Working with corporates and coaching executives always creates personal growth and development (PD). Unless an individual is ‘ready-for-change’ this growth may take quite a while. Typically, PD happens between a few minutes and about 18 months. Knowing that PD and particularly, Emotional Intelligence are not fixed, and knowing so much about real performance and behavioural change in executives, it seemed natural for Dr. McLeod to write this book.

Aimed at the domestic market, the book is relevant to everyone whether an executive or not.

Buy the UK Kindle Edition £6.17

Buy the Paper-back, $9.99 plus post (soon to be available with UK and European distribution, watch Amazon page in your country for book listing)

I have been talking and writing about my ‘Human at Work’ (©AngusMcLeod2011) theme for over a year and Nod’s final illness has lessons for coaches and everyone. Its not enough just to perform at work – when we risk to bring our humanity into work, the value, trust and warmth that humanity engenders creates deeper, more productive co-work. And it does all that without the political agendas that suck the life and productivity out of organisations. Nod had this ability to bring his humanity into work in spades. Its for the rest of us to step-up and bring these qualities into our work too. It’s for coaches and managers everywhere not to be fixated just by targets, but to recognize that great coaching/management is also about engendering focus on people-well-being and the development of the soft-skills that make all of us more impactful, authentic and team-players at work.

Angus

Coaches can make the mistake of measuring the success of their coachee’s by accomplishment only. This is not right and is not sustainable. Coaches need to coach for repeated success but also for wellbeing. Success should not come when it brings damage into the world of the coachee. Invariably then, the outstanding coach will be checking the sustainability of stated objectives and facilitate the shedding of the coachee’s tasks, so they can focus on specific outcomes, including the quality of their existence.

Watch Alistair’s slideshow of Russell at this link.

Angus McLeod, 17 May 17., 2012.

Part of our ‘Human at Work’ Series ©.

Judgements have their uses. Especially when you want polarity, the ‘yes’/'no’ options for an answer. For example, Judgement in logical decision-making or Project Management contribute massively to success. But do they always? No. So why do I celebrate Einstein as a genius of ‘letting go judgement’ in order to find brilliant solutions? Find out here. Yes, judgements are useful to executives. But we also need to look at the ‘con’ side of judgemental habit and how this habit can restrict team-work, lead to poor flexibility and, a lack of creative-solutions.

In teams, a culture of judgement is a recipe for poor performance. So, how could that be right when so many business-models are predicated on systems and judgements? I’ll provide an example. One of our international clients builds multi-billion dollar projects over 5-7 years or more. The careful systems-management within projects was seen as too heavy-handed and the best and most successful senior managers are the ones that are able to work around the system ‘to make things happen’. The art of doing this while still meeting stringent safety and quality criteria is highly evolved. Many of their most impressive talent simply do not have what it takes to lead at this level.

I found myself coaching one Project Manager who in his first coaching session declared that he was headed for a $20 Million progress-default fine, as, in about six weeks time, he and his team would fail a critical milestone. All his talent and experience of managing highly skilled talent could not find a way forward. Naturally, he selected this as an issue to work on, doubting that anything would make a significant-enough difference to make the crital marker on the calendar. He was resigned to losing the £20 Million and had advised the Board of that too.

What happened? In short, his new thinking from our session led him to go away and meet with his team and significant key stakeholders. One month later he was confident that the milestone would be met. It was.

What this taught us and the organization, was that there was too much reliance on yes/no systems and not enough on how to work with the systems (or against them) to get the job done safely and to specification. It also taught us that coaching can provide the most staggering Return on Investment in certain circumstances! Could the system be changed?

Changing the System and Flexible Thinking

A senior collegue of my coachee was charged with looking at the systems. He decided to create a phantom project. This would mean that the organization would design, pilot, test and build a new project without actually making anything. What would it cost to make nothing, but go through the paper formalities of ‘due-process’? This innovative approach led to an astoundingly (high)  figure for chasing paper: From memory, of the order of some $350 Million. He took this figure to the Government and told them that the organisation could reduce this on-cost substantially, save lead-time in development and reduce costs. They listened.

Einstein & Flexible Thinking

There is no doubt that Einstein was a genius of physics and mathematics. His theory of relativity was a mindboggling advance, so far-reaching that the proofs of his genius came many years later. Two atomic clocks sat on a bench. Their accuracy was in-step to 100 millionth of a second in a thousand years or so. One clock was sent on a US mission to fly around the Earth. When it returned, Einstein’s predicted time-shift had occurred. Of course this has been checked and proven many times since. I believe (yes, I am guessing) that Einstein, for all his academic brilliance, was unlikely to reach a solution on the basis of logic and what he knew: in other words by making judgements about whether one idea fitted experience or not. I believe he had to let go of judgement in order to achieve something radical, to go with that radical idea (in spite of academic reservations) and to keep digging deeper until something resolved. Now that is genius!

Judgements in Teams

There are more human aspects of judgements in teams – these worry me too! When we are quick to judge, we can be quick to prejudice.

We can alienate creative thinkers with our closed minds.

The quality of our relating with colleagues and stakeholders becomes inefficient, some of the time.

We close ranks with other similar judges and become siloed. The organisation becomes inefficient.

Worse than that, judgemental mindset closes off what is ‘dynamic and potential’ in ourselves. At worse, we become anachronistic, left behind, odd.

So, in organizations, we need the mix between ‘judgement mode’ and ‘open-minded mode’. Not just a mix of traits by combining people within teams: two judgemental thinkers and one creative person in a team or three for example. But rather the ability of all staff to flex from one state (of judging) to the other (open-mindedness), consciously and flexibly! Here then is the solution to judgement-cultures within organizations and one that leads and contributes towards strategies improved team-working, better communications, improved understanding, better motivational-management skills and raised productivity.

Judgements in the Coaching Manager and Coach

As coaches, judgements are best left to one side nearly all the time. Then we can hear and see what people are saying and read and adapt to them better. When we do have a sense of what is happening, rather then judge, we need to ask a question that will add perspective and self-learning for the coachee. This allows them to make the ‘Einstein Leap’ in thinking. And these coaching skills can (and are) learned by managers to adapt and grow their personal management styles in training. And that is exactly what AMA has been doing in organisations since 2004. We have worked with Surrey County Councils and with Kings College Hospital, and more.

For more information on culture change and isolating the key ‘tipping points’ of organisationa- change, contact us!

Angus McLeod, 2012.

Meet Angus McLeod and Prof. David Clutterbuck in November. This is a wonderful programme called ‘The Coach’s Journey’. More information here.

Reasons to be happy in 10 minutes. Watch the camera work and images of Louie Schwartzberg and listen and brighten your day! A ‘Human at Work’ can need a lift sometimes! See video below.Louie Schwartzberg is a film-maker and was invited to give a Ted Talk. It is reproduced below curtesy of youtube:

“To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded”.  Quote by, Ralph Waldo Emerson

How much I appreciate these wise words of Emerson’s! He writes of moral successes that paradoxically, put the bar both quite high and quite low. A ‘redeemed social condition’ might take more effort than helping just one person, but they are still successes.

It is very good to be reminded of these important reasons for being alive, especially today, in the competitive modern world, when success is often aimed for, seen and experienced as material success at all costs: the honours degree, the next job up the ladder, the successful business… These may be ‘real world’ objectives or ‘pressures’ but how do they fit the larger objectives referred to by Emerson? Are successes in the material world materially different from the kinds of success that he describes?
They might be, but I do not think they are necessarily so.

I feel that when material success is not kept in a separate compartment of thought from the kinds of success that Emerson puts forward it is ultimately more satisfying. Your own personal values determine what success is for you. What you aim for yourself, what you consider as success in others and what you experience as success are individual matters.

Let’s start with the experience of success. Success is very similar to contentment in that it is about satisfaction with how things are. Contentment can be a steady state in life if we are living in a mature way. Success can also be a regular feature of a rewarding life, but the feeling of success can also just be a fleeting experience. This fleeting experience of success may occur if when one goal is successfully reached, it is immediately followed by whatever effort is necessary for reaching the next one, and the next one after that…
Have you ever been hill walking and toiled uphill, perhaps in rain and wind with a pack on your back, to reach the top of the ridge, only to see the next ridge, and perhaps the one after that, still ahead of you before you reach your destination? Then you have to find some strength from inside yourself to keep going. It does help to stop for a while, to look back at how far you have come and to admire the view. We have to remember to do a bit of ‘breathing easier’ ourselves as well as helping others to achieve ease.

Finding strength within is good. It is necessary for achieving any kind of success, as long as you do not exhaust yourself and do not miss out on celebrating each success on the way towards further successes.

I think that is what is so helpful in what Emerson expressed. Both the ‘redeemed social condition’, which is a massive success, and the ‘one life has breathed easier’, which is a relatively modest success are notable successes.

Perhaps in terms of experience, perhaps that can be compared to the Olympic gold medalist reaching the podium for their medal and the child about to be presented with the school prize for winning a race. Both can be completely satisfying 10/10 experiences of success.

I heard on BBC Radio 4 recently that in animal experiments, I think it was rats as usual, the creatures who had succeeded in one challenge, in this experiment winning a fight, were more likely to win the next one, even though there was no measureable difference in prowess between loosing and winning rats. The same seems to be true of boxers. It is not just how good a fighter the boxer is, but whether or not he or she has already won that creates a winning psychology.

You could, and people often do, take that the wrong way round. I hope you don’t.  Expecting failure because of previous failure is a vicious circle and it is one well worth escaping.
You do not have to wait for large successes to be acknowledged by others (like the Olympic champion) before you allow yourself to have experiences of success. You can build what I like to call a ‘history of success’ by taking note of all your successes, whatever size or type. Try writing down seven successes every day for a week and notice how you feel. According to the psychologists, that kind of behaviour makes the next win easier to attain.

That is where contentment comes in. Appreciating small successes, including little increments of the kinds of success that Emerson refers to, can create ease with how things are, and hence contentment in life. There might be plenty of work to do to reach the large goals, but it is one step at a time and the steps can be celebrated. That process of celebration builds the mindset and the muscle for successfully reaching your big goals.

It’s akin to the cup described by Kahlil Gibran, if we do not keep it full, the cup itself dries out and turns to dust.

This is what Professor Angus McLeod calls ‘acknowledgement of success’ and he produced a figure for this, where one decides to act, one takes action and is successful and then one acknowledges that success BEFORE moving to the next task.What better way to keep the cup topped up and STAY successful!!?

Judy Barber c.2012.

Figure is from ‘Self-Coaching Leadership – from Manager to Leader’ by McLeod, A., Publ. John Wiley, 2007.

At the moment I am dealing with an excessively large workload and so it seemed like a good time to write about stress!

When life has a good rhythm of work, time for family and friends, and time for oneself, then it is easy to write safe platitudes about how stressed people should go about de-stressing themselves. As a reminder of how easy it is to make up advice, I made these up:

1.    Keep a good balance between time for work and time for your own life, and do not let these times spill over into each other.
2.    Make time for yourself, even if it means blocking off time in your diary, and make sure you spend the time wisely doing things that will bring you back into your best self, emotionally and physically.

Great advice, but have I been taking it in the last few weeks? No!

My current project is the publication of my raw food recipe book, the final part bringing text, photos and drawings together, to-ing and fro-ing with edits and doing all manner of last minute detail tasks in conjunction with different people to different fixed deadlines in a short space of time. It can get like that with any multi-faceted project.

I have spent far too many hours in front of the computer and have neglected my immediate needs in various significant ways, all the while busy with a house move!

Yesterday I cracked and burst into tears because it was all getting too much and I realized how woefully inadequate I was feeling. I took myself off to my favourite café, where I slumped in the background having a good think while supping a large bowl of soup. This was good because I re-jigged how I would spend the next few days and I planned in some proper time out for myself.
I made a very individual choice of how to spend my time off. If you are reading this for tips, I suggest you come up with something just as idiosyncratic.

I had things to buy further afield than my small town so I took the train. I did that in order to relax completely and just let life carry me along. To give my over-activated brain time to slow down, I did not take anything to read. Instead I took a small curtain to hem by hand in order to change my focus from head to hands. By the way, two-handed activities like sewing and knitting not only help integrate the head with the hands, but assist the left and right halves of the brain to  work together. The connection between these halves is encouraged and developed that way. That feeds back into being able to think logically and imaginatively about the same things, ‘joined up thinking’. How helpful might that be when back in the office?

Then, I walked all around town getting things done. I wore very comfortable shoes so that this was good exercise for bringing my body into balance.

I managed to tick a few things off a long list so that I had some sense of achievement.
Lastly, I sat down in this café to wait for my train home and gave myself the thinking, planning and writing time I had planned for.  I quietly wrote the first draft of this article without rushing.

In all it was a successful day. Of course, I could say, “I went shopping in Cheltenham”! But that would not tell you the whole story.
How do I feel as a result?

•    More relaxed
•    Rested
•    More together
•    Much more adequate to the tasks I have to do
•    Content
•    Not stressed

From my experience today, here is my one Winning Tip for you for de-stressing, for taking the distress out of stress when you have to work exceptionally hard.

Interrupt the Pattern

Trust yourself to know exactly what you need and give yourself at least half a day to meet your needs in whatever ways work for you.

A walk in the country? Re-reading a favourite novel? Ironing to good music? Sitting in the cinema on your own watching a tear-jerker? Swimming? Eating really healthy food? Rearranging the living room? Rowing a boat? Spa day? Aloneness or easy company? Going on strike from domestic activities for the day? Art Gallery? Paint a picture? Dance? Sleep?

These need to be conscious choices that will have positive effects on your physical and emotional wellbeing. It is the upside of escapism, with nothing that will give you hangovers or exhaust you further.

Plan your time and then interrupt your current stuck, stressed, treadmill pattern. Let the world wait for a few hours while you catch up with yourself and re-inhabit every part of your best self.

Having interrupted your recent pattern, then you can get back to working hard in a much better way.

Looking back at my two pieces of advice at the start of the article, here are my comments:

1.    Bringing everything back into balance is not always instantly possible. Do not hassle yourself about it.
2.    Making ‘time for you’ turned out to be wise advice.

I’ll go with my Winning Tip:

Take the distress out of stress this way: INTERRUPT THE PATTERN, in ways that are right for you.

Judy Barber, 2012.

Note: You will need to refer back to #1 in the second part of this paper!

I worked as a professional role-player/improvising-actor taking improvisation-scenarios into organizations. One way we worked was to prepare in advance by creating characters and then improvise a scene that was significant for that audience. We stopped at a moment of high drama and then stayed in role in dialogue with the audience. From the helpful suggestions that came up in the discussion, we would wind back and replay the scene, now with the characters equipped with new perspectives and positive ways to act.

One example was when we improvised a scene about domestic violence in front of a group of men in prison (for violent crimes). In the first scenario, the husband came home late in a foul mood and complained that his dinner was overcooked. He was angry with the children for using the whole table with their homework. He became more angry when his wife was angry with him for coming in late (so she missed her evening class) and because he smelled of drink. The scene was cut at the moment he was about to throw her grandmother’s precious vase at his wife’s head.

After the discussion, which brought up a lot of pain and a mixed bag of feelings and suggestions, we acted the situation again. I played one of the children; this time I did not end up cowering in the corner. What had been revealed in the discussion about the background to the situation was that the husband had been late and had been drinking heavily after being laid off at work. He had not felt able to come home straight from work because it was going to be so awful telling his wife. It had been easier to transmute his difficult emotions (about being laid off) into anger at someone else, his wife.

What changed the scenario (when we replayed it after the discussion) was that the husband used the audience’s idea, that he could be courageous and tell his wife! This time, he came home straight after work, ate his dinner at the usual time and thanked his wife, told her tactfully (without worrying the children) that they needed to talk about something very important and asked her to come home straight after her evening class.

Note:

• He worked on his problem by finding a kind of strength – in this case courage – in himself
• He didn’t burden others in inappropriate ways
• He was respectful towards his wife and children
• He respected his wife’s life by working around her prior engagement, her evening class
• He kept his dignity
• He didn’t dump his negative emotions on others

I have told you all this to lead into a discussion about the benefits of replaying situations, as in the first scenario above. What happens if we re-run a real work-situation for a better outcome? In each of the three situations below (see part one),  consider what other suggestions you might have made had you been in the ‘audience’. This process helps to ‘detach’ or ‘psychologically dissociate’ from the emotion in the event too!

Three Scenarios (please refer to part #1)

1.    The boss, the messy desk and the missing document

I did not do too badly, because I did keep my dignity, but how might I have acted differently for a better outcome, in my lower status role?

Had I been his mentor perhaps I could have initiated a conversation about systems. How was he processing documents from the moment they arrived (or were created) and how things were stored. We could have talked through ways to make it easier to retrieve different kinds of documents.
Had I been in the hypothetical audience watching this I might have suggested finding a tactful way of asking him how he would like things arranged so that I could retrieve information for him easily in future. I would have suggested asking this in a way that didn’t ruffle his feathers. Making the suggestion by asking a question in a gentle way might have worked – and would have been equally good practice for a mentor or a receptionist. The difference for the receptionist is that from her role she could not tell her boss what to do, just ask him what he wanted her to do (to prevent a repeat of the issue). Hence she could still shift him from his ‘blame-game’ into helpful systems-thinking.

2.    The receptionist who was not heard when she made intelligent suggestions

This situation continued for a while. Things changed because perceptions of me changed in a roundabout way. I never took effective, direct-action. What might have created positive change more quickly?

If I had been in the audience watching a typical scene in the tea-room, such as the first time the receptionist made a suggestion to a fellow staff member about ways to work with a teenage boy who was behaving badly towards his parents, what might I have spotted? The fact is that the staff member was not listening to the receptionist, so there was no point in offering any suggestions until she created a listening environment.

My suggestion would have been that she create a listening environment before wasting her tea-break trying to be helpful (to someone who was not listening)! She could have done this by asking a question in such a way that it opened things up. For example, if she had asked him: ‘Would you like me to make a suggestion?’ it would have been churlish or even rude not to have said ‘yes please’ and then not to have listened.

Another question, which could have given her space to share relevant prior experience, might have been: “Do you think I might be able to offer something helpful?” Questions like this change the game and can shift conversations out of prefabricated ‘boxes’ of status-related perception.

3.   The male fellow staff member who chatted to the female receptionist to get her to do his work for him.

Had I been in the audience watching that scene, I would probably have found it quite amusing on one level – the amusement of recognition. But, as a woman in a role (without the protection of an elevated status), it was not funny. Had she agreed to do the work, she would have had to push it in before the other tasks (that she should have been doing).
Had she not agreed… she might have felt guilty about not being friendly and helpful. There is something nice about being asked to ‘help out’ and in a friendly chatty situation it might not be easy to refuse.

What might have helped her stay on-task with her own work in a chatty situation? My suggestion, had I been in the audience, would have been to stick with systems thinking. This was a work situation, not a situation with neighbours, friends or family. Perhaps she could have asked him who usually did those tasks for him and/or acknowledged the pressure he was experiencing or simply raised her eyebrows and even laughed!

What she didn’t need to do was to defend herself, make excuses or give any reason at all for saying “no”. Since they were on friendly terms, she could have been playful in how she said no with a friendly smile – ‘sorry buddy, not in my job description.’ ‘Good try, but you missed.’ Using systems thinking could have helped her to not be drawn into saying “yes” just because he was perched on the edge of her desk being chatty.

To sum up, here are my three retrospective suggestions:

• Ask a tactful question about how things could work differently in future.
• Create a listening environment before sharing information.
• By all means be friendly, but stick to systems thinking to prevent people from taking advantage of your good nature.

Those are my three suggestions. By reading this you have been in the ‘audience’ too. What else might you suggest?

Judy Barber, 2012.

Discover the Secrets Most Business Women Don’t Know About!

How to Increase Credibility, Status and Success, Working With Men!

When I first moved to New Zealand many years ago with my NZ-partner, we both looked in the paper for jobs to pay the rent, while we got ourselves settled. I got a job as receptionist for the Methodist Central Mission childcare division. My work included answering the phone, being secretary to the boss, typing up social workers’ notes and looking after distressed children (while their parents had difficult interviews about abuse, drugs, fostering and adoption). It is interesting how job-descriptions and the actual job-tasks can diverge. This was an enlightening role for me after lecturing and teaching – enlightening in ways I had not expected.

I will share three telling incidents from that role. They came to mind when I was planning to write about how men and women relate to each other at work. These incidents say something about status as well as gender I feel, but since those two bundles of issues are inextricably tangled, I will keep going and I have tweaked the title to suit!

1. My boss was very kind but disorganized (as was apparent from the state of his desk). I had not been in post very long when he walked into my little office demanding to know where I had put a particular document. I explained that it was not something he had put into my keeping and found a tactful way to help him sort out the top of his desk. The document was retrieved there. I remember a gruff ‘thank you’, but no acknowledgement of his false assumption that I was to blame.

Unpicking that assumption, it could summize:

• It is legitimate to assume a receptionist (almost synonymous with low status and female) is to blame, without checking first.
• It is legitimate to use a negatively judgemental tone with a woman colleague.
• Women do not do their jobs very well.

Of course, those are only my assumptions and cannot be verified.

2. Our department shared a tea-room with a crisis telephone line and a service for young people. Social workers of course talk about their cases over tea and coffee. My work, which had included work with disadvantaged people (including teenagers and adult inmates in a London prison) had given me much experience to share, but when I tried to bring something to the conversation, I had the odd feeling that I was not being listened to, or even heard. As word got out that I was university-educated and that I had established a teaching/lecturing career, things changed. Some even came to me, the lowly receptionist, to run tricky situations past me.

Was I not initially heard because of assumptions that people were making about me as a woman in a low status role?

3. I got on well with the staff in the different departments and had good conversations. I exchanged thoughtful repartee ‘sparks’ with one man without, any hint of sexual innuendo. We simply liked each other. One day he dropped into my office, in passing or so I thought, and perched on the corner of my desk. After a few minutes of friendly banter I was ready to get on with typing up the usual pile of social workers’ reports, but he suddenly asked me to do some typing for him because he needed it done in a hurry! OK, this could just be someone asking for a favour, but what were the assumptions?

• That certain people, ie women/receptionists/secretaries do the typing and men do not? By the way, my typing was, and still is, the untaught, several-finger version I had figured out at university and it was probably no better than his.
• That taking a position quite close to a woman and on a higher perch than her would help him to get his needs met?
• That being friendly would work as a persuasive technique?
• That his work was more important than mine?

Each of us has unique life experiences, but I wonder if any of this is ringing any bells for you? If so, how would it be to listen to them? How would it be to untangle experiences of your own that come to mind and to think about what assumptions might have been at play in those situations, the assumptions that others might have been making? And your own assumptions?

Some assumptions come from people not really being awake to what they are doing and going along with cultural norms. Noticing the web of assumptions that people at work inhabit, is a good step towards being more awake – a life-long process by the way!

Once you notice more about what people are assuming, you can find new ways to relate to them in situations in which the wrong assumptions were being made previously. My suggestion is to:

KEEP NOTICING WHAT ASSUMPTIONS MIGHT BE BEING MADE (BY YOU AND OTHERS) IN YOUR PLACE OF WORK WITH REGARD TO GENDER AND STATUS.

Freed of false assumptions, how much more wonderful and productive might any workplace be?

Judy Barber, 2012.

Best Selling Author of ‘Good Question!’

“I listened to the interview with Angus McLeod today. I felt  like Angus’ words sang to my heart: ‘Authenticity’, ‘focus’ and ‘be the music’. There were lots of powerful moments for me in a very profound way. The one that has stuck with me the most is ‘Be the music’!” Dina Cooper, Surry Hills, NSW, Australia. Listen here:

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