Category: Executive Leadership

Staying True to What You Value Most

Good day team,
This week’s challenge is about remembering what you asked for and staying true to what’s most important.

Here’s a story that illustrates how easy it is to drift away from core values.

In my first meeting with a prospective client, I often ask these three questions:
1. What’s your vision for what you want to achieve?
2. What lessons have you learned from past experiences that prevented you from achieving a vision?
3. How do you think a coach can help you realize your vision?

The answers to these questions set the foundation of our relationship. They are typically very positive and full of optimism:
“I want to create a profitable company that provides good jobs for others and has a positive impact on the world.”
“I see a team of people who are creating new processes that make our jobs easier to do and the team is happier because of the improvements we’ve made.”
“I want to create a company that is highly innovative – where creativity and new ways of thinking are encouraged in everything we do.”
“I want my employees to feel empowered, come to work everyday because they love what they do, and feel passionate about our products and customers.”
“I want to lead my people but not micromanage them so they continue to feel like we’re in partnership and able to take ownership at the same time.”

We build plans based upon their answers and begin a program of coaching and training to create the kind of environment that makes their visions achievable. This works well until my client starts to veer away from the original ask.

Here’s an example.

Bill is the CEO of a start-up company. He left his job as the lead software engineer and started his own company to get out from under a boss that was too demanding and controlling. He dreamed of creating a company where he could hire a team of smart people who wanted to work collaboratively and loved to be challenged. He came up with a brilliant design for a new product, created a business plan for his start-up and sold the whole idea to some investors. Bingo – Bill had a small office, two partners from his previous company, and enough money in the bank to get his product launched.

The first six months Bill was in business he decided to hire me to help him navigate the tough waters of creating a new business. We worked to articulate a core set of values that would help Bill lead the team , stay true to what was important to them, and put their values into action. We did exercises that helped the team understand one other’s behaviors and strengths, and provided tools that could aid them in their collaborative efforts. As his brand began to develop, we made sure that his vision and values were expressed in all corporate communications – both internal and external. It was a strong start – the product was getting a great response from the public, the team was happy and highly committed, and Bill was living his dream. Year one passed with flying colors – happy team members – happy investors – happy Bill.

Into the second year, given the pressures of running a new business, things began to change. People worked harder and harder and stress levels rose. Under stress, team members spent more time in their back-up behaviors, attacking others and defending themselves rather than collaborating. In a frantic effort to keep up, Bill began to take more control of the day-to-day operations afraid that if he didn’t, the whole thing would crash and burn. He unleashed the autocrat within. He placed more demands on those around him, trusted his teammates less and began to micromanage the entire operation. As his coach, I tried to point out that things were out of control. His behavior ran counter to his expressed values. “I’d like to stay true to my vision and values, said Bill. But honestly, I don’t have time to think about those things right now. I’m the CEO of a start-up and this business is blowing way past any of our original expectations – it’s all I can do to just keep up.”

So, how could I help Bill? How could I help get him back on track?

I asked Bill for a time out. This wasn’t easy for him to do, since he was moving at break-neck speed to keep up with his daily challenges. He was now so involved in other people’s jobs, that he had no time stop and reflect. He was CEO, chief product office, and the head of sales, etc. I needed Bill to step back and re-examine what he intended for his company. Was his behavior reflective of his company’s values? And, most importantly, did Bill see what was being sacrificed in his attempts to have a successful company?

Bill needed to make a choice. He couldn’t go north and south at the same time. He couldn’t take more and more control and become more dominant if he wanted his people to feel empowered. He wouldn’t be able to have a highly successful team if the customers and investors saw Bill as a success but not the team. As one of his original partners said to me, “I’m not Bill’s partner anymore – I’m an order taker.”

Fortunately, Bill was able to stop long enough to hear me and his original partners early one Saturday morning over breakfast. Underneath it all, he knew that he was spinning out of control. He had the best of intentions but he wasn’t the kind of owner, CEO and business partner he had originally intended to be. With the help of his original two partners, he was able to ease up on the reins. He stopped dictating, asked more questions and fostered more dialogue. Even more impressively, he let the investors know that he was not willing to sacrifice the core values of his business in order to meet their short term expectations. He re-committed to the original core values to create a more sustainable environment for the team in the long run. As he said to me, “I was killing the spirit in the place and until I stopped, I was not even aware of it.”

This week, ask yourself if you are becoming more controlling as the demands of your business or your department increase. Are you staying true to your core values and vision? How have your behaviors changed? Do you have a way of getting honest feedback from others? Are you sacrificing the long term health of your company or team for short term gains? Are you dictating or inspiring and empowering others?

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” Antoine De Sainte-Exupery

Have a good week,

Kathleen

© Copyright 2014 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search Inc., all rights reserved.

How Alignment Connects Execution to Vision

Good day, team.

This week’s challenge is about the importance of alignment in organizations.

I’ve been reading an excellent book, “The Work of Leaders: How Vision, Alignment and Execution Will Change the Way You Lead” by Julie Straw, Mark Scullard, Susie Kokkonen and Barry Davis. The book starts out by describing two scenarios:

“Scenario One: The CEO sends out an email announcing the company’s ambitious sales goals and then takes the afternoon off to go golfing. The employees are left with no clear process, no strategy and no delegation of responsibilities. Without direction or rationale, everyone is worried about making mistakes. There are whisper sessions along the rows of cubicles. When something goes wrong, the finger-pointing begins. Trust and morale are low, and this is reflected not only in their ability to execute but also in interactions with their customers.”

“Scenario Two: At the quarterly all-company meeting, the CEO stands before a simple map of the company’s strategy. ‘These are the three platforms that lead to our success,’ he says. ‘If your work isn’t related to or supporting one of these things, then please stop what you’re doing because you’re not working on the right stuff.’ Since clearly establishing this vision, the company has been aligned from the CFO who tracks the top line to the customer-facing people who work on the front lines. All are focused on what they need to do to execute the vision, and all are invested in the process. They openly collaborate, challenge one another and celebrate accomplishments as they reach milestones.”

Obviously, we know which scenario makes the most sense and will yield the best results. And yet, we’ve all seen many variations of Scenario One play out in our work environments. We see people working away, often having way too much to do without a strong sense of how their efforts are helping the company meet its goals. Often, the goals change frequently, and communication to employees may or may not relate to the strategic vision. It’s hard for people to connect what they’re doing every day to the company’s overall success unless someone connects the dots for them, and that’s a big part of what leaders’ jobs are all about.

Warren Bennis, author of numerous best-selling books about leadership said, “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” This is certainly a big part of a leader’s responsibility to insure an organization’s success. But, equally as important, is the ability for a leader to verify that the execution going on within the organization supports that vision.

Many of my clients who are managers complain to me that their people are working on the wrong things. “Why can’t they prioritize?” is the question they often ask. Some people do have more difficulty making distinctions when analyzing what’s the most important thing to do. However, often the reason people can’t prioritize is not because they’re lacking in that skill, but because they don’t know enough about the company’s vision or goals to know what to prioritize. They have loads of stuff to do, and unless someone above them has made it really clear what’s most important, they will just keeping doing the stuff as it comes up.

Employee alignment is too often left out of the equation. I call it the glue securing that the vision (what leadership has envisioned or the end goal) and execution (what people are doing) come together in reality.

Straw and Davis’ book goes on to give leaders three areas that require the most focus when helping to achieve employee alignment:

• Clarity
o Explaining rationale
o Structuring messages

• Dialogue
o Exchanging perspectives
o Being receptive

• Inspiration
o Being expressive
o Being encouraging

This week, ask yourself if you’re giving the right kind of information about the vision and strategy of your company so that your team members can align their duties. When asking employees to prioritize, are you clear and do you offer concrete ways for them to support the vision? Also, how inspiring is your communication? Do you keep changing the goals, making it difficult for your team members to hit their targets? And, are you receptive to their ideas about better ways to execute in order to meet the goals?

People can toil endlessly doing things that may not make your vision take shape. Make sure you haven’t left out the glue that makes everything come together. Without alignment, your ship could go in a completely different direction than you wanted and your people will only get more and more tired as they row in the wrong direction.

Have a good week!

Kathleen

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

Introverts As Leaders

Good day, team.

This week’s challenge is about introverts and their ability to lead and manage others.

Our culture fosters a misconception that people who are introverted by nature do not make good leaders or even know how to manage others. This idea comes from years of conditioning by extroverted leaders who naturally know how to actively persuade and direct others. Take Bill Clinton, for example; he’s a classic extroverted leader. Whether you agree with his politics or not, you can’t argue that he does have a talent for being able to influence large numbers of people through highly persuasive public speaking and politics. Although some people found his behaviors to be questionable while he was in office, there was no doubt that he could lead people to get what he wanted and generally brought both parties together to reach agreements.

There are many good examples of extroverted politicians and leaders, but highly introverted people are usually not in that same category. Introverts are usually more analytical than verbal. They tend to avoid risk and conflict. They don’t tend to be natural cheer leaders or aggressive sales people. We might describe them as “nerds,” and we rarely think of them as people who can lead the charge, rally the troops or inspire the team.

This is an inaccurate perception, however. In fact, I work with many introverted leaders. They bring their special talents and thoughtfulness to the team with just as much ability to influence and inspire, but they do it differently than their extroverted team mates. They often wait until the rest of the team has argued about an issue before they offer their solutions. Their enthusiasm and passion about a product, process or service offering might show up in the way they share innovative ideas or their ability to help others figure out how to get things done. They inspire trust through sincerity and authenticity rather than by impress others. And they often make others feel comfortable enough to openly share new ideas as well as adhere to processes to get things done.

While the extroverts cheer the team on, the introverts deliver the goods. An introverted leader will influence the overall team and company results by helping the cheerleaders figure out how to deliver a solution. In this way, an introverted leader or manager is a great example for the other introverts on the team.

I have one client who told me, “I often don’t say anything in meetings. I’ll have a thought, but then the analytical part of me talks me out of saying it because it doesn’t add enough value to the meeting.” When his boss gave him feedback that he needed to speak up more, he couldn’t think of anything very useful to say. This often happens to introverts. They have extensive internal filtering systems and will lose an opportunity in the moment to share because they’ve filtered out the idea or are not fast enough in their response. Of course, it’s also aggravating for them to sit through lengthy meetings where the extraverts seem to talk just to hear themselves speak.

Dwight Merriman, chairman and co-founder of Mongo DB and DoubleClick, is a self-proclaimed introvert. He thinks it’s a myth that most CEOs are extroverts. In a recent New York Times interview, he spoke about his leadership style as an introvert.

“I think my style is pretty plainspoken and non-hype — and to be transparent. Some people might be sincere, but you don’t feel that air of transparency because they’re too busy selling and everything is pitched with an extra 10 percent.”

When asked about public speaking, which is often an introvert’s greatest fear, he said, “I think 95 percent of the time you can get past [your fear of public speaking] with sheer brute force. I remember public-speaking class in college. I really didn’t want to do it. But today, when I give talks to 1,000 people, I’m not nervous at all. I think you get used to it. You just have to force yourself out of your comfort zone.”

In referring to ways he thinks he can improve, Merriman said, “I don’t give people enough positive feedback and praise. That’s an example of how I’m not a natural-born awesome manager. Even though I might be thinking it, I’ll just fail to vocalize it. You get busy and distracted with meetings and running from here to there, and it’s hard to stay mindful of things like that.”

Because he is a naturally shy person, Merriman says he is much more comfortable with one-on-one short conversations and prefers using e-mail for minor communications. When it comes to giving more difficult feedback, however, he always uses face-to-face meetings where the awareness of body language is important.

In their book “Strengths-Based Leadership,” Tom Rath and Barry Conchie profile Brad Anderson, the CEO of Best Buy, and outline his five top strengths. Anderson is a great example of a highly introverted leader who identified his strengths and built a company around them. He spent much of his childhood in libraries, loving the process of studying what made things work and generating lots of ideas. When he started Best Buy, he wanted to create a company of people who knew more about the products they sold than their competition. This idea of expertise was his value proposition, and he built the company’s culture around it. As it turned out, much of Best Buy’s success has been because it has the most knowledgeable sales people in the industry. It’s a great example of how an introverted leader used his strengths to build a profitable business, rather than trying to act like an extrovert.

Rath and Conchie describe Anderson this way: “As much as Anderson’s look and demeanor may not fit the conventional CEO mold, his actions and personality wander even farther off the beaten path. Yet, over the past 25 years, Anderson took an unknown regional electronics store and helped make it into the largest consumer electronics retailer in America. The amazing story of his career’s trajectory is only overshadowed by the organization’s performance during his tenure.”

They described him looking and acting more like a history professor than a CEO. And yet, they also wrote that his sincerity and level of warmth make him one of the most approachable people they’d ever met and that the employees of Best Buy love him for that. In fact, it inspires them to be that way with their customers.

If you’re an introvert by nature, think of ways this week that you can maximize your more quiet and thoughtful ways. Perhaps you notice that you bring a level of calmness into a meeting that makes others relax and feel more like participating. Maybe your analytical disposition allows you to study a problem for a long time and come up with good solutions for the team. Don’t be afraid to share those ideas, even after all the extroverts have expressed their thoughts. Consider taking a public speaking class so that you can learn to speak more comfortably in front of groups. Your approach will be different than someone who naturally does well in front of a crowd, but that won’t make you less effective. It will just be a difference in style.

What strengths do you bring to the table and how can you showcase them best? That’s the real question. No one expects any of us to be great at all things, and each of us needs to find the areas where we add the most value. The world would be a pretty boring place if we all lead and managed others in the same way. Build your management and leadership styles around your strengths as Anderson did at Best Buy. Not only will you be happier doing it in your own signature style, but others will see your authenticity. Studies have shown that people feel more encouraged following a leader who they see as being true to themselves rather than trying to act like someone they’re not. And that’s as true for introverts as it is for extroverts.

When Rath and Conchie asked Anderson how he was able to provide leadership for more than 150,000 Best Buy employees, Anderson described the critical role of his self-awareness and authenticity. While he may not be a natural at working a room or chatting up a store full of front-line employees, he has developed a unique way of connecting with Best Buy employees, customers and shareholders. He simply asks great questions.

You can lead others in a number of more introverted ways. Find your particular style — what really works best for you — and try that out with your employees this week. You may not influence the team like Bill Clinton would, but if you can be true to yourself, people will want to follow your authenticity and unique strengths.

Have a good week!

Kathleen

*Note: For more information on this subject, there’s a wonderful new book entitled “Quiet”, by Susan Cain that I highly recommend.

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

Horse Sense #3 -Give Them Some Rope

Good day, team.

This week’s challenge, “Give Them Some Rope,” is the third installment in my Horse Sense series. If you’ve been following my horse adventures, you know that I’ve leased a wonderful horse named Treasure for the summer. Over the past three months, Treasure has taught me many lessons, some of which I’ve tried to capture in my weekly writing.

Last week, Treasure taught me about allowing her to do it her way and not imposing my will on her. And that’s the theme of this week’s challenge, too.

This past Friday, I went out to Kozy Manor, the stables where Treasure lives, for my weekly horse lesson. I found her out in the pasture, happily enjoying her breakfast in the company of another mare. Convincing a horse that being haltered and put on a lead rope in such a pastoral setting where she’s been allowed to roam free and eat good grass, is no easy task. But this morning, Treasure only snorted at me a few times when I put the halter around her head.

I intended to work with her on a much longer lead line, so I walked her out to the open arena where we’d have plenty of room. I hooked her halter to a 24-foot rope rather than the usual 12-foot rope, knowing that this would give her lots of room to move, but it would be much more challenging for me to control her.

Treasure immediately tested the length of the rope, and I suddenly realized the power of this animal. She moved around a lot faster than usual, and the pull on the rope was much greater than I was accustomed to. As she pulled harder on the rope, so did I, and each time I yanked the rope back, she would stop and face me with a confused look on her face. Why was I giving her all this freedom only to try and stop her? It was a mixed message for sure.

As I worked with Treasure that morning, I saw the same phenomenon over and over again. I would instruct her to do something for me, give her lots of lead rope to do it, and then, when I was afraid that I was losing control, I would yank her back. Instead of teaching her how to do something, I was confusing her. There had to be a better way! My growing anxiety and frustration only increased my inability to work successfully with her.

We often do this exact thing with people who work for us. We ask them to do something and give them lots of freedom to do it. And then when we become afraid that something isn’t going quite right, we yank the rope back, so to speak, to get them under our control. Meanwhile, the mixed message this tactic sends creates resentment and confusion. Have you ever heard the phrase, “They’re jerking my chain”? That’s a phrase I often hear from my clients when their boss suddenly tries to take back a project or assignment after things aren’t going quite right.

At one point in my lesson with Treasure, she actually did what I asked her to do but she did it going in the wrong direction. I yanked hard on the rope, and my teacher asked me, “Why didn’t you recognize that she did what you asked her to?” And I said, “Because she didn’t do it the way I wanted her to.” My teacher laughed. “Really?” she said. “Did you want her to do it the way she’s learning to do it or the way you expected her to do it? And why are you so anxious about giving her lots of room to learn? If you keep yanking on that rope, she’ll never be able to work it out. You’ll just continue to frustrate both of you. Try holding the rope closer to where she is and when she pulls on it, let the rope slide through your hands for a foot or so and then slowly pull on it. This will let her know that she’s got room to learn and will encourage her to work it out. And don’t forget to let her know when she actually does what you’re asking her to do. It may not be exactly as you envisioned, but recognizing that she did what you asked is key to her learning.”

How many times do we ask others to do something for us, but because they don’t do it exactly the way we want them to, we forget to recognize what they’ve accomplished? So many times my clients have said to me, “Geez, what do they want? They asked me to take ownership for this project, and then they swooped back in and took over when I didn’t do it exactly the way they expected. It’s so frustrating! First they empower me, and then they micro-manage me!”

This week, take a look at how you manage others in this context. Are you giving them a mixed message by asking them to take over a project or an assignment and then taking it back when you see it’s not going as you expected? Are you appreciating the way others do things even if its different from the way you would do it? Is your fear of losing control motivating you to jump back in and take over?

Try doing what my teacher suggested ― give them more rope. It doesn’t mean you let the rope go. It means that when you feel the urge to yank the rope back, let some more of it go instead. Then if you still see that you need to pull on the rope, do it gently. Try giving someone the space they need to learn how to do something even if it takes them briefly in the wrong direction. There’s a lot to be learned by taking a detour off any given path. Going in the wrong direction first is often what helps us learn how to make our way back to where we need to be.

Recognizing how someone learns to do something is key to good management and mentorship. Perhaps the only way my horse could do what I asked her to do in that moment was to go in the opposite direction. I envisioned her going to the right, but she managed to do it going to the left. Because she didn’t go exactly as I thought she should, I missed the most important part ― that she did what I really wanted her to do. If I’d given her more rope, I might have seen that she gave me what I was asking for, even if it wasn’t exactly how I wanted her to do it. Most important, in those few feet of rope, I could learn that by releasing rather than yanking, we both stay involved in the learning.

As Benjamin Franklin wrote;

“Tell me, and I forget. Teach me, and I remember. Involve me, and I learn.”

Have a good week!

Kathleen

P.S. The coach will be on vacation for a few days. The next challenge will be published on 9/29/13

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

The Harm of High Self-Orientation

Good day, team.

This past week, an article I read in The New York Times by David Brooks got me thinking about self-orientation. The piece was about Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriquez and how, over the years, he has become more and more preoccupied with himself and his image. This week’s challenge looks at how this type of self-orientation can separate a person from his or her team, friends and family. These folks become the center of their own universe and forget that anyone else is around.

Self-preoccupation didn’t happen to Rodriguez naturally. It happened after promoters, agents and owners saw a rare talent and the money it could generate. Here’s part of what Brooks wrote:

“Rodriguez was a baseball prodigy from his earliest years. He batted an insane .505 his senior year in high school and had as many as 100 scouts at every game. When he was drafted first overall by the Seattle Mariners, he hired the super agent Scott Boras, who damaged whatever chances Rodriguez had of becoming a normal human being.

“Boras turned him into a corporate entity. In her book, ‘A-Rod,’ Selena Roberts reported that in the middle of his first contract negotiations, Boras had Rodriguez read a statement accusing the Mariners of being ‘low class.’ In other words, he was told to attack his first organization in order to squeeze a few dollars out of them. From the beginning, Rodriguez’s preoccupation was not with team, it was with self.

“By the time Rodriguez became a free agent, he was the marketing facade of A-Rod Inc. When negotiating with the New York Mets, Rodriguez’s handlers asked for the use of a private jet, a special hotel suite when on the road and a personal marketing staff. By the tine he reached the Texas Rangers, according to Roberts, a clubhouse attendant was required to put a dab of toothpaste on his toothbrush before every game.”

All of this led to an overly inflated ego that is insatiable in its quest for more and more attention. At the same time, Rodriguez has become overly sensitive to that attention. Ironically, the very special talents that lead him down this road are now threatened by his inability to deal with them. He has developed a reputation for caring more about his personal statistics than his team winning.

How does this happen to people? How do people become so overly concerned with their own performance, their own status (such as job titles and how high up they are on an organizational chart), their own ideas and even their own daily lives that they separate themselves and lose their ability to connect with others?

Like Rodriquez, many people with special talents get targeted by others who want to turn them into superstars. The great injustice is that once they become stars, it’s harder to relate to the team or the family. This alienation makes it more difficult to access their special talents, and the constant preoccupation with themselves continues to separate them. Being special can be a lonely place, and we often see superstars turn to drugs and alcohol to numb that feeling of being disconnected and alone.

As Brooks so aptly put it:

“My theory would be that self-preoccupied people have trouble seeing that their natural abilities come from outside themselves and can only be developed when directed toward something else outside themselves. Enclosed in self, they come to believe that their talents come from self, are the self. They have no outside criteria that tell them what their talents are for or when they are sufficient. Locked in a cycle of insecurity and attempted self-validation, their talents are never enough, and they end up devouring what they have been given.”

In the work environment, it’s difficult to trust people who constantly frame events in relation to how they affect them personally rather than how they affect the overall team. They are so self-oriented that we can’t trust them to be there for us when we need them. Part of good teamwork is sacrificing our own gains so that the team wins in the end. And part of belonging to the whole is knowing that we are only one part of that whole and not the entire thing.

This week, try to witness your own level of self-orientation. Are your unique talents and experience balanced with the talents of others on the team? Do you find that you dominate meetings by showcasing your talents? Do you give others the space to showcase theirs? How much time do you spend thinking about yourself during the day? Do you interpret almost all situations from the perspective of how this affects you rather than the broader view of the team? Do you compete with your peers to be the fastest, smartest, most creative and innovative, or most powerful? Do you throw others under the bus to gain the most advantage?

Each of us has sense of self. That self is often defined by the world around us and the people with whom we have the most interactions. As we age and acquire more wisdom, we see that these definitions may be pretty good when it comes to describing how we show up in the world, but they don’t really define our true selves at all. How we appear to others becomes less important. Rather than allow others to define whether we’re good or successful or special, we eventually learn to access our true selves. When we are in touch with our true self, we can more readily share ourselves with others. We revel in a sense of belonging and naturally desire to be true to what’s important to the group overall. When we alienate ourselves, we ultimately suffer. When we become overly preoccupied with our own concerns, our ability to embrace other people disappears.

People who have healthy self-esteem naturally value other people’s sense of self as well. Kindness and consideration of others predominates. These people consider what their team members need to be more successful. They encourage their team to be more considerate of other teams within the company, knowing that if they all win, the company wins. They think of ways to step back to allow others to shine.

Try experimenting with your self-orientation this week by intentionally putting yourself in your teammates’ shoes. What’s challenging for them and how can you help? How are they feeling about the project and what does it look like from their perspective? How can you reach beyond your own concerns to help a family member or friend?

William B. Given, Jr., the famous business author wrote:

“Whenever you are too selfishly looking out for your own interest, you have only one person working for you — yourself. When you help a dozen other people with their problems, you have a dozen people working with you.”

Have a good week!

Kathleen

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

Finding Meaning and Purpose

Good day, team.

This week’s challenge is about finding meaning and purpose in our work and how that contributes to our overall happiness and sense of well-being.

Over 60 years ago, the famous Austrian psychologist Viktor Frankl wrote a book called “Man’s Search for Meaning,” cited by the Library of Congress as one of the 10 most significant books ever written. In his book, Frankl wrote that happiness cannot be pursued; it ensues as a result of living a life with meaning and purpose. The more directly you pursue happiness, the less likely you are to achieve it. Although pursuing happiness may result in momentary pleasure, it doesn’t lead to an authentic, soul-satisfying happiness that can come from living a life with meaning and purpose.

Frankl taught that people can discover meaning and purpose in three ways: by doing work that matters, by loving others unconditionally and by finding meaning in their suffering. When I read this, I understood the first two, but understanding the third took some time and thinking. In Frankl’s case, he was interned by the Nazis in 1942 and lived in concentration camps for three years. In reading about his captivity, I realized that he survived this horrible ordeal by believing that his life had a purpose and that all of his suffering was not in vain. His survival had everything to do with how he responded to his circumstances. If we suffer and think it’s because our luck has run out, we didn’t get a fair break or someone else has done us wrong, we feel nothing but despair. But if we choose to find meaning in our suffering, we can change our attitude about our difficult circumstances.

Many of us have heard the phrase, “Attitude is everything.” I think in this context, much of what Frankl wrote about illustrates the phrase. Each of us experiences loss and suffering in our lives, and there are many ways we can deal with it. For example, a few years ago, when my business was suffering because of the economic downturn, I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to continue. However, instead of allowing myself to worry, I decided to use my time to study new coaching techniques and take some training courses. When business is good and I’m busy, I don’t have time to take the training that keeps my skills sharp. When I look back now, I realize how smart it was for me to use my time in this way. Instead of allowing depression to creep in and waste my time, I chose to use the time to my advantage. I still worried but not to the extent I would have if I hadn’t chosen to fill my time productively.

What helped me most during this time was the realization that I was able to do some good in the world. I wanted to keep coaching because I could see the value it brings to others. That deeper meaning gives me a sense of purpose. That sense of purpose helps me navigate through the obstacles that always come up when you run your own business and gives me a strong sense of determination to keep going.

This week, ask yourself if the work you do is meaningful? You don’t have to be on a mission to save the world. Each of us does small things every day that contribute to the well-being of others. The trick is to find the meaning in what you do, whatever it is. For example, there’s a dog-walking service down the street from my house and a small park about ½ block in the other direction. Each morning, a woman walks all kinds of dogs past my house down to the park for a run. She always smiles and waves at me when she walks by. One day, I was out on the sidewalk and I asked if I could pet the dog she had on leash. I remarked that I thought she was lucky to have a job working with dogs all day. She told me that she loved it. Although some dogs were pretty challenging, most of them loved going for their daily walks. She said it made her happy to be doing something that brought joy to the dogs. And she was glad to help out their owners, who because of work and other obligations didn’t have time to walk their dogs every day.

I realized that this woman probably doesn’t make much money. But her authentic happiness is easy to see. She loves what she does and finds meaning and purpose in it.

Discover what you do in a day that benefits others. Maybe you work in a financial function for a company and make sure that people get paid every two weeks. Or perhaps you work in a restaurant and enjoy bringing good food to your customers. How about writing computer code that enables others to access better information or redesigning the way something works so it’s easier for others to use? Maybe, like me, you work with people as a coach or a consultant and try to help them maximize their strengths or find better ways to accomplish things.

Stay-at-home parents who spend their days caring for their children, garbage collectors, bank tellers —the work these people do adds value to the lives of others. How we relate to the roles we play in our jobs is up to us. Our attitude toward what we do and our ability to find the meaning and purpose in it determines our happiness.

As Frankl said, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Have a good week!

Kathleen

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

The Beauty of Small Meetings

Good day, team.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a good week!

Kathleen

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

Horse Sense #2 – Getting The Message Across

Good day team,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a good week!

Kathleen

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

What Body Language Can Tell You

Good day, team.

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

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

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

Are You Mad At Me?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

Have a good week!

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