Category: Executive Leadership

Focus On Your Customer

Good day, team.

This week’s challenge is about the importance of focusing on your customer. “Customer” comes from Middle English and is defined as “a person who purchases goods or services from another.” The Middle English word is derived from the Latin word consuescere, which means “to accustom,” and the Medieval Latin custumarius or custom means “a usage or practice common to many.”

From these definitions, we can see that the word “customer” comes from customizing a good or a service that someone else wants to buy. If you go into a store, for example, and you don’t see anything you want, then you won’t buy anything. But if you see something that has been customized for you, made specifically based on your needs or wants, then chances are good that you’ll buy it and become a customer.

These definitions seem simple to understand, and yet, we forget what we’re actually in business for: to serve our customers.

I frequently see teams that are working diligently to meet deadlines and to “get stuff done”, but forget to ask the fundamental question, “How does this serve my customers?” We often get so focused on our deliverables, our design, and our specific part of the project that we forget to look beyond our day-to-day tasks to see if what we’re doing is actually satisfying the customer.

When was the last time you sat in a weekly staff meeting and talked about how you recently gave customers exactly what they wanted or needed? Generally, meetings are all about where you stand with the current project, what you’re doing to get your part done, and what’s preventing the team from moving forward.

At some companies, it’s rare when a customer is mentioned in a staff meeting. In fact, some of the managers I’ve worked with are more concerned with their competitors than they are with their customers and ignorant or confused about precisely who their customers are. Consequently, people work on projects and deliver product designs that miss the mark. They aren’t what the customer wants.

“When you obsess about the customer, you end up defeating your competition as a byproduct,” said K.R. Sridhar, the founder of Bloom Energy, a fuel-cell company. “When you are just obsessed about the competition, you end up killing yourself … because you are not focused on the customer.”

It is all too easy to become so busy that we lose sight of what’s most important. We can’t see the forest for the trees. And while we’re busy with our heads down getting stuff done, customers may have changed their minds, become dissatisfied with our lack of customer service and support, or developed a preference for a competitor’s product. All of these things can happen when we don’t regularly remind ourselves that the very reason we’re in business is to serve the needs of our customers.

This week, assess the degree to which your team is focused on the customer. Find out if your team members are able to connect what they’re doing – daily, weekly and monthly – with the company’s fundamental need to deliver customer value. If they’re not and they’ve lost sight of what’s most important to your business, then spend some time to help them realign. Take time to educate your staff members about how their piece of the pie becomes part of the whole. Help them see how what they do has a direct impact on the customer.

Find ways to figure out what your customers really want and communicate that to your employees. If you haven’t talked to your customers within the past three months, make it a practice to inquire about whether they’re getting added value from your product or service. Direct customer feedback gives you an opportunity to discover what’s working and what isn’t and to gather new ideas for future product enhancements. Some of the best new ideas come from the users themselves. And most customers love the connection you provide when you call them directly. It makes them feel appreciated — because they are!

Take a lesson from Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon: “We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.”

Have a good week,

Kathleen

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

Suggestions for Better Team Collaboration

Good morning, team.
Team collaboration continues to be an important topic for me in my coaching practice. I recently read a study conducted jointly by the Concours Institute and the Cooperative Research Project of London Business School. They sent surveys to team members and leads, executives and human resources leaders at a variety of companies in different industries. The results surprised me in some cases and, in others, confirmed many of my observations about effective team collaboration.
Many companies rely on large teams of highly educated specialists to complete major projects. These teams consist of people from diverse backgrounds, often from many locations, who are brought together to meet an urgent need. They work together virtually, collaborating online and over long distances.
In the above-mentioned study, an interesting paradox became clear. Although teams that are large, virtual, diverse and composed of highly specialized professionals seem essential to major projects, these factors also make it extremely hard to get anything done.
The study showed that when team size increases beyond 20 members, the level of cooperation decreases substantially. Members are much less likely to share knowledge freely, learn from one another, shift workloads flexibly, or identify bottlenecks and help each other move through them. And, in my experience, subteams that work on just a portion of a major initiative get folded into a much larger corporate team and often get lost in the shuffle.
The study further discussed how the strengths of a team can become its weaknesses. Diverse knowledge and views can spark new insights and innovation. However, the less people were familiar with others on the team (their background, history with the organization, views and behaviors), the less likely they were to share knowledge.
Virtual participation is a way of life in all companies these days. Only 40 percent of the teams studied had members all in one place; the other 60 percent did not. The research shows that as a team becomes more virtual, collaboration declines. Unfortunately, the old saying “out of sight, out of mind” applies.
Highly educated people with a specific area of expertise bring a lot to the table in terms of knowledge and experience. However, the greater the proportion of highly specialized people on the team, the more likely team members were to argue from their sole viewpoint. In other words, if team members think they know it all, they’re often unwilling to learn from others or experiment with new ideas.
The study offered eight recommendations for successful collaboration:
Invest in environments that encourage strong relationships, such as open floor plans to foster communication, increased travel budgets so people can interact face to face, and meeting spaces that encourage activities beyond just sitting around a table so people can interact on many different levels. Anything that demonstrates a commitment to collaboration sends the right message.
Model collaborative behavior. At companies where senior executives demonstrated highly collaborative behavior, the rest of the team members also did.
Create a “gift culture” rather than a “tit-for-tat culture” — or rather, develop a culture based on coaching and mentoring. Such a culture helps team members build networks across an organization that they can use to do their work. Daily coaching increases people’s level of cooperation as well as their ability to feel empowered to take ownership. The study demonstrated that in such an environment, team members were less likely to blame others when things didn’t get done and were more willing to help them out when needed.
Teach people relationship skills, such as appreciating others, being able to engage in purposeful conversations, resolving conflicts productively and creatively, and managing programs.
Support a strong sense of community. When team members feel they are part of a community, they feel more comfortable reaching out to others. When a situation is not emotionally safe, people are reluctant to participate.
Assign team leaders who are good at getting tasks done and building relationships. The study found that focusing on task orientation at the beginning of the project and later focusing on relationships is most effective. Regardless of seniority, team members who weren’t willing to take on tasks and deliver results were seen as untrustworthy.
Build on the existing relationships within the team. Include a few people who already know each other to help establish a model of behavior that new members can emulate.
Be clear about roles, responsibilities and tasks. The study showed that cooperation increased dramatically the more sharply defined these elements were for team members.
This week, consider the size and effectiveness of your teams. Are you investing in their ability to relate and collaborate? How well are team members exchanging ideas and being open to each other? Is everyone on the team aware of roles, responsibilities and ownership tasks? Does everyone feel safe working together?
Don’t assume that just because a bunch of people are assigned to work on a project that collaboration will occur automatically. Try using some of the above suggestions to help your team members work more successfully together.
Have a great week!
Kathleen
© Copyright 2012 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search Inc., all rights reserved.

Compromising Your integrity For Your Career

Good day, team.

This past week, I’ve been thinking about what happens when an event at work causes us to question our own integrity. This week’s challenge is about these kinds of dilemmas — when we are faced with the difficult choice of protecting our integrity or doing what seems right for our career.

Here’s a good example:

One of my clients was part of an executive team in a company. He reported to the CEO along with five other people, each representing one of the core functions in the organization — finance, technology, marketing, sales and operations. He had been in his role for about two years when he began to understand that the CEO was lying. He first experienced this when he flew from Chicago to New York for an important customer meeting. The CEO had asked him to attend the meeting and gave him detailed instructions about what results the company hoped to achieve through the discussions. When my client asked if the CEO would also attend, she said, “Of course, we’ll both be there. This is too important of a deal for me not to attend. But we will position ourselves better if you lead the discussion and do the negotiating. I’ll be there to support you, and our customers will see that by my being there, this deal is our top priority.”

My client prepared diligently, and when he boarded the plane, he felt confident that the meeting would go well. The next day, he settled into a chair in the reception area at his customer’s offices. His boss wasn’t there yet, and he hadn’t heard from her. He began to scroll through e-mail on his phone and found an early morning message from her. He was shocked to read that his boss would not be attending the meeting. Something had come up that prevented her from making the trip, but she didn’t say what it was. She wished him luck and asked that he call her as soon as the meeting was over to let her know how it had gone.

His heart rate increased and his throat tightened as he saw his customers coming down the hallway to greet him. What had happened? How could she miss this important meeting with their top customer? How would he explain her absence? He didn’t want to lie, but he thought he’d better come up with a pretty good excuse. And what did she expect from him? Was he supposed to shoulder this one all on his own?

The customer’s first question was, “Where’s your boss this morning?” My client felt his face redden and replied, “She had a family emergency come up at the last minute.” As he looked his most important customer in the eye, he could tell this guy knew he was lying. But he could do nothing about it. He had to play his role the best he could, even if he had to lie and compromise his own integrity.

After the meeting, his boss didn’t answer when he called to tell her how it had gone, so he left a message. Later that day, he received an email from her saying how pleased she was with his efforts and that she had every confidence the deal would turn out the way they hoped. She also said she was sorry she couldn’t be there but staying in the home office had been important for her to do. They could talk more when he returned to the office.

Two days later, after other meetings in New York, my client boarded his flight back to Chicago, still depressed by what had happened. He still couldn’t resolve the nagging feeling he had about lying to his customer. How would the customer be able to trust him going forward? Why did his boss put him in that position? He couldn’t say, “She blew off the meeting.” Should he have said something else? But anything short of “family emergency,” would have implied that this meeting was not her top priority. My client tried to rationalize his actions by saying to himself, “My customer isn’t stupid, he knows that anyone put in my shoes would have done the same thing. What difference did it really make anyway?”

As he settled into his seat, much to his surprise, he saw his boss board the plane and sit down in first class. Not only had she lied about not being able to attend the meeting, but she was actually in New York all along! Anger replaced shock, and for the rest of the trip, my client seethed. He felt betrayed and duped. Underneath the anger was fear. What did this mean? Why was she doing this to him? Was she planning to put him in a position to fail so she could fire him? What would this mean for his family? His son was a year away from going to Stanford. How could he afford to send him there without a job?

As he walked through the terminal after deplaning, my client kept his head down. He didn’t want to see her for fear that he would completely lose it and express his anger toward her.

After a sleepless night, my client arrived at his office the following morning caught in a quandary. Should he confront his boss, tell her he saw her on the airplane and ask for an explanation? Should he avoid the conversation all together? He knew what was politically correct, but what was he going to do about his anger, frustration, sense of betrayal and desire to tell the truth?

Later that morning, when he met with his boss to review his trip, he could not stay quiet. His desire to clear the air, tell the truth and ask her for an explanation became too great.

As their meeting began to wind down, he finally asked “Can you level with me here? I saw you on the flight back to Chicago yesterday, which means you were actually in New York. Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you attend the meeting? What’s going on?” One eyebrow raised slightly, as his boss remarked, “Oh, I didn’t get a chance to tell you. I had to make a quick turnaround trip to New York to talk with some of our analysts.” There was a slight possibility that she was telling him the truth, but his intuition knew she was lying. He understood in that moment that she was now just piling lies on top of lies and that trying to get to the truth would be a waste of time.

As he left her office, he thought, “Whatever trust I had in this woman is gone. I better watch my back from now on.”

To make matters worse, weeks later, in the quarterly meeting with their board of directors, his boss described the trip to negotiate the deal with their best customer in New York as if she actually had attended. She took credit for the work he had done as though she had negotiated the deal herself. He watched in a state of complete disbelief and resentment when she didn’t even mentioned all the work he had done. He got no credit. Just when he thought he couldn’t bare the lies any longer, during the break, the chairman approached him and asked in a low voice, “Tell me Dave, how did the meeting in New York really go?” Although my client was encouraged by the chairman’s obvious acknowledgement of his role in the deal, he was now being challenged to speak the truth about what really happened and, in doing so, reveal his boss’ lack of integrity.

These things happen to all of us from time to time as we try to navigate our way through our daily jobs. Whether we are part of an executive team or a part-time clerk working in an accounting office, we all see things that make us question whether something is being done right and if the people we work with are telling the truth. How should we handle these situations? Do we just play our roles as best as we can, even if it means we have to lie or cheat to cover for our bosses, team members or directors? My example may not seem like a big deal, but for my client, the inner turmoil it created was torture. He was placed on the razor’s edge between being true to himself and doing the right thing versus doing what he thought he had to do to keep his job and not confront his boss’ lack of integrity. As a result, he no longer trusted his boss and spent the rest of his time at the company in fear and trepidation about his career. Eventually, he left.

In his new job, my client often encounters similar situations but not to the degree he did in his previous position. He was careful when selecting his new job and asked about his potential new boss’ personal values. He got feedback from people who worked at the company and asked, “Does he have integrity and how does it show up?” His new job is not perfect, but it’s better.

If you find yourself in a similar situation, learn to tell the truth in a way that it can be received. I often help my clients reframe their messages. If I say to someone, “You lied to me, why did you do that?” I know I won’t get a good response. It may be true and direct, but generally, this approach can make the other person feel backed into a corner. It’s more likely to bring out defensiveness. On the other hand, when I say, “Tell me what happened here,” I’ll usually have a better chance of hearing the truth from the other person because I’m not being so confrontational.

Another approach can be to find a time after the challenging incident has occurred to sit down with the person you’re dealing with and bring up the subject of integrity. Ask how he or she balances his or her own integrity with the actions of others that are not in line with that integrity. It may seem manipulative, but if you ask in total sincerity with the hope of understanding what’s really important to the other person, it may result in a better overall picture of that person, and ultimately, it can only help in your on-going interactions.

Each of us has to come to some resolution within ourselves about our actions. In the case of my client, when the chairman asked him what really happened in New York, he said, “The good news, Bill, is that we closed the deal. I’m happy we can continue to do business with these folks under our new contract. It will really raise our revenue numbers for the year.” He actually answered the question and by-passed the implied question. The chairman smiled and shook my client’s hand. “Good deal!” he responded, and walked away.

Have a good week!

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

© Copyright 2012 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search Inc., all rights reserved.

The Importance of Body Language

Good day, team.

I recently read an article about the importance of body language and what it communicates about us. I’ve long known that our body language often communicates far more than our tone of voice or the actual words we speak. For example, I sat in a meeting last week where one of the participants was rolling her eyes while her fellow teammate continued to dominate the conversation. Her frustration with her teammate was obvious, even though she never said a word. In another conversation with a client, I noticed when I asked him a question that made him uncomfortable, he crossed his arms and looked down at the floor, rather than exchange eye contact with me. In another example, I saw two women sitting next to each other on the metro, chatting. When a suspicious-looking man sat next to them, they moved quickly and fearfully out of their seats.

All of these examples show how we communicate messages with our movements, facial expressions and gestures. Even though we may be saying something completely different with our words, our body language gives others the real message time after time. In fact, studies show that people who say something that doesn’t match their body language engender distrust in others. The listener receives two distinctly different messages and wonders which one is true and why the speaker is communicating two different things.

Now science has proven that our body language not just influences our state of mind, but actually changes our body chemistry. In an article from the Portland Business Journal this past week, Connie Glaser writes about this topic under the title, “Body language can be more powerful than you imagine”. In her article, she refers to Harvard Business School’s Amy Cuddy who wrote an article entitled “Just Because I’m Nice, Don’t Assume I’m Dumb,” published three years ago in the Harvard Business Review. Cuddy analyzed the impact that body language has on power. “ In the past, most psychologists assumed that body language actually reflected one’s state of mind. The controversial article made the argument that body language actually affected not only one’s state of mind, but it could alter physiological measurements as well”, wrote Glaser. “In her research on “power posing,” Cuddy showed that changing the body’s position for as little as two minutes has the ability to stimulate higher levels of testosterone and lower levels of cortisol. This finding is important because testosterone is linked with dominance and risk-taking, while cortisol is a stress hormone that can trigger hypertension, impair the immune system and cause memory loss.” Glaser continued.

Science has now proven that Cuddy’s hypothesis was correct. Cuddy joined Dana Carney and Andy Yap from the Columbia Graduate School of Business to study these phenomena. In an article, they published in Psychological Science, they wrote about an experiment they conducted to prove their theory. A control group was used to measure the hormonal impact of body language. Male and female participants were evenly placed in either high or low power pose groups. The high power pose group was placed in expansive postures (i.e., leaning forward with both hands placed firmly on the desk) while the low power pose group was put in restrictive poses (i.e., sitting in a chair with arms folded and legs tightly crossed). Amazingly, after two minutes, the high power poses decreased their cortisone levels by 25 percent and increased their testosterone levels by 19 percent. What this shows is that physical poses alone effect the brain as well as the body. Consequently, people who feel powerless or have low self-esteem can overcome these feelings by changing their body pose.

Cuddy also went on to study the importance of “emotional impressions” that we receive from other people. “She discovered that most people underestimate the powerful connection of warmth and mistakenly overestimate the importance of competence”, wrote Glaser. People tend to spend way too much time worrying about the words they use, rather than how they communicate the message. Cuddy observed, “People often are more influenced by how they feel about you than by what you’re saying … you have to connect with them before you can lead them.”

In my own observations, I notice that when I’m feeling unsure of myself, my feet tend to turn in and my posture collapses in toward my chest. My breath gets shorter, and I actually feel smaller, physically. I’m sure the message that’s sent to others is that I’m not confident. On the other hand, when I’m feeling good and confident, I easily sit up straight, look directly into the eyes of whomever I’m talking with and feel much more present. Both of these positions have a huge impact on the quality of my communication and my ability to influence any conversation.

This week, first observe your body language. What are your gestures saying to others? Can you feel your facial expressions when you’re sitting in a meeting? Are you saying one thing and allowing your body language to say the opposite? Are you projecting warmth and a desire to connect or a cold indifference by only focusing on the facts or results?

Second, try experimenting with your gestures and movements. Are they confident or lacking in self-assurance? Does your body language make others uncomfortable? What are your facial expressions saying to others? Do you often look worried or skeptical when you’re listening to others? Do you cross your arms when you’re in meetings with others? Maybe you’re sending out mixed messages to others by saying one thing with your words and sending a different message in your body language.

As much as I don’t like video conferencing, I have found that seeing myself on the screen the way others see me is helpful. I remember how surprised I was to see myself on a videoconference screen looking completely bored with the meeting I was attending. I didn’t feel bored, but I was slouched in my seat and not being very attentive to what others were saying. When I caught a glance of myself on the screen, I was shocked at what I saw. I immediately sat up straight and tried to become more engaged. When I did this, I noticed that others around me responded more positively toward me.

The way we communicate sends out multiple messages to others. If our body language matches our words spoken, our communication is far more powerful. This week, try experimenting with it and see what you discover.

Have a good week!

Kathleen

Note: The coach will be taking a much-needed break for the next three weeks. The next challenge will be published Oct. 28, 2012.

© Copyright 2012 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search Inc., all rights reserved.

Do Unto Others

Good day, team.

This past week, I’ve been thinking about how many of us constantly try to influence others to adopt our point of view. We try to convince others that the way we see something or the opinions we have are correct. We want others to see or think of something in the same way we do, so we work to sell them on our ideas and attitudes.

Just look at what happens at political conventions — candidates and their supporters make speech after speech trying to convince voters that their way of thinking is correct, with lots of examples to support their thinking. These speeches often contain both facts and falsehoods to convince the audience. The candidates position themselves as being right and the opposition as being wrong. Over the years, we have increasingly seen our political candidates criticizing the opposing party to gain the advantage in the election. Personally, I find this kind of negative advertising to be counter productive because it creates a lot of fear in people. Fear can be used as a strong motivator, but I don’t believe that fueling fear in people is a good way to win elections. In the end, none of us are better off.

What is often forgotten here is that behind all the opinions and influential statements are real people. The following paragraph from a recent post on Ramble, Ramble, a blog written by a woman named Ginger, says this so well:

“There is a PERSON behind the things you are saying. When you say that all liberals or all conservatives … when you say that all Democrats or all Republicans … when you say that ALL of any group is/says/does/thinks/behaves/believes/hates/loves/etc., you are saying that about real people. Honest to goodness, flesh and blood people. Not just ideologies. Not just platforms. Not just issues. Not just politicians. Your friends. Your family. Your neighbors. Your co-workers.”

I see this same phenomenon occur within teams at work. It’s not uncommon for members of different teams to disagree. They may want the same outcome, but the way they want to go about getting that outcome can be quite different. For example, let’s say that the accounting manager and the marketing manager disagree about how much money should be spent on a new marketing campaign. It won’t take long before the accounting manager starts making some derogatory remarks about the marketing manager to his or her own team of accountants. This type of speech, meant to influence others on the team, may make the accounting manager feel better and more justified in the moment. When we feel strongly about something, we want others to agree with us. We don’t want those marketing people to spend too much money on a bogus campaign. We want them to stay within the budget we outlined. So the accounting manager forgets that the marketing manager is a peer and that they both are part of the same overarching team. Instead, it feels okay to throw the marketing manager under the bus to make things right. But what happens when someone on the accounting team is asked to give the marketing department some information? This person might have an immediate negative reaction because of what his or her boss has said about the marketing manager. In our desire to get people to think and act the way we want them to, we sometimes overlook the negative impact that our influencing can have on others.

I often ask myself these three questions when I feel strongly about letting others know what I think or feel:

*

Is it worth doing damage to someone else just to be able to express my opinions?
*

Am I trying to convince other people to come over to my side of the argument?
*

What good results can come from this conversation?

When I hear people speak negatively about someone else, it always makes me feel sad. When I see a gang of people bully another group of people because they disagree with them, I feel outraged. When I observe myself thinking negative thoughts about someone I don’t understand, I feel irritated. None of these feelings help me in my life. They tend to seep into my state of heart and mind and pollute my inner peace and wisdom. When I try to influence someone to think poorly or negatively about another to build up my side of an argument, I end up feeling that negativity within myself.

This week, see if you’re trying to influence others against someone else. Maybe it’s in an aggressive way, making yourself look good and your opposition look bad, just like politicians do in their speeches. Or maybe it’s in a passive aggressive way by making side comments that incriminate someone you disagree with or think is stupid. Ask yourself whether you are helping the team by trying to influence others in this way. Is it worth the momentary pleasure that makes you feel as though you’re winning an argument or recruiting others to take your side? Does the feeling of “I’m right and you’re wrong” actually help all of the team meet its goals and get the results needed?

Of all the statements my mother repeated to me over and over again as I was growing up, this classic stands out: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This week, my challenge is to take my mother’s good advice and apply it to my speech and sharing of opinions. I encourage you to do the same.

Have a good week!

Kathleen

© Copyright 2012 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search Inc., all rights reserved.

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

The Importance of Team Work

Good day, team.

The 2012 Olympics are coming to a close, so I’d like to write about teamwork for this week’s challenge.

We hear the word “teamwork” so often that I think we forget how much it affects our lives. When people try to accomplish a common vision, mission or goal, they engage in teamwork. It can be as complicated as the teamwork accomplished by the NASA team members who recently landed the Curiosity rover on Mars or as simple as a group of children on a playground coordinating a game of hide-and-seek. Throughout our lives, we engage with others to work together and achieve.

During this year’s Olympic games, I’ve been encouraged by the spirit of teamwork I’ve observed among many of the athletes. For example, when the U.S. men’s swim team put Michael Phelps in the last position in the team relay race. His teammates were motivated most by Michael getting another gold medal, which make him the most successful Olympic athlete of all time. If they could get him a good enough lead, then he would have a better chance at winning in the last swim. As Michael said, “I’m so grateful to these guys, they just handed me the best position and without that, we might not have won the gold.”

I was amazed to watch Jordyn Wieber of the U.S. women’s gymnastic team rooting in the stands for her team within an hour after she found out she wasn’t going to compete in the all-around gymnastic finals. The woman was ranked No. 1 in the world this past year for her gymnastics abilities, yet she didn’t win out over her own teammates to compete in the overall competition. Individually, it was a stunning blow after training her entire life in the sport. But for the sake of her teammates, she rallied soon after the disappointment to cheer them on to victory.

When working with teams, I often relay the story of Michael Jordan when he first became part of the Chicago Bulls basketball team. Michael was the best basketball player anyone had ever seen. At one of his first practices, he made basket after basket, running circles around his new teammates. At some point, Phil Jackson, his coach, pulled him aside and said that he wasn’t interested in Michael just making points. He would need to become a team player if he wanted to play for the Bulls and that meant often sacrificing making the basket himself to give the ball to one of his teammates. Michael was stunned. Wasn’t it about winning? Yes, Jackson replied, but there is no “I” in team.

Babe Ruth once said, “The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.”

Teamwork is often what inspires us to keep going when we think we can’t. Individually, we may be motivated to beat out everyone else, but we are limited by our personal abilities. However, when we are part of a team, there’s an extra incentive to win, to go that extra mile for our teammates. To be a part of a team, we have to trust that our teammates are behind us and rooting for us, that they want us to win as much as they want to win themselves. There’s that extra bit of encouragement that comes when you hear your teammates yell out, “Come on, you can do it!” that can make all the difference

At the heart of trust is the understanding that someone is working his or her hardest for our benefit. It’s not completely self-less because when we work hard for the benefit of others, we often get the most benefit ourselves. But the victory is so much sweeter when we can share it with our teammates. It made me so happy to see the U.S. women’s soccer team crying, laughing and hugging each other in a big, joyous, chaotic pile of women on the field right after they defeated the Japanese team for the gold medal. Without teamwork, this never would have happened.

This week, check in to see how your teamwork is going. Have you had your head down so much that you haven’t been reaching out to your team as much? Maybe you feel like the lone ranger and need to find ways to reconnect with some of your teammates. How about the overall health of your team? Is there suspicion and gossip happening? Or do you see team members being considerate of each other and supportive in working toward a common goal? If someone on the team needs more direction, is there another team member taking the time to sit down with him or her to give support? Do you see someone drifting away from the team and if so, what can you do to help him or her feel more like a part of the whole team rather than just an individual contributor?

As human beings, belonging to a greater whole is essential for our happiness. The more connected we feel, the healthier we are physically and psychologically. This is your week to do a team check. Take a look at your team, whether at work or home. Are you a healthy participant? What can you do to ensure that your team will continue to thrive?

Mia Hamm, the great American women’s soccer player once remarked, “I am a member of a team, and I rely on the team. I defer to it and sacrifice for it because the team, not the individual, is the ultimate champion.”

Have a good week!

Kathleen

© Copyright 2012 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search Inc., all rights reserved.

Business and Busyness

Good day, team.

This week’s challenge comes from the Harvard Business Review blog. I’m sharing the post, “Is Busyness Bad for Business?” written by Susan David, who is the founder and co-director of the Harvard/McClean Institute of Coaching and a member of the Harvard faculty, in its entirety:

“Michael is busy. For weeks he’s been rising early and getting home late. As division head, he’s used to the budget season bringing strain. But this year he’s been running the numbers — doing his ‘real work’ largely outside normal hours. His days are filled with meetings, often without clear objectives, and the invitations just keep coming in. To make matters worse, he’s been asked to complete seemingly redundant paperwork and grapple with ever-changing spreadsheet columns. The constant activity is taking its toll.

“Many of us can relate to Michael. The New York Times recently featured an essay in which writer Tim Kreider critiqued today’s ‘crazy busy’ lifestyle as unnecessary and destructive — a smokescreen designed to hide the fact that ‘most of what we do doesn’t matter.’ The piece received hundreds of comments and was in the ‘most viewed’ list for quite some time. He clearly hit a nerve.

“But what should organizations — people like Michael and those who manage him — read into that conversation? Is busyness bad for business?

“The answer isn’t a simple yes or no. While Kreider argues that we need a bout of idleness to get inspired and work more effectively, there is evidence that workers benefit from busyness. Take an experiment in 2010 by professor Christopher Hsee at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Hsee’s team found that people who kept themselves occupied rather than waiting idly after a test felt happier. Interestingly, participants in the study were not likely to busy themselves unless they could justify the activity; they weren’t interested in what Hsee and his colleagues call ‘futile busyness’. But the results showed that even futile busyness is better than idleness.

“In my organization’s own recent research with a global firm, we discovered that a common characteristic among the company’s great leaders was their recognition of the importance of busyness. They knew idle employees would suffer and so pushed to create a stimulating environment. For example, a leader responded to a downturn in work by encouraging team members to look for new projects that interested them and that might generate opportunities. Not only did this keep the group engaged, but some of the projects also eventually bore fruit. This wasn’t futile busyness, of course. ‘Creative busyness’ might be more appropriate.

“Indeed, busyness seems to be most productive when the tasks we busy ourselves with are also meaningful. In a 2008 MIT study, researchers investigated meaning by asking participants to build Lego models. Finished models were either kept, or they were disassembled in front of the participant and handed back for rebuilding. (This was called the ‘Sisyphus condition,’ after the mythical figure condemned to repeatedly push a boulder up a mountain only to watch it roll back down again). Even though the two conditions involved exactly the same type of work, participants in the ‘meaningful’ condition were willing to produce more models (and built them more efficiently, for a lower median wage) then those who mimicked Sisyphus. Surely Michael, who attends one meeting only to have another scheduled, and completes one spreadsheet only to be presented with new figures, is starting to feel like he’s pushing that boulder.

“Perhaps we are not so much caught in a ‘busy trap’ but a ‘meaning trap’. A meaningful life involves pursuing what we truly value, a sense of contribution in our work, as well as time outside of work to relax, enjoy hobbies and spend time with loved ones. It’s perhaps no surprise that the great leaders in our study were also expert at modeling work-life integration; they value busyness but also meaning. How did their emphasis on both impact the bottom line? Positively. Their teams were more engaged, their revenues were higher, and their turnover was lower than other groups.

“If you are responsible for keeping others ‘busy,’ consider the following:

1.People have a fundamental need to feel competent. It’s your job to give them stimulating, meaningful work.
2.Rather than waiting out a lull, encourage employees to be creative and proactive.
3.Give them the time they need to complete key assignments. Don’t let meetings or inefficient work practices hijack their workdays.
4.Help employees stay connected to the meaning in the work they do. Tie tasks to how they benefit the person, the team, the client, the organization.
5.Consider what makes life, and not just work, meaningful. Make sure your team members have time for it.”

The above suggestions are part of your challenge this week if you manage others. If you don’t manage others, take a look at your own level of busyness. Are you feeling like Sisyphus, constantly pushing a rock uphill just to have it roll back down? Does your work have little meaning? Or are you having trouble connecting what you do to meaningful results for the company? Do you end up doing things over and over again without any change in the results? Or worse, with no real results at all? Start asking your boss to help you connect what you’re doing to the goals of the company. Change the way you do something if it’s become so mechanical that you could do it in your sleep. If you’re just going from one thing to the next without feeling inspired, ask your boss if you can work on another project or find a way to do something differently to rekindle that fire within you.

Sometimes we mistake busyness for being important. If you think you have to stay busy all the time to make others think you’re important, think again. Some of the best leaders build time into their day to be not busy, so they can digest what’s happened and make better decisions. If you’re too busy, you may not be giving enough attention to others, which sends the wrong message to your co-workers, customers and partners.

See if your busyness is adding value to your time or wasting it. If you feel “crazy busy”, ask yourself if things are truly crazy and that’s why you are so busy. If not, is being too busy making you crazy? Either way, find out if your busyness is worthwhile.

Have a good week!

Kathleen

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

© Copyright 2012 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search Inc., all rights reserved.

Learning How To Learn

Good morning, team.

This week’s challenge is about learning how to learn. That may sound redundant, but honestly, now that I’m trying to learn something new, I’m realizing some things about how I learn.

I’m learning about horsemanship. That is, I’m learning how to ride a horse, how to care for horses, how to speak horse language, how to relate to these amazing four-legged animals. Call me crazy. A friend of mine recently commented, “Wasn’t falling down a flight of stairs last October scary enough? Now you want to ride a horse? Isn’t that dangerous, particularly for someone your age?” I know this doesn’t sound like something a friend would say, but her comments did come from a deep concern for my well-being. I tried to make the case that since I haven’t done so well on two legs, perhaps being on something with four will actually be safer. I’m not sure I’ve convinced either of us yet.

Truth be told, part of why I’m learning to ride a horse is to get over my fear of falling from high places. Getting on a horse for the first time last weekend was scary — shaking in your boots kind of scary. As I sat there in the saddle, feeling my whole body quiver, I realized that the only way to get beyond this was to be patient enough to just sit there until it stopped. If I could wait and the horse would just stand there, I knew the shaking would stop eventually. Of course, it did, and I embarked on my first horse ride in 40 years.

It’s been a long time since I last learned how to do something brand new, and I have to say, I’m really not fond of being a novice. I’m one of those people who grows quickly impatient if I can’t do something well right out of the gate. I don’t like how it feels when something is foreign to me — all that new information can be overwhelming. I quickly think, “This just isn’t worth the time or effort. It’s going to take too long to learn how to do this.” Part of why I never learned how to play a musical instrument is because it takes an enormous amount of time, practice and patience to become good at it. I have great respect for musicians because I have no idea how they have the persistence to keep at it year after year.

When I’m learning something new, it helps if I can find small accomplishments within the larger experience of the learning. For example, when I rode for the second time yesterday, I could already get on the horse better than the week before. I gave myself a little nod of encouragement by saying to myself, “You see, you’ve already learned something new.” Between that and my teacher giving me kudos for a few things, I’ve been able to overcome the negative attitude that I can’t do this.

When I was in grade school, teachers weren’t aware that different children learn in unique ways. It was all about delivering the information in the curriculum so that we could complete our lesson plans. But the fact is, a lot of us didn’t get it. For one thing, all of the information was delivered either via the teacher talking to us and or through our own reading about it. For many people, these methods are the least effective to learn. They are boring. How many of us remember sitting in school and listening to the teacher begin to talk about something? After about three minutes, the mind would go blank. On the other hand, I clearly remember every moment of my sophomore biology class when the teacher allowed his pet boa constrictor to crawl all over us. I’m an experiential learner. I like to learn as I’m doing rather than reading about it first.

I’m sure my computer skills have suffered because of my aversion to reading manuals. Short instructions that come from recipes, I can handle. But just looking at the front page of an instruction manual gives me a headache. I can’t keep my attention glued to a written step-by-step process. But throw me into the pool with a vague idea of how to keep my head above water, and I’ll figure it out.

When I was in college, my physics teacher realized that I wasn’t learning anything in his class. Maybe it was how I always sat in the back row hiding behind the tall guy. Eventually, my professor asked to meet with me after class. I dreaded the meeting. I knew I was in over my head, but I needed the science credit to continue majoring in anthropology.

“Not getting much out of this, are you?” he asked.

I could feel my face redden. With down cast eyes I replied, “Nope.”

“Do you know how you like to learn?”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” I said.

“Well, he went on, everyone learns a little differently, and the trick to learning isn’t so much about the subject you’re trying to learn but rather about how you like to learn things. Once you figure out how you like to learn, you can learn just about anything.”

This was a new idea for me.

“Let’s try an experiment,” he said. “Let me explain centripetal and centrifugal forces to you, and you can tell me what you’ve understood once I’ve finished.”

He proceeded to explain the two forces and how they work. As much as I tried to listen, he lost me at, “a mass underdoing curved motion, such as circular motion, constantly accelerates toward the axis of rotation.” What?? He might as well have been speaking Greek to me. When he went to the blackboard and wrote out an equation illustrating his point, I was truly lost. He could clearly see that I wasn’t getting it.

“Okay,” he said patiently, “let’s do it your way. Come with me.”

I followed him down the hallway to his classroom. He asked me to get on the stool that he generaly sat on during class. It had a rotating seat, which made it easy for him to turn toward his students and then back to the blackboard when illustrating a point. He asked me to get on the stool and hold my arms in close to my body. Once I did this, he came over and gave me a spin. “This is fun,” I thought as I spun around in circles on the stool.

“Now, hold your arms out,” he instructed. I did this and immediately began to slow down. He came over and spun me around again, this time asking me to bring my arms in and to extend them out as I spun around. Each time I held my arms out, I slowed down. When I brought them back in again, I would speed up. He explained, “When I spun you around, the energy I was using created centripetal force upon you. When you extended your arms out, the opposing centrifugal force created by your extended arms in space slowed you down.”

He went on to explain that there were other laws of physics at work here in regard to Newton’s laws of motion, but this was one small illustration of some of these physics at work.

“Does it make more sense to you now?” he asked.

I had to admit that it did. “Why can’t I always learn it this way?”

“You actually can,” he replied. “You just need to ask for more of a demonstration so you can see how it works. It’s called ‘visual learning,’ and for some of us, seeing how it works is the only way we can learn it.”

When we made it back to his office, he went to the bookcase and handed me a textbook. “Here,” he said, as he handed it to me. “This is my gift to you. Do the exercises in this book, and I’ll pass you in my class.”

The book was called “Physics for Poets.” I laughed. How appropriate, I thought. A book about physics written for people like me!

As I turned to go after thanking my professor for teaching me a lifelong lesson, he remarked, “Promise me that you won’t take physics again. I don’t think it will be your area of expertise.” With a great sigh of relief, I assured him that I wouldn’t take physics again but that I would never forget what he really taught me: how I like to learn.

This week, take a look at how you like to learn things. If you haven’t learned anything new in a while, choose something. Do you like to read about it first, assimilate the information and then try it out? Or maybe you’re like me — you’d rather learn about it as you’re doing it. Perhaps you enjoy the interaction that comes from learning from someone else. Do you prefer doing this in a larger group or one on one? Maybe you’re someone who enjoys going online, watching a video of how someone does something while you take notes and then try it yourself. Some people learn best by telling someone else about what they are learning. My horsemanship instructor suggested I tell my husband what I’m learning. She understood that if I have to explain it, I’ll learn it more quickly.

However it is that you like to learn, this is the week to experiment with it. As Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”

Have a good week!

Kathleen

© Copyright 2012 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search Inc., all rights reserved.

The Science of Happiness

Good day, team.
This week’s challenge is a rerun from 2009 about happiness and being positive. I was recently reminded of the important work being done on the science of happiness and thought I’d share this piece again.
Last week I re-read a great article in The Sun magazine, “The Science of Happiness” by Barbara Fredrickson. Fredrickson is the Kenan Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has spent more than 20 years investigating the relatively uncharted terrain of positive emotions, which she says can make us healthier and happier if we take time to cultivate them. She has recently published a book called “Positivity” about many of her findings.
I have long been interested in understanding group dynamics in business teams. I’ve spent many years observing the behavior that occurs when teams work together and often wondered why some teams are successful while others are not. What factors create high-performing teams? What factors create teams that spiral down to a dead end?
In her work, Fredrickson was introduced to Marcial Losada, a well-known business consultant who has developed mathematical models of people’s ability to broaden and build their capacities, resources and resilience. In many years of studying 60 business teams during their annual strategic planning sessions, Losada ranked their success based on the number of positive and negative statements made during the meetings.
People on high-performing teams had a 6:1 ratio of positive to negative statements, whereas the low-performing teams had ratios of less than 1:1, meaning that more than half of what was said was negative. The high-performing teams had an even balance between asking questions and advocating for their own points of view, and also an equal measure of focusing outward (for example, on customers) and focusing within the group. The low-performing groups asked almost no questions and almost never focused outside the group. They exhibited a self-absorbed advocacy: Nobody was listening to anyone else; they were all just waiting to talk.
Ultimately, Losada took his behavioral data and wrote algebraic equations that reflected how each stream — asking questions, being positive and having an outward vs. inward focus — related to each other. He learned that his equations matched a set of existing equations called the Lorenz System, which is famous in nonlinear dynamics because it, in turn, led to the discovery of chaos theory, sometimes called “the butterfly effect” — the idea that the flap of a butterfly’s wings in one location can set in motion a series of events that causes a hurricane on the other side of the globe.
Underneath the dynamics of high-performing teams is what physicists call a “complex chaotic attractor,” which produces unpredictable or novel outcomes. So high-performing teams produce novel creative results. Underneath the structure of low-performing teams is a “fixed-point attractor” that causes the teams to nosedive. What’s interesting is that negativity always arose within the realm of self-absorbed advocacy and not asking any questions. That’s where the fixed-point attractor lies.
Ultimately, using the Lorenz equations, Fredrickson was able to predict that a ratio of three positive events to one negative event is the tipping point where things become chaotic, which is a good thing, since it’s only in this environment that people can be truly interactive and creative. In her study, as a team interacted more and experienced more creativity, positivity spiraled upward.
Fredrickson tested this 3:1 ratio over the next few years to see if it was actually true. In each case, the theory held. She also applied it to her own life in raising her second child and found it to be a much better method of child-rearing. If she could balance the number of times she said, “No” to her son with three times as much positivity, his ability to express himself and pursue his creative interests was much higher, and he was happier. She found this to be true in marriages as well. Research suggests that married couples who express about a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative emotions have much more solid marriages than couples who exchange greater amounts of negativity.
So what’s the challenge here? This week, try seeing how much negativity grabs your attention and how often you express it. Then take a look at how often you express positivity and what tends to draw you in more. Fredrickson’s research shows that negative experiences tend to demand our attention more, and it takes self-discipline, will power and practice not to focus solely on them and to choose a positive outlook instead. So negativity tends to happen to us, whereas we need to intentionally choose positivity.
Observe what’s happening in your team meetings. Do the negative comments far outweigh the positive? Do people seem disengaged? Do they ask questions and share new ideas, or do they just sit there and choose not to participate? When they do speak, is it to protect their territory or is it because they want to share an insight or encourage creativity within the group?
If you see a lot of negativity in your life, here are some simple suggestions from the article for experiencing more positivity:
Be aware of the present moment, because most moments are positive. We miss many opportunities to be positive because we’re thinking about the past and worrying about the future rather than being open to what is happening now.
Pay attention to human kindness — not just what others do for you but what you can do for other people.
Go outside in good weather.
Practice mindfulness or loving kindness meditation.
Arrange your life around your strengths. Ask yourself: Am I really doing what I do best? Being employed in a job that suits your strengths is a great source of enduring positive emotions.
Check out the amount of positivity you experience in your life, both personally and at work. Try injecting more of it into your life this week, and see if it makes you happier. As Robert Ingersoll wrote, “My creed is this: Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others so.”
Have a good week!
Kathleen
Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249
© Copyright 2012 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search Inc., all rights reserved.

The Benefits of Scenario Planning

Good day, team.

This week’s challenge comes from the Harvard Business Review blog. It is written by Grant McKracken, a research affiliate at MIT and author of “Chief Culture Officer” and “Culturematic.”

In his blog post “Every Company Should Build a Second Corporation,” from Friday July 6, McKracken suggests that while companies need to keep doing what they’re doing to win business and be successful, they also need to create a second company that is always looking at worlds that may be in the future and designing ways to best survive different scenarios. It’s like having a scout who’s out in front of you always looking for the best path ahead.

Here’s the post in its entirety:

“All winners lose. The market leader is a dead man walking. The incumbent is cursed with inevitable failure. That seems to be the prevailing sentiment among many in the investment and journalism worlds: The smart money, they argue, bets against the incumbent. Their surmise: The world will change. The reigning corporation will fail to adjust. The right thing to do? Short them (assume that their share price will fall). Short the winners. Bet against those who flourish. Because all winners must lose, and sooner than we think.

“I have heard this argument before, but for the first time I am hearing it argued as something unobjectionably and manifestly true. At some point in the past 10 years, ‘short the incumbent’ had gone from being a daring proposition to received wisdom. There is evidence, to be sure. Of the top 25 corporations listed in Fortune in 2000, only 12 were still there in 2010. Let’s put this another way: In the decade between 2000 to 2010, half the winners lost.

“And the structural factors are clear enough. The world is changing more quickly. Black swans are multiplying. Disruption is everywhere. The incumbent can end up failing dazed and confused.

“Success makes the corporation believe it has got things right. So change feels like self-betrayal. The competition forces a new business model. So change feels like a tumult. The new market often forces a move from a premium price position to a commodity one. So change feels like a giveaway. Adapting to change feels just plain wrong.

“But the market has spoken. It’s telling us we have a systematic problem. It’s time for a systematic solution. We cannot nickel and dime our way out of this one. We need a big, bold answer. Assuming, that is, that we want to escape the curse of the incumbent.

“My version of this answer — and I am sure there are others — is to build a second corporation and wrap it around the first. So now we have two. The first corporation is defined pretty much as it is now. And the second corporation is another creature altogether, with a different set of principles and processes.

“The first corporation exists to win. It exists to find, extract and capture available value. Leave this just as it is. But let’s acknowledge that this first corporation exposes us to risk. After all, it is designed to work with the world as it is. So it must be out of alignment with the worlds that may be. It makes us a prisoner of the moment. The second corporation is looking for those worlds that may be. Its task is not to win but survive.

“It’s counter-intuitive and I can hear you arguing: ‘Winning, surviving, this is a distinction without a difference!’ But look at it this way. If winning (and the first corporation) were enough, we wouldn’t see half the winners on the top of Fortune 500 fall like Icarus. If winning were enough, surviving would take care of itself. But it turns out, winning and surviving are different things. They take different mindsets. They take a different set of systems and instincts.

“Just to be crystal clear, I’m not saying that the corporation should stop struggling to win. It should keep hiring the best people, finding the best partners, devising the best strategies, squeezing out costs, innovating faster and smarter, clobbering the competition, etc. Winning is the deepest part of its DNA.

“I am merely saying that now that the incumbency comes with a curse, now that the smart money is betting against us, now that our death is nigh, we need something more. We need an exterior that is vigilant, experimental, assumption hunting. We need a bridge from which to spot those black swans. We need a way to prepare for worlds that are implausible.

“Everyone knows that we live in a world of tremendous change. But our response has been what Andy Grove calls ‘building a better firehouse.’ We are committing to getting faster and more agile. But there’s an absolute limit to how fast we can get. Many corporations run pretty good firehouses as it is. They can’t get a lot faster. The world doesn’t care. It’s going to get much, much faster. Time to rebuild the firehouse. Time to rethink firefighting.

“Indulge me a different metaphor. As the world gets more turbulent, the organization gets harder to ‘fly.’ What used to be simple acts of navigation now have a lot of guesswork. Simple acts of decision-making are no longer straightforward. Once as easy to fly as a 747 in light chop, the corporation can now feel like a Piper Cub in high winds. There are moments when the instruments go out and decision-making takes on a ‘hope and prayer’ quality. We are pretty sure those lights on the port side are Baltimore. Because, well, they could be Cuba.

“Now that the smart money assumes our demise, we need a system to ensure our survival. We need something that looks less like improv and more like engineering. We need a second corporation.”

Your challenge this week is to explore ways to be nimble and quick in the face of an ever-changing world. Maybe your processes are currently working, but if one part of your customer base suddenly changed, would you be able to stay on top of servicing them? How about creating a team of people within your organization who’s sole focus is on scenario planning — that is, creating strategic plans for a variety of possible outcomes? If you’re currently working on a team, what would it look like if your team got caught in firefight mode? Would it survive? And what can you do to help the team create the kind of skills that expert firefighters need to have?

As McKracken says, “We need a way to prepare for worlds that are implausible.” This week, try thinking outside the box and look at your job, your company and your team from a completely different perspective. What would it look like if the world changed?

Have a good week!

Kathleen

Kathleen Doyle-White

Pathfinder’s Coaching

(503) 296-9249

Note: Many thanks to my coaching associate Kate Dwyer for sending me this article. It’s just one more way that she’s helping me take a more expanded view of my business.

© Copyright 2012 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search Inc., all rights reserved.