Category: Professional Development

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Spiritually Awakened Mind

Young woman with arms outstretched

This is taken from my forth-coming book “Staying Grounded in Shifting Sand”

On an early morning walk in the Royal Chitwan National Park in Nepal, our group came across a couple of rhinos bathing in a small pool. Our guide told us to lay low since the rhino will charge if it senses danger. Our guide also explained that rhinos have very poor eyesight, and so if it sees something move, it will charge regardless of what the animal is. Rhinos have even attacked jeeps. Our guide seemed to take delight in calling to the rhinos to get their attention and then had us back off when the rhinos looked around or moved. The rhino is a good metaphor for those who are living their lives without a fully awakened mind. Many people sense danger and attack, even if they don’t fully understand what they are attacking. And because they can’t see clearly, they feel in a state of anxiety or danger most of the time. You may know such people. They could be co-workers, neighbors, community leaders, friends or family members.

When stressed we react out of instinct or deeply learned patterns. We react without thinking through what may be happening, or as the rhino, without seeing what’s really going on. Luckily we humans can stop from instinctive, knee jerk reactions. We can reflect on the situation and see it from various viewpoints. Staying open and aware you needn’t simply react. You can choose how you respond. You can attack or flee or you can negotiate, cajole, charm, or surrender. As we move from childhood to adulthood we learn to see situations beyond what is immediately happening and to consider various options for dealing with life events.

It is too easy to get beaten down by the daily tasks in our lives, to let our small self, our ego, our fears run the show. The question is- what game do you want to play? Do you want to play the game of life that feeds that small ego-self or do you want to play the game that expands yourself. The bigger game involves seeing where your growing edge is, moving beyond your comfort zone, and be willing to stay there long enough to learn the lesson required and find more solid ground. This is a game that lets you tap into power much larger than your small self and achieve possibilities beyond your wildest dreams.

The spiritual way to move through your work day is to play the game of the awakened mind- one where you see your physical, material world unfold and also see the events metaphorically or metaphysically as the opportunities to grow, learn and experience joy. The object of the spiritual game at work is to learn to forgive more, offer compassion at every opportunity, be joyful, and find peace in any given moment.

“Be kind whenever possible. It’s always possible.” Dalai Lama

www.lindajferguson.com

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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.

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Air New Zealand Shows How to Fight Back

An airplane up in the sky

[This is a guest blog from “Managing Outcomes,” published by Tony Jaques, Director of Issue Outcomes Pty Ltd, for people who work in issue and crisis management and strive for planned, positive outcomes. You can subscribe to his newsletter at www.issueoutcomes.com.au]

Every manager who has ever wanted to beat up on an ill-informed or aggressive journalist in the midst of a serious corporate issue can take a lesson from the CEO of Air New Zealand.

At a time when New Zealand’s national airline was discussing a proposed alliance with Australian-based Virgin Blue, the news and comment magazine The Listener published an intemperate editorial entitled “Turbulence ahead” accusing Air NZ of going “determinedly downmarket on its Australian and Pacific routes” and suggested the “downgrade” would move the airline towards budget standard on international short-haul flights?

Although Air NZ has an acknowedged reputation for very open communication with the news media, angry CEO Rob Fyfe must have considered giving the magazine “both barrels between the eyes” but decided instead on a response which was both clever and effective.

Playing on the name of its accuser, Air NZ produced a video response entirely in sign language, with subtitles. It began: “Dear Listener, Ironically it seems you haven’t been listening to what we’ve got to say, you’re hardly living up to your name . . . As you appear to have turned a deaf ear to us we thought it might be best to respond in a language you may be more familar with.” The sign language video concluded: “Now we’re all guilty of selective hearing sometimes, but we’ve got to say you did a fantastic job of not listening to the facts. If you’d like to talk this through further, lend us you ear and give us a call.”

The video (below) featured the CEO himself and, just to drive the point home, was accompanied by a formal press statement written entirely in the printed version of sign language except for the heading: “We’ve worked bloody hard to create an airline New Zealanders can be proud of and it really winds me up when someone gives us a gratuitous slap.”

Needless to say the video also got posted on Youtube, where thousands of viewers have enjoyed the airline having fun at the expense of the hapless magazine.

But beyond the fun element is the serious question of how best to respond when under attack. Too often the corporate first reaction is an angry denial. Wry humour like this is probably not appropriate during a crisis when lives or the environment are at stake. However it is a reminder that sometimes it is better to whisper than to shout. The Biblical proverb has it: “A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.” Perhaps the modern version is “Don’t get mad, get even.”

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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D is for Divine

Potted Pink Petaled Flower Near Black Tablet

It’s one thing to believe in the Divine and it’s another thing to believe in the guidance that the Divine is giving you. According to the authors of the book A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America, almost everyone who was interviewed believed in a higher power or God. However, when it came to feeling the presence of that higher power or God at work about half felt it and the other half didn’t.
When we can tap into the Divine that constantly surrounds us is when we can really experience a greater sense of meaning, purpose and joy in all we do. One book that really opened my eyes, hears, heart and soul around this concept is the book Divine Guidance: How to Have a Dialogue with God and Your Guardian Angels by Doreen Virtue.
According to Virtue, “How you receive guidance from God and your guardian angels isn’t important. What matters is that you notice them, can verify their Divine source and act on it. God always answers the questions, requests and prayers we hold in our hearts. Since God knows everything about us; we might as well be completely candid when requesting Divine guidance.”
There are four methods or channels to receive divine guidance. We each have the ability to receive guidance through all of these methods. Most of us have one or two channels that tend to be stronger. As I share the methods and examples of how I’ve used this channel for guidance in my work, I want you to think of your own examples at work.

  1. Clairvoyance (clear seeing) – guidance comes as still pictures/images or moves in your mind’s eye. Examples include dreams, mental pictures, mental movies, seeing colors/auras, visual signs from heaven, and symbols. My example: Before I wrote created my You’re IT Tribute Book in honor of my mom, I saw her opening up this book in which each page was from someone whose life she touched telling a story of how my mom has made a difference in their lives.
  2. Clairaudience (clear hearing) – hearing from the outside or inside your head – still, small voice within; auditory messages. My example: I was guided to write my first book The Little Girl Who Found IT: A Story of Heart and Hope by a small voice within that told me to write a poem, which many years later turned into my book.
  3. Clairsentience (clear feeling) – receiving guidance as an emotion or physical sensation such as a smell, tightened muscle or a touch; feeling or hunches. My example: When I was meeting for the first time with the team for a training design project that I’ve been hired for a wonderful integrative health and healing program called Renewing Life, I got chills over my body, which is a clear signal for me that I’m being guided by a heavenly purpose.
  4. Claircognizance (clear knowing) – suddenly knowing something or ideas for a fact, without knowing how you know. My example: This is a calmness I have inside that I know something will manifest when the time is right. This came true for me at a professional development meeting for the University of Minnesota as I’m adjunct faculty in the College of Continuing Education department. I just knew that it would be just a matter of time before I would be the one presenting to the other instructors some of the techniques I’ve been implementing in my classes.

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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.

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Janae Bower is an inspirational speaker, award-winning author and training consultant. She founded Finding IT, a company that specializes in personal and professional development getting to the heart of what matters most.

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Quitters Never Win?

Young professional frustrated with work

This Blog is by Kathie Allen, CPCC, ACC – Guest Writer

Recently I was coaching a client who was overwhelmed with work and wholeheartedly believed that “quitters never win.” I asked her/him, “What are some valid reasons why someone would quit any of the work s/he is doing?” “Well,” s/he said, “if you aren’t any good at what you do, then I guess that’s a reason. And, if what you are doing doesn’t fit who you are anymore, then that would be a good reason to give it up. And, if someone else is better at it than I am and I don’t enjoy my work anymore, then I could resign.” When s/he heard her/his words, s/he spoke her/his truth immediately: “I’m afraid that if I let go, someone will judge me for that action. Mostly I will judge myself for quitting!”

What about you? What are you holding on to that no longer fits? What are you doing that you aren’t very skilled at or isn’t your passion but you’re doing it because you think you have to?

Clarify for yourself the things you do well, the things you are passionate about, and the places where you make a difference and feel alive when you engage in them. Then set out to do them. Leave the things you don’t do well to someone who can. Don’t rob them of the chance to contribute to what they do well.

What do you really want to quit? I challenge you to do so as soon as possible! Your stress will be reduced, and you will begin to live from a place of passion and peace as you pursue work that is a great fit.

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

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Kathie Allen, CPCC, ACC – Professional Life and Leadership Coach. Kathie loves to work with people who believe in the greater good and those in search of deeper meaning for their lives. Contact Kathie: 218-326-9267 • [email protected]

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Unleashing the Power of your Story-I

Plasma ball illustration

“When we know the facts about people, we know what they are. When we know their stories, we know who they are.” John Quincy Adams

Leadership, Systems, and Stories

One of the most powerful ways to understand your leadership, and the reasons you behave and lead as you do, is to understand your systemic story.

Out of my work over the past 25 years with individual executives, executive teams, and large organizational change projects–and from my work with David Kantor, one of the leading family systems therapists and systems consultants in the U.S.–I have developed a powerful leadership coaching process, Creating your Leadership Story. Story work helps leaders make major improvements in their performance in short periods of time. Clients report that, in 2-3 hours of coaching, they create significant positive changes that stay with them over the long haul.

Leaders who choose to do story work learn to see Events–how they respond to particularly difficult leadership challenges. They come to recognize their Patterns of behavior and implicit assumptions, both those that have helped them create desired results and those that have gotten in their way. And, they discover Structure–how Patterns are rooted in their systemic story, the story that reflects how they initially learned to operate in systems.

Many clients describe seeing the connection between their present day leadership and their deep story as transformational. They make a fundamental shift in how they view themselves in the world and as leaders. But the work does not stop there. They then create a new story that is aligned with the results they want to create and the kind of leader they want to be; they identify new behaviors and assumptions; and they practice their new approaches to produce quantum leaps in their leadership effectiveness.

This post is the first of a series in which I will discuss what I mean by “story”, why your deep story is central to how you lead, why seeing your deep story is a powerful way to make desired changes in your leadership, and how you can go about doing that. Also, I will review the broader context for our stories—the theory underlying story work; stories in the context of our life cycle; and our individual and cultural myths, where these mythic stories come from, why we tell them, and what we can learn about ourselves and our world by paying more attention to them.

Questions to Ponder

Have you ever been in the middle of a leadership situation and felt, “I’ve been here before”? The content of the situation may be new, but you still have an underlying “deja vu all over again” experience.

Have you ever experienced a tough, high-pressure situation that was important for you to deal with effectively, but you felt stuck? You may have experienced yourself trying the same things over and over again, each time trying a little harder, and each time feeling more stuck. As in the proverbial tar baby story, the harder you pushed, the more you got entangled.

Conversely, you have probably experienced leadership situations that came out wonderfully despite huge challenges; you were successful and felt great, you performed to the max, and your energy flowed naturally and organically. You may or may not have known why things went so well, but you knew that they did, and you knew you felt great.

Most often, these kinds of instances reflect your deep systemic story.

What is a Systemic Story?

Your systemic story is the story you have told yourself about your experience in systems, particularly the first system of which you were a part. It reflects how you learned to survive and operate in systems; for example, your deep story reflects how you learned to:

  • Relate to key players in your life
  • Be successful
  • Get noticed, or avoid getting noticed
  • Take risks, and protect yourself
  • Respond to authority, and exert your own authority
  • Give and receive love

At its core, your deep story is the internal narrative you have created about your experience of the human condition. As such, it is central to who you are as a human being and as a leader.

What you can do—a first step

If you want to learn to see your story and how it influences your present day leadership behavior, to learn how to keep the parts of your story that serve you well and change the parts that do not, start observing yourself. As a first step, “stand on your own shoulder”, or “on the balcony” and watch yourself doing what you do. Pay particular attention to how you handle the toughest leadership challenges. Notice your thoughts, your feelings, and your behavior. In our next post, you will start to learn what to do with the things you have observed. Eventually, you will learn how to unleash the power of your story and make your life as a leader more consistent with who you truly want to be and what you deeply yearn to accomplish.

To be continued…

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If you have questions and would like more information about story work, feel free to contact me:

Steven P. Ober EdD

Office: 508.882.1025 Mobile: 978.590.4219
[email protected]

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Ask Them and They Will Come

Man in Brown Suit Jacket sitting on a couch

This blog was written by guest writer Andy Horsnell.

While working for a nonprofit capacity building service, I had occasion to put together an “Executive Director Boot Camp” that would help EDs identify and begin addressing issues that were critical for their on-the-job effectiveness. Early in the development of this project, I almost had myself convinced that I knew enough, given my twenty years in capacity building, to just roll it out to the market. Almost. Instead, I invested in interviews and focus groups with about two dozen executive directors to see what I could learn.

I learned plenty. First, make it exclusively for executive directors; resist the temptation to open it up to other senior staff and board members. “We want to be free talk about our issues, without worrying about what our staff and board members might think.” Then they told me the issues what they wanted the session to address, and gave me specific input on the session format, timing, promotion and pricing. They said, “If you can pull this off as we’ve outlined, we’ll happily pay $400 for a two-day session.” This from a group of people who were known to complain about paying $20 for a lunch presentation by an expert on the latest ‘critical issue’.

We launched the program with the initial goal of thirty participants. The common wisdom around the office was, “We’ll be lucky to get twenty. I mean, how many EDs are there that will come up with $400?” Sixty-five, to be exact. And we could have taken another twenty, had we had the room to accommodate them.

In short, the program almost sold itself, because we had the audacity to give our paying customers what they actually wanted, instead of what we felt they needed. It’s a lesson I won’t forget quickly: don’t ever fool yourself into believing that you can think for your customers. It’s so much easier (and effective) to just ask them in the first place and, if you do, they’ll reward you for it.

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Andy Horsnell is an accomplished social entrepreneur with deep roots in nonprofit management, consulting and training. He is the guide to the Social Enterprise section of the Free Management Library.

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Coaching Tip – The 5 Minute Weekly Review

Desk Clock on a Table

As I work with my coaching clients, I realize that most people do not routinely reflect or evaluate their progress – unless it is performance review time. I created this simple feedback tool called The 5 Minute Weekly Review to provide a structure for insight, learning and improving performance.

The 5 Minute Weekly Review

  • What went well?
  • What went poorly?
  • What would you have done differently?
  • Next week – what will you do more of? Less of?

As you try out this tool, what would you include in your weekly review?

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

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Pam Solberg-Tapper MHSA, PCC – I spark savvy business leaders to fire up their cutting edge, be extraordinary and do great things for their world. How can I help you? Contact me at [email protected] ~ Linkedin ~ 218-340-3330

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Information Security as Crisis Prevention (video)

Businessman struggling with work crisis

This is the first short educational video I’ve created on YouTube. I apparently spoke a bit too quickly and one word was omitted at the beginning, but otherwise I hope you find it to be an interesting introduction to this crisis management subject!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVar3MZbpaU

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc. , an international crisis management consultancy, and author of Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training.]

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Welcome to the Library’s Blogs!

A welcome signage

Development is hard pressed to interface with operations. Yet it is extremely important that this interface be workable because developments are not relevant until they find their way into operations. This is the “reason for being” of development; to have new systems and adaptive processes and structures integrated, in the long run, to foster organizational performance and adaptation.

What’s The Difference?

An operation is charted to preserve the status quo, the current thinking and methods. Operations assumes this status quo as a “given” and works within current procedures to improve them and “operationalize” them with a high degree of efficiency. In most operations the problem is clear and solutions are knowable. Fast response is an overriding value in executing a “fix” and getting the operation back on-line.

Development, on the other hand is a constructive conspiracy. It is the development function, who’s job it is to replace the current ways of doing things, with new tools and assumptions more in line with changing business and organizational conditions. Development is rife with ambiguity; it is a searching and learning process. The overriding value is gaining commitment to change.

Innovation and Development is fragile, complex and conceptual. Nothing kills it faster than premature exploitation- rushing to capitalize on it too soon. Development is not charted but it is navagatable, it is a learned activity in action where hunches are tested and theory is developed in the process of action. The context of development is uncertainty. Operations on the other hand, works to reduce uncertainty to a program, an operational term.

Learning It While Doing It

Operations are based in control. Developments emerge and are always subject to un- intended consequences in action as development is moved toward its purpose. One of the themes of these essays is that developments are realized through the process of development, it is in effect learned in the process of doing it.

Usually there is not a great deal of organizational understanding and support for doing this. An often operation does not see the need or understand the purpose of the development itself. For this reason, development needs protection at a certain stage. Protection and understanding go hand in hand. As the development is understood the protection can be loosened which is necessary to gain the institutional support for prioritizing the resources for more disciplined development.

Boundary management means the protection and support of a differentiated development culture and the managed change of this culture when appropriate. Boundary management is a continual effort of judgment and balance because technical organizations optimize performance and their activities are always influenced by demands and feedback from a variety of sources in the global environment. Establishing and managing boundaries is both necessary and problematic.

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For more resources, see the Library topics Consulting and Organizational Development.

Jim Smith has over 40 years of organization development experience in a wide range of organizations. He can be reached at [email protected]

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CYA- It all depends on Perspective

Man in suit lost in thoughts

How many of you work in a CYA environment? I’m guessing many of you are nodding yes. Well – it all depends on perspective. What if CYA didn’t mean ‘Cover Your Ass’ but rather ‘Choose Your Attitude’. How different would your workplace be if people really got it that they alone are responsible for how their day goes. Everyone gets a chance to choose their attitude from the minute they walk into work, to the staff meetings they sit through, to the way they talk to their co-workers. Here’s a little insider information – You create your world from the inside out. Choosing your attitude is the first step.

What do I mean by creating your world from the inside out? Your attitudes, beliefs, thoughts, judgments shape your words and deeds. When you truly understand you have the power to choose your attitudes (and I’m including here your beliefs, thoughts, judgments), you are the master of your world*. Your inner dialogue shapes how your outer world unfolds. When was the last time someone pushed a hot button of yours? Guess what – you can’t determine what others do, but you can determine how your respond. Choosing your attitude is an empowering approach to your work. You control your mental and emotional state, rather than giving your control away to someone else.

There are only two responses you can give in any moment– acts of love or acts of fear. Cover Your Ass is a fear-based response. Choose Your Attitude helps you remember you can choose a loving response instead.

We always get a chance to choose our attitude, in the small and large ways. Pay attention to how you respond to things this week. Do you respond from a place of love or fear? Affirm that you are able to respond with loving kindness to others, no matter what they do. You’ll move more easefully through your day if you do.

Here’s an affirmation to help you this week:

I know I am whole, balanced and supported by staying true to my Source of Love. I know that everyone is doing the best they can in any moment. Let me enhance this moment with my compassionate understanding and loving kindness. I will stay true to my inner knowing that I am Love regardless of what goes on around me. As such I will choose the most loving thought, word or deed I can offer in the moment.

* My second book,” Staying Grounded in Shifting Sand”, shares more information about Personal Mastery. To see the 1st chapter and a video overview of the book, go to- http://www.NextTopAuthor.com/?aid=2089 If you feel so moved, please vote for me as the Next Top Author before 11:59 pm tomorrow (Mon. June 28).

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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.

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