Devil’s Snare
My oldest child was the perfect age when JK Rowling was publishing her Harry Potter books. Together, we began learning about Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry with me reading the stories to her at bedtime. And as Harry grew up, so did my daughter. By the time the final books were coming out, she was finishing High School, and I’d have to wait until she had devoured the latest novel on her own before I could have my turn.
The characters each have their individual challenges but always have the need for one another, which is a great life lesson—not just a coming of age lesson. Naturally, some of my favorite themes from the series are appropriate in Coaching.
In the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry and his best friends are new students at Hogwarts, and are on a quest to find the Stone. They are continually thwarted by unexpected enchantments, and they are just learning how to use their magical skills. After quelling “Fluffy” (a three-headed snarling dog!) they are enmeshed in Devil’s Snare:
This plant uses its creepers and tendrils to ensnare anyone who touches it, binding their arms and legs and eventually choking them. The harder a person struggles against Devil’s Snare, the faster and more tightly it binds them; if they relax, it will not tighten as quickly.
This encounter with Devil’s Snare illustrates the character distinctions of Harry’s two best friends which plays out through the entire series: Hermione is a studious perfectionist and Ron is ill-prepared and emotional. Because of her research, Hermione recognizes the species and tells her friends to relax to get out of the clutches of the plant. At first Ron fights, causing more distress. Finally, despite his fear, he follows her advice and is freed.
- What are the circumstances you face in which struggling is increasing your distress?
- Have you relaxed in the face of fear? What occurred?
- Do you have associates who have knowledge to share with you? Are you listening to them?
As the venerable Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, told Harry: “It is our choices, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
Choose wisely!
Going With the Flow
Flow : The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced mee-high chick-sent-mee-high, my friend David Rock told me that, and he is important because he wrote one of my top books The Brain at Work) is another book that stopped me in my tracks. Published in 1990, my copy is old, much dog eared and underlined. The author is more recently widely known as a pioneer in the Positive Psychology arena, and his early work outlined in Flow was required reading for coaches because it was solid research about what makes people feel good. Absent real problems like psychological damage, war or pestilence, people were coming to coaches with the objective of optimizing their existence and more specifically, their time at work. Csikszentmihalyi says that in his studies, when people reflected on their most positive experiences they seemed to share one if not all of these characteristics:
- “ the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing.”
- we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing.”
- The task has “clear goals and
- Provide immediate feedback
- There is deep but effortless involvement that shuts out the noise of everyday life
- We are able to exercise a sense of control over our actions
- Self consciousness disappears, but sense of self emerges more strongly after the experience is over
- The sense of time passing is altered; minutes can seem like hours, or hours can feel like minutes.” (Harper, 1991, pg. 49)
Csikszentmihalyi’s theory was that to achieve flow we needed to maintain the balance between the level of challenge of the activity, and our skill level – if the challenge is too low, we become bored, if it is too high we become overly anxious. Each individual needs to monitor their own challenge level to keep it optimal to stay engaged. 
This rang so true for me, and it was extremely useful in work with clients who were clearly bored, but judging themselves for it, thinking they had perfectly jobs and should be happy. Not so! To stay in Flow, it is critical to constantly be raising the bar. This is not totally true for everyone all the time, but for some people, some of the time, the model is extremely useful.
Habits Make All the Difference
The promise was books that rocked my coaching practice that are off the beaten path. OK, so maybe this one isn’t that original, and I must have stumbled on The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey in Barnes and Noble because I can’t remember who recommended it. But I have to say that from the day I read this book, I changed some habits that utterly altered the trajectory of my life. I don’t think it is a coincidence that when I started doing what Covey said (and let’s be clear, not everything, just a few things made a huge difference) my business took off, my household became more orderly and calm and my quality of life shot up. I developed a reputation for being freakishly productive. I feel that almost every other “self-help” book that came after this one simply fleshed out some of the good ideas that were here in the first place.
In the section called Put First Things First, the 4 box quadrant probably made the biggest impact on me. The idea is that we all can put every single thing we do into one of the four quadrants.
| Urgent | Not Urgent | |
| Important | QUADRANT I crises, pressing problems, deadline-driven projects |
QUADRANT II prevention, Principle Centered activities, relationship building, recognizing and leveraging new opportunities, planning the future, recreation |
| Not important | QUADRANT III interruptions, some calls, some mail, some reports, some meetings, popular activities |
QUADRANT IV trivia, busy work, some mail, some phone calls time wasters, pleasant activities |
The ones who spend the bulk of their time doing things in the “important” quadrants are simply going to have a much higher life satisfaction quotient. This very concrete model gave me the courage to say no to things that did not fall into the Quadrants I or II. Today, I let people assume I am extremely busy (everybody does) and if pressed I will admit that I am no busier than anyone else, just extremely focused on what is most important to me and ferociously choosy about what I focus on. Don’t tell anyone.
Learn to Love Chaos
The second book in my series on books that knocked my socks off and made an appreciable impact on my coaching practice: Leadership and The New Science
In the early 90’s I was having lunch with a friend and mentor Alex Caillet and I asked him what one book would make the biggest difference for me and he recommended Meg Wheatley’s Leadership and The New Science. One of the things I had noticed working with clients is that they were desperate for answers. The right answers. Of course, as a coach, it was not my job to be the truth dispenser with all of the right answers. But I did feel an obligation to help clients articulate a set of internal values that they could use to make decisions no matter what the situation. But I was still at a loss for a set of Universal Laws that were consistent, were not beholden to any particular world view or religious law. I kept coming back to quantum physics – there had been a recent splash in the news about complexity theory and I had been noodling on how to apply those laws to regular life and work for my clients. Well – Meg beat me to it, and what an amazing job she did. Her breakthrough book made a huge impact on me and in the business world at the time, but as happens with many great books, it has fallen out of circulation. I say, it is time to bring it back. Some of the earth shaking concepts:
- Order will naturally emerge out of chaos. You have to be patient and order will come naturally from within. Good leaders accept occasional chaos as a revitalizing and renewing step.
- Relationships are the only things that matter- it is critical to develop a diversity of relationships.
- Information is the organizing force in the universe; it is the life blood of any system. If it is not flowing freely, the system will not self organize properly.
- Vision is an invisible field and it is the leader’s job to hold this field.
Is that all? Isn’t that enough? Going back to re-read this book to create this blog post, it has once again rocked my world.
Click here for a terrific, oldie but goodie interview with Meg Wheatley
PS I think it is important to give credit to whomever introduces us to great books. The person who introduced me to the Angeles Arrien book mentioned in the previous post is an old, dear friend Belle Linda Halpern, founding partner of The Ariel Group.
Unexpected Inspiration
In my mentoring of coaches and coaching practitioners in organizations I am often asked what my influences have been, so I thought it would be fun to do a short series about the books that have rocked my world as a coach. Not the obvious ones, the books that are not necessarily on the beaten paths and the coaching school reading lists. Over the next few weeks I will share some of my favorite books with a short review of their key messages.
To get us off to a brilliant start for 2012, I will tell you a little about The Four Fold Way: Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Teacher, Healer and Visionary by Angeles Arrien. Arrien is an anthropologist who travelled and lived among indigenous peoples and studied change agents – all of whom draw on the power and wisdom of the 4 archetypes in the title. What she found was that no matter what their culture – peace loving or warlike, maternal vs. patriarchal, agrarian or nomadic – all of the effective leaders follow roughly the same four principles which comprise the Four Fold Way.
- Show up and choose to be present (Warrior)
- Pay attention to what has heart and meaning (Healer)
- Tell the truth without blame or judgment (Visionary)
- Be open to outcome, not attached to outcome (Teacher)
I have been using these principles personally as a self leader, and experimenting with them with clients for over 15 years. They have proved to have astonishing staying power and have supported those who wish to build personal power, be more effective with groups, and increase their coaching skill. Most fine leaders are not as well rounded as they might be, and find very little inspiration in competency models to articulate their gaps and create a real plan to close them. This model provides another angle and I have found that the principles work regardless of religious conviction or cultural background.
Stepping Over…or Taking Steps?
A few months ago I was walking through our house when my husband stopped me suddenly. He was pointing to a place I’d just walked past at least 5 times. In that place was a snake, curled into a tight circle. We live in Arizona. Snakes in the house are not a good thing. The fact that I’d stepped over it at several times was even more disturbing. It also made me wonder what else I step over all the time without noticing.
What DO we step over, without realizing it? Maybe it’s the impact of something we said, not realizing that it was unintentionally hurtful. Or, maybe it’s the part of our work that we really don’t like, not realizing that others notice when we don’t do it. Or, maybe it’s the insignificant meetings that we attend without paying attention, not realizing that our input is important for the business decisions that are being made.
OK, now I’m convicted! It’s time to pay attention to the things that I step over and start taking steps in a new direction. One step is to pay attention to the responses of others and to clean up messes. Another step is to take action on the things I don’t like to do, regularly. A third step is to be present (really present and focused) at meetings, and to contribute input when decisions are being made.
How about you? What steps can you take rather than stepping over something that could potentially bite you?
What Neuroscience Can Teach Leaders About Change
There are probably six excellent change theories and models, and hundreds of books. Here are a couple of little factoids about the human brain that just cuts to the chase on this topic:
- People can only really focus on one big goal at a time. Setting another goal will most likely cancel out the original goal (Rock).
2. Change is hard for everyone and really really hard for some, because it literally sets off alarm bells in the brain (Rock and Schwartz). When navigating a change, take more time than you think should be needed, set up systems for people to have conversations about the change to process it. People need time and coaching to relate, repeat and reframe (Deutschman) their thinking about the changes expected of them. Be ready to be talking about the change long after you have become bored to death with it.
As Peter Senge so advises:
- Start small
- Grow steadily
- Don’t plan everything and
- Expect challenges.
Image by Paul Brentnall
Hoarding Information
I think we’ve all heard about the TV show on hoarding. I haven’t seen it, but I have known a few people who are hoarders. What a mess, at so many levels. What challenges it causes, for so many people.
Recently, while facilitating a meeting, someone commented about a leader who seemed to be hoarding information. My ears perked up (not to imply that I hadn’t been listening before, of course). What a concept: hoarding information. What a mess, at so many levels. What challenges it causes, for so many people.
Then, I started to wonder if I hoard information. Yuck. I think I do.
- I definitely have information in my computer that people might be able to use. Yes, we have sites where we can share information, but how often do I upload to them?
- I definitely have information in my head that people might need. Yes, I’m willing to answer questions when asked, but am I proactive enough to be sharing in anticipation of what they’ll need?
- I definitely have resources that would be useful to others. Yes, I’m willing to share when approached, but am I thinking about resources my team members might need before they ask?
What causes this hoarding of information? I came up with a number of possibilities, none of which are attractive. One possibility is fear. If I share, then others will know what I know, and they might be better than me. Another possibility is insecurity. If my team members meet some of the people who have been useful to me, then the team member might be liked more than me. Another possibility is lack of confidence. If I develop my people by sharing useful information as a way of developing my team, they may excel and be promoted ahead of me.
Get my drift? Not a pretty picture. What a mess, at so many levels. What challenges it causes, for so many people. Slap, slap. It’s time to get over myself, deal with the fear or whatever it is, and do what leaders are supposed to do: motivate, inspire, develop others, and definitely not hoard information. That means sharing as much information as I can, keeping people informed, and thinking about what’s best for them, not just about what’s best for me.
Who Do You Aim To Please?
Throughout the course of our lives, we’re constantly trying to impress someone.
As kids, we want our parents to be proud of us. We want our friends to think we’re cool. We want our teachers to think we’re smart.
As we get older, we still want our parents to be proud of us. We still want our friends to think we’re cool. And now, instead of teachers, we want our colleagues and clients to think we’re smart.
Then, one day we wake up and realize we’re spending most of our waking hours trying to live up to someone else’s expectations. We’re spending more time trying to make everyone else happy than we are on meeting our own needs. We’re not necessarily unhappy, but we’re unfulfilled.
Depending on how we choose to look at it, that unfulfilled feeling can be a blessing or a curse. We can either let it spiral out of control into a deep depression or, hopefully, we can choose to use it as a wake up call.
To determine if your life needs a slight course correction, ask yourself the following questions:
“Whose life am I living?”
You only have one life to live, you might as well make it your own.
“Am I being selfish enough?”
You can’t take care of others if you’re not taking care of yourself.
To have any chance at spreading sustained happiness to others, it’s vital to make sure that YOU are happy. From time to time, do a check-in to make sure that YOUR needs are getting met so that YOU are able to continue to meet the many needs of all the important people in YOUR life.
On-Boarding: How to Shorten Ramp-up Times for Employees
Join The Ken Blanchard Companies for a complimentary webinar and online chat beginning today at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time (12:00 noon Eastern).
Madeleine Homan-Blanchard, coauthor of Coaching in Organizations and Leading at a Higher Level will be discussing three strategies for getting people off to a fast start in a new role in a special presentation of On-Boarding: How to Shorten Ramp-up Times for Employees.
The webinar is free and seats are still available if you would like to join over 600 people expected to participate. Immediately after the webinar, Madeleine will be answering follow-up questions here at The Coaching Source for about 30 minutes. To participate in the follow-up discussion, use these simple instructions.
Instructions for Participating in the Online Chat
- Click on the LEAVE A COMMENT link above
- Type in your question
- Push SUBMIT COMMENT
It’s as easy as that! Madeleine will answer as many questions as possible in the order they are received. (Be sure to press F5 to refresh your screen occasionally to see the latest responses.)
We hope you can join us later today for this special complimentary event courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies. To register, visit On-Boarding: How to Shorten Ramp-up Times for Employees
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