What Gets You To Action?

Yesterday I talked about making sure you have accurately assessed yourself – WHY you are putting off action.

Here are some strategies to address the root causes of why this happens:

1. For fear: Identify similar tasks where you have been successful in the past to bolster your confidence. Focus on the present possibility of success and try to stay with that versus jumping ahead to the implications of success. Stay present. Enjoy the ride!

2. For worrying about what others think: ask for support and feedback from your “fans” on what you do well. Remind yourself about what you do well by creating a list of successes, and know that you can only control yourself. Put on mental blinders: It’s not your business what people think of you. Your job is to do the best you can with the matter at hand.

3. For being overwhelmed: work with your boss, coach, peer, spouse or friend to talk out loud to “de-whelm” yourself and make the project or task more manageable: break it down into smaller, step/step tasks; ask them for guidance, coaching, suggestions as to what to do or how to do it; ask for helpful resources (books, articles, websites, training).

4. If you don’t like the task: delegate it, if you can. If not, then find a way to make it fun: play music, dance, doodle, give yourself a reward after key milestones and upon completion.

5. For fear of loss: acknowledge the loss – what you loved about the previous project or team, make plans to (re-) visit if appropriate and/or say good-bye.

These are some brief suggestions to get you started. (I’ve done whole seminars just on procrastination!). The key is to identify one of the above solutions or create your own – and try it. Don’t delay. 

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

What Keeps You From Action?

We all have moments – hours, days or weeks – where we are putting something off: a task or a project. It could be making a phone call to someone confronting an issue, starting a project, or doing the last step to finish a project.

Considering what “it” is that gets put off, you first need to give yourself a proper diagnosis – to delve into why you keep putting “it” off – before you can create an action plan around it. Today we’ll talk about the diagnosis and tomorrow we’ll talk about how to address it.

Typically there are two root emotions that allow procrastination to grow. They are fear and loss.

1. Fear falls into two categories: fear of failure or fear of success. We have these fears for a number of reasons. To name a few:

2. We are worried about what others think.

3. We are overwhelmed and not sure how to manage or prioritize the project - we don’t know WHAT to do or where to begin; we don’t know HOW to do something; we don’t believe we can do it or have something of value to offer; if we succeed more will be expected of us in the future. We are thinking of all of this at once!

4. We plain just don’t like the task.

5. You might think “loss” is an odd thing to have on this list. But sometimes you could be putting off finishing a project because you love it so much and don’t want it to end. All endings are beginnings and all beginnings are the end of something that came before. You might not want to start a project as it signifies leaving another project team behind or going to a different office building. By putting it off, you don’t have to deal with the loss of that project or group.

If you are frustrated with yourself and want to get yourself to action, ask yourself is your procrastination due to one of these reasons? When you answer yes, then you can start brainstorming how to address it. If it is none of the above, then ask yourself: Am I really being honest? Why won’t I do this task? Keep asking why until you get to the core emotion or reason. If it’s not one of the above, what else is it?

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

Distinguishing Between Positive Psychology and Coaching

I’m hard pressed to find a difference. Both are focused on what is good and positive and building on this for positive results.

“Positive Psychology is the scientific study of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive…This field is founded on the belief that people want to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives, to cultivate what is best within themselves, and to enhance their experiences of love, work, and play.”

This is a departure from the traditional field of psychology and traditional therapy which emphasizes mental illness or what is wrong with us.

The International Coaches Federation (ICF) “defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.” This definition was buried deep in their website. This organization is a valiant effort to set up some kind of standards so unschooled or inexperienced people can’t hang out their shingle and declare themselves a coach.

Both disciplines focus on building on what works, what our strengths are. Neither is focused on what is broken.

ICF defines the distinction between therapy and coaching as:

“Coaching can be distinguished from therapy in a number of ways. First, coaching is a profession that supports personal and professional growth and development based on individual-initiated change in pursuit of specific actionable outcomes. These outcomes are linked to personal or professional success. Coaching is forward moving and future focused.”

Therapy can say all this, especially positive psychology-based.

“Therapy, on the other hand, deals with healing pain, dysfunction and conflict within an individual or a relationship between two or more individuals. The focus is often on resolving difficulties arising from the past which hamper an individual’s emotional functioning in the present, improving overall psychological functioning, and dealing with present life and work circumstances in more emotionally healthy ways.”

This is a description of some modalities of therapy. At my last count there are over 250 therapeutic modalities, with positive psychology being one of them.

“Therapy outcomes often include improved emotional/feeling states. While positive feelings/emotions may be a natural outcome of coaching, the primary focus is on creating actionable strategies for achieving specific goals in one’s work or personal life. The emphasis in a coaching relationship is on action, accountability and follow through.”

Both therapy and coaching should focus on insight, behavior change, actionable strategies and outcomes with positive emotional states if they are doing their jobs effectively. How can you heal someone without enhancing positive emotions? How can someone achieve their goals if they are negative?

In terms of coaching, I don’t know how you can help someone have and be more of what they want in their life or work without dealing with their feelings.

In the marketplace of free enterprise – does it matter what someone calls themselves as long as the consumer goes in with their eyes open and is clear on what they are getting and feels that their Coach or Therapist has given them a service of value – has joined with them in their process to help them move their life forward in ways where they are achieving their goals and thriving?

Regardless of your profession – all of life and work is a healing process to help us be more of who we can be – more whole – fulfill our potential. We are all fragmented in some way or not as “good” as we can be. Each professional practitioner has pieces or elements that help us get more of what we want in work and life. They have similar training and toolkits around deep listening, client relationship building. They may have different theoretical models and frameworks, which do factor in, in terms of orientation and approach to the work.

The disciplines use some different language that appeals to different audiences. Does it matter if they are essentially talking about the same thing? Targeted language is important. Could it be that it comes down to what label someone is comfortable with?

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

Coaching: What Distinguishes It From Therapy?

The field of coaching as a structured profession is new and loosely defined. I’m an experienced business and leadership coach. I am also a trained therapist.

I left the field of therapy at 27 to go into business. At that time, one of my clients who had schizophrenia said to me, “Well you are an okay therapist but you are too young. Go out in the world and get some life experience and then you’ll be a good therapist.” When I told my other client I was leaving, she said, “I hope you drop dead.” And then hung up. So goes the life of a therapist! Lol.

Having now worked in business for over 20 years, I found my clients words to ring true – not dropping dead!  I can attest to the richness of my work and life experience making me a better coach, counselor, and consultant.

The clinical training I received has been invaluable in my coaching and facilitation work in terms of:

1. Understanding what is required for significant, sustainable behavior change.

2. Understanding group dynamics and how to best leverage them to facilitate insight and learning.

3. Having an appreciation for how many people are “in the room” when talking with a client.

4. Understanding how to keep boundaries between “my stuff” and my client’s “stuff” in service of what is really helpful for the goals of our engagement and their development.

I have been in many industry discussions focused on differentiating the distinction between therapy and coaching – and have yet to find a clear definition that is accurate and concrete. I heard it said, “While coaching holds that the client is whole, resourceful, capable and creative, therapy does not.” Many therapists would take exception.

When you are working with “the worried well”, the lines are gray. The overlap is both coaches and therapists work in the realm of emotions. Today our problems are more complex so require both head and heart, thoughts and feelings.

While many therapists lead with emotions, they may also work on left brain strategies to heal their clients. With matters of the heart, you can’t always hold the results to a timeline and the cathartic process can be charged and messy. Coaching work is time bound, to monitor and measure results. While coaches may lead with left brain approaches, they need to address emotions in order to get at the roots of sustainable change. All true change takes place in the context of safety and trusted relationships.

To me, the bottom line for coaching is: have the coach and coachee created an alliance of the client’s design that will help him or her achieve their goals? Does the coach have a diverse toolkit that can help his/her client see and feel the possible and make real, measurable progress against it?

Is the coach serving as a safe sounding board. co-strategist and giving their client timely, candid feedback? This is the heart of coaching. Nothing more, nothing less.

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

How Do You Find A Good Coach?

If an executive coach is what you seek, first make sure the person has experience working in a business context on business and leadership issues and not selling life coaching experience.

If a life coach is what you seek, the clearer and more narrow you can be on what you want to work on, the more successful you’ll be in finding a coach who can meet your needs. Instead of overall “life” try to focus on one key area such as lifestyle, losing weight, meditation, relationships, or career. Split focus will get you dissipated results and you may not find a coach who really has expertise in your chosen area.

Cedric Johnson, a Psychologist and Consultant, concisely summarized key questions that qualify a person to coach another. Does this person:

1. Have knowledge and skills in behavior change?

2. Deeply understand the world of their clients?

3. Have supervision and direct feedback on an ongoing basis?

4. Have a self-knowledge and self regulation not to get dragged into the emotional morass of the client?

5. Have wisdom and experience not to practice outside of their area of competence?

6. See real lasting change in their clients as a result of their service?

My adds:

1. What is their approach and orientation to the work?

2. Ask for referrals: from your potential coach; from your friends and colleagues who have worked with someone they liked – and got results with.

Once you have screened on competence and expertise, the final cut is for chemistry/fit. You need to develop a trusted advisor relationship with your coach, otherwise you are marginalizing or jeopardizing your success. All true change takes place within a context of safety that will allow you to take risks, search, test, practice and grow. Factor your gut into the equation.

Ultimately you want someone who is willing to share “graceful truths” with you – tell you the truth in a direct way that you can hear it and act on it.

What do you think?

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

Coaching: Should A Life Coach Have A Life First?

Here is an interesting New York Times article on the controversial topic of what makes a good life coach – and does age matter?

I do executive coaching, focused on a very specific population: Organizational leaders. All work is done within the context of conducting extensive assessments and creating a development plan, which involves the leader’s manager. All actions are behaviorally-based with targets and measurements. Yet I still have people referring to my work as “life coaching.”

Because people are whole creatures, often coaching executives requires that we touch on aspects of their lives that effect and impact their effectiveness as executives – which includes their personal lives – But the focus is on making them a better leader.

“Life” coaching is such a broad and complex topic. Philosophers, psychologists and poets take very different approaches at looking at and solving the most complex of human dilemmas.

I understand life coaching is focused on making someone’s life “better” in a way that the coachee has defined as better. I don’t think someone should be dismissed as a life coach just because of their young age, but they should be suspect. Age should be one of a number of filters. There IS something to be said for age, which implies but does mandate, experience and wisdom.

As Atul Gawande, a surgeon focused on top performance says, “Jobs that involve the complexities of people or nature seem to take the longest to master: the average age at which S. & P. 500 chief executive officers are hired is fifty-two, and the age of maximum productivity for geologists, one study estimated, is around fifty-four.”

The focus of assessing a life coach should be on the quality of their skills, as evidenced by the degree of success they have achieved in their life (however long or short) and the results of their clients. One can have a long life and not have learned from it. One could have a short life and learned a lot from it.

In addition to education and experience, it is ultimately the quality with which the coach has processed their life experience that gives them the competency (skills and characteristics) required for excellent coaching: presence, deep listening skills, quality questions, clear boundaries, and the courage to give difficult feedback.

What is your take?

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

What Enables You To Perform At Your Best?

You cannot separate peak performance from passion, focus and wellbeing. This implies wellness and being-ness. Good health, presence and peace of mind are equally important to top performance as is knowledge and skill. Being interested – focused and passionate about what you do is critical to your success over time. How you attend to something says everything about you and your results.

Our culture focuses so much on over-the-top dynamic doing that we forget that we are human beings not human doings. We are not endless wells of energy but need filling up with what nourishes us to expend more energy – to be infused with a spirit not just a flat obligation.

Have you ever experienced that flow where you are totally focused, working hard on something but also completely relaxed and at ease? Is this a paradox? No. This is the way we are meant to be. Our minds complicate our expression sometimes.

I’ve had “the flow” when painting a picture, facilitating a workshop or reading to my daughter. They all take focus and a certain amount of skill, experience, knowledge or talent. I enjoy these activities but how do I know I am “really on” and performing them well?

Ultimately it’s about other’s feedback and the objective results. Does the painting evoke thought and emotion in others? Is paint skillfully applied? Do workshop participants understand and respond to my questions? Did they learn something? Did their learning effect their life or job performance? Is my daughter engaged in the story? Did the way I read the story engage her to step into another land or character’s mind?

Identify something you are good at and love to do. Can you do more of it? I guarantee this will impact all areas of your life and work.

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com