I first met X when she was underemployed. Well, not underemployed, exactly, but under-supported. X could organize the second coming while unconscious. She seemed to breathe a different atmosphere than others, slaying the dragon of obstructive and nonsensical insurance regulations like some kind of Jedi knight. While others slogged through complicated decisions line-by-line, getting ever more confused, X never lost her footing. She seemed to intuit the right answer in a flash. Then she would explain her reasoning to the rest of us in a single sentence, and we’d see the clear path of her reasoning. Agree or disagree, it made perfect sense.

X was chafing for a bigger field to play in, a place she could make a bigger difference. Her boss chose not to give her that chance.

X quit, choosing to believe in herself. She chose to believe that her skills and her vision belonged on a bigger playing field, and that she would find it. She had no idea where to look. It was hard to leave what she’d spend years creating.

She consulted, took an interim job, consulted some more. She stayed restless and dissatisfied, and questioned daily her decision to leave the safety of what she’d created for the vagaries of what she believed could be. In the middle of this, the recession hit hard with its high unemployment and dearth of opportunities. I felt a little bad for encouraging her to follow her star.

But X is a fighter.

Last night we had dinner together and she told me about her new gig, doing what she alone can do, fully supported and appropriately compensated. It’s huge, what she’s bitten off.

The story of X reminds me of Kenneth Atchity’s three rules of time management:

Don’t do anything that doesn’t need to be done.
Don’t do anything that someone else will do if you stop doing it.
Only do what only you can do.

X is the right one to get this done. I can’t wait for updates.

Lately, I’ve been watching people in their lives, noticing the difference between those who are successful and happy, and those who are less so. It looks to me like the more successful ones have learned to surf their anxiety better. Not that they are more talented, or smarter – they are simply more able to show up every day and learn from their mistakes, which they court rather than try to avoid. They manage to keep inching forward, a little more each day. Perhaps this is what Woody Allen meant when he said “90% of success is just showing up.” Or Edison when he said “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”

Just yesterday, I was talking to local luthier, Kenny Hill. We were in his shop where he was working on a copy of a 1856 Torres classical guitar. He was telling me about his process, and how the historical copies he made taught him the principles he used in his modern, experimental line of guitars. To make a long story short, he viewed the whole thing as one continuous mistake: he tried things and then, if he liked them, he tried to sell them. If they sold, he turned the design over the his assistants and they made them in bigger quantities. Sometimes he’d put a guitar away for months or years, thinking it was a lost cause only to take it off the shelf and be surprised by what was there. The whole process seemed to bemuse him, which fascinated me, because his guitars are highly prized by classical guitarists all over the world.

It got me to thinking about the things we show up for at work everyday: The tasks, the mission, the people. And about how all of them can lose their luster over time due to boredom or frustration. It’s painful to invest ourselves in something or someone and not get what we worked so hard for. So, like Kenny with a guitar that isn’t working, we put it away for awhile and focus our attention elsewhere. Kenny comes back to his “failed” guitars with curiosity and the soul of an inventor: what can I learn? Edgar Schein calls this “accessing your ignorance” and considers it a cornerstone of effective consulting.

That got me thinking about how we stop showing up. How we decide the guitar, the person, the situation is a failure, and not worth further attention, and leave it on the shelf. The key seems to being willing to change our preconceptions and learn to approach our guitars – the situation or the people in our lives – differently.  To approach from the perspective of what I don’t know, rather than all I’m certain of through previous painful experience.  To let go of my wounded – and wounding – certainty.

I used to joke about combining these two quotes, “Follow your bliss” and “Ignorance is bliss,” saying if both are true, then following your ignorance must be surest path to bliss.

Well, yeah.

________________________
Add your voice to the conversation.

Bowen family systems theory has colonized my thoughts for the last couple of months. Psychiatrist Murray Bowen spent his career creating a more scientific framework for psychology. His framework is radically different from what I’ve been used to, and is causing a fair amount of soul-searching on my part. I’m finding this journey riveting.

Bowen theory (the short version)
In a nutshell, Bowen believes that all groups – families, teams, organizations – form systems based on the anxiety that arises when choosing between our ’self’ and belonging to the group. We pass this anxiety around like a cold: Someone is always infected. In Bowen’s view, our role in this system determines our behavior more than our personal characteristics. Unless and until I’m willing to stop reacting to that underlying anxiety and choose a response that takes everybody’s needs into account – mine included. In this view, autocratic behavior is just another word for anxiety. Always being the one to stay late and do something for a client or the team is too.

What to do about it (in general)
In his approach, you stay connected with everyone in the system and maintain your own integrity. It’s not either-or, it’s both-and. You don’t join others at your expense and you don’t take your marbles and go home. This is not the comfortable choice. It’s more like a crucible out of which comes maturity and growth, not just for you, but for the whole system. But it’s not you righteously modeling a behavior you want others to adopt – it’s you choosing your path and sticking with it while staying connected and available to others, despite the flack they are giving you. You listen, and you connect, and you decide what to do about what others are telling you. This requires thoughtfulness and commitment without shutting others out. Bowen calls this differentiation.

An Example
The best example I can think of is having someone edit your writing. It’s your writing – you are the author. It’s your voice, your point of view, your self-expression. You are the final decision-maker. The editor gives you her opinion, often quite forcefully. As you take it in, you are beset with many thoughts: This editor is an idiot, she doesn’t get me at all. Or: This editor is an expert, I’d better do exactly what she says or my piece won’t be any good. With experience, you know that a good night’s sleep will allow a third voice to enter the conversation in your head: Some of these suggestions are great, even though they’ll require re-working entire sections. Some of them seem picayune, so I’ll ignore them, and other seem over-zealous, and appear to miss my point. I’ve got to talk those over with her.

Bowen’s theory explains so much of what I see in myself and in my clients. And it explains it in a way that doesn’t fence anyone in, which is why I love it. Trouble is, I don’t yet know how to apply it. That’s the tricky thing about theory: No user manual. So, into the lab we go. Let the experiments begin.

What to do about it (the specifics)
Decisions are anxiety-laden. Even simple decisions get complicated by the underlying emotional process that glues us together. It goes like this: I think the decision is mine alone to make and you think I should have consulted you. The leaders I coach often find themselves in this dilemma. They want to build a team, and they want to control the decisions for which they are held responsible. It looks unsolvable, and to some extent it is. By that I mean it’s a dilemma that never goes away. There is no one-size-fits-all approach which means you have to think your way through each decision. Analyze it to see which parts involve others and which are your alone. When we are reactive and wanting primarily to reduce our anxiety, we get this wrong.

Each decision has two aspects: What’s mine alone to decide, and what involves someone else. If I slow my automatic reaction down and go step-by-step, this distinction pops out. When I react automatically, I miss it. They key is to refuse to choose between them and me.

I’ll give you a universal example: A client wants the impossible, and right now. I want to go home on time and have dinner with my friends and play music. On the surface my evening looks doomed. I seem to have been presented with an either or decision: either I do what the client wants, or I have my evening. It’s that self vs. other dilemma. If the client is senior to me, I know what I have to do, at least that’s what our anxious mind says. Or, I may be so angry at these requests and the sacrifices I’ve made to honor them, that I simply say no.

The third way
Virginia Satir, another pioneer in the systems approach to groups, advised her students to never leave their clients with only two choices. She advocated te power of the third way, believing the third option is what took a client out of reactivity and into authentic choice.

The third option in the above situation stands a much better chance of satisfying each of you. Here’s one way it might sound: “I’ve got a dilemma: You want me to stay late tonight to work on this and I have plans I cherish and want to keep. How can we both get what we want?” Your job in the ensuing conversation is to refuse to choose between your needs and their needs. Do not settle for less than meeting both of your needs. This requires you to immunize yourself against their anxiety and increase your tolerance for discomfort – theirs and yours. The pay-off is a stronger relationship with your client, a better solution to the current dilemma, and the delicious surge of energy that comes from standing up to anxiety.

I’m very curious to know what you think about this. What’s your experience with the third way? And, because I’m writing on a topic I’m still digesting, I wonder if I’m making sense. I welcome your feedback.

For those of you who receive this by email, here’s a link to the blog post so you can leave a comment. Scroll down a little to the comment box.

I’ve had a wonderful, refreshing break, and I’m baaaaccck!  Picking up where I left off, the topic is still the mystery we call  groups and group process.  This weekend I had the chance to observe groups at work.  I was struck by these two in particular:

GROUP 1: The 10 group members were excruciatingly polite, walking on eggshells, careful not to offend.  Some focused on making themselves known while taking up quite a bit of airtime; others held back, waiting for a place to jump in.    Some made little speeches, advocating their point of view.  Some talked about their feelings.   Those who advocated a point of view did nothing to invite others into dialog with them.  Those who talked about their feelings did not ask others how they felt.  It was like the dialog in a Woody Allen movie:  serial presentations that do not relate to the presentation that went before it.   They looked at each other, then looked down at their copy of the article they were discussing.   They wanted to connect, or so it seemed.   Their process began to look excruciatingly political:  12 people looking for a leader, or permission to become a leader or perhaps vying to become a leader.  It was hard to tell.    At the 20-minute mark, each of them closed the magazine with the article and began to focus exclusively on each other.  At the last minute, one group member posed an open ended question to the group and didn’t answer it herself.   The timekeeper signalled the end of the meeting.

GROUP 2: The group of 3 was busy deciding what to write on the flip chart.  Each of them was clear what was expected of their group:  To tell the rest of the group the key points of the article they’d read the night before.  They were all looking primarily at the flipchart one of them was writing on, and they were contending with each other.  Their progress was rapid, their interactions crisp and focused.  They contended easily and openly about the meaning of what they’d read, and about which points to convey.  In 10 minutes, they were finished with their task, energized and a bit feisty.

I wonder if you’ve seen – or been in – groups like these two.  How do you account for the differences between them?  You can let us know in the comments below.  Thanks for chiming in.

Last week, a client emailed me asking for help with facilitation skills. So, I went to youtube.com thinking I could find some high quality training videos in a jiffy. Nope. I found a lot of folks slinging lingo and jousting with jargon, but I didn’t find anyone who could talk about facilitation without slipping into one of two traps:

1. Drowning me in a blizzard of meaningless buzzwords until the room started to spin. If I’d been near an open window, I’d have jumped. Gleefully.

2. Standing in the front of the room with a marker saying things like, “Yes! Action is doing something – very good!” followed by “That’s it! We need a process to do something. You’d be amazed at how many leaders do not understand the need for process.” It was like day care in hell.

I love facilitating meetings, and I was bored to distraction. I know many of the people in those videos love meeting facilitation and the magic of groups too. What is it that makes us so tongue-tied about this key leadership skill? Why do we either bury it in corpo-speak or find ourselves making ringing proclamations of the obvious. Either way, why do we sound like such nitwits?

Because facilitating a meeting is simple. It’s so simple, it doesn’t seem possible that all that power could come from something so simple. So, we over-complicate it with lofty talk or overstate it’s simplicity with an almost psychotic passion.

Wanting to comes first
The raison d’etre of every meeting to to motivate a group of individuals to join forces to get something done. To be come something more than a collection of individuals. It’s not convincing them. It’s not persuading them. It’s not leading them. It’s not making it happen, because motivating someone else isn’t possible. They must motivate themselves. Motivation comes from wanting to do something. Group motivation comes from individuals connecting with each other – igniting each other until they are a great, roaring bonfire. Without the “want to,” you’ve got nothing. In the case of many meetings, you’ve got quite a bit less than nothing as group members spend time getting over the barren wasteland of meeting after meeting without even a spark.

All of which means that meetings are about letting a group talk themselves into wanting to do what needs to be done. That’s best done by asking for their help figuring out how to do it, then getting out of the way while they ignite each other. You’d best be ignited first, either with excitement or frustration or doubt, it doesn’t much matter which. A group that catches fire turns all of those into fuel.

Let’s say you’ve got a group with a little free-floating rage. Nothing too terrible, just a little, you know, frustration, marked by an inability to move on, perhaps for years. You can try the old chestnut where you list all the issues, declare them in the past and agree never to speak of them again. Except you’ve just spent 30-60 (or more!) minutes reinforcing the complaints and negativity, amping up the limbic system and reinforcing the very neuronal paths you want to extinguish. Probably not the best approach. And, saying “you can’t talk about that” just drives them underground. Besides, you want these complaints as a springboard for problem-solving. What you need is a way to hold them differently, a way to create some transformation space around them. Here are two ideas:

1. Have pairs, trios or some other subgroup create skits depicting the frustrating situation then follow that up with one depicting the situation as they’ like it to be. Ideally, you’d ask them to do something creative with this: act it out as if everyone were animals, do a group sculpture showing the relative position of everyone in the drama, perform a song, limerick or haiku – something that engages a different part of the brain than the part that’s stuck. Watch all the performances, then, in the debrief, use the positive version as a spring board for action planning.

2. Rework the board game CLUE! This is riskier, faster, high-energy fun. Have the group generate new CLUE! solutions based on the frustrating situation. You can prime the pump by making the following three lists:
Places (can include virtual places)
Categories of people (probably job titles)
Murder weapons (these can be objects or behaviors)

After you’ve had the group list all three, have them generate new solutions in this format:
It was (category of person) in the (place) with a (murder weapon).

Examples:
It was the executive in the boardroom with a powerpoint
It was HR in the computer with an email

After they’ve had their fun with others, have them generate some more, this time using this format:

It was the team member in the (place) with the (murder weapon).

This gives the group a fun and easy way to make the shift from blaming others to seeing their own culpability and returning them to a sense of personal power. Productive action planning follows naturally.

First came the desire. After the desire came the giddy excitement. After the excitement came the clear goals. After the goals, the false starts. After the false starts, the shame. After the shame came the mean voices. After the mean voices, terror descends like a visit from the dysfunctional family you moved across the country to avoid. Their voices reverberate through the house, explaining in detail why every idea you’ve ever had cannot work. Your excitement evaporates, the desire begins to seem like a weakness or a character flaw. The garage that’s been a mess for 17 years becomes the most important task on earth: You must clean it, now. The exciting project can wait. The oscillation has set in: excitement, fear, distraction, shame, self-criticism; Repeat. It’s exhausting to stay in one place. We are built for movement, no matter what Uncle Harry whispers to Aunt Agnus as they roll their eyes and smirk.

This is the cycle I see in my clients. The project they start, humbly, in the small corner of the organization that is theirs somehow becomes the center of the universe, and a threat to its orderly existence. So, they stop cold, disappointing those who had been relying on their leadership.

This is the cycle I experience myself, never more than this year when I declared that I would publish.

It does seem that the bolder and more clear the goal, the more fierce is the resistance to it. Thing is, resistance is merely a sign of anxiety, and anxiety is like sweat: A by-product. It’s not feedback. It’s not a warning of dire consequences to come. It doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong or you should stop. It means you’re doing. That’s it. Anxiety is the by-product of change like sweat is the by-product of exercise. And, just like sweat, you brush anxiety out of your eyes and keep going.

If you pause for too long, you’ll start to believe the voices you hear. If you linger longer, what the voices whisper will become the truth of you experience. Uncle Harry and Aunt Agnes will nod in that irritating way they have.

Instead, find a way to keep moving toward your desire. Here’s what I do:

1. Pick a smaller goal, a tiny, insignificant first step. I want to write, right? I know that when I set that intention, the ideas start popping up at the most inconvenient times. So my first tiny step was to make sure I had post-it notes and a pen everywhere I might need them: in the car, in the bathroom, next to the bed, in my gym bag. A tiny step, so easy to do, it engenders no resistance. It’s even kinda fun.

2. Resolve to do it badly. Really badly. Epically, catastrophically badly. Like the grammar of those last 2 sentences. Annie Lamott encourages her students to write a “shitty first draft.” Years ago I read about a group of friends who got together weekly for “bad art night.” Their goal was to have fun creating. Their one rule was that anyone who got into turning their art piece into a thing of quality had to immediately “wreck” it.

3. Get help. When your mind like a rat wheel. going over and over the same info, but getting nowhere, it’s time to get help. Talk to someone. Think out loud. Find a forum online and post an inquiry. Hire someone to help you. I was struggling with a vexing pellet stove problem that’s gone on for 2 years. No one I’ve talked to could help me. I read, posted to forums, brooded and froze all last winter without heat. The other day, I was talking to a neighbor and he suggested the approach I’ll be trying next week. It was a much better idea than the one I’d settled on and was avoiding. Now I’m excited and energized.

4. Pick much larger goal, one that shocks all mean voices to silence. No, bigger than that. Really, it should crack you up with it’s audacity. If it’s crazy enough, it will make you smile inside. It’s important that you have no idea how to accomplish it.

5. Take a walk. If I don’t sweat profusely at least 4 times a week, I’m overrun with stress. In order to move forward toward my goals, I’ve got to be spending myself physically. It gives me energy and it shows me how inexhaustible my source is. It orders my thoughts too.

6. Do something you’ve always wanted to do, but were afraid to. Maybe it seems frivolous, or you could never be a person who does that, or you can’t possibly learn it. Then do it. Sometimes, the nasty voices become so involved with saving you from that crazy endeavor, it’s easier to evade them on other topics.

I still remember buying my first tambourine. I’d fallen in love with the middle eastern style of playing and gone to a workshop to try it out. I became so besotted, I bought a professional quality, beginner’s tambourine for $75.00. All through the long drive home, I heard my mother’s voice saying “75 dollars for a TAMBOURINE?” For some reason, this cracked me up and a talked and joked with that voice all the way home, Years later when I bought a tambourine costing 10 times that much, mom had nothing more to add.

When the going gets tough, I write haiku. Personal haiku, political haiku, random haiku – I find it soothing to take something overwhelming and pack up all its punch in only 17 syllables. This week, I’ve been seeing the effects of fear everywhere I look, including the mirror. These 6 haiku are as much for me as for my clients and friends. Hope you enjoy them.

#1
Can’t do this, Can’t do
that. Start, stop, start, stop. Afraid.
That’s no way to lead.

#2
Start strong, keep going.
Shadows follow, never lead.
They cannot catch you.

#3
Do too little, do
too much, gossip, distance, blame.
Anxiety sucks.

#4
Tired? Stuck? Fear has
you. Get up! Energy comes
from movement, not thought.

#5
Wanting to rush through
I slow down. Key points I miss
now bite me later.

#6
Natural to push,
threaten, shout in times like these.
Counterproductive.

One of my coaching clients told me about a moment of such consulting brilliance that I had to share. She manages the workflow of an internal advertising agency. Her daily bread is the impossible deadline: A brochure takes 3 weeks, the account manager wants it in 3 days, because the client needs it. I’ve been infiltrating her organization with The Anxious Organization, by Jeffrey Miller, and reinforcing his basic message: Responding to another’s anxiety with your own anxiety makes everyone more crazy. Better to calmly stand for what’s correct, proper and factual. That way everyone calms down and can think more clearly.

So, she gets one of these crazy requests, with an added detail: the event the brochure is meant to support is in 3 days. So, she calmly says: “A brochure like that takes 3 weeks. Tell your client that and ask if they still want the brochure. If they do, we’ll be happy to produce it.”

Pure genius.

The message behind the words is this: “We want to help, we say yes to the brochure and yes to you and your client, and we say no to the deadline.” The effect of calmly pointing out the obvious is that everyone relaxes and is able to focus on the real issue: The client needs something in 3 days and it can’t be a brochure. Problem-solving ensues. If I’m the client, I might say “What can you get me in 3 days?” And, if I were my client, I might say “What are you hoping to accomplish?” Horse-trading ensues, this time about real needs rather than imaginary solutions.

She could have said: “3 days? Are you crazy? We can’t do a brochure in 3 days! We can’t do it.” And waited for the call from her boss’s boss’s boss, telling her to do it anyway. That’s the usual response to saying no the work, the account manager and the client.

She could have said “That’s an impossible deadline. We’ll do what we can,” and delivered the brochure in 3 weeks, while being hounded by the account manager and the client, and damaging her organization’s credibility. We’ve all heard the lie meant to soothe: The check is in the mail. Your new kitchen will be ready in 2 weeks. I’m from HR, I’m here to help.

The key is this: Say no to the crazy deadline, the idea that will make things worse, the plan that is doomed. But say yes the to person, the relationship, the goal, the inspiration, the aspiration, the ideal, the desire, the yearning that led them to make such a hair-brained request in the first place. That’s where the home run is, lurking just under the request that makes you want to scream.

Think of the client or the request you most want to say no to. Separate out the part you will say no to from the part you can authentically support. Treat them separately, and speak the unanxious truth to both. In the midst of all the noes you must say, what can you say yes to?

Christine Kane calls gratitude “the ultimate bringer of more. It is the ultimate releaser of drama.” This article from Pepperdine University links expressing gratitude to increased cardiovascular and immune function as well as increased optimism and success. Martin Seligman’s research suggests that a daily practice of gratitudes is as effective at combating depression as cognitive therapy and anti-depressants combined.

So, why not use it for a team that’s running on fumes and could use some encouragement? Why not use it to sustain your high-performing team? It’s easy, uplifting and fun to replace whining, complaining and gossiping with appreciation, gratitude and counting your blessings.

This attitude of gratitude icebreaker comes in two flavors: face-to-face and virtual.

Face-to-face: At the start of your meeting (team, project, staff, annual planning – any meeting) ask everyone to list 3 things they’re grateful for in the last 24 hours. Then go around the room having each person read their list. That’s it. The real pay-off is in doing it every time you meet, making it your practice.

Virtual: Send a group email to your team every morning, listing three things you’re grateful for in the last 24 hours. Ask each of them to do the same and watch the positive momentum build.

I’ve been doing the virtual version for the last month with members of my business group, the BUGs. It’s made a huge difference: I’m not interested in finding things to complain about anymore. Instead, I find I’m focused on making each experience something I can be grateful for which is so much more fun! The practice has made me much more creative – more of a problem solver – and much more peaceful. I’m more optimistic too. Try it with your team and let me know how it goes.