"A coaching relationship is dynamic, directed, unexpected and exciting. We will work together to actively move you from where you are to where you want to be. You can count on us to inspire, challenge, ignite and support you. We will be a relentless advocate of your dreams and ambitions."

Digging For Worms

POSTED MAY 4, 2016 - by Dina Silver

Remember when you were in middle school and your teacher put you in a group of three or four to complete a report or presentation?  Unless things have changed markedly since my days at those scrawny desks, there was usually a natural leader, a couple of good soldiers and a slacker. The slackers were absolutely infuriating since they contributed little or nothing, put more pressure on the rest of the team who had to pick up their work, and walked at project’s end with the same good grade earned by their harder-working cohorts.

I clearly remember my own kids coming home and ranting furiously about the injustice of these situations, and I don’t think I had much good advice to offer.  What were their options, really?  Cooperate and do your best. Recognize that not everyone has the same confidence, capacity or diligence to excel.  Rise to the challenge and put your best work forward even though others are not.

The problem of being an achieving twelve-year-old on a cruddy team is not all that different from being a motivated thirty-something surrounded by a mix of excellent and not so excellent teammates. Your work depends on others and not all others are created equal. So what are your options?

1. Talk to the person/people and articulate the impact of their behavior on the team and on the team’s results.  Sometimes this has a surprisingly good outcome.  Often though this tactic yields a short-term bump and a then a slide back to where you were at the start.  To effectively talk to a peer about something as sensitive as this you must be able to speak clearly, honestly and humanely.  Emotional baggage that you bring to the conversation backfires and the loser is… you!

2. Talk to your manager.  Risky choice since you may look like a grown-up tattler who is pointing fingers instead of solving problems.  If the problem person is really a disaster for the team, it can be more effective to gather the team together to talk to the manager en masse. 

3. Work around the problem by doing other people’s work for them.  This is what usually happens and it is an unappetizing choice indeed since you are now doing your work and someone else’s and you’ve successfully trained a poor performer to keep on doing poor work. 

4. If you are the manager, then you must provide clear and unapologetic feedback to poor performers. Find out their perspective about what is occurring and:

a. Match them to work better suited to their abilities

b. Provide training if that is what is at the core of the problem

c. Move them to a different team

d. Move them out of your organization

Managers who let high performing teams suffer with untalented and/or unmotivated members do so at great peril. Your high performers may get so fed up they start to look elsewhere; the team may become so frustrated that the overall level of performance declines; morale absolutely suffers and the work-around to compensate for slackers creates burnout and disappointment.

So take action-- cut the Gordian Knot and liberate your high performers to do what they are yearning to do—their work, really well.

Biography is NOT Destiny

POSTED JUNE 1, 2016 - by Dina Silver

You are not your past. The past occurred, it has happened.  Some of it -- both the good stuff and the bad -- was out of your control and due to circumstances of birth and genetics.  Some of it you may have caused or influenced. Your past may have been luxurious and loving and you assume the world will sumptuously roll out in front of you like the red carpet at the Oscars.  Your past may have been challenging, full of privation and emotional trauma and you believe your future story will look a lot like past chapters, regardless of your efforts.

Neither is true, and if we simply look around, we know this is so. We see people who have ‘everything’ squander their lives, plow through fortunes, and take bitterness and entitlement to excruciating new levels.  And we see people overcome the most wretched beginnings create lives of meaning, contribution, love and abundance.

What is absolutely true is that your attitude about the impact of your past on your ability to create a life that you love, is fundamental.  And the great thing about attitude is that you can choose it.

Attitude is choice.  You can carry a chip on your shoulder or decide not to.  You can choose to forgive or you can stay in anger.  You can choose to tackle the challenges in your life, or you can curl up fetal on the couch and give up.  You can choose to be loving even when loving has created pain.  You can choose to be kind even when there is no good reason to do so.

Having a positive attitude is not a guarantee that you will get the life you want.  But it is the only place to start.  You cannot move through hardship with a bad attitude and expect good to come your way.  The universe just isn’t lined up to support your negativity with positive outcome.  You cannot expect to create joy from sorrow without forgiving yourself and those involved in causing your sadness or the sadness of others. You cannot make money if you hold an assumption that you do not deserve to live an abundant life. You cannot find love until you choose to recognize how very loveable you are.

Once you have adjusted your attitude by choosing to move forward with as much grace, self acceptance, kindness and fortitude as you can muster, then you must make sure you are absolutely clear exactly what it is you intend to lean toward. Clarity is essential—how can you head toward a destination that has no coordinates.

And even if your destination continues to seem distant and elusive, the journey is your attitude, and that is entirely in your control.

Stop Making Sense: Leverage Your Intuition

POSTED JUNE 1, 2016 - by Dina Silver

While our analytic brains are trained and developed, challenged and grown daily, our gut reactions are often considered suspect.   We receive information all the time that is neither analytic nor objectively provable, and even in the face of our strong hunches, many of us regard this information as irrelevant, distracting, even useless. We operate on a kind of “prove it or lose it” basis in which we often overvalue data and undervalue intuition because our hunches can’t be substantiated, proven or convincingly argued.

Intuition is a natural gift and we all have it though for so many of us the muscle is somewhat atrophied. When we are operating synchronously with our mind and our gut, we navigate through our lives from our truest centers and make better decisions for ourselves and for our organizations.

“People with high levels of personal mastery do not set out to integrate reason and intuition. Rather, they achieve it naturally—as a by-product of their commitment to use all the resources at their disposal. They cannot afford to choose between reason and intuition, or head and heart, any more than they would choose to walk on one leg or see with one eye”—Peter Senge

Sometimes what we know but can’t prove is the most critical information for us to trust and to share. Yet we undermine our intuition all the time. Maybe it seems too ‘new agey’, or we decide we’re not intuitive, or we don’t see the link between intuition and productivity and maybe most importantly, because intuition leads us into the unknown, it can be quite scary to pay attention to our intuitive hits.

One of the many shortcomings of operating from fear is that it holds us trapped in the realm of the predictable. It’s tough to be open to startling new ideas that fly in the face of convention. Intuition can give us access into what might be so that we are not stuck forever with what is. So much creativity and invention come from letting go and getting curious about an idea that seems preposterous, from following an inkling, a hunch.

When the steam locomotive was new, for example, a breakthrough in technology made it possible for the engine to exceed 30mph. With speed of 40mph in sight, a debate broke out—even in the medical literature of the time. One learned doctor said that it was common knowledge that the human body would explode at forty mph!

If you’re curious to create a ripe environment for your intuition, the most important thing you can do is to create time each day when you slow down. Intuition cannot compete with the velocity of your thinking mind. It will be trumped every time by your analytic brain. I ask my executive coaching clients to make daily time for quiet. Whether you can carve 10 minutes or an hour each day, go quiet. Turn off your phones, your pager, you email alerts, your kids, your staff, your boss…

Once you are quiet and your mind is calm, here’s a great exercise: Pose a question to yourself of significance. Maybe it’s a goal or a problem or a challenge. Close your eyes and notice what images, thoughts, ideas, impressions and emotions flow through your mind. When you’re ready, jot down what you remember. You may have an immediate insight or it may come in time. You may get a piece of information and need to ask yourself another question. Use this practice to develop your intuitive muscle. Over time you’ll get better and better at noticing and valuing the full spectrum of information that can help you make the very best decisions for yourself.

The High Impact of High Touch

POSTED JUNE 1, 2016 - by Dina Silver

I saw a gorgeous rocking chair in a lovely little shop in Oregon a few weeks ago.  Super comfortable, spectacular and detailed woodwork and naturally, pricey enough. The artist who makes these chairs works to order.  I couldn’t resist.  I placed an order and put my deposit down.

I expected to get notification in a couple of months that my chair was ready and would be crated and shipped and that would be that.  Instead, the artist, Kelly Hawk, emailed me, introduced himself and began sending me photos of my chair in progress– the wood for the headrest, the slats, the choices of wood that he recommended and beautiful details of how the chair will look.  I get a progress report from him every four or five days and I have never felt so delighted in a purchase, so eager to see and welcome the finished product, and most relevant to this blog post, so inclined to hire him again.

Kelly made a personal connection just because that’s how he works.  In the best sense of the word he takes things personally.  He even offered to deliver the chair personally (he lives in Washington State and I’m in Los Angeles!) if I would pay for gas and split the cost of a motel with him.  Needless to say, this guy goes the extra mile, and I am a raving fan.

Kelly and his wife drove down to LA and made an adventure of the delivery of my beautiful rocking chair.  We invited them for dinner and they stayed overnight and they headed back home the next day.  

I think the question for each of us is how to incorporate Kelly’s natural gift for deepening connection so that our staff and our customers begin to incorporate us into their lives because our connection to each other has meaning to them.

We can share our process, we can share something of ourselves, we can reach out to learn more about those to whom we provide service or product.  The more consistently and creatively we are able to bridge the anonymity that so often prevails between customer and company, the more likely we are to truly distinguish ourselves to our public and create raving fans and customers for life.

Pay It Forward

POSTED JUNE 1, 2016 - by Dina Silver

You never know when you may change a person’s life for the good.  Most of us actively hope that we have a positive influence on the people we know-- we try to behave with integrity and kindness.  But if you really want to ramp up the odds that you have enormous impact, your actions must be intentional and selfless.

Sometimes people take intentional actions that are heroic. You may have heard, for example, of these amazing kidney transplant stories where one person gives a healthy kidney to a needy stranger and then a friend or family member of that recipient donates to another needy and unrelated patient.  These virtuous circles have exceptional impact—the lives of multiple individual’s lives are saved and their ‘debt’ is re-payed by family or friends who pay it forward by giving a kidney to another needy person.

This is a big gift!  And not all of us will choose to take an action of such enormity.  But there are still loads of other ways for each of us to create joy, change lives, grow the careers of others, or lend a hand to someone who needs some help. Mainly we need to adopt a mindset of service to others and let go of worrying about how we will benefit from our efforts.

In the corridors and offices of our companies, there are a myriad of ways to change lives. 

• Introduce a talented junior person to a much more senior individual ensuring that the senior person really takes note.  Help both see how they can be of help to each other.  Do not hoard your senior level connections.  Spread the wealth and enable unexpected outcomes and partnerships to emerge.
• Mentor a new-hire with the kind of commitment that brings them on board assuredly and successfully—go the extra mile.
•  Praise accomplishments publicly and authentically.  Never take credit for the work of others.
• Give away a juicy assignment to someone who needs visibility and opportunity.
• Take an interest in your staff’s kids.  Connect them to interesting internships by making a few calls. Remember how hard it was for you when you first started?
• Step in and help someone who is stumbling—even if it is far from your job description.  When someone is in harm’s way do not sit by and watch the train wreck.
• Promote staff as soon as they are ready-- even though it may leave you short-staffed and their talents may be in the service of a competing department! You can never grow yourself by holding another back.

Every time you become intentional about having powerful and positive impact on another person you have the opportunity to start an amazing ripple of change and confidence in the life of another.  Their newfound opportunities have impact on their home lives as well as their work lives.  And when people experience this kind of generosity of spirit they are likely to pay it forward:  your initial action may have an unexpectedly long life cycle.  And though you may never be able to connect all of the dots, they are connected. 

It is free and easy to make a big difference so give your help generously and leave a big footprint.

Appendectomy

POSTED JUNE 1, 2016 - by Dina Silver

The good news was I got to have a fantastic evening out with my 18 year old son who was home for a couple of weeks appreciating a stocked fridge and on-site laundry that did not require coins.  The bad news was the evening ended with an appendectomy—mine.  You just never know what’s around the corner.

As it turned out, I was lucky—my appendix had not yet ruptured so the surgery was straightforward and frankly, pretty easy.  I imagined the recovery would be tough—imagining my anguish moving from sitting to standing or lying down.  I would have liked to milk the sympathy for a solid week and let worried family and friends hover and tote and do for me, but the truth was, I really wasn’t in much pain at all.  I had to recalibrate:  my preconceptions of a tough recovery from abdominal surgery didn’t match the truth of my experience—I was home the next day and out to dinner the next night.  And asleep by 8:30pm.

By day, when I’m not lining the pockets of surgeons, I work to help leaders magnify their impact and set a clear and decisive course for their teams and companies.  I get the chance to work up close and over time with my clients, and I see them in periods of stress as well as times of ease and celebration.  Ever since they took my appendix away, I’ve started to look at when my clients may be over-reacting.  When are they so primed for a negative result that they fail to notice that what is actually occurring isn’t so bad?  How much stress might be taken out of tough situations by merely stepping back for a moment and honestly asking the question:  How might I be blowing this out of proportion? Or, Am I responding in a manner that matches what’s really happening?

The truth about appendixes is that you don’t need them.  The truth about a lot of emotional angst and the associated adrenaline and anxiety is that you don’t need them either.  And sometimes the cure doesn’t even hurt that much.

Let Me Entertain You

POSTED JUNE 1, 2016 - by Dina Silver

What makes a presentation a compelling, edge of your seat, tell everyone you know what you just experienced event?  Here’s a clue– it is definitely NOT data filled power point slides– those are particularly handy if you’re looking to induce sleep or give folks time to catch up on their emails.

So many of my executive coaching clients find themselves regularly in front of rooms large and small, so the question of what captivates an audience is often on my mind.  My little memory cue for presenters is:  Grab Them, Involve Them, Compel Them, Release Them

For starters, you must grab their attention.  Even if your audience has a real interest in your topic, even if the meeting is small and these are your direct reports, even if you are feeling low in energy and just want to dump your data, if you don’t grab their attention, your information may just seamlessly flow into the stream of endless info that bombards us from every direction 24/7/365.  So think carefully about how you want to start your talk– whether it’s a large formal presentation or a gathering of your team you need to create a compelling reason for them to be fully present.

Okay– you’ve grabbed them with a compelling piece of information, with an urgent issue, with an amazing opportunity, with the purpose of your talk.  Now what?

You must involve your listener in your mission.  You’ve got their attention now let them be part of your experience.  Find a way to share with your audience why you care so much about this topic.  If you can get them curious to know more, you have them in the palm of your hand.  Sometimes the best way to involve an audience is through story, sometimes a photo will catch the core of your mission, sometime a powerful graph or chart can land with enormous power.  The extraordinary jazz vocalist Bobby McFerrin was teaching a large audience about our intrinsic understanding of the pentatonic scale.  Check out how he Grabbed and Involved his entire audience. You can bet that every person in that room was delighted, learned something about the pentatonic scale and went on to share the experience with others.

Next step?  Compel your audience into action.  What do you need your team to do?  If the audience is larger, what is your request of them that takes them from sitting and listening to incorporating your thoughts into their lives or their work?

And finally, Release your audience.  Don’t hold them a moment longer than you need to.  Time is precious, so speak and go quiet.  If your presentation is to a small group and there is the chance to bring them into the conversation do so.  People learn by participating.  If you are in front of a large hall, choose your words crisply, don’t tell stories that are funny but irrelevant.  Stay on point and grab, involve, compel and release.

Tags: high-impact presentations, presentation skills, public speaking

Category: Executive Coaching, Tools for Managers and Leaders

The Future is Now

POSTED JUNE 1, 2016 - by Dina Silver

I sat with a group of colleagues last week and we spent a couple of hours exploring our thinking about global trends over the next five years as well as how the world of executive coaching will be different five years from now.  Both conversations were rich, and like all generative dialogues, the thinking was compelling, deep, far ranging and the ideas and their potential impacts are still chasing each other in my brain.

These are crucial conversation for all business leaders to explore with their teams.  I encourage you to make this a priority in the next month—you will be amazed at the impact of the dialogue.  Unless we speculate about where the world is heading and how shifting trends will impact our businesses, we will be blindsided and out-performed by competitors who saw the future coming and took action.

Step 1: “How do you think the world will be different 5 years from now?”

Take an hour or so and have a blue sky conversation where all ideas are welcome.  Give people note cards or large post-its and have them write several ways they see the world changing in the next 5 years. Group similar ideas together on the wall and enter into deep and curious conversations about the trends that your people see emerging.  There are no right answers here—so don’t make anyone wrong.

Step 2: “How will these trends impact our business over the next 5 years?”

Now that your team has brainstormed about future global trends, bring the conversation down in scope to look at the impact of these trends on your business.   Again, I suggest index cards and each person contributing 3 – 5 impressions. 

Don’t shy away from the hard conversations—that’s the point and value of this exercise!   If a trend is observed that puts your key product at risk, don’t sweep it under the rug.  Shine a light on it and debate the action your team or organization needs to take.

However intelligent your business strategy, it holds little value for you if it does not incorporate key global and local trends and their impact on your company.  You cannot design, build, sell or provide service in a vacuum.  Make sure your strategy is synched up with where the world is headed so that you are positioned for the success you deserve.

Supply the Light, Not the Heat

POSTED JUNE 1, 2016 - by Dina Silver

9 Simple Steps to Successfully Navigate Emotionally Charged Conversations

A new client has had a complicated and often difficult relationship with her boss. On bad days when one speaks, the hair on the other's neck stands on end.  At the same time, both are talented, creative, responsible and devoted to their jobs.  If either left the company, it would be a great loss-- and neither wants to leave.  In fact, both want to create sanity and calm in their relationship together -- but they're stuck in a rut and need some help.

I was brought in to work with each of them individually and to bring them together in facilitated conversation as needed. The goal is to give them tools to shift the way they communicate with each other so that the good work they do can happen more easily and with lots less stress.

You've likely been in or witnessed similar configurations and conflagrations in your own work life.  Maybe you've been on the receiving end of disrespectful communication from your boss, maybe you've left hurt feelings and tears in your wake and been mostly unaware, maybe you've got such a difficult colleague that you have perfected the work-around so that your interactions are reduced to the barest contact.

Human beings are complex – we bring everything that has formed us to the workplace and many of us do not have the skills to manage our mood, our language or our impact.  As a result, we spend enormous amounts of time trying to navigate the interpersonal minefields that spring up when a difficult person is a daily fixture in our life.

Once a relationship has gone sour it can seem impossible to resurrect -- but this is not the case.  The parties involved are both suffering though it may look like they are quite comfortable in their dysfunction.  To change the dynamic, one person must take the lead and inaugurate a conversation about what is occurring.  This requires a little courage and a plan for how to hold this kind of charged conversation.  You'll need to find the courage, but we can supply the plan.

The key is to bring clarity and calm to the interaction and leave your emotional baggage around the relationship under lock and key.  And once you've locked the baggage up, you can toss the key.

Leading with Light

This process is adapted from Susan Scott’s wonderful book: Fierce Conversations

The 9 Step Process

1. Name the issue.  Take some time to do this prior to meeting with your colleague so that you have a smart, succinct and emotionally clean way to present the issue.

2. Request a meeting.  Don't just pop in to your colleagues' office or cube and launch in. Name the issue you want to talk about, request a convenient time and then make sure you have an uninterrupted opportunity to have a serious conversation.  No phones, no email, no unexpected visitors, etc. Getting out of the office works well.

3. Share examples. Choose two or three examples of the lousy behavior you observe between the two of you.  Share the examples cleanly so that you are accurately describing what occurred without adding your emotion to the description -- remember the goal is to provide a way for the two of you to talk openly about the problem. If you make your colleague defensive or angry, you can pack up your toys and go home.  The litmus test for you should be that you are describing the example(s) just as an uninvolved witness to the interaction would have described it.  Just the facts, Jack.

4. Share your heart. Here's the part where you share how it feels to you to be stuck in this cycle.  Make sure you say "I feel" not "you make me feel."  Once you put your feelings on them "you make me so angry ..."  you have effectively primed the conversation for explosion.

5. Why it matters. What is at stake here if the status quo continues?  What is the impact of your dysfunction on the team, the business, each other?

6. Your fingerprint.  Yes, it takes two to tango and you're a part of the problem too!  Here's where you cop to your contribution to the situation.  This step is absolutely key!  Nothing is ever only about the other guy.  Recognizing and owning your part of the mess allows the conversation to be a shared opportunity instead of a blame game.

7. The fix.  Share your desire to repair and create a healthy and respectful work relationship.

8. A Penny for Your Thoughts? Conversation is a two-way street.  Now it's your colleague's turn to share his perspective.  Listen carefully and make sure you ask questions when you're unclear.  Resist the impulse to explain, blame or shame.

9. Next Steps. Decide jointly how you wish to move forward and what you both agree to work on.  Decide what mechanisms you will use to hold each other accountable.