During a recent coaching session, my client and I discussed how the principle “a body in motion stays in motion” could assist her in getting her project completed.

We set up a plan where she worked on a specific aspect of the project each day until it was completed. She came to the realization that she was much more efficient in doing small sections of the project daily rather than trying to tackle big sections intermittently.

She learned that it took too much time and energy to get reoriented to where she left off after too much time had elapsed. It felt “jerky” – like she was always starting over. So she stuck with it to keep the momentum.

How about you? How do you stay in motion?

For more resources, see the Library topic Personal and Professional Coaching.

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Pam Solberg-Tapper MHSA, PCC – I spark entrepreneurial business leaders to set strategy, take action, and get results. How can I help you? Contact me at CoachPam@cpinternet.com ~ Linkedin ~ 218-340-3330

Women, Power, and Leadership

In Cathy Curran’s blog on July 7, Women, Power, and Leadership, she talks about how, in the past 40 years, women have become increasingly important players in the business and professional worlds, including positions of leadership. She says that while a glass ceiling still exists and, despite the fact that more and more women are getting past it, that women continue to underrepresented in leadership roles. Cathy states that one reason more women have not made the transition into leadership is because the socialization of women still does not prepare them to handle organizational power and influence. She contends that among all the leadership skills taught to prospective female managers and leaders, education in the successful use of personal and organizational power is lacking. Cathy suggests that some of the more individualistic – and traditionally more masculine — skills and qualities, such as independence in thought, action, and decision making, taking risks, and understanding competition, are ones that women will need to intentionally put more time into developing in order to make a successful transition into organizational leadership roles.

Gender Disparity in Senior Leadership

I certainly agree that the leadership traits prioritized by most organizations could largely be described as masculine or agentic (i.e. someone that demonstrates assertiveness, competitiveness, independence, courageousness). Not only that, but I would argue the majority of competency models in organizations continue to manifest a bias toward traditional leadership qualities and skills. Despite this, the number of women in the managerial and professional ranks in the United States has steadily increased in the past 30 years, and research now shows that women currently hold 51% of managerial and professional positions (Welle, 2004). It is interesting that while these numbers are significantly larger today than ever before, the movement of women into senior leadership positions continues to be incredibly slow. According to Welle, among Fortune 500 companies, only 16% of corporate officers, 14% of board directors, 5% of top earners, and just over 1% of CEOs are women.

Influence of Gender Stereotypes

What is the explanation for this continued disparity at the top? Recent studies reveal that although gender stereotypes are slowly but surely changing in the corporate ranks, women in these settings continue to be viewed as having more nurturing, supportive, and communal tendencies, and are evaluated more harshly than men if they demonstrate these qualities, especially in more senior leadership roles. Ironically, women managers, on the average, actually score higher than men on objective measures of agentic or traditional leadership qualities, but still are not well represented in executive positions (Duehr & Bono, 2006).

Bias at the Top

It appears that more traditionally feminine qualities, while more often valued and perceived as effective at middle manager levels, are not seen as having the same relative value for senior level positions, especially in larger companies. It seems clear that in a majority of corporations, the competencies most valued at senior levels of leadership continue to be the more traditionally masculine (e.g. being keenly focused on the financial bottom line, capacity for critical and strategic thinking, and the ability to make risky and independent decisions). There are of course many unfortunate ironies and outcomes associated with these biases. While many women appear to possess the traits viewed as important for senior leadership, they are frequently not perceived to have enough of these qualities, especially by the individuals that make decisions about senior leader advancement. If this is true, it would seem that further development in women of certain, more agentic qualities and talents, will be important — as Kathy Curran states – but it is likely that changes in perception, or a changing of the guard, may also need to take place. If the glaring gender disparity in executive positions is going to shift, there will likely need to be a perceptual shift within the ranks of those that make promotional and hiring decisions for these roles.

During a recent coaching session, my client was overwhelmed and stressed because of all of his responsibilities. He said his shoulders felt weighted down, like he was carrying a heavy backpack.

I asked what he would like to accomplish on our call – emphatically he stated he wanted to get things in his life sorted out. I asked “How would you like to go about doing this?” After a moment he replied, “I want to unpack my back pack. I don’t even know what’s in there anymore.”

So that’s what we did, unpacked and prioritized what to do with the items in his backpack. At the end of our session, he had focus and an action plan. This made him feel lighter and under control again.

What a great metaphor – “Unpack your Backpack”

What’s weighting down your backpack?

What’s your plan to unpack it, focus and take action on what’s in there?

For more resources, see the Library topic Personal and Professional Coaching.

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Pam Solberg-Tapper MHSA, PCC – I spark high achieving business leaders to get on fire about their lives, develop their leading edge, be extraordinary and do great things for their world. How can I help you? Contact me at CoachPam@cpinternet.com or LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/pam-solberg-tapper/13/600/745

The Essence of Story work

This post is the last in a series about Creating your Leadership Story—how you can learn to see your original systemic story; how, particularly in high stakes situations, it inserts itself into your present day leadership behavior; and how, if desired, you can change your story. The fundamental premise is that you as a leader can learn to see your story—how you have learned to operate in systems–identify ways that it inhibits and ways that it helps you reach your goals, and create a new leadership story that is more aligned with the kind of leader you want to be.

In some ways story work is very complex. It involves learning to see patterns that have reverberated throughout your life and learning to understand the essence of how you have interpreted your experience of the human condition. In other ways it is very simple—there is an identifiable, straightforward set of steps you can engage in to discover and change your story. I call these steps “the essence of story work.” Here they are:

1. Identify and Clarify an important present EVENT: Identify a present situation with which you are having difficulty. A good place to start is with the question: “What is the most challenging leadership situation I am dealing with right now?” Clarify what is happening and how you are responding to it—your behaviors, your thoughts, and your feelings. You might say something like (this is a real example), “My biggest challenge is dealing with all the diverse constituencies in my organization and surrounding community. I try to keep them all happy so that I can hold the system together. That is my job as leader.”

2. Identify the PATTERN: Ask yourself “Is this the first time I have had this kind of experience and responded this way, or have I behaved in this way before?” Invariably, if the event is truly a significant, challenging, high stakes one for you, you will find yourself saying something like, “Oh I’ve been in situations like this several times before,” or, ”I’ve always done this,” (as the leader above said) or, “I have responded this way since my first job—no I did it in college too…well, now that I think about it, I also had this kind of experience in high school and Jr. High.” Now you have identified a pattern of behavior, and accompanying assumptions and feelings, that you have repeated many times throughout your life. The chances are very high that the pattern you see and your deep systemic story are mirrors of one another (mirrors not in content but in structure—the plot line, the character structure, your implicit assumptions, and what you tend to do).

3. Explore your Story (the STRUCTURE): Ask yourself, “What role did this pattern play in my original systemic story?” Or, “How did this story line play out in the first system of which I was a part?” Think through examples that occurred as you were growing up. Identify the major players and their roles, including the role you played. Identify the “story you told yourself” about what was happening—your thoughts, assumptions, actions, and feelings. By this time in your reflection process, who will have a very good picture of the difficulty part of your systemic story–the part which, when activated in present day situations, holds you back. At this level, the leader above said, “I was the youngest child. I had several brothers and sisters who had already moved away. I felt it was my job to hold the family together so they would come back. I did that by keeping everyone happy. Oh! That’s the same way I’m trying to lead in difficult situations today!”

4. Explore alternatives: When you see your patterns and your story, you can identify clearly the behavior you have engaged in and the assumptions you have been making. For example, one of the assumptions of our leader above was, “It is my job to hold the system together.” Another one was, “the way to keep people together is to keep them happy, to please them.” Usually we make these kinds of assumptions without even realizing we are doing so; they are implicit. Through story work, our implicit assumptions become explicit and, therefore, more easily changed. Ask yourself, “do these behaviors, thoughts and feelings I learned early on really fit my present day situation?” Usually the answer is no. Usually you see that there are other behaviors, assumptions, and feelings that will serve you better in your current circumstances. For example, our leader above may adopt a behavior of putting issues squarely on the table and an underlying assumption that working through tough issues is good for an organization.

5. Choose your new story: At this point, you have a good picture of your systemic story, how it has contributed to patterns of behavior over time, and how it plays out in present day high stakes situations. Let’s say your difficulty story is something like: “I never say no to new opportunities and challenges because I don’t want to be seen as inadequate. As a result, I get incredibly overloaded and stressed.” The story you choose is, “I say yes when I truly want to, I say no when that is called for, and I negotiate when I think appropriate. My life is in balance.” Then identify behaviors and assumptions that will support your new story, for example, sometimes saying no to authority and assuming that people will respect you rather than think less of you for standing up for yourself.

6. Practice, Practice, Practice: To bring your new story into being, identify specific behavioral experiments in which you will try out your new behaviors and assumptions. For example, “In our upcoming budget meeting, I am going to state my position very clearly and not cave in when people question me.” You might begin your experiments in situations that are lower risk and later try them in situations that are higher risk. For example, holding your own in the budget meeting may be less risky for you than opposing your boss in a 1/1 stand off. Try your experiments and notice what comes up—what you think, what you feel, what you say to yourself. Chances are you will feel some satisfaction at having tried something new and some anxiety in having tried something unfamiliar. Though we wish that it did, seeing the old story is, in and of itself, not enough to make it “go away.” The old story is apt to raise its head in the form of feelings of anxiety or sadness, thoughts like, “Oh my, what am I doing. They are going to think I’m not a team player!” Pay attention to what comes up, and notice the thoughts and feelings from the old story. Notice them but don’t get tangled up in them. Metaphorically step back from them, see them, and recognize that they can be part of the normal mix of things but that they don’t have to be in the driver’s seat. When you choose and practice a new story, your choice is in the driver’s seat. Just because you feel those old things and think those old thoughts doesn’t mean that you have to follow them. Rather, you can over time, notice them, learn from them, and continue to make choices in favor of what you want to create.

Using the media of stories, we have looked in some depth over the last several weeks at one aspect of human systems—the internal system—the things we think and feel that influence what happens. In coming posts we will look at a model for the Whole System, and then at the two remaining arenas in human systems—the face to face system, i.e. the world of direct interaction with others, and the larger external system—our organizations, businesses, and their environment. All of these arenas are parts of the greater systemic whole in which we live our lives.

Until then, good journey…

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If you would like to learn more about story work and/or consider story coaching, feel free to call or email me at:

Steven P. Ober EdD
President: Chrysalis Executive Coaching & Consulting
Partner: Systems Perspectives, LLC
Office: PO Box 278, Oakham, MA 01068
Home: 278 Crocker Nye Rd., Oakham, MA 01068
O: 508.882.1025 M: 978.590.4219
Email: Steve@ChrysalisCoaching.org
www.ChrysalisCoaching.org

Introduction

As the last forty years have demonstrated, women have successfully become players at many tables in the business and professional worlds. Increasingly, more women are moving to the head of the table as well. But this can still be a bumpy road for many otherwise capable, talented female leaders: the glass ceiling still seems to be there, only now we can see women on the other side and wonder why we can’t make it ourselves.

The main premise of this blog entry is that among all the leadership skills taught to prospective female managers and leaders, education in the successful use of personal and organizational power is still sorely lacking. It is well accepted that the skills that enable a person to excel in their chosen field are very different than the ones necessary to lead and manage others. However, for women, the challenge is different than for men, not necessarily only because of possible discrimination, but because our socialization still does not prepare us to handle organizational power and influence well.

Organization Politics and Power

The type of power I am referring to is organizational political power. Although organizational politics is often cast in a negative light, I maintain that politics is a neutral term, that its skills are useful if not mandatory for organizational success. The negative cast enters depending on how one plays politics, not whether. The term politics refers to a system of reconciling divergent interests through the use of consultation and negotiation. This political negotiation happens at the intersection of stakeholder relationships among interests, conflicts and power. To work out a successful acquisition for an organization, to lead an organizational change, or to manage the many disparate abilities of direct reports and/or departments require the ability to successfully navigate and master the currents of stakeholder interests, conflict and power.

For women, though, the foundational abilities on which organizational political prowess is developed are still not ones most of us are socialized to acquire, because much of the tacit understanding of these skills is based on participation in masculine subcultures. Negotiating, depersonalizing, reframing, risk taking, strategizing, competing and mastering the unwritten rules of the organization come harder to us than for many of our male counterparts.

Stages of Power

Hagberg (2003) posits that this occurs because of difficulties in transitions between one stage of power and the next. According to her, there are discernible levels of organizational power that one must master to be successful in one’s career. Stage One she defines as Powerlessness. For the purposes of this blog, we will not delve into this stage. Stage Two, Power by Association, is where we learn the skills and abilities of our chosen profession – to become competent as a marketeer, a teacher, an engineer, etc. It is characterized by apprentice-like behavior: as we try to understand and make individual contributions to the organization or profession to which we belong, we look for a powerful other(s) to emulate.

After mastering this stage, we transition to Stage Three, Power by Achievement, as we begin to move up the ranks of the organization. This heralds the beginning of our management career. This stage calls for independence in thought, action, and decision making, taking risks, understanding the unwritten rules of the organization, ability to negotiate, strategize, compete, build effective coalitions, play as a part of a team, and maintain a healthy balance between self interest and the good of the organization.

Hagberg generalizes that Stage Two power accentuates what could be called a more feminine expression of power, whereas Stage Three calls for a more masculine demonstration. For men, moving from Two to Three is the easiest transition among the stages: they are socialized to expect that they will move from Stage Two to Stage Three, and if they are talented, other male hands reach down to help them up. For women, Hagberg asserts that this transition is the hardest: some of the agentic, individualistic skills that are demanded by Stage Three are more foreign to our upbringing and to how we’re shaped by culture.

Conclusion

Therefore, to excel as managers, we need to pay more conscious attention to learning these skills. Reflection, role playing, peer coaching based on an understanding of the types of skills needed to excel at Stage Three all become useful tools in the acquisition of what have traditionally been thought of as masculine-identified traits.

What does this mean in terms of the feminine strengths we can bring to leadership? Are they not important as well? More about that in a forthcoming post . . .

Reference

Hagberg, J. (2003), Real Power: Stages of Personal Power in Organizations, Sheffield Publishing Company, Salem, WI.

Author

To learn more about Kathy Curran, PhD, and her upcoming workshop, Using Power in Relationships with Women and Men at Work, go to her website at www.powerandleadership.com or contact her at 651-293-9448 or kcurran@powerandleadership.com.

A guest post by Terrence Seamon

I recently watched a documentary on TV about the finalists in the 2009 international Van Cliburn piano competition held every four years in Fort Worth, Texas. These young virtuosos were incredibly talented, the best pianists in the world from many countries including the U.S., Japan, Russia, China, Italy, South Korea, and Bulgaria. Extraordinarily competitive, hard working, and driven to be the very best, these world class musicians are top performers. And they thrive on performing, practice, coaching and feedback.

We have all known top performers. Some of us have even been top performers at one point or another. Top performers, such as the Van Cliburn pianists, your top salespeople, or a rising star with “hi-potential,” can benefit by coaching as much as anyone. Perhaps even more so if you look at the parallel to the world’s top athletes, e.g. Olympians. Every skier, skater, swimmer and diver that competes in the Olympics has a coach and receives coaching. Although these athletes are the very best in their respective sports, they are driven to stay on top, to enhance their performance, to learn new things, and to stay mentally tough and focused. So they “get” the value of coaching.

In business organizations, Managers are often at a loss as to how to coach these “stars,” especially those that seem arrogant and immune to influence and change. Yet those employees need coaching as much as anyone. The key is to understand them, especially their needs and drives. And apply such principles as:

Communicate and Connect – The only way to know what your top performer needs is to connect with her and open a channel of honest communication between you. Get to know the top performer. Learn about her goals. Ask how you can support her. Build trust.

Ask for their ideas – Top performers get to the top by consistently delivering superior results. They are also constantly improving what they do. Seek their ideas for improvement. When you are faced with a thorny problem that has no obvious solution, ask the top performer for their thoughts.

Utilize their capabilities – If there is one thing that top performers hate, it is to be under-utilized. Challenge them and push them. Keep raising the bar.

Show your appreciation – Do you want to retain your top performer? If so, let them know you appreciate them and the contribution they make to the team and to the organization.

Expose them to new – Top performers love to learn new ways, especially if they sense that the new approach will enable them to stay at the top in their field.

Recently on LinkedIn, someone asked: What do you do if a top performer is resistant to being coached? Should you simply get out of the top performer’s way? Should you “carry water” for them? Cater to them in order to keep them happy and prevent their jumping ship?

There is always a need for coaching, in my mind. But it’s vital to assess what the performer most needs. Without a clear and agreed upon need, this star performer may just get irritated with you. And they may resist your coaching. Ask yourself: Could the behavior that seems to signal “resistance” be something else? Could it be impatience? Could it be arrogance? Maybe the performer is unconvinced that the coach has anything of value to offer.

Coming back to the Van Cliburn winners, the three medalists were selected from 12 finalists. As the documentary unfolded, the filmmakers gave us a profile of each competitor. While nearly all fit the profile outlined above, there were a couple who did not. Yes, they were incredibly talented and Olympian in stature on the world classical music stage. But they were full of themselves. They wouldn’t listen. They were resistant to coaching. And they lost.

For more resources, see the Library topic Personal and Professional Coaching.

Written by Kristine Quade, JD, MSOD, HSDP

Environmental conditions are changing rapidly; in these shifting conditions, traditional leadership models are not working. Information is available to everyone, at any time. Social networks are eroding the established hierarchy. Product development cycle times are increasing at a shocking pace. Market conditions are being set by a different set of rules. How can any modern-day leader function effectively given these enormous challenges?

In these turbulent times where outcomes are unpredictable, those who lead dynamically are succeeding. Dynamical leaders pay attention to three conditions to ensure an effective, highly functioning organization: coherence, resilience, and fitness. The leader who masters these conditions will achieve what others say is impossible!

Coherence

Coherence can be thought of as an interdependence of parts. An organization needs to be coherent with market conditions to remain a player in a given strategic space. Departments need coherence to ensure a strong coordination of activity. Teams need coherence of behavior to effectively work for the organization’s benefit. Patterns that build coherence are those that keep communication open and honest, ensure clarity of roles and responsibilities, build shared identity, and create a rhythm of high performance.

Resilence

Resilience is the ability to integrate, re-calibrate and recover quickly when challenged. The normal inclination is to fall back to familiar ground, carefully exploring until the change becomes familiar once again. Resilient leaders are constantly placing themselves in unfamiliar conditions, stretching their capacity to absorb and adjust. They seek what is different in perspective, approach, or opinion; connect across boundaries; and explore new ideas and technologies like a curious scientist. Resilient leaders are constantly looking for constraints in their thinking, decision-making, relationships, and behavior. They actively explore their filters, viewpoints, and judgments, constantly seek ways to break constraints and keep themselves open and adaptable. Patterns that build resilience include utilization of multiple perspectives, ongoing learning, and establishing feedback mechanisms for recycling learning back into the system for continued expansion of potential. The cycle of exploration and knowledge generation comes from external markets, interactions with customers, attention to shifting conditions, and curiosity of teammates. A resilient leader notices patterns of creativity, exploration, collaboration, and integration.

Fitness

Leaders who understand fitness are not thinking about athletics. Instead, they are constantly scanning their environment for potential surprises. They regard blips and trends as pieces of a larger puzzle to be solved. They know that these changes offer valuable information that beckons them to make meaning for their organization. These leaders have inquiring minds and seek to build organizational cultures that candidly talk about what is being noticed, are patient with different perspectives, and discern emerging patterns from random blips and trends.

How does paying attention to coherence, resilience and fitness ensure the capacity to accomplish what others think is impossible? Some leaders choose to focus their attention on building coherence. They focus on clarity of mission, vision, values, process improvements, performance objectives, and measurements. YES! These are needed and necessary. But they are not the only conditions for success. Coherence forms the ground floor of an effective organization, but what keeps an organization alive is resilience and fitness—the ability to adapt to what is important.

Sad as it may be, the environmental conditions we are experiencing now prohibit many organizations from developing a five-year strategic plan that is fully executionable. Dynamical leaders know their approach to business opportunities require constant vigilance for shifting environmental conditions and the ability to adapt with urgency. Operating in these conditions means that leaders must expand their focus grow their organizations capability to be resilient and fit into an environment of rapid change.

If you wish to learn more about this type of thinking and how to become a dynamical leader, check out the schedule for presentations and/or workshops on http://www.DynamicalLeadership.com .

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Steve Wolinski provides leadership development, organizational change and talent management services to numerous public, private and non-profit organizations. Website, Email.

Being succinct is a communication skill that many of my coaching clients try to master. In today’s business world it is imperative to be clear and concise. Your message needs to get across with the desired effect in the least amount of time possible.

Here are 3 tips:

1. Stick to the facts. Avoid drowning the recipient in nonessential detail.

2. Use fewer words. It may be hard to tell what your point is if you ramble. Also, the recipient may decide not to read (or listen to) what you are trying to tell them if it is too long.

3. Be Credible. Know your objective and the main points of what you are communicating. You show a higher level of professionalism when you state solid evidence versus just giving your opinion.

Your thoughts?

For more resources, see the Library topic Personal and Professional Coaching.

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Pam Solberg-Tapper MHSA, PCC – I spark entrepreneurial business leaders to set vision, take action, and get results. How can I help you? Contact me at CoachPam@cpinternet.com ~ Linkedin ~ 218-340-3330

Moses, Dorothy, and the Hero’s journey

We have been focusing on leaders’ deep systemic stories–how they were formed, how they shape your leadership behavior, and how you can learn to see, and if you desire, change them. In this post, we will look at the larger cultural context for our individual stories.

Making Meaning through Stories

We as human beings are meaning making creatures. One of the ways we make meaning for ourselves as individuals is through our own systemic stories. One of the ways we make meaning of our larger world and our place in it is through the stories we create about life and about our relationships with each other, with our planet, and with the heavens. Examples of these cultural stories include creation stories; flood stories; Eden stories; stories of exodus and deliverance; wandering in the wilderness; stories of light and hope; fairy tales; and stories about birth, death, and regeneration.

Our individual stories are narratives we have told ourselves about our own experiences in our life journeys. Our larger cultural stories are narratives we have created about our broader human experience. All of these stories, our personal ones and our larger myths, are interconnected. Understanding one group of stories helps us learn from the others.

Where do our stories come from?

What are our broader cultural myths really about? Where do they come from? I suggested above that they are about our human experience and our desire to make meaning of that experience. Specifically, I believe our cultural myths emerge from three interrelated arenas:

• Our cycle of life from birth through childhood, adulthood, mid-life, maturity, and death.
• Our relationship with the earth and the seasons
• Our relationships with others—our parents, our families, our friends, and our larger communities.

The Hero’s Journey

Joseph Campbell found that, while there are indeed differences, there are also remarkable parallels among the archetypal stories, or myths, across all cultures. These parallels reflect commonalities in the human condition.

Campbell also indentified a powerful prototypical story he called The Hero’s Journey. Hero’s journey stories appear in all cultures, and their underlying structures are much the same. The basic sequence of a hero’s journey story is:

• The hero begins in a “stable” state.
• Something breaks her loose.
• He goes into a difficult period, the pit, a trauma.
• She emerges from that dark night of the soul and goes on a journey, a quest to accomplish some great thing, meet some great challenge, and/or get to a desired place.
• The hero experiences several tests along the way
• If the hero is successful in his journey, he achieves his goal, meets his great challenge, and reaches his desired destination.

Moses and the Exodus

The account of Moses and the Exodus is a mid-life hero’s journey. Moses left Egypt as a young man and for many years had a stable life and family in the desert. The burning bush experience—through which he was commissioned by Yahweh to lead his people to freedom and into the Promised Land–broke him loose from that comfortable place. He re-entered Egypt and faced the threat of the Pharaoh and his minions. He became the vehicle for the plagues visited upon Egypt. He led the Children of Israel through the climactic trauma of crossing the Red Sea, the closing of which destroyed Pharaoh’s pursuing armies. Moses then led his people in a 40-year journey through the desert looking for the Promised Land.

Dorothy and the Yellow Brick Road

The story of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz is a coming of age hero’s journey. Though the content is totally different, there are many thematic similarities to Moses’ story. Dorothy was in Kansas on the farm (a stable place). The cyclone broke her loose from that space, and she experienced the storm’s powerful trauma. As Moses had Pharaoh as a nemesis, Dorothy had the Wicked Witches. As going through the Red Sea destroyed Pharaoh’s armies, when Dorothy came through the tornado, the house she was in killed the Wicked Witch of the East. Moses and the Children of Israel came through the Red Sea to a strange desert with a long journey and desired destination ahead of them. Dorothy came through the tornado, landed in the strange Land of Oz, and soon began her journey back home. On his journey, Moses experienced many tests—tests of his leadership; a sometimes rebellious, idolatrous group of followers; the lack of food; and the summons to Mount Sinai. Dorothy was also tested—the plants that made her and her friends fall asleep; getting access to the Wizard; the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West; the fact that the Wizard was hokum. To pass these tests, both Moses and Dorothy needed to use the best resources of their hearts, their minds, and their courage.

Your own Hero’s Journey

With careful examination, you will find that your story is also a quest that has a sequence similar to Moses’ and Dorothy’s. We start in what we initially experience as a safe protected place, at home with our parents. We feel loved. Over time, we learn that our situation, and the love we receive are not perfect (not necessarily due to the fact that anyone is s bad person—most often simply due to the imperfection of the human condition). We experience our first great test, the first great question of life: “Am I worthy, am I loved? Am I loveable?” We begin our life journey in search of the answer to that question and in search of the love we believe we have lost.

Our next test comes in young adulthood, when we find ourselves answering the second great question of life: “What am I going to do with my life on the planet? Who is the best person I can be in the world?”

During mid-life we face our third great challenge. We look back on our lives, and ask ourselves the third great question: “Have I been the best person I can be?” Have I led a life of worth and meaning?”

And finally, in maturity, we experience our fourth great test. We look both backward and forward and ask ourselves, “How can I leave the planet a better place than I found it? What is the legacy I want to leave behind?”

If we answer these four great questions of life successfully, we reach our “promised land”—the knowledge that we have led a life of worth and meaning.

The Tapestry of Life

Your leadership journey, your overall life journey, and your journey in your current phase of life are intricately intertwined. They are all variations of your own hero’s journey. You reach a plateau and are comfortable there—for a while. Something occurs to break you loose. You are no longer as comfortable; you experience a period of transition. You set out on the next phase of your journey to achieve a certain goal and reach a desired point—to become a powerful leader, to guide your organization through a period of major change, to make your mark, or to establish your legacy–to show yourself, others, and your world that you ARE worthy, loved, loveable, and successful, that you are indeed a good human being. Such is the nature of your life journey; such is your hero’s journey; such is your leadership story; and such is the human condition. They are all part of one whole cloth.

What you can do

To help yourself learn your own present and desired story, ask yourself, “Where am I in my life journey, right now? What was my last plateau? What shook me loose? What is my destination, my goal? And, how do I proceed effectively and humanely to achieve my goal?” The answers to these questions will begin paint the picture of your own hero’s journey.

Where do we go from here?

My next post will the last in this series on Unleashing the Power of your Story. I will end the series by summarizing the steps you can take, the specific questions you can ask and answer for yourself, to identify your present and desired leadership stories and take the steps to move yourself powerfully from one to the other.

Meanwhile, Good Journey…

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If you would like to learn more about story work and/or consider story coaching, feel free to call or email me at:

Steven P. Ober EdD
President: Chrysalis Executive Coaching & Consulting
Partner: Systems Perspectives, LLC
Office: PO Box 278, Oakham, MA 01068
Home: 278 Crocker Nye Rd., Oakham, MA 01068
O: 508.882.1025 M: 978.590.4219
Email: Steve@ChrysalisCoaching.org
www.ChrysalisCoaching.org

Steve is a senior executive coach and consultant. He has developed and successfully uses a powerful approach to leadership coaching, Creating your Leadership Story, which enables leaders to make deep, lasting improvements in their leadership effectives in short periods of time. He and a group of partners have created a breakthrough educational program, Coaching from a Systems Perspective, in which you can significantly enhance your abilities as a systemic leadership coach. See http://SystemsPerspectivesLLC.com.

Successful people are those who have a Vision. They are fulfilled because they are living a life by their own design. They accomplish more in less time because they know where they are going.

Here are 3 Coaching Tips for Creating Your Vision:

1. Begin with the End in Mind. In 5, 10, 20+ years from now what do you want to accomplish in your life? What are your aspirations? What do you want? When do you want it? What will you take a stand for? What is your purpose? Your legacy? Then, center your priorities and activities on your vision and what is important to you.

2. Focus. Think about what you want, not what you don’t want. Guard your thoughts carefully because they create your experiences.

3. Set milestones. Create markers or steps along the way to assure you are on track. Celebrate small successes to keep your motivation high.

As the adage goes, “If you don’t know where you are going, you will end up somewhere else”.

What is your Vision for your life?

For more resources, see the Library topic Personal and Professional Coaching.

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Pam Solberg-Tapper MHSA, PCC – I spark high achieving business leaders to get on fire about their lives, develop their leading edge, be extraordinary and do great things for the world. How can I help you? Contact me at CoachPam@cpinternet.com or Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/pam-solberg-tapper/13/600/745