Power Tools for Leadership: Don't Just Say No [leadership]

I want to tell you about a tool called, The Positive No coined by William Ury, Director of the Global Negotiation Project at Harvard, in his book The Power of a Positive No. I have been astounded by the number of times I have applied this tool in the last month.

A board asks its executive director to take on additional responsibilities as budgets are cut and positions are lost.

A leadership team wants to censure an employee in a way that runs counter to the director’s ethical standards.

A lawyer counsels a small business owner that he needs to license his product.

In all these cases, my clients wanted to say ‘no.’ No to taking on additional responsibilities, no to an unethical censure and no to licensing. The key word here is ‘wanted.’ Is it okay to say no? All the what-if’s start showing up: What if I lose my job? What if my team rebels and stops producing? What if the lawyer is right? In all cases, Ury says we can fall into a trap:

The Trap of the 3 A’s
We accommodate as in, “Sure, whatever you say.” This inevitably leads to resentment.

We attack as in, “Over my dead body! I’m in charge here.” This escalates conflict and tension.

We avoid as in, “I am not going to say anything and hope this whole issue disappears.” This results in festering problems that erupt.

Ury’s approach is deceptively simple. He says that a positive no has three elements: Yes! No. Yes? Let’s quickly review them.

Yes!
Every ‘no’ has a deeper yes. Imagine the roots of a tree. This deeper yes is comprised of the interests, values and needs that ground you in something positive. Something you stand for and believe in. Something that nourishes and sustains you. For the executive director being asked to take on additional responsibilities, his deeper yes was his commitment to serving the population his organization was created to serve. Taking on additional responsibilities would mean the core mission of the organization would be compromised and people would not be served.

Some tips on the Yes!

Communicate your deeper yes before you say ‘no.’

Be respectful: Your deeper yes is a shield that protects your values, not a sword to be brandished at your opponent.

Acknowledge that you may not agree and look for shared interests.

No.
Your ‘No’ is the trunk of your tree. It is stable and unmoving, grounded as it is in deep roots of commitment. The executive director’s ‘no’ was to taking on additional responsibilities.

Some tips on the No.

Create a Plan B. Be prepared with a strategy you can implement if your ‘no’ is rejected. This can vary from leaving the organization to enlisting allies to withdrawing your cooperation—the key is to have a plan you are fully prepared to implement. Which leads to the next tip...

Don’t threaten. Neither your ‘no’ nor your Plan B is a threat; it is a confidence building move for yourself. It means you don’t have to punish the other person when things don’t go your way. You simply implement your Plan B.

Educate. Explain the reality you see unfolding if your no is rejected.

Yes?
The process ends with a yes because what you want is for the other person to accept your ‘no,’ without closing down communication or feeling disrespected or rejected. Imagine the branches and leaves of a tree reaching out for agreement and the preservation of a relationship. For the executive director, this meant acknowledging the board’s concerns, offering alternative approaches to managing the additional responsibilities and suggesting ways to sell this approach to key donors.

Some tips on the Yes?

Listen and acknowledge the other side

Suggest a problem solving approach

Be respectful and constructive

If you are beginning to imagine how you might use this tool in your own life, read the book. It is a small book that is well organized and offers so much more than space allows here.

Let me leave with you a quote from the book:

“Every day each of us is faced with choices, small and large, where saying Yes to one choice means having to say No to others. Only by saying No to competing demands for your time and energy can you create space for the Yeses in your life, the people and activities that really matter the most to you. Here is the paradoxical secret: you cannot truly say Yes until you can truly say No.”

Do You Have A Leadership Strategy? [Leadership]

Strategy is Overrated

I have been struck by how often my clients come to me with questions about strategy.

What is the best way to…?

How should I…?

How can I avoid/encourage/deflect…?

There are some assumptions embedded in this approach (which we all fall pray to, by the way) that are not particularly helpful.

Unhelpful assumption #1: Situations can be manipulated
If I stage the conversation or paint the picture in a particular way or if I time the move just right… Do you really think the people in your organization (or your stakeholders) don’t know (or won’t find out) that they are being played? And who are you being as you implement the strategy? Are you comfortable with trying to force an outcome? There is a kind of hubris to this approach that isn’t who you are at your core.

Unhelpful assumption #2: There is a right way: If I get it right, I can avoid conflict, inflict less pain, and protect myself from a big ‘after the fact’ clean-up effort or come out smelling like roses. Mmm. As long as you hold to this assumption, you always only have a 50% chance of being right and you or someone else is going to get it wrong aren’t they? And that just opens the door to that lovely voice of judgment that berates you (and those around you) for not measuring up to the moment.

Unhelpful assumption #3: I have to have figured this out in advance
Too often we mistake planning for controlling. Please anticipate needs (your own and others) and reactions. By all means think about what you are going to do or say beforehand. But don’t deceive yourself into believing that even your best effort is complete when you are only strategizing with yourself (or a trusted few others).

So what is a well-intentioned leader to do?

Get clear about your own values and think about what it would look like to approach the situation in a way that allows you to be your most comfortable, honest and real self.

Build up your tolerance for the hard stuff. When you are in the ‘business’ of working with and serving people, you are bound to encounter pain, discomfort and conflict. If you keep strategizing to avoid it, you are either in the wrong profession or you have yet to discover how amazing people can be when they are witnessed in all their humanity and given the opportunity for their creativity to shine through.

Expand your network and keep asking for feedback. Keep talking to the people you know you ‘should’ be talking to. Ask them who else you should be talking to. Talk to the people who are the stakeholders of those people. And do a lot of listening. Listen for new perspectives. What do these people know and understand that you may have been undervaluing? What ideas have gone underground? Put your ear to the floor and find out.

Finally, two resources about Leadership in Uncertain times that really make sense. A 13 minute interview (or transcript) with Marshall Goldsmith on 6 questions leaders should be asking and 5 sound leadership strategies for today’s economy that stand you in good stead no matter the circumstances written by Kate Sweetman, a leadership consultant. My favorite quote from the Sweetman article:

“…when people at the top of the house essentially cease to communicate with the rest of the organization, they need to snap out of it. They are not writing an economics term paper. They are leading an organization, and that means interacting with the people who are looking to them for guidance, and providing those folks with the truest picture the leader can draw about their collective future.”

Power Tools for Leadership: Balance Advocacy with Inquiry [leadership]

I periodically share what I consider to be power tools for leadership. In his book Principle Centered Leadership, Steven Covey explains, “Real leadership power comes from an honorable character and from the exercise of certain power tools and principles.” The metaphor is apt. In order to use a power tool safely, you need courage and skill; you ought to be sure that the tool is appropriate for the purpose and you must take care not to do damage.

This month’s tool comes from Bill Joiner’s toolkit with some support from Peter Senge. As a leader, you have conversations all day long. And you know that some of those conversations are, or have the potential to be, transformative- but they fall short. You and your team are frustrated and productivity suffers.


Step 1: Surface Your Own Assumptions

Reflect on a recent conversation that left you frustrated. On the left side of a sheet of paper, record the conversation (as if it were a transcript) to the best of your ability. On the right hand side, write what you were thinking and feeling during each part of the discussion. Now examine your own thinking.

What was your frame for this conversation? How were you thinking about its purpose?

What assumptions did you make about the situation or the person?

What are you learning about your own behavior?

You might want to try this with your leadership team after a particularly challenging conversation. Let everyone share the results of the two-column exercise and discuss the questions together.


Step 2: Practice Your Dialogue SkillsThere are two basic skills and two supporting strategies. Try these tools first without the power turned on (i.e. in low risk situations):

SKILLS

Advocate: Clearly state your perspective on the issue, the goals or the solution.
Inquire: Invite the perspective of the person you are speaking with after every statement of advocacy you make.

STRATEGIES

Illustrate: Offer concrete observations and examples so that others can better understand your rationale. When you inquire, ask others to do the same.
Frame: At frequent intervals in the conversation, step back and clarify the purpose, make your assumptions explicit or explain why this conversation is important to you.

Step 3: Check your intentions

Are you really open to other viewpoints? Do you believe that collaborative conversations will yield a better result?

Step 4: Watch for Traps

Many of us advocate without inquiring—(we tell it like we see it and let the chips fall where they may) or inquire without advocating (we figure out where everyone else stands, hold our cards close to the chest, and look for our best tactical advantage). This breeds mistrust and is antithetical to transformative conversation. Covey calls this coercive power. His meaning is clear.

Sometimes our intentions are good but our lack of clarity means that we are arguing over different things. Diligent framing and illustrating is often the solution.


Step 5: Power Up

Once you are comfortable using the dialogue skills, bring them into your transformative conversations. Share the tool with your colleagues and periodically discuss how well you are all doing in using them.

Play More and Argue Less [Leadership]

In this post recession economy, you might be feeling a little victimized by circumstances outside of your control. Maybe you feel like your capacity is being sorely tested. Or maybe you feel that your people are not up to the challenge. I would like to link you to two resources that will get you thinking about 2 areas where you do have control: your style of communication and the way you structure work in your organization. They are short, engaging and probably just about all you have time for right about now:


The first resource:

Jonathan Fields, a self-declared career renegade offers 7 Tips to Lose an Argument. What he really does for us is provide clear and digestible suggestions for having conversations that not only yield results but build relationships. His tongue in cheek article helps us see what there is to lose when our only focus is on “winning” an argument.


The second resource:



In this half hour talk, Tim Brown, the CEO of IDEO talks about why play and playfulness matters in organizations. I strongly urge you to watch the presentation. You will want to share it with your staff and talk about it at home! I know you are skeptical (You are, aren’t you?) so I am also going to share a slimmed down summary provided by Garr Reynolds. And since you asked, Garr Reynolds, formerly of Apple, is an associate professor of management at Kansai University in Japan. He is also the author of a blog entitled, Presentation Zen.

Fear inhibits us and often prevents us from taking chances or sharing our ideas with others. It leads us to be overly conservative and to keep our “wild ideas” inside.

Playfulness can be pragmatic as well. It helps us find better solutions, more creative answers to complex problems.

Construction play is a powerful way to learn (classic “learning by doing”) for kids. Adults can do this too (called “thinking with your hands”). This behavior is about prototyping and quickly getting something in the real world “...and having your thinking advanced as a result.”

Role play can be used to experiment with non-physical designs such as health-care services, educational settings, etc. We should take role-playing more seriously (as children do). Role play is important for putting ourselves in the shoes of the end users, looking at the world and experiences from their point of view. Role play is an empathizing tool.

Play is not anarchy. There are rules, especially for group play. Play also involves negotiation. One does not play all the time — we need to learn to transition in and out of play. You can be a serious professional (or student) and be playful.

A Sudden Sweet Shot of Joy [Life]

I recently had an unexpected delay at the airport and bought a paperback novel to pass the time. It has been a long time since I have been able to satisfy my thirst for good fiction. I usually go to the library and comb the new book shelves for first-time authors. I have found many gems that way. So the book I chose, In the Woods by Tana French, is an Edgars Award winner for best first novel. At the end of the 4th chapter I found the following:

“Out of absolutely nowhere I felt a sudden sweet shot of joy, piercing and distilled as the jolt I imagine heroin users get when the fix hits the vein. It was my partner bracing herself on her hands as she slid fluidly off the desk, it was the neat, practiced movement of flipping my notebook shut one handed, it was my superintendent wriggling into his suit jacket and covertly checking his shoulder for dandruff, it was the garishly lit office with a stack of maker-labeled case files sagging in the corner and even rubbing up against the window. It was the realization, all over again, that this was real and it was my life.”

This was one of the best descriptions I have ever read of what it is like when you are fully present and in-the-moment. You see everything clearly, without the inner voice of judgment. You don’t have all the mind chatter about what else you really should be doing right now. This was not only a rare moment for the character in this book; it is a rare moment for all of us.

When I start to work with clients I often ask them to think of a “peak moment” in their life. You can try it too. Think of a time when you were totally and completely present. Fully awake to what was going on around you such that you can really recreate that moment (and I am literally talking abut a moment—not the summer when or the day that…) in all its details, using all your senses. Really, stop reading and think of a time…

The next step is to figure out why this moment called you out of your usual stuck-in-the-musings-of your-mind place and woke you up. Usually, it is because in that moment you were fully honoring your values. When my clients tell me these stories, we look for what was important to them about the moment and begin to name and clarify the values that really resonate with them. The character in my novel really valued partnership, familiarity, and a well defined task. It is when he stops acting in accordance with those values that things really go awry for him.

And that is the next place for you to look, too. Take a look at the values that stood out in your peak moment. Don’t worry if they are “socially acceptable” or “popular” or don’t fit into one neat word like love or family. Now look at the way you are leading your life today. On a scale of 1-10, how well are you honoring those values now? What would be different if you could shift just one troublesome area from honoring your values at a 4 to honoring them at an 8?

Can Your Team Deliver? [Leadership]

Steel workers do it, can you? No, you don’t have to reheat steel or roll it or whatever it is that steel mill workers actually do.
But…

Can you work with your co-workers, fellow committee members, or family members to tackle complex tasks that you know a lot about?

Can you give each other meaningful incentives for coming up with workable solutions together?

Can you be sure that the solutions you come up with will be implemented?

These are the three criteria to successful teamwork isolated by a new research study using data from steel minimills, published in the Journal of Labor Economics. It shows that there is measurable payoff when companies invest time in supporting employees to work together on complex problem-solving.

We all know though, that simply putting a group of people in a room to solve a problem is not always effective. We have all been in frustrating, ineffective meetings that create more problems than they solve. Think about a team you are on now (your volunteer committee, your professional colleagues, your family) and ask yourself:

Can we be open about expressing our opinion?
Are our meetings compelling and productive?
Do we get bogged down and are decisions hard to come by?
Can we give each other difficult feedback about poor performance?
Can we rise above our self-interest and act on behalf of the group?

If you answered no to even one of these questions, then you should look at a powerful model for creating the conditions that support effective teamwork developed by Patrick Lencioni. In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team he outlines 5 conditions which must be present to ensure effective results. The first and most basic is trust.

How do you build trust?

>Do things together: shared experiences build trust.
>Follow-through on your commitments to each other over and over again.
>Learn about and welcome what you each contribute.
>Allow yourself to be vulnerable—for real; fake shows of vulnerability are transparent to all.
>If you are the leader, don’t punish vulnerability! When someone owns up to a weakness, respect them for it.

Leading Change? Ask the Right Questions [leadership]

Have you read Community: The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block? Block’s book is for people who care—about their communities and schools and organizations. It is for people who may be cynical about our usual way of creating change. Block offers a detailed blueprint for how to create a community in which accountability and commitment are primary. He points us toward a new way of leading that honors what is possible when people are valued, connected and allowed to take responsibility for their own future.

Right in the middle of the book, Block hones in on a critical precondition: The need to pay more attention to the questions we ask as we convene people to create change. It is not that we have not been asking questions all along. It is that the questions we ask narrow our possibilities, absolve us of responsibility and assume that change can be “controlled into existence.” Here are a few of the questions that reflect the old mindset:

How do we get others to show up and be committed?
How do we get others to be more responsible?
How do we get others to buy into our vision?
Who has solved this elsewhere and how do we import that knowledge

And here are the powerful questions that have the potential to transform:

What is the commitment you hold that brought you into this room?
How valuable do you plan for this effort to be?
What declaration of possibility can you make that has the power to transform the community and inspire you?
What is the story you keep telling about the problems of this community?
What is your contribution to the very thing you complain about?
What are the gifts you have that you do not fully acknowledge?

Can you feel the difference? These questions ask something of all of us. In answering them we are already taking a stance—even if that stance is to disengage. These questions make it hard to be indifferent. They require us to bring our whole selves into the room. They assume that the communal agenda emerges out of our personal concerns and there is a little bit of an edge to them. They are not easy to answer.

Ask yourself these questions, and then find a few other people in your community and talk about them together. See what happens. Let me know.

Build Professional Partnerships [Business Development]

My vision for my coaching practice is for it to grow through a variety of partnerships. Let me tell you about one of them.

Mary Gorham and I live in different states and some years after our initial meeting, we are beginning a partnership focused on coaching leaders committed to global sustainability. Our first workshop is being field tested and we are excited about the initial results. Here is what we have learned that might be useful to you in your own professional partnerships:

Trust Your Intuition
I was originally drawn to Mary’s energy. As we talked, we recognized our common values and professional interests. We liked each other and we found we could laugh together- a critical element in all my relationships.

Commit to the Relationship
Mary and I spoke with each other by phone weekly for the better part of the past 3 years. We began by coaching each other, and over time, realized we would like to partner in some way. Not all of our calls were goal directed. Some seemed to find us drifting in opposite directions. These calls were hard to schedule with our complicated lives. Yet, we rarely ended a call without scheduling the next one. And when it made sense, we scheduled extended face to face time as well.

Know What Matters to Each Other
From the start, our conversations were both wide and deep. We talked about what we valued in our lives and in our professional experiences. We talked about spirituality and the role of our different faith communities in our lives. We talked about our children and parenting. As committed parents, forging a professional life always happens in a broader context.

Appreciate and Acknowledge Each Other’s Strengths
Mary and I have both complementary and overlapping strengths and skills. We see them, and name them for each other consistently. This has helped us to weather the times when we feel like we are contributing less than we would like and it has enabled us to focus on what we can do rather than get stuck in what can’t be accomplished.

Keep Redesigning the Alliance
Mary and I not only create agendas and goals for our meetings, we talk about what we need from each other to be productive. “Let’s get really curious about where we are stuck today.” Or “I really want you to challenge me.” And “You can count on me to be honest” or “You can count on me to be succinct.”

If you know of a professional partnership in need of coaching support, please encourage them to get in touch with me.

Do You Take Time to Stop & Reflect? [Leadership]

“I always feel like I have to be responsive to everyone else’s agenda. If I could only stop before each meeting and ask, ‘what is my agenda? What do I want to accomplish in this meeting?’ I could feel like we have a level playing field.”

“Sometimes I get so upset that things are not going the way I want them to, I start to internalize the failure. If I could only stop and reflect I would realize that there is probably a conversation I need to have with someone that could improve the situation.”

“Things can get tense in my operation. We move at breakneck speed and things don't always happen as I would like them to. Next thing I know I am snapping at my people. If I could only stop and mentally separate myself from the action I know I would see what was needed and I could take calmer steps to get us there.”

This is just a small sampling of what I heard from my clients this month. Everyone seems to be struggling with how to stop themselves in the midst of competing demands. On the one hand we have to learn to bypass our own inner critics. You know the ones:

“If you stop, people will think you are weak and it will really backfire”

“Stop? Who has time to stop? You are behind as it is. Keep going!”

“You are too undisciplined; you will never be able to develop this habit.”

And to be generous with ourselves, we are also battling the culture around us. Do you know of a place that is not rushing, behind schedule, overworked and overwhelmed? The stakes are too high, the vision too grand, the reputation too important to preserve…

I could tell you what my clients are doing to tackle the issue but their answers are not yours. Here is a great exercise from a company called Entrevis that might lead you to your own answers. Ask yourself:

What is the belief I have that makes it hard for me to stop?
What are all of my behaviors that follow from this belief?
What is the result of these behaviors?

Now work backwards…

What are the results you want to have?
What behaviors would produce those results?
What set of beliefs would compel you to change your behavior?

To really create commitment to your new belief, try your own version of this ritual: write the old belief on a piece of paper and release it to the wind. Now write down the new belief. Plant it alongside a seedling in a flower pot or your garden. As it grows, let it serve as a reminder for the new belief drive your new behaviors so you achieve the results you long for.

Are You an Agile Leader? [Leadership]

So you are an expert, now what?

I have been rethinking both the meaning and value of “expertise”.
For much of my career, it was something I strove to develop. I knew that I needed to have expertise to advance my career. I worried about being a jack-of-all-trades because I had moved around so much in my career. People seek you out when you are an expert, right? You get to make decisions, impact change –it seemed like the ultimate achievement! You can tell from the title of this newsletter that I am moving away from that conception.

Don’t get me wrong. Expertise is important. I want a plumber with expertise when my sink is leaking. My home is still standing because of the combined expertise of a whole host of artisans and construction workers. I still believe teachers need to have subject matter expertise if our children are to truly learn. And I’d be lost without our resident experts on technology – our sons.

All the same, as I made the shift from consultant (i.e expert) to coach I have discovered that there is a shadow side to expertise. When I am invested in being the authority, I forget to ask questions, to inquire and explore. When I know what should happen it is so much harder to notice what is trying to unfold in front of me.

Leadership Agility: Five Levels of Mastery for Anticipating and Initiating Change, by Bill Joiner and Stephen Josephs is a relatively new book on leadership that integrates much of what I have seen borne out in the leadership development of my clients and colleagues. So I was thrilled to discover that they identify the lowest level of agility as the “expert” level. (The other levels are achiever, catalyst, co-creator and synergist.) If you want to get a flavor for how this book might be useful to you, I encourage you to take this brief survey on their website. You will receive an assessment via e-mail that will likely intrigue you. I am currently piloting a new 360° Assessment tool based on this model (developed by the authors with Cambria Consulting) which looks very promising. If you think you might be interested, e-mail me!

Even if you don’t hold a title that implies ‘leader’, if you see yourself as someone who takes action with an intent to change things for the better (in your family, town, volunteer organization, work environment) then I believe you will find the assessment and the book thought provoking and valuable.

Don’t have time to read a whole book? Download one of these short articles which summarize key ideas about leadership agility.

Shifting Perspectives [Life]

Have you ever felt stuck in the circumstance of your life? Have you ever said to yourself, “That is just the way it is”? My clients and I often come up against this. Coaching at these moments is like dancing. In dance, you move your body in space and time and with every movement, there is a new experience and a new vista opens up. It is magical when people begin to see the possibilities and choose their next steps with deliberate confidence. The April 2008 issue of Harvard Business Review features an interview with dancer/choreographer Twyla Tharp, author of The Creative Habit. I thought I would share with you three ways in which she shifts perspective on some common beliefs about creative risk-taking.

“There is a kind of arrogance in… intimidation. We think that it has to do with modesty. To the contrary…”

Tharp believes that Brahms didn’t write his first symphony until he was in his mid-40’s because he was intimidated by Beethoven. He was not thinking that he could never be as good (modesty) rather Tharp imagines he said to himself, ‘my first symphony is going to be better than Beethoven’s Ninth’ (arrogance) and that is what held him back. When you worry about being better than, or different from you are stopped in your tracks. Where in your life are you letting yourself be intimidated? It is in the doing that our creative spirit can have expression.

“Copying is taking somebody else’s solutions. Learning is taking somebody else’s problems.”

When you do take the risk and try something at which you are a novice, you might hear a voice in your head saying, ‘this is ridiculous; whatever I try to do will surely have been done before and far better than I could do it now.’ Tharp says, so what? Your attempts are all part of your own learning process and they induct you into a community of learners who are working on the same problems you are.

“True failure is a mark of accomplishment in the sense that something new and different was tried.”

One of my clients said to me recently, “I am really bad at failing”. This client’s life was basically on hold as he held himself back from anything that might lead to failure. Tharp says, celebrate failure! Our lives are like a block of clay that we get to keep molding and reshaping and throwing back and creating again- I truly believe that, if nothing else, we were put on this earth to create. If fear of failure keeps us from contributing our creative sprit to the world, then we are forfeiting our humanity.

I am not sure if Twyla Tharp would agree with me, but I am not going to be intimidated!

Aligning Your Actions With Your Values [Life]

Sometimes the life-lessons we learn take their time making an impression on us. Sometimes, they overtake us with force, not unlike the recent winter squalls. This month, the universe conspired to send me my own personal winter squall.

On a day when I was very proud of myself for tackling lots of small to-do’s that had been waiting for my attention, I called my cell phone company. They had been charging me for a service I had explicitly requested not to have. The call turned into a three hour ordeal with long stretches of being on hold and multiple supervisors during which I found myself angry, frustrated and in tears. Ultimately, I resolved my issue AND I had wasted three hours of precious work time, in addition to working myself into such a frenzy that no further constructive work was possible.

The next day I learned that our neighbor and friend had been diagnosed with breast cancer, was scheduled for surgery and needed blood for expected transfusions. I was a match, so I cleared my calendar, drove to the city and made a designated blood donation at the hospital. Door to door, I was away from my office for three hours. I came home with a full heart and somehow at peace and continued to do several more hours of work.

You can tell where this is headed, right? Well you are smarter than I am because it took me a little while to make sense of the difference between the three hours with the phone company and the three hours at the hospital. It all comes down to honoring my values. In the phone company interaction my values were being stepped on-big time: respect, honesty, service. (And to be honest, I was complicit in disregarding these values.) Donating blood for my friend, on the other hand, was me honoring my values fully. So the life lesson for me (okay so I have had to re-learn this one several times in my almost 5 decades) is:

I am most alive, at peace, and productive when I let my actions be guided by that which I truly value. To be crystal clear: when my actions honor my values, my entire experience of my life shifts.

In coaching, I uncover the client’s values, and really look at how well they are being honored, how they can be used to make more resonant choices, and how they can help the client approach difficult situations.

Speaking of difficult situations, if you also have people in your life who are experiencing serious heartbreak—be it illness or loss—visit Aurora Winter’s website. She is a woman with heartbreak of her own who is a wonderful resource for others. I leave you with three tips she offers when talking to a person in your life who is in crisis:

*Acknowledge the pain, sorrow, suffering, …
*Listen without fixing or resisting
*Give hope by reminding the person of his/her inner strength, and the support of the people around them

Define Success Your Own Way [Career]

© 2003 The New Yorker Collection from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved

Do you ever stop to notice when you are succeeding? Really, isn't it so much more common for us to label failure? We are quick to point out failures in others and most of us are entirely too attentive to our own internal critic. Success on the other hand is a little harder to define. For me, success was a little like the fur coat hanging in my mother's closet. It was luscious to touch and look at but when I put it on, it never felt quite right.

I recently had the opportunity to explore messages about success that I have assimilated over the years, and craft my own compelling definition. Here are just a handful of the many versions of success which were competing for my attention:

public recognition
meeting expectations
material reward
being unique
having choices
unwavering commitment

Together with 6 other people connected via a telephone line, we played the Success & Me Game™. We had three luxurious hours to reflect, analyze our responses, and choose resonant paths. The game was skillfully designed to enable 6-10 strangers to trust each other, and help each other to think deeply about-- and ultimately to articulate and celebrate-- our personal paths to success. Even for a coach, this game was a real jump start to my metabolism. My fellow players really forced me to stretch my thinking and to see myself in a new light. The game helped me to capture the deep qualities of who I want to be in the world and stay focused on the bottom line concrete issues like how much money do I really need to make?

This game works on so many levels. My game partners included people who were starting new careers, transitioning to new stages of life, planning for retirement and dreaming big about making a difference in the world. I was so taken with the process that I have established a partnership with the game's creator, Nina Ham, and I am now offering this experience to you. My website has more information about how to sign up for a game. You can also assemble your own group of friends or colleagues for a game designed just for you. If you are in NY, NJ or CT I am happy to run the game at a location you choose.

My emerging definition of success involves my capacity to give to others. 10% of the proceeds from all games played will always be donated to a good cause. Check my website to see which organization will benefit and if you organize your own game, you can name the charity of your choice!

Finding Meaningful Work [career]

Are you playing an angst-ridden game with the question, "What am I doing with my life?"

--Did you choose a responsible career that no longer engages you and now you are in search of working at something that matters?
--Are you unexpectedly out of work and even as you feel the pressure to find your next position, you want to make a decision that will work for your priorities today?
--Or are you more like me- you find meaning in your work, and as your own passions and commitments evolve, you need your work to evolve with it?

This month I highlight three books that might put you back in the game with assertive confidence.

Encore: Finding Work that Matters in the Second
Half of Life by Marc Freedman
This is the place to start if you sense a little tug or even a deep undertow that where you are now in your life is not serving you. Freedman tells inspirational stories of people from all walks of life moving into careers that were more aligned with their own values and aspirations. He also makes us rethink our orientation to "the golden years" of idle relaxation. The online community gives you access to resources for meaningful work as well as an active discussion with people (over 350 at last count), many whom have already made the shift and are interested in supporting their peers.

The Third Age: 6 Principles for Growth and Renewal
after Forty by William Sadler
Sadler posits that middle age is a misnomer. He describes 4 ages each with the potential for growth, meaning and renewal. The principles he outlines are really invitations for exploration of our own approach to work and life and he offers useful tools along the way. Here is a particularly provocative quote that got my attention:

"In addition to lighthearted playfulness and openness to learning, another important quality in childhood is willingness to forgive failure and learn from mistakes. So often adults express regrets about mistakes made in parenting, work, relationships, lifestyle. Brooding on regrets can certainly impede second growth. Young children do not take their efforts to learn and achieve so seriously. They do not expect to always get it right the first time. They learn from mistakes. A child knows that it is acceptable to 'get it wrong' before getting it right." (p.90)

Back in Control: How to Stay Sane, Productive and Inspired in Your Career Transition by Diane Grimard Wilson
Wilson is a career coach in Chicago and her book is a text-based version of her approach. She points out that sometimes we get stuck in destructive patterns that can be changed if we explore them. She offers strategies for figuring out our strengths, taking charge of our ineffective thoughts and cultivating our intuition and capacity to focus. This is a highly practical book with valuable resources cited throughout.

Can You Express Appreciation? [Leadership]

Before eating our Thanksgiving dinner, we paused to declare what we are thankful for. I am sure we join millions of families in America in this ritual. This year, we included a personal expression of appreciation for each member of our family. My family is used to my tendency to "orchestrate" these events. (We won't talk about the year that everyone found a discussion prompt under their dinner plate which they were required to use during the meal!) So I had several requests:

1. Look the person in the eye
2. Tell them what they did that made an impact
3. Tell them how you felt when they did what they did
4. Tell them what need of yours was met by their actions

I learned these simple steps from Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. He describes how too often, our appreciation is really a masked judgment- no matter how positive. Who are we to say that this person is smart, or generous? And if we deem them worthy today, will we change our minds tomorrow? It is well worth reading the entire book and the last chapter will offer you stories and strategies for expressing and accepting appreciation.

Harvard psychologists, Bob Kegan and Lisa Lahey, say that our professional lives would be so much more fulfilling if we could express appreciation more effectively. In the fifth chapter of their book, How The Way We Talk Can Change The Way We Work they claim that most often we confer "indirect, nonspecific entitlements." In a group context we also have a tendency to talk in the third person, "Jane did a fantastic job" even when the person we are thanking is in the room with us! They have three simple recommendations. They also offer a user-friendly chart that clearly distinguishes between the common way we have of expressing appreciation and the more constructive language of "ongoing regard."

There is a lot of research that documents the effect of appreciation and admiration on healthy relationships, particularly in marriages. I came across this article entitled, "Love, Honor and Thank" on the way appreciation can influence the age-old conflict over division of labor in the home.

Although it is ideal when we can have face to face conversations with the people we want to thank, a well written note can have lasting impact. Several months after my friend and colleague, Lenny Zakim passed away (see PS: September) close mutual friends were cleaning out his office and found a packet of letters in his top desk drawer. These were letters I had written over the years, in which I would thank him for his words in a speech or his actions on a particular occasion that came at the right time for me and inspired me in my own work. What he never knew, was that I had my own packet of letters that he had sent me. Learn how to express appreciation well and often- there is no greater gift!

Conversations That Matter [Relationship]

In our age of animation, robots and 'Second Life' it is sometimes hard to remember that humans are in fact the only species given the gift of speech. And what are we doing with that gift? How many times have we retreated into silence rather than risk a confrontation? How often have we shut down conversation because what we might hear could make us profoundly uncomfortable? How often have we hesitated to speak honestly because we can't trust that there will be a receptive audience? In politics, in boardrooms, in classrooms and around our dinner tables amazing things can happen when we create the conditions for sincere and open conversation. This month I share with you several resources that will both inspire you to host these kinds of conversations and give you some basic tools to do it well because sadly, we are all a little rusty.

In "Can We Talk?" Vicki Robin, shares what she calls three "minds" of hosting that are valuable reminders for all of us as we speak to the people in our lives. She is co-founder of Let's Talk America. Their website is filled with practical resources for hosting conversations at multiple levels of complexity ranging from your living room to your city.

An inspirational and accessible book worth reading before you spend time with family and friends this Thanksgiving is Turning to One Another by Margaret Wheatley. Parts one and two of the book lay out Wheatley's beliefs about conversation and its transformative power. Part three offers us 10 conversation starters -each a short essay framed around an essential question. You might use these exact questions and they may simply point you toward a model for the questions that are essential in your own world. I leave you with this quote from Wheatley:

"Life doesn't move in straight lines and neither does a good conversation. When a conversation begins people always say things that don't connect. What is important at the start is that everyone's voice gets heard, that everyone feels invited into the conversation. If you're hosting the conversation, you may feel responsible for pointing out connections between these diverse contributions, but it's important to let go of that impulse and just sit with the messiness. The messy stage doesn't last forever... We don't always get it right the first time and we don't have to. We need to settle into conversation."

Fulfillment at Work [leadership]

If you employ people, regardless of the size of your organization (even babysitters count!), are a chair of a non-profit board or if you coordinate volunteers-in short, if you play any role in which you depend on people, then you will want to read The Three Signs of A Miserable Job. This is Patrick Lencioni's sixth book and it is both simple and profound.

The core idea can be stated in two sentences: When people feel fulfilled at work, they are more productive and reliable. Fulfillment is a consequence of being known, knowing who and how you impact the lives of others in your work and having clear ways of measuring your impact. While these ideas are simple, many of us struggle with putting them into practice. This is often a large area of focus with my coaching clients-their own fulfillment and the fulfillment of their team.

If you read my Core beliefs you will know that this paragraph from the end of the book truly resonated as well:

"By helping people find fulfillment in their work, and helping them succeed in whatever they are doing, a manager can have a profound impact on the emotional, financial, physical, and spiritual health of workers and their families. They can also create an environment where employees do the same for their peers, giving them a sort of ministry of their own. All of which is nothing short of a gift from God." (p.253)

This book got me thinking about the work of the Arbinger Institute. They have published two books which I might talk about in another edition of PS. They have a powerful approach to helping all of us to look at ourselves more honestly as a pathway to seeing the humanity of our employees and the people with whom we are closely related. I thought I would leave you with a link to an article entitled, The Parenting Pyramid from their website that applies their approach in a very personal context-marriage and parenting.

Opening Doors to our most Precious Relationship [relationship]

It is so easy to fall into the habit of believing that our family and work relationships would improve if only the other person would change. Just ask my children, they know exactly how I want them to change! When we think that way, we shut the door on new possibilities. In order to open that door, we first have to get into right relationship with ourselves. So I want to tell you about two resources that can help you do that. Think of them as door openers. And yes, I am working on them too!


1. Guided Visualization
Imagine taking a journey to an unknown place. As you approach the door you know you are about to meet your best possible self 20 years from now. You discover that she is happy and peaceful. What would you want to ask her? What if she could tell you how to get from where you are today to where she is? How to overcome all those obstacles you see in your way now… How to work through your conflict with your kids and your partner? Well actually you can, through guided imagery. It is powerful to discover the wisdom your true unconscious self really holds for you. Ricki Rush offers several different guided visualizations which are available on CD. You don’t have to be good at meditation or quieting your mind—just willing to follow her direction. You don’t even have to be visual. Whatever comes up for you as you move through the visualization will be exactly what you need.

2. Three “Doorways” to Reconnect to Self
Sandy Davis a former management consultant and currently a coach who lives a well balanced life in Maine coined the term “zillience”—it is delicious to say isn’t it? He defines it as an “expanded capacity to thrive no matter what comes your way”—we could all use a little of that. So his latest newsletter caught my eye when he described three different doorways to reconnect with yourself.

1. The front door is a daily centering practice. This could be meditation or prayer or anything that creates inner stillness for you.

2. The side door is regular aerobic and physical exercise (we get that one, right?)

3. The back door is a daily creative practice. As opposed to the front door where you want to stop doing, the back door really is all about rolling up your sleeves and doing—only it should be something you don’t have to do. Singing, dancing, painting, cooking (don’t tell my family I included cooking!)

So take it easy on your significant other for awhile, and nourish the relationship with your most precious ally—yourself!

Are You and Money on the Rocks? Tips for Making up with Money [relationship]

This summer our family took a long overseas trip—it was wonderful, and it was hard not to notice how much money we were spending. This month, I am opening up a local office outside my home and suddenly the expenses are piling up—rent, new phone, liability insurance, printing postcards to let everyone know…and the list goes on. Not surprisingly money has become more of a topic of conversation at home and it is not always a warm and fuzzy one.

As the money magnet expert, Morgana Rae will tell you, money can feel dangerous; it can break up families. When we start to unpack our beliefs about money, we discover that we may be in a long-term unhealthy relationship with none other than our own personal version of a jerk. Of course we are not cultivating a healthy relationship with money—s/he is so unattractive!


MONEY DYNAMICS
I recently had the opportunity to hear Morgana coaching a woman on her own struggles with money. In a short and abbreviated version of her Financial Alchemy™ process, Morgana helped her client to see that:

her version of money was smarmy and distasteful

she really needed to “break up” with her old image of money

she could go to central casting and find her ideal version of who she wants money to be

her new image of money is always a force for good in her life

Morgana guided her client to ask ‘Money’ what he needs from her to improve their relationship. I asked Morgana for a sample session for myself so that I could tell you about the process, first hand. And yes, I do have some real issues right now. Morgana told me that she and ‘money’ (her own romantic, Ivy League guy with a book in his hand and a rose for her!) agreed that they were not doing free sessions any more.

Something about the clarity of that response really got me thinking. I admit to being skeptical about the idea of personifying Money. But I had also heard Morgana say that the dynamics of our relationship with money often have parallels in our other relationships. So I started to look at how I am feeling about money now and ask myself:

Where else am I focused on scarcity and what is the impact of that?
Where else am I making choices that I am not enjoying?

And then I realized I know something about how to strengthen relationships. I opened up my copy of The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman and reminded my self of this:

4 Tips from John Gottman: Apply these to your honey AND your money
(in my words, not his):

Get to know your partner
Show appreciation
Turn toward your partner—indifference kills
Be open to influence from your partner

Now if the partner in question is money, what should you be doing right now?

Well, I am signing off now. I have some important relationship building to do.

Gremlin Taming: Learning to Relax into Presence [life]

uptight, adjective
1. Nervously tense, irritable, or angry
2. unable to express one’s feelings

Think of a person you have difficulty being with. Notice what happens to your body, your muscles. Notice your breathing. Check your heart rate. When we are uptight, we are not really engaging with the person in front of us. We are actually having an entire conversation with ourselves (I can’t believe I have to be here, this person is just tolerating me, I am afraid I will do something stupid, I want to scream…).

Now think of a person you love, one you feel truly at home with. Your soul-mate, your best bud. What shifts? Do a quick body scan. Imagine yourself standing in front of this person. Where is your attention? The chances are that you are completely focused on the human being in front of you. You are present with them and not lost in an internal dialogue. You are open to whatever comes next in the interaction.


ZEN THOUGHTS
Rick Carson, tells us that at those moments when we notice ourselves tensing up, the most important thing to do is Simply Notice it. He offers us the Zen Theory of Change:

I free myself
Not by trying to free myself
But by simply noticing how I am imprisoning myself
In the very moment in which I am imprisoning myself

Once we can create some space from our visceral reaction, we can choose how to proceed. One important goal is to have a more authentic encounter with the other person. The problem is that when we are all uptight, we are not really engaging with them because our focus is not on them but on our beliefs about them (in our head). And they are not really engaging with us because we are otherwise occupied with the voices in our own head! So the first step is to give this relationship a chance by actually being there to have the relationship and see what shows up.

TIPS FOR TAMING THE GREMLIN
Here are two quick suggestions to ground yourself as offered in A Master Class in Gremlin Taming by Rick Carson.

1. Change your breathing! Start breathing in even, relaxed breaths and consciously relax your muscles.
2. Bring your attention to the person in front of you and away from your internal chatter about the person.

And here are Carson’s steps for really trying to connect with someone you are struggling with:

Simply Notice what are you feeling, remembering, observing?
Describe this to the other person in simple, clear “I” statements.
Hush, Breathe and Listen to whatever comes next. Know that you don’t need any particular response from the other person; you have done your part. Just stay silent, breathe calmly and listen to whatever comes next. Whatever you hear back, you simply start back with step one and simply notice….

Are We Having Fun Yet? Laughter is a Gift [life]

This idea has always been one of my core values. Basically if you are one of my really good friends, you and I are going to laugh—a lot. And if we don’t know each other, our laughter will connect us. One of the nicest material gifts ever given to me was a bumper sticker that reads: SHE WHO LAUGHS, LASTS.

As it turns out, the research shows that not only is laughter therapeutic, but laughing can be a path to intimacy. Do a Google search on the role of humor in relationships. You will see that lots of people are thinking and writing about this issue. It is preoccupying us, maybe because our world seems to be facing so many serious issues. I am not talking about laughing at a funny TV sitcom (are there any left?). I am talking about that pre-verbal connection that we make with another human being that brings us in sync with each other. It takes us outside of our heads and into our bodies for a rare magical non-judgmental moment.

If you are a parent, you know your child’s laughter is one of the most irresistible sounds around.


Are we having fun yet?
This is the sometimes cynical, sometimes sad question my husband and I ask each other when things are a little strained. It usually means—we are not!

Want to Share Laughter?
Michael Bungay Stanier, has come up with 8 principles for bringing fun into your life that I think really work and I want to share them with you:

1. Stop hiding who you really are
2. Start being intensely selfish
3. Stop following the rules
4. Start scaring yourself
5. Stop taking it all so damn seriously
6. Start getting rid of the crap
7. Stop being busy
8. Start something

Curious about how these will add fun and lead to more irresistible laughter and intimacy in your life? Watch his video, The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun. Then go find your home videos of your child (or yourself) laughing at age 2 and keep playing them over and over.

What do you think of me? [Life]

When I was growing up, I was never satisfied being me. I wanted to be able to “spike” on the volley ball court like Kaori. I wanted to draw portraits like Patty. I wanted to do funky embroidery like Yako and have Kimie’s impeccable handwriting. Actually handwriting was a “thing” for me. I spent hours mimicking the handwriting of my various classmates. I was good. And somehow, I believed as a teenager that if I could write like them, I would magically adopt the characteristics of their personalities (and bodies) that I coveted.


Over the years, my dissatisfaction with myself turned me into quite a chameleon. And ironically, my chameleon qualities became one of my prized attributes. I could fit into any situation, adopting the mannerisms, speech patterns and cultural habits of any group I joined.

I couldn’t honor who I was becoming
It has been over 35 years since that time and various people have said things to me along the lines of “oh I wish I could be like you, you are so…[and you can fill in the blank]“. Actually I would need you to because I never heard what they were saying. What? Me? You see, I never claimed me-who I was or who I was becoming. I was too busy trying to be like everyone else.

Does this sound familiar in any way? (Please tell me I am not alone here!) Is what you do see about yourself blinding you to what you have not yet discovered? Where are you shortchanging yourself? Where are you not noticing your magnificent impact in the world? What if you could embrace all of you and have that feel good?

Claim your own gifts
I believe we are infinitely complex and there is no end to the ways in which we can surprise ourselves. I still can’t spike on the volley ball court or draw very well. And my handwriting, well, it shows the signs of trying on too many styles. I haven’t stopped noticing my deficiencies. But I am claiming them for my own. They are my unique deficiencies that have made me who I am today. And as for my strengths, well, not only am I willing to claim those, but I can even hear them when they come from those around me. Here is my challenge to you…go out and ask five people you respect what qualities they value in you. And listen! Really listen.

Can Your Relationship Be A Fairy Tale? [Relationshp]

This year is a significant one for our family. My husband and I are a few months away from celebrating our 18th wedding anniversary. And this month, my parents will be celebrating their 50th.

After all these years, there are a lot of stories we could, and do, tell about our lives. Which stories we choose to hold on to, though, can determine what the future will look like. There are the stories we tell in public, the ones we tell our kids, the ones we tell our best friends, and let’s not forget the ones we tell ourselves as we are waiting for our partner to get out of the house or listening to our significant other snore in bed.

If you are in a relationship right now, just stop and think about the stories you tell.
What is the picture you paint about your relationship?

Do your stories bring you closer or do they serve to keep you locked up in your self-righteous tower?

What character do you play? Are you the damsel in distress? The innocent victim? The long-suffering martyr?


What was Your Original Myth?
When I work with couples facing a challenge that is pushing them apart, I start by asking them to tell me their original story- the story of how they came together. At first there is a brief silence, or a quick knowing exchange. As they each begin to retell their original myth (often weaving their stories together) there is a palpable softening of the emotional field. You hear it in their tone of voice; you see it in their body language. The partners might find a metaphor that captures who they were when their relationship was still tenderly being nurtured.

(When my husband and I were being coached he talked about himself as my Prince Charming. When I recall that image I am immediately taken back to the exhilaration I felt, knowing that this handsome, talented guy saw my potential and believed he wanted to be there as I blossomed into whatever I was to become. It certainly helps to smooth over those moments when I am feeling all too Cinderella-esque as I pick up stray socks and try to straighten yet another pile that has sprouted on the floor of our bedroom!)

Sometimes, for couples who may not be destined to celebrate a 50th anniversary, the original myth already contains the elements of their ultimate undoing.

The Way We Were
On my parents’ 40th anniversary, my sister and I created a memory book. We invited a large list of friends and family to send us pictures, stories, old letters and early recollections of time with our parents. We painstakingly created an album that my parents still love to look through. I can see their faces as they slowly turned the pages in awe. They couldn’t wait to get back to their own home and relish in the unfolding of long buried memories and faces long gone. With that gift we gave them back their shared story. It reminded them of who they were at their best, what they valued and the ways in which they had made an impact on other people’s lives.


My husband and I have not yet made plans for our own big event. However, we may just watch our wedding video and taking time to remember that the slipper fits!

can Teenagers Find Their Life Purpose in School? [parenting]

My husband and I have two sons and it is striking how different they are from each other in some very fundamental ways. The younger one is driven by his own internal curiosity and passions. He loves learning and he loves school. He has never met a boring topic and his main stress in life is that there are not enough hours in the day to learn more about all that he is interested in. He is both exhilarating and exhausting to be around. His challenge in life will be to figure out how he wants to channel his energy to make a mark on the world.

Our older son also loves school. (We never had those bleary-eyed, “do I have to go to school today?” mornings!) For him it is mostly the social life that draws. Classes are just something he does between talking to his friends. There have been glimmers of interest here and there-photography, architecture, a cool science experiment. Math, because he knows it comes easily to him. But by and large, what he lacks is passion and the relentless pursuit of, well, anything. Now that he is in high school, my husband and I are hoping that the school and all its offerings will ignite a spark that will carry him into adulthood.


The Path to Purpose
The Fall ’08 issue of Independent School had an article by William Damon, a Stanford University professor and author of The Path to Purpose: Helping Our Children Find Their Calling in Life. He is not holding out a lot of hope for my son if schools continue as they are today. Kids, he says, are working hard and they have no idea why; that leads to boredom and apathy. Here is the bit that got me:

Students need schools that are more than test-prep training grounds. They need schools that stir their imaginations and give them a chance to discover their deepest and most enduring interests. During their crucial formative years, they need schools that help them decide what kind of person they wish to become. Ultimately, they need schools that provide knowledge, mentoring, and encouragement that will help them identify their own moral north star, a compelling purpose to guide them through their journey in life.

Yes! Can our son’s school do that? (Although if schools actually did that, I would probably have no more coaching clients left.) As luck would have it, just a few days after I finished this article I was reading Tal Ben Shahar’s book, Happier and came to this passage:

Throughout the term, drowning in work they do not enjoy, students are motivated by fear of failure. At the end of the term, liberated from their books and papers and exams, they feel an overwhelming sense of relief- which, in the moment, can feel a lot like happiness. This pattern of pain followed by relief is the model that is imprinted on us from grade school. It is easy to see how, unaware of alternative models, living as a rat racer could seem like the most normal and attractive prospect.

A rat-racer? Is that my son’s fate? Surely if the schools can’t do anything about this then our parenting can shift the tide for him. Ben Shahar continues:

They learn from their parents that grades and prizes are the measure of success, that their responsibility is to produce outstanding report cards rather than to enjoy learning for learning’s sake.

Okay, now I have to say that my husband and I have always and only wanted our kids to do their best and enjoy learning. That is what we believe, and what we tell them. We have never punished our kids for low grades or held out other children’s success as a comparative measure. But now I needed to be sure that this was the message that was coming across.

Why enjoying learning is more important than grades
“You know that your grades are not what are important to me right?” I asked my older son one night as he was doing his homework.

“Huh? Then how come you are always asking me to do my homework and every time I have a test you want to know if I studied. Isn’t it because you want me to do well?”

“Well, I do want you to do well but I also want you to enjoy the learning that is why we ask you at dinner if you learned anything interesting today…” I trailed off.

This conversation was not going in a good direction. Clearly, I have been sending the wrong messages. Have I doomed his chances for finding what he really loves? With my clients, one of the things I do is to listen for the resonance as they talk. When does my son get really excited? What lights him up? What makes him laugh?

I am on a campaign now to be alert for those moments and to nurture them. I am also increasingly aware of how I talk about my own work. At the very least I can be a role model of someone who is passionate about her own work. Every day, at dinner, my sons ask me how my day was. (I love that!) I have a daily opportunity to speak to the passionate sparks in my day rather than the drudgery or the checking off the of the to-do lists. I have three more years with my older son at home. I may not be able to help him find his life purpose in that time, but I am sure as hell going to try to light the way.

Why Am I Crying? [Life]

When my husband and I were still dating (for seven years, mind you) I cried any time we went to a movie in which a man made a commitment to a woman he loved. My husband always cries in movies about fathers and sons. All it takes is a son’s longing to connect to his dad or vice versa and the tears flow. Recently, I had a week in which three different clients cried in the context of our coaching session. In each case, the tears came when I (or the client’s partner) said something that desperately needed to be heard:

“You need to give yourself time to mourn the life dream you let wither.”

“The memory of your dad, is a memory of acceptance, he accepted you and that memory can bring you to your own self-acceptance.”

“I want to always remember how much I love you.”

In all cases, the tears represent a kind of release, when a longing we have is suddenly tapped into. A truer, deeper part of ourselves has been touched and even if we can’t speak about it, our tears are the pathway there. They are a signal for us to pay attention.


The power is magnified by the fact that someone else’s words were able to reach us. Even for those of us blessed with close family and friends, it is always a surprise when another human being manages to dip into the deep well of our being, and create a splash. And once they do, we have a unique opportunity to swim around in those deep waters we may rarely visit- and if we let them, we have a partner who can join us.

Tips for following the path of your tears

Don’t make a joke of it and move quickly on to something else.

Don’t judge yourself for being weak or sentimental.

Do get curious about what is there. Set aside time to write in your journal, talk more with your partner or friend, or just sit with a pencil and paper and write a letter to yourself.

When and why do you and / or your partner cry?

Why You Should Stop Asking Why [life]

"Why?” is the province of toddlers. They are learning at such a fast pace, their curiosity is off the charts. Do you think children need answers to their why questions? I wonder. Answers can often be full stops and the end of conversation. It’s more likely that children are in fact simply using “why” as a form of exploration rather than searching for a one-word answer.


Why questions take you to your head. You immediately try to figure something out. Not a problem if the question is, “Why does red and blue make purple?” When we are trying to find meaning in our lives and make a difference in the world, I say, let’s go straight to our hearts!

Why questions deceive you into believing that there are simple explanations for complex questions. Like, “Why can‘t you settle down and make a commitment?”- There’s an easy one!

Why questions can sink you deeper into a problem rather than guide you toward meaningful action. Okay, so maybe you keep sabotaging your diets because your father told you how much he loved his plump baby. And maybe your father did this because you have a genetic predisposition towards eating disorders. Wow, that sucks. Better go eat some ice cream to cheer up!

The value of questions is their capacity to connect us to our truer, deeper selves. They let us linger in the questions, and explore. They awaken our curiosity about ourselves and our world. Abraham Joshua Heschel said it best on the first page of his book, God In Search of Man.

In the process of thinking, an answer without a question is devoid of life. It may enter the mind; it will not penetrate the soul. It may become part of one’s knowledge; it will not come forth as a creative force.

Teach your Children Well: Redefining Charity as Justice [parenting]

Give if it feels good? In Hebrew, the word for charity actually emerges from the root word for Justice. Perfect isn’t it? We are not just talking about a nice thing to do. The spirit moved you and you acted charitably. Great! What if the spirit doesn’t move you? Are you not responsible for acting justly in this world? I sound a little strident don’t I? I am not trying to get biblical here.

I just think that if we rely on charity we are hoping that people will be inspired to give, to serve this world. Some people are more inclined to tap into that capacity than others. If, on the other hand, we are pursuing justice, well, it seems like we can teach people to be just. I am really not preaching. I am simply thinking like a mother.

Take Pride in Your Children’s Natural Instincts
I have two boys who amaze me constantly with their capacity for giving. I see my boys when they were toddlers holding out their teddy bears, and other cherished toys, to offer to a friend’s child. For years, every summer and winter the three of us would roll up our sleeves and enthusiastically clean out the toys so that we could deliver them to children in need. (I will never forget the winter break when my older son was about eight and he suggested it as a “fun” activity we could do together). When my children come into some “extra money” from their grandparents they start planning on gifts for each other and for us. Really, I am crying here in Barnes and Noble as I realize what a gift my children’s giving nature has given to me.


Teach Your Children Well
So, is this charity or justice? Well as parents we are not taking chances. When we started to give our sons their allowance, the stipulation was that 10 per cent got put aside for charitable giving. (Mind you for most of their childhood their allowance has been $1/week so it took awhile for that tithe to amount to anything!) We sent our children to middle schools where there was a service requirement. Our older son visited a boy with autism weekly for two years until the boy’s parents had to send him to live away from home. In high school now, he assists weekly at a creative arts program for children with autism. Our younger son trained to be a clown. Most Sundays he was at a local hospital or elder care home entertaining residents with jokes and song. This past summer he volunteered at a week long summer camp for children with special needs.

I whole-heartedly believe in the power of charitable giving and I also know that as a parent I am responsible for teaching my children how to create a just world. We haven’t been as consistent as I would like but over the years, as a family, we have delivered meals to home-bound elderly, served at soup kitchens and packaged meals for the hungry. I recently heard of a community in the northeastern United States that surveyed its population and discovered that its members were giving over $13 million dollars to causes outside of their own community.

Let’s Serve Up Some Justice in our Communities
Imagine if every community actually gave to its own. It feels like we have come upon a time when we are going to need an awful lot of justice in our cities and towns to enable the less fortunate among us to live dignified lives. I want my kids to be equipped to respond. And yours too. I think that all of our families are the hope of the future. Three resources that have recently inspired me:

The White Envelope Project: founded by four siblings, they encourage others to do something for someone else and in lieu of a gift, give your friends and family a white envelope with the story of what you did.

The Three Big Questions for A Frantic Family: Leadership Guru Lencioni encourages all families to start by asking the question: What makes your family unique?

You identify the core values that serve as the foundation for your family. It is who you are without even thinking. I intend to start this conversation in our own family. I’ll let you know what happens.

The Best Gifts for our Children II [parenting]

When our eldest turned 13, he received an iPod from my husband’s sister and a laptop from mine. Could it really be that bad? We all love music, singing and the piano have brought us together. My husband had an iPod for about a year at this point, and this became a “thing” around which they bonded. Our son was listening to my husband’s favorites and vice versa. Two years later, my younger son got the same set of gifts and the bonding intensified exponentially. But look. The brothers weren’t driving each other crazy; they were sharing music and talking about playlists and how to use the programs on their computer. Now presents in our house are more likely to be Apple gift certificates.

It is a slippery slope
We kept noticing that we were spending a little less time in each other’s rooms. Sunday afternoons had become a time for all of us to “work” at our computers. When we tried to pick a Sunday night movie to watch together, we would huddle around the computer and check the parental guidance site. Our boys had figured out how to watch TV on their laptops. Bad news. The kids were getting exposed to reruns of Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond. Good news.


Through it all, as our family entered the computer stage, we kept talking about it. We bemoaned what we were losing. We looked for ways to compensate. We had new ways to acknowledge our kids because, you know, they really do get this stuff better than we do!

So, when my son was ready to start high school he actually asked us if he could have a Facebook account. I was really conflicted. (First of all, I barely knew what it was. This is never a good place to be as a parent.) Would we be giving him access to his friends or exposure to shady characters? Would he be tempted to waste all his time when he should be studying? I called the guidance counselor at his high school the summer before his freshman year. This turned out to be a great decision, “If you don’t let him have an account, and he actually listens to you- he will be an outcast. If he doesn’t listen to you and gets one anyway, you have just created a situation in which he has to lie to you. Let him open and an account and talk to him about it. Keep the lines of communication open.”

So that is what we did. In fact, my son and I joined Facebook at the same time. (No, he did not ‘friend’ me- that is SO uncool). We actually read the fine print that tells you that everything you post is eternally searchable. We talked about the power of our words and he agreed to give me his password so I could monitor what was going on. (I stopped doing that after the first year.) My son got his gift - he is on Facebook with way more friends than I have. And I got mine. I have a relationship with a pretty trustworthy teenager who is learning that independence comes with responsibility to us and to his peers.

So, is it okay to give our kids access to technology?
In the end, I am still conflicted. I think as parents we have to decide when and how much. And based on my own experience I offer my suggestion:

Keep giving your kids your most precious commodity- your time and attention to listen and talk. Reach out to experts who can guide you when you are struggling. We were never meant to figure this all out alone.

The Best Gifts for our Children [parenting]

When I was a teenager, I never asked my parents for small things. (It could have something to do with the pair of roller skates I asked for when I was 10 and never got, Dad!) I asked for big things. Really BIG things: a car, a trip abroad, a week at a spa. In each case, I felt they were extravagant requests, and I also thought “what the hell? what is the worst that could happen, they say no?”

So, now I am a parent. When we buy gifts, we try to spend our money in ways that bring us together as a family. Vacations and meals rank high on the list. We favor puzzles and our ping pong table. Rather surprisingly, the hammock, which I bought for my husband, has turned into a family magnet as well!

We try to set limits
Today, BIG things usually mean a gadget or game for your television, anything hand-held and electronic, cell phones and access to social networking websites. Our kids do not have TVs in their rooms. There was no internet access until last year (they were 14 and 12). We never owned a Nintendo, an Xbox or a PS2. We don’t have a Wii. When our oldest son was in 8th grade he was in the “no cell phone” club. There were three of them until the day he came home and announced, “It’s just me, Ma!” Now that he travels to a high school 30 minutes away, he does have a cell phone (bottom of the line; NO bluetooth and NO texting). AIM accounts were started and stopped. (Okay, this last one was more because they were messing up my computer than because of any objections we had to it.)


It is our way of expressing love
You might think that all of this has led to a lot of strife at home. It hasn’t. Mostly, it led to our kids preferring play dates at their friends houses! Now that our kids have their own laptops and internet access, even they agree when I say, “This computer thing is out of control, don’t you think?” (Is it better for me to keep shouting upstairs that dinner is ready or should I follow their lead when they e-mail me to ask, “what’s for dinner?”)

Really, the amazing thing is that our kids get that we value human interaction over parallel play on a screen. They may feel periodically deprived, but they know this has been our way of awakening their potential and forestalling their addiction to technology. Things do change though. Stay tuned!

Raising Sons to be Husbands [parenting]

I am a mother of sons and I am raising husbands. When my son was three years old, he considered pink his favorite color and he loved to play with his kitchen set. These would not even merit mention but for the fact that the moms around me felt it was “interesting.” It is amazing how invasive society’s rules about our gendered lives really are. It has always been important to me to help my boys express themselves fully. What that means in reality is giving them opportunities to recognize, name and confidently feel a full range of emotions. Anger, silliness, and joy. These are the more socially acceptable emotions for boys. But fear, sadness and a deep sense of connection are so much harder to nurture.

Here are two moments in my son’s lives (Insert: Your future sons-in-law) that I treasure:

My teenage son’s camp friends have just spent a long weekend at our home as part of a camp reunion. My husband drives the boys home and our son joins them to say goodbye. My husband comes home amazed to have witnessed the emotional farewell of these close friends-hugging and all!

I walk into the living room where my son is reading a book on the couch. As I get closer I see that he is crying. Gently, I sit down next to him and ask him if he is okay. He looks at me. “Yeah”, he says through tears, “but this book is so sad. The children in this book are being treated so meanly.”


Thankfully, we don’t have to leave this important process to chance. There is wisdom out there in the world to help. Our goal as parents should be to normalize our children’s emotions. There are no bad emotions, only unhelpful responses to them.

Introduce your children to the language of emotion
When children pretend play, ask them how a character feels? You can also label emotions and connect them to what you are seeing. (“That boy jumping up and down in the picture looks really happy doesn’t he?”) Go beyond happy, glad, mad and sad. Find opportunities to use more nuanced words like frustrated, wistful, and confident.

Help kids recognize emotional courage
In the words of the authors of Raising Cain, “Many adults display emotional courage in their work or personal lives, but rarely do we allow our children to witness our private moments of conscience or bravery.”

Show your love openly
Dads, this one is especially important for you. Hug your son, kiss him, and tell him how much you love him without condition. No dad around? Borrow a mentor and a role model who will care about him, do things with him and make an emotional connection.

Let boys be boys
Boys can be sensitive and caring and they are not going to express it exactly like girls. Honor and appreciate them for their capacity to take action, their willingness to be inclusive and their structured games and fidelity to fairness.

Getting to Know Your Children Without Snooping [parenting]

When our kids were young, there were so many windows to perch from to marvel at who they were becoming. There were play dates and park benches. The tables around which we painted and made play-dough. The floors we sat on to read stories and engage in make-believe. Car rides in which anything and everything could (and did) happen. Today car rides are more likely to include other kids in the car pool and surreptitious texting. Most weeknight dinners are too rushed for relaxed and unobtrusive parental perching. And unless we are babysitting our cousins, our play-dough days seem to be over!

So, as they grow, we need to be much more creative and alert to catch the quick reflection of the evolving spirit of our children. If you want a good view, here are some of the places I have learned to look:

Their writing
It is true that a lot of so-called creative writing in school is circumscribed by topic and rarely reveals your child’s inner soul. Nevertheless, as kids get older, their perspectives on their world, and the books they read, for example, can tell you a lot about how they think and what moves them.

The music they love
My son has recently become a fan of Ben Fold. He told me to listen to the words of his two favorite songs: Learn to Live With What You Are and Still Fighting It about a dad who doesn’t want his son to grow up…Need I say more?

The way they treat their team mates on the field
My kids have been frustrated by losing soccer games. They can mope with the best of them. But I have watched them when a team mate is beating himself up for his poor performance as they rally to his side, with respectful encouragement.

Their privacy requests
Around the time my older son turned 13, I learned to knock on the door before entering his room. So far, they have an open-door policy with me- except for the bathroom. That is strictly off-limits.

How are you learning about your children?
What do you do to walk the fine line between your children’s privacy, and knowing who they are and what’s happening in their lives?

Change the Way You Cook & Change Your Life [life]

I am not a cook. I don’t spend enough time in the kitchen to merit that distinction. (My mother-in-law has nothing to fear from me.) But I do cook and I am rather proud of what I can do, however I tend to get a lot of flack from my family about the way I cook. Here are some of the hallmarks…

I improvise
I can never repeat good recipes (and thankfully bad ones). The printed page is just a guideline. I leave out ingredients I don’t like, and substitute when, I realize after my third trip to the market this week, I still don’t have what I need.

I am thrifty
I “concoct” with leftovers and “hide” ingredients I think my family might not like.

I multi-task
Cooking is the best time for me to talk to my best bud, listen to my books on tape or tune into my favorite NPR program.


I am fast
I collect quick and easy recipes. I love the idea that I can whip up two multi-course meals in a few hours!

I clean as I go
No piles of pots and pans in my sink. (I think I take after my grandmother who used to relish saying, “Would you know anyone cooked a full course meal in this kitchen?”)

As a relationship coach, I know exactly what questions to ask myself now:

What is it like to become aware of how you cook?
Not so pretty. Seems like all my worst habits, (that I thought I had overcome) are hanging out with me in the kitchen!

How does that feel?
Not great and also a little reassuring. I was proud of some of the behaviors that used to define me like multi-tasking and being fast, for example.

So now that you are more aware, how do you want to choose to be in the kitchen?
Well, I do feel good about cleaning up as I go. It really fits with my value of taking care of my environment and keeping things simple. And I don’t want to feel boxed in by recipes or some magazine’s view of what foods I should be keeping in my pantry to cook the best meals.

But I do think that multi-tasking is a barrier to being fully present with myself and with what I am cooking. That is the one I need to focus on.

Great, so what is one thing you could do that would inspire you to be really present when cooking and not multi-task?
Mm. I think I have to check in with the C&D readers and get back to you on that one.

Okay wise readers. The way we live any part of our lives, is the way we live our life! This is it, moment to moment. I may have mastered multi-tasking at my desk, but cooking is the final frontier for me. What is your final frontier? What if you started by looking at how you are in the kitchen. What does it tell you about how you are living your life?

4 Questions to Ask Yourself About Parenting [parenting]

Your child tells you he is going to play at a neighbor’s house. The neighbors are close friends and you don’t give it a second thought. An hour later your friend calls to tell you she thinks the boys went off to the woods behind your house - a place you know they shouldn’t be.

Your daughter has stopped letting you check her knapsack when she comes home from school. One day as you are cleaning her room you discover a pile of small things (a pencil case, a key ring, a notepad) that clearly don’t belong to her.

Your kids have household chores to do each week and they are not getting done.

Four Questions for Parents
As a parent you ask, “What do I do now that things are going wrong? What kind of corrective action do I have to take? What discipline does my child need?” While there are clearly going to be times when some direct intervention is called for to keep your child safe or to prevent a serious incident, more often than not, the solution lies in prevention.

The Arbinger Institute, in a powerful article entitled The Parenting Pyramid™, tells us there are four questions parents should be asking themselves:


1: Am I correcting my children without teaching them?
Have we spent time helping them to understand what we value? Do we seek out teaching opportunities when there is not a problem?

2: What is the quality of my relationship with my children?
Will our children be open to our teaching if we are mostly unavailable or preoccupied?

3: What is the quality of my relationship with my spouse?
Are you looking for love from your children that you really want from your wife? Are your frustrations with your husband making you short-tempered with your kids?

4: How pure is my “way of being?”How are you relating to the people in your life? Are you focused on what you need from them or do you see their needs and wants to be as real as your own?

So…If you are struggling with correcting your children’s behavior, check out how consistent you have been in teaching them. If they are not open to your teaching, check out the quality of your overall relationship with them. If you are struggling to connect to your kids, you might want to invest in reinvigorating your marriage. And if you are struggling in your marriage, you might want to do some introspection into who you are being right now.