Sending you greetings at Christmas

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Dear Reader

Christmas is approaching rapidly with its combination of the religious and the pagan, the historical and the mythical, the festive and the down-right practical (oh, those preparations!). We celebrate the birth of the Christ-child along with the abundance of our winter stores. In Father Christmas we celebrate both the historical figure of Saint Nicholas and the myth that Santa Claus spends the night before Christmas visiting gifts upon all the children of the world. And in the Christmas narrative we celebrate the birth of a child whose story has also assumed the quality of myth.

With Christmas comes the end of one year and the beginning of another. This is a time to look back on the year just gone and to look forward to the year that lies ahead. In case you would like help in shaping your reflections and your plans for the future, look out for the questions I shall be publishing this week on my blog.

In my own life and work I look back on the intention I set at the beginning of 2011 to bring my communication and marketing into the twenty-first century. I celebrate the progress I have made to this end. This has included beginning to shape and practice an approach to asking for referrals which enriches everyone involved. It has included getting clear about what differentiates my approach to coaching from that of my peers. It has included taking my first baby steps towards “shouting it from the rooftops” – most recently, updating my profile on LinkedIn to highlight my key areas of interest.

I also look forward to the steps that have yet to be taken. These include moving my regular newsletter to a platform which can support a growing number of readers. They include updating my website to showcase a business which is radically different from the one I first envisaged when I set up Learning for Life (Consulting) in 2002. They include introducing a growing range of products and services to meet the needs of my core clients.

Most of all, though, in this present moment, I am taking a moment to experience the gratitude for the many contributions I have received this year and which support me in doing work I love. I cannot possibly do justice here to the breadth and depth of this support – perhaps it’s enough, for now, to express my gratitude for the opportunity to work as a coach to leaders, unleashing innate leadership potential through powerful, compassionate and authentic relationships.

So, in signing off, I send you every good wish for joy at Christmas and many blessings in the New Year.

Dorothy

PS If you’re feeling sad about the commercialism of Christmas, take a look at the way these singers took the spirit of Christmas with them to their local shopping Centre.  Just follow this link.

Coaching: opening up new perspectives

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Sometimes, the fact that we are doing our job well and enjoying it can blind us to the potential we have for a role which takes us (to borrow from Gay Hendricks in his book The Big Leap) beyond our “zone of excellence” to explore our “zone of genius”. This is what I sensed in Graham Parris when we began our work together in coaching partnership.

To find ourselves in our zone of excellence and with more to give does not always mean that we need to jump ship in search of something new. Rather, it often implies checking in, taking stock, beginning the process of tuning in to our intuitive voice – what some call our inner wisdom and guidance. Often, the job we already have takes on new meaning and significance when we can see it in the context of the larger picture of our lives.

I was thrilled to meet Graham at a time when there was scope for him to look at this bigger picture and to support him in taking a step back from his immediate concerns and to begin to ask: what do I really want from my career going forward? This is what Graham said about our work together:

When I started working with Dorothy I didn’t expect to be changing jobs immediately. Even so, Dorothy challenged me to look at what I really wanted in my life and career so that when I then needed to look for a new job I had already started to develop a different perspective on what I wanted and I had begun to imagine what it might feel and look like when I’d got there.

Coaching has been the most personal developmental opportunity I’ve ever had – intensely personal. For me, it’s been an opportunity to find and try out new approaches to things I’ve done all my life and an opportunity to identify and address areas where I’m holding myself back. So coaching has been timely for me with the biggest outcome being that I’ve given myself permission to think about things differently if I want to.

As my coach Dorothy supported me in working from the assumption that I have the answers within me and that has worked well for me. She set the scene well at the beginning of our work together and she challenged me in ways which have left me more empowered. As well as paying attention to the coaching process – showing up on time, helping me to set goals, checking in with me etc. – she brought immense coaching skills. I also enjoyed the way she wrote blog postings as a way of offering more content when it was helpful.

Graham Parris
White Consultants (WCL)

Unleashing innate leadership potential through powerful, compassionate and authentic relationships

Coaching, Developing as a leader, , ,

As Christmas approaches, I am looking forward to taking a break.  My conversations with clients about diaries have almost gone past the stage in which the question “shall we meet before or after Christmas?” is asked.

There are many things I shall look back on in 2010 – and many things I am looking forward to in 2011.  This includes looking back on the work I have done this year to clarify my offering to clients.  My aim has been to make it increasingly easy for those people and organisations to find me to whom I am best suited to contribute.

Most recently I have been preparing an update of my profile on LinkedIn.  This is what I have included – so far:

Dorothy Nesbit

Leadership Coach, unleashing innate leadership potential through powerful, compassionate and authentic relationships.

Summary

Are you a successful senior leader who’s striving to fulfil your potential? Do you want dramatically to increase your contribution to your organisation?

It’s lonely at the top. Everyone looks to you for the answers and your actions are under scrutiny from every direction. At times, wracked with self doubt, you are your own worst critic. Wearing the “mask” of leadership, trying to keep up with your own view of what it takes to be a great leader – it’s hard work and exhausting.

A passionate leadership coach, I love to team up with talented and successful executives to liberate their innate potential and achieve more with less effort. My clients build powerful and authentic relationships with themselves and with others as a springboard for increasing their contribution to their organisation.

If you recognise the need to adjust your approach and you need help with the “how”, I’m your coach.

My signature coaching approach will leave you:

• With clarity and confidence about the role you want to play;
• Equipped to play your role with growing ease, authenticity and self-mastery;
• Inspired and motivated to deliver improved business outcomes.

My approach is uniquely effective because I grow and develop powerful, compassionate and authentic relationships, unleashing and cultivating innate leadership potential.

I wonder, as you read this description, what do you learn about the people with whom I most enjoy working in coaching partnership?





The dance of intimacy

Emotional Intelligence
…separateness does not mean emotional distance, which is simply one way of managing anxiety or emotional intensity.  Rather, separateness refers to the preservation of the “I” within the “we” – the ability to acknowledge and respect differences and to achieve authenticity within the context of connectedness.
Harriet Goldhor Lerner, PhD
The challenge of relationship is one that affects men and woman at work and in the home.  And as Christmas approaches (yes, less than a month now until Christmas) the tensions that already exist amongst family members begin to come more sharply into view.  It’s one thing to weather the low-level unease between you and your partner when you are both out to work five days a week and another thing altogether to spend a fortnight together at Christmas.  And that’s before mentioning parents, siblings, in-laws…
Relationship is the ultimate challenge to our authenticity for the reason Lerner highlights in this quote.  It is so easy to maintain an uneasy rapport in intimate relationships by sacrificing a measure of authenticity.  As a temporary strategy you might say it works.  Over time, it can lead us to have relationships with our supposedly nearest and dearest which are like fossils – a brittle and unchanging representation of something that was and now is no longer.  Unlike true fossils, the needs that are not met in such relationships are always hovering beneath the surface and waiting for a moment to express themselves.
The strain of such relationships extends beyond the relationships themselves.  Many people embrace the idea that the unresolved emotional issues in our lives are embodied over time in our general health and well-being and may ultimately lead to a variety of physical illnesses.  It can seem that we are left with a poor handful of alternatives if we are to maintain our good mental, emotional, physical and even spiritual health whilst also maintaining our relationships.  Staying in rapport with ourselves whilst also staying in rapport with others is a challenging business.
In her book, Lerner offers clarity and simplicity whilst maintaining depth.  She identifies the central role that anxiety plays in relationships and some of the common strategies people use to respond to anxiety – strategies which do not work.  She also offers a small number of core aspects of relationships to which we need to respond, including what she calls “triangles” (the way we engage with third parties as an outlet to issues we won’t face in a relationship) and the issue of polarity, especially in the extent to which we function in a relationship, becoming the capable or incapable member of a relationship between opposites.
Lerner also offers some clear messages for those of us who want to make changes in our relationships.  She highlights self-focus as the foundation stone of intimacy.  By this, she does not mean a blind and selfish urge to meet our own needs no matter what.  Rather, she refers to the courageous acts of owning our own needs and naming them in a relationship rather than seeing the other person in the relationship as the source of all problems.  And she offers both practical steps and many case studies to illustrate the points she makes.
If there’s one sadness I have about this book it is that it’s directed at women. It deserves to be read by men and women alike – perhaps in time for Christmas.
PS  Just to let you know, as a member of Amazon Associates UK, I shall receive a referral fee for any books you buy using the links in this posting.



 

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it by living someone else’s life

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Your time is limited, so don’t waste it by living someone else’s life
Steve Jobs
CEO, Apple

In London, students have been protesting at the proposal to raise the fees for attending university.  As I write, MPs are facing a controversial vote in Parliament which will have been decided by the time this post is published.  In the day’s news and commentary journalists have been highlighting just how many MPs on both sides of the house, in the run-up to the Parliamentary debate, have been undecided which way to vote.
As a country, our need to balance our books is a current driver for this proposal and yet, it seems to me, there are much larger issues at stake.  They are not all negative, so that – even whilst remembering that my own university education was entirely paid for by the state – I am undecided which way to lean.  I am aware, for example, that many of our country’s greatest entrepreneurs did not complete a university education and I wonder if, by inviting students to consider what they want from university and to calculate whether or not they want to make the investment needed to achieve this (financial or other) return-on-investment, we encourage the very entrepreneurialism which our politicians so often say is lacking (even whilst encouraging its surpression by the messages they give about and through education – a whole topic of its own).
It’s not that I am decided on this issue – I am open to look at it from all sides and I am sure that it would take more looking at than I am likely to do to reach an informed and considered conclusion.  I’d like to think that this is what the politicians are doing on my behalf, even whilst recognising the likelihood that more immediate concerns will stand in the way of a much larger picture.
I am, though, sure that – with or without education – we are born with resources which are apt to manifest themselves.  Insofar as education adds value, it does so by supporting us in becoming the person we are meant to become – like the acorn becoming the oak – rather than by seeking to mould us into something we are not.  Everything that I feel most passionate about – education, training, coaching, leadership – has this truth at its heart.
So it was striking to me as I found myself watching, once again, one of the wonderful short talks on http://www.ted.com/, to hear Steve Jobs talk to students graduating from Stanford University about how to live before you die.  Jobs spoke about his own experience of dropping out of university only to spend a further eighteen months dropping in on those lectures that most appealed to him whilst kipping on the floors of his friends and returning Coke bottles in order to get the 5 cent return which would pay for his food.  He talked about how his learning served him in setting up what became Apple.  He talked about being sacked from Apple and, by a quirk of fate, setting up a company that later became part of Apple so that he, one-time CEO of Apple became CEO again.  Jobs could not foresee the outcomes that would come from following his instincts in this somewhat unconventional way and still, they came, and they came from doing what he most enjoyed.
And in the midst of his fascinating talk came the most arresting of his comments which I offer once more for the sheer joy of his insight when he says:  Your time is limited, so don’t waste it by living someone else’s life.
If you were living the life that you – and only you – were born to live, what life would that be?

Working with a sense of flow

Emotional Intelligence, ,
Establish a place of work where engineers can feel the joy of technological innovation, be aware of their mission to society and work to their heart’s content.
Masaru Ibuka
First “purposes of incorporation” of Sony
There’s a name I have yet to master, so it’s a cut and paste rendition for me:  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has made it his mission to understand what makes people happy, recognising that research – again and again – shows that, beyond a certain level, money isn’t where it’s at.
Csikszentmihalyi’s classic text, Flow:  The Psychology of Happiness, has made it from my Amazon wishlist to my study and still has yet to be read.  So I was curious to receive a link to a speech by Csikszentmihalyi on the wonderful www.TED.com which is also available on YouTube – just follow this link to hear him talk for just short of twenty minutes about his life’s work.

What questions does it raise?  I wonder, how many of us achieve this state of flow and how often?  What would our life be like if this were a regular part of our experience?  And what would our experience of work be like if we made it our mission to pursue flow as a primary goal in our careers?  (Or if, as leaders, we made it a primary goal of our leadership to create a work environment in which those we lead experience the state of flow in their work?)

Masaru Ibuka seems to have recognised the possibilities for our lives in the workplace in his first “purposes of incorporation” for Sony.  As I write I recognise that it’s easy to look to the organisations we work for to facilitate our own sense of flow.  I wonder, are you ready to be responsible for this aspect of your life?

PS  Just to let you know, as a member of Amazon Associates UK, I shall receive a referral fee for any books you buy using the links in this posting.

Making an empowered choice

Emotional Intelligence

“Should you not report sexual harrassment at work?  What happenes to the women who report it?”  This question comes up on the Human Resources UK group on LinkedIn and I notice it draws my attention.  I notice the implicit assumption that being harrassed is a women-only experience.  I also ponder the difference between coming to such an experience as a victim and coming to it as someone who is empowered to make choices.  This is my response on the forum:

From the point of view of the person who is viewing the behaviour of another as harrassment, two key questions (in my view) are this: is he or she ready to open up a conversation with uncertain outcomes? And what is the cost of not doing so?

We face the same dilemma in every area of our lives. For example, there was a time following the death of my father when I became aware that one friend was unhappy because I wasn’t choosing to spend as much time with her as I had been used to and I was making a different decision with another friend. She shared her feelings with me and I invested time in listening. I also asked her to hear what was going on for me and, effectively, she said no. For me, this was a process of discovery, finding out about the limits of our friendship and, ultimately, led me to let go of that friendship. I was ready for that. Some others might not have been.

Coming back to sexual harrassment at work, anyone who chooses to open up a dialogue about their experiences is choosing to find out more about the organisation they work for as well as about the person whose behaviour he or she is not enjoying. It’s likely that this won’t always be pretty. At the same time, this does open up further choices. Of course the question is there to be asked: what’s the learning for me in this situation? And there is also the question: given what I have experienced as a result of raising an allegation of sexual harrassment, do I want to stay with this organisation or move on?

Perhaps there’s a question here about whether we come to the dialogue as a “victim” or as an empowered person who is ready to find out more and use new insights to make decisions.

Of course, there is so much more that could be said.  This was my starter for ten.

Ways to liberate yourself from the power of the amygdala hijack

Emotional Intelligence, ,

In recent days I have been writing about what Goleman labelled the “amygdala hijack” in his book Emotional Intelligence.  In this posting I want to offer some options for the person who wants to reduce the destructive power of the hijack in their lives and perhaps even to transform this energy into a power for good.  I don’t go into any option in depth (though that may come later).  Rather, I open up avenues for exploration – options to play with (and, as they say on all the reality TV shows nowadays, “in no particular order”):

  • One option which dampens the fire of amygdala emotion is to develop the practice of inserting words and phrases by which we take ownership of our thoughts – such words and phrases as “I believe…” or “I have a voice within me that’s saying…”  There’s a world of difference, for example, between saying that “you are lazy and selfish and a waste of space” and saying “I believe you are lazy and selfish and a waste of space”.  Even if we insert this phrase into our thinking it shines a light on the self rather than the other and makes us more likely to remind ourselves of the role we are playing.  Quite simply, the emotional sting is not so sharp when we own our thoughts in this way;
  • Another option is to remind yourself that you can’t change the others, you can only change yourself.  Like the option above this brings our attention back to where it belongs – to the self.  Why does it belong here?  Not least because this is where we have the power to make changes.  Perhaps it’s worth adding that Gandhi took this idea one step further with his oft repeated mantra to “be the change you want to be in the world”.  In other words, what is it you would like to see in the other person that you are not seeing?  And are you demonstrating the same qualities ourselves?  To explore this is to begin to set an example in the area that is so important to us;
  • Another – and no less challenging – option (look out for a posting on this) is to let go of the idea that there is anything wrong.  The idea that someone should be another way is the fast-track route to the amygdala hijack.  If you start from the premise that the situation – or person or event – is what it is you can begin to focus your attention elsewhere.  (I mentioned Katie Byron in my first posting and you might like to explore her work in this area);
  • Another option is to look behind your immediate emotions for the underlying emotions you feel and for the needs of yours that are not being met in a situation.  This opens up the possibility of sharing your needs and making a request of the other person.  As simple as this sounds in theory, this level of ownership of our feelings and needs takes practice in a culture in which many of us are alienated from our underlying feelings and needs.  Marshall Rosenberg has made it his mission to share this simple approach under the name of Nonviolent Communication;
  • You might like to master the NLP “meta-mirror” or a similar approach as a way to transform highly charged emotion.  I wrote about this technique in my recent posting (Thinking of all the mirrors in my bedroom).  This is an approach designed to transform our perspective.  You can read about this, too, in my recent postings (As a meta of fact);
  • Finally, I offer the ultimate test of all:  speak to the person or people involved and share what’s going on for you.  I offer this not because it is the most effective communication strategy.  Rather, I offer this because it is probably the ultimate test for you of where you’re at.  Initially, it’s quite possible that sharing yourself in this way may lead to good old-fashioned argument!  In this way, you’ll know your way of thinking is off the mark.  Over time, as you become more self aware, the thought of sharing what’s alive for you may prompt you to say “mmm… I have more work to do to transform my way of thinking before I share”.  Ultimately, there may be relationships in which you do want to share your thoughts and feelings and to ask for the other person’s understanding.

Finally, I reach out to you and invite your insights and experiences.  Which of these approaches have you tried and with what outcomes?  What other approaches have you tried that work for you?

Freedom from the “amygdala hijack”: the benefits of transforming your thinking

Emotional Intelligence

Recently I wrote a posting One step on the long walk to freedom from the “amygdala hijack” in which I invited the reader to be curious about the thinking that sits behind the amygdala hijack – the moment in which you are triggered by a person, event or situation so that your emotions come with such speed and intensity that it seems as if they control you rather than you them.  I promised to write more about the actions we can take to transform the thinking behind the amygdala hijack and this is my intention for my next posting.  First though, what outcomes can we expect if we are able to transform our thinking and what benefits might they lead to?

What outcomes can we expect if we are able to transform the thinking that triggers such strong emotions?  In my view, these outcomes reflect the increasing levels of capability we demonstrate as we learn to transform our thinking:

  • Transforming our thinking after the event may not be ideal – most people want to be free of the amygdala hijack – and still, it opens a pathway for letting go of the event itself as well as for learning in the longer term.  In short, it opens up options that are not open to us as long as we hold on to the thinking that fuels the hijack in the first place;
  • Developing the skills to transform our thinking in the moment makes it more likely that we can interact with others in stressful moments in ways which work for both parties.  In other words, transforming our thinking in the moment makes it more likely that everyone’s needs can be honoured and met – including our own;
  • Developing the skills to transform our thinking over time opens up a wide range of new possibilities.  Our commitment to transform our thinking and our practice of transforming our thinking over time makes it easier to transform our thinking in the moment and can also reduce the frequency and intensity of our amygdala hijacks.  In time, we can come to see the hijack as an ally – showing us where we still have some learning to do.

What are the benefits that follow on from these outcomes?  As I ask myself this question, I wonder just how long this list might be – and decide to highlight just three:

  • Transforming our thinking leads to radically improved relationships – with ourselves and others.  This is true in the personal and professional sphere;
  • Transforming our thinking helps us meet our needs far more effectively – including our need to contribute in positive ways to the lives of others; and
  • Transforming our thinking leads to improved health and well-being – from our physical health (reduced blood pressure and everything that this might lead to) to our emotional and psychological well-being.

Is this a quick and easy process?  I’m not sure it is.  Some scientists have posited the theory that the amygdalae are part of the limbic system of the brain and that this in turn is older in evolutional terms than other parts of the brain.  The amygdala hijack occurs because our ancient brain perceives a threat of some sort and because the perception of the threat is disproportionate to the threat itself.  In other words, it’s possible we’re wired to have the amygdala hijack as a matter of survival.

Even without the science, the experience of the amygdala hijack is one we all experience and will continue to experience over time.  In my next posting, I hope to offer some ways to move forward – though I can’t promise anyone a hijack-free life.

What is it you really want? Getting to the heart of your needs

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As I begin to write this posting I have a sneaking susipcion that I may have written it already and still, this is a topic that comes up again and again and again:  what is it that you really want?  Coaching helps people to clarify what they really want and, at the same time, it is not unusual for my clients to find it challenging to tune into their desires.  This posting is prompted by conversations with one such client and also supports recent postings.

Firstly, let’s clarify one thing.  What is the difference between “wants” and “needs”?  The school of NLP (to which I shall return below) offers the question “what do you want?” whilst the school of nonviolent communication (or NVC) talks about needs.  What’s the difference?  In truth, when we drill down far enough we get beyond the surface manifestations of our desires to understand the needs that (we think) would be met if were to have what we want.  This is the difference between the promotion or the big flash car (the strategy by which we plan to meet our needs) and the sense that we are seen and admired (the need we hope to meet by that strategy).  It helps to understand the underlying need as a way to test the strategy by which we plan to meet it – is the promotion (or… insert your own strategy here) the right tool for the job?

But how do we test our true needs?  NLP (I said I would return to NLP) offers a neat questioning strategy to do this.  The first question is simple:  “what do I want?”  So far so good – often the answer expresses a strategy rather than the needs that lie beneath the strategy.  So, the second question probes further:  “what would that do for me?”  By repeating the second question we come ever closer to identifying the underlying needs we are hoping to meet.

My client asked me what she might be looking for when she identifies a need so I offer a link to the needs identified by Marshall Rosenberg and colleagues on the Center for Nonviolent Communication (see needs list).  Key to this list is the non-specific nature of each need.  When we understand that our underlying need is for support, for example, we are no longer bound to meet it in one and only one way.  We can start to get creative.  What support do we need?  And what (multiple) forms might that support take that would meet our need?

There are at least two good signs that we have understood our needs.  The first is that we have gone beyond any physical manifestation of our need to identify something that does not have physical form (such as love, or respect or honesty).  A second good sign is the feeling that accompanies this identification of our need.  I experience this as a kind of “coming home”, a moment when I become calm and contented even when the need has yet to be met.

And yes, this is an amazing thing about identifying our needs in this way.  By being present to our needs we have a sense of fullness rather than a sense of lack.  In the world of nonviolent communication, Robert Gonzales and colleagues describe this as the living energy of needs.