by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, For Executive Coaches, Leadership Development
I recently came across this email I sent to a client after an executive coaching conversation. It has broad applicability for leaders.
The key from today is: get very clear about and keep your attention on the future you are committed to and the values at your core. Develop the discipline to pause and assess each event and communication in light of your commitments. Take your next step in service to your future, not as a reaction based on automatic, unexamined assessments from your past. Learn your triggers (people exhibiting disrespect, for example, or lack of candor) and move them into the realm of choice instead of letting them run you.
People follow a leader who is pulled by a compelling future and is adept at using data from a variety of sources, even unfriendly ones. They are made uncomfortable by an authority who is the victim of events or who devotes his energy to repairing the past. Instead, use the precious present to set-up a fulfilling future.
—Tony Mayo
Click to download as a printable Adobe .PDF file.
by Tony Mayo | For Executive Coaches, Team Manager Skills
Mom’s love permanently changes children…and grandchildren, 
according to research by Moshe Szyf at McGill University: “rats that are good moms can permanently change the way the genes of their offspring act, causing the pups to be calmer throughout adulthood”
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“the actual sequential structure of our DNA, can pretty much shrug off the influence of any external environmental factors, short of massive radiation. However, the expression of individual genes within that sequence can be permanently altered by such seemingly innocuous influences as diet or how others treat us.
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“rats that had received healthy doses of maternal licking as pups grew up to (more…)
by Tony Mayo | For Executive Coaches, Recommended Books
The best part about having the flu last week was the enforced leisure to read Philip Pullman’s amazing trilogy of His Dark Materials. Central to the plot is a state described by the poet Keats in a letter:
…several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature which Shakespeare possessed so enormously — I mean NEGATIVE CAPABILITY, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason… ~John Keats
Pullman cites this state as a requirement for the most important and powerful work a person can do.
Reminds me of the insistence by one of the greatest coaches, Julio Olalla, that coaches must be comfortable with not knowing and withholding unanswered questions.
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