On Living, Leading, (Re)designing, and Coaching

The Seven Most Important Questions in Facing Tough Times

These are tough times for many of us. In tough times it is easy to get overwhelmed. How do we cope? Change is inevitable. Where do we start?

When things change in the marketplace, new possibilities open up and some current possibilities close down. Just an ancient mariners lived by their skill in reading the changes in sea and weather conditions, we must live by our skill of reading the changes in the world we live in.

Lately, I've been having conversations with the people in my life - friends, clients, business partners - framed by the question "what now?" Given the new world we are in today, what now? What is the world that we are already in? How must our responses be different? How must we be different?

Below are the questions I've been asking people. I think these are the seven most important questions we all need to be asking ourselves today in the middle of our tough times.

I invite each of you to consider them in the context of your own life.

Question One: What is your biggest struggle right now?

Of course, I have no idea what specifically you are struggling with. But let me take away some common false answers to this question. Your biggest struggle is not that you lack time, money, or energy. Your biggest struggle is also not that you lack willpower or discipline. In fact, your biggest struggle has nothing to do with lacking anything. The interpretation that your biggest struggle comes from a lack of something leaves you disempowered. How helpful is that? Not! So let's not go down that path.

I'd like to suggest one place among many that you should consider in answering this question. What if your biggest struggle comes from something that you aren't facing fully instead of something that you are lacking? And what I mean when I say "facing it fully" is seeing, acknowledging, owning, and responding to it fully.

In these times there is a lot of fear and even panic. Nobody can get credit, people are getting laid-off, ecological crises seem closer than ever, Obama is going to change things but we don't know (but hope) that they will be better. There are lots of things to be afraid about.

As humans, when we feel afraid, most of us do what we've always done when we feel afraid. Maybe you are already thinking of what you do as you read this. Some of us hide, some of us attack, some of us run away, some of us freeze up. We all have our own particular responses to our fear that life isn't turning out the way we want it to.

When we react out of fear we are not authentically responding to what's happening now. How could this be the case? Because our reactions to fear are learned and conditioned habits. Our response to fear is pre-determined. But there is no pre-determined response that is ever going to be an authentic response to what's happening. We can't act with skill in facing our situation when we're reacting out of habit.

How can you overcome this? Get to know your own habitual responses to fear intimately. What do you do when fear arises? Your ability to acknowledge and own your automatic response reduces the power they have over you. And that - facing your fears - opens the possibility of doing things differently and for generating an authentic response to what's happening.

What I'm proposing is that maybe your biggest struggle is freshly facing that which you don't want to face. Follow the trail of your fear that life isn't turning out. 

Question Two: What is your biggest opportunity in this situation / in this market?

The way I see it, your biggest opportunity will always involve doing something new. It may be bringing forward latent gifts and talents that you have, widening your community, bringing a new level of focus to your work and life, or having a difficult conversation, or taking a bold action. In a business sense, maybe your biggest opportunity comes from a new product or service offering or maybe it comes from deepening customer loyalty. Your biggest opportunity could be anything and I'm betting it will require doing something new. Here's my take on what's at the core of this "something new."

For many of us our biggest opportunity in this market will come from rewriting our future. You might be thinking, "What on earth do you mean? The future hasn't happened yet." And you would be right, the future hasn't happened. But that doesn't stop us from having stories about the future. 

As humans, all of us live within a narrative or a story about ourselves, our life, and our work. One of the funny things about the stories we have about ourselves is that we've already determined the ending. We can't, it seems, live our lives unless we have some certainty about the future even if it is made up. Mark Freeman, author of Rewriting the Self (a book which is excellent, demanding to read, and nearly impossible to come by), points to our need for stories with this rhetorical question:

"Aren't stories ultimately defensive delusions, created as a means of defying the onslaught of time, with its accidents, its unforeseen and unforeseeable consequences, its nameless and unending future?"

We create stories with already determined endings as a defense against the true uncertainty and unforeseeablility of the future. Knowing how it all ends helps us live day by day with the uncertainty of life. However, knowing how it all ends is also a recipe for circumscribing the limits of what's possible in our lives.  Our greatest opportunity opens up by letting go of the certain ending we hold so tightly.

Since we can't seem to live into the future with zero certainty, we need to make up a new ending for our story. So, who are you going to be? What are you going to do? What are you going to have?  All of these questions are open for reconsideration when we invent new possibilities for our future.  Rewriting our future - today - and living into those possibilities in a way that they become our reality is the idea.

When confronted with the question "what is your biggest opportunity in this market?" most of us allow our thinking and imagination to only range within the possibilities that we already included in the ending of our story. So I'm not asking what are your biggest opportunities to play out the story you already know how the ending to. I'm not asking you how to win the game you are already playing. Instead, I'm asking you, "What are the opportunities to reinvent your story's ending, to reinvent the game you are playing?"

If you are a CEO or businessperson, your thinking here should be informed by your study of demographic trends, economic forecasts, an interpretation of the changing political landscape, and a grasp of how newly emerging technologies are shifting the competitive landscape. However, to realize your biggest opportunities, you must not take the game you are playing for granted. You must not take the ending to be certain. Instead, change what it means to win the game - change the end of your story.

Question Three: What crossroads are you at in your life and work?

Question One and Two are challenging but they empower you. Therefore they are questions worthy of true consideration. These questions empower you because they challenge you to 1) be true to and face the results that you actually have in your life and 2) to be true to the freedom you always already have in how you fashion yourself (your public and private identities), your relationships, your commitments, and your responses.  These questions empower you because they call forth the full measure of your authenticity.

Question Three brings the first two questions together. This question challenges you by saying, "Well, you can continue on the same path, doing more of the same, and generating the same results OR you can take a different path. Which will it be?"

I encourage you to take up this question in as much specificity as you can. To say generically, "I choose to take a different path" without a concrete definition of what exactly you will do differently is useless.

What are the specific crossroads? In your closest relationships? At home? At work? In your career?

The crossroads you are at is an opportunity for you to redefine yourself, to redefine your relationships, to acknowledge and re-commit to what you deeply care about, and to generate new results.

Question Four: As you engage the world, what is most important to conserve?

Conservation is an often overlooked but critical part of any change. Change is a funny thing because we want it badly but we hate being in the middle of it. Usually when we go about making a change, we don't know what we are getting ourselves into because we don't know what has to change in order to make the change that we want in the first place. This is why being in the middle of change is so scary for people. When we are in the middle of the unsettlement and uncertainty of change, it seems to have no end or limit.

A powerful way of allowing ourselves to be in the uncertainty of change is to start off with a clear definition of what is being conserved.

Again, please answer this question in a specific way. And if you are leading change within your organization, speak openly and often about what is important to conserve in the midst of this change.

You might be temped to answer this question by stating your values. Values are great. Go ahead and state them. But you also need to take your thinking to the level of action. What are you going to keep doing the way that you are already doing it?

Question Five: What is your "guiding star" as you navigate through the changes you need to make?

How many times have you found yourself in the middle of doing something differently and felt disoriented? Probably a lot if you are like most people. So what do you do when you get disoriented? What or whom do you consult to get re-oriented?

It is odd (but maybe not surprising) that people often launch off into new territory without packing a compass. They don't have a way of getting their bearings in the middle of the the new ocean they are sailing in.

Like all the other questions here, I'm suggesting that you really take this up and really look to see who or what is your guiding star. And just as before, let me take away some answers that I think are false.

Your guiding star isn't some leadership expert or self-help guru. It isn't a book or a method or a process or a plan. Your guiding star isn't your mentor, coach, priest, or spiritual guide. Of course all of these may be helpful but they aren't your true source of guidance.  Your compass isn't outside of you. You are your own guiding star. You might be thinking, "But I'm the one whose disoriented, remember!?" Yes, part of you is disoriented - the part that is trying to get things to turn out a certain way.

Whenever we try to get life to turn out a certain way, we can easily get disoriented. We all have parts of us that are trying to do exactly that. However, as human beings, we also have an indestructible Self that is always whole, unitary, complete, and fully present. Our Self isn't trying to get life to turn out a certain way because from it's perspective life has already turned out. And how it turned out is how things already are.

The amazing paradox is that when we fully accept where we are, true guidance for the journey shows up within us. This is what living and leading from Self is all about. How do we do this? In a way the real answer is different for each of us. However, generically how we do this amounts to letting go of needing to have life turn out a certain way and tuning into what we actually feel and sense in the moment. This is like tuning our radio to the "guidance" radio station.

Question Six: What commitment do you hold that makes this conversation necessary for you?

I'm making a big assumption with this next question - that you already have something that you deeply care about that makes engaging these questions truly worthwhile for you. But I'm on safe ground because human beings are caring beings. We just are. 

Most of the time what we care about just hangs around in the background of our thinking and acting. From what I've observed in my own life and in the lives of my coaching clients, when our cares and concerns just hang out in the background we tend to drift through life. And when we are facing tough challenges in life and work, drifting doesn't help that much. Drifting leaves us feeling powerless.

If we bring our cares and concerns into the foreground and into sharp focus by actually stating them as commitments, suddenly we've set ourselves in the driver's seat. We've set ourselves up for driving instead of drifting. And that is empowering.

I used to start these conversations with this question. However, engaging the previous questions tends to prime people to consider this question for real. So take a look at your answers so far. What cares and concerns have been present all along but hiding there in the background? Bring them out into the open by writing them down as commitments that define who you are.

Question Seven: What action are you going to take next? With whom? By when?

My commitment to anyone who enters this conversation with me is that it be of significant value to them. One of the ways that the value becomes real is through the new actions that people take. Again, I'm asking for real concrete and specific actions. So what new actions will you take? With whom? By when?

The Eighth Step: Do it all over again and again and again

The last step isn't a question. The last step is to make working with these seven questions into a practice. Working through these questions just once is powerful however vastly insufficient. To be truly effective over both the short and long term, your answers to these questions always have to be fresh and alive. Stale answers don't work.

I hope that you've found this article of value. I'd love to hear your comments and questions so please share them on this blog.

I want to thank two friends of mine, Ken Homer and Robert Masters, for being in conversation with me as I thought about these questions. Both of these men are wonderfully gifted coaches and I'm lucky to have collaborators of their caliber. Thanks guys!

Take care,

-Steve

Changing the Way We Change

This past weekend I picked up the published version of Charles Leadbeater's book "We Think".  I've been tracking this project since he published the full manuscript in draft form in 2006 for public editing - a bold and courageous move for an author.

Here is a short video summarizing the major points of the book produced by Charles.

So here is my take about what is happening - we are changing the way we change and this has a direct impact on how our identities are constructed, how people trust us, how people value us, and how well we are able to generate value for others.

And ... people and organizations that don't change the way they change will start dropping like flies. Well, that's a bit extreme. For sure that will happen to some in markets where competitiveness depends on sensitivity to fast-changing customer needs and wants.

Why do I think this will happen? Because what was previously through impossible - changing practices en mass on a global scale in a short period of time - is now possible. And the time period is growing ever shorter as the years go on.

All of this is being fueled by new social technologies - internet, wikis, facebook, myspace, linkedin, google, etc. - but is actually an expression of a new way of being, a new way of relating, and a new way of changing.

And, I might add, this new capacity for change is arising just in the nick of time to resolve the massive breakdowns in sustainability that we have on this planet.  Those breakdowns will not be resolved through management decisions or legislation - although both will play key roles. Instead, they will be resolved by "us" working together collaboratively.

And it seems to me that the challenge in moving forward with this is that whenever anybody says something like I just said - that we must work together collaboratively on a global scale - we see this as without any real traction and without any substantial ownership.  Somehow the idea seems overly idealistic from the perspective we currently have.

And yet if you've read Paul Hawken's latest book Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World you'll see evidence of "we think" in action. This isn't an ideal, it is a reality!  Here's a Paul Hawken talking about this to some Googlers.

Enjoy!

-Steve

"A genuine dialogue is never the one we wanted to conduct"

The quote from the title is from Hans-Georg Gadamer, a philosopher who studied hermeneutics - the art of interpretation and understanding.

Gadamer's point, is seems, is that it is the nature of genuine conversation that it takes you somewhere you didn't intend to go beforehand. And once you are there, the conversation reveals a new understanding that belongs to no one (no single person). Rather, the understanding is a creation that is realized only in its sharing.

Understanding is a creation that is
realized only in its sharing.

This is a very very radical stance - that something is only real if and only if it is shared. This flips most communication strategies on their head. Most communication strategies are strategies for getting the message out. We have the understanding ... now let's drill it into the masses (e.g., our family, our friends, our employees, our clients, our customers, our audience, etc.). How different would our approach to communicating be if we took Gadamer's insight to heart?

In order to have the conversation we intended to have we must steer the conversation, dampen our sensitivity to shifts in emotions and moods, and only listen for what we want to hear. But this doesn't necessarily generate understanding. In order to generate understanding, we must have the conversation that "wants" to happen, so to speak, instead of the conversation we want to happen.

To generate understanding, our listening must be sensitive and open and this demands from us a higher level of authenticity and presence in the conversation. Leadership, coaching, and design occurs within a conversation and can only be effective when it is a genuine conversation.

Take care,

-Steve

Civic Engagement and the Restoration of Community

Good morning,

Last week I summarized a paper that I recently read by Peter Block. I have received permission to share it with you.  Enjoy!

Download CivicEngagement.pdf

If you have any comments on this, I'd love to hear them.

Love,

-Steve

Restoration of Community Through Civic Engagement

Two postings ago I pointed to three big breakdowns that I believe all leaders must face in today's political and business climate. Today I'll explore the second breakdown - the fragmentation of community.

Our conversations today are often generated within narratives and beliefs about each other that fragment us:

• If you're not with us, you're against us.
• If you aren't one of us, then you are one of them.
• I need to take care of my own.
• I need make you wrong in order to make me right.
• I need to dominate you in order not to be dominated.
• I need to make you invalid in order to validate myself.
• I need to make you guilty in order to secure my innocence.
• I need to burden you in order to relieve myself.

These narratives and beliefs drive much of how we relate to each other and how we build community. They all seem to be strategies for survival. But how well do they ensure our survival in the long run?

Underlying all of these narratives is the belief that war - which these are all forms of - ensures our survival. And in a way it did when our problems of survival were localized. But today we have global sized threats to our survival - both economic and environmental.

Today, perhaps as never before in our history we are being presented with global threats that demand global responses. The narratives and divide us, that fragment us as a community, only make our survival less possible. What is called for is a reconstruction of community.

Right now I'm in the middle of attending my first virtual conference GOS2006 - Global Open Space Conference.

The first speaker is Peter Block, author of several bestsellers on leadership, management, and business consulting. He has given us all a paper called "Civic Engagement and the Restoration of Community" to read and discuss with him during the conference.

In it he characterizes our current ways of living together as retributive.  Retributive is a good way, I think, of characterizing the narratives/beliefs above. And retributive conversations are devoid of accountability and soft on commitment.

He proposes a conversational reconstruction of community as follows:

1. Conversation for Invitation - conversations which extend invitations; being in a community must be a choice not a mandate
2. Conversation for Possibility - conversations which declare new possibilities for the future that are available through civic action within a community
3. Conversation for Ownership - conversations in which we establish ourselves as the cause of the community; where accountability is declared
4. Conversation for Dissent - conversations in which people can say "no" are essential if there "yes" is to be meaningful
5. Conversation for Commitment - conversations in which promises are made to generate satisfaction within the whole community
6. Conversation for Gifts - conversations focused on the gifts we bring and offer to the community

These conversations of civic engagement are an approach to reinventing our communities in a way that generates accountability, commitment, and not fragmentation.

I'll ask him if I can distribute the paper on this blog. Stay tuned for more.

What approaches to community building should also be in this conversation?

-Steve

The Zen of Presentations

Just a quick note to point to a great resource for leaders, designers, and coaches.

If you ever make presentations or help others improve their presentations, you'll find a ton of value in spending time with the blog (and associated websites) Presentation Zen by Gary Reynolds.

BTW, you can find the presentation the slide on the right came from here.

Enjoy!

-Steve

Are You Socially Intelligent?

               
 

Daniel Goleman, the author who popularized emotional intelligence, has a new book out on social intelligence. Leaders, designers, and coaches take note. Goleman reports on the ways that we are wired to be social creatures biologically. And he points out that social intelligence is a critical skill for being effective in the world. Here is a short 4-minute video of Goleman talking about social intelligence. Enjoy! -Steve