PAUSE: Master Your Meetings
Today, we’re discussing how you can use PAUSING in your meetings, to respond as a leader vs reacting to old triggers that can be derailing.
Live 2019 with Grace
During some personally difficult times, clients and colleagues will often ask us, “Why do you do this work?” They are puzzled that we would choose to put ourselves in the middle of the messiness and pain that people experience in their lives and work. We do this work because we know that when people matter to themselves and believe that others matter, too, success is ensured. This is true in organizations, on teams, and with individual contributors. Success increases when people matter. …
US & THEM
This week in honor of Martin Luther King Jr, we’d like you to consider a change of language that can have a profound effect on you and on others. You see, language is the fundamental way in which we come to understand and relate to the world around us. When you change your language, you influence your ability to relate to others and to build powerful connections. This week, we’d like you to play with your language. Every…
Why 2018 Was the Best Year in History!
With some regularity, our clients share with us that they’re more distressed by the state of the world than they can ever remember. We can sometimes feel the same, so imagine our surprise when on January 6, 2019 we came upon a New York Times column by Nicholas Kristof titled: “Why 2018 was the Best Year in Human History!” We found it very powerful to hear some of the amazing things that happened in 2018 – most of which didn’t make it…
PAUSE and HALT: A Powerful Combination
One of the things we love about the PAUSE is that you can use it to interrupt your reactivity to external actions, and you can use it to provide support for how you respond to your internal thoughts and feelings. When people are under stress, they often work harder, run faster, spend less time sleeping, exercising, and eating. They feel overwhelmed and have no clue how to get clear about what they need. Pausing is a powerful way to…
What Burdens Is That Other Person Carrying?
This week, we want to share with you an article that we read recently. The article is written by Carl Richards and appeared in the New York Times. We’ve pasted the article in the body of the post, but you can also click to read the article here. As you’ll see, the article is about empathy, and understanding that all of us will–at some time–be dealing with something that rocks us to our core. The trouble is that for most…
If You Toss Someone a Grenade…
If you toss a group a grenade…they will run for cover. Starting a conversation with accusations or anger is akin to tossing a grenade into a room and expecting people to want to play “catch.” No matter how valuable your insight or how accurate your concern, the act of grenade tossing will result in people not hearing you because they’re consumed with ducking for cover. In talking to a client about his accusatory behavior he stated, “But the grenade isn’t…
The Fundamental Pause
As coaches, we get hired because people – despite the best of intentions – are struggling to change the things that are getting in the way of their success. Our goal is to help you recognize and overcome those habitual reactions that keep the changes you’re working toward from taking hold. The key behind the work that we do is helping people manage their reactivity, and to do that we teach them something we designed called, the Fundamental PAUSE. The…
When Life Feels Dark and Heavy
One of our clients recently had a difficult month, and a dear friend and mentor sent him this writing by John McQuiston called “Each Day”. We want to share it with you, as it is an important reminder when life feels dark and heavy. Each Day At the beginning of each day, after we open our eyes to receive the light of that day, as we listen to the voices and sounds that surround us, we must resolve to treat each…
Great Questions Can Change Your Life
Last week, we wrote about Growing Your Wisdom built on the quote by Mark Twain: “Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you would rather have talked.” At the end of that post, we promised that this week we would look at how to formulate questions that create meaningful conversations. Over the course of our careers we’ve discovered, time and again, that identifying a great question can dramatically change your interaction. We’ve talked about this…