Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is the system of reality in what they assume themselves to be. One can give nothing whatever without giving oneself – that is to say, risking oneself.
If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of giving.
Jorge Haddock, Dean, School of Management talks about Transformational Leadership. Change focuses on behavior, whereas transformation focuses on “beingness” or culture. Transformational leadership is about shifting the organizational conversations or interpretations to create different results or outcomes. Organizational culture can become transactional, but transformational leadership creates conversations that generate a culture of relationships, moods, and actions consistent with the desired outcomes. The axiom is that our power to transform our commitments and subsequent actions is directly determined by our ability to engage in powerful conversations – to generate transformation we must generate different conversations. These conversations utilize language, which is most commonly descriptive. However, leaders use language in a generative fashion to declare something with no evidence or authority. Using this type of language, transformational leaders create truly new possibilities.
I am going to share with you a useful story about a huge breakthrough in sales effectiveness. My friend told me this story at a critical time in my career. First, some background on how I heard it and why its lessons are so powerful.
I returned to executive coaching full time in 1995 and put my coaching materials on the World Wide Web using CompuServe’s pioneering OurWorld service. My email newsletter was soon being read around the world. I soon received an email from an important coach in South Africa, Pat Grove, who became a valued friend and mentor.
Pat told me that he was in San Francisco in the early 1970s helping to invent coaching at the same time as Werner Erhard (EST), John Hanley (Lifespring), Fernando Flores (Action Technologies), and others. Pat developed and delivered his own training programs in South Africa and Israel for forty years, until his death in January of 2012. I never participated in his group training but I did get tremendous value from our emails and Skype conversations. I am sad that he is gone.
Pat mentioned once that being an effective coach is only possible if one is effective in sales. Simply put, if no one accepts your coaching you are not a coach. Pat, like me, was not a “natural salesman.” We also began our careers with traditional business training. He started as a bank accountant and my first paying job was with a “Big 8” accounting firm. Frustrated and bored, we each decided to try sales and we each failed. The story of my first breakthrough in sales effectiveness is told elsewhere on this blog. Here is Pat’s story, that he shared with me by email in 1996. Pat wrote quickly and informally so I present an edited version here. [My comments are in square brackets.]
No Big Deal
by Pat Grove
I gave up wanting to prove anything and just got the job done.
I chose to be a service agent…
The most important thing I learned was not to sell benefits but to enroll people into taking action on their dreams.
Selling Encyclopedias was at first for me a way to prove to myself, and others, that I was OK. Firstly, my background and experiences and lying about myself to others and to myself was catching up with me. [Pat used the word “lying” in a particular way here. He refers to the pretensions so common in our culture of pretending to “have it all together,” hoping people will think we are more competent and comfortable than we truly feel. This is all an “act” to prevent people from seeing us as we see ourselves.] So I found a system that had the potential to make a lot of money compared to (more…)
I have great respect for Dan Gallwey; he is a pioneer of coaching and really gets it. Heard him just yesterday on a video from the 70s or 80s, paraphrasing.
When an employee or competitor fails to deliver what you require, start by inquiring into what he sees as the requirement, what he saw in the performance. Growth comes from seeing the world differently, not from being criticized or corrected.
Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. (‘What else could it be?’) I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electro-magnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and I am told some of the ancient Greeks thought the brain functions like a catapult. At present, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer.
–John R. Searle, MINDS, BRAINS AND SCIENCE, p 44
Published in 1984. I would update Searle with, “At present, obviously, the metaphor is the Internet, the brain as a complex network of adaptive connections.”
Problem is, the brain is not very similar to anything. Comprehension is further hampered by the fact that “the brain” has no clear boundaries. Its behavior requires a body and an external environment. Not to mention the recursive challenge of the brain being the primary tool used to comprehend itself.
Executives often find themselves assigning blame. Many believe that ranking and sorting their colleagues is a key management skill–and I agree. A much rarer and more powerful skill is the ability to see our own contribution to the unwelcome behavior we see around us. Why is self-awareness more powerful than judging others? Because altering my own behavior is the best access I have to altering the future.
I know this. I teach this. I also forget to practice it.
In November of 2007, for example, I was in San Diego attending a weekend training for coaches. A breakout session was led by the author of one of the best-known books on coaching. It is a good book and I was very eager to attend. His ninety minute workshop was scheduled six times over two days–I was in a morning session on day two.
The author immediately struck me as irritated, aggressive, and arrogant. (Here I am, always ranking and sorting.) His opening seemed vague and rambling and his responses to questions were not pertinent. (Here I go, proceeding to collect evidence for my case.) People were shaking their heads and looking at each other. Coaches are a fairly supportive audience but in the first fifteen minutes, five of the thirty people walked out, one while the author was responding (elliptically) to his question! (Perfect. I have other people agreeing with me, a seductive substitute for truth.) I decided to (more…)
Passion is not something you follow. It’s something that will follow you as you put in the hard work to become valuable to the world.
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The traits that lead people to love their work are general and have little to do with a job’s specifics. These traits include a sense of autonomy and the feeling that you’re good at what you do and are having an impact on the world. Decades of research on workplace motivation back this up. (Daniel Pink’s book Drive offers a nice summary of this literature.)
These traits can be found in many jobs, but they have to be earned. Building valuable skills is hard and takes time. For someone in a new position, the right question is not, “What is this job offering me?” but, instead, “What am I offering this job?”
A key benefit of discussing important decisions with your executive coach is the exploration of alternative explanations for observed events. Managers, particularly business owners, have a very distinct point-of-view, a set of filters that leads them to interpret the data differently than their coach, employees, and customers might. A good executive coach will help the manager consider other possible meanings thereby making better decisions and communicating more effectively.
Here is fun example of how the position from which you view events can lead you to the wrong conclusion.
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Bad presentation–or resistant audience?
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