A perfect day

About Dorothy, All articles,

Monday.  Today I am coaching on the phone.  I am tired after a late night – attending the Teaching Awards’ annual national awards ceremony followed by dinner.  I am grateful for the rapport I have with my clients and for the trust that comes with it:  today I may need to call on that rapport as my desire to contribute balances with my body’s yearning for sleep.  I imagine that it doesn’t do to yawn when rapport and trust are absent.

In truth, the activity of coaching is one I love so that my energies quickly rise to meet the occasion.  I enjoy each call and the added value that comes for the client from working in coaching partnership.  (As I write, I recognise how impersonal the word “client” seems to me right now.  These are real people who place their trust in the process of coaching and in me as their coach as we work together to progress the issues and agendas they are grappling with.  Coaching is anything but impersonal.)

Judy, my sister-in-law is staying, too, and has already asked me if I have time for lunch.  I coach until twelve before walking up to Blackheath where I meet Judy and her son – my nephew – Edward at the Handmade Foods Cafe.  We eat outside in the mild November weather, eating our vegetarian curry which is absolutely divine.

Judy asks me if I’d like to walk down to Greenwich and – since I don’t have any calls until the late afternoon – I am free to say yes.  We walk across the Heath and through Greenwich Park.  It strikes me – as it has done already this year – that the colours of Autumn are particularly intense.  Canary Wharf is beautiful in the low Autumn sunshine.  It really is a beautiful day.

We wander around Greenwich taking in a few shops and stopping at Waterstones (there has to be a bookshop involved) before having tea and (in Edward’s case) beer at the Old Brewery.  I am amused – or perhaps bemused – when I find that our common territory (semantics) combines with my own special interests (emotional intelligence and nonviolent communication) as we discuss the finer differences between embarrassment, shame and guilt.  Is it possible to feel these emotions and still have no regrets?

We walk back through Greenwich Park and I leave Judy and Edward to visit the Royal Observatory as I continue home.  I have time to meditate before they return as well as to catch up with some e-mails so that I can start the day tomorrow with a conscience and an in-tray that are both clear.  I also have time to say goodbye to Judy before she leaves to go back home and I pick up the phone for my next call.

Sometimes it helps to balance forward planning with flexibility in the moment if you are to live in the flow of life and to experience the perfect day.

Dorothy Nesbit: About the Author

Coaching

I am thrilled to be writing an article for Coaching at Work magazine, which will be published just in time for International Coaching Week, in February next year.

As part of writing, I have been looking at what other authors say about themselves and in how many words.  Thirty looks like the limit.  I thought I’d share my first attempt with you here on the blog.  How does it land with you?

Dorothy Nesbit, executive coach, cultivates leadership potential with a trademark rigour and compassion, nurturing authenticity, ease and outstanding performance. She is a certified NLP Coach and practitioner of Nonviolent Communication.

http://www.learningforlifeconsulting.co.uk/
http://dorothynesbit.blogspot.com/

Completing my coaching with Lynne

Coaching, ,

Monday, 25th October 2010.  We didn’t set out to do it this way when we scheduled our last appointment and still, later, my coach, Lynne Fairchild, realises this date is exactly five years from the day we first spoke.

During those five years, Lynne and I have spoken three times a month and our coaching has covered every area of my life.  Since I started running my own business in 2002 and started working with Lynne in 2005 she has been a significant source of support for me as I explore what it means to own and run a business – and to have a life in which work and non-work are in some kind of balance.

This year I have chosen to work with Kathy Mallary, who specialises in helping coaches to market their businesses, and this has provided an impetus to draw my work with Lynne to a close.  I am full of gratitude as I think of the work we have done together.  During this time, I have become increasingly self assured, understanding my aims and values and taking steps torwards leading an ever more authentic life.  I have also discovered just how much I enjoy working in a committed coaching relationship and this has served me well with my clients, too:  a number of clients have worked with me over time and I look forward to more and more such relationships.

As an aside, Lynne and I have not (yet) met face to face because of the geographical distance between us.  I am based in London and Lynne is based in the US.  I hear eminent coaches in the UK talk about how coaching is most effective when it’s carried out face to face and I wonder – I confess – if consciously or unconsciously they say this to protect their businesses from the exchange rates which – when it comes to telephone coaching – favour coaches abroad.  In our final (“completion”) session Lynne gives recognition to my willingness to go deep in our work together and without holding back.  It seems to me that working by phone has supported this depth rather than detracted from it.

What do you say when you say goodbye after five years of working together?  In truth, after five years of working together much of what needs to be said has been said already.  We have acknowledged each other so many times.  We know that our deep mutual regard will outlive our coaching relationship.  We know that the completion of our coaching is the beginning of our post-coaching relationship.  I know that I feel confident – no, glad – to continue to refer people to Lynne.

In the run up to our completion I think of our work as like planting a tree.  I know that the tree is planted and has taken firm roots.  I know that there are things outside of our work together that have contributed to the well-being of this metaphorical tree.  I know it will continue to grow long after our work is completed.  And for this I am, quite simply, deeply grateful.  

Singin’ U.S.A.

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“Is it me, or people making a bit more effort than usual with their appearance?”

It’s Sunday, and Mimi and I are doing our makeup at the Barbican in preparation to sing.  We are singing songs from America, from Copland’s arrangement of a number of old American songs (you might almost call them folk songs) to modern songs by Morten Lauridsen and Eric Whitacre.  The choir has been on a journey which is not unusual when we learn something new.  Along the way we have struggled with the challenges involved in learning new (and especially contemporary) pieces.  This is the phase in which we are most likely to dismiss the pieces as being not very good.  Now, though, whilst still feeling a little nervous, we are starting to catch ourselves singing snatches of the songs.  We are ready to perform.

We have been on a journey of another sort with our conductor – and composer of some of the songs we shall be singing – Eric Whitacre.  He is younger than many of the conductors we sing with and brings the kind of beach-blond good looks which are often associated with California, where he lives with his wife and young son.  His compositions, whilst contemporary, are tonal – tuneful – in a way which is not fashionable in the world of new music.  What’s more, in his rehearsals with us, Eric’s manner is quite unlike that of many of the conductors we work with, combining confidence with humility and an unusual dose of openness – letting us know, for example, how it is for him to hear the Songs of Immortality, which will be premiered for the first time tonight, being sung for the first time.  Behind the scenes the chorus “chatter” suggests an ambivalence towards him, both drawn to his good looks and his openness of manner and slightly wary.  This is not what we’re used to.

Whitacre is a modern composer in another way.  His website (at http://www.ericwhitacre.com/) is thoroughly modern in its use of the possibilities of modern social media.  It includes a blog, twitter and facebook page as well as a photo gallery (from which I have taken the photo above) and examples of his music.  After he discovered a recording by a young woman of his piece Lux Arumque on YouTube he invited singers to record their line and created a virtual choir performance.

What of our concert?  This, too, was a thoroughly modern affair.  Whitacre introduced each piece or cycle with his trademark directness, openness and honesty to which the audience clearly responded warmly.  His wife, soprano Hila Piltmann, sang Barber’s Knoxville:  Summer of 1915 with an assurance and simplicity that moved me.  The choir (if I may say so – I am not without bias) rose to the occasion, singing with our trademark gusto and even with a bit of polish here and there.  I loved the challenge of the Songs of Immortality and was moved almost to tears by the rising crescendi in Sleep.

I was moved, too, by Whitacre himself.  For he was never less than completely gracious in his dealings with everyone involved.  For this, as much as for the beauty of his music, I am deeply grateful.

Coaching? My personal experience was so good I’d like to carry on

Clients and testimonials, ,

Often, organisations sponsor coaching for individuals and only rarely does it take place in the context of a wider programme, despite the benefits that can come from developing the skills and raising the performance of whole teams.  Jo Vigor was my coaching client in one such programme and had first-hand experience of coaching as well as indirect experience of the impact of coaching on her staff. In her testimonial she mentions the overall impact of the programme whilst focusing on her own experience of coaching:

In the workplace – organisationally – the coaching programme helped everyone, enriched staff and the team so that we are working better.


In my own coaching the biggest goal was to take stock and give me confidence and I give this a big tick. Working with Dorothy helped me to consolidate and gave closure after some important life events (my divorce and the death of my father) so that I have been able to let go of baggage and I am now able to look forward.


At work, I understand my role and I see myself as a professional in my own right and a confident leader – my confidence has grown. I am more outspoken and willing to challenge the Board of Directors. Also I have made changes in the way I handle challenge in personal relationships. At the same time, I’ve learned not to take myself so seriously.


In addition, we took time to reflect on where I am now and where I might be going next. Coaching has changed how I see myself for the future – I have an expanded view of what’s possible for me and I have been “trying it on for size”. Our coaching left me with some questions I’d like to explore further about what next.


Personally, I appreciated Dorothy’s style. On the one hand, her professional management of our coaching was good – she contracted well so that I knew what I was signing up for, she was prompt and well organised and the homeworks she gave me were good. On the other hand, she was able to engage both as my work coach and with me as a person. Within three minutes of meeting me she had asked the searching questions. She was able to work with my style – she let me let off steam and then we would explore. In short, it was like having an “adult parent” – going back to see your Mum but having a confidential adult conversation.


Coaching? My personal experience was so good I’d like to carry on.

Jo Vigor
WCL Consulting

And I also extend an invitation to you: if Jo’s testimonial describes an experience you would like to have, or if you know someone who may be interested to work with me, please contact me directly via dorothy@learningforlifeconsulting.co.uk.

Leadership and the Anatomy of the Spirit

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, , , ,

It’s Friday night in the run-up to a concert.  Tutti night, when the chorus and orchestra get together for the first time to prepare for a concert on Sunday.  Even though I know there won’t be much down-time in this particular rehearsal, I have my book with me in the hope that I might be able to continue my reading.  Part-way through the rehearsal one of my colleagues leans over and asks to take a look.  I send the book down the row, marking a page I think might be of particular interest.  I don’t see it for the remainder of the rehearsal.  When it comes back she comments:  “It should be essential reading”.

The book’s author, Caroline Myss, is – it seems to me – an extraordinary woman who has become what is known as a “medical intuitive”.  With very little information about the individuals concerned, Myss found she could diagnose illnesses and pinpoint the causes of those illnesses and the energetic or spiritual challenges faced by the individuals concerned.  It wasn’t always that way.  In the preface to her book she charts her transition from newspaper journalist to theology student to founder of Stillpoint publishing company to medical intuitive.  This latter is not something she sought out.  Her initial experiences in this area left her confused and a little scared and it was a while before she met C. Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D and began to support her intuitive abilities with an intensive study with him of the physical anatomy of the human body.

In her book, Anatomy of the Spirit:  The Seven Stages of Power and Healing, Myss sets out to teach the reader the language of energy with which she works, offering a summation of her fourteen years of research into anatomy and intuition, body and mind, spirit and power.  She draws on a number of spiritual traditions including the Hinda chakra, the Christian sacraments and the Kabbalah’s Tree of Life to present a new view of how the body and spirit work together.  In reading Myss’ book, I was fascinated by the model she outlines, charting the energetic content of each chakra, its location, its energy connection to the emotional/mental body, primary fears, primary strengths, sacred truths and more.  This is a map of the spiritual challenges we face in our lives in which Myss also shares many stories from her work which illustrate the implications of embracing – or not – those essential human challenges.

For those already familiar with the world of energy and comfortable with the language of the spirit, Myss’ book is a fascinating read and a reference to return to again and again.  At the same time, Myss’ book is not only for the spiritual seeker.  In the often more guarded language of the business world, Myss is addressing aspects of what is often called emotional intelligence.  Many books for example, (including Alfie Kohn’s Punished by Rewards and more recently Daniel Pink’s Drive:  The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us) highlight research findings which demonstrate unequivocally that we give our best performance when we are driven by our own intrinsic motivation rather than by external punishment and reward.  In the language of the spirit this is about our intuition and inner guidance – something Myss covers amply throughout this book.

As I read what I have written so far, I also think of the need for leaders to be able to uderstand themselves, to understand others and to understand the context in which they work – the organisational and wider culture.  I think of how often my own work as executive coach supports individuals in facing the very challenges Myss outlines in this book:  what would it mean for leaders to be able to support themselves and others in the same way?  Myss’ book offers powerful and intriguing insights for the leader from the world of (as it has become known) alternative medicine.

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.

Being the change: the challenge of owning my “genius”

Coaching, ,

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?”
Actually, who are you not to be?  You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.  There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us;  it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Marianne Williamson
A Return to Love

On Monday I wrote about the challenges of being the change you want to see in the world.  I didn’t expect to return so soon to this subject to highlight another challenge – the challenge of owning my “genius”.  I take this term genius from Gay Hendricks’ book The Big Leap, a book which invites readers to step beyond their “zone of excellence” and embrace their true genius.

Marianne Williamson’s famous passage, from her book A Return to Love which quotes in turn from the book A Course In Miracles from the Foundation for Inner Peace, points squarely to this challenge and to its implications.  Society’s call to modesty often holds us back and at the same time to hold back is to embrace the law of unintended consequences.  As a coach with a passion to help people to embrace and inhabit their full potential I feel the challenge of choosing between society’s call and my own authenticity in modelling to my clients what I yearn for them to be able to do for themselves.

Today, Kathy Mallary, my coach (with special skills in the area of marketing for coaches) has been holding my feet to the fire, challenging me not only to write a statement of my genius (using the questions Gay Hendricks offers in his book) but also to place myself firmly in the centre.  This is what I came up with (how does it land with you?):

 My Genius




I’m at my best when I’m growing and developing powerful, compassionate and authentic relationships with myself and between myself and others.

When I’m at my best, the exact thing I’m doing is seeing beyond my current limitations to be present to my full potential so that I can develop a trust or knowing that I have a place in the world – a place of true belonging, a place in which my true self is truly a gift to the world. I am also identifying and taking meaningful practical actions towards living in and from my place of true belonging.

When I’m doing this, the thing I most love about it is seeing things falling into place (my own sense of self, new insights into my true path etc.) and experiencing – seeing and feeling – the sense of peace and harmony that comes from this: within myself, within others, and in the relationships between myself and others. This is life within nature’s true and harmonious laws – no “forcing” needed. As I blossom everyone and everything around me also blossoms.

Dorothy Nesbit
October 2010

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.

On the challenges of “being the change”

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,

Many times, Mahatma Gandhi invited people to “be the change you want to see in the world”.  Gandhi pioneered satyagraha, or the resistance of tyranny through mass civil disobedience.  As much as he was firm in his pursuit of the rights of Indian people, Gandhi was also committed to total nonviolence.  Gandhi’s invitation to “be the change” brings us back to some essential truths.  Why should others embody ways of being that we ourselves do not embody?  And anyway, the truth is, we cannot change the others, we can only change ourselves.

For me, understanding these truths has been an important part of what brought me to coaching – to being a coach. And like peeling the layers of an onion, I find that every time I reach one new frontier in my learning another one opens up. And yes, from time to time, life sends a reminder that I’m not there yet. This is how it was last week.

On Tuesday, in conversation with person A, I listened to her as she expressed a view I didn’t share and said it didn’t resonate with me.  When she repeated it I said I found it more helpful to look at it differently and shared my thinking.  When she repeated it a third time I found my emotions were triggered.  Our conversation turned from the matter in hand to the way we were interacting with each other.

On Wednesday, I was sitting next to person B’s wife on the London Underground as, standing in front of us both,  he told her how much he disliked the English.  As the people around him began to exchange glances at each other I felt the discomfort rising in me as I listened to him talk and talk and talk… I was grateful when, eventually, two women claiming to be off-duty officers invited him to leave the train.

On Thursday, I finally got round to responding to an e-mail on a forum for followers of nonviolent communication from person C.  It was an e-mail I hadn’t enjoyed reading and I was concerned for the person she’s written it to as well as concerned about its effect on the wider group.  I decided to share my concerns openly and to invite a conversation amongst group members.

As the week progressed I found myself reflecting more and more on what was going on in me in response to all these exeriences.  Following each experience I recognised just how much I was putting the focus of my attention on the other person.  Surely person A should hear and respect me when I shared with her that I simply didn’t share her view – and let it go!  Surely person B should know in advance that talking about how much you dislike the English on the London Underground was going to offend people and cause an argument!  Surely person C should see that her e-mail – on a forum for students of nonviolence – was at odds with some of the most fundamental teachings we seek to follow!  Even as I write I feel the seductive lure of putting the other person in the wrong.

Catching myself in this way of thinking I remind myself that violence – and nonviolence – begins on the inside, with our thoughts and feelings.  Even if we follow all the steps that we can identify en route to nonviolence, if we do so from a place of wanting to be right, we fuel violence in the world.  Thinking in this way I am not being the change I want to see in the world.  This is not to say that I would want to hold back from expressing a different view or making a request of the other person.  Rather, this is to recognise that I would like to do so whilst accepting that, like me, they are where they are, doing the best they know how in a given moment.

And as my perspective starts to shift, I see reasons to be grateful to these people, each and every one.  For my experiences with them are a reminder of my own aspirations, to be able to respond to behaviours I don’t enjoy, to express my needs and to make requests of others whilst accepting them fully as my brothers and sisters in this world – and whilst accepting their behaviour as OK, the best way they know how to meet their needs at a given point in time.  What’s more, my experiences are a reminder that I am on my way – and still not there yet.

Falling in love with Janacek, our beloved Sir Colin and Simon O’Neill

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I am following up after a first meeting with a new coaching client.  I have promised to send her links to whatever postings I have already written (and possibly to write another) on the subject of appreciation.  As I scan through the postings that sit under the label “celebrating” I am struck by several that relate my experiences of singing with the London Symphony Chorus.  I smile, for I am in the midst of one such experience right now and – not for the first time – find myself falling in love.

We have been rehearsing Janacek’s Glagolitic Mass which we performed on Sunday and will perform again this evening.  It is a challenging piece with entries for the chorus which are hard to place even whilst requiring great precision.  We have been told that, in its original version, it was deemed too difficult to sing so that Janacek was asked to re-write it.  It is not to everyone’s taste – I know of one member of the chorus whose choice it is not to sing this piece – and still, it is to my taste.  I love the exuberant proclamation of faith that is written into the text and resonate to a quote from Edward Seckerson, music critic for The Times, when he says:  “One way of looking at Janacek’s Glagolitic Mass is to imagine that the voices raised in affirmation and outrage are those of pagans who have been Christian for about a week”.  This is music that brings a fresh eye – and voice – to the liturgy.

Sir Colin Davis is our maestro for the evening and an old friend through our many years of singing under his baton with the London Symphony and other Orchestras.  When my niece asks me, following our Sunday morning rehearsal, how I see the role of conductor, I reflect on the preparation we have had to sing as well as on the extent to which we rely on Sir Colin for those difficult entries.  It’s not just that he has prepared us for this piece.  Over the years we have heard him remind us (many times!) to come in early and “don’t chew the vowels!”  As I write I feel grateful for the opportunity to sing with him over a number of years and for his ongoing quest for performances that are sharp at the edges, lacking in any sentimentality and still, full of truth.

Beyond this, I feel a slight twinge of guilt as I prepare to single out any one of the musicians.  The soloists are wonderful, including Catherine Edwards on the organ.  Still, I have to say that it’s Simon O’Neill who has won my heart.  We have sung with him before, notably when he stood in at short notice to sing the title role of Otello in December 2009.  I hesitate to describe his performance, fearful of tripping over the critics’ vocabulary for a tenor of O’Neill’s gusto.  At the same time, it doesn’t do justice to his finesse to say, simply, that he really gave it some welly!  Over and above his singing, the fact that he had it in his heart, after such a demanding performance, to acknowledge the chorus amidst the takings of bows, gives him a place in my heart.  I love this act of appreciation from one singer to another.

Perhaps you will be in the audience tonight when we sing again.  I hope so.  And if not you will have to wait until our performance is released on the LSO Live label.  Perhaps you, too, will fall in love with Janacek, with our beloved Sir Colin and with Simon O’Neill.

If you want things to change, start by accepting the way things are

Coaching,

It’s Monday evening and I am on the “Genius Jam” call with my fellow coaches and members of Kathy Mallary’s Empowerment Club.  The club’s focus is our marketing.  Monday’s call, though, is about something wider – how are we contributing to our own progress and success?

I am curious when Kathy says to one of my colleagues:  “If you want things to change, you need to start by accepting the way things are”.  The fact that this resonates with me tells me I need to sit up and listen.

I sit and listen.  One of my colleagues likes to work with women at a time when they realise that, in order to move forward, they need to step fully into being who they truly are.  I recognise how much this applies to men and women alike.  So much of our education shapes us to seek out other’s expectations of us and to try to meet them.  This process continues in the workplace.  Lurking beneath this way of thinking is the idea that we have to be someone else – someone other than who we are – if we are to succeed.  This is an “I am not OK” or “I am not enough” position.

Along the way, many of us also feel the need to be authentic in our lives, so that we can feel torn between two worlds.  The mythical “midlife crisis” denotes the time when we can no longer sustain a way of being that keeps us so alienated from ourselves, or even a way of being in which we show one face to the world whilst also nurturing our true selves behind closed doors.  Sooner or later we want to “come out”.  This is not to say that the choice to come out in this way leads us through a door and straight to an authentic self.  For many – most?  all? – people, this is a step-by-step process of learning and discovery.

So, I ask myself, why did Kathy’s assertion resonate so strongly today with me?  I choose to see it as an important marker.  Of course, if you want to plan a journey from A to B you need to know where A is as well as B (though this is clearly true).  This is one reason why, if you want things to change you have to accept the way things are.  More than this, though, I ask myself, am I accepting myself as I truly am?

Our call finishes at 8pm so I cut myself some slack and decide to sleep on it.  No doubt this is a question to which I shall return.