samedi 12 novembre 2011

Holding up a mirror

Yet again I love the serendipity of chasing ideas and, as my friend describes it, joining the dots.  

  • In the back of my mind the metaphor of coaching as being like holding up a mirror to someone. 
  • earlier in the week a link to Bruce Britten's blog on Organisational Learning and paper engineering and the two quadrants of the model like the JoHari window 'We know what we don't know' and 'We don't know what we don't know'
  • and today coming across the brilliant cartoon from Delta 7 on personal blindness. 






mercredi 9 novembre 2011

From managing burdens to resilience

Earlier this year I posted an article on managing burdens and managing energy. Since then I have come across more and more articles, and attended a conference on resilience run by the Association for Coaching in July. 

Resilience is one of the latest management and coaching buzz words. The logic behind this is essentially that if we cannot manage the causes of modern-day work stress how can we better prepare and protect ourselves so that we 'bounce back' after encountering it. 

The latest article to land in my mail box is from the Institute of Leadership and Management's monthly magazine Edge online, their Management Masterclass: Building Resilience.  It focuses on four areas:
  • Give yourself time to adapt -'Building resilience doesn't just happen naturally. Individuals need to set aside time to reflect on their behaviour and actions and consider what changes they need to make.' 
  • Focus on positive outcomes - Setbacks happen to everyone, what is important is how we manage these, learn from them, identifying and understanding one's strengths and moving on.  'Try to position the setback into the context of a forward-looking constructive story.'  Leaders are also responsible for supporting others through creating an environment where employees are able to recover  quickly from disappointment rather than go into decline. 
  • Entrench your hardness quotidient -  leaders need to examine their mental toughness, which determines how well they respond to stress, pressure and challenges. 
Having just completed a two-day in-house workshop with colleagues - most of whom are struggling with the burdens of not enough time, too much pressure, changing goalposts and lack of personal recognition I was most struck by the final paragraph.  

  • Establish your support networks:  Irrespective of your position, being resilient doesn't mean you have to do everything on your own. Know who to call upon for support and be prepared to seek their advice or guidance when it comes to the moment of truth. It is not a sign of weakness – the stronger your support network and the stronger your relationship with them, the more resilient you are likely to be. 
This to me is critical. I have been watching the dynamics of the workshops we have run in-house over the last year. One thing  that comes through repeatedly is the realisation by participants that much what they are experiencing ('suffering' is often the word used)  is systemic, and the support and advice that can be gained within the workshop from other colleagues.

And more on 'systemic' in future articles.

jeudi 15 septembre 2011

Interesting articles - Understanding regret and two ways to avoid it

Daniel Pink outlines two techniques for helping him to decided on a course of action when he is stuck:

  • One he calls the “90-year-old me Test.” – where you imagine you are 90 and looking back at the decision before. What will I want to have done in this situation? In most cases, the 90-year-old me wants today’s me to take an intelligent risk rather than to avoid one — and to act nobly rather than like an ass.
  • The other he calls the “Viktor Frankl Test.” In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl advises: “Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.”

Interesting articles - Leadership, and why small interactions matter

Why small interactions matter

This short HBR article based on an interview with Douglas Conant[1]  looks at how leaders can maximise the value of what may seem to be interruptions : meetings or the ‘I need just a minute’ converstations. 

These interruptions can become ‘touchpoints’

Touchpoints are defined as ‘ everyday encounters in which there's an issue, there's you, and there's another person or another group of people. They are not necessarily planned meetings.’

A research study (Gloria Mark, University of California) ‘found that most people only work for eleven minutes before someone interrupts them. And twice in those eleven minutes, they would interrupt themselves, like thinking, "Maybe I should check on this" or "Maybe I should check on that." So ……. on average, people have four minutes of uninterrupted time at a stretch to work on things. They're always looking for time to do their real work around that because the reality is, if it's four minutes today, it's going to be three and a half minutes tomorrow.’

He points out that ‘small everyday encounters define your impact on your organization and your reputation.’

The key in managing interruptions such that they become touchpoints is your own perspective of them. 

To do this takes good listening skills : listen intently to understand,  frame the isssue to confirm your understanding of it, and find a way to advance the issue, and a mindset of being interested in the person, and their issue, and how you can help. 

 ‘….  go into every interation with a mindset of how you can help.  So after you listen, frame and advance, as yourself  or the other person how that interaction went. Is there anything more you can do for him?  It’s that simple.’

He refers to the four A’s :  You need to be alert, abundant, authentic, and adaptable.  ‘Alert means you pay attention. Abundant means thinking in terms of possibilities, not limitations. To be authentic, you bring your whole self to these interactions. And being adaptable means bringing the necessary skill to the situation to be directive, consultative, or inspiring.’

He concludes the article by pointing out that while touchpoints is not a leadership model, a leadership model can improve the effectiveness of touchpoints.

Ultimately, people have to create their own way of walking in the world, but we think you have to work at that -- it doesn't just magically happen……….  Leadership does take work. And it should. If you aspire to be a leader, you ought to treat leadership as a craft, you ought to become a student of it, and you ought to work at it. And if you're not willing to work at it, well, you get what you give. I would assert that highly effective leaders are made more than they're born.’


[1] former CEO of the Campbell Soup Company and author of TouchPoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments

samedi 28 mai 2011

Why? - leading from the inside out

'People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And if you talk about what you believe, you will attract those who believe what you believe'.

Simon Sinek sets out how great leaders inspire action in his TED TALK.  How we inspire others comes from that inner place in us, what we believe in, what we are truly passionate about.  It is about inner authenticity.

Understanding and tapping into that inner passion regularly comes up in coaching.  

I believe It is at the heart of great coaching, when the coachee goes beyond simply improving skills and behaviours and understands and taps into what it is that fundamentally drives him or her.  It enables leaders to become great leaders, inspiring others to follow them, not because of what they say and the words they use, but because of why they are saying it and their own authenticity.  Without this inner 'why' many leaders and organisations find themselves in the all too common saying / doing gap, with lack of trust and follower dis-engagement.

As the the Overview of the GoodWork Project sets out:
People who work are not always aware of the forces that ultimately matter to them. While focusing on the “how” questions—how to get a job, how to keep the job, how to get ahead—many forget the “why” questions that they began with: Why take this path? Why aim to achieve this objective? Why behave in this way? It is the “why” questions that remind us of our truer aspirations and ambitions. Because everyone, everywhere, wants to live an admirable life, a life of consequence, because we all would like to pass “the tombstone test,” the “why” questions cannot be ignored for long without peril to one‟s personal stability and enduring success. It is like ignoring the rudder on a ship—no matter how much you look after all the other moving parts, you may end up lost at sea.

'We follow those who lead, not for them, but for ourselves. And it's those who start with 'why' that have the ability to inspire those around them or find others who inspire them'

Good leaders and good followers both need to be aware of their own 'why' questions.
As Mark Levy says 'meaning is where your power resides.'  Listen to his audio download 'The fascination factor' or reading his e-book on his web site Compelling



jeudi 28 avril 2011

The Inner Game of Work

Timothy Gallwey, 2000

This book develops Gallwey ‘s tennis coaching model and applies this to the wider context of work. For Gallwey performance at work, as in sport, is undermined by potential interference.  
P = p – i    Performance = potential less interference. 
Performance can therefore be enhanced, either by growing “p” potential or by decreasing “i,” interference. The goal of the 'Inner Game' is to reduce whatever interferes with the discovery and expression of one’s full potential.

Gallwey’s underlying premise is that we have two ‘selves’.  
Self 2 is the human being itself, embodying all the inherent potential we were born with, including all the capabilities actualized and not yet actualized.  
Self 1 is the critical inner voice, the  ‘know-it-all who (does) not trust Self 2’ but who constantly advises, criticises and effectively undermines the innate abilities to perform that we all have. Self 1 is the influence of all the criticism we have been exposed to in the past, pushing us to adapt to the demands of the outside world. 

He outlines 3 interconnected principles involved in the process of learning to learn and personal change: Awareness - about knowing the present situation with clarity; Choice - about moving in a desired direction in the future; Trust- in one’s own inner resources. (ACT).

vendredi 25 mars 2011

Starting points ....... and ends

The quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a good starting point for a coaching conversation.  

Covey in his book on the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People talks of 'Begin with the end in mind' - though I much prefer the Cheshire cat version.  Coaching conversations without a clear objective(s) becomes just a pleasant conversation. Where a client is completely stuck the first session may often become a session on working on clear objectives. 


Alice speaks to the Cheshire Cat

`Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'

 `That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
`I don't much care where--' said Alice.
`Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
`--so long as I get somewhere,' Alice added as an explanation.
`Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, `if you only walk long enough

samedi 12 mars 2011

Transactional Analysis

Transactional Analysis (TA) was developed by Eric Berne in the 1960s and 1970's

The philosophical assumptions of TA 

  • People are OK – i.e. have worth, value and dignity. I may not always like or approve of your behaviours, what you do, but your essence as a human being is OK with me.
  • Everyone has the capacity to think. Therefore it is the responsibility for each of us to decide what he or she wants from life. Each individual will eventually live with the consequences.
  • People decide their own destiny, and these decisions can be changed.
Decisional model:
You and are OK. We may sometimes engage in some not-OK behaviour. When we do we are following strategies we decided as young children. These strategies were the best way we could work out as infants to survive.

To realize our full potential as grown ups we need to update the strategies for dealing with life that we decided upon as infants. When we find that these strategies are no longer working we can chose to review them and to act differently. In TA terminology we need to gain autonomy. The TA tools for working to achieve this are awareness, spontaneity and the capacity for intimacy.

For a healthy, balanced personality we need to access all three states: Adult for the here and now problem solving; to fit comfortably into society we need the sets of rule we carry in our Parent; while in our Child we have access to the spontaneity, creativity and intuitive power we enjoyed in our childhood. 

PAC EGO STATE MODEL
An ego state is a set of related behaviours, thoughts and feelings. It is the way in which we manifest a part of our personality at a given time. The model sets out three distinct ego-states:
  • Adult - if I am behaving, thinking and reacting in response to what is going on around me here and now and using all the resources available to me as a grown up person I am said to be in my Adult ego state.
  • Parent - at times I may behave, think and feel in a way which is a copy of my parents, or of others who are parent figures to me.  If I do I am said to be in my Parent ego-state.
  • Child - sometimes I may return to ways of behaving, thinking and feeling which I used when I was a child. Then I am said to be in my Child ego-state. 
Transactions – If I am communicating with you I can chose to do this from any of my three ego states. You in turn can decide to reply from any of your three ego states. This exchange of communication is known as a transaction.

Complementary transactions
Complementary transactional vectors (of stimulus and response) are parallel; the ego state addressed is the one that responds
  • Adult :Adult
  • Child: Child
  • Parent : Parent
  • Parent : Child
Crossed transactions
Crossed transactional vectors (of stimulus and response) are not parallel, or in which ego-state addressed is not the one which responds.
  • Stimulus: – Adult – Adult
  • Response: 
    • Parent – Child;  
    • or Child - Parent
Ulterior transactions
In ulterior transactions two messages are conveyed the same time.  An overt or social message, plus a covert or psychological message.
Overt: Adult – Adult
Covert: Parent - Child

When I offer you a transactional  stimulus I can never make you go into a particular ego-state. You can choose to respond from whichever ego-state you want.

Childlike not childish – there is no such thing as an ‘immature person’ only someone in whom the Child takes over inappropriately or unproductively.

In the Child resides intuition, creativity and spontaneous drive and enjoyment.
The Adult is necessary for survival. It processes data and computes the probabilities which are essential for dealing effectively with the outside world.
The Parent has two main functions. First it enables the individual to act effectively as the parent of actual children, thus promoting the survival of the human race. Secondly  it makes many responses automatic, which conserves a great deal of time and energy.

Thus all three aspects have a high survival and living value and it is only when one of them disturbs the healthy balance that analysis and reorganization are needed. … each has its legitimate place in a full and productive life.

Life scripts
Berne proposed that life scripts are started at birth, completed in childhood and updated with real characters in adolescence.  Script decisions represent the infant’s best strategy for surviving in a world that seems hostile, even life threatening. Script decisions are made on the basis of a child’s emotions and reality-testing.  Life scripts are classified under three headings:
  • Winning  - relative to accomplishing the ‘declared purpose’ I have set myself,  comfortably, happily and smoothly.
  • Losing or hamartic (Greek hamrtia ‘basic flaw’) – someone who does not accomplish a declared purpose.
  • Losing or banal – ‘middle of the roader
You can determine a winning life script by putting the question - What would you do it you lost?  
  • A winner has additional options, that is how he wins. If one thing doesn’t work out, he tries something else until he is successful.
  • A loser doesn’t know, all he can talk about is winning – when my horse comes in….
  • A non-winner sometimes wins, sometimes loses, but never very big in either direction, he does not take risks.
Most of use decide on scripts which are a mixture of winning, non-winning and losing.   Our personal combination of decisions may be entirely different. What is non-winning to you may be winning to me.

Most important of all to realize is that any script can be changed. By becoming aware of my script I can discover areas in which I made losing decisions, and change them to winning decisions.

As adults we sometimes replay the strategies we decided on as infants: 
  • When the here-and-now situations is perceived as stressful. 
  • When there is some resemblance between the here-and-now situation and a stressful situation in childhood.
The movement into script is decisional, even though the decision is out of awareness. By being aware of script we are able to take greater stress before moving into scripty behaviour (or via therapy improve my ability to problem solve rather than resorting to scripty behaviour).  We ‘rubberband’ back to a childhood situation, often ‘putting a face on someone’ from my past experiences (parent, sibling)  - Freudian ‘transference.’  One of the goals of TA is to ‘disconnect rubberbands.’

While in script we attempt to meet adult problems by re-playing infant strategies. Necessarily these bring the same results as they brought when we were infants. Without conscious awareness we seek to set up the world so that it appears to justify our early decisions. When we get those uncomfortable results we can say to ourselves in our Child ego-state, yes the world is like I decided it was.  

Our scripts are often ‘magical solutions’ for resolving the basic issue that was unresolved in childhood: how to get unconditional love and acceptance. As adults we have a hard time letting to of that magic and are terrified of what the alternative might be – some terrible, unspeakable disaster that we had build as infants and that our script was crafted to avoid.  For this reason some people continue to follow ways of behaving which, at the same time, they recognize as self-damaging. 

Extracted from TA Today: A New Introduction to Transactional Analysis. Ian Steward & Vann Joines, 1987.


If you are interested in reading more I recommend Dave Spenceley's notes on the TA101 introductory course and his articles and book reviews.  He also offers a 2-day TA 101 workshop in Leeds. 

Commitment

Goethe on Commitment - J. W. von Goethe


"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative ( and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now".

A key part of the coaching conversation is this question of commitment.  Having identified / clarified the goal, examined the options and decided on the next steps, the question arises - 'How committed are you?'   Without personal commitment to the changes agreed the coaching remains at the level of a comfortable conversation.


As outlined in the recent post on 'procrastination, the coachee may need help from the coach with 'getting specific'

  • What do you want to start with first?
  • How important is it to you that you do it?
  • How are you going to do it?
  • When are you going to do it?
  • Exactly when?
  • Who do you need to help you?
  • How realistic is it?
  • How committed are you to doing it?
  • What do you need to get it on track?
  • What do you need to keep it on track?
  • What might be lurking around the corner to derail it?
  • How can you avoid that?
  • What help do you need from me?


but the commitment remains with the coachee.

Gallwey - Inner Game

In his book 'The Inner Game of Work,' (2000) Timothy Gallwey develops his tennis coaching model (from The Inner Game of Tennis, 1976) and applies this to the wider context of work. 

For Gallwey performance at work, as in sport, is undermined by potential interference. 

P = p – i   
Performance = potential less interference.

Performance can therefore be enhanced, either by growing “p” potential or by decreasing “i,” interference. The goal of the Inner Game is to reduce whatever interferes with the discovery and expression of one’s full potential.’

Gallwey’s underlying premise is that we have two ‘selves’.  

Self 2 is the human being itself, embodying all the inherent potential we were born with, including all the capabilities actualized and not yet actualized.  

Self 1 is the critical inner voice, the  ‘know-it-all who (does) not trust Self 2’ but who constantly advises, criticises and effectively undermines the innate abilities to perform that we all have. Self 1 is the influence of all the criticism we have been exposed to in the past, pushing us to adapt to the demands of the outside world.

Coaching is: ‘the facilitation of mobility'. It is the art of creating an environment through conversation and a way of being, that facilitates the process by which a person can move towards desired goals in a fulfilling manner.’  He points out how our perceptions and definitions of external ‘reality’ impact our experience of this reality.  Thus making a conscious choice about the lens through which we experience work is what redefinition is all about.  He outlines three interconnected principles involved in the process of learning to learn and personal change: ACT -Awareness, Choice, Trust
  • Awareness - about knowing the present situation with clarity;
  • Choice - about moving in a desired direction in the future;
  • Trust- in one’s own inner resources.

 He highlights the importance of ‘desire:’ identifying what we really want, what we are passionate about, rather than what self 1 is telling us we 'ought' to do. 

He includes other useful models in the book, including the STOP model
  • Step back
  • Think
  • Organize your thoughts
  • Proceed
and the idea of you, the player, as being a corporation, and examining who actually has controlling shares in this business:  you, your partner, parents, children, your boss? Do you have the freedom to run you the corporation as you want to? What would you need to do to re-establish a majority stake?

dimanche 6 mars 2011

Procrastination, and small steps...

Over the last couple of months the ‘procrastination’ word has come into several of the coaching conversations I have had with players.  There is usually an air of resignation, of the player being back in that place that he/she recognizes and does not like. The personal dislike for not being more determined, not being stronger, not having moved on, got on with it …. 

How to ‘just do it’?  No wonder the Nike slogan has been so powerful, we can all relate to that time when we wanted to ‘do just do it’ and something held us back.

We usually sit down and get specific.  We pull the whole thing back centre stage and dissect it into more manageable bits:
  • What do you want to start with first?
  • How important is it to you that you do it?
  • How are you going to do it?
  • When are you going to do it?
  • What might be lurking around the corner to derail it?
  • How can you avoid that?
  • What help do you need from me?
We then go on to write it down and I follow up with the player to see how he/she is managing their own next steps. Usually the process of breaking it down into small, more manageable, ‘bites’ makes it easier for the player to ‘just get started.’  To quote Lao Tzu: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Last week I came across a posting on one of my favourite sites, Anecdote, that also offers suggestions for just getting started......

Kevin Bishop of Anecdote posts a book review on Dr. Robert Maurer’s book  One Small Step Can Change Your Life Dr. Maurer is an Associate Clinical Professor at the ULCA School of Medicine, and an expert in Kaizen, the Japanese technique of achieving lasting success through a series of small, steady steps. 
Maurer argues that all changes, even positive ones, are scary. Attempts to meet goals through radical or revolutionary means often fail because they heighten fear. But the small steps of kaizen disarm the brain's fear response, stimulating rational thought and creative play.
In this book he lays out six strategies which underpin Kaizen and applies them to everything from overspending, beginning an exercise program, managing stress, to keeping the house clean.
The six strategies are:
1. Asking small questions to dispel fear and inspire creativity
Maurer argues your brain loves questions, so use this to shape behaviour. So instead of writing down all the things you should be doing to improve your health, ask yourself small questions like: "what is one way I can remind myself to drink more water today?" and let the brain come up with, and implement the answers. He uses the example of Michael Ondaatje, the author of the English Patient, who says he doesn't start by asking; "What kind of characters would be fascinating to readers?" Instead he takes an incident, say a plane crash, and asks himself a few very small questions, such as "Who is the man in the plane?". "Why did the plane crash?". "What year is this?" The answers to these very small questions lead him to create his rich, emotive and ultimately prize-winning novels.
2. Thinking small thoughts to develop new skills and habits
Maurer believes that this philosophy is enhanced by "mind sculpture," a concept developed by Professor Ian Robertson and outlined in his book Mind Sculpture: Unlocking Your Brain's Untapped Potential . Mind sculpture is a kind of guided imagery designed to train the brain in small increments to develop new social, mental, and even physical skills, just by imagining yourself performing them.
3. Taking small actions that guarantee success
This is all about empowering yourself with simple small steps to start the change process. He uses plenty of examples including the following:
Get more sleep. Go to bed 1 minute earlier at night, or stay in bed 1 minute longer in the morning.
4. Solving small problems, even when you are faced with an overwhelming crisis
When something happens that does not work properly, Maurer argues we should spend the time and energy right then to solve it before it produces unwanted results. "Confront the difficult while it is still easy; accomplish the great task by a series of small acts." Tao Te Ching.
5. Bestowing small rewards to yourself or others to produce the best results
Maurer believes that small acts of recognition and small meaningful rewards are much more effective than bigger or more structured rewards.
6. Recognising the small but crucial moments
This is all about understanding that small things make a big difference, especially at crucial moments. He tells a fantastic story about Psychologist Dr John Gottman and his study with couples on the small acts that make a huge difference whether they stay together.


































    dimanche 20 février 2011

    Useful links and web sites

    Arbinger Institute - focuses on the idea that the underlying problem is often not the what we do, but how we do it - self deception.  The book Leadership and the Art of Self Deception is a useful resource for both coaches and manager, to better understand how we relate to others around us, whether at work or outside. 


    Otto Scharmer - including articles and tools on the U Journaling process.


    Aid on the Edge of Chaos - exploring complexity & evolutionary sciences in foreign aid.


    Personality theories, types and tests - Businessballs


    Covey overview of ideas in 7 Habbits


    Mike the Mentor - compilations of coaching models


    Psychosynthesis



    The Clean Collection - clean language


    Systemic Constellations



    Andecote - Change management 
    Lasagne and Chips - knowledge and change management blog


    Ingenious People's knowledge - people are the centre of all action


    Johnnie Moore - articles and podcasts about facilitation


    The Work Foundation 


    Adair action centered leadership Runge Effective Leadership 


    Slideshare



    Association for Coaching (AC) - Recommended reading 



    Metaphor - TED talk


    Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation Daniel Pink


    Motive means and opportunity - Bruce Britton





    Delta 7 - great site using images to get to the unspokens in organisations

    Delta 7 This is our organisation