Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama




Obama's Dreams from My FatherDreams from My Father by Barack Obama

I certainly would not have begun, much less finished, this book if the author and subject had not become so important. It is disjointed and rambling, parts memoir and parts abstract essay, and needed a firm edit to clarify its message. Separate from all that, however, is Barack Obama’s keen insight into race, belonging, and living a meaningful life. Listening to such a brilliant and compassionate person is time well spent. Also evident is his intuitive recognition of the power of conversation to create a world and a future, a foundation distinction for executive coaching. My favorite examples:

p. 287 That’s what the leadership was teaching me, day by day: that the self-interest I was supposed to be looking for extended well beyond the immediacy of issues, that beneath the small talk and sketchy biographies and received opinions people carried within them some central explanation of themselves. Stories full of (more…)

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

 


 

CVR FlowCVR FlowFlow:
The Psychology of Optimal Experience

by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Ph.D.

 


 

Excellent description, Doctor, where’s the prescription?


Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Ph.D.

Professor Csikszentmihalyi has done a great service by distilling his decades of research into happiness and satisfaction into a well constructed single volume. He writes with wit, insight, and character. His vast learning is often evident but never overbearing.

The book ultimately fails, however, for it invests all of its considerable power in describing Flow and convincing the reader to seek this optimal experience but does too little to (more…)

Two Yous: Who is driving?

Colin WilsonI went through extreme depressions, glooms. There was one occasion on which I decided actually to commit suicide.

I’d got into this state — I was working as a lab assistant at the school, and what would happen was that I’d make tremendous efforts to push myself up to a level of optimism. I’d do it in the evenings by reading poetry, thinking, writing in my journals, then I’d go back to the school the next day and blaaahhh, right down to the bottom again. This was the feeling of The Mind Parasites — there’s something that waits until you’ve got lots of energy and just sucks you dry like a vampire. This sudden feeling that God was (more…)

Creativity Generates a New Reality


CVR STARTUPCVR STARTUPSTARTUP
A Silicon Valley Adventure

by Jerry Kaplan


The following is an excerpt from: STARTUP by Jerry Kaplan

Jerry Kaplan

…I first learned the truth about scientific progress from my Ph.D. dissertation advisor at the University of Pennsylvania.

A shy Indian man with a shiny, balding head and an occasional stutter, Dr. Joshi was widely known for his brilliant work in artificial intelligence. Our weekly meetings to help me find a thesis topic were more like therapy sessions than academic discussions. Most of the time he would (more…)

Ready Position


Richard Strozzi-Heckler

I was in a training last week with Richard Strozzi-Heckler. The first exercise he led the group in was a centering practice I also teach. You can listen to the podcast here: Find Your Center Before You Act. The next day, Richard told us a story in which his centering practice saved a presentation–and his lungs.

While studying ai-ki-do in Japan, Richard was asked by his instructor to come with him to help with a demonstration for a group of teenagers. At the school, Richard donned a heavy leather shirt. His master handed him a sword and told him, “When I fire this arrow at you strike it with your sword.” Strozzi had never seen, much less been instructed in or practiced, this procedure but one does not quibble with one’s Japanese ai-ki-do master.

As he stood on stage while the master spoke to the teenagers, Strozzi’s head was filled with (more…)

Why I review novels on a blog for business owners

moby_dick

Herman Melville

Fiction, like religion, takes us to a strange world to which we nevertheless feel a connection.

–Herman Melville

To enter another person’s world, to see things as they see them, to allow for different reactions to similar circumstances is to connect with people in a powerful way. Such empathy, compassion, and insight are essential for succeeding as a leader, salesperson, or an executive coach and to living a fulfilling life.

Reading the stories of people in circumstances different from your own is entertaining exercise that develops this important skill. Good novels offer intimate and immersive experiences of worlds most business people never encounter, yet the practice they offer with escaping our own narrow versions of reality can help us to be more receptive to the various worlds of the people we manage and sell to every day. [For more on individual worlds, see The Santiago Theory of Cognition on this blog.]

 


 

See these recommended novels on my blog:

The Razors Edge

Closers: Great American Writers on the Art of Selling

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values

When the Sons of Heaven Meet the Daughters of the Earth

His Dark Materials

Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons

Spidertown by Abraham Rodriguez, Jr.

Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street

And, of course, the one I wrote:

Crimes of Cunning: A comedy of personal and political transformation in the deteriorating American workplace.

Crimes of Cunning 3D on sale now


 

Have Some Happy

 


 

Ferrari

Most of my CEO executive coaching clients have detailed, measurable goals. We use them as navigational aids, comparing interim results with plans and expectations, to help the client make adjustments to their attitudes and activity. I was in the midst of one such review when the client took the conversation in a novel and fruitful direction.

I asked, “Have you looked into that club for sharing exotic sports cars we discussed?”

“I’ve been thinking about that, ” he responded. “Why (more…)

CEO Executive Coaching Fees

Conference Board executive coaching fee report

The Conference Board has published an update to its survey of executive coaching fees. According to the survey, “the most commonly stated fee [for executive coaching of CEOs and their direct reports] is greater than $500 per hour. I found this a bit odd, not because of the price level but because the top executive coaches I know do not charge by the hour but for a term of service. This was confirmed later in the Conference Board report.

Executive coaching engagements are typically six months or one year in duration, according to the survey, and fees range from $13,000 to $30,000 for six months.




My experience is consistent with those figures.

Readers may also find it interesting that executive coaching is common and growing not just in the US but in Europe and Asia. Rates are the same in Europe as in the US and have risen significantly around the world.

Click here for the complete Conference Board 2008 Executive Coaching Fee Survey.




The Conference Board has released its 2010 report. See my comments here.




The Traveling Pennies Exercise a/k/a Three Coins Method

 


 

Traveling Pennies

My executive coaching clients often ask how to translate their new insights into regular practice so that the benefit of the coaching is integrated into their lives. This is crucial since the adult executives I coach have well established and largely successful habits that are expressed automatically.

How do we make new strategies and methods just as habitual? One of my favorite techniques is the traveling pennies.

Is there a practice you and your coach have developed that you want to make a part of your life? Perhaps you choose to center three times per day, express gratitude more often, or ask a clarifying question before responding to an inquiry. Here’s how to “operationalize” your good intentions.

Each morning for the next few weeks place (more…)