Beware Of Despair – A Coaching Brief

The true meaning of despair is separation from purpose—the sense that you are unable to realize your mission – that there is no way for you to engage in your life affirming purpose.  Two roads cross the juncture of despair. One leads into fatigue, depression and apathy; the other leads to awakening and renewal. The first diminishes the life force; the second rekindles the essence of life.

Cellular energy, biologists tell us, is carried and released by ATP (Adenosine - triphosphate). “ATP is a multi-functional nucleotide that is a carrier of “molecular currency” of intracellular energy transfer. In this role, ATP transports chemical energy within cells for metabolism. It is produced as an energy source during the processes of photosynthesis and cellular respiration.” In short, ATP is the energy potential of the cell. It brings to the cell the energy to engage in its function and do all that it needs to do.

What about you? What gives you energy to engage in your functions and do all that you need to do? What is your whole-person (beyond cellular) ATP?

In our coaching work with high performers they find that their whole-person ATP - the energy potential they can realize and release is a function of Alignment-To-Purpose.  Your whole-person ATP is in your Alignment- and Adherence-To-Purpose.  Despair and depression are the signs of ultimate loss of Alignment To Purpose (ATP). Awakening and renewal are found in reconnection and realignment to purpose.

To acquire cellular ATP, Adenosine – triphosphate, you need a balanced nutrition.

Finding and ongoing-ly calibrating your Alignment-To-Purpose is central to the personal development journey and to the process of coaching. You develop self awareness and insight to what energizes you, to your intuition and to what nourishes your purpose. You get sensitized to the Being and Doing of purpose and discover the relationships of the higher, the lower and the middle. You examine the personal and professional aspects of your life to create and arrange your optimal Living On Purpose.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Nov.16.2008 :: Coaching, Organizational Development, Personal Growth :: No Comments »

Here are a few gems (compiled in brief format) spoken by the people present in our recent Souls On Deck circle – a group of pioneering practitioners, poets, space makers, agents and catalysts of emergence and healing:

“History gets in the way of our aspirations and possibilities.”

Questions from Dale Nienow to reflect on to help us move into presence here and now:

• What do I need to let go of in order for this group to flourish?
• What do you need from this community to show up fully with your gifts?

Series of process Insights:

1. Notice what is going on.
2. Name it. Make us aware.
3. Honor history. Respect the journey.
4. Find where you are meant to be.
5. Attend to emergence.
6. Let go of what holds you back from showing up at full.
7. Create a space for others to flourish without becoming invisible.
8. Tend to legacy.
9. Take care of yourself. Your story matters.
10. Listen to what is spoken. See what we are being shown.

Aviv Shahar :: Nov.15.2008 :: Organizational Development, Relationship :: No Comments »

A response to a crisis follows three phases:
Phase 1: Looking backward – this begins with denial and continues into argument, anger and bargaining.

Phase 2: Looking lost – when anger and bargaining with what was and is no more has been used up, it gives way to confusion. The reference that was used as an anchor is no longer there, and there isn’t a new point of reference yet.  Confusion leads to feeling and looking lost which gradually may lead to surrender.

Phase 3: Looking forward – If the second phase has led to surrender it opens a way up into a third phase. From surrender and acceptance there is a shift toward looking forward, to identifying new opportunities and to adaptive emergence.

Some never go past the first phase. Some stay at the second phase for far too long. Resilience is being able to metabolize from phase one through two and quickly move into the third phase.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Nov.03.2008 :: Innovation, Organizational Development, Personal Growth, Reflections, Tough Times :: No Comments »

The greatest tax increase is neither in McCain’s programs, nor in Obama’s plans.

The greatest tax increase is in the breakdown of communication and civil discourse, the breakdown of trust and the ability to work through differences to find optimal solutions. Breakdown of trust and leadership is going to cost individuals, families, organizations and the economy as a whole, and the consequences will be greater than any tax change we will see under either presidential candidate.

The arts of conversation, of trust building, of open collaboration and of true leadership bring the greatest gains. These are the kind of gains the government cannot penalize. Developing the Three Pillars of Trust and collaboration is the ultimate leverage – it produces dividends that cannot be taxed.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.10.2008 :: Leadership, Money & Market Behavior, Organizational Development :: No Comments »

The greatest leadership act in the world is growing and developing new leaders and then empowering and releasing them to lead.

Leadership development and the management training field have seen many formulas: ‘the 5 steps…’; ‘the six ways…’; ‘the seven, the nine and the twelve of something else’. All these frameworks are good, and they all carry wisdom and powerful teaching, but there are two problems:
The first is that all maps are only an extrapolation of reality.
The second is the formulaic and prescriptive proposition they make.

True, we all have maps in our mind. Even when you say “I don’t have a map,” it only means you don’t have a clear map, you’re not aware of your map, or your map isn’t working or is confusing. That’s the point of downloading new maps. It is a great learning experience. What then is the problem or danger with maps?

It’s called - forcing the map onto the landscape. That is what I did one night when we learned to navigate: I had made a thorough study of the topographic map. I memorized how many steps I’d have to count to the first fork, to then go around the first and second hill and climb the third hill that would appear on my left. It was all in the detailed topographic map.

It was a summer evening and off we went, each leaving for their solo navigation on their own. In the beginning it all looked clear. But then something happened. The turn I was looking for in between two hills did not look exactly how I expected it to look from my study of the map. But then I looked at it again and found a way to justify the landscape, and of course got lost. It’s called forcing the map onto the landscape. We do this all the time. We fight situations by trying to coerce onto them our mental map, and it brings to us grief and distress.  I had to trace back to the point where I started, by which time it was nearly morning. But first I had to let go of the fixation of forcing the map onto the ground reality.

As a leader, maps can help you a lot, but you need something even more important than maps—You need your own compass. You need to know yourself and have the capacity to enter an unknown terrain that has not been mapped, where you draw the map as you walk the terrain. This is the nature of leadership. You find a path forward in a place you have not travelled before. “To lead is to take the next step, to go where you have never gone, to open a way forward into the unknown and the uncharted.”

The best and most impactful leadership programs help leaders find and develop their own compass, sense of vision and direction and offer tools to draw the map as you walk the terrain. In our leadership summits and retreats we take the view that you are unique. Your strengths and success formulas are unique. While all formulas and maps carry helpful teachings, the greater reward is in discovering yourself, and understanding your values, areas of passion, personal capabilities, learning inclinations, energy cycles, and your own way of creating and achieving success. Successful leaders first lead themselves.

The greatest leadership programs are those that help you lead yourself and then help you get on the path of developing leaders around you.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Aug.10.2008 :: Leadership, Organizational Development :: 1 Comment »

Great teams cultivate a culture that encourages internal coaching. People on these teams don’t hold back; they are not political and they do not miss opportunities to get better.

If you are lucky enough to participate in such a team, you know how great it feels. It is one of the most joyous and fulfilling experiences you can have. Executives from our coaching seminars tell us about the excitement of working with winning teams that develop a coaching culture. These teams make them better professionals and help them to continue to grow and develop.

We all get inspired when witnessing a sports team that is moved by something greater; wherein, the individual players surrender to become part of a greater whole that amplifies their individual contribution.

What are the characteristics of a strong coaching culture, where each person is ready to coach and be coached by everyone else on the team? They are the same characteristics of winning teams:

1.    Unified vision and purpose
2.    Willingness to change
3.    Love of learning and growth
4.    Great humor
5.    Fanaticism about collaboration and improvement
6.    Focus on the team output, not on roles
7.    No defensive in the face of learning
8.    Fast recovery and resiliency
9.    Celebrating success and celebrating learning from mistakes
10.    Low on ego, high on results

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Jun.25.2008 :: Coaching, Organizational Development :: No Comments »

Time Magazine article, The Rage to Engage, says that “Engagement is an amorphous concept, but as anyone who ever worked on a team can tell you, it’s critical—the unengaged undermine—even if it’s tough to pin down.”

At the end of a recent “Blue Belt Top Talent” program we gathered with the management team for lunch. People exchanged impressions about their experience and learning and there was a lively feeling around. One of the participants stood up to tell the executives how much she valued the opportunity and what she learned through the program. She concluded by saying: “It is very inspiring to know that the organization in which I make a living is so committed to ensuring that I make a life.”

In a few short days we created a community of purpose, wherein people were energized and committed to act on their values in life and at work. The theory we have been successfully testing for many years with very consistent feedback is that reclaiming our humanness in the work place is good for business; that happier and healthier teams are more resilient and agile, faster to adapt to change and more effective in delivering on goals.  We continue to hear from participants, years after they complete the program, that it feels different to go to work and meet their colleagues, that they are more engaged.

Here are 15 points you can use to assess your own engagement and the engagement of your team. You can evaluate these 15 points to identify strengths and opportunity gaps in the Anatomy of Engagement as it applies to your team. Ask them to grade each of the 15 statements below on the scale from (1) to (10) — (10) representing “very much so” or “always” and (1) representing – “hardly” or “never”.

1. I enjoy open communication with my manager
2. I have a clear understanding of objectives - I know what success looks like
3. My activities are organized to support and deliver on the objectives
4. I see how my work helps the organizational strategy
5. We create trusting relationships at work
6. My job offers me opportunities to express my talent
7. There are great role models in our organization that I try to emulate
8. I am evaluated on how well I deliver on the objectives
9. I am incentivized to deliver great results
10. My job provides me opportunity to grow and learn new skills
11. I have the tools I need to support my work
12. I receive feedback on how my efforts and performance help the company achieve success
13. I value my team members and their individual contributions to our work
14. I am proud of the work we do and how we make the world a better place
15. I enjoy and get energized when I see the people I work with

Ask your team to respond to these statements. You can then discuss this engagement anatomy profile with each person independently or with the team as a whole if appropriate. Here are a few questions you can use to get the debriefing conversation going:
1. Which of the points above got the highest score? What can we learn from these?
2. Where are the lowest scores? What can we learn from these items?
3. What are the differences in how we see our organization and how can we bridge the engagement gaps?
4. What opportunities do we have to improve and cultivate an even greater engagement?
5. What other new ideas can we think about to help strengthen our own engagement as well as the engagement of other stakeholders?
6. If we focus and take one or two things into action - which will have the most impact?

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: May.19.2008 :: Leadership, Organizational Development :: 1 Comment »

This post is dedicated to Jeremy a true Software champion.
Who do you want on your team? Which of these two kinds of individuals is more essential for your success?

A person who never makes a mistake or someone who is able to recover fast from a mistake?
Yes, if we’re talking about a brain surgeon or a structural engineer please give us a meticulous foolproof track record.  In most of life’s situations though, the ability to bounce back from a mistake is even more essential. Life is full of setbacks, twists and turns. Eight times out of ten, I will take resourcefulness, recoverability and resilience over pedantic or even infallible perfection.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: May.16.2008 :: Organizational Development :: No Comments »

The corpus callosum is the largest bundle of nerves in the human body. It connects the two halves of your brain. It helps the right and the left hemispheres of the brain to communicate and coordinate their activity.
As with your brain so is the case with your organization. Certain parts represent and are more inclined to “left brain” functions and other parts are by a greater degree “right brain” inclined. The question is, do they talk to each other? Do they communicate and coordinate well?
It was the surgeon, Joe Bogen and the psychologist, Michael Gazzaniga who discovered that the left and right brain hemispheres have distinct functions. Bogen was trying to help people with epileptic seizures by cutting the corpus callosum. Seizures tend to begin in one spot and spread by chain reaction to the surrounding areas. His idea was to prevent the seizure from spreading to the other side of the brain by severing the corpus callosum. Gazzaniga’s job was to discover the after-effects of a “split-brain”. As with many other great discoveries, the right and left brain localized functions were discovered by accident.
Organizations can suffer epileptic seizures too. It happens when communication breaks down, when finance and R&D, marketing and supply chain, sales and logistics don’t communicate well with other. If the organizational corpus callosum is severed or not functioning and the different functions are fighting each other instead of serving a joint purpose, the organizations can suffer an epileptic arrest.
Your task as a leader is to enable the collaboration and integration of these functions and groups. Here is the leadership challenge:

Are you the corpus callosum of your organization? Do you help and enable the left and right hemispheres to communicate and integrate with each other? Do you facilitate a whole brain organization, where the output is greater than the sum of the individual parts?

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Mar.13.2008 :: Leadership, Organizational Development :: No Comments »

Learning something unique from the participants who attend my seminars is the best part of the work I do. I get to see and experience the world through their eyes. In my recent seminar in Chapala, Mexico we explored the Three Pillars of Trust. This is a powerful module in which we unlock the anatomy of Trust and translate it into practical and pragmatic behavior.

Here is a learning that surfaced in our discussions.  Managers in Mexico shared with me that from their perspective, Latin America is more communal and family oriented than the United States. Therefore, it’s harder for people to trust each other. It sounds counter intuitive but here is how they explain this phenomenon. The US culture promotes independence and individualism where it is clear that each person is in what they do for their own good.  The greater the independence the more critical it is to develop trustful terms of engagement. Developing a culture of trust is in the highest self interest of the individual to be able to transact business and to enable collaboration.

The Latin American culture is not ready to support such independence. The family value structure is strong and the communal bond has great prominence. The inverse (or shadow) side of this is that people are more likely to second guess, distrust and try to manage each other. “The people in logistics try to tell the finance people how to do their job; the finance people try to tell supply chain people how to do their job; supply chain tries to tell marketing how to do their job; marketing tries to tell logistics how to do their job…” and on it goes, instead of trusting that everybody knows their job best and are doing their utmost.

Further, inefficiency, wasted time, bad service, blame and confusion are often the consistent byproducts of lack of trust. As decisions are often being challenged and have to be explained or justified, the workload for all is doubled, more obstacles are placed between deciding and taking action and it takes twice as long to arrive at the desired outcome.

What is the insight about the culture factor of trust? The higher you climb on the development spiral of society and culture the greater the independence and with it the level of trust.

What culture do you work in? Is it trusting or lacking trust? There is no greater multiplier for teamwork effectiveness and speed than a high level of trust. Building a culture of trust in your organization is the transformational key to your competitive advantage and success.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Feb.24.2008 :: Organizational Development, Reflections :: No Comments »