and how they could lead further changes throughout their organizations. They started becoming who they needed to be to lead effective change throughout their teams.

This week, take a look at your team, your work group, your company. Are you being forced to make big changes throughout your business and, if so, how will you overcome the natural resistance to change by your team members? Take some of GE’s suggestions and see how you can apply them to your team.

After going through the training with his leaders and watching how it was implemented over the next two years, Immelt observed, “To pursue growth, you have to give some clear no’s and yes’es, and I would say that what we always struggle with—even at high levels in the company—is too many maybes. Decisiveness is one of the core traits of a growth culture.

“I still have to push, and I think that will always be true. But there are now more people pushing with me. When somebody asks me, ‘At your level of the company, what does a leader do?’ I always say, ‘Drive change and develop other leaders.’ Our training gave me a way to do both at the same time.”

This week, think about what you’re doing to get the most out of your business and your people. Chances are some changes need to be made, and your challenge is to find the best way to lead your team through them.

Have a good week!

Kathleen Doyle-White

Pathfinders Coaching

(503) 296-9249

© Copyright 2010 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.

Note: If you want to learn more about this topic, read the article “How GE Teaches Teams to Lead Change” by Steven Prokesch in the Harvard Business Review, January 2009 edition.

10/25/10

Good day, team,

This week’s challenge is about the benefits of shaking up our normal patterns. I just spent two weeks immersed in French culture and cuisine, and the greatest gift of this vacation was the opportunity to do everyday things very differently.

Try speaking a foreign language for two weeks: That alone will help you see yourself and your world from a different perspective (three years of high school French was not much help). Take two hours for lunch each day dining on some of the finest cuisine in the world or walk everywhere you want to go in a large city. Find yourself in a toilette without any toilet or ordering a steak medium rare and having it served raw. Become totally lost and be forced to ask a complete stranger for help without speaking their language  (in our case, this always lead to a positive experience as the French are always so willing to help and have a wonderful joie de vivre!).

Each of these experiences gave me the chance to be more awake, to be out of my comfort zone and struggle to make something work or to be understood. Although it’s irritating, it always forced me to pay attention and provided the opportunity to notice aspects of my surroundings I never would have seen if I were in my normal daily routine, like the way light falls through a hotel window in the afternoon after a luxurious nap or what a carpet of ferns looks like in the early morning on a search for mushrooms in a French forest.

Every time I travel, I experience a wonder and innocence that get lost in my regular life of work, chores and responsibilities. I know this doesn’t have to be the case, and I’ve tried many times to jolt myself out of the low hum of work life, but the more familiar my life, the more asleep I seem to be. Fortunately, I find myself in a business where my clients tend to awaken me with their comments, stories and observations. Being present to them is my most important job, and it never ceases to amaze me how much I am inspired by their sincerity and hard work.

This week, try changing how you do things just enough to wake yourself up. You don’t have to travel halfway around the world to be more aware of your surroundings. Knowing how easy it is to take our lives for granted, try spending some time doing the dance a little differently so you can remember how much you enjoy it.

Here’s a lovely quote from Gresley that speaks to my point:

“Our object in traveling should be not to gratify curiosity and seek mere temporary amusement, but to learn, and to venerate, to improve the understanding and the heart.”

And another from Mark Twain:

“I have traveled more than anyone else, and I have noticed that even the angels speak English with an accent.”

Think about what you can do to shake things up a bit and notice what otherwise gets lost in your day. Or, better yet, start planning your next vacation and do some research about where you’d like to go and what you’d like to see.

Standing in front of Notre Dame in Paris last week, I noticed that the entire front of the cathedral has now been completely cleaned and restored. When I visited two years ago, much of the front was covered in scaffolding. There in front of me, the late morning light shone on the beautiful faces and figures carved out of off-white, pink-hued stone. The entire structure is such a thing of beauty that it took my breath away.  In that moment, I realized how fortunate I was to be there. Now my challenge is to bring that appreciation to the more mundane moments in my life.

Have a good week!

Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White

Pathfinders Coaching

(503) 296-9249

© Copyright 2010 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.