Category Archives: Emotional Intelligence

Life Is a Treasure Hunt

19 Tuesday Mar 2019

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When I was growing up, I read a lot of Sherlock Holmes. I still love following a mystery and considering each event and detail as a possible clue.  Of course, I never have the whole thing figured out when Mr. Holmes exclaims, “Elementary, my dear Watson!”, but I always have my suspicions.

Looking at each detail of the story for meaning is one of the things that I enjoy most in Sherlock Holmes’ adventures. I didn’t think of looking for meaning in the details of my own life until I read The Celestine Prophecy years ago. I don’t remember many details of the plot, but I did take away the thought that people and challenges might be put in my path for a reason.

I’ve always fought against the idea of “destiny.” What is the point of living life if you are just living out a script set in stone? However, I like the idea of looking for and following clues because I’m still in control in that case. I always have the ability to choose whether to follow the clue or not, but recognizing it as a possible turning point keeps me from blundering blindly through life without making a conscious choice.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that I have to jump on every opportunity that comes my way. If I did, I’d buy every single item advertised on TV and fall for every marketing gimmick. The ultimate choice is mine. I find that my stomach is my most reliable yardstick for making a decision that’s right for me.

I was offered a discount on a leadership school that is quite expensive. Two trainers who I respect from my life coach class recommended me. I felt a real obligation to live up to their expectations and to take advantage of the opportunity in front of me. In the end, I realized that the thought of taking on such a huge financial burden was making me crazy, and my stomach was in knots. When I let go of the opportunity, my whole body relaxed, and my stomach unclenched and gave a sigh of relief.

In her book The Unmistakable Touch of Grace, Cheryl Richardson writes about a guiding hand influencing our lives. She calls it “grace” and writes, “Every event we experience and every person we meet has been put in our path for a reason. When we awaken to this fundamental truth, we begin to understand that a benevolent force of energy is available to guide and direct our lives.”

Richardson advocates asking for that help from the Universe, or whatever name you use for your higher power. Asking a higher power for help isn’t all that odd an idea. Many people pray to God and ask for help and guidance. Here is the phrase that Richardson uses: “I am open and receptive to the power of grace in my life now. I ask to be shown clear examples of how this energy is operating in my life.”

My best example of grace stepping in to lend a hand came the morning that I was struggling to get the convoluted idea of grace that was in my brain untangled, down my arms, and into my hands to type. I was about to give up when my friend Rose called. She said, “I thought that you could use a smile this morning.” I told her that I always appreciated a smile, and she asked me what I was up to.

I started trying to explain the concept of grace and clues and choice. My explanation seemed lifeless and vague, but she sent me scrambling for a pen with her immediate comment, “Oh, the treasure hunt to fulfillment.” Wow! Thank you, Universe, for sending me Rose this morning!

“That is the way I live my life,” she continued. “I see myself surrounded by opportunities that I get to choose from.” It’s way beyond coincidence that she telephoned just as I was grappling with Cheryl Richardson’s call for grace.

Rose’s metaphor of life as a treasure hunt reminded me of a game that I used to play with my children. They were too young to read, so I sketched various places around our yard and used them as clues.  I handed them a picture of the slide. They would run to the slide, where a picture of the basketball goal waited for them. They ran to each place eager to find out where the next clue led.

There are a lot of similarities between the kids’ game and life. First, there’s no way to see the end from the beginning. Second, to get to the end and win the game, you have to follow all of the clues in a specific order. You focus all of your energy on the visual image of your immediate goal. Once you reach that goal, another one waits for you that will take you further along your adventure. The game of life is fun when it’s a puzzle and a journey into the unknown that requires brains, courage, and tenacity.

There are those who disagree with my perspective on life, and I wouldn’t argue with them. They have just as much a chance of being right as I do, but being “right” isn’t what is important. Whether or not it’s true, isn’t it a more fun way to look at life? We have two choices. One is to go through life feeling that we are buffeted by the winds of fortune and are forced to fly hither and yon like a feather with no say in where we go. On the other hand, we can see ourselves surrounded by clues and gifts that are ours for the taking. Each day is an opportunity to learn and grow. Each person is a potential guru with wisdom to share.

Now I will confess that I wrote this blog back in 2007. It represents a turning point in how I view life. I still work to see life as Rose does – a treasure hunt to fulfillment. I will admit that the treasure hunt has taken me to some dark and scary places in the past dozen years or so. However, the journey is an adventure if you expect tokens and clues that will lead you into sunlit happiness. An adventure is something that I can look forward to living.

Life is a grand adventure when each moment could uncover a clue that leads to the treasure of living our best lives! As my friend Sherlock Holmes would say, “Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot!”

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

Avoiding Silver-lining

12 Tuesday Mar 2019

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Brené Brown turned silver-lining into a verb in a video on sympathy vs. empathy. You can watch it here if you are interested. I love her discussion on silver-lining things.

When someone is upset about a situation, we want to make them feel better. It’s a natural reaction, but not always a helpful one. Sometimes we feel compelled to show them the bright side of a situation – also not really helpful. When we do that, we are silver-lining. A tip-off that we are silver-lining someone are the words “At least.”

For example, let’s say that I am expressing frustration about not getting a gig after spending a lot of time on writing a proposal. The people listening want to cheer me up and make me feel better. They might say, “Well, at least you still have your health” or “At least you still have that other job that you are working on.” Both true perhaps, but the statements are not going to improve the situation or make me feel better.

After I watched Brown’s video, I started noticing a lot of silver-lining going on. A friend and fellow coach with a soft and nurturing heart who doesn’t like to see people suffering was the first person I noticed. She called me when I was seven hours into an eight-and-a-half hour drive. She asked me how much further I had to go, and I told her. Her answer was, “At least you only have an hour and a half to go.”

I felt like smacking her upside of the head. I wouldn’t ever, but I felt like it. Her statement made me angry. The point was that I had an entire hour and a half of torture left! I was tired, and my back hurt. I was bored and felt like I couldn’t take another moment in the car. Her silver-lining had totally dismissed my feelings and situation. Her statement had the exact opposite effect of what she intended.

My friend was the first person who I thought of and noticed, but I should have seen myself first because I am also guilty of silver-lining! I am a champion at silver-lining, especially with my children. They complain or share a frustration, and I want to show them that things are not that bad. I will say something like, “At least you have friends you enjoy at work” or “At least you have a car that runs.” Ack! I’m working to never silver-lining them again.

I noticed silver-lining again in a leadership workshop. We were talking about communication toxins. Small groups were creating skits to show each toxin and an antidote for each. Communication toxins are criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling, in case you are curious. They come from John Gottman’s research on couples.

I heard a lot of “At least” when they were creating their skits. We stopped and talked about better ways to deal with the toxins and, in general, situations when people were feeling some negative emotions.

The first step is to identify and acknowledge the feeling that the person is experiencing. Susan David, author of Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life, advocates facing all of our feelings, even the uncomfortable ones. Before we can face them, though, we have to name them.

In coaching, after naming an emotion, we normalize it. It’s important for all of us to be reminded that it’s normal and acceptable to feel some of what are termed “negative” emotions. In truth, emotions are just emotions. They are not inherently good or bad, positive or negative. Our emotions are natural reactions to events.

Now, we can control our emotional reactions to some degree, but that’s a different conversation. Now we are just naming and normalizing. Remember that silver-lining does not help someone reframe a situation or feel better; it’s not the solution.

Let’s go back to my road trip example. I sigh and say I have an hour and a half to go of an eight-hour drive. One good response could be, “That is a really long drive. I bet you are tired.” I might respond with something like, “I am tired! My back is sore, and I am so bored that I can’t stand it.”

At this point, most of us want to send a solution like “Why don’t you listen to an audiobook?” or silver-lining the situation with “At least most of the drive is behind you.” Resist!

It’s time to normalize and help them name and accept the emotions that they are feeling. We might say, “Of course you are tired! You’ve been sitting and focusing on driving for hours!” Hearing that kind of response makes us relax because we feel seen and heard.

Naming and normalizing emotions can also open the door to furthering the conversation. Once I feel that someone is listening and empathizing, I might say, “Long drives are terrible – and my children live so far away.” I’ve shared something else that is troubling my mind as I drive hour after hour.

Once again we are presented with the temptation to do some silver-lining because we want to make people feel better. We don’t want to say, “At least you get to see them every few months.” Instead, we want to name and normalize again by saying something like “It is frustrating that they aren’t closer to you.” No solutions or silver-lining – only listening and empathizing.

When we silver-lining people, we create resistance and an adversarial conversation. They feel compelled to defend the emotions that they are feeling. They don’t feel listened to or understood. Remember my gut reaction when my friend said, “At least you only have an hour and a half left.” I was immediately angry.

When we acknowledge the feelings and listen, we let people know that their feelings are valid and normal. We also let them know that we value them enough to really listen to them in order to understand what they are feeling. Our personal needs are to be listened to, understood, and respected. When we meet those needs, we help others relax into their situations, gain some perspective, and maybe find a solution.

Or maybe they just feel better because they aren’t alone with their feelings. Empathy, rather than silver-lining, goes a long way towards creating positive relationships, which are the hallmark of great leadership and a happy life.

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

Creating More Space in Life’s Garden

26 Tuesday Feb 2019

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We are shaped in many ways by our childhood experiences because we interpret them from a child’s perspective – they were a big deal to our Little Self. Once we interpret the experience, we often establish a belief around it that we carry with us for the rest of our lives. Not all of those beliefs serve us in adulthood.

It’s easiest to explain with an example. Let’s say that when you were young, you loved to draw, but one day someone told you that your elephant looked like a rock with a garden hose attached to it. First, it hurt your feelings. Then you internalized the event by thinking that you were not a good artist and that you couldn’t draw. We don’t like having our feelings hurt, so you decided to avoid being hurt by not drawing ever again.

Lack of drawing skill is a common childhood belief brought into adulthood, as is “I can’t dance, sing, and/or write.” It takes time to learn those skills. We know that as adults, but as kids, we just decide we are not talented after our first attempts and that it’s better not to try.

Comments made to us in childhood can also affect our self-image, for good or for bad. My mom was usually very kind about my looks, so I have a good self-image around my appearance. When she brushed my hair, she said that it looked like spun gold. Consequently, I like my hair and resist all of my hair stylist’s attempts to get me to color it. It’s great to hold on to the childhood beliefs that serve us in adulthood. If you decided back then that you were smart, handsome, creative, tenacious, determined or lovable, keep those!

However, my mom also once made a passing comment about my having big ears. My ears aren’t huge, but I was self-conscious about them for a very long time. It wasn’t until high school that someone else told me emphatically that I did not have big ears. I was close enough to adult status to take in the comment with a little maturity and realize that Mom may have been kidding or just having a bad day. I am now at peace with my ears.

The beliefs can be big or small – anything from our ability to dance to our ability to have successful relationships. Our Little Self inside still feels the emotions attached to the experience strongly, so take your Little Self by the hand, walk up to the belief, and look at it from an adult perspective. Decide that you can learn to draw and that you are not doomed to failed relationships. Analyze what happened through the lens of adult maturity. It often doesn’t look nearly as big, scary, intimidating or meaningful.

Clearing out those unhelpful childhood beliefs can be very freeing. If we think of our lives as a garden, when we are born the garden is open with lots of space. We start having some negative experiences and fence off parts of our garden and declare them off-limits. “I’m not going to draw anymore,” “I will wear my hair over my ears always,” and “I can’t dance” become things we say to ourselves over and over again. We believe them without conscious thought or question. By stepping up to the fenced-off area and peering into it as an adult, we can see the experience from a different perspective and decide not to let it limit us anymore. We take down the fence and free up that space! We can try to draw and see if we like it. We can wear our hair short and show off our ears. We can dance to our heart’s content.

The more fenced-off areas we clear, the more room we have to live and play! Facing strongly held beliefs can be daunting. If it feels like an overwhelming task, get a life coach to help you with the process. Either alone, or with a coach, grab your Little Self by the hand, clear some fences, and dance together – you’ll have lots of space.

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

Review: Qualities of a Great Leader

12 Tuesday Feb 2019

Posted by in Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Positivity

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In leadership workshops, we create a list of important leadership qualities. For frontline employees, there are two crucial qualities for great leaders. Consistently being fair is the first quality. Favoritism is one of the things that destroys the morale of a team. Even the appearance of favoritism can mess with the dynamics of a group. Being fair beyond anyone’s doubt can be a challenge, especially if some of our employees are friends.

As leaders, we might need to create a little bit of distance from friends with whom we work. If we supervise friends, we must tell them that we cannot talk about situations at work or any of the other people on our team. Our friends cannot enjoy access to us and our opinions about work that the rest of the team does not get. We must treat everyone in the same way.

It’s also important for us to let the people we supervise know that we have established boundaries with our friends. Our employees will think the worst if we don’t bring it up, so we need to go ahead and discuss the agreement that we have made with our friends. It’s crucial that everyone on the team feels confident that when we are chatting with our friends, we aren’t talking about the other people on the team or what’s going on at work.

The second quality that is important to frontline employees is the ability to listen. One of the things that employees complain about most often is when leaders don’t stop what they are doing and listen. Basically, we want to listen for understanding. Our personal needs are to be listened to, understood, and respected. A lot of times people don’t care if we agree with them in the end; they do care that we took the time to listen and understand their point of view.

It is important to take the time to fully understand other people’s perspectives. However, listening for understanding does not mean that we have to agree with a person’s perspective or take his or her suggestions. We want to maintain a mindset that says, “There is a possibility that I might agree with you or that I might incorporate your perspective.” However, there is no obligation to agree at the end of the conversation. We can say upfront, “You know, I haven’t made up my mind, and I may or may not do this the way you’d like for me to, but I do want to understand your point of view.”

The next important leadership quality is kindness. Leaders often push back at the idea that kindness matters. They say, “I don’t have to be kind. I’m not their best friend!” We don’t have to be someone’s friend to be kind to them. Being kind also doesn’t make us a pushover. We still need to set clear expectations and be sure that everyone is living up to those expectations. However, we want to maintain a positive relationship, so we act with kindness. We don’t yell or belittle. We help them succeed in a positive way.

The next quality is integrity. Integrity is a bit of a catch-all because integrity is walking the talk, being a role model, and acting consistently with honesty, kindness, and fairness. Integrity is also about being trustworthy and reliable.

The little extra dash of spice in integrity is your own personality. As leaders, we get to be us. Everyone’s style is a little different. It’s not that one is better than the other. It’s that we are each acting according to our own strengths and our own personalities.

The last quality is consistency. It is important that we have a positive and caring attitude, listen, act fairly, be kind, and act with integrity all the time. Great leaders are consistent, dependable, and reliable.

Honestly, none of us are going to be reliable and consistent all the time, but we need to manage to do it most of the time. Our employees need to know that we aren’t going to yell at them when they come to us with a problem. They need to feel confident that we are going to be calm and reliable. We’re going to ask questions and figure out how to fix the situation. We want our employees to feel that we are a stable, reliable force who is going to help them. Until employees feel confident that their leaders are reliable and consistent, they are going to be tentative and watchful—maybe even subversive or dishonest in order to avoid an unpleasant confrontation.

Of course, the list could continue. In workshops, we sometimes come up with 20 qualities of exceptional leaders, but the ones we’ve just discussed are a good place to start.

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

 

The Danger of Assumptions

05 Tuesday Feb 2019

Posted by in #Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Uncategorized

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As leaders, we want to collect accurate knowledge in a way that builds and maintains positive relationships. It’s one of the ways that we cultivate our personal influence. Unfortunately, we sometimes base our actions and opinions on assumptions, rather than accurate information.

Assumptions are not all bad. We walk up to a door, and we assume that the doorknob is going to turn and the door is going to open. We base a lot of our lives on assumptions because they save us time and make life easier. However, it’s important to be aware of when we’re making assumptions.

In conflict resolution workshops, participants role-play a scenario about laundry. Almost all of them take on the stereotypical gender role for laundry. Male or female, if they are the ones with responsibility for laundry, they take on the societal role of females. During the discussion after the role play, participants are surprised at how easily they assumed women do the laundry. No one questioned or even realized the assumptions they were making. The strength of the gender roles was surprising because the scenario was based on a Marine who did the laundry and didn’t feel he was appreciated. We don’t want to hold any assumptions, but we often do without even realizing it.

The real danger of assumptions is that we don’t realize that they are assumptions. Many times, we transform the assumptions into absolute truth in our heads. For example, somebody doesn’t say good morning to us, and we assume that the person is ignoring us on purpose. The truth may be that he or she had a really bad morning and didn’t even notice us. However, we make up this story in our head about the person being uppity and thinking that they are better than us. We move forward as if that assumption is true and treat the other person accordingly. We allow an assumption that probably isn’t true to influence our relationship in a negative way. The poor person who didn’t say good morning will probably be mystified by our chilly and maybe even unprofessional behavior.

As a leader, it is important to stop and ask, “Is this something I really know, or am I making an assumption?” The only way to know if something is true or not is to ask. Perhaps a person’s poor performance is due to laziness, but it could also be caused by a lack of training, illness, or just not understanding that a particular task is a priority. As leaders, it’s our job to find out for sure, not assume.

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

Power of Positivity and Caring

29 Tuesday Jan 2019

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There is a growing body of evidence on the power of positivity and caring in leadership. An increase in positivity results in an increase in productivity and efficiency. It also improves morale and reduces turnover. Those are some important results for a leader to attain.

Our own personal experiences support the research. Think of a great leader you have known. Did that person have a positive attitude? In workshops, everyone answers yes. Was that person caring? That is to say, did that leader have your best interests at heart even if he or she was tough on you? Once again, most everyone in workshops answers yes.

One of the fundamental goals of leadership is to create and maintain positive relationships. Really, maintaining positive relationships with the people at work is basic professionalism. When we have positive relationships, both parties in the relationship can focus on work. We don’t take part in anything petty or negative, and no one is distracted from the job at hand.  That does not mean that we need to be best friends with people at work, it just means that we have relationships based on respect and kindness.

Maintaining a positive attitude and work environment is a challenge. Humans are hardwired to notice and hold on to negative situations and events. It’s part of our nature. We can change our natural tendencies, but it requires some discipline and a commitment to choosing differently. We have to wave around the Magic Wand of Destiny and CHOOSE to notice and remember the positive.

Identifying and solving problems are primary responsibilities of leaders, and we don’t need to stop doing those things. However, we do need to begin noticing what is going right. Fortunately, there are many more positive events in a day than negative. Think about it—we do all sorts of things right in a day, and all anyone notices or comments on is the negative. It’s frustrating! We want to notice and comment whenever we see someone doing something right.

Noticing and commenting positively on actions that we want to see again is powerful. It lets people know that we are paying attention to what they do, that we appreciate their efforts, and that the task itself is something worth doing. The best way to get someone to do something again is to praise them for doing it. It’s an easy motivational technique that also builds the positivity of the relationship.

When we create positive relationships, we are using personal influence as opposed to positional power. In a leadership position, you have power over the people who work for you. Perhaps you have some options to give awards. You definitely have the power to discipline. Positional power is bestowed on you with your job title, and it is not the best long-term motivational technique.

Positional authority is effective as long as you are watching your employees. If we use the metaphor of the carrot and the stick, positional authority is using the stick to threaten people. It is highly effective if we are standing in front of the person. The carrot is positive incentive. When we create positive relationships, we are using our personal influence. People want to work for us, and they keep working when we are not present.

In order to create a positive relationship, one must have a positive interaction ratio of at least five-to-one. That is five positive interactions for every one negative interaction. Negative interactions include developmental feedback, which leaders must give. The only way to maintain the required positivity ratio is to increase the number of positive conversations. The positivity ratio is in alignment with other research that found people are most motivated by being acknowledged and appreciated for their contributions.

Not everyone who works with you will be easy to get along with. Their negative attitude and actions can make the creation of a positive relationship more difficult. We can overcome the challenge, but it takes determination, self-discipline, and some knowledge. Knowing something about people can make it easier to create a positive relationship with them. The author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni, found that just knowing each other’s birth order and a childhood challenge increases trust. We can get to know one another better with something as simple as starting meetings with an icebreaker. It’s also a good idea to take some time to chat with people. Short chats are not a waste of time because they increase familiarity, trust, and positivity.

Granted, there is a fine line between getting to know someone and getting too personal at work. Leadership is an art, not a science. However, you cannot be an exceptional leader without knowing and caring for the people who work for you. It can be done within reasonable, professional boundaries.

Studies have shown that caring leaders are more effective, and now we have some research-backed actions that we can take to increase our capacity and ability to care about others. Dr. Barbara Fredrickson found that people who participated in loving-kindness meditation became more compassionate and empathetic toward others. There were also emotional and physical health benefits and an increased tendency to see things in a good light and be more optimistic about the future. That is an impressive list of results for a meditation practice of 60 minutes a week. There are lots of guided loving-kindness meditations online.

Dr. Fredrickson also found that shared positive moments can have positive emotional and physical results for individuals. The more positive moments we share, the easier it becomes to create more. We also increase our own positivity in the process. The shared moments of positivity don’t have to be with people that we know for us to gain the benefits. Our discussion is focused on work, but you can practice engaging others in a positive way in line at the grocery store.

Being positive does not mean that you have to be Little Mary Sunshine and never offer developmental feedback. Being positive and caring does not mean that you give up maintaining standards and discipline. Leaders must give developmental feedback when needed and not shy away from tough discussions. However, it is important to intentionally create positive conversations in order to maintain the positivity ratio of at least five-to-one. The main behavior changes required are being pleasant, noticing what is going right, and then commenting on it in an appreciative way.

The book FISH! gives us an excellent example of how a group of determined people can create a positive culture. A group of fishmongers decided that they didn’t want to work in a negative environment anymore. They focused on four things that increased the positivity of their work environment: Play, Make Their Day, Be Present, and Choose Your Attitude. The results were amazing. Their work became more enjoyable and their business more successful.

Keep in mind, a leader’s job is to help everyone else be successful. If the people around you are failing, you are failing. Your job is to create success for everyone. One of the most effective ways to help people be successful is to help them focus on work and to motivate them. Creating and maintaining positive relationships can accomplish both of those things.

You can create a more pleasant work environment, motivate people in lasting ways that are effective when you aren’t watching over them, and increase productivity and efficiency just by waving around the Magic Wand of Destiny and intentionally choosing to be positive.

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

 

 

Building and Rebuilding Trust

22 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by in Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Psychological Safety, Uncategorized

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trust chain 600 px

Think back to the leader that you consider to be a role model. Do you trust that person? Participants in workshops always answer yes. We trust the people who we are willing to follow. Great leaders need to be trustworthy in order to have the personal influence needed to get people to follow them. We build trust by being consistent. Great supervisors are consistent and reliable.

Honestly, none of us are going to be reliable and consistent all the time, but we need to manage it most of the time. Our employees need to know that we aren’t going to yell at them when they come to us with a problem. They need to feel confident that we are going to be calm and reliable. We’re going to ask questions and figure out how to fix the situation. We want our employees to feel that we are a stable, reliable force that is going to help them. Until employees feel confident that their leaders are reliable and consistent, they are going to be tentative and watchful—maybe even subversive or dishonest in order to avoid an unpleasant confrontation.

Fortunately for us, people tend to extend trust to people at the beginning of a relationship. Trust is a gift that we need to appreciate and work to keep. We want to avoid breaching trust because once it’s gone, trust is difficult to gain back. However, all is not lost if we lose someone’s trust. There are things that we can do to regain it as quickly as possible.

The first thing to do is to admit that we’ve done something disappointing. If we made a bad decision, forgot something, or lost our temper, we should admit it. The second thing to do is apologize. Some old-school thought states that leaders should never apologize. It’s based on the belief that leaders have to be perfect to be great leaders. The problem with that thinking is that none of us are perfect. We are human, and we make mistakes. We only make matters worse if we don’t admit them and apologize.

We also need to do whatever we can to fix the problem if that’s possible. An apology goes a long way, but we also want to do what we can to make things right. If we forgot to do something, how can we get it done and deal with the results of forgetting? If a plan doesn’t work, it’s time to regroup and try again. We help to rebuild trust when we do what we can to repair any damage that we’ve done.

After we have broken trust, we will have to continue to behave in a consistent, reliable manner until everyone feels comfortable again. It may take some time, so we need to be patient.

In summary, when we break trust, it’s important to acknowledge it, apologize, and do what we can to fix it. Then we continue to be trustworthy until whoever was affected decides that they can trust us again.

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

 

Clearing Old Dreams

08 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by in Emotional Intelligence, Fresh Start, Uncategorized

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At the beginning of the year, we often create a list of resolutions. The list can include things we want to do, goals we want to achieve, and intentions for how we want to be. However, one of the most useful things that we can do to create a foundation for success is to clear out and organize our physical things.

When I coach clients, we often start by getting rid of stuff. It’s amazing what a clean, spacious, and organized closet can do for you if you are feeling stuck or frustrated in life.

There are lots of people out there who have ideas and structures for getting your home organized. When my own children were small, I found FlyLady. She got me to run through the house for 15 minutes with a trash bag, collecting things to set free for other people’s enjoyment and use. The two questions that she had me ask were “Is it useful?” and “Do you love it?” A yes to either question meant I got to keep it.

Now, of course, Marie Kondo’s system is all the rage. It varies some from FlyLady, but she has us asking the same basic questions. I think that both of them are missing one of the biggest challenges to getting rid of clutter: many objects represent our dreams for the future.

We all have a clear idea of what we want our futures to hold. We don’t always say them out loud, but we have a vision and a mental to-do list. For example, for a few years, I was determined to go to Italy. I had listened to the book Under the Tuscan Sun (which is absolutely nothing like the movie.) The book is a sort of mundane account of a woman and her husband who decide to buy a home in Italy.

My then middle school-aged children mocked me for listening to the author tell her story in her Southern accent. But the story and life intrigued me. I wanted lemon trees and arugula growing along the driveway.

In support of that dream, I bought books about Italy. I got flashcards to learn to speak Italian. They set on the “someday” shelf on the bookcase in my bedroom.

One day I was clearing books and deciding what to get rid of. By that time, the Italy collection had been collecting dust for several years. I hadn’t talked much about my dream, but my then-spouse didn’t have much enthusiasm for the idea. I also realized that I didn’t really want to live that far from my family.

I decided to give up that dream. It hurt, but it was also freeing. There were a lot of “shoulds” wrapped up in the dream, like learning Italian and saving money. It made me sad to give up the dream, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen, and I gave away the books that represented the dream.

We also have a clear idea about who we are and who we want to be. Maybe we see ourselves as crafty moms who gracefully manage to make papier-mâché snakes with our children. Maybe we fancy ourselves as craftsmen of wool or wood. It could be that we see ourselves as learned or athletic. All of these self-identities have physical items that go along with them.

One of the most difficult things for me to get rid of was a pair of rollerblades. At the time, I had always considered myself an athlete. I played sports in high school and continued to be active. In my 20s I could ski backward down a German mountain slope. In my 30s, I carried children and all of their accouterment to various activities. In my early 40s, I carried camping gear and hiked with Boy Scouts as an Assistant Scout Leader.

When I was 49, I had brain surgery to correct an abnormality. I now live with five tiny platinum coils in my brain. In the couple of years before and since, I was not athletic. In fact, I feel nauseous and dizzy if I break a sweat or lift something heavy. I am not who I was by any stretch of the imagination.

I was clearing out the garage and came upon my dusty rollerblades. I had tried them and wasn’t great, but I had hopes of mastering rollerblading. At that moment, I realized that I was never going to rollerblade. Bigger than that, I was no longer athletic. Wow, what a blow that was. It sounds obvious, but moving from who I wanted to be to who I actually was was incredibly difficult.

I put the rollerblades into the give-away pile while sobbing. It was letting go of the self-image and the thing that represented that self-image.

Most of the things that clutter our lives are “one-day” things that represent what we want to do or who we want to be. Those things are beyond “Do I love it?” and “Is it useful?” The questions are “Am I ready to accept who I really am?” and “Am I ready to change my vision of the future?”

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

Positional Power v. Personal Influence

18 Tuesday Dec 2018

Posted by in Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Uncategorized

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carrot 650 px

There is a simple motivational model called the Carrot and the Stick. It’s a metaphor. Imagine you are sitting on a wagon that is being pulled by a horse. If you want a stubborn horse to go forward, you can hit it with a stick. This is negative motivation, and it is fear of being beaten that motivates the horse. You could take a longer stick, tie a carrot to it, and put it out in front of the horse. The horse will move forward to try and get the reward. This is positive motivation. For the long term, you get better results from people by using positive motivation techniques – carrots.

Supervisors’ authority that comes from a job title is positional power. As supervisors, we can do things like putting people in for certain awards (i.e., give them carrots), and we have official ways to discipline people (i.e., use a stick to motivate). Positional power is important, but it isn’t what we want to use all the time because it’s only effective when we are with or near the employee. However, when we leave the area, the employee is no longer motivated. In fact, they will probably not work hard and will see what they can get away with. Using positional authority is a last resort.

On a daily basis, we want to use personal influence because it is more motivating and effective. We create personal influence by building positive relationships. Our employees will continue to work when we aren’t present if we have a relationship built on respect and trust. The main focus of the first section of the course is how to cultivate that personal influence.

One of the first steps is to define the qualities and abilities of an exceptional leader. In the workshops, the list created by participants usually includes knowledgeable, compassionate, confident, creative, approachable, humble, honest, trustworthy, trusting, big-picture thinker, motivating, inspiring, constant learner, consistent, and integrity.

In addition, there are two more qualities to highlight. Frontline employees always list two things right up front: listens and is fair. When we pay attention to people when they talk, it’s called active listening. When we practice active listening, we are letting people know that they are worth our time, that they are valuable. Listening with the intent to understand the other person’s point of view helps to build positive, trusting relationships. When discussing “fair,”  most employees mean not showing any favoritism.

It’s important to know that people usually don’t quit their jobs, they quit their bosses. As supervisors, we don’t want to run people off with a negative attitude. Turnover is expensive for an organization. The statistics vary between 50-90% of an employee’s annual salary. If at all possible, we want to keep people working for us and make them successful.

As supervisors, we have an enormous influence over the people who work for us. We can create a pleasant and supportive environment that makes people want to come to work or a negative, fear-filled environment that employees resent and want to escape. We affect the quality of our employees’ lives at work and at home because people carry their dissatisfaction with work to their homes.

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

Intentional Change Theory

04 Tuesday Dec 2018

Posted by in Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Uncategorized

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Intentional Change Theory bridge the gap

A professor named Richard Boyatzis studies leadership and personal growth. He came up with a model for the best way for us to improve ourselves. It’s called the Intentional Change Model, and here are the steps:

  1. What does your ideal self look like? What skills does your ideal self have? In what areas is your ideal self an expert?
  2. Take a hard look at your real self right now. How are your ideal self and real self similar? Those are your strengths. Gaps are where your real and ideal selves are different.
  3. Create a learning agenda that builds on your strengths and reduces the gaps.
  4. Try new behaviors, thoughts, and feelings in alignment with your learning agenda. If one thing doesn’t work, then try another!

The final point that Boyatzis stresses is the importance of having a person to journey with you through your intentional change. He says that trusting relationships enable us to experience and process each new personal discovery better.

Personal growth is a challenge. It takes analysis and hard work. As Boyatzis says, “People change in desired ways, but not without intentional efforts.”

Take some time to think about who you want to become. What can your ideal self do? How does your ideal self behave? What thought patterns or perspective does your ideal self have? My ideal self is a little more fit and financially more secure than my real self. Those are my gaps. My ideal self and real self are both confident and motivated. Those are my strengths.

Once we’ve identified our strengths and gaps, we want to create a plan! My plan would include more exercise and actions that will create more financial security. As part of my plan, I get to try different things to accomplish those goals. You get to experiment, too! It’s fun to try new behaviors and thought patterns.

We all want to be sure that we have a trusted friend or coach to help us process the journey and increase our awareness.

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.