The focus of the book was the importance of compassion and authenticity, while this new chapter is all about implementation, with specific advice on how to be compassionate and authentic in your day-to-day life. The twenty-minute podcast is a simple, practical guide to building better relationships at work and at home, with answers to these reader questions:
What can I do to deepen relationships?
How can I feel comfortable with people of different backgrounds, tastes, and values?
How do I help others feel safe to share their lives with me?
What habits might I establish to reduce loneliness and build community?
Tony recommends these resources for further study and practice.
Just click here and either listen on your computer or subscribe through iTunes to have this and all new podcast episodes placed on your device as they become available. You may also set up an automatic “feed” to non-Apple devices by using this link: click here for other devices.
Are you a business owner thinking about whether coaching might improve the performance of your COO or another key executive? My answer is, “Yes,” in most cases, but only if the CEO is being coached. I’ve learned the hard way over the years that I can have a major, enduring impact with a COO or other direct report only when I am also coaching the CEO. I believe this is generally the case with true executive coaches.1
Any growth or development on the part of a subordinate that is not shared by the boss is likely to have two unwanted effects. First, the boss’s unchanged behavior will undermine and thwart the direct report’s new behavior. Second, the developing key executive will either abandon the changes or judge the boss to be the bigger problem and leave. As one blunt coach said to a prospect, “If I fix your VP without you moving in the same direction, you will become the problem.”
Stay away from inspiring stores of genius leaders such as Steve Jobs, Harold Geneen, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, etc. They are unique, lucky, and extraordinarily difficult to work with. They certainly were not copying anyone. Anyone attempting to copy them is likely to cause disasters both financial and personal.
These recommendations for management training, as with executive coaching, require the ultimate leader and influencer (you, the CEO/Owner) to learn and practice the same techniques.
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1 I say true executive coaches because, these days, every consultant, trainer, and even many salespeople now call themselves coaches. That’s a topic for another post.
This is exactly why I do not use standardized assessment tools on my executive coaching clients:
…one of the main hindrances to coaching was understanding people as collections of fixed properties with desire attached.
…by using assessment models this way we are reinforcing our understanding of people as things, and this way of understanding makes any effective coaching impossible or nearly so.
…it assumes that the person is a thing which can be found out about, figured out, and predicted.
In Chapter 15, Who Has the Helm, the main character learns about the childish tactics that persist into adulthood and sometimes take control of our actions. His wife also shares the counterintuitive response that takes away their power over us.
Click here to download the free .pdf. No registration, no pitch, just a gift. Read it and reap.
In the late 1960s, an MIT student went to a meditation class by Philip Kapleau, author of the classic, The Three Pillars of Zen. The student only went because his Ph.D. advisor had invited the speaker to campus.
No word on whether Roshi Kapleau was discouraged to see only four listeners in the large lecture hall, the organizer, his student, and two others. We do know that he effectively delivered his message because that student became Jon Kabat-Zinn, the most influential promoter, teacher, and scientific researcher of meditation in the history of the West.
It is not a speaker’s job to judge the audience. We save the world one speech, sometimes one listener, at a time.
Don’t just find a mentor. Allow yourself to be mentored.
Be humble enough to listen.
You don’t have to ship everything.
Feel free to dabble & play. Not everything you make needs to ship. Some things you do for you.
Chaos is okay.
Time is the soil in which great ideas grow.
Stick with it & be willing to put it to the side now and then.
Be mindful of with whom you spend time & at what activity.
Money is a means not the end.
Good to have. Bad to chase.
Fancy is easy. Simple is hard.
Simplification is an art form: it requires a knack for excising everything from a problem except what makes it interesting.
The less marketing you need, the better your idea or product probably is.
Don’t oversell to the doubts and indifferent; put your energy into making something you find interesting.
Value freedom over status.
Shannon, pursued projects that might have caused others embarrassment, engaged questions that seemed trivial or minor, then managed to wring the breakthroughs out of them.
Don’t look for inspiration. Look for irritation. Then, do the work.
Tony’s short book on building community is now available
with an extra chapter and a guide to additional resources.
The new chapter is a simple, practical guide to building better relationships at work and at home. The focus of the book is the importance of compassion and authenticity, while this new section is all about implementation, with specific advice on how to be compassionate and authentic in your day-to-day life.
This expanded edition also includes links to recommended books and articles for further study and practice.
“Powerful, simple message we can all immediately apply to our lives.”
“More of an invitation than a sermon, the message is not religious in nature and the message is universal. Tony leaves us with an opportunity to live richer, more expressive lives.”
“Covers a lot of meaningful ground in a handful of pages – brings together courage, bravery, belonging, acceptance, compassion and more–and backs it up with insights, experience, resources, and references!”
“You did not speak just to fill the time; each sentence added to the whole.”
“Tony, I have it on good authority that your sermon this last Sunday was about the best ever.”
“We were inspired by what you shared and how you shared it. Thank you.”
The Courage to Be in Community, 2nd Edition:
A Call for Compassion, Vulnerability, and Authenticity
by Tony Mayo
The word courage originally meant “to speak and act from the heart,” or cour in Latin. Courage is required to express our deepest and most authentic selves because we so often fear judgment, rejection and exclusion. How do we balance the universal human needs of authenticity and acceptance in our personal lives? How might we foster communities where others have the courage to be truly themselves with us?
Executive Coach Tony Mayo drew on the research of Brené Brown, Joseph Campbell, and others to compose this enthusiastically received non-sectarian sermon. Originally delivered to the Unitarian Universalist Church in Reston at their Sunday services on January 26, 2014, it has now has been revised and expanded for publication.
We sought out our executive coach, Tony, to show us the most strategic, effective way to design our success. A business coach will help you make the right moves at that right times consistently; it’s a precise recipe for getting ahead. Our decision to partner with an executive coach has been a very fruitful investment. By working with Tony, we were able to meet our ten-year business goal in three years. That’s the power of having an expert help you structure your decisions and career movements on a regular basis. Having a career coach isn’t a luxury; it’s smart business and smart living.
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