Accept Both The Constant And The Change

Current events are volatile. Complexity abounds. People at work and at home are pendulum swinging from fear to hope, and then back to fear, all due to the numerous chaotic situations that are happening around them. 

As a result many people, who are new to leadership and management positions, are feeling isolated and disconnected from their own clarity. This is happening internally at the personal level and externally with their core team. They also are feeling stressed and overwhelmed by all that needs to get done, all that needs to be communicated, and all that needs to be prioritized. Even experienced leaders are struggling with how to update strategy, goals, and systems given the continuous adaptive challenges that are surfacing on a daily and weekly basis. In short, everyone is worried and stretched.

Because of all of this, I am regularly getting asked one question: “What am I supposed to do given these crazy times?”

And my response is clear and concise: “You have to accept both the constant and the change.”

Now, on the surface, this seems elementary. But we all know that when something appears simple, it is never simple or easy. Instead, it requires us to return to the ground level truths about people and change. 

Work With What You Have

The first ground level truth is that we have to work with what we are given. While we may hope for things to be different, they are not different. While we may hope that people, structure, systems, and culture are in full alignment, they are not. While we may hope for a common mindset about how to live the mission and values on a daily basis, most days they are not being fully utilized. as a framework for decision-making and customer service. In short, our hope for things to be better or different is not generating the results we want. So, rather than hoping for change, we instead have to maintain the constants and, at the exact same time, create the changes we wish to see in ourselves and the company. 

This begins with taking stock of what we have. We need to carefully assess what is, and is not working. We need to find out where things are going right and where things are perpetually going wrong. We also have to figure out what is, and what is not in alignment with the desired outcomes that we seek to create. This level of diagnostic work needs to be the precursor to building a plan. It is the degree to which we pause, reflect, and consider what is actually taking place that will, in the end, determine what kind of technical and adaptive solutions need to be put in place in order to get back on track and moving in the right direction. 

We begin this level of diagnostics work in two different areas. First, we need to take stock of what is going on within these four specifics elements, namely people, structure as in who reports to whom and how the company communicates, and executes it’s goals, plus systems, and culture. Each of these four elements can be explored at the operational level or the strategic level. The key is that they are explored thoughtfully and carefully. 

The second area we need to take stock in is whether or not there is a clear understanding of the answer to the following three questions: What do we want to be know for by our customers? What do we want to be know for by our employees? What do we want to be know for within the communities where we serve? To find the answers to these three questions, a leader needs to go to each of these three groups, i.e. customers, employees, and community, and engage in deep listening. We need to follow Stephen Covey’s advice from years ago and “seek first to understand; second to be understood.”

Once all of this information has been gathered and processed, then a plan can be created which starts from a place of reality rather than a place of hoping for change to take place. While starting with what we have may be difficult and challenging, leaders at all levels, who are successful over time, always work with what they are given, and build from this foundation. 

The Importance Of Belonging 

The second ground level truth is that everyone hopes for, and desires to belong to something that is making a difference. This simple fact seems to be often lost in the rush to get things done, and to maintain some semblance of order and predictability in the day to day operational level of the company. However, with the binary mindset of getting things done vs. things not getting done, many leaders and managers do not grasp the importance of belonging. They do not comprehend the importance of people wanting to feel connected with others and to know that their job matters. In essence, people want to feel like they are making a difference at work and in the world at large. 

As management consultant, educator and author Peter Drucker wrote, “Knowing where one belongs can transform an ordinary person - hard working but otherwise mediocre - into an outstanding performer.” Brene’ Brown in her book, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead (Avery, 2012), builds on this perspective when she wrote: “Connection is why we’re here. We are hardwired to connect with others, it’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives, and without it there is suffering.” Belonging and connection are mission critical to creating success over time. Maintaining it over the long haul is just as important, too. 

Yet, so few leaders and managers have a team development plan that strengthens trust, connections, and the feeling of belonging. Furthermore, so few leaders and managers grasp that people join a team for very specific reasons, namely to have a place where they feel safe and cared for, to feel like they are part of a group that recognizes and values the differences and strengths of each member, and to be able to create significant achievements that would not be possible at an individual level. 

Many times over the course of my career, I heard the phrases, “These are my people” or “This is my work family”. The depth of these relationships, based on a common identity and common understanding, creates capacity and becomes a force multiplier as all involved confront technical problems or adaptive challenges. In short, when people feel like they belong and are making a positive difference, it creates clarity of purpose. It also gives people hope, and strengthens their resolve to work through the difficulties, be they large or small. 

Broken Open Vs Being Just Broken

The third ground level truth is that there is a major difference between being broken open vs being just broken. Poet Mark Nepo writes: “When broken open, we grow. When just broken, we endure. And the crucial call of all relationship is to inhabit what we learn from being broken open to help us endure the times we are just broken.” 

Leadership is hard work. There will be days when we will be stretched to the limit, and there will be days when we will go flying past the proverbial limit into uncharted waters. There also will be days when all we can do is endure. And there will be days when we are broken open by the process. The first key is to discern the difference between the two forms of being broken.

The second key is to know what to do when one is feeling broken. Initially, we must understand that this is not something that can be fixed by controlling everything and everyone around you. There is no one-two-three step process that will put things back to normal. Instead, when we are feeling broken, there needs to be a healing more than a cure. As Nepo continues, “… what opens us is never as important as what is opened.” This is true, because in the opening, we have the opportunity to deconstruct and reconstruct how we approach life and work. 

This in-depth healing process of deconstruction and reconstruction takes time, patience, support, and reflection. While it may be difficult as we move from what was to what will be, we must put one thing in place in order to be successful. Executive coach Lindsay Leahy in her book, Take It All Apart: How to Live, Lead, and Work with Intention (River Grove Books, 2024), writes about how we need to identify people who we “respect and trust, and listen to their voices more than the voices of others” as we begin this work. These connections will help us “take in and internalize the positive feedback as much as or more than the negative.” This means building or rebuilding our network of people who will support us, and then allowing ourselves to be supported as we do the work. As Leahy continues, “Allowing yourself to be transformed, to become different, to surrender, and to accept a new reality is going to take real commitment.” With a strong support network, we can make this level of commitment and sustain this level of commitment through the whole process. We also need to show ourselves some grace and be disciplined as we do this deep internal work. This in combination with some tenderness and self-compassion makes a huge difference. 

The Quiet Wavelength Of Wisdom

Renowned philosopher, educator, and Tai Ji master, Chungliang Al Huang understands this perspective and points out that “there are no beginnings and no endings. The universe is process and the process is in me.” It is in the inner process of accepting both the constants and the changes that we open up to a new perspective. “Finding the universal in the personal, and the personal in the universal,” writes author Ryan Holiday, “is not only the secret to art and leadership and even entrepreneurship, it is the secret to centering oneself. It both turns down the volume of noise in the world and tunes one in to the quiet wavelength of wisdom that sages and philosophers have long been on.”

In these times of unpredictable difficulty, we need to be careful and not overreact to all that is happening. We need to work with what we have and remember the importance of belonging. We also need to comprehend the difference between being broken and being broken open. Then, as we remember all three of these things, we will achieve a new level of congruence in our life. In short, we will come to better understand, and then tune into the quiet wavelength of wisdom that has guided sages and philosophers over the centuries. 

© Geery Howe 2025

Geery Howe, M.A. Executive Coach in Leadership, Strategic Planning, and Organizational Change

The Missing Puzzle Pieces - part #2

The Power of Co-learning

Third, they experience the power of co-learning. During the mid-90’s, I encountered a health problem that was troubling. Having seen local specialists with minimal success, I decided to go to an out of state, holistic health clinic that was highly recommended to meby others. I learned that people came from all over the world to this clinic to find answers to complex health problems. So, my wife and I went to meet with the founder of the clinic, to ask for help, and hopefully to find some workable solutions. 

During the day that I spent at the clinic, and during the subsequent review of the extensive testing that was done, we did discover multiple problems and multiple solutions. All of which made a difference over time. But most important, I found a healthcare professional and healthcare team that started their work from a most unique place. 

As they explained to me before I meet with the doctor, the people at the clinic do not define the work they do as a doctor-patient relationship. Instead, they frame up the process as a co-learner experience. The doctor has to learn about me, my lifestyle choices, and my overall health record. At the same time, I need to learn from the doctor about what he was discovering about my health challenge as well as learn about how my body works when dealing with this health challenge. 

In basic terms, I engaged with them in a continuous learning cycle. But at the foundation of this whole process was something quite powerful, namely deep listening. My doctor and I had to do some deep listening with each other. And we needed to do some deep listening with my body. In particular, I needed to learn how to listen to the triggers that would make my health condition worse, and to listen to my body when it was on the right track to being stable and healthy. This level of deep listening is something I am still doing today. 

While my overall health improved dramatically, I also learned how to live with my chronic health condition. I learned how to manage it and how to live with it. As I have gotten older, it is still there, but now I do not see it as a problem as much as just how I am wired and how my body copes with life’s normal stresses and not so normal stressful periods. 

Decades later now, I am still intrigued by this concept of being a co-learner, and find deep listening to be a most helpful perspective when I am coaching others. I am there to learn from them, and when I appropriate, they are there to learn from me. Together, we are co-learning through the challenge before us. 

The Importance of Mutuality

Fourth, they come to appreciate the importance of mutuality. This is a big word, and it has many levels of definition. In the beginning, it is defined as “the sharing of a feeling between two or more people.” But when we dig deeper into this definition, we realize that mutuality means there is an interactive relationship based on a healthy level of respect and sharing. It is not a one-sided relationship, but a constantly evolving relationship.There also is a recognition of the important role feelings play within the sharing that takes place, and an understanding of what is motivating and/or creating them. 

From my perspective, for a true depth of mutuality to occur, the previous three elements need to be in place, namely people doing deep inner work, the creation of safe and open space, and the power of co-learning generated from deep listening. When this convergence happens, then mutuality is experienced. 

However, there is an element to mutuality that needs further exploration. As this connection is built through sharing, and as deep listening occurs, all involved will come to understand that our felt experiences and our lived experiences are not the same thing. Our felt experiences reflect feeling felt and/or feeling seen. It happens when empathy is paired with acceptance, understanding, and respect. 

On the other hand, the sharing of our lived experiences generates knowledge gained from choices made and the resulting experiences that took place rather than through assumptions, research, media, or comments made by others. When mutuality arises, all involved have patience to recognize that our felt experiences are just as important as our lived experiences. Both are a source of knowledge and both guide us in our life journey. 

The One Burning Question

Our lives are made up of many puzzle pieces. And every day we are trying to figure out how to fit them together. We must take responsibility for this level of work, and not defer our choices to other people’s whims or expectations. As part of this important process, we must intentionally seek rest and re-creation, regeneration and rebirth, all while discovering and rediscovering our life’s purpose. The knowledge gained about ourselves while doing this level of work will make a significant difference in our life at home and at work. And it will change the expectations that we hold for ourselves and for others. 

Because in the end, it is easy to loose perspective about life. “It is so easy to take for granted that tomorrow will come, that another opportunity will be given to bear witness to a sunset, take a walk in the forest, listen in awe to the birds, or share a moment of connection with the one in front of us,” writes Matt Licata, PhD, in his book, A Healing Space: Befriending Ourselves in difficult times (Sounds True, 2020). “But another part knows how fragile it truly is here, how tenuous, and the reality that this opening into life will not be here much longer.” As he continues, “At the end of this life - which is sure to come much sooner than we think - it its unlikely we’ll be caught up in whether we accomplished all the tasks on our to-do lists, played it safe, healed all the wounds from our past, wrapped up our self-improvement project, or completed some mythical spiritual journey.” 

Licata notes that in the end there is “only one burning question: How well did I love?” For me, this is the missing puzzle piece. No matter what is the challenge before us, are we willing to risk loving and being loved in the midst of our life journey? 

The answer must always reflect the clarity that every experience we have shapes us into who we will eventually become. And every experience we have creates an opportunity to love, to listen thoughtfully, and to show compassion and grace to all we meet, including ourselves. For while the puzzle of life may be complex, the choice to love and be loved is quite simple. It all begins with me pouring the puzzle pieces of my life onto the metaphorical card table and slowly putting the pieces together. Over time, the different pieces will interlock with each other, and the resulting picture that emerges is one that is beautiful, whole and complete. Then, the miracle of life appears before us and we are blessed beyond measure to experience it each and every day. 

© Geery Howe 2025

Geery Howe, M.A. Executive Coach in Leadership, Strategic Planning, and Organizational Change

The Missing Puzzle Pieces - part #1

Introduction

Over the past year, I have enjoyed putting together 1,000 piece jig saw puzzles. While some are more fun than others, I thoroughly enjoy opening the box, pouring the puzzle pieces out on to our card table, and beginning the process of sorting them to find the edge pieces. Once I have the edge put together, and all the other pieces are laid out on various old cookie sheets, it is time to sit down and start piecing it together. 

I didn’t know until recently that there is a term for someone who likes putting a jig saw puzzle together. They are called a dissectologist. Now that is one fancy term!  I just like seeing the picture come to life as the different pieces interlock with each other. 

When it comes to life’s journey, I think we spent a lot of time trying to get various “puzzle pieces” to interlock. We look for the pattern and/or the picture, but somedays we just can not find it. I know from my times working jig saw puzzles that I can look and look and not find the missing puzzle piece to finish a section. Then, a day later, I look and see the piece instantaneously. It is as if the piece appears magically on the tray. What was lost has been found!

When coaching people who are struggling in finding their metaphorical puzzle pieces, I listen carefully and often ask questions. Here are two questions I have used at times from a book by Graham Alexander called Tales From The Top: Ten Crucial Questions from the World’s #1 Executive Coach (Nelson Business, 2005):

- What knowledge about yourself are you missing that could make a significant difference in your life and/or your company’s performance?

- What are you demanding of your people that you’re not demanding of yourself?

These kinds of questions have many diverse and important answers. And these answers are not discovered in a single sitting. Instead, they are revealed over time and through on-going dialogue. From my experience of being with people doing this work, there are four outcomes when they engage in the process of finding the missing puzzle pieces in their life and in their work. 

Deep Inner Work

First, they come to value the journey of doing deep, inner work. Cal Newport in his book, Deep Work: Rules For Focused Success In A Distracted World (Grand Central Publishing, 2016), defines deep work as “Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.” Newport uses a work based definition of deep work. I believe the same concept can also be applied to our non-work life, i.e. actions performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your understanding about yourself and others to a new level of perspective and insight.

The first step to doing this kind of deep, inner work is to carve out time and space where it can happen in a distraction-free zone. Newport points that “The reason knowledge workers are losing their familiarity with deep work is well established: network tools…. In aggregate, the rise of these tools, combined with ubiquitous access to them through smart phones and networked office computers, has fragmented most knowledge workers’ attention into slivers.” He continues by sharing that “A 2012 McKinsey study found that the average knowledge worker now spends more than 60 percent of the work week engaged in electronic communication and Internet searching, with close to 30 percent of a workers’ time dedicated to reading and answering e-mail alone.” I would say that in 2025 this is happening even more so at work and at home. I also would note that deep, inner work is considered secondary to managing home and work logistics. Still, deep inner work is important if we want to move from a fragmented life to a unified life. 

For me, this ability to do deep, inner work happens routinely now, because I learned a new way of starting my day from my youngest son and his wife. They call it slow coffee, which is an uninterrupted quiet time period at the start of the day. Sometimes, they read a book and sometimes they catch up on the news or their social media feeds. The goal is to slow down, enjoy the coffee, and prepare for the day. I choose to do this now for 30 minutes after breakfast, seven days a week. 

During my slow coffee time, I incorporated a morning practice that my wife has done for many years. She calls it her daily readings. It is a time to quietly, and with no interruptions, read a various of resources from faith related books and other inspiring authors. It is a time to slow down, center myself, gain perspective, learn something new, and reflect. 

Nowadays, I have a stack of five to six books next to my favorite chair and I routinely spend some time with each of them over the course of the week. The combination of slow coffee and daily readings has been a powerful way to start the day and to stay centered over the course of the day. In short, it is my way to connect with something greater than myself in the midst of dealing with daily living minutia.

Safe And Open Space

Second, they realize the significance of finding and/or creating safe and open space. My morning readings and slow coffee time are one form of a safe and open space. But, in reality, there are many different forms of safe and open spaces. From taking time for reflection, visiting with dear friends or mentors, or finding a faith community that is supportive, the goal is to stop, and take stock of what is going on inside of us and around us. 

Kevin Cashman in his book, The Pause Principle: Step Back to Lead Forward (Berrett-Koehler, 2012), writes “All too often, we allow ourselves to be carried away by our busy-ness. We are too hyperactive, too reactive to even notice the hidden value-creating dynamics waiting just under the surface within us and around us. Tethered to our smartphones, we are too caught up and distracted to take the time necessary to sort through complexity or to locate submerged purpose. In our urgent rush to get ‘there,’ we are going everywhere but being nowhere. Far too busy managing with transitive speed, we rarely step back to lead with transformative significance.” 

In this same book, Cashman reminds us of the second Law of Thermodynamics: As activity lessens, order increases. He notes that “The Pause Principle is the conscious, intentional process of stepping back, within ourselves and outside ourselves, to lead forward with greater authenticity, purpose, and contribution.” I believe this is a very important point and what makes the creation or discovery of safe and open spaces significant. As Cashman continues, “The greater the complexity, the deeper the reflective pause required to convert the complex and ambiguous to the clear and meaningful. Pause helps us to move from the transitive or hyperactive to the transformative…. All real change begins with self-change; pause is a catalyst of self-change.” 

When we give ourselves permission and choose to be fully present within a safe and open space, we have the opportunity to do something that is very important, namely to deconstruct how we are engaging with our life and take stock of whether or not our life choices are, or are not working. Then, we can reconstruct a better way of moving forward. Some people do this on their own. Some people use a book to assist them in this work. Some people ask for help from a coach, mentor, or trusted friend. The key is that the deconstruction and reconstruction is done in a safe and open space. 

To be continued on Tuesday. 

Geery Howe, M.A. Executive Coach in Leadership, Strategic Planning, and Organizational Change

Leadership During An Extended Period of Adaptation - part #2

Important Questions For The Team

“The usefulness of the knowledge we acquire and the effectiveness of the actions we take depend on the quality of the questions we ask,” write Eric Vogt, Juanita Brown, and David Isaacs in their short booklet called The Art of Powerful Questions. “Questions open the door to dialogue and discovery. They are an invitation to creativity and breakthrough thinking.” Questions during times of adaptation are very important at the individual and group level work. The challenge is to find the right questions. 

For this, I always turn to the work of Peter Drucker, Frances Hesselbein, and Joan Snyder Kuhl and their book called Peter Drucker’s Five Most Important Questions: Enduring Wisdom for Today’s Leaders (Wiley, 2015).  Here are the five questions I recommend a team start exploring during an adaptive challenge:

1. What is our mission?

2. Who is our customer?

3. What does the customer value?

4. What are our results?

5. What is our plan?

Reviewing these as a team is essential because the resulting dialogue and discussion will reveal, in part, what is and is not changing. This level of understanding will help team leaders communicate better when dealing with loss and resistance during a time period of extended adaptation. 

The interesting thing that I have observed during this level of dialogue is the focus on questions #2 and #3.  While question #2 may not change that much, I always find it intriguing to participate in a group setting and to witness how much awareness and understanding has or has not shifted around question #3. What I have seen is that the cause of many adaptation issues surface around the changes in customer expectations. 

One key to creating this level of understanding is to discern what customers want, need, and expect. The other is to ask ourselves a critical question: What do we want to be known for as a company? This can be broken down into the following categories: product quality, overall customer experience, i.e. buying the product/service and using the product/service, and finally the employee experience in the previous steps. 

In the end, the quality of the questions we ask will “open the door to dialogue and discovery. They are an invitation to creativity and breakthrough thinking.” And creativity and new ways of thinking and working are mission critical to success when working through complex adaptive problems. 

Team Leaders And Adaptation

When a team leader moves through an extended period of adaptation, so does their team. As a result, this often feels like the team is caught in a perpetual cycle of the classic storming stage within normal team development. When this happens, I coach team leaders to remember that team members are having two experiences at the same time.  

Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall in their book, Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World (Harvard Business Review Press, 2019) point out that there are two categories of experience, namely “We experiences” and “Me experiences.” As they explain, “… what distinguishes the best team leaders from the rest is their ability to meet these two categories of needs for the people on their teams. What we, as team members, want from you, our team leader, is firstly that you make us feel part of something bigger, that you show us how what we are doing together is important and meaningful; and secondly that you make us feel you can see us, and connect to us, and care about us, and challenge us, in a way that recognizes who we are as individuals.” 

While the above paragraph is self-explanatory, within it are important points that sometimes get missed. First, when it comes to we experiences, a team leader needs to help their team members see “how what we are doing together is important and meaningful.” This action is often called framing and naming the work. Many leaders just tell people to work but don’t really explain why the work during an extended period of adaptation is important or meaningful. 

In basic terms, they don’t place the efforts of the team within the context of the bigger picture. The outcome of this action is two fold. One, people focus on maintaining and defending status quo. Two, they become disengaged over time because the work they do is just work and not something that is making a difference. In short, action without understanding is not going to result in innovation or effective collaboration. 

Second, during adaptive work, a team leader needs to focus on the me experiences. In particular, they need to make team members “feel you can see us, and connect to us, and care about us, and challenge us, in a way that recognizes who we are as individuals.” Again, on the surface, this seems like basic team leader work. But in reality, it is much harder than it appears. For to do this well, a team leader needs to build a healthy relationship with each member on the team while also building the whole team. Furthermore, they need to build a relationship that is based on authentic caring and trust. In short, feelings and EQ are more central to the work than the classic focus on clarity and IQ. 

Buckingham and Goodall add two final points in their book that I think relate to adaptive work. As they write, “local experiences… are significantly more important than company ones,” and “the truth is that … people care which team they’re on.” When it comes to the heavy lifting related to adaptive problem solving, local solutions are more important to people than company solutions, because local relationships and local outcomes are tangible and visible on a day to day basis. While these individuals may work for the company, the local team culture is their daily we experience and me experience. And given how important both of these experiences are to people, we must remember that working on a functional team can and will make a big difference to whether or not both of those experiences are stressful or overwhelming. 

Flip The VUCA Forces

Living and working in an extend period of adaptation, or what is sometimes called a VUCA environment, namely a time period where the world is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, is difficult. Leaders and companies are stretched by the technical and adaptive challenges before them. When this becomes an extended time period, rather than a VUCA episode, the work can become complex and complicated, all at the same time period. 

The term VUCA was introduced by the Army War College and by Bob Johansen in his book, Get There Early (Berrett-Koehler, 2007). Johansen contends that we have “to flip the VUCA forces to terms that create possibilities and refine VUCA as: Vision; Understanding; Clarity; Agility.” The pathway to doing this involves disciplined thought and disciplined action. 

We begin this flipping process by doing in-depth diagnostic work before action to determine what actually is going on. Next, we must create a culture of courageous conversations, and generate and distribute leadership deep into the organization in order to mobilize people to create new solutions. Then, we need to make two critical choices, namely to invest time and energy into resource building for greater perspective and understanding, and to stop self-criticism and self-judgement during the hard work of leading others. As we make these choices, we also need to ask ourselves and others quality questions and engage in thoughtful listening and dialogue. Finally, we need to understand the kind of we experiences and me experiences that people are having as they do this hard and on-going work. 

"In the end,” writes Max De Pree, American businessman, writer and founder of the Herman Miller office furniture company, “it is important to remember that we cannot become what we need to be by remaining where we are." Because, in the end, adaptation is always about transformation. And the most successful leaders moving through an extended period of adaptation are always agents of transformation. They help us, individually and collectively, move from where we are to where we need to be, resulting in vision, understanding, clarity, and agility. 

© Geery Howe 2025

Geery Howe, M.A. Executive Coach in Leadership, Strategic Planning, and Organizational Change