Category: Change

How To Conserve Your Energy at Work

Good day, team,

This week’s challenge is about the importance of managing your energy rather than your time.

In the June 2010 “Harvard Business Review,” Tony Schwartz, the CEO of the Energy Project, published an article titled “The Productivity Paradox: How Sony Pictures Gets More Out of People by Demanding Less.” Ten years ago, the Energy Project started to address the subject of work performance and the problem of employee disengagement after a poll of 90,000 employees worldwide revealed that only 21 percent feel fully engaged at work, whereas 40 percent are disenchanted and disengaged.

When the Energy Project discovered that burnout was one of the leading causes of disengagement, members of the staff decided to focus exclusively on helping people manage their energy instead of just their time.

According to Schwartz, “Time, after all, is finite. By contrast, you can expand your personal energy and also regularly renew it. Once people understand how their supply of available energy is influenced by the choices they make, they can learn new strategies that increase the fuel in their tanks and boost their productivity. If people define precise times at which to do highly specific activities, these new behaviors eventually become automatic and no longer require conscious will and discipline. We refer to them as rituals. They’re simple but powerful. They include practices such as shutting down your e-mail for a couple of hours during the day, so you can tackle important or complex tasks without distracting interruptions, or taking a daily 3 p.m. walk to get an emotional and mental breather.”

The article goes on to describe how the Energy Project designed an energy-management program for Sony Pictures, starting at the top of the organization. To date, more than 3,000 of the company’s 6,300 employees have been through the program and already the reaction to it has been overwhelmingly positive. More than 90 percent say it has helped them bring more energy to work every day. Eighty-four percent say they feel better able to manage their job’s demands and are more engaged at work. Despite the recession, Sony had its most profitable year to date in 2009.

Whether you set aside an uninterrupted 60 to 90 minutes each morning to focus on your top priorities or you intentionally breathe to calm down when something irritates you, there are many ways to renew yourself so you have enough energy to meet your needs. Here are some do’s and don’ts from the article to help you re-energize and renew:

DO’s
θ Take back your lunch—get away from your desk and leave the office so you can refuel.
θ Communicate what you value in others; write a note of appreciation to someone.
θ Cultivate creativity by setting aside an informal, relaxing space at work for creative thinking and brainstorming.
θ Share your passion by communicating what you stand for and what gets you up in the morning.

DON’TS

θ Avoid conflict by ignoring a situation. Don’t be afraid to have courageous conversations: communicate directly and honestly, with sensitivity.
θ Try to do multiple things at the same time. Make an effort to give people your full focus; try to listen and not interrupt (don’t be fooled into thinking you can multi-task: recent studies have shown that when we multi-task, our ability to do anything with proficiency goes down).
θ Be self-absorbed. It’s easy to make any situation all about you. Try stepping beyond your own immediate needs to better serve the needs of others; put yourself in someone else’s shoes.

On his website, Schwartz writes, “Leaders can easily underestimate how their attitudes and behaviors affect the energy levels of their teams. Because energy is contagious, both the quality and quantity of a leader’s energy can drain or galvanize a team.”

This week, try to take some time to renew yourself during the day. Maybe you take a short walk or invite one of your team members out for lunch. Perhaps you put the “do not disturb” sign on your cubicle or office and take the time to focus on a high-priority project. How about just letting people know what energy zone you’re in? My low point of the day is about 3 p.m., so I try not to have meetings from 3 to 4 since I know it’s hard for me to focus during that time. I have a friend who goes out to her car at 3 p.m. every day and takes a five-minute power nap. She always feels refreshed when she returns to her desk.

Life is movement and rest. Your energy is what gets you going and keeps you going, and it’s also what compels you to stop when you need more of it.

Have a good week,

Kathleen

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

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

Why We Hate To Be Wrong and Letting Go of Rightness

Good day, team,

This past week, it’s become increasingly clear to me that we do not like
to be wrong. I think this trait is pretty universal. Something in our
nature finds being wrong painful and hard to get over.

As often happens, just as I was thinking about this topic, I happened upon a
newspaper article about a former Portland journalist, Kathryn Schultz,
who’s written a book titled “Being Wrong.” Here are some highlights
from the book according to an interview with the author by Roxanne MacManus
of Willamette Week:

“In her first book, ‘Being Wrong,’ the author reveals there are many,
many ways to be wrong, from when our senses trick us into seeing an
optical illusion to our own memories of events. However, it turns out
that being wrong isn’t as big of a problem as the difficulty we have
with letting go of ‘rightness’ because it forces us to rethink how we
view ourselves and the world.”

In the interview, Schultz says, “I actually started thinking about
being right and how we’re all attached to that experience. I wondered,
‘Why do I want to be right? Why do I spend so much time proving my own
rightness?’

“I have this theory that we remove anything that is positive or
interesting from the category of ‘wrongness.’ We have such negative
associations with the idea of error that if something is good or makes
us happy, and we learn from it, then it’s suddenly not a part of
wrongness; happy surprises, sensory illusions, moments of illumination–
those happen because of wrongness, but we don’t think of it that way,
because we have such negative associations with the idea.

“I think the two hardest things to be wrong about are ourselves and
other people. I was in this relationship when I was 24 that I thought
would last forever. I was completely and totally wrong about that and
it was so painful, and part of the pain is wrongness–the shock in
thinking your life is going a certain way and then having that collapse.
After that, I traveled the world; I moved to New York; I became a
writer. Everything I love about my life came out of the catastrophic
collapse of those beliefs.

“The best part of being wrong is the possibility to come up with a new
idea. The experience of being wrong forces us to explore further, and to
me that experience of surprise and confusion, which can be disorienting,
it makes you see the world in a new way, and suddenly everything is new.”

I thought back to some of the difficult experiences I’ve had over the
past few months in my work and private life. In each case,
I thought I’d done something wrong or someone was telling me I was
wrong. This wrongness never fit with my imaginary picture of who I
think I am–in my work or as a friend or loved one. In each case, I was
disillusioned about my own sense of rightness and defended it in a
variety of ways to prove that I was not wrong. Never mind any lessons I
learned from being wrong, or new ideas I came up with once I realized
something wasn’t working: My insistence on being right was predominant.

This week, observe what happens in your interactions with others when
you’re trying to be right. Do you often correct others when you think
their facts are not right? Do you feel compelled to control a situation
to make it right? How about trying to make other people right?

Conversely, see how it feels to be wrong. What happens in your body
when someone points out that you’re wrong? Does your chest get tight?
Do you feel short of breath? Do you immediately become angry
or depressed? Do you become defensive?

Once you’ve observed the situation, experiment with not fixing what’s wrong.
Try not correcting others for a day or two to see how it feels.
Maybe you live with something that’s wrong for a few days, just to see
what can be learned from the experiment. If you’re editing a document,
you could intentionally not correct a misspelled word, just to see how
that makes you feel. Perhaps you could allow family and friends
to be wrong about something without offering a suggestion about how to make it
right. Or maybe you admit that you’re wrong and leave it at that.

On a larger scale, take a look at the belief you may hold about yourself as
being right most of the time. Why is that so important? Are you
preventing yourself from learning new things or having new experiences
because you’re tightly holding on to your image of yourself as being
right? How about having the courage to admit when you’re wrong and then
not beating yourself up internally because you were?

One of my clients said to me recently, “I’m not afraid to tell you when
I’m wrong. This is liberating for me. It gives me a brand new way to
look at things and opens up more possibilities for me.” This week, I
hope more of us can have this experience.

Have a good week!

Kathleen

*The quotes used in this challenge come from an article entitled,
“Hotseat: Kathryn Schulz, A former Portland journalist explains why
sometimes it’s right to be wrong.” by Roxanne Macmanus for the
Willamette Weekly.

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

The Benefits of Having a Hobby

Good day, team,

This week, it’s become increasingly clear to me that I need a hobby.
Frankly, the idea has never appealed to me. Maybe it’s just the word hobby.
My only association with it is hobby horse, which also did not sound very
desirable. Maybe it’s because no one in my immediate family had a hobby.
Or maybe it’s because activities like quilting or airplane model-making
didn’t light my fire.

This morning, I consulted a dictionary to try to change my attitude.
A hobby is “an activity or interest pursued for pleasure or relaxation
and not as a main occupation.” Then I realized why I need a hobby. It
would be good for me to engage in an activity that provides pleasure
and/or relaxation that’s not work-related.

Yesterday, I worked on a photo album to give our kids who are moving
from Oregon to Ohio. I started on it and when I next looked at the
clock, three hours had gone by and I hadn’t even noticed. I got so involved
with choosing the right photographs, sorting them, trimming the corners
to fit into the album, etc., that I wasn’t at all aware of the time going
by. I realized when my husband walked into the room that I was thirsty
and hungry, but I hadn’t even noticed. I looked around me and discovered
little bits of paper and photos all over the place and I hadn’t noticed
them either. It suddenly dawned on me that this little project had given
me energy. I had enjoyed working on it to such a degree that I totally lost
track of time and place.

This is part of what hobbies are all about: Doing something with our leisure
time that gives us energy. Finding a hobby we can do on our own, that gives
us enjoyment, satisfaction and a sense of renewal, seems to be essential
to achieving better balance in life.

My grandfather loved caring for his roses in the spring and summer. Each
day he would go out to the backyard and study the beautiful bushes that
lined the back of the house. I can still see him sitting in his canvas
garden chair, dressed in his work clothes and weather-beaten straw hat,
admiring his roses, their color and shape, checking how much sun they
were getting or whether he had pruned them right a few weeks back. Then,
he would take his clippers and his watering can and approach them with great
care. He put on his gloves, carefully snipped here and there, and gathered the faded
blossoms in a basket. Then he removed his gloves and got on his hands and
knees to feel how moist the soil was or to spread it where it had become uneven.

He did these things with surgical precision. Sometimes he would spray for bugs
or add extra fertilizer to the soil. Then he would sit again, sipping on iced
tea my grandmother had brought him, and admire his roses. Before he was finished for the
day, he would cut the flowers that he wanted to bring into the house. He created a small
bouquet in his gloved hand, eventually putting them into a basket to deliver to my
grandmother. It brought him great satisfaction.

In the winter months, he continued his research about roses, looking
through the many catalogs that came in the mail and choosing just the right
specimens to replace or add to his collection.

I often wondered why this retired attorney had turned to growing roses
as a hobby. When I asked my father about it, he replied, “Well, he
loved the finished product. Nothing made him happier than to see a
bouquet of fresh roses on the dining room table that he had picked for
your grandmother that day. He felt as though he had accomplished something
special for both of them.”

This week, your challenge is to choose a hobby or put more time and
attention toward the hobby you already have. Perhaps you decide to
learn to draw or to knit. Perhaps you’re interested in learning how to
make beer or to build small wooden toys for your kids or grandkids.
My husband’s hobby is playing keyboard on Wednesday nights with other musicians.
My sister lives in Hawaii and creates gorgeous pastels of the surrounding
landscape and ocean. My friend Kate rides her horse Indigo for pleasure and
relaxation.

So what will mine be? I’m not sure yet, but this week I’m going to concentrate
on finding it.

As Dale Carnegie advised, “Today is life–the only life you are sure of.
Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself
awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you.
Live today with gusto.”

Have a good week,

Kathleen

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

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

How Joy Regenerates Us

Good day, team,

Yesterday, after so many days of grey skies, hard rain and the kind of wet cold that you can never warm, the sun came out. There was not a cloud in the sky. I went outside. I stood in the sunlight. I took my first deep breath in two months. I soaked in every radiant particle. I experienced pure joy.

Here are two poems by Rumi that describe my feeling.

The Source of Joy

No one knows what makes the soul wake
up so happy! Maybe a dawn breeze has

blown the veil from the face of God.
A thousand new moons appear. Roses

open laughing. Hearts become perfect
rubies like those from Badakshan. The

body turns entirely spirit. Leaves
become branches in this wind. Why is

it not so easy to surrender, even for
those already surrendered? There’s no

answer to any of this. No one knows
the source of joy. A poet breathes

into a reed flute, and the tip of
every hair makes music. Shams sails

down clods of dirt from the roof, and
we take jobs as doorkeepers for him.

Joy

Joy moves always to new locations,
the ease of its flow never freezing.

A long winter’s tale is over. Now
with each spring day a new story.

This week, allow yourself the experience of pure joy. Perhaps it comes in that first bite of something incredibly delicious. Maybe you sink your nose into a fragrant rose and inhale that intoxicating scent. How about wrapping your arms around someone you love and allowing yourself to fully embrace them? Or when someone says something humorous, allowing yourself a big, full-bellied laugh that shakes your whole body to the core?

Give yourself the gift of joy this week. You deserve it!

Have a good week,

Kathleen

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

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

The Value and Necessity of Succession Planning

Good day team,

This past week, I’ve had an opportunity to talk with many of my business client’s about succession planning. In short, succession planning is the process one goes through to determine who in your organization could take your place and putting a plan together to insure your replacements development. Hopefully, you’ll be able to choose someone who could not only do your job, but perhaps, do it better than you are doing it now. When you do succession planning, you’ve managed to hire and develop someone who brings lots of commitment and talent, and as they gain competence and confidence, it becomes easier to replace yourself when the time comes.

More often than not, when I ask my clients if they have a clear successor, they often reply, “well, no, I’d have to hire someone from the outside.” This is a sad tale for the team member who is hoping to take their bosses place. We all know what it’s like to work for many years, trying to do a good job, impress your boss, have a positive impact on the bottom line, develop your team, be reliable, responsible and competent, working nights and weekends to get that big promotion, only to find out that your boss is hiring someone in over you because they don’t think you’re strong enough to do their job. A life’s work erased in a moment. Nothing can kill our internal motivation faster than that.

So, if not having a good succession plan causes you to risk losing one of your best team members, why wait so long to do this?

Years ago,while visiting Germany for the first time, I learned the importance of succession planning . It was my first trip to Europe and we visited family friends in Munich. One day, riding in a car on the autobahn, our host was talking about the surrounding landscape as we looked over well manicured, verdant fields. In the distance we could see a small forest of perfectly grown trees, all the same height and width, that looked like a bright green patch in a quilt. As we approached, I marveled at it’s beauty. How could trees grow with such precision? When I inquired, our host asked if we could see the small church that stood just a few yards from the small forest. He explained, “when that church was built over 150 years ago, the local people used the trees around the site to build it. Knowing that eventually, the beetles, or the weather, or fire, would destroy the wood, they built that stand of trees so that they could replace the wooden beams and sides of the building when it was necessary. To this day, they plant a new tree every time they harvest an older one to sustain the church.”

This is succession planning at it’s best. Metaphorically, knowing that you might sooner or later be eaten by beetles, get pummeled by bad weather, or burned by fire, you plant seeds that will grow into healthy trees that can be harvested to replace you.

This week, give some serious thought to who will succeed you and start putting together a plan to do it. We are often under the illusion that we will live forever and along with that comes the imaginary idea that we can continue to work at our current rate, with our current level of commitment and competency. This too shall pass, and who will be there to carry on?

As my husband went out the door this morning to continue working on the outdoor fire/pizza oven he’s building, he said, “I’m going outside to continue to work on that which will outlive me.” It made me think of our grandchildren lifting fresh cooked breads and pizzas out of the oven, feeling gratitude for their G-Pops for having thought about his successors.

Have a good week!

Kathleen

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

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

The Miracle of Renewal and Suggestions for How To Do It At Work

Good day, team,

This week, the message of renewal and regeneration is coming through loud and clear. It started mid-week when our daughter delivered her second baby. Upon holding him in my arms, seeing him for the first time, I marveled at the miracle of new life. Nine months had passed, and here was this robust and beautiful baby boy, arriving with all the hope and expectation that only a newborn can bring.

This weekend, I found myself herding a mother turkey and her 14 newborn chicks into a safer place after a truck passed by and sent all the chicks running to and fro on the road in a panic. Again, I marveled at how quickly these precious little chicks were adapting to their new environment and how vulnerable they are to life’s perils.

This morning, I read in the Sunday paper about the explosion of Mt. St. Helens that took place in Oregon in 1980 and the regeneration that has occurred since then. On that day 30 years ago, a column reaching 15 miles above the Earth pumped out volcanic ash for more than nine hours and darkened the skies for more than 100 miles. Today, the emergence of plants and animals from that destruction has amazed scientists and biologists alike.

Finally, I read an excerpt from a graduation speech President Obama gave at Notre Dame University. He said, “Ours is a history of renewal and reinvention, where each generation finds a way to adapt, thrive and push the nation forward with energy, ingenuity and optimism.”

So, having gotten the message, this week’s challenge is about renewal.

Here are some thoughts on the topic from the book “Leadership and the New Science” by Margaret Wheatley.

“Renewal is a time to tell the truth about what is so, and then to face that truth. It is the time to heal our selves; to remember who we are. And when we remember who we are, we bring our authentic selves forward.

“Renewal is a time to surrender what is no longer useful. There is often an aspect of death in renewal, as letting go may require the end of a way of thinking or operating, the end of a product line, closing down a factory, letting go of a dream. The very act of renewal is a surrender of doing. Renewal may or may not be experienced as struggle, depending on how attached we are to that which no longer serves us. Edith Weiner, in ‘Six Principles for Revitalizing your Planning,’ explains that ‘the initial key to effective strategic thinking is not learning, but rather forgetting. It requires unlearning and the shedding of old, misguided assumptions.’

“Once we let go, we often experience a sense of release and new energy. We also experience a sense of spaciousness. The often irresistible temptation is to fill that space immediately, as not knowing may be very uncomfortable. This space is best used as a time of questioning and allowing. This space may last a moment, a week, or several months or more in time. This space is the rich, fertile ground out of which true vision emerges.

“Here are some of the most common forms of support that exist during the renewal process:

–Collegiality and cooperation: friendly association with co-workers who are cooperative in their actions and constructive in their observations

–Acceptance: acknowledgment and approval

–Advocacy: backing and endorsement

–Permission to fail: leeway to make mistakes and learn from them

–Information: news about the business and the organization

–Feedback: data about one’s abilities, prospects and reputation

–Flexibility: options to tailor a job to one’s own strengths or circumstances

–Stress relief: reducing anxiety and tension by accommodating family and other outside demands, and preventing on the job hostilities

–No limitations: allowing people to take on as many challenges as they wish and to support them in stretching themselves so they are no longer limited by false ideas about what’s possible for themselves, their teammates or the organization.”

This week, your challenge is to apply some of these forms of support that naturally occur during the process of renewal. See where you have the opportunity to create something new, either in its own right or by transforming something old. Spring is a wonderful time for creating new life, new ideas and new approaches. Our ability to renew and regenerate ourselves and others is infinite. Take advantage of the season at hand and, as the president suggested, push forward with energy, ingenuity and optimism.

Have a good week,

Kathleen

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

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

The Importance of How We Communicate Non-Verbally

Good day, team,

This week’s challenge is about trying to communicate with people who don’t speak the same language we do and how we manage to get our message across even when we don’t understand the words.

Over the past few weeks, we have had friends visiting from France, and I have been reminded again of how important it is to spend time with people foreign to us. It’s so easy to think that the way we think and live are the same all around the world. People from elsewhere show us new ways to see and do things.

One of our guests doesn’t speak English, and my French is very elementary, so it’s been challenging to communicate. I’ve found myself relying on gestures and tone of voice to get my messages across. It’s been fun to attempt new French words by stretching my brain to find any kind of Latinate word that might be the root of an English or French word we’re trying to speak to each other. Surprisingly, many words in the two languages appear similar, but their pronunciations are so different that they’re unrecognizable.

Nevertheless, as human beings, we are masters at using every possible skill we possess to be understood. Last evening, I found myself making the motion of digging a trench to explain how we might dig up some dirt in the garden. And this morning, I was making the sound of bacon cooking to try to explain part of the breakfast menu. Along with these antics come much laughter and embarrassment: We are used to understanding and being understood without trying. But the truth is, we often communicate something very different than the words we are speaking.

When we have to rely on gestures, facial expressions and tone of voice, we realize how much we communicate nonverbally. How many times have you sat in a business meeting and heard someone saying one thing while his or her facial expressions convey a very different sentiment? Isn’t it interesting that, even over the phone, when someone stops listening to you, you can feel it? When my daughter-in-law tells my grandson, “Owen, you need to pick up your toys,” she uses a different tone the first time she says it than the third time. The words may be the same, but Owen finally realizes that he’d better pick up his toys this time or he’s going to be in trouble.

This week, notice your gestures, your tone of voice, and your facial expressions when you communicate. Do you use your hands a lot when you’re trying to emphasize something? Maybe your tone of voice becomes very different when you’re trying to communicate a sense of urgency. Pay close attention to the communication styles of the people around you. Does their tone of voice change depending on who they’re dealing with or what they’re attending to? Perhaps you see that peoples’ communication becomes more relaxed when they’re with their own team or their friends compared to when they’re with people they don’t know as well.

Whatever the case, try seeing how consistent you are in your communication. Do your facial expressions represent the same message that’s coming out of your mouth or are you sending out mixed messages? Are you using the right words to convey your message? How do you know if people actually understand you? You may find yourself resorting to the sort of charades I did last evening, acting out digging a trench, but if it helps others understand you and it’s more fun, why not try a new way to get your message across?

Have a good week!

Kathleen

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

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

What Will Your Legacy Be?

Good day, team,

Last weekend my family celebrated my father’s life at a ceremony at the Exeter Chapel, in Exeter, New Hampshire, where my Dad attended prep school in the 1930s. There, in this sacred and beautiful space, friends and family gathered to honor him and say our final good-byes.

As part of this week’s challenge, I would like to share an excerpt from the speech I gave about my father and what he left me. I offer it in hope that it will encourage each of you this week to ponder your legacy.

“To me, my father’s legacy is more than what you read about in his obituary. It’s not just where he went to school or what job he had or which organizations he supported. You won’t hear about it in the stories we tell about him. He didn’t create a philanthropic foundation or leave us a fortune or even leave us with only happy memories. There were many times throughout my life when we fought bitterly, judged each other severely, and hurt each other painfully. But, in the end, the legacy my father left me was to never be afraid to search for the truth, to find that kernel of light and love that exists all around us. He would often remind me that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living.’ He knew that in our constant drive to understand the external world, we often missed what is our greatest birth right, our ability to know the truth that lies in our heart of hearts and in our souls.

“My father always encouraged and inspired me to continue to be the explorer I was born to be. Although this didn’t guarantee that I would always find the right path, or become a high achiever, or leave the world a better place, it did insure my ability to keep that inner fire alive—and stoked—to feed that insatiable desire to see what’s at the heart of it all, whether it be in the light or the dark, and to live the questions. Upon telling him about my discovery of the no-thing, he seemed quite content and genuinely happy for me.

“You see, he was always an explorer himself. This was the guy who subscribed to ‘Astounding’ magazine for as many years as it was published and kept every single issue. He wrote amazing science fiction stories long before ‘Star Trek’ was televised. He questioned what he read in the newspaper each day and never stopped being amazed by the phenomenon of life in its simplest and most complex forms.

“He was never afraid to question our position in the universe or talk about whether God exists. And, for all his political conservatism, I believe that within his internal life, he embraced a kind of liberal freedom that showed up in his ability to accept everything that came his way. Ironically, he was as adamant about sticking to his daily routine as he was about allowing his thoughts and emotions to fly free. More importantly, he was able to love life to the fullest, whether it was in the sip of a good scotch, the telling of a good story, watching a perfectly thrown baseball, playing golf with his buddies, or listening to a favorite piece of music with his beloved wife, Barbara.

“When I asked him once whether there was a heaven or hell, he replied, ‘I believe that we make our own heaven or hell on this earth.’ Those of us who knew him well know he had both of these experiences in his lifetime. But whatever the case, he was never afraid to question what it all meant. This is the legacy I hope to leave to my grandchildren: four beautiful boys who look to their Nana and G-Pops for inspiration and the courage and freedom to explore the mysteries of life. Four beautiful boys who, although you never met them, Dad, will have been touched by you, nonetheless.

“On the day before he died, Barbara called me to tell me he was dying. I remember her saying that for the past three days, every person who walked into his room received the same reception. Now no longer able to speak, and perhaps knowing the inevitable, my father would take the hand of each visitor and hold it up to his cheek. In a moment of true intimacy, I like to think that my father was able to experience the great mystery he encouraged me to seek no matter what—the light and the love which burn eternally bright.”

This week, ask yourself, “What will I leave for the people I’ve worked with, the people I’ve loved and the world at large?” Your challenge is to give some thought to your legacy and see if you’re living the life that you’d hoped would create.

Have a good week!

Kathleen

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

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

The Importance of Experimenting With Different Leadership Styles

Good day, team,

This week, David Brooks, columnist for The New York Times, reminded me again how different leadership styles can be successful in his editorial “The Humble Hound.”

We all know typical maverick leaders who aggressively hit for the home run each time: They are aggressive, charismatic and super-confident. But we also know how risky that kind of leadership can be. If you go for the home run every time, you’ll more often strike out; these kinds of leaders often produce volatile corporate results.

In his editorial, Brooks refers to Jim Collins, the author of “Good to Great” and “How the Mighty Fall.” In researching his books, Collins found that many of the reliably successful leaders combine “extreme personal humility with intense professional will.”

Brooks calls this kind of leader the humble hound (I appreciate that Brooks refers to the leader as she rather than he in the article).

“She thinks less about her mental strengths than about her weaknesses. She knows her performance slips when she has to handle more than one problem at a time, so she turns off her phone and e-mail while making decisions. She knows she has a bias for caution, so she writes a memo advocating the more daring option before writing another advocating the most safe. She knows she is bad at prediction, so she follows Peter Drucker’s old advice: After each decision, she writes a memo about what she expects to happen. Nine months later, she’ll read it to discover how far off she was.

“In short, she spends a lot of time on metacognition—thinking about her thinking—and then building external scaffolding devices to compensate for her weaknesses.

“She knows the world is too complex and irregular to be known, so life is about navigating uncertainty. She understands she is too quick to grasp at pseudo-objective models and confident projections that give the illusion of control.

“She spends more time seeing than analyzing. Analytic skills differ modestly from person to person, but perceptual skills vary enormously. Anybody can analyze, but the valuable people can pick out the impermanent but crucial elements of a moment or effectively grasp a context. This sort of perception takes modesty; strong personalities distort the information field around them.

“Because of her limitations, she tries to construct thinking teams. In one study, groups and individuals were given a complicated card game. Seventy-five percent of the groups solved it, but only 14 percent of individuals did.

“She tries not to fall for the seductions that Collins says make failing organizations: the belief that one magic move will change everything; the faith in perpetual restructuring; the tendency to replace questions with statements at meetings.”

Brooks refers to the “ethos of stagehands who work behind the scenes. Being out when the applause is ringing doesn’t feel important to them. The important things are the communal work, the contribution to the whole production and the esprit de corps.”

This week, take a look at your leadership style. Are you acting like a lion or a humble hound? Are you quick to change things and expect your team members to always be on their toes by responding with a sense of urgency? Do you pride yourself on having the reputation of being aggressive, daring and self-assured? Are you being overly analytical by challenging everyone’s thinking, including your own, and missing what’s right in front of you in the moment? Would people describe you as humble and patient or as being bullish in your thoughts and actions? When was the last time you said to a subordinate, “I really need your help”?

Whatever type of leader, manager or supervisor you are, try to see the value in being versatile in your leadership style. This week, experiment with different styles. If you usually lead meetings and are often vocal in them, try letting someone else lead the meeting and staying quiet so you can listen. Take Drucker’s suggestion and write down your decisions, reviewing them months later to see how good they turned out to be. Maybe you experiment by being more active and aggressive if you normally are not. It might be a good surprise for people around you to see you behave differently. They will be less apt to make assumptions about who you are if you don’t fit the same picture they’ve already painted of you.

Good leadership requires authenticity and consistency as much as it benefits from versatility in thought and behavior. Try exercising that versatility this week and see what the results turn out to be.

Have a good week.

Kathleen

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

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

* The coach will be out of town the weekend of 4/17/10. The next challenge will be sent out 4/27/10.

The Dangers of Ready Comprehension

Good day, team,

I am pleased to offer as this week’s challenge the weekly sales thought from Nick Miller*, president of Clarity Advantage Corp., a sales consulting firm in Concord, Mass. (http://www.clarityadvantage.com/). Nick writes one of these columns each week and since I’m on his mailing list, I receive good sales advice from him every Sunday. I always appreciate his writing, but the following suggestion in particular stuck out as useful.

“Ready Comprehension”

“In which we are reminded to listen beyond the point at which we think we know the solution to a client’s problem or challenge.

“Packing some boxes for the office move that’s two weeks away, I found my 25-year-old copy of “Dune,” one of Frank Herbert’s inspiring, disturbing science fiction novels. Through his novels, Herbert wrote about several themes, including governments, power, and knowledge. In one, he wrote (read this slowly), ‘Ready comprehension is often a knee-jerk response and the most dangerous form of understanding. It blinks an opaque screen over your ability to learn. The judgmental precedents of law function in that way, littering your path with dead ends.’

“The first sentence is worth reading again. ‘Ready comprehension is often a knee-jerk response and the most dangerous form of understanding.’ In the sales world, we tell our clients and prospects, ‘My experience helps me understand your challenges and recommend solutions that will help you reach your goals.’ We ask questions, looking for familiar patterns and business issues. Finding one, we think eagerly, ‘Ah, I see the picture’ [our ‘ready comprehension’] and expertly pronounce product information and stories about our success with other clients [our judgmental precedents].

“When we work from our ‘ready comprehension’ experience in this way, we risk the ‘opaque screen’ blinking over our abilities to learn because we leap to conclusions too fast, based upon our judgmental precedents. Limited by the opaque screen, we stop asking questions once we think we have enough information to support pitching an idea or a product. We hear ‘objections’ [the ‘dead ends,’ in Herbert’s quote] when we recommend solutions that don’t fit because we responded based on ‘ready comprehension’ rather than digging for deeper understanding. Herbert wrote elsewhere, ‘The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something that we don’t understand.’

“To serve our clients best, we must discover things about them that we may not understand and for which they don’t have ready answers—e.g., asking questions about their goals, strategies, personal and business values, policies and preferences, and trade-offs among alternatives. Such discussion creates new knowledge leading to recommendations that are different and more valuable than those our competitors may suggest.”

Your challenge this week is to watch out for “ready comprehension” and try waiting a moment before you jump to conclusions, make assumptions or just act as though you know it all. Be prepared to dig a little deeper and question your reflexive answers and assumptions.

Have a good week,

Kathleen

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

*Many thanks to Nick for allowing me to reprint this. If you’re interested in receiving his weekly sales thought, you can access it on his Web site: http://www.clarityadvantage.com/. You can contact him directly if you’re interested in finding out more about his services.

Nick Miller
(office) 978-897-5665 (mobile) 508-733-3754
Clarity Advantage Corp.
(c) Clarity Advantage Corp., 2010. All rights reserved.