5 Coaching Mistakes Every Leader Should Avoid

As an executive coach, a common question I have to work through at the beginning of a new coaching engagement is

“Am I working with the right person?”

There are two reasons I find myself asking this question:

1. The person I am working with seems to be just as talented as their supervisor.

2. The people I coach are really good at what they do. They are technical experts in their field.

It doesn’t take me long to answer my own question. Yes, I am working with the right person. The higher you go in organizations, everyone is talented (for the most part) and the people are experts in their field. However, this does not mean they are experts in leadership.

Most of my coaching is helping to groom people for higher levels of leadership. Often there is some tactical, behavioral development that needs to occur.

It is the idea that Marshall Goldsmith writes about in his book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.

I have had over 750 hours of coaching experience in the last 3 years and I have noticed something very interesting.

We all make mistakes.

Not a revelation, I know, but to me it is an interesting observation. Why? Because I wonder where organizations might be if not for the common mistakes I see them making in regard to coaching their leaders.

• Would turnover decrease?

• Would we unleash talent?

• Would customers have more delight?

• Would we ensure a solid foundation for future generations?

Enough Philosophy

Here are 5 coaching mistakes I observe. As you reflect on these mistakes, ask yourself what traps you might be falling into.

1. Confusing your needs with the needs of the person being coached
   
   Depending on your level of leadership, you are responsible for coaching your team to make one or more of the following connections:
   

   1. The mission of the organization to the vision

   2. The purpose of the organization to the mission

   3. The values you aspire to the purpose

   4. The guiding principles to the values

   5. The strategy to the guiding principles

   6. The tactics to the strategy

   7. Individual behaviors that implement tactics
      

   Let’s be honest, most of our coaching focuses on the last one. We are so in the weeds trying to control others that we often lose sight of what the person really needs.
   
   Rather than focusing always on whether or not they are “doing” things exactly as you want them, perhaps you need to go back and connect them to something that has more depth and meaning.
   
   I believe that most people get up in the morning and really want to do a good job for the company. Too many of us as leaders can not get out of our own way. We feel if we are not “doing,” we are not working.
   
   Before you coach someone, step back and ask yourself “What is really going on here? What does this person need from me today?"
   

2. You say it (or yell it) and they produce
   
   I wrote about this one in my book a few years back 7 Secrets of an Emotionally Intelligent Coach.
   
   We live in such a fast paced world that we lose our sense of time. We have instant access to so many things today that 10 or 20 years ago might have taken weeks or months. I no longer have to go through an administrative assistant or send a letter to see if someone can meet with me. I knock out an email or send a text and have a response, often 5 minutes after I sent it.
   
   I heard best selling author, John Townsend, (author of Boundaries, and other great books) give a great analogy the other day. He said it is like standing in front of an apple tree and yelling at the fruit to grow faster; all because the leader wants bigger or more fruit.
   
   Some things just don’t work this way. Some things take time to grow, develop, and mature, no matter how fast you want them.
   
   I recommend you spend some time doing what psychologists call “attuning” with your folks. The idea is to bring into harmony; to tune. The skill required is to connect with others at a deeper and more vulnerable level. This goes beyond being nice or friendly to really be able to listen well and understand the emotions and motivations that are the foundations for behavior.
   
   People will do amazing things for leaders they feel connected with.
   

3. This is their personality so they will always behave this way
   
   I have just about had it with personality profiling. All of them. From Myers-Briggs, to Insights, to the Enneagram, PDI, Horoscopes.
   
   What we are learning about human personality is that it is contextual. No one person is one way all the time.
   
   Those of you who love personality tests, especially those who are certified on them, will say that your model talks about how we need to be flexible and that this is an important aspect.
   
   Right. And if we need to flex, then we are not one way all the time.
   
   The problem is, as leaders, we put people in boxes. We create implicit biases around what people can and can not do based upon their level of introversion or extroversion. We judge, we label, we categorize, and way too often, we are dead wrong.

   
   According to Adam Grant, a leader in the psychology field out of the University of Pennsylvania, the statistical reliability and validity data around these assessments are just not strong enough to do with them the kinds of things organizations do.
   
   As coaches, we need to stop making judgments on personality and understand the context the person is. None of us is always a certain way. Let’s get in and coach people to understand more of what is at the root of what they are doing, not doing, or more likely doing, just not the way you want them too.
   

4. The person being coached is a robot
   
   Just because you run 24/7/365 and are always on, doesn’t mean everyone else is or that it is healthy. We have to start thinking more about corporate health, or better yet, the health of the people who work for us.
   
   How are you coaching your team to take better care of themselves?
   
   How are you modeling this behavior?
   
   If you give someone who already has a full place more to do, how are you helping them prioritize the work? They can not begin to know what is in your mind regarding how they should plan to deliver without your coaching and insights.
   
   Let’s remember that the people we are working with are just that: people.
   
   They have families and other communities outside of work. They have spouses, parents, and kids. They have all kinds of relationships they care about and care for. So, if someone on your team has a family member pass away, they are going to need time to mourn this loss. Just because they are back at work in 3 days (which is a travesty) doesn’t mean they are all the way back. If someone just got a diagnosis of liver cancer, for crying out loud, they are really not thinking about when they will have that report on your desk.
   
   Sure, you have a job to do. I get it. A lot of people are depending on you to drive results. But really, come on…just have a heart.
   

5. Your way is always the best way
   
   This one is a real mindset shift. It takes:
   

   1. Self-Awareness - Realize you don’t know what you don’t know. You might be really far removed from reality.

   2. Self-Regulation - Allow yourself the ability to think and not emotionally react.

   3. Humility - You don’t know everything so how can you get curious with others and develop a learn as we go frame of mind.

   4. Trust - Let them experiment with new and different ways and approaches.
      

   This really is about how you can create a learning organization, one that inspires people to creativity and innovation. At the very least, if there is a prescriptive way for them to work, be open to hearing other ideas on how the work could be done. People they will be more engaged if they know you want to hear their ideas.

As I reflect on this list, I realize it is very relationally focused.

That is because most of the time we hire smart, talented, skilled people who want to do a good job.

Therefore, it is the relationship with the leader that inhibits performance.

Humble thought.

I Just Had A Vacation And I Am Exhausted

If there is one thing I am known for as an executive coach, it is ensuring my clients hear this clear message: when you are on vacation, you are resting.

There has been a lot of work done to show that we are actually able to perform better when we are practicing good self care. Part of good self care is that we learn how to rest.

I really love how Parker Palmer puts it, “Self-care is never a selfish act - it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others. Anytime we can listen to true self and give it the care it requires, we do it not only for ourselves, but for the many others whose lives we touch.”

OUCH.  That one hurts me personally. So much so that I think I need to apologize to all of you who trust me as a coach and in the work of developing the leaders in your organization.

Why?

Because I just had a “vacation” and instead of resting, I worked.

Usually when I am on vacation I will catch up on a lot of reading, reflecting, and journaling. Mostly how I rest is that I will have fun with my wife and my friends and family, we play golf, go out for dinner, play games.

This last vacation I took, I did the second thing; spent time with friends and family playing golf and board games.

What I did not do was spend any time reflecting or reading or journaling.

Instead, I had client calls, and planning meetings, and workshop preparation. 

DANG! Why did I do that?

In his book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Peter Scazzero calls this out as the importance of silence and solitude. He found in his own leadership journey how important this was, not only when taking chunks of time out, like a vacation, but integrating silence and solitude as part of his daily routine. Scazzero writes that he slowed the pace of his life down from working six days a week (about 70 hours) to five days and 40 hours. Over the years, this slowing down has given him time for solitude and reflection.  

The counter-intuitive aspect of this is not always obvious - that this slowing down is actually something that can help us go faster. It can clear our minds. It can refresh us. 

The parallel for me is sleep. When I get a good night’s sleep of 8 hours, I am ready to take on my day. If for some reason I only sleep 4 hours, I am groggy and sluggish the rest of the day. 

While that is an example of a 24 hour cycle; when we put our weeks and months together the logic is the same. 

Rest And Emotional Regulation

By now most of you know the story of the part of our brain called the amygdala. It is the sight of emotional learning and emotional memory. It is the part of the brain’s fear circuit and can trigger things like anger and aggression. When you do not rest enough, or well, this part of your brain doesn’t get the reset it needs from all the days activity.

Research has shown that sleep-deprived people show a 60 percent greater activation of the amygdala during waking hours over those who are not sleep deprived. In his book, Successful Aging, Daniel Levitin writes that “when your mom told you that you were crabby when you didn’t get enough sleep, she was probably right.” (As a side note, Levitin states that sleep deprivation is strongly associated with Alzheimer’s disease.)

The same kind of rest we need every night is needed in more of a yearly pattern as well. As leaders, we need to be able to disengage, to be silent, to think, to become distracted. There is energy in this when we reengage. It is like waking up from a goods night’s rest and having your Mom say, “Wow! Look at you! You sure on in a good mood. You must have had a good night’s sleep!”

Remedy

Edgar Schein, in his book Humble Inqury, makes a most salient point in this area when it comes to the real problem. All of this busyness affects our ability to regulate emotion and gets us into a state of mindless hurrying. Schein writes, “If I hurry I do not pay enough attention to what is going on, and that makes mistakes more likely.”

DANG!

Why didn’t I just take my vacation and disengage so I could be in a frame to reduce mistakes? It all seems so simple.

More importantly, perhaps, then not paying attention is that I may miss new opportunities that are right in front of me. Because I am not rested, I mindlessly hurry by them.

For me, I agree with Schein in that learning how to run faster is not where I need to be in my life, but that I need to slow down in order to make sure I have my full thinking and observational mind available to me and can take “full stock of reality.”

My next vacation is scheduled over Christmas holiday. Please know I will not be available. But also know that when I come back in January, you will get a better version of me. 

Is empathy part of your leadership development plan?

I was reading my newsfeed the other morning when a story about Mark Cuban caught my eye. 

He is my favorite shark on the TV show, Shark Tank, and the title really intreated me, so I clicked on the story.

The title of the article is “How Mark Cuban’s Compassion For An Ex Employee In Need Shows Remarkable Empathy And Leadership.”

Two things about the title really grabbed me:

1. Mark Cuban and the word Compassion. I have to tell you, that really stirred me. As you read the article you find out that Mark went out of his way to help a guy who suffers from mental illness. Keep in mind, this is a guy who he had employed as a player on his Dallas Maverick’s NBA team for only one year. He probably didn’t know him all that well, yet went out of his way to intentionally help.  That is what COMPASSION is. The word actually means “with someone in their suffering.” I think we all could use a little more of that trait today.

2. The second thing I noticed was that the editors had linked Empathy and Leadership in the title of the article. What gets linked with leadership these days when it comes to news is anything but leadership. In fact, I scrolled through the news just a few minutes ago and the only thing I saw was mean spirited vitriol that was more about furthering agendas than it was reporting the news. I guess that is what I found so refreshing about the story linking Empathy and Leadership. 

But these two things are not why I wanted to write this post. 

What really caught my eye when reading the article was this quote, from an NBA scout: :

Talent isn't the question. It comes down to whether or not he's worth the potential off-court headache. 

The player the scout is referring to is Delonte West….but that really isn’t the point.

The thing that really struck me was that talent alone is not enough. Never has been. Never will be. 

I have known and worked with a lot of people over the years that had more talent in their little pinkie than most people totally embodied and yet they just never seemed to be able to get ahead. 

• They were disruptive in meetings

• They seem to only care about themselves and patting themselves on the back

• They only care about their agenda, their project

• The task they had to accomplish was more important than the people around them

In essence, they lack what Mark Cuban, at least in this one instance, seems to really understand. 

People matter!

Compassion and empathy are leadership traits that need to be honed and developed. 

I am asking myself these days if we have put way too much emphasis on management and productivity, and not enough on caring about the people who are doing the production.

I wonder what our world would be like if we all made Empathy part of our Leadership Development plans?

Metabolizing Negative Reality Like Defensiveness

Nobody likes bad news. Especially when the reality of what you are trying to process just does not line up with how you see things.

In my executive coaching practice, I am able to observe the above reality quite often through one of the tools that I use; the Interview 360.

When a new client signs up with me, one of the primary things they are trying to understand is how they are viewed in their organization by other folks. The second thing they are trying to gain awareness around is how the perceptions of others line up how they see themselves.

The Interview 360 is a tool that is meant to bring some clarity to the self-awareness of the leader.

The closer the leader’s self-awareness is to the perceptions of others, then we say there is a higher likelihood that how that leader thinks they show up is in fact what others are experiencing.

Leaders whose self-awareness is aligned with those in the organization have a pretty good idea of what their strengths are and they also have a keen idea of what their opportunities for growth might be.

Not all leaders I work with experience this level of alignment!

In collecting feedback for a leader, it becomes fairly easy to tell when a leader has made a mistake, or not treated others in a professional manner, or maybe they just don’t listen very well. The issues for misalignment can be vast and quite varied. Often they are contextual to certain types of organization relationships, like with direct reports or with peers.

When this misalignment occurs, the thing I hear most from the client I am working with is, “That was not my intention!”

This statement is then followed by some type of rationalization:

• I sure didn’t mean to react that way.

• I actually thought I had a mandate from leadership to do what I did.

• I am being penalized for my boss not showing up and leaving me exposed.

• My action was totally taken out of context, that is not who I am.

Defensiveness

Leaders often get charged with being defensive when situations like this occur. Defensiveness is a very typical immediate type of reaction. I never fault a client for being defensive initially.

The problem with a defensive posture in the long-run is that it inhibits the leader from being able to learn and grow from the precipitating event.

Likely, this defensiveness over the long term is a leader’s inability to metabolize negative reality.

At times, people struggle to completely understand the feedback they have received. Best selling author, John Townsend, says leaders who struggle in this area are really struggling with their ability to accept imperfection.

Leaders who maintain long-term defensives might be struggling with issues of embarrassment, shame, and even deep-seated narcissism. This defensiveness can wreak havoc with a leader’s self-confidence, their ability to tolerate stress, and even cause them to be much less trusting in previously trusted relationships.

Thermostat or Thermometer

As I am working with clients who are defensive in processing negative realities, an analogy that has worked for me is to challenge the leader to see themselves as a thermostat instead of a thermometer.

Leaders who act like thermometers allow their emotions to rise and fall based upon what they are feeling in the moment. When any of us receives feedback that creates a negative reality for us, this is a common occurrence. No one likes to be called out as an adult for behavior that is not valued by the organization, especially if this behavior has been rewarded in the past (If not overtly rewarded, at least not recognized and overlooked).

For most of us, these negative realities will fade a bit from our current memory, we become almost numb to the event. Compartmentalizing it as an isolated issue and covering it up with an “it really doesn’t bother me that much” band-aide.

Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere something will happen and the entire experience of the negative reality will come back to light. Perhaps someone gets a promotion that you were in line for, until the negative reality event. Or maybe you get passed over for a bonus you otherwise would have fully deserved! Then it is like a fire-cracker has been lit off inside you and your emotional temperature just skyrockets.

A very high-risk place for a leader to be.

The coaching I do with leaders who have experienced negative realities is to help them see themselves more as a thermostat rather than a thermometer. The goal here is for them to take an accurate account of the entire environment around them and then control the environment.

Thermometers measure the temperature in only one place and are a reflection of their environment. A thermostat has a much broader perspective of what is going on and can see a much bigger picture and then be more in control of the narrative.

How About You

Have you experienced any negative realities lately? Something not go your way? Did you get some feedback that maybe you didn’t agree with or that really set you back?

You have a choice in terms of how you respond. I think initially we are all a bit like thermometers. So give yourself some grace here. Then, as time goes on, the real challenge for you is are you going to stay a thermometer or are you going to grow into a thermostat? What is the upside if you grow? Also, what is the downside if you stay a thermometer?

5 Questions Every Leader Needs To Be Asking Themselves in Reflection

How good are you at spending time in purposeful reflection?

This is a question I ask a lot of the leaders I coach. The reason I ask about purposeful reflection is that I think leaders are fairly good at reflecting, they are constantly seeing things in their own heads.

For example, I had a client who recently was working on a review of the talent in her organization. She spent a lot of time reflecting on the individuals that she was representing. However, she spent almost no time intentionally reflecting on her overall outcome or any of the biases she might have experienced when going through her talent review process. 

I think it is fair to say many of us are good at reflecting on the work in front of us…maybe not so good at critical reflection of the processes we went through to make the work happen.

There are not many of us who spend time on this. And I get it. 

Those of us in leadership development have spent way too much time working with leaders on obtaining good outcomes and not nearly enough time helping you think about your processes.  We have encouraged you to go from “good to great,” to be “innovative,” and to “work from your strengths.”

But what we haven’t given you are tools to purposefully reflect on how you are showing up as a leader.

A leadership guru, Gary Yulk, wrote that to facilitate favorable learning environments in organizations, leaders must act as a role model.

Have you thought much about that? Do you see yourself as a role model?  What does that even mean for you and how you are impacting those on your team? Are you one who encourages your team to have a good work/life balance but sends emails at 5pm on Saturday evening and 9am on Sunday morning?  

Role models set the tone and the pace for those they work with.

Some of you might be saying, “Well I want folks on my team to work hard! During COVID I need to make sure they are really engaged.”

Okay, just know that Dan Goleman, in his book Primal Leadership, calls out this “pacesetting” style as dissonant. The problem, according to Goldman, is that you will likely burn out people on your team.  If you don’t burn them out, you will run them down so much they will lose energy to be able to give you any kind of extra effort when it is needed. 

Here are five other biases that leaders can be influenced by and some questions you can spend some intentional time reflecting on:

1. Confirmation Bias -Seeking out proof that will confirm what you already think or believe.  Are you working on a project or with a team and unduly influencing them to show something you already believe is true? What do you need to do to eliminate this bias from a project you are currently working on?

2. Hindsight Bias - Belief that the past was more accurate and predictable than it really was. How old is the data you are using to form your opinions of people on your team? I have a client who made a mistake several years ago. Although he has had many successes since then, he is still in a “penalty box” for that error. Are there people in your organization you need to forgive because you are putting too much emphasis on things that happened a long time ago?

3. Gender Bias - A widely held set of implicit biases that discriminate against gender. Let's say a female in your organization (Sally) really gets intense in a meeting. You think about the situation and come to a private conclusion that “when under pressure, women get emotional.” Anytime we use all inclusive language about an individual we are showing a bias. Step back and think about what happened to Sally in the moment and consider why she got emotional. Then apply the same standard to one of the guys on your team (Dave). If he gets emotional, does he get credit because he is passionate? If they are both emotional, why is it a problem for Sally and not for Dave? How might you take gender bias out of your thinking as you work with talent on your team?

4. Anchoring Bias - Relying heavily on an initial piece of information or a data point that unduly influences your decisions and thought processes. “Do you remember that guy we hired from a competitor 5 years ago? He was a total wash out.” Do you use comments like this that unduly influence your thoughts and feelings today? Does this one situation anchor all your thoughts on hiring competitors? How could you look at each individual without labels and find the good in what they are brining no matter what their work history might be?

5. Available Thought Bias - Your decision is influenced by what springs first into your mind. I witness this one a lot in leaders. They tend to fall in love with the first thing out of their mouths. This comes from our pride, and feeling we need to defend an idea just because we said it. This one happened to me today in a meeting. I was asked my opinion and gave it, then felt like if I didn’t defend it I would be seen as not having a take on a topic. So I ended up defending something I was not that passionate about.  How might you overcome pride, admit you were wrong, and agree with someone who had a better idea than you?

I do hope you might take some time today or this week to pause and reflect on how these biases might be affecting your leadership.

As you reflect, I encourage you to forgive yourself. We all have biases - we can’t help it. Our brains are association making machines. They fill in blanks to make reality from things that may or may not be there. Realizing we all have biases is the first step to better team outcomes. 

Best hopes to you with your intentional reflection exercise.

4 Proven Ways to Get Out of a Rut

As a professional coach, I have been on the receiving end of many questions throughout the years. One that I’ve heard over, and over, and over, sounds something like this: “Scott, I am in such a rut right now. Any ideas on how to get out?"

The idea of being in a rut is an interesting one.

Wagon-Stuck-Road-Bad

What is a rut?

The phrase "stuck in a rut" is said to have originated in the early 1800’s as settlers in America were moving west. The wooden wheels of the wagons they were pulling would get caught in holes or very deep grooves that were carved in the common path being traveled. If your wagon got stuck in a rut, I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to pull out and continue the journey.

Today the phrase “stuck in a rut” has a different meaning but similar feeling to it. The feeling of being buried, bored, not motivated, stagnant, or even monotony.  I would estimate that 25% of the coaching I do is with clients who feel like they are in this deep pit and cannot seem to find a way out.

How Do Leaders get Out of a Rut?

Here are four strategies you can use to get out of a rut. I would recommend picking one and see if it works for you. As with all the recommendations we make, there are no guarantees. If something is not working for you try a different approach or a new strategy.

Rest

It is possible for us to feel like we are in a rut when really what we are is tired. In our 24/7 world, where things are constantly coming at us, it is very easy to feel paralyzed and not know which direction to turn. It is like you have eight ropes tied around you and each one is pulling you a different direction. They all have the same amount of tension on them, so you cannot move. You are stuck and what really needs to happen is to release the tension.

Here are three things you can do to rest and relieve the tension so you can move again:

• Serious Play. Often times we think of play as being for children. However, research has shown that play for adults stimulates higher-order thinking. Play, in this sense, is a voluntary activity involving physical engagement of some type that is pleasurable for its own sake. Take a day and just go play. Do something you get a lot of pleasure out of. Resist feeling guilty or childish and just enjoy it. Reflect at the end of the day on how good you really feel. I find the feeling freeing, and a great way to release the tension.

• Sleep. You may flat out not be getting enough. Turn off the TV, iPad, Phone, or DVD player, and get 7 to 8 hours of sleep. If you are in a rut, track the amount of sleep you are getting. If you find you are not getting enough, take a nap. Close your door, schedule a meeting with yourself, and close your eyes for 20 or 30 minutes. It can be refreshing.

• Nature Walk. The walking part is relaxing in itself, and doing it in the woods, on a mountain, or on a beach can be an excellent way to relax. This practice will also help to use pent up energy and help you to sleep better at night.

Reflection

• Get Clear. Make a list of your priorities. Put them in order and start crossing them off. The physical aspect of seeing things crossed off will give you the sense that you are making progress out of the rut.

• Find a Friend. Support them. Focus on them. Don’t focus on yourself and your problem. I find that focusing on others and their problems, then trying to help them solve their issues, often helps me. Being an entrepreneur can at times be scary. Then I go serve a community meal at our local Care Center for people who literally don’t know where their next meal is coming from, and I realize that I really have nothing to fear.

• Start journaling. Then buy Shery Russ’s book The Journaling Life. Seriously, journaling is one of the single best things that leaders can do to keep themselves headed in the right direction. I would encourage you to not only journal what you think, and facts that have happened to you, but also to journal your feelings. Getting emotion out on the table is critical for releasing the stuck feeling.

Retreat

The idea of a retreat comes from an old French word meaning "a step backward."  The word took on a military connotation in the 14th century as an act of withdrawing from action. The reason for withdrawal was to regroup so you can re-engage the enemy again more powerfully than before. Many people I run into see retreat as weakness. Retreat is actually a way for the leader to regain their thoughts and engage their work again more powerfully.

• Personal Leadership Retreat. This idea is for you to get away by yourself for 2 to 4 hours to just think about where you have been, where you are now, and where you are heading in the future. I just took a Personal Leadership Retreat a week or so ago and have done a video chronicle of my experience and what I learned. You can view it here. If you don't know how to do a retreat this video will give you some ideas on how you could do your own Leadership Retreat.

• Read Your Bible. One way to retreat when you don't have time to get away for four hours is to take a 20- minute retreat with an inspiring book. The book I turn to most often for inspiration is the Bible. The Bible is, year in and year out, the best-selling book in the world. However, most people just do not spend enough time gleaning inspiration from this masterpiece. One of the verses I turn to most often is Colossians 3:23.

• Try Fiction. Reading or watching a TV series can be a great way to step back, relax, and prepare to re-engage. My wife and I are currently on a retreat of sorts. In the evenings, we are watching the series Alias on Netflix. The show stars Jennifer Garner and has a spy theme with interesting twists and turns. We call it "mindless", but it helps sometimes to just relax and be mindless so that the next day I am more prepared to engage my world.

Reprogram

You got into this rut by a certain path. If you are going to get out, you may need to do something different that will reposition your perspective. This reframing can be difficult for a couple of reasons: First, leaders may believe that the path they were traveling is right, ergo the rut is on the right path. Second, even when leaders acknowledge they are on the wrong path, being in the rut feels safer than any change they may need to make to get on the right path.

Here are three things you can do to reprogram yourself out of the rut:

• Get on a new path. Start innovating. Don’t worry about success or failure. Develop an attitude to let go of the outcome and just focus on the quality of the input.

• Stick your hand up. Let others help pull you out. Start collaborating. Collaboration is an intentional sharing of ideas, which requires give and take, and at times some real humility. Just talking about what path you want to be on can be of great value and begin to extract you from the hole. Walter Isaacson, in his excellent chronicle of how the digital age came to be, made this observation, “Brilliant individuals who could not collaborate tend to fail." Don’t fail. You are smart enough! Reach out, collaborate, and do it with some intentional frequency.

• Take a risk. Executive coach Marshall Goldsmith is famous for saying “fail forward fast." I recommend a book titled Fail Fast, Fail Often. In it the authors provide some very practical advice on how to break free from habitual behaviors that may have you in a rut, and to trust your enthusiasm for a new venture. I know I have said it before, but I do think it is worth repeating: as leaders, we need to let go of outcomes and focus on quality inputs.

Homework: Get out of your rut by trying one of the suggested methods of Rest, Reflection, Retreat, or Reprogram.  Let us know which one you try this week in the comments below.

What Do You Mean They Don’t Trust Me?

I doubt that too many leaders wake up in the morning saying to themselves, “Gee, I wonder how I can erode my team’s trust today?” If they did they would either be pure evil or would be trying to get people to quit their team. To me, it is almost unconscionable that a person who was able to rise to a level of leadership in an organization would stoop to such madness.

The thing I find interesting in my executive coaching practice are the calls I receive asking for suggestions on what can be done when a leader has lost their team’s trust. So, I did some research on organizational leaders regaining trust and here is a brief summary of what I found.

Steps to Regaining Trust

1. Discern the Error. Since most leaders do not get up in the morning hoping to erode the trust of the team, it is important to decipher what went wrong. How small or large is the impact? Did you go back on your word? Are you making changes that people do not understand? Were changes made that were thought to be temporary but now they seem permanent? If the violation of trust is two-sided then some type of conflict resolution will be needed.

2. Assess the Impact. If the violation of trust is localized between one, or two, individuals then move as fast as you can to rectify the situation. Realize that even if it’s just a misunderstanding, word travels quickly in organizations. Try and remedy this as fast as possible. If the transgression is more systemic, then a more formal, systematic plan may need to be put in place.

3. Admit Publicly The Error Of Your Way...Quickly. Once you’ve identified your error, be prepared to make it right. Perhaps one of the most common trust errors is the perception of the leader using inconsistent standards to evaluate contribution. When this happens a leader needs to apologize for any inconsistency and strive for clarity around the standards being set.

4. Listen to Each Other. No matter if the erosion is localized or systemic, good listening skills by both parties are needed. Avoid trying to justify behavior or explaining your intention. There can be time for that level of clarification later. The thing that is needed most at this point is to sit down, show good empathy and try to understand where the other person is coming from.

5. Be Prepared to Apologize. The leader must have a humble posture in order to grant someone else a higher position than they take for themselves. According to Edgar Schein, this can be difficult for a leader because of the formal power granted by the organization where the follower is just expected to implicitly comply.

6. Follow Up with Compassion. According to trust and communication expert, Irina Schultheiss Radu, leaders need to build cognitive trust by showing they are reliable and dependable to work whatever plan has been put into place. At the same time, the leader needs to build affective trust by showing true care and compassion. (Click here to refresh your memory on cognitive and affective trust.)

When a leader finds themselves in trust-issues situations immediate action is needed in order for organizational effectiveness and efficiency to be restored. Are you currently rebuilding trust with your team members? What actions are you putting in place to recover the path toward trust?

If you are a leader who thinks you have lost trust, or you are forwarding this article to someone you feel has lost trust, take heart. In most cases the trust is recoverable. The path is not easy, but if approached with sincerity, restoration is possible.

How Do You Solve This Leadership Problem?

A few years ago, I had a fascinating conversation with a client who had an unusual problem. His organization was hiring for an upcoming position and the internal candidate was confident, driven, and articulate during the interview process. However, when he asked her to explain different ways she’s handled “critical feedback,” she was silent. My client asked the same question in a different way and framed the query with how she’s handled “personal development opportunities.” Still no answer. He even used an example of something he had observed in their workplace interactions and it still didn’t induce an answer on her part.

He was puzzled, and I can see why. What’s the best practice, for a leader, on helping someone see their personal weaknesses and potential areas for development? 

Here are some ideas of what may be happening when your team member can’t see their own shortcomings:

1. Lack of self-awareness.  They don’t know themselves to receive feedback and how to process the information. A lack of self-awareness is actually quite common in leadership development. Self-awareness means understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the leader and the effect these have on others in different situations and contexts.

2. Poor listener.  Even though my client asked the same question in different ways, it is possible that the woman didn't understand. In any dialogue, there are three conversations happening. The first is between the two participants, and the other two conversations are the ones that each participant is having with themselves. If the interior monologue has a “higher volume” than the verbal conversation, active listening is not happening. The conversation energy is going toward preparing what to say next when the other person stops talking.

3. Arrogance. It is common for the leadership literature to call this narcissism. Another common description is pride or being so self-absorbed that previous feedback rolled off her back. In this case, it seems like she heard the feedback, but rejected it.

4. Omniscience. A high level of knowledge is often seen as a positive quality in a leader, as knowledge and experience are valuable commodities. However, a leader who believes they are all knowing is on a slippery slope.

5. Lack of self-regard. Self-regard is an ability to be able to accept yourself for who you are. It is the appreciation for your positive attributes, and your perceived negative traits, while still feeling good about yourself. With my client’s interviewee, it’s possible her personal view of self was so low or distorted, that admitting fault would appear as weakness.

As leaders, it is vital we learn how to receive critical feedback and capitalize on personal growth opportunities. So, how are YOU doing on answering the question, “What is your personal development opportunity”?

Give this question full breadth and stretch yourself a bit? Get honest and ask, "What do I need to work on that will cause me to be a more effective leader?" Let me know what you find out about yourself and how I can encourage you on your journey.

Will These Three Ideas Help You Succeed?

What questions have you been asking yourself as you build your success story? Perhaps, it is, “As HR Vice President, what does leadership development look like?” Or, “As a sales leader, how can I balance work and family? Or even possibly, “As a Church Plant Pastor, what do I need to do to grow my congregation?”

These are tough, yet realistic problems that we face as professionals, but I think we need to reframe the questions.

Any coach (whether formal or informal, external or internal, paid or volunteer, executive or life or organizational) must have the skill of listening then reframing questions. Reframing a question provides a different perspective on the issue at hand.

As a coach, it’s my job to reframe the question to help you get to the heart of the matter. Rather than asking about leadership development, I would challenge you to ask the real question, “What do I need to do to get promoted in my next role in the company?”

Or if you’re the sales leader, what I really hear you asking is, “If I sacrifice time with my family, will it be worth it financially?”

Or to the pastor, I would reframe the question as, “What should I be doing to grow my church? I am doing everything the books say, but it isn’t working!”

Please don’t misunderstand my point. I do think that people want to know how you approach things, how you set goals, how you solve problems, how you prioritize resources, how you assess risk. But, the answers they want will direct back at themselves.

Enter the world of what psychologists call self-efficacy.

Research On Self-Efficacy

Self-Efficacy is a fancy term for belief in yourself; confidence in the capabilities and talents you have been given and developed. Studies have shown that the confidence you have in your capabilities affects your performance and is linked to happiness, satisfaction, and well-being. All of these attributes in one way or another link to success.

Research published in the December 2016 issue of the Consulting Psychology Journal outlines that you can help those you coach be more successful by following three simple ideas:

1. Invest the Time: The confidence of the person increased as the coaching relationship evolved over time. As you coach others over the course of your conversation, notice how their confidence increases toward the coaching objective. When it does, make them aware that you are seeing this increase in confidence.

2. Say it Out Loud: The more the client verbally articulates their confidence, the higher the achievement to the goal actually becomes. “I am going to do this” type statements show confidence in the client's ability. The more they make commitments out loud, the increased likelihood of belief in themselves.

3. Ask the Right Question at the Right Time: In this study, questions asked by coaches fell into three categories:

   • Open-ended - “What do you want to do?"

   • Proposing Solutions - “You could search for other companies that offer better possibilities.”

   • Provide Support - “That sounds like a great idea."

The research points to proposing solutions as the only effective method in triggering self-efficacy statements in the very first coaching session. While the other two methods are also valid, they merely enhanced the confidence of the other person throughout the coaching engagement.

As you work with and coach others on your team, especially if you have more of a long-term relationship, focus on asking open-ended questions and providing support for the ideas they bring. Too many of us fall into the trap of proposing solutions because it makes us feel better about ourselves like we added real value. I would argue that the value you bring is the investment of time and belief in the person you are coaching. The research says that the value of you proposing solutions beyond early in a coaching relationship does little to improve the confidence or belief in the mind of the person you are working with.

How would your work environment change if you focused on building the confidence of others in your organization? When you are coaching others, resist the temptation to make the coaching about you by offering advice and providing them solutions. Really focus on practicing open-ended questions and providing your client the support they need.

How to Maintain Emotional Balance When Things Go Bad

In every organization, there are sometimes big changes and it can be hard to maintain emotional balance through each situation. You may be thinking, “Sure, it is easy to use the tools you mention when things are going well, but what happens when things go bad?” Just because there are changes that may affect your position, it does NOT require that it affects your emotions in a negative way.

Several situations could be categorized as difficult for leaders to work through: downsizing, merging, restructuring, relocating, new leadership, project failure, ethical and moral failure, just to name a few. Basically, any situation involving a change that does not give you a positive feeling. These situations don't have to be awful, but they encompass any kind of change that takes you out of your normal routine, which can make them difficult.

When there has been a breakdown in your company, it doesn’t feel good. Tensions are high and people are on edge emotionally. Realizing the emotion exists and not allowing the negativity to drag you down is the skill. This is emotional resilience. Bad things are going to happen.

How can you as a leader work on your own resilience to be able to lead others to see a brighter day ahead?

The first step in being a resilient leader in times of tension and complexity is to be aware of and manage your emotion. In an issue of Leadership Quarterly, Laura Little, Janaki Gooty, and Michelle Williams take on the topic of "the role of leader emotional management." The authors studied 163 leaders and their followers and concluded that when followers perceive that the leader was managing emotion, focusing on meeting expectations, and creating a future, followers felt better about the leadership being provided. Conversely, when followers perceive that leaders modulate or suppress their emotion, there is a lack of leadership and job satisfaction on the part of the follower.

What can you do as a leader to create better leadership in times of tension and complexity? How can you focus on meeting expectations while creating hope and a future for your followers when times are tough?

Here is a simple acronym that can help you stay in CHECK during difficult situations:

Consider the Situation

Take note of what's going on and how it is affecting you, your relationships, and your team. Can you describe the situation clearly and objectively, then identify the emotion it brings up and why? Are your emotions creating false expectations that need to be managed?

Hear from Others

Who are two or three people you trust that can speak into the situation? Identify individuals inside and outside of what's going on that can help you think and act productively as you figure out what to do. Don't spend too much time doing this, or else you become subject to the opinions of too many people and fall into a pit of gossip and negativity, which brings us to our “E."

Eliminate Negativity

This is easier said than done but necessary. Pessimism indicates that there's absolutely no hope or no solution to what's going on, and that's just simply not true. Whether it's coming from yourself or from others, be sure that what you are hearing and thinking will be constructive and productive. Martin Seligman, past president of the American Psychological Association tells us we need to develop a “positive explanatory style." This is not “The Power of Positive Thinking” we all have heard about. It is much deeper than this. Seligman says, “What you think when you fail is crucial.“ How you explain things to yourself when they don’t go your way is the difference between helplessness and being energized.

Create a Plan - Organize and Carry Out

You've thought about it and talked about it, now it's time to decide what you will do about it. Start with the outcome you hope to have and work backward, documenting the steps you need to take to reach that outcome. The key here is to describe what success looks like to you before you implement the plan.

Keep Your Head Up - Stay Consistent, Present, and Motivated

We know it's not going to be easy, but no matter what happens you have the ability to take a deep breath, stay positive, and keep going. What are some things you can do to remove yourself from what's going on, clear your head, and rejuvenate yourself to stay in the game?

HOMEWORK

Think about this acronym and how you can apply to a difficult situation you are facing. Write CHECK on a note and stick it somewhere you can see it as a reminder of this process. When you see it, think about how you can apply it to the things causing tension for you and your organization.

Does this really have to be a 4 letter word?

C. O. N. F. L. I. C. T

Okay, so it isn’t literally a “4 letter word,” but in organizations sometimes it feels twice as bad as any four letter word ever would.

Conflict is one of those tension words that has such a negative connotation. So averse that we avoid it like we would someone in the grocery store not wearing a mask.

It is like the conversation you know you need to have with someone, but you go the other way because avoidance seems, at the time, to be much less painful than the interaction.

But is it? What is behind this avoidance? 

This is the generation of “when you see something, say something.” I think that mantra is pretty easy to articulate in isolation, like when you are hiding behind your Facebook. But put all the social pressures we feel in organizations on top of it and avoiding conflict can seem like a better route than addressing it.

What if the person I am in conflict with gets hurt? Worse yet, what if I get hurt?

Rather than face the hurt or the pain, our knee jerk response is often to avoid. Just like the person in the grocery store who is not wearing a mask and our first thought is not the fact that it is unlikely they have COVID (current respiratory specimen data at this writing is 7.0%) , rather, we choose to avoid them all together. There is over a 90% chance that all is well, but we become paralyzed by the prospect of the pain, so we avoid and miss all the great opportunities that could have been present if we just engaged.

Conflict and Emotional Intelligence

I was working with a team of folks a few years back whose senior leadership team was trying to address the fact that their business was being held back because everyone in the company was so nice to each other. 

I actually see this a lot with the organizations I work with. They are great people. Highly professional. And rightly so, in our organizations It has become the right thing to do to treat employees well, with respect.

A goal in developing organizations is to try and understand what the people need and to try and meet those needs. We hear a lot these days about how to engage employees; making sure they are enjoying their work has become a metric for performance. That is all well and good, except if we are not careful we can over index on the relationships to the extent that problems will go unsolved.

It is interesting to me the relationship between Interpersonal Relationships and Decision-Making, specifically the problem-solving aspect of a decision-making process. 

First, let me define my terms.

Interpersonal Relationships between people are mutually satisfying relationships that are characterized by trust and compassion. 

Problem-Solving is the ability to find solutions for problems where emotions are involved (which is every problem) and how the emotions impact the decision.

Here is what it looked like at the client I mentioned above:

The organization had a culture of caring about people. The experience was very much like being in a family. By-in-large, they all are really nice people. They trust each other and show a tremendous amount of care and compassion. Strong Interpersonal Relationships. 

So when a deadline came…(and went)… for a project to be delivered, it created a problem. Other teams would be waiting for the work that was now missing. What ensued is what I called tension-smiles.

You can feel the tension of the missed deadline, all the while smiling as if nothing was wrong. 

The emotion of the problem was high. The relationships were trusting.

The issue became that the folks in the organization saw the choice they had as either stressing the relationship OR solving the problem. What I heard was, “If I confront Sam for missing the deadline, then I will lose trust with him.”  

From their perspective, the choice was between preserving relationship OR the solving problem - not both.

This is common when it comes to conflict. The tension and the emotion affects our ability to see things clearly. We fall into fear based thinking that blinds us. Instead of seeing the full picture, fear causes us to see very few options in front of us.

The Strategy 

A simple hack when you feel you are facing this dichotomy is to change your OR to AND.

How can the manager in the above scenario have both strong interpersonal relationships and solve the problem at hand?

Understanding where Sam is coming from AND holding him accountable for missing the deadline are both possible by flexing your Empathy muscle; empathy for Sam as well as for the people impacted by his missing the deadline. 

Our emotions will, at times, not tell us the truth.

It will feel like I must pick one option over the other; such as the relationship over solving the problem. This is the “false” in false dichotomy.  

Your emotion, your fear, your anxiety is telling you something, but what it is telling you gets misinterpreted.  

Your emotion is telling you that there is tension. The question your emotion is asking you is “What do you want to do about this?”  

Emotions can’t decide. All they can do is inform.

It is up to your more rational, thinking brain to make the decision. In order to do this, it is key when you feel the fear or the anxiety in the false dichotomy of choice to take a deep breath. Step back for a moment and see if you can find a way to solve the problem AND maintain the relationship.

Change your OR to AND.

Hold Sam accountable AND maintain the relationship.  

Best Hopes to you on this journey.  It is worth the ride.

7 Steps to Creating Followership

With all the crazy in our world these days, most leaders I speak with barely have enough time to get their jobs done, let alone spend any significant time catching up on things they enjoy reading. I know for me it has been that way, I am about 3 books behind in my own reading schedule. The other thing I really enjoy that I just have not taken as much time for is keeping up with my journal reading. The journal Leadership is one of my favorites. 

I had a client who needed to reschedule the other day and I jumped on the journal Leadership’s website to see what was current and I was really intrigued by the framework of  the  August 2020 issue. The entire journal is dedicated to the shift being seen in how effective leadership is being practiced. Here are a couple of the articles:

1. The price of wearing (or not wearing) the crown: The effects of loneliness on leaders and followers.

2. Barriers to leadership development: Why is it so difficult to abandon the hero

3. Toward a methodology of studying leadership-as-practice

I find it very interesting to think about the leader not being the hero. For too long, we have been sucked into thinking that the leader will rush in and save us. That the leader is some sort of mystical figure who is smarter, more engaging, or has more energy.

As I watch organizations and spend time reading and thinking about this, I am becoming convinced nothing could be further from the truth.

Even certain personality construct like Myers-Briggs give homage to types that they say are natural leaders like the ENTJ (see Myers-Briggs for more details). There are so many implicit and explicit biases in this kind of nonsense that the idea is almost laughable.  

Since leadership has such a strong relational component, I am becoming convinced that true leadership is really about whether others will follow. There will always be a consideration given that in certain circumstances people might have to follow. There is some power gradient in play where a person feels they have to tolerate the leader. But this is a leader in name only, or maybe a better term is boss or supervisor. 

True leadership has followership; not because they have to, but because they choose to.

Those following the leader do so because they buy in to the vision. They find the work they contribute toward the vision to be interesting and worthy to spend their lives doing. Those in followership  have heightened levels of accountability. They feel responsible for the vision and they understand their role in making it happen.

There are very significant trends (all being accelerated by COVID) in the direction of followership models replacing traditional heroic, leader-centric models. These follower-centric models are replacing what many are now calling the “heroic” leader. The leader is no longer the center of the work flow to create leadership, rather, as Barbara Kellerman writes in her book, Followership, “Followership implies a relationship between subordinates and superiors and a response of the former to the later.”   

I really like the idea of followership as it brings into balance the task and the relationship side of the leadership equation. Followership is about empowering teams to higher levels of performance where the leader is setting the vision, building a safe environment, fostering learning, recognizing contributions, and maybe most of all is not the focus of the attention.

Are You Creating Followership?

The above question is a good one for leaders in organizations to sit back and ask themselves. Really spend some time reflecting on your ability to create an environment where people choose to follow your vision, and not because they have to for some organization hierarchy or power gradient reason.  

Here is a little checklist of 7 things to reflect on your own ability to create followership:

1. Clearly describing the vision - In a few words can I articulate our purpose?

2. Repeatedly giving the vision - How many times a day do I bring the work people do back to the vision?

3. Reciprocal Trust - Do followers feel psychologically safe to be themselves so they can contribute? Do you really understand their relational needs that unlock their true potential?

4. Learning - Do we encourage learning including: asking questions, giving and receiving feedback, even making mistakes?

5. Expectations - Are they as clear to followers as they are in your own head?

6. Coaching - Do you really want to win; or do you just want to be seen as a good coach?

7. Two Tier Feedback - Are you willing to examine original assumptions made or do you just give feedback on observed behavior?

I give you these 7 ideas and questions not really as a model for followership, but more of a checklist to ask yourself or others around you how you are really doing at fostering the relational side of leadership.

I would love to have your perspective on Followership. If you have a comment, please put it below. Love hearing from you.

How Can Being Instead of Doing Affect Your Organizational Culture?

Years ago I worked at an organization that had a cultural norm of “respect for people." This norm was carried out in many positive ways such as compassion with the loss of an employee's family member, care with paternity and maternity leaves, and even performance-reflected pay-base in this respectful culture.

In one department, a leader swooped in with an agenda. He would make changes in performance standards but only select favorites would be told of these new rules. Low-performance ratings were given to people who had traditionally been top performers. The culture shifted dramatically and the organization became chaotic and fragmented. The previous cultural norms were no longer reliable. All anyone knew was to "please the leader or you are out."

Six months later the entire department had been decimated. The leader had to be replaced. What was once a high-performing organization had been completely and utterly destroyed by the actions of one person. One really loud voice was able to take down an entire team, exiting many top performers from the company in the process.

The culture you define as an organizational leader impacts the development of your team members. If they don't feel safe, they definitely won't feel valued as a team member. And if they don't feel valued, then they won't be motivated. When you have unmotivated team members you run the risk of losing them or leaving untapped potential on the table.

So, how do you create a culture that allows your newest team members to feel safe as well as your current colleagues to be motivated? Perhaps it's not something that you DO, but instead what you can BE.

Focus on developing your Emotional Intelligence. This effort on your part will impact the culture you want to create. As you create this positive culture, the desired behaviors will become part of who you are and not just something that you do occasionally. Think deeply about the kind of culture you are shaping as you lead your team.

Here are five things you can become that will positively impact the culture of your organization:

Be Self Aware

Know yourself and be confident in your abilities. Understand how you handle your emotions and how they impact your company. Your team is watching to see how you will react. In fact, they may be able to predict your behaviors. Become just as aware of yourself and how you can choose your emotional responses.

Be Assertive

Communicate your what, how, and why in a simple, clear, and even repetitive way so that your team understands.

Be Empathetic

When I teach seminars on Emotional Intelligence, I often ask the group for a common definition of empathy. The response I get back more than any other is “walking a mile in the other person’s shoes.” I love this definition, but to take it one step further (pun intended),I would add that empathy is “walking a mile in the other person’s shoes, even when the shoe doesn’t fit." Being empathetic is about being compassionate, caring, listening, and being flexible as needed. I strongly believe we should not neglect the impact empathy has on shaping the culture of your company. Showing regular empathy will instantly invoke safety and value in your teammates.

Be in Control

Don’t waver or change things based on emotional reactions. When something comes up that causes an emotional response, remind yourself of the company’s mission and your principles to ensure your decisions align with your mission. This way, your team can feel confident that you won't make changes at the drop of a hat. As they trust you, they can focus on the work they need to do.

Be Optimistic

Positive people are magnetic. Their energy makes others want to be around them. In order to be optimistic, you have to change the way you talk to yourself. Begin to see the best in yourself, recognize setbacks as learning opportunities, and realize obstacles are unique, temporary events that you'll get through.

How are you doing with these five things? Look back over the list and fill in the rest of these phrases:

I want to be more…

So that my team can feel …

And we'll create a culture that is ...

Share what you wrote with a mentor or coach and have them help you with this development. If you can't think of who to share this with, write it in our comments below or contact me directly. I'd love to hear what you have to say and find out how we can help you!

3 Reasons People Make Change

A question I am asked quite often in my executive coaching business is, “Do you really think people can change?”

So many in organizations have the idea that a leopard can’t change its spots and they apply this metaphor to the people they lead.. And while it is true that a leopard might not be able to change its fur pattern, that is where the metaphor breaks down. 

Researchers say that every cell in our body will be regenerated at least every 7 to 10 years. So, at a cellular level, I have been at least 6 different people.

The question that is really being asked is, can people grow? And this question comes down to choice. If the leopard could choose to change its spots, would it? If the person sees the need to grow, will they choose it?

While you may not have a choice to change, you for sure can choose whether you grow and develop.

Can people take on different skills, behaviors, or attitudes? Can they grow and develop? The answer to this for me is a resounding YES!

Acceptance 

The real question is not “Can people change?” rather, the question is “Will organizations let them change?”

If a person makes a conscious effort to grow and develop, can the people in the organization see the change? Or, do they walk around in their implicit memory of the person they remember; not who the person is now.

I know a midlevel manager who is a technical expert, holds a high standard, and received feedback that he doesn’t care about people. He worked on his empathy and made progress. He still has trouble, not with his team, but with senior leaders who remember how he used to be.

I know a more senior leader who was overly assertive at times, received feedback, made change, and the question now is, “What if this behavior comes back 2 years from now?”

I know a young leader who actually had to change companies because he could not overcome the reputation of being the entry level marketing guy. 

People grow and are changing all the time. All three of the people above responded to the feedback and were able to grow. And in all three cases, it was others in the organization who could not see the change the person had made. 

Can people change? A resounding YES! 

Do we let them? I sometimes question this. 

Many of you are saying, “Scott, of course I can accept that someone has changed!” And I hear you.

Explicitly, to the point you are aware of it, you probably can. But so many of our thoughts sit in our unconscious. We hold so many implicit biases that sometimes I think our subconscious does not agree with our conscious observation of ourself. I know I struggle with this in my own life. I have people really close to me who have made bad choices over the years. Right now, they are doing well, all signs point to significant change…and here I sit just waiting like a judge in court for them to screw up so I can bang the gavel and say, “See? I told you so!”

We tell ourselves we accept the changes others make, but do we really?

To me, that is the big leadership question of the day. Not can they change, but am I willing to accept the change I am observing?

3 Reasons People Change

First, Intention doesn't equal impact. Some people don't like certain aspects of who they are and they want to change that one thing about themselves, so they will set out a plan to become something they desire.  I think we all have inside of us a picture of our ideal self. That sort of "Disney Princess" of who we want to be. But then there is the real self. The person we really are. More like Ogre in Shrek. Much of the change and growth happens not because of what other people think, but because of who we want to become. This might be a certain character quality, such as being honest. "It’s not that Maria is dishonest, it’s that when I talk with her, I feel like I don't get the entire story."  If Maria gets this feedback, she might say, "I never meant to be dishonest, I just am never sure how interested people are in what I have to say so I cut it short. If they ask questions I give all the information." It is not that Maria's character is evil, it is that her intention for communication is not the impact she is having.

When our intention does not equal the way we come across, this can be a very powerful motivator for change.  

Second, they have suffered enough. The current way they are showing up is not getting them what they want. Pain can be a very powerful motivator. We see this one in action all the time. People leave marriages when there has been abuse. People change jobs, not because they don't like the work, but the Gallup organization tells us via their research most leave because they don't feel connected to their supervisor. These folks end up running from something. It is the person in an organization who just cannot overcome a deficit that was exposed early in their career. For whatever reason, even if they change, the organization just can't seem to get past it.  "See, there goes Gary again, he is your best friend when he needs something but when he is finished with you it is like he has no further need for you."  Gary might say “None of this is true, that is not me.” Or he might say “I feel like that is not me, but I will work hard to show how I can maintain relationships.” Maybe Gary is a super focused person. This hyperfocus is seen in some cases as a gift to get things done and in other cases stand-offish because he is focused on the task at hand and not the relationships around him.

If Gary can not rebrand himself, and if there is not organizational forgiveness, he often feels that it is best if he moves on. In the famous words of Lebron James when he left Cleveland, "I'm taking my talent to South Beach.”

Third, they want more out of life. Some people when they are handed lemons say, "Hey thanks...free lemons!” Other people go out and make lemonade, something sweet and delicious. Some folks in organizations just take what comes along. If something good comes their way then they say “Hey look! I just got something good!” Other folks really want more out of life and their career. They want more challenge or responsibility. They have a strong desire to learn and to grow. But there is a catch. They have a reputation. You know, that’s Charlie the marketing guy. What? He wants to be a marketing director, well he is good with the data but can he lead people? I don’t think so, because I knew a guy like him once and….  So, in organizations, if people want more, and we see the talent, the question is how do we keep them? They want more, let’s find a way to give it to them.

As much as we want to try sometimes, we can not change other people. The more we try to understand who they are, who they have been created to become, the more helpful we are. Most of us need to stop trying to change others and just dig in and really understand who they are. Help people think about who they want to be in 5 or 10 years. Where do they see themselves? Does the current trajectory of behavior or skill set get them to the desired state? 

Some people are pretty happy with who they are. Some folks not so much, and they really want to become someone different.

So, back to what I think the question really is…if someone puts in the work, no matter the motivation or desire for change, can you accept it when they do?

Perhaps it isn’t a question of whether they can change, but can YOU?

Have a great week!

I Thought I Was Being Empathetic

I had a great conversation this morning with someone whose coaching I am supervising. It went something like this…

“I have a client who has a really hard time connecting with his boss. He feels like he listens to the questions the boss has, but that when he answers the question he doesn’t even get to the end of the answer before the boss interrupts with another question. Scott, I feel like I might be coaching the wrong person. I think the boss might need the coaching.”

While this might be true, the boss might need some coaching on being patient and listening, what I coached my supervisee around is that we really can’t do anything about the other person (in this case the boss). Our job as coaches is not to try and control everything in the equation. And certainly not to allow our clients to manipulate the situation by blaming others as a reason they can not develop. If the boss indeed is a bad listener, this does not have anything to do with the fact that the client we have in front of us still has work to do in learning to be more empathetic. 

Said another way, the bosses poor behavior is no excuse for our client refusing to look at themselves to learn and grow. 

3 Types of Empathy

A typical definition for the emotional skill of empathy that I use in my work in emotional intelligence is  "recognizing, understanding, and appreciating how other people feel Empathy involves being able to articulate your understanding of another’s perspective and behaving in a way that respects others’ feelings.”

This type of empathy is known in the literature as Empathetic Concern. There is a prosocial orientation with a leaning toward a compassionate behavior with others. The idea behind Empathetic Concern has concern for the thoughts and feelings of the other person while being able to articulate the other person’s perspective. There is no mandate to agree with the perspective, but the goal is understanding where they are coming from.

Empathetic Concern is very different from two other types of empathy that have been discussed in the literature; Empathetic Distress and Empathetic Perspective. Empathetic Distress is characterized by a reactive and negative feeling that are focused on the self and reactions to others. It often manifests itself as anxiety, worry, doubt, and discomfort. The concern in this type of empathy is more recognition of the other persons state of being while being focused on how it will affect the self (you/me). Empathetic Distress is self-referential concern. It is hearing that Joe just got laid off and being worried about how this will affect your workload, or even whether you are next! It has nothing to do with how the layoff is affecting Joe in the moment.

Empathetic Perspective is more about trying to cognitively connect with what the other person is experiencing. It is often seen as intellectualizing the other persons situation and trying to rationalize the experience. “Joe will be just fine. He is a talented guy. He got a nice severance. He will be working again in a month. He can actually enjoy some time off and connect with his family, something he has talked a lot about.” What always goes along with Empathetic Perspective taking is some sense of moral judgment. The person trying to do the empathizing becomes both judge and jury about the circumstance and Joe is never even called as a witness to see how he feels about being laid off. 

Back to the Story

With the context of these three types of empathy in mind, I want to return to my coaching supervisee. I challenged the young coach to go back to the client to try and discern which of the 3 types of empathy the person was actually using.  

The young coach interrupted me, “I don’t have to go back, I already think I know.” I let them convince me they were being empathetic because they were tying to intellectualize the bosses behavior rather than digging into what the boss actually meant with the initial question.  The young coach continued, “ I need to coach my client on digging into not what they heard the boss ask for, but instead strive to understand what the bosses intention is for asking the question. I feel like the work I have to do is to move my client from Empathetic Perspective to Empathetic Concern.”

“How might you do that?” I asked.

“The first thing I can think of is rather than my client responding to and answering the bosses question, would be to take a deep breath, be patient, then ask the boss, to say more about the initial question.”  

My work as the coaching supervisor was done. The young coach had articulated for themselves the development need and has all the tools to really help the client grow.

Personal Application

This has been a really tough week for me personally. My wife has not felt well this week and we have had to make some trips (actually every day this week) to the doctor’s office. 

When I get in what I call “driver” or problem-solver mode, I can feel myself shifting from Empathetic Concern to Empathetic Perspective. I can cognate what is going on in my wife’s body without expressing concern and compassion for what she Is experiencing. I don’t see myself as a tyrant, but I do need to become more aware to show more Empathetic Concern in the moment. 

How about you? Where do you fall on the spectrum of Empathetic Distress to Empathetic Perspective to Empathetic Concern?

I am sure it is contextual for you, as it is for me. The growth for all of us is likely to recognize those situations where you are not showing the Concern that other people deserve.

How Can Curiosity Help Your Leadership Journey?

When a child builds a Lego creation, they rarely step back and say, "This is my masterpiece, my life's work is finished!" Instead, they allow their curiosity to grow and they often improve their handiwork or build something entirely different. Kids are open to the possibilities of their creations.

Leadership is also this way. Cast a vision, identify your followers, build your team up, but do not stop there. Become curious about your team, how you work together, and the goal you are working toward. Learn about your followers and look at your projects from different angles. This will allow you to gain perspective of how others see your leadership versus how you see it and allow you to revel in this curiosity.

WHAT IF YOU’VE LOST YOUR PASSION FOR THE JOB?

Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat Pray Love, says one of the grand misconceptions about quitting your boring job so you can have a creative life is that 90% of what you will find in your new life will be boring too. It is mundane. It is slugging it out. In my own life, I left my job to pursue my passion and do what I felt would be more exciting. Today, I get entrepreneurs and business people who come up to me and say, "I want to do what you do, it seems so cool." Now, helping my clients become more effective in their leadership is awesome.

But I want to let you in on a secret.

90% of what I do is boring.

I have contracting and invoicing, and managing expectations, and TSA, and delayed flights. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything because I enjoy the 10% that allows me to interact with interesting people. The one thing that motivates me through the mundane are those people, as well as one simple word: curiosity.

CURE IT WITH CURIOSITY

I treat the boring by igniting curiosity. I take myself and my needs out of it, and instead, make it an exploration. Always learning, always curious.

I encourage you to add this to your leadership experience: a journey of curiosity with the discipline of organizational leadership. Leadership is an arrangement between you and your followers. After some time, this relationship can become very boring, if you don’t remain curious.

Through curiosity and learning, you'll strengthen your leadership and build strong relationships with your followers. Your newfound understanding will allow you to work in sync and you'll see your vision arise. When this happens, there will be moments where the passion is reignited. Until those moments arrive, remain curious and be eager to learn. This is a safe and wonderful place for you to explore.

What would it take for you to ignite curiosity about your team? What can you learn from them? What insights could they offer on your current project that you hadn't thought about?

Let me know what you learn by emailing me or leaving a comment below.

Can You Guess the 6 Attributes of an Emotionally Intelligent Coach?

Before you read this post, take 30 seconds and see if you can write down 6 attributes of what an emotionally intelligent coach might possess. Go ahead and write them down. Once you have committed to what you think, read on and see how closely you and I agree.

My Story

I had a very interesting conversation with a client the other day on the topic of coaching verses directing people on his team.

I really became curious about what makes up an emotionally intelligent coach a number of years ago when I wrote my first book Seven Secrets of an Emotionally Intelligent Coach. This idea recently came back to me as I was having a conversation with a friend of mine regarding some feedback he received from his team. The feedback came in the form of “You tell us what do do a lot. We know what to do. What we need from you is more direction on how we go about doing the tasks in certain situations.”

Here is a snippet of our conversation:

He said, “Scott, I really want to coach the people on my team but there are certain times and situations where I find just telling them what to do is easier.” 

"I really get this.” I empathized.  "There are times when it probably is easier and even the right thing to do. Telling is certainly easier. But is easier always the goal?”  

Ken Blanchard, in his Situational Leadership model, acknowledges this. He writes that if the development level of the individual you are working with is inexperienced and they don’t have a lot of knowledge on a subject, telling them what to do (directing)  is an appropriate strategy!

So, I asked my client, “How experienced are the people on your team?”  

Turns out that everyone on the team has been there for at least 3 years or more.  I think Blanchard would say that more than likely, as long as the task the person is doing is not new,  the people need something besides being directed! They know what to do, but they might need help with how to do it, especially if circumstances are unique.

Let’s make this practical.

A sales person with 3 years of experience should know how to prospect for new business. They don’t need direction on “what prospecting is.” Instead, what they may need from you as their leader is what prospecting might look like during times of customer ambiguity, like we are experiencing right now with COVID. How might they go about prospecting new customers when the customers are not sure what the next week will look like, let alone what the next 6 months will be?  

As a coach, you can help them develop a clear vision and strategy for this. Sure, it takes time. And it is not easy. But in the end, don’t you hire smart people? Why not take the time to coach them? Set clear expectations. See where they have questions. Then get out of the way and let them shine!

The Emotionally Intelligent Coach

What the people on a team need, as long as they have experience and knowledge, is coaching.

Coaching is how leaders support the growth of people on their team.

The main idea around coaching is helping other others become better than they thought even possible by understanding what they are experiencing and rising above it. Coaches set expectations about the performance of where the person is and where they need to be in the future. All of this is done with the maintenance of a mutually satisfying relationship. Coaches have a way of maintaining the relationship while stretching the person to grow. This stretching is often results in shifting the thoughts, feelings, and beliefs of the person to be more than they even thought possible themselves.

Self-Actualization

Self-Actualization is an emotional intelligence attribute that has to do with the coaches pursuit of meaning and their own growth and development. It is about you as the coach knowing what you want for yourself and your team. If you know what you want as a vision for your team, you can clearly define the expectations you have. If you don’t know what you want, in the immortal words of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, “Any road will get you there.” Expectations of what the people on the team need to do have to be clear. Without setting clear expectations people will fill in the gap with what they think you as the leader want. Emotionally Intelligent Coaches have a clear line of sight for the vision they have for the team.

Emotional Self-Awareness

Emotional Self-Awareness is all about understanding your own emotions and realizing when they are starting to get the best of you. My friend in the story above knows he needs to coach, but when tension comes in or the world gets complex and he doesn’t quite understand things, we tend to default to safety. And for him, it just feels safe telling people what to do.  If a coach is aware when they are stressed or triggered, then they can start to learn to step back from this coach out of curiosity rather than fall victim to the stress of the moment and resort back to “tell mode.”

Empathy

Empathy is about understanding the other person’s perspective. Such as the age old adage of “walk a mile in their shoes.” I always add to this, true empathy is walking a mile in their shoes even if the shoes don’t fit. A good coach takes the time to understand what it is that the person is really experiencing. If they are having a hard time meeting the expectation, jump into the mirky water with them and understand what it is they are going through.  Not what your interpretation is of what they are going through, but actually what it is they are experiencing. You as the coach are not judging at this point. You are really observing and just trying to understand what the situation is that they are in. You cannot help them change their circumstance if you do not understand where they are currently.

Reality Testing

This attribute is often overlooked when it comes to coaching. The idea behind Reality Testing is being objective, not allowing emotion to cloud your picture of how things really are.  This attribute ties in well with Emotional Self-Awareness. Emotions have a way of clouding our decisions and our judgments. Reality Testing argues for understanding the impact that your emotions have on your ability to see things clearly and objectively. We all have certain biases that come into every decision we make. Many of these biases are implicit and we don’t even realize we have them or that they are entering into our processes.  My friend in the story above was trying to make his life easy by telling his team what to do. What happened was he lost his objectivity on what the goal for the team really is. My friend, due to the stress and complexity of his role, was losing his ability to be objective in the moment which hampered his ability to coach.

Interpersonal Relationships

This attribute often gets confused with friendship. You do not have to be friends with those on your team to have good interpersonal relationships. What you do have to have is a relationship that is mutually satisfying. There is nothing in the “rule book” that says you have to go out for beers after work in order to have a good relationship. This attribute of emotional intelligence argues simply that you get your emotional needs met from the relationship and they get from you what they need.  In the story above, the people on my friend’s team are not getting the emotional needs they have met. What they needed from their boss was to know that he has their backs. If the relationship is transactional and the needs are transactional, then it is mutually satisfying.  So, if I am in a grocery store and the person is helping me check out and they are friendly, that is what I need. They need me to smile back and pay my bill. Thats it; mutually satisfying.  At work, the relationships are often deeper and the needs are deeper. The coach has to get to know the emotional need of the people on the team in order to satisfy them.

Assertiveness

Finally, a coach must be able to be assertive. They need to have a clear understanding of their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs and be able to assert them in a non-threatening way. If the employee is not meeting expectations, then the coach has to be able to convey this clearly and without drama. If they are exceeding expectations, then communicate what you think and feel and believe about it.  To be assertive links to self-actualization. You have to know what you expect before you can ever assert what you think or believe. Assertiveness is always safe for the person being coached. There should not be anger or anything close to that level of emotion. There should be confidence and self-assurance, but not to the point the other person feels any threat.  It is vital to maintain a safe learning environment in coaching.

Final Thought

These are the 6 attributes of an emotionally intelligent coach. They are not set in stone as absolutes, but my hope is that they foster some discussion for you and the people on your leadership team.  

Why not ask at your next staff meeting what your team thinks are the 6 attributes of an emotionally intelligent coach like I did with you at the beginning of this post? See what kind of conversation you get started.

 If you want to know more about linking emotional intelligence and coaching, I would love to have a conversation. I have several clients who are considering doing some training with coaches on their teams around this idea. If you want to learn more, give me a shout out and we can set up a time to talk.

Are You Dealing Effectively With Emotional Exhaustion?

My wife and I are currently on a much needed and restorative vacation. We are spending time with our kids and grandkids and refreshing by emotionally disengaging from the business for a few days.

It is the idea of emotional disengagement that I want to challenge you with today.  When you take time away from your work, whether it is on your day off, or over a holiday, or perhaps a vacation or sabbatical, are you able to emotionally disengage?

I know some of you will be saying, "No way! I could never do that. I just can not emotionally disengage," there is:

• Too much going on with the new product launch

• There are performance reviews due the week I get back

• There is a significant shortfall in revenue and I need to have action steps in place

• Email. There is always email. It just never seems to stop.

• I will look weak or unprepared if I take my foot off the gas and drive the organization.

I have heard every reason leaders give as to why they have a hard time disengaging. Worse yet, at some point in my career, I have probably said them all too.

As I was journaling about this very topic, two things really stuck out to me:

First, I don’t think I realized how tired I was until I took some time off and really rested. Second, I am putting way too high of a value on my self-regard. I made so many excuses for why I was unable to emotionally disengage. I told myself:

• I am so important that the product won’t launch without me.

• I am the boss and people need to know my opinion of their work.

• Superman to the revenue rescue! I am the man who can turn it all around in one week!

• I might miss something or more likely someone will need my opinion.

• I can’t afford to look weak or unprepared.

While no one wants to admit when they need a dose of humility, a healthy check of mental restoration shows us that there is tension in this equation. I don’t know a leader who wants to look weak or unprepared, so rest assured I am not saying this. What I am saying is that if leaders do not actively disengage themselves from time to time they are at risk for becoming emotionally exhausted.

Emotional Exhaustion

Emotional exhaustion is the core factor in what is commonly referred to as burnout. This that state of having nothing left to give to others physically or emotionally to others. It leads to poor performance, low levels of commitment, and turnover.

According to work by Leiter and Maslach on emotional exhaustion, the first sign to watch for are feelings of being overextended. When you would normally leave work around 5 or 6, but find yourself still answering emails or taking work home with you. Being overextended can show itself in a number of ways, from poor prioritization to losing your “cool” and getting frustrated by things that are usually no big deal.

Now neuroscience kicks in.

Your reptilian brain senses your fear that you are not performing at your best. Then your need to survive kicks in. If I don’t keep going I will lose my job, you tell yourself in your thought life.

When you notice this kind of self-talk it is time to stop, take a deep breath, invoke feelings of empathy for others, and start asking questions. This process has been shown to slow down your survival-brain so that you can engage your thinking mind.  When you engage your thinking mind you will realize that this is not a time to work harder, but to take a break.

In my experience, leaders not only need to be on the lookout for themselves, but also for others in the organization. This same line of research shows that those most prone to burnout are often the most dedicated and committed to the organization, working too much, too long, and too intensely. Three factors are common with the type of person susceptible to burnout.  The individual may want to please others to the extent that he or she feels guilty when requested to give more time, has a strong need to help, and experiences boredom due to a routine job.

I am Experiencing Emotional Exhaustion…Now What?

According to Barari and Barari (2015), EI training has been found to be effective in leadership training and reducing burnout. Additionally, implementing employee intervention programs, like “What You Know About Stress Is Killing You,” which identify stressors and helps build a plan to buffer the effects of negative emotions caused by stress, have been found to be very effective in reducing some types of emotional exhaustion. Finally, because positive interpersonal relationships are absolutely vital in reducing both workplace stressors and employee turnover, ensuring that you lead a culture that values and supports friendships between coworkers is a must. Programs that promote healthy work-related relationships and team bonding are vital.

Remember, your knee-jerk, reptilian brain, emotional response to exhaustion is to power through it. Science says the opposite. These unique times we are living in may make it difficult for some to grab a cup of coffee with a friend, but make it your goal this week to schedule a phone call, or better yet, a Facetime or Zoom. Purely for the benefit of connection and enjoyment. Notice how it affects your stress level.

Or better yet, why not schedule that vacation you have been dreaming of taking?

Homework: Why not identify some stressors that you are feeling and talk with a coach or mentor about some things you might do to relieve the stress and some of the emotional exhaustion you are feeling. The other thing I recommend is that you schedule a vacation, and this time try to disengage for 4 or 5 days in a row.
 

Do This and You Will Never Work a Day in Your Life

The last 2 days have been really fun!

Every month I lead an Emotional Intelligence Certification course. The folks who sign up for this course do some pre-work reading, then spend two days with me learning how to interpret and provide feedback using an emotional intelligence assessment. This 2-day class is a very full two days! We start at 9 am and finish at 4 pm both days, and there is some homework in the evening for the participants. In total, probably 12 hours of class time in two days. 

Normally if I spent twelve hours teaching over 2 days, I would be exhausted both mentally and physically.

In addition to spending 6 hours each day certifying people, later in the evening, I led coaching supervision for 2 classes I am teaching for Concordia University in Irvine, California. These supervisions occur with 6 to 8 students and run 2 hours each. There is an intense amount of listening and instructing that goes on in these sessions, to the point that after I lead a supervision course I am usually exhausted.

As I have been reflecting this morning on the certification and supervision classes that just finished, I realized something. I am far from exhausted; in fact, I am energized. 

That caused me to begin to get curious around why.  Why is it after a very intense week of human interaction using video technology I am really full of energy?

What I came up with is not rocket science, and I can assure you there is likely nothing on this list that is a revelation for you:

My List

1. Exercise. My wife and I worked out by either going for a long bike ride or doing our Orange Theory workouts 5 out of 7 days this week. There is something about my workout that gives me energy and life. I don’t always love doing it, but I am coming to realize that I don’t like how I feel when I am not exercising regularly more than I dislike the actual exercise. So, for me, working out is a part of what I do for energy.

2. Diet. Small meals more frequently was the theme of this week. No junk food. Mostly fruits, vegetables, fish, and nuts. When I eat healthily I just feel better than when I eat a bunch of stuff that is processed. I have more energy when I am consistent with my diet.

3. Sleep. 8 hours every night this week. I am actually really focused on this. I am a believer that this one might be more important than the first two on my list. Mathew Walker, in his book, Why We Sleep,  convinced me that we have work policies about smoking, substance abuse, ethical behavior, injury and safety, and disease prevention, but insufficient sleep, another harmful and potentially deadly factor, is commonly tolerated and even encouraged. Too many leaders, according to Walker, mistakenly believe that time-on-task equates to task completion and productivity. This insanity (my words not Walkers) can cost upwards of $54M annually according to a recent study done across four large US firms.

4. Fun. A 2016 study by Barbara Plester and Ann Hutchison explored the relationship between fun and workplace engagement what they found was that workplace fun offered employees a refreshing break and created a positive feeling for the person about their work. If it was fun, they were more engaged in the work. It is what researchers for years now have called “flow.” While it was for sure a long day of “work” for me, what I reflected on was that I was in flow, and it was really fun. 

5. Sabbath. This is an interesting word I think that might not be familiar to all who read this post. Many will see this word and immediately run from it as some kind of religious icon. I don’t see Sabbath that way. The origin of the meaning of the word Sabbath likely comes from the Abrahamic traditions and is associated with the biblical creation story where God creates all of the physical world we experience in 6 days, then on the 7th day He is said to rest. Because of the origin of this story, some will reject the idea out of hand. Others will make it an idol and will worship the day and miss the point entirely. To me, the Sabbath is an experience where I rest and live my life differently from how I live it the other 6 days of the week. I set it apart and rest in it. For me, it includes worship and meditation. It might include a different form of exercise, or cooking a meal I wouldn’t normally cook. It is not a set of rules or do’s and don’ts but it is an idea where the day is different. I really like what Dallas Willard is quoted as saying, “If you don’t come apart for a while, you will come apart after a while.”  I took Sabbath last week.

So, that is my list. Nothing earth-shattering, but I think the difference this week is that I did it! I didn’t just think about doing it. I didn’t just have the head knowledge that it should be done. I actually DID these things.

As a leader, I suspect there is nothing new under the sun you need to do to “never work a day in your life.'“ But there might be something you need to experience that you already know.

By the way, I am going on vacation next week. Which is another form of Sabbath for me!!!

I will still have a post but will write it in advance so I can really detach and rest. Now as my good friend Mike Risinger says about vacation…"detaching and resting”…now that sounds like fun!!

Have a safe and happy 4th of July. Get some rest!

If you are a leader, please read this NOW. It is affecting you, too.

Last year I worked on a project that brought a lot of value to a client of mine, and in the process, I have become more self-aware of some changes I need to make in my own journey.

Here is the background story:

My client asked me to develop a 90-minute training on the subject of Implicit Bias. 

The project sounded interesting to me for several reasons. First, I have not done anything with the topic since graduate school. Second, I have been reading in the mornings from a little book by Parker Palmer called, “On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity, & Getting Old.” He has been speaking into my life as only Parker Palmer can about some baggage I am carrying around that I no longer need. These things started as unconscious biases, but through the work of Palmer, I have become more keenly aware of them.

Now for this story to make sense you have to know, and you can probably tell, I am a huge Parker Palmer fan. I read everything he writes, and most of it two or three times. There is just something about how he speaks truth through his own journey in life that I cannot get enough of.

As I work on this project, I am researching the topic of Implicit Bias. The implicit part means unconscious, so what I am NOT talking about are biases we realize we have. One example of a known bias I hold is that if I have a choice between any kind of ethnic food I will always choose Asian, specifically Thai…even over tacos, which is not easy for me to say.  When eating ethnic food, I realize I have a bias toward Chicken Pad Thai, Coconut Rice, and Panang Curry!

Implicit biases, however, are unconscious, inflexible beliefs about a particular category of people.  Implicit bias is basing our thinking on people not as individuals, but as a nameless, faceless group. Implicit bias is not what I like or don’t like about an individual person, but more about an attitude toward an entire group of people. 

To familiarize yourself with the idea of Implicit Bias and how it might be affecting your thinking, try this little thought experiment.

Thought Experiment

Record the first thought that comes to your head when you read the following list of words:

• A person in a wheelchair

• An immigrant from Mexico

• A single mom with 4 kids

• A person from New York City

As you completed this little thought experiment, a couple of things can happen:

1. If you know someone who fits the description in some way, you use them as a substitute for an entire group of people. This could be positive or negative.  For me, I do not personally know any single mothers with 4 kids. But I do have a mom who had 4 kids, who stayed at home until all the kids were out of the house. My personal experience then becomes part of the frame that shapes my thinking about single mothers with 4 kids: that they should stay home with the kids until they are grown.  Again, not a proud moment for me, but one that I have to realize is shaping how I view the world. I put all moms with 4 kids in a category in my mind that this is how they should all be because this is what my experience has been.

2. If you do not know someone in this category personally, then you likely have had some experience along the way that will be shaping your thoughts. For example, when I think of a person in a wheelchair, the first thought I have is “they slow me down in the airport.” I am not proud of this thought, but this is an Implicit Bias I have. After all, isn’t the entire world about me? If I see someone in a wheelchair, I have a knee jerk thought reaction that their time is not as valuable as mine. I just really want to make myself puke when I write this.

Okay, I am tired of self-disclosing right now so you can play with the rest of these categories of people to decide for yourself if you are proud of how you responded. The more honest you are with yourself, the more you can change your thinking with some self-awareness and dedicated thinking.

Now that I have completely exposed myself to some unconscious biases that I have…enter Parker Palmer into my life to bring some motivation for me to think differently.

In the book I mentioned above, on page 154, Palmer writes about self-awareness and self-examination. He states, “…this call [for self-examination and self-awareness] goes back as far as Socrates, who believed that the unexamined life is not worth living.” Palmer adds, “the unexamined life is a threat to others.”

Ouch!  That one hurts.

Especially since I do not mean to intentionally do harm to Mexican immigrants or single moms with 4 kids, or people in wheelchairs.

But the fact is, I might be harming them. And this is what I need to go to war with.

Because my implicit biases are unconscious, it is only by bringing them to my consciousness and going to war with them that I can make necessary changes in my life. 

My Recipe for Change

I am following a three-step process in confronting my unconscious  biases:

1. See
   I am really trying to watch out for unconscious bias in my life. I am trying to become more aware of when I categorize or group people and then apply wholesale thoughts about them to my situation.

2. Think
   Once I recognize that I am judging people by groups, I am trying to become more empathetic toward them. To really ask myself what it would be like to be them?  Christian Kaisers, in his book, The Empathic Brain, writes that more empathic individuals activate their own actions more strongly than less empathic people while watching the actions of others. We need to practice flexing our empathic muscle to get better at it.

3. Do
   Up until this point, I have not taken any action. The only way I build stronger muscle is to do something positive to change my thoughts. Dr. Sondra Thiederman, in her book 3 Keys to Defeating Unconscious Bias, says “attitude follows behavior.” I need to be specific in seeing people as individuals, and then I need to take it a step further and get to know them. If I do not know any moms with 4 kids, then I need to find a few of them and learn what it is like in their world.  If I don’t know any Mexican immigrants, then I need to seek them out and ask what it is like to be them.

Thank you to my client and to Parker Palmer. You all have rocked my world, hopefully for the better.