TheLeadershipNotebook

Change vs. Transition

 

“Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.”

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

It’s commencement season. A time of new beginnings. I spent last weekend at the University of Notre Dame, celebrating the graduation of my daughter, Sarah, now a newly minted MBA. Her ND experience included many rigorous classes, late nights and challenging team projects. But it also included meeting great new friends, world travels and much personal growth.

Sarah’s headed back out into the business world as a new “IBM-er.” She’s landed a new job, in a new city, with new many experiences ahead of her.  Plenty of new beginnings, as well as the ending of her ND “career.”

The experience of change that Sarah faces is not so different than what my coaching client, Kevin, now faces. When we first met last month, he had just been promoted to a new senior level position within his company. Kevin has a new job, in a new location with new responsibilities.  Now reporting to the CEO, Kevin is excited for his new role but uncertain about the unfamiliar territory that he finds himself.

We know that personal and organizational changes happen all the time and they can be significant. Typically we focus on the outcome that the change produces. For Sarah and Kevin, each has a new job, in a new environment with new demands.

But for their change to be successful, Sarah and Kevin must go through the necessary process of transition. Transition is the more difficult piece but absolutely essential to successful change.  Whether at the corporate or personal level, we often lose sight of the critical importance of the transition process, focusing on the change itself. 

I wrote about transitions last November, in my article, Successful Transitions: Where Endings Come BEFORE Beginnings. And now that it’s hitting so close to home, I’m reminded of its importance.

Author William Bridges, in his book, Managing Transitions describes each of the three required phases of transition as he helps us chart an effective course for the change. They are:

1. The Ending
2. The Neutral Zone
3. The New Beginning

These phases are not necessarily linear, but for successful change to occur, ironically, Sarah and Kevin must BEGIN with the END. This Ending phase represents the need to recognize the losses and endings associated with the new change.  It’s not typically the change that we object to. It’s the giving up of the current, having to let go of something that is familiar and comfortable.

Here are some recommendations from Bridges as Sarah and Kevin address this Ending phase:

1. Identify the losses you’re feeling as a result of the change. Be specific.
2. Acknowledge the losses openly and sympathetically. Often, it’s not talking about the loss that causes trouble.
3. Define what is over and what is not. One of the most important leadership roles during times of change is that of putting into words what it is time to leave behind. Be specific about what goes and what stays.
4. Mark the endings and show how endings ensure the continuity of what really matters.

Sarah is leaving behind day to day contact with great friends and the lifestyle that accompanies college and graduate school. And when I met with Kevin again last week, we discussed how his Ending included leaving behind the comfort he had with the projects he led and the direct authority he held. Now reporting directly to the CEO, his new role requires less “doing” and more leading and a much more strategic focus. He leads an entirely new team with different personalities and a very different focus. Kevin now realizes that before he could fully launch into his new role, he must address what he was leaving behind.

Commencement season is a time of change and new beginnings. What’s happening in your world? What changes and transitions are you facing? How have you addressed your “endings”? For the individuals you lead, how do you help them work through the process of transition and experience successful change?

We're so proud of Sarah and her accomplishments and have absolute confidence in her ability to successfully navigate this change and the process of transition that it requires.

 

To your success,

Mary

 

When Widening the Gap is a Good Thing

 

“Between stimulus and response there is a space.

In that space is our power to choose our response.

 In our response lies our growth and our freedom”

~ Victor Frankl

 

In the world of personal and professional development, I work with clients to reduce the gap between their current “soft” skills and the new skills required for them to be the leader they want to be.  Our focus on narrowing the gap is a good thing.

But when it comes to managing stress and our often impulsive responses to stress, widening the gap is always our desired focus. The gap I’m referring to is the time between the occurrence of a trigger or stressful event and our response. It’s the difference between saying what your emotions can drive you to say in the moment and the thoughtful response that comes from being mindful of what you’re feeling and why. It’s our brain that literally get’s “hijacked” in such stressful situations.

 

Daniel Goleman, author of numerous books on emotional and social intelligence, describes the brain’s response in this way:

“When we’re stressed, the part of the brain that takes over, the part that reacts the most, is the circuitry that was originally designed to manage threats—especially circuits that center on the amygdala, which is in the emotional centers of the brain.

The amygdala is the trigger point for the fight, flight, or freeze response. When these circuits perceive a threat, they flood the body with stress hormones that do several things to prepare us for an emergency. Blood shunts away from the organs to the limbs; that’s the fight or flee.

But the response is also cognitive—and, in modern life this is what matters most, it makes some shifts in how the mind functions. Attention tends to fixate on the thing that is bothering us, that’s stressing us, that we’re worried about, that’s upsetting, frustrating, or angering us. That means that we don’t have as much attentional capacity left for whatever it is we’re supposed to be doing or want to be doing.

In addition, our memory reshuffles its hierarchy so that what’s most relevant to the perceived threat is what comes to mind most easily—and what’s deemed irrelevant is harder to bring to mind. That, again, makes it more difficult to get things done than we might want. Plus, we tend to fall back on over-learned responses, which are responses learned early in life—which can lead us to do or say things that we regret later. It is important to understand that the impulses that come to us when we’re under stress—particularly if we get hijacked by it—are likely to lead us astray.

 

That’s why it’s so important to widen the gap between an impulse and our action.

The tool I use with my clients to remind them of this habit is referred to as PAR: Pause, Assess and only then, Respond. My clients learn to become mindful, in the moment, BEFORE responding and reflect on what they’re feeling and why. This practice can lead to a more thoughtful, measured response that is more likely to create a better or more productive outcome.

Try PAR in your daily practice and let me know what you think.

To your success,

Mary

 

 

 

Elevating Your Game

 

I’ve always been passionate about sports, especially basketball. So when my daughters were in grades 5 through 8, I had the honor of helping to coach their youth basketball teams. Some of the years our teams resembled the “Bad News Bears,” in others, we made a deep tournament run. My goal was always to have fun, teach and maybe win along the way. Helping the athletes improve their skills, gel as a team and mirror the realities of life’s ups and downs? Priceless.

When my kids got to high school, the “pros” took over. Regardless of the sport, I noted with fascination the coach’s power and influence over the girls’ confidence, desire to perform and team dynamics. When focused on the positive, the kids and the teams responded. When the coach was demoralizing or focused on winning at all cost, the results went in the opposite direction.

Somewhere during those years, I became a member of a fledgling organization called the Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA). I was drawn to its mission to transform the youth sports culture to foster positive, character-building experiences.

For some reason, I've retained my membership. And I was blown away when yesterday I received my annual report. Over the years, the organization has blossomed, with its board members now including the likes of LA Lakers Coach Phil Jackson, the NBA’s Shane Battier, soccer star Julie Foudy, and Hall of Fame QB Steve Young. They have witnessed the power of positive coaching in the youth community and want to continue its spread.

PCA has board members from the business world, too: Chip Heath, author of Switch, Marsha Dweck, author of Mindset and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who wrote Flow. And there’s even a representative from the accounting profession, Mark Edmunds, vice chair of Deloitte, who says in the annual report that “Deloitte wants to help PCA change the world.”

Amazing. The organization with one local office 11 years ago now has nine regional offices across the country. They’ve trained more than 430,000 parents, coaches and youth organization leaders, and have impacted more than 4 million youth.

What’s this got to do with those of us in the business community? PCA has elevated its game over the years by focusing on six different principles:

Effort as a Habit: Teaching the athletes that setbacks are inevitable and you can respond to them with renewed effort. Success comes from effort over time.

Mistakes: You can never be your best if you fear mistakes. If you’re afraid of making mistakes, you will play tentatively. Tentative players usually get beat.

Leadership for Everyone: In high-performing teams, everyone acts to move the team forward. An emotional commitment to your team’s success qualifies you to play a leadership role.

Impact: There are no easy jobs with big impact. If you want a stress-free life, recognize you probably won’t have much impact.

Appreciate: Life goes by quickly, so make time to appreciate the daily joys of life.

These look like leadership lessons to me. Not to mention the fact that these young athletes are our future leaders. What do you think? How can you elevate your game? Has PCA been involved in your community?

To your success,

Mary

 

 

Assess. Predict. Perform.

 

I’m really excited. I just got back from New York City. I attended a launch meeting for the next generation of the emotional intelligence assessment that I use in my executive coaching and consulting practice. The new and improved EQi 2.0 has the same scientific reliability and validity as its predecessor, but has several significant updates that make the instrument an even better predictor of human performance.

Now you know why I’m excited.

Those who know me and the background of my coaching and consulting work with leaders, know that I’m passionate about helping my clients develop their EQ, recruit successful candidates and retain current high performers. I utilize EQ for good reason. Emotional intelligence has proven to be a key indicator of human performance and development potential.

For those who may not be familiar with emotional intelligence, it’s a set of emotional and social skills that influence the way we:

• perceive and express ourselves;
• develop and maintain social relationships;
• cope with challenges, and;
• use emotional information in an effective and meaningful way

These skills, like self regard, self awareness, empathy and assertiveness to name a few, are the cornerstone of effective leadership practices. And there’s lots of data supporting this assertion.

When they embarked on enhancements to the assessment, MHS, the developer of the EQi 2.0, obtained feedback from over 700 coaches, consultants, academics and business professionals for the purpose of making an already great assessment, an outstanding assessment. And based on what I learned at the meeting, I’m confident my clients will reap the benefits of these enhancements.

So what’s holding you back? Why not take advantage of this outstanding tool to help you take your performance or the performance of your organization to the next level? I love to quote the words of former GE CEO, Jack Welch:

“No doubt emotional intelligence is more rare than book smarts,

but my experience says it is actually more important in the making of a leader.

You just can’t ignore it.”

 

To your success,

Mary