Vedere Consulting
This blog is dedicated to helping people find fulfillment and satisfaction at work and to leaders who want to create organizations where that is possible. Ultimately that's where we are all most successful.
--Plum Cluverius,Executive Coach
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Do You See the Beauty?
I was
looking through a box of old photographs and found a picture of myself taken
when I was in college. A friend
interested in photography wanted to practice and had taken and developed this
picture and several others. I remember
distinctly how disappointed I was when I saw the result of his work. Disappointed is too mild a word. I hated it.
I thought my hair was stringy and flat, my lips were too big—I just didn’t
fit the image of beauty I had in my head. I dumped all the photos in a box and
basically forgot about them.
Seeing that
photo recently almost took my breath away.
The young woman staring back at me was beautiful. She had full lips and fresh skin with a
sprinkling of freckles and clear, open eyes.
She looked knowledgeable and innocent—so alive, with her life stretched
out before her.
Looking at
this picture, I felt sad for that vibrant young woman who couldn’t see how beautiful
and gifted she was. Yet isn’t that so
often the way? We pay so much attention
to what’s wrong, we fail to see what’s right.
You get one bad grade and it erases all the good marks. You get one bad evaluation and suddenly that’s
all you can focus on. One bad thing
happens during the day and suddenly it seems like everything is going wrong.
There’s
actually a physiological reason for this.
Our brains are hardwired to focus on the negative. Rick Hanson (
http://www.rickhanson.net/ ) says
negative thoughts are like Velcro and positive thoughts are like Teflon—the negative
gets our attention and stays in our minds much longer.
Why does
this happen? According to Hanson, our
brains are constantly scanning our environment for threats and for things that
attract us. For early man, attractors
were food, shelter or potential mates and threats were animals and
others things that could kill. But threats
were stronger than attractors. Look at
it this way. If a bush was shaking and
early man couldn’t see what was behind it, there was the potential for a threat
(a large, man-eating animal looking for lunch) or an attractor (a game animal
or friendly human). If you made a
mistake and passed up food or a mate, you lived to try again. If you made a mistake and it was the hungry
beast, you didn’t contribute to the gene pool.
So we learned to focus on threats first.
That worked
great when our very survival was challenged every day. But the challenges are different now. We know from many researchers that positive
emotions make us more creative and more open to new ideas—characteristics we
need to respond to today’s constantly changing environment. Hanson says it takes six positive thoughts to
equal the strength of one negative thought.
That’s why it behooves us to focus on the positive, to see what’s right
with our performance, with our bodies, with ourselves. If we aren’t intentional about this, we will
miss our beauty, our gifts, and our potential contributions to the world. And that truly is a shame.
Plum Cluverius, PCC is an executive coach
with over 30 years experience in leadership development. She lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.
Labels: Emotional Intelligence Self Mastery, Personal Growth
Click for more information on executive coaching with Vedere Consulting. You can also follow Plum on Twitter.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Tips for Making E-mail Work for You: Part 2
Regular readers of my blog know that I’ve learning to manage
my e-mail volume so that it doesn’t overwhelm me on a daily basis. My April 5 blog post outlined a series of
steps I’ve been taking to get my e-mail under control. I’m still following those tips for the most
part (although I sometimes fall off the weekly planning routine wagon) and
e-mail is much better. That doesn’t mean
I don’t still feel overwhelmed. So
today, I want to share a second technique with you, and believe me, it’s
something completely different.
The technique is from Suzanne Zeman, somatic business coach
and author of the book
Listening to
Bodies, A Somatic Primer (http://www.somaticbusinesscoach.com/
). Suzanne’s coaching practice combines
traditional business coaching and somatic coaching.
Somatic coaching is coaching that brings
awareness to the body and how the body is responding (often unconsciously) and
shaping our responses to our world.
What
Suzanne taught me is to breathe and to become aware of my body’s length, width
and depth, particularly its width. Focusing
on width, Suzanne says, “you can experience confidence in your capacity to hold
more commitments.” OMG that’s what I
need—confidence that I can hold all my commitments!
So I tried breathing in the way she taught and focusing on
my body and extending my width outward.
I know this sounds weird, but it worked.
I don’t know that I necessarily got more done, but I was much calmer and
less overwhelmed, more able to see that I would get it all done
eventually. That means I am doing a
better job discerning what needs to be done, better at coming up with more
creative short cuts, and more energized and cheerful when I have to work longer
hours. In short, I’ve expanded my
capacity to hold more commitments! I’ve
been trying this for a few weeks now and am amazed at the difference it makes.
If you want to try it, here are her instructions (they are
in her book):
“To open your width, bring your breath to the mid-torso
level, feeling your ribs expand and relax and in inhale and exhale. Then extend your energy in the horizontal
direction, by expanding energetically through the sides of your structure. You may want to open and lift your arms, as
though holding a giant ball—this can help you open your energetic width to
become a more open container for all that you’re holding. Let yourself open to this dimension when you
feel overwhelmed, alone and despondent, or when you want to securely hold all
the commitments you have made to the people you care about. Continue practicing opening the dimension of
width, and note your responses to the following:
What do you experience as you ‘get
wider’?
How do other people appear when you
open this dimension?
How do you experience your capacity
as you widen your structure?”
Isn’t this interesting?
If it appeals to you, give it a try.
The results are fascinating. (BTW: yesterday’s e-mail took less than 30 minutes
total to process).
Plum Cluverius, PCC is
an executive coach with over 30 years experience in leadership
development. She lives and works in
Richmond, Virginia.
Click for more information on executive coaching with Vedere Consulting. You can also follow Plum on Twitter.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
What Makes A Great Workplace?
You can hardly pick up a book or
article on leadership these days without hearing how important the development
of good relationships is to individual and organizational success. How do we know that’s true?
A number of research studies have
identified the importance of relationships in successful workplaces, but a
study often cited was conducted by the Gallup organization in the late 1990’s. Gallup set out to discover the factors that
separated organizations that were successful in finding, focusing and keeping
talented employees from organization that didn’t have this competitive
edge. When they began the study, Gallup researchers
didn’t know if salaries or benefits or perks or leadership made the difference.
To find their measure of
organizational effectiveness, Gallup turned to the over one million interviews
they had conducted over a 25 year period.
They had been measuring factors in the workplace that managers could
control and that pointed to higher employee satisfaction. They were looking for patterns in these
questions and they were particularly interested in teasing out the survey
questions that loyal and engaged employees answered affirmatively but average
or poor performers answered negatively or neutrally. The idea was to identify only the factors
that appealed to highly motivated and talented employees.
When all was said and done and
the factor analysis, regression analysis and concurrent validity studies were
finished, twelve factors emerged from the data as the most important indicators
of an organization’s ability to attract and retain the most talented
employees. These factors are:
- Clear work
expectations
- Equipment and
materials to do job right
- Opportunity to “do
what I do best” every day
- Recognition and praise
(within the past seven days)
- Someone cares about me
as a person
- Individual development
and growth is encouraged
- My opinion is valued
- Company’s
mission/purpose makes me feel my job is important
- Co-workers committed
to quality work
- Close relationship at
work
- Frequent conversations
about progress
- Opportunities to learn
and grow
What patterns do you notice when you look at these twelve factors? Clearly, a significant number are determined
by the employee’s immediate boss and most of them require relationship building
skills and focus. A manager is not going
to be good at setting clear work expectations (which requires a conversation),
knowing their employees’ strengths, demonstrating care and concern, connecting
the work to the organization’s mission, and providing useful opportunities to
learn if they cannot build trusting relationships or if they don’t take the
time to build them.
Relationship building requires a level of self mastery—learning to bite
your tongue until the right moment to have a difficult conversation. It requires self awareness—the ability to recognize
your own emotions, observe them objectively and use them as clues to determine
what you need from yourself and others.
It requires empathy—the ability to recognize what others are feeling and
to communicate understanding and acceptance in difficult times. Self mastery, self awareness and empathy are
the cornerstones of emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence (EQ) is now identified as equally important to
long term success as IQ. Fortunately,
emotional intelligence can be learned. I invite you to explore the tools page on my website for some great resources or to call me about ways to learn more.
Plum Cluverius, PCC is an executive coach with over 30 years experience
in leadership development. She lives and
works in Richmond, Virginia.
Labels: Emotional Intelligence Self Mastery
Click for more information on executive coaching with Vedere Consulting. You can also follow Plum on Twitter.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
The Power of Vulnerability
Morgan Jon Fox, a gay rights activist and filmmaker, did
almost the exact opposite of what he planned to do when he finally had the
opportunity to debate John Smid, the executive director of Love in Action, a
fundamentalist Christian organization that encouraged gay and lesbian teens and
adults to renounce their homosexuality and become “ex-gay.” Fox had been instrumental in on-going
protests against Love in Action’s Refuge program for teens.
Armed with six pages of points, Fox planned, according to an
interview aired on this week’s
This
American Life radio broadcast “Own Worst Enemy” (
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/play_full.php?play=462&podcast=1)
in a segment entitled “Just as I Am,” to give what he described as “an eloquent
argument” for his perspective when he finally had the opportunity to meet Smid.
Instead, after an awkward silence, he started telling his
story—about his childhood and when he came out, about the pain he felt when he
wasn’t accepted by friends and family, and how it felt being in a committed
relationship and how much healthier he felt.
Smid, interviewed in the same broadcast, said “this is not what I
expected. This guy seems to be vulnerable
and honest and humble.” That moment
began what is so rare today—an honest and respectful dialogue from different
perspectives on the political spectrum—and over time a transformative
experience for both men.
Birute Regine,
www.facebook.com/birute.regine, in her book Iron Butterflies, defines vulnerability as “a profound experience
of openness.” In her interviews with
over 50 successful women, her surprising finding was that vulnerability was “the
doorway to change.” Brene Brown, a
social science researcher, studied people with a strong sense of worth. What startled her is that the people who had
the strongest sense of self worth actually embraced vulnerability—they believed
that “what made them vulnerable made them beautiful.”
Brown says that in order to be
authentic, the people with high self worth believed they have to “be willing to
let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they are.” Our culture has traditionally has shunned vulnerability
with the thought that leaving ourselves open leaves us open to attack. And that is to some extent true. Yet, as Birute and Brene demonstrate in their
research, that vulnerability is paradoxically what makes us strong, what helps
us grow into bigger ways of being, what helps us connect to the people around
us and helps us build the relationships we need for success.
In what ways are you willing to
open yourself to others? How can you
share your own experience? How can you
listen and connect instead of overpower and outsmart?
Plum Cluverius, PCC is
an executive coach with over 30 years experience in leadership
development. She lives and works in
Richmond, Virginia.
Labels: Emotional Intelligence Self Mastery
Click for more information on executive coaching with Vedere Consulting. You can also follow Plum on Twitter.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Conflict? One Question Can Make All the Difference
This week, I’ve had the opportunity to listen to myself and several other people—in different instances—get angry at someone else. You know the drill. All of us were using words like “manipulative,” “inconsiderate,” “taken advantage of,” “anal,” or “depressed,” to describe the people who had triggered the loop of accusations in our heads. It’s an automatic response, I think. Something happens to hurt, frustrate or anger us and we’re off and running with explanations about what the person was doing and thinking and what their motivations were. Each explanation makes us more frustrated and more hopeless that anything will ever change.
One question changed this downward spiral. That question was, “what did you want in this situation that you weren’t getting?” For each person--client, friend, me, that question stopped us in our tracks. It changed the trajectory of the conversation. Each of us had to stop and think. “What did we want?” We had been so focused on how we had been wronged and why we had been wronged, we were totally clueless.
Marshall Rosenberg (http://www.cnvc.org/about/marshall-rosenberg.html ), whom I have mentioned many times, calls this shift of attention from the outer issue to the inner need, “shining the light of consciousness” on the thing that is most likely to help us. Because if we understand the need we have that isn’t being met, we have a much better chance of doing something to get it addressed.
This has proved to be true time and time again as I have wrestled with my own issues, worked with my clients and listened to my friends. For one of us it was “time in my garden.” For another it was “acknowledging how hard it is for me to manage the kids by myself.” For a third it was “trust that I will take care of it.” Each time a person “got” the need, you could sense the shift in the conversation. There was a sigh (was it of relief?) and an upward movement of the eyes (which signals thinking) and problem solving language, “maybe I could just say I need help.” The whole tone of the conversation was different—it was more hopeful, more empowered, more optimistic.
I believe this kind of shift in our conversation and our thinking is critical if we are to have more satisfying lives and relationships—at home and at work. One question, thoughtfully answered, can make all the difference. Susan Scott, in Fierce Conversations, said, “our work, our relationships, and, in fact, our very lives succeed or fail, gradually, then suddenly, one conversation at a time.” Each conversation matters. What type of conversation do you want to have?
Plum Cluverius, PCC is an executive coach with over 30 years experience in leadership development. She lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.
Labels: Crucial Conversations
Click for more information on executive coaching with Vedere Consulting. You can also follow Plum on Twitter.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Tips for Making E-mail Work for You—Part 1
I sent out a call for help a couple of weeks ago—my e-mail was getting totally out of control. It was taking me 2-3 hours to get through it all and often I left some of it undone. Even more debilitating was the way I felt after an e-mail session—drained, discouraged, ineffective and overwhelmed. I believed e-mail was forcing me to focus on the petty instead of the important and often I often had a nagging sense I was letting something important fall through the cracks.
Several readers sent me interesting tips about handling e-mail and I decided to try some of them as well as do some exploring on my own. This is what I’ve learned so far. I began with what I already know works:
· Set aside 2-3 times a day to check your e-mail. Resist the temptation to constantly check it. Those interruptions cost you a lot of wasted time because it takes your brain a few seconds to refocus on your task after you are distracted. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve gone to e-mail to SEND a message only to start looking at what’s there. After a few minutes I’ve forgotten why I opened Outlook up in the first place and I’m staring at the screen trying to remember (this is getting worse as I get older).
· Turn off your alarm so you don’t know new items are coming in. I just did this (finally) and it was easy to do—I found out how using the Help function.
· Create folders to store e-mails you want to revisit. Leaving them in your inbox just clutters it up and makes it harder to find what you really need. I have both long term storage folders and weekly to-do folders for things I know I’ll need to refer to frequently or soon.
· At least once a day sync your smartphone with your computer system so you're not keeping two different "lists" or calendars.
My dear friend, non-profit executive Robbin Peach, showed me her system for managing e-mail and her ideas sparked a quest that led me to “personal productivity guru” David Allen and his book, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress Free Productivity. So far, the ideas he outlined that I adopted have worked wonders. My average e-mail processing time per day is less than one hour and I’m actually getting through it all and staying on top of where everything is. A word of warning, though. It took a lot of work and time to get there.
Allen’s ideas encompass much more than e-mail and honestly, that’s what I needed. In a nutshell, they are:
1. Capture anything and everything that has your attention and concern. I decided to use Outlook tasks to get everything in one place. Allen recommends putting every idea you have on that list—that way it’s not floating around in your head somewhere creating tension.
2. The next step is to define each task in terms of an outcome (what do you want to accomplish) and then to write down the first step you need to take to get that task done. This was hard, but I found out it was the most liberating part of Allen’s system. I didn’t have to plan a whole project, I just had to figure out what is the next concrete thing I needed to do. Things like make a phone call, find an estimate, etc.
3. Allen’s third step is to organize all these tasks in a streamlined way, in categories, based on how and when you need to access it. I created a number of categories in Outlook, assigned them bright colors I could easily recognize and then organized my list based on the category. Therefore all my coaching, professional development, business development and financial tasks are all in one place.
4. Schedule regular times to review your lists and put tasks on your calendar or daily to do list. I’m doing this once a week—at the same time I review my mission statement and overarching goals. (People who know me are laughing now—they can’t believe I’m doing this). These higher goals never fail to inspire me and motivate me to focus on what’s really important.
5. For e-mail, organize your e-mail first by sender. You can then quickly delete any unwanted mail that made it through your spam filter. Next, tackle each e-mail. If it takes 2 minutes or less to respond, take care of it right then. If not, it goes on your task list and you define it in terms of outcome and next action. Or you can assign it to a folder and then create a regular time to go through the folders and deal with these items.
It took me several days, working in chunks, to get this system organized. But so far, it’s working really well.
For more information on David Allen and his GTD system, go to http://www.davidco.com/.
Plum Cluverius, PCC is an executive coach with over 30 years experience in leadership development. She lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.
Labels: Work and Life Balance
Click for more information on executive coaching with Vedere Consulting. You can also follow Plum on Twitter.
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