As coaches for over 20 years, in businesses of all varieties, we’ve seen many examples of people who have concerns about someone else’s behavior; and yet, they themselves are seen and experienced as “the problem” in the office. How can that be? Let’s take a look at Janet. Janet is a confident and competent businesswoman who came to us on the brink of being let go. She was distressed and angry, and she was looking for an ally to figure…
“As humans, we know who we are by looking at the mirrors of others’ eyes. For that reason, it’s important that you choose your mirrors wisely.” ~ Dr. Linda Carpenter To be a successful, powerful leader, it’s critical that you regularly reflect on who you are, what matters to you, and how you want to engage others in your life and your work. It’s equally important that you’re willing to understand your impact on others, the way they…
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…
We were in a meeting a few weeks ago with a CEO who was describing a major rift in her executive leadership team. In that conversation, she explained how there was a breakdown in the working relationship between two subgroups of her team, and went on to say that one of the members could sometimes have a sharp edge, which “was probably the issue.” She asked us if we would work with the members of her team to help them…
Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve had conversations with executive leadership teams, parents, soccer coaches, and midlevel managers that have focused on how to help others succeed. To a person, they were struggling with how to know when to be hands on and when to be hands off. At one of those meetings, an executive said that they use the what, what and how, and how continuum—which looks like this: When deciding how hands on to be, a good…
We were recently in a meeting talking about some of the work by Roger Fisher and William Ury on the Harvard Negotiating team. Many of you will know them from their 1991 book, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. In that groundbreaking book, the authors introduced a new way to think about negotiations and difficulties. Where we once thought of winners and losers, they proposed identifying options for mutual gain, separating the people from the problems, and…
Thank you all for your wonderful stories and comments during our five-week Choosing Happiness series! They were truly touching and we love that you shared your stories with us. Many of you wrote and told us that you personally are working on choosing happiness, but have a close friend or loved one who can’t quite get there. No matter what you do or say, you can’t seem to make that person happy, and you’re frustrated. Some of you feel a…