Good day, team,

Last week I traveled to Southern California to visit a client for a few days. On my early Tuesday morning flight, I found myself seated in a Bombardier aircraft, a small turbo prop that seats about 70 passengers. The seats line up in rows of two on either side of a central aisle and are extremely small.

I found myself sitting alone as the passengers filed in and gratefully began to realize that it was possible no one would sit next to me. “Ahhhh,” I thought. “I can stretch out and take a short nap.” Unfortunately, a large man got on the plane at the last minute and, since someone was sitting in his seat already, he chose to sit next to me.

I immediately went into judgment about the person who had taken the man’s seat: “Why do people do that? I never do that. Why don’t people consider the person whose seat they’ve just taken? What makes them exempt from following the rules like the rest of us?  Why do they think they’re special? Why doesn’t the flight attendant do something about it?”

Then, as the large man squeezed into the seat next to me, I realized that his body was taking up more room than his seat allowed, and I would have to move partly into the aisle to give him extra space. So I went into judgment about him too: “Why do large people book themselves on these kinds of airplanes? Someone should be making them take another flight on a regular-sized aircraft. Why did this guy have to pick the seat by me? Who let him just take any seat he wanted to? Someone should be in charge and make him sit in the back where there’s more room.”

As we settled uncomfortably into our seats, the man said something like, “Sorry, lady, but someone took my seat.”  I muttered something like, “Yeah, I don’t understand why people do that sort of thing.”

At this point, I tried to calm down. I was uncomfortable, angry and tired, and a thousand judgmental thoughts were racing through my head. Each one felt justified as I kept telling myself that the whole situation was someone else’s fault:  the jerk who took the man’s seat; the large man sitting next to me,  and the flight attendant who didn’t seem to care about any of us.

I tried focusing on my breathing as a way to calm down, and as I took my first, deep meditative breath, I realized the large man next to me smelled pretty awful. Well, that just fueled my anger—even breathing was not going to be the answer.

Then the man reached into his pocket, pulled out a tin of chewing tobacco and put a wad between his teeth and gums. That terrible aroma I was smelling was partly due to the tobacco. “Geez,” I thought. “I can’t believe I have to sit next to someone who has this disgusting habit. This is just gross!”

But worse than the physical discomfort was how miserable I felt because of my judgmental thoughts. Throughout the following week, I saw clearly how often I was overtaken by this state of judgment. Because my experience on the plane was so strong, it reminded me each time I judged another person how often it happens and how bad it makes me feel. In some cases, it affects my psychological state for hours, and I have to work hard to come back to a place of relative peace and tranquility.

Your challenge this week is to observe when you judge others. Then, try not to let the state overtake you. If you find yourself justifying your judgment, ask yourself, “Would I want to be judged so severely by the person I’m judging?” or “Am I so aware of all the factors that affect this person that I have a right to stand in judgment about who they are, what they do or how they do it?”

Maybe you work with someone whom you frequently have negative opinions about. Perhaps you can try to see what positive qualities this person brings to your team, and when your judgment arises, try thinking about those better qualities. When you notice yourself developing strong, negative thoughts about another person, ask yourself whether this attitude is helping you in the moment.  Perhaps you could turn your strong opinion into a question about the person. That speculation might give you a different way to view him or her and change your attitude.

None of likes to be judged by others. But this last week I also realized that being the judge feels pretty awful too. It’s not how I want to spend my time. This week, I’ve challenged myself to trade my judgment—my certainty about another person—for curiosity about what I don’t immediately see, a practice that serves me and other people better.

Have a great week!

Kathleen

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

© Copyright 2008 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.

Good day, team,

I’ve been rereading some of Marcus Buckingham’s book “The One Thing You Need to Know,” which focuses on the key things all managers and leaders need to know to be successful.

Buckingham defines the main responsibility of a manager as follows:

“The chief responsibility of a manager is to turn one person’s talent into performance. To speed up the reaction between the talent of the person and the goals of the organization.” He goes on to say that it’s really a catalyst job. Managers create a win-win situation when they see that supporting the strengths of all team members energizes them, because they’re allowed to do what they love and that gives them extra energy. That energy, multiplied by the energy of the other team members, who are also jazzed if they’re working from their strengths, creates an organization with an unbeatable sustainable edge. And the energy makes working together incredibly exciting!

He goes on to say that the main responsibility of a leader is as follows:

“The chief responsibility of a leader is to rally people to a better future, and the two words that are most important here are ‘better future.’” Buckingham notes that all great leaders are keenly optimistic. Not that they’re always in a good mood, or always positive, but that they are optimistic about the possibility of a better future and absolutely dedicated to moving people in that direction. He uses people like Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln as examples. These leaders were dedicated to a vision of the future that was far better than what existed in their day. And yet both of them suffered from deep depression at certain times in their lives. Regardless of what was happening personally, they never lost sight of the better future they saw for the world. And they never gave up in their efforts to try to move people toward that better future.

Your challenge this week is to leverage your team members’ strengths and all the possibilities that they create for your overall team. If you’re a leader, try to articulate your vision for a better future so that people understand what you see and where your dedication lies. Try increasing the level of engagement within your team by getting to the heart of the matter – what’s truly important to them and to their team. Each of us has an internal combustion engine that gets re-energized by doing what we love and working on what we think is important. Try freeing up that energy within the team so people are encouraged to make extraordinary efforts to achieve their goals.

Have a great week!

Kathleen

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

© Copyright 2008 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.

Good day, team,

It’s officially springtime, and I can’t let the beginning of this wonderful season go by without writing about it. Spring is about energy, renewal, opportunities for new growth and color! On Saturday morning I went for a walk in the park, and the radiant, beautiful colors of flowers and shrubs were showing up everywhere. It’s tough to stay in a bad mood when you have a bright purple azalea staring you in the face! Think about how the daffodils feel when someone walks by who’s angry or sad.

These emotions just don’t fit with the energy of daffodils. The new growth of spring always inspires me, and here’s how that inspiration affected me that morning.

After walking for about an hour, I realized that my walk was making me feel so good that I felt like giving something to someone. I walked by a grocery cart containing a homeless person’s possessions, and I thought about slipping a $20 bill inside to give the person a nice surprise and allow her or him to buy a decent lunch. But there was no one around, and I wasn’t quite sure it seemed right, so I continued on my walk.

I strolled by a church and thought about making a donation in the offerings box. But the door was locked, so I kept going. I walked past a home where they were having a garage sale. A 12-year-old girl was minding the store and asked me if I wanted to buy anything. All she had left were old Barbie dolls.

I don’t have any grand-daughters (yet) or friends whose daughters like Barbie, but I gave her $1.50 for a Barbie doll who was missing part of her blond hair and had permanent pink marker drawn on her face. As I walked away, the little girl had a big smile on her face.

A little while later, I came upon a group of girls who were drawing chalk pictures on the sidewalk. I asked them if they wanted an old Barbie doll, and they all ran to me to claim her. As I left, they were giggling and talking excitedly about what clothes they could put on her from their doll collections.

When I got home, my mailman was just leaving the mail at my front door. We chatted for a bit—about what a beautiful day it was, about how time flies and we just couldn’t believe it was Easter already. As we talked, I saw the extra broccoli plants that I had bought to plant in our garden. My husband had already planted some and these were extra. I asked my mailman if he had a little garden spot where he could plant some broccoli and whether he’d like these plants. It turned out that he’d planted potatoes and tomatoes before, but never broccoli, though he was wiling to try. So I bagged them up for him and off he went, carrying the mail in one hand and his new broccoli plants in the other.

Your challenge this week is to give something to someone. Spring is the season of abundance, and we are all blessed to be surrounded by wealth and beauty. Sharing with others is rewarding: It’s always a good time to do it.

You don’t have to give someone a material object. Maybe you give of yourself by extending a favor to someone. Or maybe your gift is as simple as offering someone a cup of tea or a hand with a chore. Whatever it is, this is a good week to give and to rejoice in the spirit of your generosity.

Have a great week!

Kathleen

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

© Copyright 2008 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.

Good day, team,

David Brooks has been writing for The New York Times editorial section for more than 30 years. He’s a conservative, and although I don’t often agree with his political opinions, I do appreciate a great writer when I read one, and he fits the description.

This past week, he wrote a very interesting article, “The Rank-Link Imbalance,” describing a trait he often sees in people in power: “People who have all of the social skills to improve their social rank, but none of the social skills that lead to genuine bonding. They are good at vertical relationships with mentors and bosses, but bad at horizontal relationships with friends and lovers.” He could have called the article “The Sad Sagas of the Supremely Successful.”

He describes how this happens:

“Perhaps they grow up in homes with an intense success ethos and get fed into the Achievetron, the complex social machine that takes young children and molds them into Ivy Leagues valedictorians. They go through the oboe practice, soccer camp, homework-marathon childhood. Their parent-teacher conferences are like mini-Hall of Fame enshrinements as all gather to worship in the flame of the incipient success. In high school, they enter their Alpha Geekdom. They rack up great grades and develop that coating of arrogance that forms on those who know that in the long run they will be more successful than the beauties and jocks who get dates.

“Then they go into one of those fields like law, corporate management, medicine or politics, where a person’s identity is defined by career rank. They develop the specific social skills that are useful on the climb up the greasy pole: the capacity to imply false intimacy; the ability to remember first names; the subtle skills of effective deference; the willingness to stand too close to other men while talking and touching them in a manly way.

“And, of course, these people succeed and enjoy their successes. When Bigness descends upon them, they dominate every room they enter and graciously share their company with those who are thrilled to meet them. They master the patois of globaloney—the ability to declaim for portentous minutes about the revolution in world affairs brought about by technological change, environmental degradation, the fundamental decline in moral values.

“But then, gradually, some cruel cosmic joke gets played on them. They realize in middle age that their grandeur is not enough and that they are lonely. The ordinariness of their intimate lives is made more painful by the exhilaration of their public success.

Brooks goes on to describe some of the stupid things these powerful, emotionally adolescent people do to fix that loneliness. How many times have you seen the corporate executive get drunk at the company Christmas party and make a sloppy pass at one of the pretty young things in the crowd? Maybe they turn to prostitution, as we saw in the recent headlines about the governor of New York, because transactional relationships are something they understand. How many managers do you know who claim that they work as hard as they do because they value their families most, and yet they travel most of the time and are hardly ever with their families?

This entire phenomenon creates middle-aged professionals who end up emotionally bankrupt due to their inability to experience any genuine intimacy in their lives. They carry on inauthentic relationships until they suddenly realize that their lives are made up of empty successes without any real connection or heart. They feel a lack of integrity since their external actions don’t match their internal state and often find themselves acting out in undignified ways.

I remember working with someone years ago who always looked and acted the part, but never seemed happy doing it. He couldn’t give anyone else his full attention and would often start working on his computer in the middle of a conversation with someone on the team. This inability to really connect with anyone was filled instead with a false personality that liked to act as though he always had it together and didn’t really need anyone else to help him out. He was cool and smart and always had the same kind of smile for everyone. We called him “Teflon man”: nothing ever stuck. He was so smooth and seamless that it was almost scary to watch him, because he seemed so inhuman.

When his wife walked out on him one morning after 24 years of marriage, he looked at himself in the mirror and didn’t like who he had become. He came to work a week later and announced to all of us that he’d hit a wall in his life and that he knew things had to change. He asked each of us to write a small paragraph about who we thought he really was, and started the process of unraveling the false personality he had so carefully woven over the years. The person who emerged was a really nice guy who wasn’t going to be the next president of the company, but was a pretty darned good manager and friend.

Your challenge this week is to try being true to your self and authentic in your interactions with others. If you’ve been living up to someone else’s idea of who you should be or some company’s idea of what a successful person looks and acts like, ask yourself if this is who you really are and if you want to continue to support that false personality you’ve created to fit in.

As Shakespeare wrote, “This above all, to thine own self be true, and…thou canst not then be false to any man.” Try finding out who that true self is and allow it to come to the forefront. You may just find that others respond in kind and your work and personal relationships are far richer because of it.

Have a great week!

Good day, team,

There are two ways for an organization to kill a good idea. One is with bad management. The other? Good management.

So writes the author Jane Linder in her new book, “Spiral Up.. and Other Management Secrets Behind Wildly Successful Initiatives.” We frequently see cases of bad management that kill great ideas boldly and blatantly. But we often don’t recognize how management teams can also kill a good idea, because they fear it won’t get approval, would be too hard or expensive to execute, or doesn’t fit an existing plan.

In fact, most innovative teams perform much better when they “fly under the radar,” meaning they escape scrutiny and get a lot done precisely because they don’t have to ask anyone else’s opinion or approval. Management’s role is to plan, budget and execute. The very functions that make for good management can kill a new idea before it ever gets off the drawing board.

The best ideas are explorations. Consider Lewis and Clark going before a management committee. “How long will it take?” “Don’t know.” “How will you get there?” “Don’t know.” “What will you find of value to the government of the United States?” “Don’t know.” They couldn’t even imagine what they would eat or how they would survive, and yet they persevered and became two of the greatest explorers who ever lived.

Years ago, I was asked by the vice president of a large corporation to design a coaching program for a new team of managers he had inherited in an acquisition. This was long before coaching was accepted by large corporations; when people asked me what I did for a living, and I said I was a coach, they would often reply, “Oh, of what, volleyball?” So this was quite an unusual step for an executive of a fairly conservative company to take. He encouraged me to be as innovative as I could to help his team move forward.

For the first year, we developed a program that included coaching the managers and supervisors and assisting them in becoming better coaches themselves. By drawing on each manager’s previous experience and strengths, we empowered them to design and train each other in their areas of expertise. This allowed us to save money and to maximize everyone’s abilities.

In the second year, other people in the organization began to take notice, and obstacles appeared where they had not previously. I was contacted by the human resources department in the company and asked, “How does this fit into our regular training program?” or “Whose budget does this fall under?” or “We’ll have to review what you’re doing and make sure that it’s OK for our team members.”

Certainly, these were appropriate and important questions for the human resources department to ask, and you can see how, once they became aware of the coaching program, they felt it was part of their job to make sure it was managed appropriately. However, as other people scrutinized the program or attempted to merge it into the larger plan for professional development, little by little, the coaching program was whittled away and eventually disappeared altogether.

Employee surveys done at the time proved how well the supervisors were managing their people and how successful the business was, so it was clear that the coaching program had significantly affected the people and the business. Not only were the ratings up for each individual manager, but attrition was down and customer satisfaction had risen.

Your challenge this week is to look at the more innovative ideas that are bubbling up from your team and let them be. Try not to fit them into a tidy plan, or a tight budget, or a well executed plan. Understand that all new ideas are highly subject to failure and allow some room within your organization for things to fail. Try working with the idea that you’ll figure it out as you go and try not to manage these things from above, but rather, allow them to self-manage along the way.

Maybe you need to encourage some of your team members to do some “skunk works,” that is, to work on their innovative ideas in a more secretive fashion rather than in broad daylight where others can scrutinize what they’re doing. Or maybe it’s just as simple as encouraging a team member to explore a new idea without exposing it to the overall team for awhile, so the experiment can be free to succeed or fail without a lot of intervention.

Whatever it is, remember that with all experiments and explorations, you have to take not knowing as a given. This may be scary at first, but you may just find that although you’re not sure how a new idea will work, in the end, you’ll manage!

Have a great week!

Kathleen

Good day, team,

This week’s challenge comes from some thoughts on leadership that I read about in an MIT alumni magazine while visiting my father in Maine. People debate whether great leaders are born or made, and good evidence supports both sides of the argument.

Accordingly, some educational institutions have created programs and curriculum to build their own leaders. For example, the Leadership Center at MIT developed a Four Capabilities Leadership Model. These capabilities are sensemaking, relating, visioning and inventing.

Rather than teaching leadership, which everyone agrees is hard to do, the program teaches students to cultivate these four strengths: Using their common sense when making key decisions, creating strong relationships with others, making their vision a reality, and allowing themselves to be inventive (meaning not fearing to make mistakes or fail).

“Anyone has the potential for leadership, of course, but certain people have a greater set of skills and aptitude. Leadership starts with someone who wants to make a difference… . When people are truly motivated toward a goal or a vision, they will do it, even if they have to change themselves. In many ways, leadership starts with what’s important to you,” writes Professor Ancona of the Leadership Center at MIT.

Another course that has become part of the leadership program is improvisation. Daena Giardella, an executive coach and professional actor, writes about that aspect of the program.

“What we believe we are, or are not, limits how effective we can be as leaders. Improvisation forces you to break out of your habitual roles. You have to be ready to respond with dexterity to the moment… . You have to dare to make an impact in the scene without worrying about looking stupid or seeming silly. Improvisers learn how to manage the ‘inner critic’ voices that chatter in everyone’s head as we go through life. The inner critic might be saying, ‘Stay small, don’t get too big for your britches’ or ‘Give up, you can’t do this.’ Great improvisers and great leaders learn to play many roles and be adaptable scene to scene. In improvisation the goal is to make the other person look good and to bring out the best in the other person. An improvisation is destroyed if it’s all about me, me, me… and the same is true about leadership. Master leaders and master influencers know how to bring out the best in their teammates.”

Your challenge this week is to identify where you play the role of leader in your life and consider whether you need to improve your ability. Perhaps you’re excellent at creating a vision and translating that for others into realizable goals and objectives, but your relationship skills could use some work. Maybe you find that common sense comes quite easily to you and that you have a reputation for being street smart and pragmatic when making decisions. However, the practical aspect of your common sense may stand in the way of your ability to be innovative. What can you do to be more inventive in your approach?

More and more organizations are realizing that leadership is not just the domain of people at the top but of people at all levels. Our ability to lead has everything to do with how committed we are to our vision and to the people around us who will help us make it a reality. Don’t be afraid to examine how you lead others and what you’re prepared to do to achieve your goals. Leadership doesn’t just come naturally. It requires real work, and we all can stretch our ability to become better at it.

Have a great week!

Kathleen

Good day, team,

While reading the newspaper this morning, I saw a quote from Akio Toyoda, the grandson of the founder of the Toyota Car Company. He said, “If I am going to be at the top of the car company, I want to be owner-chef: with knowledge not just of its vehicles but their ingredients. As such, I taste my car, and if it tastes good, I provide it to the customer.”

Mr. Toyoda is currently one of the possible candidates for the position of Toyota’s president. Just because he is the grandson of the founder doesn’t guarantee that he will get the position. He has to earn it. He’s already held many prestigious positions at Toyota, but he must also have an intimate knowledge of the company’s products. Part of the requirement for becoming president is 10 years of monthly, Toyota race-car training. Evidently, if you want to become the president of the world’s most successful car company, you have to drive the cars and understand on all levels what they feel like and how they perform.

The above-mentioned quote made me think about what it means to have first hand knowledge and experience with your product and its effect on your customer. How many companies actually require that their team members use the products or services they create? I once went to a bank to get a home equity line of credit. I asked the loan officer about customer service support to ensure that I would actually get to talk to a live person if I had a problem. I remember her saying, “Well, I don’t really know. I don’t bank here. I use my husband’s credit union because the service and rates there are much better.” Needless to say, that bank didn’t get my business.

Some of my clients are in the Internet business. Over the past few years, they have found themselves becoming more and more disillusioned by the type of work they’re doing. It used to be about designing the Web site for the user: making sure that whoever clicked into their site had the best possible experience. Nowadays, it’s about monetizing. That is, instead of focusing on the customer experience, companies try to maximize the number of ad impressions they can expose viewers to before driving them away. It makes me wonder if the people in the company who are concentrating on monetization actually go into the site and try to use it?

Your challenge this week is to take Mr. Toyoda’s advice and try to taste your business. If you’re in the service business, try using your service for a week. If you produce a product, try using the product. If you work in a company that has a production line, try working on the line for a day to see what your production team members actually experience. If you work at a call center, get on the phone with a customer and “taste” what you’re feeding the customer and also what the call representative is experiencing as well. It’s not enough to ask your customer what they’re experiencing; try having the experience yourself so you know first-hand what it feels like.

In the article, Mr. Toyoda also told one of his favorite stories, about three dentists. One advertised he was the best dentist in the world. The second dentist claimed to be the best in France, and the third dentist said only that he was the best in town.
“Everyone says Toyota is the best company in the world, but the customer doesn’t care about the world. They care if we are the best in town.” And when they buy a car, they care about whether this car, right here, right now, is the best for them.

This week, find out whether you’re the best in town by experiencing what you have to offer. Become your own customer and see what it tastes like.

Have a great week!

Kathleen