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I have just returned from a week’s vacation in sunny Portugal. The heat and beauty of the tranquil setting we inhabited for seven days was sufficient to allow my mind to completely relax from the pressures and worries of building a business back at home. I found myself smiling and joking at the most mundane and inane things relaxed and comfortable in my own skin.

I have been feeling pressure lately to prove myself to myself. I have lost some of my and sparkle and joie de vivre. Everything I have looked at or entertained lately seems to have taken on a particular grey hue.  I was tired.

Getting away was perhaps a symbolic act for time out or time away from what I spend most of my energy doing on a daily basis and it spoke to me when so often I suggest the same to my clients for their weekly work regimes. Time out or time for reflection doesn’t get as much currency as I think it ought.

 I was recently facilitating three separate conversations with members of the same team and each group lamented the lack of time for reflection and space to re-engineer projects before delivery. Curiously they allowed time for learning after the completion of a project, which was commendable, but little time in project flow. It seems that inadvertently we contribute to our own overwhelm.

I am curious to know who ever invented the 40 hour work week (normally blown) and 48/50 week work effort on an annual basis.  It seems too much. Certainly after working almost continuously for six straight months now I am showing the need for more not less rest. Am I a lightweight? Do I not cut it anymore as an executive striving for success; have I lost it, whatever it is exactly?
I am minded to think of my own running schedule which encourages rest days and light days for recovery. Sensibly I stick to this regime knowing that despite myself I am less prone to injury, staleness and fatigue. I mind my performance and schedule in rest religiously. How come the same regime does not apply with respect to work?

For now I am simply responding to the demands being made of me and filling in the others hours of the day guilty as charged.  It seems that my work ethic does not script rest.

A shame or a luxury then that is takes the going away on a holiday to serve as a reminder of the need for rest and recovery.  R&R takes on a whole new reflection at least for me!

Yesterday was a seminal day for me. I finally got closure on an issue I had been grappling with for more than 18 months. The choice to surrender and let go in the moment was excruciatingly difficult.  All of me was shouting to resist, fight on and get my story heard. I felt that in settling I was being muffled and made to feel small yet again!

The choice to fight on was appealing in that I was holding on to the attachment of winning and being right. The choice to make a deal and surrender in the moment was less appealing and seemingly more difficult because I was relinquishing control and or deciding for myself without relying on an external force or people to do the deciding for me.

It is amazing to me how helpful yet how difficult it is to let go. We hear the refrain all the time and it sounds so deliciously easy yet it is not. I think it is because the notion or action of letting go is inextricably linked to very definite psychological obstacles. From a psychological vantage point one explanation for the difficulty of letting go has to do with early life experiences around trust and faith. Trust and faith, it seems, are prerequisites to letting go and surrender.

There are strong correlations between the nature of one’s relationship with early authority figures and one’s present day capacity to trust or have faith in something greater than one’s self. With a less than healthy orientation towards authority figures we learn to rely on our own steely reserve. This however can prove detrimental and insufficient. At best it is one dimensional. In such cases, trusting that it is safe to let go of your perception of a situation, or your seeming sense of control, is understandably, very difficult.

Another element is the condition or conditional need for attachment.

The psychiatrist and author, David R. Hawkins, offers a powerful distinction, noting that we are not attached to the thing in question, but to attachment itself. What that means psychologically is that we are attached to the satisfaction of the resentment, the satisfaction of seemingly being in control, the satisfaction of our perceptions of ourselves and others.

 
So what is the upside in letting go and in surrendering if as this author subscribes there is a lot of satisfaction to be derived from being “in control”

This answer is purely personal but from yesterdays experience it seems that letting go yields a release of pain, a satisfaction that I took responsibility for my decision and I was not beholden to any external authority. I took what was in reality a tough choice but I made it all the same.

My choice now is not to beat myself over the ever vexing question “what if”
If I can manage that then I conclude I will have let go.

It is with regret that I heard of the death of C. K Prahalad on the 16th of April 2010. He was a formidable contributor to the thinking on Leadership and management. We are indepted to him for his work and passion around his chosen subject.

I had the pleasure of meeting C. K Prahalad back in 2004 when he spoke at the IMI conference in Killarney here in Ireland. In fact I bumped into him while he was being positioned for a photo opportunity for the Irish Times. I did hear him speak over the course of the conference and was wowed by his temerity, audacity and humility in speaking about leadership. I had read about him whilst I was I studying for an MBA at Trinity College Dublin in 2002. I was to read his many tombs on Leadership. I have my favourites, the HBR article he co-wrote with Gary Hamel, Core Competence and the Corporation, 1990 and later Competing for the Future 1994 again written with Gary Hamel.

I ate his words, literally,  and no doubt regurgitated or churned  out in some fashion his various thoughts and ideas for management; I wholly prescribed to his thinking.

 
Last week I wrote about unconditional responsibility and the need for it in our everyday and working lives. I also commented that assuming responsibility for our actions is not easy and that taking the victim role can be more enticing.

It is interesting to observe that every year for 33 years C. K Prahalad spoke to his MBA class about the importance of responsibility and such was his conviction that he did not change a single word in the text of his speech.
Some of his thoughts are included here for your digestion, re-written so as not to violate copyright.

• C. K Prahalad extolled his students to understand the importance of nonconformity. Leadership is about change, hope, and the future. Leaders have to venture into uncharted territory, so they must be able to handle intellectual solitude and ambiguity.
• He asked his students to display a commitment to learning and developing themselves. Leaders must invest in themselves. If you aren’t educated, you can’t help the uneducated; if you are sick, you can’t minister to the sick; if you are poor, you can’t help the poor.
•  He also asked that his students develop the ability to put personal performance in perspective. Over a long career, you will experience both success and failure. Humility in success and courage in failure are hallmarks of a good leader.
•  Equally he was quick to suggest that they be ready to invest in developing other people. Be unstinting in helping your colleagues realize their full potential.
• Learn to relate to those who are less fortunate. Good leaders are inclusive, even though that isn’t easy. Most societies have dealt with differences by avoiding or eliminating them; few assimilate those who aren’t like them.
• Be concerned about due process. People seek fairness—not favors. They want to be heard. They often don’t even mind if decisions don’t go their way as long as the process is fair and transparent.
• And of course the point I loved was this one; Assume responsibility for outcomes as well as for the processes and people you work with. How you achieve results will shape the kind of person you become.

There were many more sage comments in his paper that contributed to his view that Leadership is a responsible process not to be entered lightly or without due care. 
The responsible manager article was written in the Harvard Business Review in Jan/February of this year, 2010. C.K Prahalad was commenting on the much commentary being given to the debate on the roles and responsibilities of leaders and managers in the tsunami of the financial crisis we continue to witness since October 2008.  Essentially C.K Prahalad was reminding us once again of the need for responsibility and that we should be mindful of the values we espouse on a daily basis.

 
I cannot attempt to do justice to such a great thinker but simply say I am grateful for his contribution and respectful of his significant role in the realm of leadership.  His thoughts on responsibility are prescient.  Thank you C. K Prahalad.

I am preparing some material for a workshop I am hosting in a couple of weeks related to personal responsibility and accountability. It struck me in writing my notes and in preparing my slides how insidious the victim stance really is. I am not surprised that people succumb to being the victim and blaming the circumstances they find themselves in a bid to protect their innocence rather than take the more challenging stance of the player.

I am using the archetypes Victim and Player as described by Fred Koffman in his book Conscious Business. He describes succinctly and tellingly the many reasons why people find it hard to behave with unconditional responsibility be it at work or at home. The chapter opens with a quote which I think is very apt.

“The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man takes everything as either a blessing or a curse”     Don Juan, Yaqui Shaman

We are not conditioned or accustomed to owning up to our contribution to things. From childhood we protect ourselves from punishment or the withdrawal of privileges by extolling our innocence in events. “The milk spilt” or “It wasn’t me” are common refrains.

Koffman speaks about the difference between victim behaviour and player behaviour in his exposition of unconditional responsibility. He defines responsibility as our “ability” to respond to circumstances by putting ourselves into the equation not standing off from the circumstances. He is quick to acknowledge that it takes courage to adopt the player stance that is, someone willing to look at every situation as a place where he or she played a role in the outcome.

He is also quick to point out that adopting a player stance in life is not about getting what you want or succeeding. It is not some mumbo jumbo or omnipotent mindset that prevails but a considered approach that yields results in better relationships, damage limitation and ultimately a person’s integrity.

 
“Ability to respond does not mean ability to succeed. There is no guarantee that what you do will yield what you want. The guarantee is that as long as you are alive and conscious you can respond to your circumstances in pursuit of your happiness. This power to respond is a defining feature of humanity”
Behaving as a victim, blaming everything and everyone except yourself is enticing in that it protects your apparent innocence but it has an immediate cost, your power. You relinquish the power as described in the quote above.

Why is it then that people, myself included, find it so compelling to blame, find fault argue the conditions of our situation without first looking at our own contribution?  One answer as I have mentioned above is our need to look clean, innocent and above fault. We also wish to protect our self esteem.

Many of us depend on other people’s approval of us for our sense of achievement and ultimately our sense of happiness. We wish to remain blameless in the reality that is failure.  Our public persona is at stake or so we judge. We therefore expend a great deal of energy protecting an “untarnished self image” What we don’t see is that playing the victim we unwittingly sacrifice our ability to take control, we sacrifice our power, we are sidelined, marginalised and impotent.
Look around!  The victim archetype is very common, in business, the media with executives you respect, your colleagues and friends etc. We are all human after all.

Taking a player stance however is a legitimate move and I have been practicing it of late to remind myself of my power and the strength of this approach. Ask yourself the following questions to support your effort to remain a player.
1. What challenge did you face?
2. How did you contribute by acting or not acting to create this situation?
3. How did you respond to this challenge
4. Can you think of a more effective course of action you could have taken?
5. Could you have made some reasonable preparations to reduce the risk or impact of the situation?
6. Can you do something now to minimise or repair the damage?
7. What can you learn from this experience?
I have salvaged a relationship, coached two senior executives around this subject and have witnessed some interesting and rewarding reactions in my application of this approach. I encourage my readers to observe your reactions to situations and ask yourself how you are responding, as a victim or indeed as a player and how far can you go?
I do not pretend this approach is easy but I do acknowledge the wisdom inherent in its tenets. Try it!

Moods and emotions are a domain of the body that have garnered mixed reactions and afforded little attention especially by those who have prioritised rational thought over feelings. According to Raphael Echeverria they are not benign but inextricably part of our being and contribute significantly to those actions we are able to take in life.
To understand moods and emotions is to accept that they both play a significant role in the way we take action as a human race. They are inextricably linked to our linguistic maps and can keep us where we are if we do not pay attention to their grip.
Emotions are produced whenever we experience a change in the flow of life. They are associated with what we have called breakdowns  i.e., interruptions in the transparency of life. Whatever we do, we always do it within a given space of’ possibilities. If something happens that leads us to a different assessment of what it is we can expect in the future, we would call this a breakdown. A breakdown always implies a change in our space of possibilities.

Essentially I am saying that emotions are reactions to external events and as such determine the set of possibilities open to us from this emotional space. Loss evokes sadness and good news evokes joy etc…We do not have to linger in emotions they visit us.

Moods on the other hand are with us so to speak we live from a mood space. In an earlier blog I described the four big mood terrains, Resentment, Resignation, Acceptance and Ambition. Once in a particular mood, we become what that mood allows us to be. In this sense, we cannot only say that we have moods, it is also true that our moods have us.  We are possessed by our moods.

The good news is that we can alter the mood space we act from and design a more productive operating space. We have said that moods create a certain range of possibilities that alone we see are possible. The opportunity then is to explore the possibilities and have conversations to alter these. In many ways this is obvious but because moods have not been transparent it often eludes us that we can intervene and redesign a new mood.

Some guidelines for design;

1. Consider the conversations you are having and not having and be responsible for the mood you are inhabiting
2. Observe and identify the mood you preoccupy- Resentment, Resignation, Acceptance and Ambition- which one?
Consider these four questions
- What is my world view
- How am I assessing people around me?
- What assessments do I have of myself
- What assessments do I have about my future?
This should give an indication of which mood you are occupying.
3. Be aware of the stories that surround your mood and the stories that perpetuate the continuance of that mood.
4. You are not responsible for the mood you are in but you are responsible for staying in it.
5. Once you have examined these assessments try to ground them or any other linguistic act you can observe, i.e. declarations, assertions etc…A nuance to any of these can shift your mood or your ability to stay in it.
6. If you know you dwell in a recurrent mood build some repertoires to support yourself. Call a friend, take some physical exercise or avoid those conversations or places where the mood is likely to prevail.
7. Don’t forget your body if you change your physical posture you can shift your mood space.
8. We are always in a mood good or bad but it is helpful to know you can design ways to shift your mood.

Like most things reviewed in this blog space it calls for practice. Enjoy!

What is your purpose and do these enemies of learning play havoc with your plan?
Many of us claim to want to learn but live with moods and emotions and internal states that deny the possibility. Consider the following statements and check how many relate to you.

• The sudden claim to know it all (Arrogance!)
• The fear of the unknown.
• A constant display of inconsistency in all you do.
• Being unaware that we live in blindness (Arrogance!)
• Confusing knowing with having opinions or information
• Having no focus; lacking a sense of purpose and direction.
• The need to keep making excuses.
• “I should already know”
• “I have to be clear about everything all of the time!”
• A continuous exposure to negative thoughts.
• Limiting Beliefs
• Making everything overly significant
• Making everything trivial
• Living in permanent assessments or judgments
• Addiction to novelty
• Procrastination
• Living in the belief “I cannot learn given who I am”
• Distrust
• Forgetting the domain of emotions and its impact on Learning
• Living a life of self denial
• Not granting permission to be taught
And many more……………………………….
These are called enemies of learning and can play serious havoc with our desire to change or see difference in our lives.

Here are some alternative strategies to employ; we call these the friends of learning

 
• Willingness to declare “I don’t know”
• Listening
• Openness
• Respect and admiration
• A willingness to question your questions
• Celebrate who you are, your achievements, success, milestones…..
• A mood of curiosity and enquiry
• Self Confidence
There is a chance that employing these friends our likelihood of success with learning will be greatly improved and support our endeavors regardless of the type of learning in which we are involved. I am curious to hear how many enemies of learning you could identify with from the list above and how open you are now to consider the friends listed here?

Is it any wonder that team members, performers in the language used by the school of Generative Leadership find it difficult to speak up or to share their dissatisfaction of team performance, when their own members refuse to listen?

I am on an intact learning team. I decided to pursue a particular course of learning where being on a team meant I got a chance to practice the distinctions we were exposed to through writings and in person learning modules. I also needed a safe environment where I could experiment for future use with live clients.

I am conscious in writing this piece that there maybe people who are unfamiliar with the way the school of generative leadership encourages its team delegates to configure as teams. There are many useful suggestions for each member to state their own particular conditions of satisfaction, for team members to write a team agreement with definite standards and practices that all members agree to.

Suffice to say that as a team we “blew” our own team agreement. There was varying degrees of commitment to our overall promise (vision) and lose adherence to the standards we adopted. It also became clear that the relevance of this programme for each member was very different. In noticing this incongruence and general malaise I decided to speak up. I did not want to get into habit of complaining either to myself or anyone who would listen nor did I want to simply put up. I made the move to declare my breakdown.

I was very deliberate in crafting my note. I did not want to blame to hurl abuse or to offend. I wanted to be clear, constructive and to use my participation on the team to speak my dissatisfaction. As a customer I have a legitimate stake in the overall product, I have conditions of satisfaction and more than anything I have a voice. To complain is one thing to do something about it is another. I chose action.

I requested a team meeting to see if there was any room for manoeuvre to get closer to my conditions of satisfaction, to see if I was being blind and in fact needed support myself or to see if there was unanimity amongst the group to seek change.

I was surprised by the individual reactions of the group. In particular the lack of care and will by one to hold this meeting with real commitment to the team. I got the usual excuse of lack of time. In the same breadth I was grateful for the reaction of the rest of the team. They were genuinely concerned to see that we addressed this dissatisfaction as a team with team intent.

It takes courage to speak up and be open to different and sometimes hostile reactions. We are all human after all. I still hold the possibility that we will have another team meeting to explore our individual and collective needs to move forward. Whilst I sit in discomfort and ambiguity about what next I am proud I said what I felt had to be said and would encourage other team players to remember they have a voice and a legitimate say in how team s work.

Remember too that despite our best intentions we cannot control the listening that is afforded us. Do not lose heart there is learning in making the move.

Just to end I would add, stand up for what you care about!

How good are we at assessing what is going well in our lives in and outside of work and what contributes to our suffering? How able are we, when we notice to declare satisfaction or dissatisfaction and thereafter declare a breakdown?

This is the language we use at Newfield to describe a situation that is no longer tolerable and for which we seek support or assistance. In Newfield we often use the analogy of a breakdown with a car. Each time I hear this explanation the story gets embellished to make the scenario and backdrop more compelling and I guess interesting.

It goes something like this; imagine you are crossing the rolling hills of Ireland blissfully minding your own business but mindful that you are en-route to a client meeting. Suddenly the car veers off the road and you realise you have a flat tire. Worse you do not have a spare wheel in the car or the equipment to take care of the damage. What do you do?

Consider all manner of expletives that might apply or simply the phrase, OMG what now! Very quickly you begin to realise that you are going to be late and all of a sudden your life takes on a different hue and direction. The story moves on but essentially the essence is that we all at some point in time have punctured tyre stories in our lives unrelated to cars. How we cope with these stories is what matters.

Many of us, me included, are reluctant to ask for help. We think we “should” be able to work things out or our pattern is such that we are used to taking care of ourselves and have not resorted to asking for help. This can prove exacting, limiting and at times painful.

Understanding that it is a skill to declare a breakdown and then to seek support or to figure an alternative strategy for some is completely new and foreign territory. We as coaches look to help a client get to the point that they can see and articulate for themselves a point of discomfort or dissatisfaction and from there we can help them move forward.

Declaring a breakdown takes courage and for many a legitimate action or as we say in Newfield a distinction in the language acts we employ. The interesting thing about declaring a breakdown is once it is out it is out. Now people have information with which to work. Now you are understandable to others. Keeping up a brave face or trying to cope alone is painful for others as well.

I was labouring under an undeclared breakdown a couple of weeks ago and didn’t know it to be honest. Finally I was moved to write about my concern and with the benefit of a good coach realised that what I was doing was simply declaring a breakdown. Having that pointed out to me felt quizzically bizarre but a strange relief. I should have known but it took someone else to point it out and that then opened a place from which I could move.

The business of breakdowns has a fundamental role in project management or team functioning as well. Often as teams we labour with handed down requests to fulfil orders that at times become unyielding, overwhelming or non-commercial. We need to have a way to make this known to our customers or team leaders. There are four ways to assess how a project or promise is shaping up and within that 3 ways to declare a breakdown in project management or a promise you are holding with a customer. You can say;

1. I declare a breakdown in the fulfilment of the promise, but I am taking actions to deal with these, and the promise will still be fulfilled. I assess that no further action is required.

2. I declare a breakdown in the fulfilment of the promise, and I assess that the actions I have taken or can take will not recover the promise, but I still assess it is possible to recover the promise. I ask for help to recover the promise.

3. I declare a breakdown in the fulfilment of the promise, and in spite of all the actions I have taken and the help provided; I can ground that the promise cannot be fulfilled to its current agreed-upon conditions of satisfaction. I assess that we must negotiate a new promise and take care of the consequences of the promise changing.

Being able to do the above and be listened to is the stuff of effective team management. I wonder how able or competent your organisation is to assess, take action and declare breakdowns for recovery? I would be interested to hear back from you.

What kind of observer are you in conditions requiring self directed learning?

I recently facilitated a group of twenty plus senior managers from five distinct organisations on a seminal project here in Ireland, called the Business Consortium. The model was adopted from a similar project instigated in the UK with huge success.

The notion was largely predicated on providing an interesting forum for learning in a cost efficient manner given the current economic climate. What was interesting for me was that we engineered a self-directed forum for learners without fully appreciating the skills required of self directed learners.

Notwithstanding this, the group rallied around the project or task at hand and surfaced 5 interesting topics/goals that they will as groups prepare, share and bring back to the steering committee in approximately nine months times. No doubt there will be learning, experiences to recount, fun to be had and new stuff to disseminate when the moment presents.

I decided to look at the text book definition of self directed learning to see if I had indeed missed a trick. Apparently self directed learning revolves around three major conceptualisations, Individual Learning, Distance Learning and Psychological control. The learners themselves need to accept their role in goal setting, effort and being their own change agents.

Similarly individual learners or self directed learners need to have a psychological disposition where self confidence is evident, inner direction guaranteed and where achievement motivation is respected if not expected.

My group embodied all of the above.

In addition there needs to be an understanding of the cognitive skills required for effective self-directed learning. These include, an ability to set goals, have processing skills, a competence (minimum) for subject matter, decision making skills and self awareness. For programmes to excel a further richness in executive skills or deep processing skills is required. This involves meta-cognition, self control, an ability to stand back and reflect, assimilate and accommodate.

Most self directed learners prove to have an aptitude to extract meaning from their learning, to enjoy the process, to personalise it or make it relevant to their respective worlds and to further develop theories to expand their knowledge and network it.

All told it seems like a simple exercise to galvanise 21 eager learners to embrace a self directed way of problem solving and yet on closer inspection a rather more complex distillation of skills is required for success.

I wish my group all the success in the world on their journey and whilst I could not have been as prescriptive as some of the literature with respect to self directed learning and what is essential in delegates I have no doubt the group I witnessed have these qualities and skills in bucket loads.

Enjoy the journey!

I am surprised that I continue to be grabbed or triggered by comments or conversations I have with some people even though I have been practicing the notion of noticing, blending, and coming back to centre for years now. This observation reminds me how learned the body is and how our experiences become conditioned tendencies. We respond to circumstances and events almost unconsciously.

Recently I was triggered by a comment from a client that floored me. I had erroneously assumed that he would have concurred with my view and when his reaction was in the negative my sense of self was attacked. My assessment but the reaction was visceral. My choice in the moment was to breathe, centre and ask myself how I would like to respond or to be grabbed. I was grabbed.

You can usually trace your conditioned reactions back to assessments you hold as true.

The trick is to look as these assessments, ground them for the truth and then chose a reaction that is befitting the circumstances and serves. I appreciate this might sound convoluted and slow as an approach but ostensibly it forces our minds and body to reinterpret our old learned ways and to shift into a new mood, usually a mood of acceptance and sometimes quite surprisingly a mood of ambition.

Noticing is the first step. What are you saying to yourself when something happens, when someone says something you don’t appreciate? Can you then go through the following steps?

1. Is this true?
2. What evidence is there to support an alternative view?
3. In what domain are you making this assessment? Are you globalising this assessment?
4. Clarify with yourself the standards you are using to assess in this way.
5. Ask yourself FTSOW (for the sake of what am I making this assessment?)
6. Share this assessment with others and try to ground it with their support.

It is important in all of the above to remain open and curious about your old held views. It is likely given our triggering reactions that these same views are not helpful or supportive. What can you give up? Your standards, your stories, and the beliefs you hold as true or the old facts that might be simply that -old?

It is disconcerting to think that we can be pushed off centre and sometimes that the duration for this is long- days for some. The good news is that we can practice to be different as long as we begin to notice become conscious of our behaviour and our reaction to others and then to be in choice.

I wonder whether this subject has grabbed you.