Cultivating the Art of Leadership

Many people come to coaching for help in defining and going after what they want. The tricky part is in wanting many things, having some of those things in conflict, and getting stuck without a lot of progress on what we want.

My teacher, Daniel Silberberg, has our group working on being clear about what we want, with the following four questions the core of our reflection and writing assignment for the week:

1. What do you really want?
2. Are you doing your best at what you want?
3. Are you doing it now? (versus putting it off)
4. Are you being yourself?

I've always been able to go after things in life, whether building a business or becoming a coach or designing a physical space. Knowing what I wanted didn't seem so hard when it came to doing something.

Now, what I really want is to cultivate a deeper ground of being, a presence that both I and my clients can always relax into, a clarity that comes from a quiet mind, a creativity that comes from being truly open.

If that's it, then on to the next question. Am I doing my best? I have been traveling a lot and not making my group's sitting on Thursday nights, even when I am in town. On the other hand, I am sitting more regularly and looking forward to a silent retreat the first week of July at the Insight Meditation Center.

My practice is deepening, but am I doing my best? It's a provocative question, one which Daniel frames in terms of excellence a la the martial arts or training to compete in anything (chess, rock-climbing, etc.).

Part of what kept getting in the way of doing my best was how I addressed family health issues over the past two years (my dad first and then my mom). How I kept throwing myself at their health, happiness, and well-being, with lots of pushing and prodding and a burning desire to alter their defeating behaviors and plenty of suffering on my part when they didn't change.

While I grew closer to both of my parents, I grew more distant from myself. Time to undo that distance.

Daniel's questions this week are grounding: What do I want? Am I doing my best? Am I doing it now? Am I being myself? Good questions to reconnect with both our longing (what we want) as well as our commitment (for the sake of what would we do our best and do it now?).

Reflect on them yourself for a week and let me know what you learn.

The June 17th headline reads: Decision-Making, Risk-Taking Similar In Bees And Humans. Of course, I had to click through. Here's the lead paragraph:

Most people think before making decisions. As it turns out, so do bees. In the journal Nature, Israeli researchers show that when making decisions, people and bees alike are more likely to gamble on risky courses of action - rather than taking a safer option - when the differences between the various possible outcomes are easily distinguishable. When the outcomes are difficult to discern, however, both groups are far more likely to select the safer option - even if the actual probabilities of success have not changed.

The study was done by the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and one of the institute's professors of Industrial Engineering and Management opined on the significance of the research in terms of workplace rule enforcement, but I was more interested in the phrases "people and bees alike are more likely to gamble on risky courses of action...when the differences between the various possible outcomes are easily distinguishable."

This phrase made me think of my teacher's (Daniel Silberberg's) comments at a meditation retreat last Saturday on "beliefs." We were studying beliefs that we hold that get in the way of success, fulfillment, and happiness, identifying some core beliefs we could afford to let go of. Daniel commented on how so often, when we're unhappy with our life or work or relationships, we believe that if we make a change that we will likely draw the short stick, namely that things will in fact get worse. Daniel encouraged us to observe beliefs that get in the way of having what we most want and to really challenge these beliefs (i.e., what evidence do we actually have that things will get worse?!).

The bees and humans and decisions article made me reflect on how much easier it is to choose a better job when it's quantitatively better (better hours, better workplace environment, better pay, closer to home). When the positive differences we can sense (see, hear, touch) are less clear (e.g., will working for myself under conditions of ambiguity feel better than working for a boss or an organization that I find uninspiring?), most of us can remain stuck, biased toward the safer course of action.

In coaching, we often talk about the importance of offering "distinctions with power" for our clients. If we can find the right language to distinguish current experience from desired outcomes and states, our clients can "gamble on" seemingly "risky courses of action."

A lot of clients are wishing for more happiness, but it keeps eluding them. Daniel talked on Saturday about how often people hold the belief that happiness is akin to a destination, a place at which you can arrive (if you're successful enough, if you're enlightened enough, if you're thin enough, whatever your theory of happiness revolves around). He went on to talk about the quality of being with each moment, as it is, and how this capacity provides for genuine happiness.
Since the whole concept of distinctions was what caught my eye in the first place, I would like to share how Aristotle distinguished three ostensible paths to happiness (he was a fan of door number 3, by the way):

1. The Voluptuary's path -- the enjoyment of sensual and material pleasures (i.e., more things, more experiences, more pleasure).


2. The Sultan's path -- the pursuit of honor (i.e., more accomplishment, power, status, admiration, more honor).


3. The Sage's path -- the pursuit of wisdom (i.e., more understanding of how cause and effect really works, what constitutes goodness in relationships and community and politics, more wisdom).

More things, more accomplishment, it's not what brings happiness, and I know this as well as the next person, but it's still easy for me to fall into the "doing and acquiring" routine when I'm not paying attention.

It takes a little help (from teachers like Daniel and fellow journeyers) to distinguish between the risks and rewards of the familiar path in contrast with those of the Sage's path. When it comes to happiness, what's really riskier?

Sigh. I guess this is why we have relatively long lives, so we can, just like the bees, "select the safer option" and also revise our bets when a more satisfying future becomes "easily distinguishable" (read: compelling enough for us to choose!).

Life work, indeed.

I got a call Wednesday morning from a gal at HP. She asked, "Would you be interested in being in a video highlighting the logo that you did with Logoworks today?"

Apparently, someone dropped out of the schedule, the film crew was in town, and the marketing department had scanned hundreds of logos and selected The Marteney Group as a top prospect to show off the work they have done. It sounded like a cool opportunity. My day was surprisingly open, so I said "yes."

My conference room was quickly transformed into a working studio, with the film crew choosing an interesting angle and using a colored light behind the blinds that were behind me. The VP of Marketing asked me questions about my experience (I have used Logoworks three separate times, for logo/corporate identity and web site development). The crew filmed my stationery, business cards, mugs, and pens up close. I think they'll be capturing screen shots from my web site too.

At some point, I'll get a DVD with the video that HP will be sharing with Fortune 500 company CEOs and marketing executives.

It's an interesting coincidence, as I've been thinking about offering my branding and positioning workshops again, after not marketing them for years. Last fall, I integrated my branding and positioning workshop with leadership coaching for Novitaz, a high tech company.

The CEO, Suni Munshani, for whom I once worked and who is now a friend, sent me a long testimonial letter after the workshop, which included the following comments:

"I want to thank you for your incredible contributions to Novitaz and the team, but also to acknowledge we may not have survived Novitaz if we had not done the off-site with you in Salt Lake City."

"We also came away with clarity on our brand, and we are very clear on the changes we need to make to our messaging. This has created a ton of work for us, but it is fun work, and we are excited to get it done. It will identify us with who we really are and what we declare we will be."

The HP video will be fun to show at the beginning of branding workshops, opening up a discussion on how clarifying vision, mission, essence, and positioning of a brand, as well as defining the core customer value proposition leads to a brand (logo/visual identity) that captures the essence of your offering.

Drop a line if you have questions about how branding can be applied at the personal level!

I was just playing back a recording of a book study group I'm participating in this quarter. Alas, I missed the first call.

It's always interesting to hear a variety of check-ins, how people describe themselves, a surprising number with rising inflections at the end of their factual statements. That peculiar rise in inflection at the end of a statement sounds hesitant, not fully grounded in one's own experience.

What is it about unfamiliar group settings that makes us sound uncertain about basic things, like what we most care about?!

My client work today was with very different men, yet had interesting parallels to my book study group call. Each client dropped into amazing moments of presence, and then, as quickly, each popped back out and felt distant, abstract, although still continuing to talk.

The difference was in how deeply each man experienced himself as he talked. It's the same for all of us, of course. It can be subtle, we can talk without that disturbing uptick in our voices, but still not be fully embodied in our own experience (the old "talking heads" syndrome).

As I listened to the rest of the recorded call tonight, I tried to imagine each person, how they were holding their bodies, what their mood was, whether they were distracted by a computer screen with email popping up, however silently, etc.

The call wasn't live. I couldn't participate in the conversation. I didn't love the book. So I found myself far more intrigued by the quality of each person's recorded presence than the content being covered.

I'm also left with a curiosity about how I come across when recorded, as part of a visually anonymous group. Hmmm.

I shopped for desert gaiters today. Didn't know I would ever need such a thing until my friend, Linwood Paul, invited me to support a project he's on in Abu Dhabi. I will be over there for two weeks starting in early March.

Linwood specializes in experiential learning and leadership development events, which involve ropes and games and that take place mostly outdoors -- in parks and, in the case of Abu Dhabi, in a sandy, desert camp. Hence, the desert gaiters, to keep out the talcum powder-fine sand out of my hiking boots.

I worked with Linwood on a similar project in Los Angeles and marveled at how powerful the experiential work was for leaders at all levels, many of whom entered their "day in the park" with some attitude about wasting time "playing" and left with profound insights into their own styles of leadership under pressure.

Directive leaders show up as highly directive in games that involve ambiguity. Natural collaborators reveal their colors in the first game of the day. And so on. The gift of this work is that there's no convincing a leader of what's showing up - they just had the experience, and so did their colleagues.

The first week in Abu Dhabi, I'll be shadowing the male facilitators working with male leaders. The second week, I'll be working with all female facilitators with an all-female group of leaders. What an honor. I couldn't be more excited!

I think I'll have to make that care package I put together for Linwood (and others on the team) that much more spectacular. It doesn't hurt to get off to a good start!

I arrived in Utah with a large number of CDs and found them clunky to look at in their black towers. So, I decided to toss out the plastic CD shells, keep the album art in a bag (just in case I wanted them for some reason), and streamlined the corner of the family room where the stereo lived.

Roll forward seven years. I lost touch with my music. I had an iPod , but I never felt compelled to carry it around with me. Benign indifference.

Then I discovered the album art view in iTunes (late adopter, I know). It was like rediscovering old friends seeing album covers from my old CDs. I spent dozens of hours loading and organizing my music over the holidays, a bit obsessively, I confess. As an incredibly visual person, I realized that I had always picked up my CD cases and knew what to play when because of the emotional links I created to the images in album art.

My friend, Tess, who is an audiophile at heart, shrugged her shoulders when I shared my discovery. The album art doesn't matter to her. The visuals don't matter. She can remember the lyrics and song names already and loves her iPod, plain text and all.

My friend, Neil Kochenour, was in town last week, and we had lunch. He lost his wife, Edie, an amazingly vibrant woman with a joyful laugh, last year. I decided to play something for him after we talked about his life and loss in 2007.

I shared a track called "Living the Courageous Life" from David Whyte's CD, Midlife and the Great Unknown.

David Whyte has this gorgeous Yorkshireman's accent and lovely poet's cadence in talking and reciting his poetry. Neil and I sat there on Friday afternoon together, listening to Whyte talk about the "great questions" and how we cannot begin the conversation inside the subject of our questions.

Instead, we must "go to a place where you can see a landscape, you listen to a piece of music, you spend time in silence, you turn the lights off and sit in the kitchen in the dark..."

I have returned to Whyte's CDs over and over in the past few weeks, as Whyte reads his poetry so beautifully, repeating phrases that linger and echo in memory.

Here's one of Whyte's poems from the CD set whose last lines keep replaying like a song's chorus: "anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you."