The Edge Coaching

We have bird feeders in our front and back gardens at home and this weekend I was watching the one in our front garden. Two young Goldfinches have started to feed from the sunflower hearts in one of the feeders; the way they do it is very interesting – either bird will arrive at the feeder, perch facing outwards and turn back over its shoulder to eat some seed, quickly truning back to look out for any approaching threat. Then back again to eat quickly, then out again – an action repeated over and over again for five plus minutes providing they aren’t disturbed.

It’s their natural response to their world – the need to feed in order to grow, coupled with an awareness of the danger in the environment in which they live – danger they must always be on the lookout for. It struck me that as humans we also fall into that way of living; our brain and neurology still have the wiring that the Goldfinches have; always watching for threat and danger and therefore always seeing that in our environment whether in situations we haven’t encountered before, or people who appear different, communities and groups who live lives differently from the way we do. I’ve also seen it in business – business owners paralysed with fear of risking a new strategy, market or product. I’ve seen it in larger organisations I’ve worked in; risk averse leadership playing it safe, taking the same old approaches to strategy and change and wondering why results are never different.

On the anniversary of 9/11 and in the continued conflicts in a variety of countries around the world (over 7,000 service people killed in Afghanistan and Ieaq, 36.000 killed in Pakistan as a result of terrorism) we see the same wiring as the Goldfinches but with violence against “threat” on a huge scale. I’ve written a lot about the new approaches to Leadership needed to break this cycle and go beyond the natural wiring to a new effective leadership that understands and can work with complexity – it takes a willingness to travel a different path that many people feel is too difficult.

Today I’ve posted a link on my Facebook page to a very useful article on one man and woman who are taking this different path and indeed have always taken the path to their public detriment sometimes – Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. Read it – if you are open to it you will get the message. You might also explore the link to the Elders website contained in the Guardian article; a group of elder statesmen and women taking a different approach. May we all eventually be able to follow that different path to create a different set of results. I think the world needs it.

Let me know what you think.

It’s been a while since the last post on this blog so apologies for that. The fact is that I have been travelling for the past couple of months; working abroad in Africa and the Emirates as well as running some big projects in the Lake District and here in Yorkshire (Sheffield to be exact). It feels as if this is the first day I have had in my office for a long time – though with the modern connectivity we can pretty much work from anywhere……email and internet in a canoe in the middle of a mangrove swamp for example!!!! Not that that was work; just an experiment to see what was possible.

And it is connection that is the key theme today. whether it was working with leaders in the Gambia or in a leadership retreat for two leadership teams in the Lake District; the challenges remain the same for anyone working with people…..how to create the kind of environments in the organisation in which people can be the best they can be and manage themselves effectively through an ongoing change process. It is actually a similar theme to that I encounter when coaching with my private clients who come for general life coaching – we all have to manage ourselves through change processes whether created by ourselves or by others. The biggest challenge is how to do it positively and effectively. Connecting up with others who will support us in positive ways is a key strategy – as opposed spending time with those who erode us with judgements and criticisms or just with general negative conversations.

So – your question to consider this weekend – what connections are you making with others? Do they support you or take away from what you want to achieve?

There is an old fable – very old probably. It goes something like this:

As soon as he died, Juan found himself in a very beautiful place, surrounded by the comfort and beauty that he had dreamed of. A person dressed in white came up: ‘you have the right to whatever you want: any food, pleasure, fun”, he said.

Delighted, Juan did everything he had dreamed of during life. After many years of pleasures, he looked for the person in white:
“I’ve already done everything I wanted to”, he said. “Now I need some work, to feel useful”.

“I’m very sorry”, said the person in white, “but this is the only thing that I cannot get for you. Here there is no work”.

“To spend eternity dying of tedium? I would prefer a thousand times to be in hell!”

The person in white came up close, and said in a low voice:
“Where do you think you are?”

In this time of deep recession and increasing redundancies, particularly in the public sector but also in the private this seems relevant to me on a number of levels. Clearly many individuals will have the challenge of losing work and having to find new work in an environment where opportunities are different if not more restricted. This may take time so how do we use this enforced separation from work in a positive and affirming way? There is a big challenge for us as communities of people in how we support those in this difficult position. The current government certainly hasn’t thought through the problems they are creating. It is easy to take the approach that it is the public sector’s “turn” now to feel the pain – I’ve got news for the politicians; the level of cuts the public sector is undergoing will cause major problems for the private sector and produce even more pain there again.

I’ve written elsewhere in this blog about complexity and integral approaches. Unfortunately the current approach to our financial challenges is still based on linear thinking and so will create more problems than it solves – it is little more advanced than the approach taken by Margaret Thatcher to the closure of the mines in the 80′s. The way that issue was approached led to whole communities having their hearts ripped out with no support mechanisms or strategies in place to help people manage. Those communities still deal with the effects of this.

We are entering a phase when it appears that kind of consequence will be felt again, only this time throughout large swathes of the UK not small localised communities. We will need new ways as individuals and communities to work through these challenges – we will also need a new level of leadership capacity; integral leadership that uses integral approaches to work with people to ensure that the “hell” of the old fable does not become a permanent and pervasive reality.

It’s been a while since I wrote a blog – sadly my Mother died just before Christmas and I have been occupied in many different ways with this.

One of the hard tasks has been to clear her flat ready for whatever we decide to do with it. Mum would have been 92 years old on the Friday following the Sunday she died and had amassed a lot of possessions through her life. Now Mum was a big recycler of bottles, jars etc etc but I was still amazed by the amount of stuff she had in her living space that she hadn’t used for years. This got me thinking – quite a number of items, for example, kitchen utensils could have been used by others once my Mum had stopped using them. Many will now go to the local hospice for them to sell to raise funds to keep their excellent work going; now these objects will be used again by others.

So, if I look in my own life and living space – how much do I have that I actually don’t use?

Apart from some objects and clothes which are seasonal – if I haven’t used it or worn it maybe it needs to go to charity so someone else can use it? Recycling as passing on to someone else so they use it. Then what about books? I once had a client who had shelves and shelves of books (often two deep); books that she never returned to to read again. One of my challenges to her was to ask herself, “If I was to keep only twenty books – which ones would they be?” This was a really useful exercise for her to focus on which books were really important; the ones she wanted to keep. She never got down to 20 but that wasn’t the object of the exercise anyway – she reduced the number, cleaned up her space and felt a lot better and uncluttered as a result.

So my challenge to you – use the six month frame: if you haven’t used it can you pass it on to someone who can? Let me know how it goes.

Linda and I had a day off on Sunday and went to visit the Northern Country Fair at Harewood House near Leeds. One of the events there was a ‘Birds of Prey’ demonstration. Now I’ve seen similar shows before but always with smaller birds. The birds at Harewood were large – a Golden Eagle, a White-Tailed Eagle, a Vulture or two. How they went about their flying was interesting; it takes them quite a lot of effort to get off the ground or their perch, especially as there was very little wind to help them. So they flew short spells and very low. Only one of the eagles managed to fly out of the ground to a nearby tree and then flew back again. They were also totally focussed on the food the trainer had in his bag or hand and were loath to go very far from that.

It took me back to my work with Grey Wolf, a Lakota Sioux, who always said that people associate eagles with freedom and power, soaring high overhead effortlessly when in fact they are quite lazy and only fly when it is absolutely necessary. The term “fed-up” is a falconry term – today we use it to mean annoyance or upset about something but its original meaning was to have a full stomach and therefore be unwilling to fly. When I was in the mountains in Peru I was able to get quite close to the Eagles in the trees at the end of the property we were staying in – they would expend no effort in launching themselves but would simply drop off a tree branch, spread their wings and use the air currents to fly.

This is much the same for individuals and organisations embarking on change – particularly when there is still plenty of ‘food’, income, profit, comfortable living and so on. This makes it even harder to make the changes we need to so we can ‘fly’ and make whatever change we want to bring about. Perhaps when the hunger is there or even the fear we might (and it is only ‘might’) make the changes we need to make. But external drivers only help for the short term – when we have moved toward our goal a bit and have some more ‘food’ we will often relax our efforts and eventually stop. New Years’ Resolutions are a good example of this – many crash and burn by mid-January at the latest.

The boost we need comes from inside, by aligning our core values and beliefs and following the paths that enable us to express them; successful achievement is about fully living and expressing what matters to us. Then we tweak the external factors to help us by finding the support networks we can trust to be honest and work with us. Do what you love and see what follows is a powerful strategy. Far more powerful than chasing the ‘bag of food’ that is dangled before us – inspiration will give your starting action the boost to enable you to continue to take further action – and provided this action is inherently satisfying and creates further inspiration and energy you can stop worrying so much about goals and targets and start enjoying the journey you are on.

And so, unlike the Eagles and Vultures, you can fly way beyond the confines of the ‘showground’ you currently inhabit – and you don’t need to return unless you choose to!

I was reading a Work Foundation report today. This is an interesting list. It suggests that outstanding leaders….

1. Think systemically and act long term
Outstanding leaders achieve through a combination of systemic thinking and acting for the long term benefit of their organisation. They recognise the interconnected nature of the organisation and therefore act carefully.

2. Bring meaning to life
Outstanding leadership enables a strong and shared sense of purpose across the organisation. They emphasise emotional connection for people with a focus on passion and on ethical purpose.

3. Apply the spirit not the letter of the law
Outstanding leadership focuses on the few key systems and processes which help provide clarity, give structure, enable feedback, give time for discussion and enable the development of vision. They use them to achieve outcomes rather than focus on the process and put flexibility and humanity first.

4. Grow people through performance
Outstanding leaders passionately and constantly invest in their people and use the challenges presented every single day to encourage growth, learning and engagement.

5. Are self-aware and authentic to leadership first, their own needs second
Outstanding leaders unite a deep understanding of others, high levels of self-awareness and a systemic appreciation of their symbolic position to become a role model for others.

6. Understand that talk is work
Outstanding leadership depends on trusting and positive relationships that are built over time for the long-term benefit of the people and their organisation. They spend huge amounts of time talking with people to understand what motivates and how they can support and enthuse others.

7. Give time and space to others
Outstanding leaders both give significantly more time to people than non-outstanding leaders and allow their people considerably more freedom and influence over the work they do and how they do it.

8. Put ‘we’ before ‘me’
Outstanding leaders work hard on issues such as team spirit, shared decision making, collaborative working and a strong bond within and between teams. Sustainable performance comes from collective wisdom and intent, encouraging people to get involved, and giving them voice and autonomy.

9. Take deeper breaths and hold them longer
Outstanding leaders actively build trust by delivering on promises and acting with consistency, which in turn, leads to a sense of security and greater freedom of expression. They understand the power of trust to speed up interactions, enable people to take risks, diminish arguments and disputes and underpin innovation.

‘But morning overtook Shahrazad, and she lapsed into silence, leaving King Shahrayer burning with curiosity to hear the rest of the story. Then Dinarzad said to her sister Shahrazad, ‘What a strange and lovely story!’ Shahrazad replied, ‘What is this compared with what I shall tell you tomorrow night if the king spares me and lets me live? It will be even better and more entertaining.’ (The Arabian Nights First Night)

Storytelling is one of the most natural human processes; it very likely has been central to human connection and communication since men and women had some kind of shared language to enable them to talk with each other. Sitting on the ground, round the fire, in their shelters early men and women told each other stories to connect but also to begin to make meaning about their experiences together and to create the shared culture and wisdom that would guide the community through the dangerous environments in which they lived.

Stories are often to do with change and the challenges or blocks to successful change and growth. Joseph Campbell, the great storyteller and mythologist, identified common structures and themes in all the major myths and stories of the world cultures. One of the main themes is to do with the hero or heroine on a journey of discovery to find something precious, whether the Holy Grail, the Magic Lamp or to rescue someone. On the way they are tested and challenged, they meet people who help, who threaten the success of the outcome, trickster figures who may help/not help as well as the out and out villains who are trying to destroy them. They also enter the ‘dark forest’ in which they lose their way and sometimes nearly give up. Some will die in the forest but the hero/heroine generally comes out of the forest into the light again to find what they are searching for and bring it back to the world they originally left.

You can certainly think about ‘Lord of the Rings’ or ‘Star Wars’ at this point but I recommend that you dig deeper, look at your own life; can you find traces and touches of the Hero’s Journey in your story? One of the exercises I undertake with clients sometimes is the get them to explore thier life or their business’ life in terms of the Heroe’s Journey. It is a powerful reflective process. I recommend it to you. It can reveal a lot – remember; there are events in our lives and then there are the stories we create about them. Do the stories you create help you or hinder you and make you a victim?

Exercise

Pause and sit – look back on your life, the journey that has taken you to the point you have now reached. Look at the brief outline of the Hero’s Journey above; can you identify times, phases or people who fit the structure Campbell outlines? What thoughts or insights does this create for you? Write them down in a Journal or notebook. Particularly note those events that might have been ‘Dark Forest’ times but which actually then led you to new things that had a positive influence on your Journey.

Here’s a thought – you can have everything you want in life……….so long as you don’t need it.

Let me unpick that. Need equals attachment to an outcome, in its strongest form it can be addiction. When we need something (and I’m not talking about basic physiological needs here) we tend to grasp it and it becomes a big deal. If we don’t get it then we feel upset, empty, angry and so on. This will push the fulfillment of our need further away.

If you don’t belive me watch a highly skilled sports person or team lose their rythym, skill and focus as they try too hard and overstretch to achieve the outcome. Look at where you have done that in your own life.

Far better to identify your wants (and ‘want’ is different from ‘need’) without attachment. Let go of need and attachment and addiction. Let go and take inspired action whilst having a sense of play, exploration and fun – create a relaxed expectation that you will achieve whilst enjoying the exploration, the journey.

This applies to teams, workgroups and organisations as well as individuals!!! Experiment with this; see what happens.

I’ve talked about complxity before on the pages of this blog. Now IBM have produced a report that is based on interviews with 1541 global leaders. For the past three years the leaders said that their biggest challenge was change – this year they identify the big challenge to be complexity…..and half those interviewed doubted their ability to manage it!!

You can download a copy of the report for yourself but I just want to let you know the key headlines that it contains. These are based on the qualities and strategies demonstrated by the “Standouts”; those organisations that have continued to grow and develop successfully.

Creativity is key – it is THE most important leadership quality. The best companies encourage experimentation and innovation throughout the business. Creative leaders expct to make deeper business model changes to realise their strategies. To succeed they take more calculated risks than less successful organisations.

The leaders in the successful organisations find new ideas and keep innovating in how they lead and communicate.

The most successful organisations co-create products and services with customers AND integrate customers into core processes. In other words they build onging partnerships.

The “standouts” also simplify operations, show dexterity in their adaptable ways of working, they expect future revenue to come from new sources and they design operations for speed and flexibility.

The successful leaders invite disruptive action! They encourage people to drop outdated approaches and take balanced risks. They are open minded themselves and will expand their own leadership, management and communication styles.

There are valuable insights here for all of us – I recommend you at least read the Executive Summary of the report to understand the signposts. One thing is clear – business, work, community life is going to get more and more complex….and it will happen increasingly quickly!!!

Are you and your organisation/business equipped to deal with the increasing complexity?

Here’s an exercise I sometimes use for myself and with some clients. Who would you invite to dinner with you – living or dead – so you could have a long and fruitful dinner/talk? You can have as many as you want – though you might not be able to get them all around the table at once!!

Here’s a sample from my list:
- Rumi (the 13th century Sufi poet)
- Lewis Jones (played for Leeds RLFC in the late 50′s & 60′s)
- Ted Hughes (poet)
- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (Spiritual teacher)
- Bruce Springsteen
- Don Americo Yabar (a mestizo who works with the Q’ero in Peru)
- Ken Wilber (Integral thinker)
- Phil Jackson (Coach of the Chicago Bulls and LA Lakers)
- Richard Hawley (musician)
- Arthur Ransome (author of Swallows and Amazons)
- Roger Deakin (writer, explorer and environmentalist)
- Charles Handy (business ‘guru’)

I think that would make for good conversation and not a little learning!! There are more but that will do for now.

Enjoy the exercise and let me know who would be sitting around your dinner table.