Tag Archives: #leadership

Create Your Bubble

13 Tuesday Dec 2016

Posted by in Leadership, Thriving Through the Holidays, Uncategorized

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Thriving Through the Holidays

Yay! We made it through Thanksgiving! We don’t have to just survive the holidays. There are skills and perspectives that can help us sail through the holidays with ease and enjoyment. Survival is not our goal. Thriving by creating and maintaining positive relationships and perspectives is what we want to strive for during the holiday season. It is so much more fun and motivating that just slogging through! Let’s make the holidays joyous!

 Skill 3: Create your bubble.

It’s easy to be influenced by the negativity of others. In fact, studies have proven that we tend to mimic the emotions of those around us. We have mirror neurons in our brain that fire automatically when we interact with others. If the other person is happy, then we feel happy. If he or she is angry, we feel angry. Our mirror neurons may fire, but it doesn’t mean that we are a slave to them. Despite the initial reaction triggered by our mirror neurons, we can choose our own emotions.

Sometimes it helps to visualize a shiny bubble around you that protects you from negative energy. Visualize yourself zipping up the front of the bubble if that helps you – like you are zipping yourself into a sleeping bag. You bubble is a complete barrier that allows only the good and positive inside. The negative cannot get through. There are no holes, no leaks, and no soft spots. Instead of a bubble, it can be God’s love or Universal energy that surrounds you. Visualize and describe it in your mind in a way that has meaning for you.

When Uncle Seibert starts on one of his tirades, mentally zip up your bubble around yourself. Imagine all his negative words sliding past you. None of them make it past your shiny bubble because it is impervious to negativity. It’s amazing how well this works! You get to choose whether or not you let the negativity of others affect you.

If someone is on a huge rant, I imagine a mirror between us – facing him or her. I see them complaining to themselves in the mirror. It isn’t even directed at me. I hope that they can see and hear themselves spewing toxic emotions. Sometimes they slow down when they aren’t getting a reaction. It isn’t fun to rant if you can’t get the other person riled up with you.

When my children were young, I would send them off to school with a shield. Here are the words that I would say, “I am surrounding you with God’s shield of white light, love, and truth. Nothing harmful or negative can get in, only good and positive.” You can phrase it in your own way, but it’s a nice gift to give others; even Uncle Seibert could do with a bubble of his own.

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.

Thriving Through the Holidays: Be Here Now

29 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by in Leadership, Mindfulness, Thriving Through the Holidays

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Thriving Through the Holidays

Yay! We made it through Thanksgiving! We don’t have to just survive the holidays. There are skills and perspectives that can help us sail through the holidays with ease and enjoyment. Survival is not our goal. Thriving by creating and maintaining positive relationships and perspectives is what we want to strive for during the holiday season. It is so much more fun and motivating that just slogging through! Let’s make the holidays joyous!

 Skill 1: Be here now.

We spend a lot of time being frantic during the holidays. We worry about getting the decorations up, buying presents, preparing food, traveling, and interacting with our families. When we worry or stress, we are thinking about the future or the past. We remember past holidays that didn’t go according to plan. We stress about the bills to come. We dread conversations with Uncle Seibert who doesn’t share our values or world view.

The best antidote for stress and worry is to concentrate on being in the moment. When we are fully present in the now, we aren’t worrying about the past or the future. We are noticing our surroundings and embracing our feelings. We are paying close attention to the people who are with us. When we live fully in the moment, there isn’t a space for worrying about other things.

We are capable of only doing one thing at a time. Multitasking has gotten a lot of hype, and interviewers still ask job candidates if they can multitask. However, studies show that the answer to that question is no. None of us can pay attention to more than one thing at a time. We can become adept at switching between things, but there is always a loss in concentration and time when we continually switch between tasks or thoughts.

Think about it for a minute. Let’s say I sit down to write notes on Christmas cards, but then start running my to-do list through my head. In reality, I’m sitting at the table doing nothing. I’m not getting the Christmas cards done, and I’m not checking things off of my to-do list. I am doing nothing!

In order to be in the moment, we need to be confident that what we are doing is what we need and want to be doing. That takes some organization and prioritization. We need to make a list, check it twice, and then decide what three things we want to accomplish each day. Once we identify what’s important, all we have to do is buckle down and focus on getting those tasks done one at a time.

It’s good to have a to-do list for home and work. Our goal is to know that what we are doing is what we need to be doing while focusing on that task completely.

We have daily chores, too. We drive kids around, shop for groceries, and we take showers. These are prime times to worry and stress. Focusing on what’s going on in the present keeps us calm and gives our tired brains a break. Remember, showering while stressing over getting everything done isn’t helping you get everything done. Take a moment to feel the water on your skin, smell the soap, and relax your muscles in the warm water.

Focusing on the now is being mindful. Studies show that no matter what we are doing, we are happier if we are doing it mindfully – really paying attention to what is going on now. Going about our holiday activities in a mindful way will help reduce stress and increase the joy that you feel!

 

 

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.

Lesson 8: Getting to the Root

22 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by in Leadership, Lessons From The Lawn, Uncategorized

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Lessons for Life and Leadership from the Lawn

I wanted to name this series “Lessons from the Garden” because it sounds nice and gardens are beautiful. However, I kill plants inside and out on a regular basis so that seemed misleading. In truth, I spent much of the summer of 2016 weeding my front yard. It wasn’t glamorous and didn’t result in anything with splendid color. I toyed with the idea of “Lessons from the Yard,” but I thought that title made it sound like I was in prison. I decided on “lawn,” and whatever you call it, I learned a lot sitting in the grass for a summer.

 Lesson 8: Getting to the Root

Sometimes I went out to weed in the yard as a break from other work. I wouldn’t have my sharp-pointed weeding tool or bucket. I would just roam the yard looking for random weeds.

Some weeds come out in one piece no matter what the ground conditions, but most weeds break off if you don’t use a weeding tool when the ground is dry. I watered patches I planned to weed the night before. However, on those impromptu weeding sessions, I often broke off the leafy top of the weed and left the root intact.

When you remove the top of the weed, the lawn looks good for a while, but the weed grows back. The root gets bigger, stronger, and more difficult to get out. You end up having to break the top off over and over again. I was solving the problem for the moment, but creating more work for Future Kathy.

One of my main goals in life is to set up Future Kathy for success. She is always very grateful when I do. I take time in the evening to plan the next day so Future Kathy can just sit down and get started in the morning. I try not to over-eat so Future Kathy won’t groan in agony and get fat. Breaking off the top of the weeds was making things look good, but it definitely wasn’t helping Future Kathy.

Like most things in life, you must get to the root of the problem to really fix it. Unfortunately, that takes time. To truly get rid of a weed, I had to sit down, use a sharp weeding tool, and dig down to the bottom of the root. It’s the only way to make sure that it didn’t return and that Future Kathy didn’t have to deal with it again. To get rid of other problems in life, you also have to take time to find the root cause and get rid of it.

Chronic challenges like being late, losing things, and always feeling frantic can be eliminated mostly if we dig down to the root of the problem. If you are chronically late, what creates that situation? If you can’t find your keys most mornings, put a hook on the wall and make a habit of hanging the keys there. Yes, it’s a bit of a hassle and requires some concentration. However, once it’s a habit, you will never have to look for your keys again.

Perhaps you are late because you just don’t give yourself enough time. Setting the alarm 15 minutes earlier until you can get out the door on time might be an easy solution. A “landing pad” by the door can save a lot of time. A landing pad is a place where you put everything that you need to take with you. It can have keys, papers, backpacks, etc. Instead of frantically gathering things at the last minute, we plan ahead and make a pile.

It’s impossible to know what the solution to a challenge is until you dig down, find it’s root, and get rid of the root problem. Just like weeding, it generally takes some time to deal with the root, but do it once and you will never have to deal with that particular challenge, or weed, ever 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.

Three Levels of Reality

10 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by in Emotional Intelligence, Leadership

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The “Three Levels of Reality” sounds like a great title for a Star Trek episode. However, it is a model that can improve our ability to communicate effectively, handle conflict in a positive way, and motivate others. I learned the concept during my Organization and Relationship System Coaching (ORSC) certification and was originally developed by Amy and Arnold Mindell. I discuss it in leadership seminars all the time.

The three levels are Essence, Dreaming, and Consensus Reality. Everything you see started as an idea – or a dream. Before it was a dream it was a feeling, an inkling, a potential. Essence level is feeling and experience before we articulate it. Once we start to describe it, it becomes more concrete and less accurate because the description depends on words which cannot adequately capture an experience, feeling, or potential.

Once we have named a feeling or experience, we are in Dream Level. Here’s where creativity lives. We create different possible outcomes and dream up things that we can then make real in Consensus Reality.

Consensus Reality is what we all agree is really here – chairs, sky, music, etc. Consensus Reality is what exists in our world.

In Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) terms, Extroverts have a tendency to dream out loud. Introverts, on the other hand, do their dreaming in their heads. I am an Introvert and my husband is an Extrovert. It took me a long time to realize that he doesn’t always plan to do what he talks about doing. Many times he is just articulating a dream.

For example, one day we were standing behind our brick home and he said, “Let’s just take a sledgehammer and knock out that bathroom wall. We can expand the house out here into the yard.”  Now there was a day when I would have immediately started arguing: “We don’t have the money for that right now!” or “That would be a hugely messy job and we need an architect to make sure it looks good.” I would have interpreted his dream as a call to action in Consensus Reality Level and responded with practical objections. However, I recognized that he was in Dream Level and I joined him there: “Yes, we could make the bathroom and the closet bigger.” We talked about all the great possibilities that would result from knocking down that brick wall. Recognizing and playing in Dream Level is fun – and it’s important to alert the other person if you’re thinking of grabbing a sledgehammer and moving to Consensus Reality.

In meetings it can frustrate a group to chronically stay at Dreaming Level because the group never DOES anything. If they don’t move to Consensus Reality Level, they don’t get actionable solutions. On the other hand, if a group jumps straight to Consensus Reality Level, they miss a lot of possibilities that happen in brainstorming and exploring in Dream Level. A good leader recognizes in which level the group is operating and steers them through the levels as appropriate.

Great leaders are people who can motivate others, really light a fire in other people’s souls. When leaders create a vision in a way that compels everyone to jump on board, they are operating in Essence Level. They find ways to touch the hearts of others and activate visceral feelings of hope, desire, belonging, and shared vision.

As with all powerful tools, creating feelings at the Essence Level can also be done with selfish intent. One can whip up feelings of hatred, fear and a deep need for self-protection. It behooves each of us to recognize when someone is activating a feeling in our hearts. What is the intent of the person or group that is reaching out to affect us in such a personal and powerful way? Knowing when someone is affecting you at Essence Level is an important first step to becoming an observer and figuring out what is going on.

The current day example of a group that intentionally operates in Essence Level for self-promotion is the news channels. They are excellent at activating fear, disapproval and disconnection no matter at which end of the societal spectrum they dwell. Hitler was great at reaching people at Essence Level. So was Martin Luther King. It’s a good idea to take a long look at the person or group who is trying to flick the on/off switch of your emotions. It’s important to check in to be sure that we stay in alignment with our own values and goals.

Here’s the bottom line: 1) Understanding and using the Three Levels of Reality is the hallmark of a great leader – and a despot. Powerful tools beget powerful results. As benevolent leaders, we want to use the power wisely for the good of the group. Steering a group into the different levels affects motivation, creativity and productivity. 2) Understanding the Three Levels of Reality is also a powerful shield against those who would use our emotions for their own gain. We create that shield by moving into observer mode and questioning the intent of the speaker and the alignment of her or his message with our values.

You can watch my video on this topic here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3j0Uxqxsek Same subject, a little bit different perspective.