Listen to the Heart

Courage is at the heart of leadership. We know that people are not resisting change as much as resisting the loss of connections, control, clarity and competence that often happens when stepping outside one’s comfort zone. Still, we as leaders push forward and aim for continued improvement. We seek a greater level of excellence and want to create this vision at the day to day level. 

Along with courage, we need something else. As Ron Heiftz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky in their book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World (Harvard Business Press, 2009) write: “To lead your organization through adaptive change, you need the ability to inspire. Adaptive challenges involve values, not simply facts or logic. And resolving them engages people’s beliefs and loyalties, which lie in their hearts, not their heads.”

John Kotter in his book, The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations (Harvard Business School Press, 2002) writes: “The single most important message in this book is very simple. People change what they do less because they are given analysis that shifts their thinking than because they are shown a truth that influences their feelings.”

Heiftz, Grashow and Linsky acknowledge this understanding when they write: “You need to strengthen two skills to master the ability to inspire: listening from the heart and speaking from the heart. After all, you cannot connect deeply with people unless you know what is in their hearts and what is in yours.”

This week and every week, pause on a regular basis and listen to your heart, and listen with your heart. This combination has the potential to be transformative for you and many other people.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Reclaim Vision

“I am worn out, " he said as we sat down together for a breakfast consultation on a hot and humid summer morning. “We have expanded the size and scope of our organization 10-fold. But even after a week of vacation, I am neither rejuvenated nor rested. I have job security as one of the top executives and a great salary. I love my wife, and we have beautiful children who are grown, married, and are bringing wonderful grandchildren into the world.

However, I realize I'm losing perspective. I’ve even started chewing people out at work. While I sense I am called to this work -- that I am here to do something significant -- I'm feeling overwhelmed. And I know I am not doing the job as well as I should be."

It was a long and personal breakfast meeting. I challenged him to live what he knew to be true.

"Do you mean I have to recover my own vision?"

"Yes, " I replied. "Your challenges are the seeds for great achievements if you are willing to preserve the core of who you are and what you believe in. Now is not the time to compromise your values."

In order to persevere in the midst of great challenges, courage, hope, and personal vision must be recovered -- for they are vital ingredients in coping effectively with change. They fortify one's ability to move ahead with clarity. They invigorate a "can do" mentality. At the same time, courage, hope, and vision are not easily found, unless we are willing to let go of unproductive and self-defeating habits.

I was sitting in another executive's office a few months later, discussing current problems in his company, when he shared with me about some of the serious physical and stress-related symptoms he had been experiencing. “I am the CEO of this corporation," he exclaimed, "and I know that if I don't make some changes, I’ll be dead before I'm fifty. This job is killing me.

"Two months ago, I began having problems with double vision, and then one day my chest tightened up and I passed out. In the emergency room at the hospital, the nurse asked me if I had been under a lot of stress. I told her I had been, but since the situation would not be changing any time soon, I told her that I just need to get me back on my feet so I can get on with the day.

"Two weeks ago, I realized I could care less about half the stuff I was doing. I talked about this with an older mentor of mine, and he suggested I consider changing jobs - maybe even look at a career change. It was then that I realized I really am afraid to look at my life. This is all I have ever done, and I just don't know where I would go from here."

Many people in organizations are caught in a pattern of “P.0.W ism." They expect themselves and others to be perfectionists, overachievers, and workaholics. Sometimes, when swamped by team projects, committee meetings, and paperwork, we even act as if we are human "doings" ‚ instead of human beings. 

In the long run, a P.O.W. approach to work and life will only yield cynicism, stress, and burnout. John O'Neil, in his book, The Paradox of Success, reminds us that many people are winning at work and losing at life. Transforming a challenge into an achievement, by its very nature, asks us to extend our boundaries.

Functioning outside our comfort zone is not always easy, and maintaining perspective can be difficult at times. Start this process by asking yourself an important question: 

What is the one thing I am not doing today that would make my life more meaningful if l did it on a regular basis? 

Let your answer be the foundation for rebuilding your personal vision for the future.

Remember: The success of any change cycle is determined not only by what we do, but who we are.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Living With Passion

I realized recently that many people live their lives like they wash their clothes. Some are careful about what colors go into which load, while others stuff it in and do not mind if their underwear is grey or their brights faded. Yet after the load determination stage, they all dump in the soap, turn on the machine, and walk away. Clothes in and clothes out. Dirt is washed away and that is all that counts.

I remember the first week I lead a work camp for teenagers in rural northern Mexico [back in the early 1980’s]. After three days of digging trenches for the first septic system and flush toilet for a small community school, the students in the work group approached me and the upcoming weekend fiestas with a big problem and an even more important question. Their clothes were dirty.  “Now, what do we do?” they asked.

There were no washing machines, not even electricity. The amount of running water from the pump depended on whether or not the community generator had enough gas and working parts to get started that day. I handed each group member a bar of soap or a box of soap flakes and said, “Go find a bucket of water and start rubbing.” That first weekend was pretty difficult for them because they had not thought ahead about how hard it was going to be to get the dirt out of their clothes after all their digging. They went to the party wearing some very wrinkled and not very clean combinations of work pants and shirts.

Yet, if you have ever washed a week’s worth of clothes by hand, you learn the importance of thoughtfulness and mindfulness. I, too, became very attentive to how I treated my clothes and how hard it was going to be to wash them out after a hard day’s work.  By the end of the week, I remembered that dirt didn’t just wash away - one had to work hard and carefully at it.  Richard Bach wrote that you are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however. My own level of awareness of how I choose to live my life started to come into focus. Dirty laundry can be a good teacher.

When it comes to learning practical stress-management skills, the quality of our lives needs to be redirected to living from a place of passion. When you are washing a pair of well-used and very dirty blue jeans by hand, and you want them to come clean because you have been invited to dinner by the town mayor to discuss further work camps with the community, you have to rub hard and be consistent. The issue of what is important is very clear, namely, that clean clothes are a statement about caring for yourself and others. It is a sign of commitment to the process. The “dump in and walk away from the machine” style of living is not even part of your reality. In short, as with the process of cleaning clothes by hand, awareness is central to handling stress more effectively.

Along with living one’s life with passion and awareness, there is another important aspect to health and wellness. As Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote: “A man or woman with outward courage dares to die; A man or woman with inward courage dares to live.”

Walking the pathway to health requires us to acknowledge, that all our experiences in life are catalysts for growth. Furthermore, what we accept, think about, and keep foremost in our minds will be the basis on which we live. If we choose to live with passion, we must have the inward courage to live fully in each moment. Stress has to be handled and handled at the moment it occurs. We can not put it off or forget about it.

In stress-management workshops, people regularly ask me where they should begin. I always remind them of the following words from the Bible: “As you sow, so you shall reap.” To have inward courage to live passionately means to become more attentive to the process of living. We do not need to start washing our clothes by hand, but we do need to become more awake to the process of what we are choosing to do and in what kind of spirit we are doing it.

On the same trip to Mexico, one day one of the light-hearted young men came up to me and asked if he and others could go down to the river to wash their hair and their clothes with bio-degradable soap. I conferred  with the other leaders since they had been in Mexico more times than I, and we said “yes” to the request. With bags of dirty clothes, we all hiked to a nearby waterfall in the river. While some washed their clothes along the bank, others washed their hair with buckets, the light-hearted one had a most unique solution. He put on his dirtiest clothes and walked into the river with soap. First he washed his clothes while wearing them, and then his hair. He ended this very funny “wash cycle” by singing at the top of his lungs while standing underneath the water fall. His clothes came out cleaner than those of the other students, and the afternoon ended with all of us standing around wearing and washing our dirty clothes and then singing under the water fall. It had to be one of my most memorable and enjoyable clothes-washing experiences. 

Living passionately can be fun and rewarding. Dealing with your stress by being aware of how you choose to live is a continual process of mindfulness. Being light of heart and playful in spirit is a good place to start.

From Listen to the Heart The Transformational Pathway to Health and Wellness by Geery Howe published back in 1991. For more information about the book, please click on the following link:  http://www.chartyourpath.com/Listen-to-the-Heart.html

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Sustainability: Working and Living Through Constant Change - part #1

THEME: Fall 2009 From Vision to Action Executive Roundtable Report

FOCUS: Sustainability: Working and Living Through Constant Change - part #1

Monday morning: December 14, 2009

Dear friends,

It was the day after an all day strategic planning retreat. As I walked in with my roller bag before my afternoon flight, I noticed two women in an office cubical. One of them motioned me over. So I wove my way through the maze and sat down. One of them looked me in the eyes and said, “I am overwhelmed given all we talked about yesterday. I am working 14 hour days and have been doing so since the spring. I can barely keep up.”

Then, she started to cry and was very embarrassed by the depth of her emotional response. I gave her my complete and undivided attention while the other woman went looking for some Kleenex. Once back and with a box of tissues in hand, we moved to a conference room. She cried some more with lots of hand waving with the hope of not smudging her morning make-up.

She shared about her mother being sick, not sleeping well, and just wanting time to rest. I told her that her feelings were normal and OK. I also pointed out that she needs to take charge of her priorities. She was a smart woman who could figure this out, but she needed to activate her support network.

I explained to her that being the lone leader was not the key to her success. She needed a team, and she needed to ask for what she needs. Then, I asked her, “what do you need?” Her response was “I need someone to help me train all of the new people.” Having visited with the CEO, I knew she could ask for this as it had already surfaced in a conversation with the CEO. But she needed the courage to go in and ask.

This is the hard part of being a leader, namely finding one’s voice and then having the courage to use it. Some days we forget that courage comes from clarity, not from exhaustion or fear. The source of clarity and courage is not fear, but clarity of purpose or mission.

I think in many organizations clarity comes when we know what role we play in the vast and complex work of planning, execution and evaluation. During the Fall 2008 From Vision to Action Executive Roundtable, I explained that empowered people have confidence in their ability and their knowledge. They have confidence in their team and their company. They believe they can make the right decisions, and they believe they are role modeling what is most important. From my experience, this confidence comes from an understanding of one’s role in the organization, and understanding what is one’s circle of influence. This confidence also comes from answering these three questions, namely “where have we come from?”, “who are we now?”, and “where are we going?”.

During this wild and wacky recession, there have been few sources of hope and many people have loss the passion for the work they are doing. Furthermore, some people just want to keep off the radar screen because right now their work place is a target rich environment for blame. The result is a roller coaster ride of emotions every day. Everyone is tired of worrying and everyone is seeking ways to regain perspective.

This week realize that personal perspective comes from personal discipline. When we are clear about our intentions, namely our purpose, our goals, and our attention, our focus, then we are moving forward in a healthy direction.

Have a good week,

Geery

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

Morning Star Associates
319 - 643 - 2257