Ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges
Recently, I set off on my own personal journey to change the way I worked out. I set goals at the beginning, bought new equipment, and kept a journal of my weekly progress. Spoiler: It was WAY harder than I thought. After 10 weeks of little progress in establishing a new routine, I asked myself: What did I do wrong?
I realized that I didn’t do enough analysis on the outset of what OTHER changes I would have to make in my life to accommodate a new time investment. By trying to add strength training to my fitness routine (for example), I had to add 20-30 min. to my workout. I had to start waking up earlier or moving dinner with family later.
Also—progress was slow. When I started, I wrote down reflections on how I was excited for the change. But, I didn’t adequately bring others along on the journey, nor did I try to find opportunities to reward myself for trying.
As a coach, I want to help clients understand that personal change doesn’t happen in a vacuum—there are undoubtedly going to be ripple effects to routines and you’ll need to rely heavily on your support channels.
First, I’ll help by analyzing the change at hand. Does your change impact timing of something in your life? Does it impact how you interact with others? Will it involve a demand on your attention/time and cause you to STOP doing something else for balance? And, if the answers are no—do you NEED to proactively change something else to set yourself up for success?
Second, I want to help get at your “power sources.” How do you define if you’re doing a “good job?” What helps you keep going when things get tough? Where do you publicize your goals and aspirations? We’ll have to lean on these heavily together.
Change brainstorm
I’ve been practicing more “design thinking” principles into my professional life (particularly with clients starting new projects). I have found it particularly helpful in consulting to make sure that all parties are aligned on the strategy and outcome for the project if there’s adequate brainstorming and alignment at the outset. That element of design thinking—ideation—is something we can easily skip over when pressed for time. Why come up with a bunch of solutions when one is probably fine?
I think it’s incredibly important to bring ideation into the coaching relationship. Sometimes we come up with an idea or path forward but haven’t considered any other inputs.
This strategy is very similar to an improv concept called, “Yes, and!” In improv, you move a skit along most commonly by saying “Yes!” to another person’s idea, and building off of that idea. (The alternative would be spending time understanding why an idea might be wrong or not allowing yourself to add-in to another person’s ideas.)
Coaching conversations should be like a game of “Yes, and!” where we are BOTH invested in the idea and choice ahead of you. My job is to foster a full period of ideation for clients and make sure we’re starting off in the right place. If you haven’t considered alternative paths, it’s almost impossible for you to not have regret down the line.
Think you want to try to get outside more? Yes and—why not try walking in a park? Yes and—have you contacted REI about group excursions? Yes and—how do you feel about water activities? Yes and—how do you think you could do that in different weather types?
Critical Positivity
I’m an optimistic and positive person. Recently, I read an article about the power that positive thinking can have not only in helping a person complete a goal, but also the physical toll positivity can have on someone. For example, in an article by Watkins and Cooperrider, I learned that, “[patients] who approached the operation with a feeling that the doctor was best, the medical techniques proven safe, and their chances of being well again were excellent” (Watkins & Cooperrider 2002, p. 3).
I think that having a positive attitude can truly change your outlook on life. However, does that come at the expense of healthy skepticism? In the medical example provided above, the study doesn’t take into account the number of times that a patient may have “listened to their gut",” done extra research, and found that the doctor actually WASN’T as experienced as they thought.
Positivity needs to be partnered with reality. Having blind positivity can force you to overlook opportunities for critical examination. It can lull you into a sense of rainbows and butterflies.
As a coach, I want to make sure that we’re ALWAYS moving forward with positivity. But, we should think about a way forward comprehensively and instead of having blind positivity. In a previous post, I discussed how ideation and brainstorming can help identify a way forward…but it could also help you identify the specific pieces of a change that are most useful and positive. You’ll be able to move forward grounded in reality!
Watkins, J. M., & Cooperrider, D. (2000). Appreciative inquiry: A transformative paradigm. OD Practitioner Journal, 32(1), 6-12.
Prototype your future
Similar to my previous post about ideation and brainstorming, prototyping is a critical part of design thinking. This stage will take you past the “idea” phase of a project and well into the next steps. If you were to pick one idea or one change, what do the next stages look like?
As a coach, I’ll help you walk through what that future looks like. I’ll help you conduct a prototyping exercise for your change that includes key activities—and, potentially others around you. Part of prototyping is visualizing the change—so I’ll have you drawing different elements of the situation.
At each stage, we’ll be discussion three things—in a given situation, what do you think you would be thinking, feeling, and doing? This is all part of a comprehensive approach to change that will lay the groundwork for sustainability.
Next, we’ll pull in people close to you and show them your visualization. What do THEY think they’d be thinking, feeling, and doing at each stage? Do they have any responses to your proposal? Do they have any different ways of thinking about your prototype?
Approaching change through design thinking can help you create a structure and way forward that will intercept any emotions that may try to derail you. If you know what the future MIGHT hold by anticipating your behavior through prototyping, you’ll be less likely to be surprised by how your change interrupts your behavior.
Disruption
Before quarantine, my work life didn’t have much routine. I might have gone to a client site one day or down to my consulting office; I could have bounced in and out of many office and work cultures without thinking too much about it. I made my own daily plans, and therefore day-to-day I was mostly focused on how I was completing tasks.
Quarantine has completely changed my day-to-day by introducing routine. Now, I spend every second in the same physical space; I’m normally in meetings with the same people, in the same environment (Teams); there is much more opportunity for cultures and micro-cultures to become apparent.
It’s also given me opportunities to disrupt my new routines. For example, why haven’t I tried running in the morning before? Why do I crave free time after work?
Schein has written that culture is: “A pattern of shared basic assumptions…that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems (Schein 1992, p. 12).
I think we can create our OWN internal culture in the way we act in our daily routines. Our internal personality can be influenced by external factors—schedules, people, location—and therefore we can disrupt our own personal culture and make changes.
As a coach, I want to make it my mission to help people see the ways routine is created and sometimes perpetuated by external factors; and that personal change can be facilitated by assessing pressures and assumptions we’ve built into routine.
Schein, E. H. (1992). Defining organizational culture. In Organizational culture and leadership (2nd ed., pp. 3-15). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Story Time
When you are meeting your friend’s family (or your significant other’s family) for the first time, you might hear a lot of stories. Storytelling in tight-knit cultures can be incredibly indicative of what the culture holds dear. Not only does it relate quickly what is funny or important, it reassures the people in the culture that they belong.
Stories…”grant comfort, reassurance, direction, and hope to people of all ages” (Bolman 2008, p. 259).
I want to help my clients understand the cultures that they’re in—and what those values might be—by analyzing common stories from those cultures. For example, I can think of a few stories I would share with other co-workers, and some I wouldn’t. I would also share completely different stories from my job with my friends.
What does it mean that you’ll tell certain stories to some, but not others? Which values are you living in at work, but not elsewhere?
Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2008). Organizational symbols and culture. In Reframing organizations: artistry, choice, and leadership (4th ed., pp. 251–278). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Mission Impossible
I don’t know about you, but I’m frequently asked to set personal, quarterly performance goals. I normally think through how I want to learn and grow in the next quarter and tie them to projects that I know are coming.
Shifting gears slightly—I’ve been reading about organizational structures that create and sustain culture. A company’s mission, strategy, and goals are extremely important not only to business success, but also to setting expectations for what’s important internally and externally. Employees know exactly where the business is heading and why, so if a change is made, they can tie it to the stated mission. If something is off, they’re able to pinpoint where the organization might be failing them. “Mission and strategy is not only what the leadership has told other people that the organization is doing, but also what the people believe the organization is doing” (Burke & Litwin 1992, p. 531).
Because a mission can highly impact culture and people might feel the need to adopt the mission as their own in a given environment, it’s considered highly transformational (Burke & Litwin 1992).
However, even though working for an organization I’m letting these key things impact and transform the way I interact in that culture, I never fully adopt them as my own. In my entire career, I’ve never considered tying my own individual performance goals to an organization’s mission, strategy, or goals.
I’m excited as a coach to help people fully understand how existing in a culture and utilizing that culture in marriage with personal growth can be transformative. I want to challenge others to adopt part of their organization’s mission more formally into their own personal goals—since, by the way, those things are affecting their behavior silently anyways—and see how their own performance might be emphasized or energize the culture they’re a part of.
Burke, W. W., & Litwin, G. H. (1992). A causal model of organizational performance and change. Journal of Management, 18(3), 523-545.
External/Internal Culture
Work culture is extremely hard to define; it’s nearly impossible to know without experiencing it first-hand. Even then, your experience in a culture changes depending on what assumptions you have going in, and your own unique experience in that work context.
I think it’s easier to identify things internally that may be impacting an organization’s culture; it’s even harder to understand how external perception may be perpetuating that culture. Culture is influenced by external forces/perception (Bolman 2008).
For example, something I’ve said about my current employer to prospective candidates is, “It’s just as good as they say it is.” There is a pitch that employees and talent acquisition managers alike are constantly crafting to others to put an external lens on your job—both to clients, but also people like…your mom.
As a coach, I want to help people understand how the external perception of their organization’s culture is impacting their experience in the culture. Are you not happy because you’re not working at one of the “cool” places to work? Are you dissatisfied because your company has a reputation of working un-sustainably, when in reality they have a great recycling program?
Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2008). Organizational symbols and culture. In Reframing organizations: artistry, choice, and leadership (4th ed., pp. 251–278). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Business as usual
I’ve been running long distance for over 10 years. Sometimes, I find it difficult to motivate myself to not only get out on the trail, but to increase my speed or distance. I’m hard on myself. I wonder why it is that I can’t find motivation.
I think there are a few things impeding me: First, I don’t have a firm goal, and second, I’m expecting to get better despite not changing anything in my environment.
“The first step toward enhancing performance in an organization is realizing that improvement is possible only if participants abandon business-as-usual practices” (Ericsson & Pool 2016, p. 121).
What would happen if I took a different trail or listened to a different playlist? What if I ate more during the day or purposefully slept in?
As a coach, I think my job is to push people to realize change doesn’t just “happen,”—you create opportunities for change when you are willing to alter your normal practices.
How much do you have to change in order to make a difference?
In order to know what is effective, people may have to change slowly. Changing too many constants at one time will never confirm the variable that was keeping you from improving. It’s worthwhile to go through an Immunity Map process to identify things that are holding you back from changing and identifying the greatest contributors.
Start there. What happens? Tweak, reassess, and try again.
Ericsson, A., & Pool, R. (2016). Peak: Secrets from the new science of expertise. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Learning through feedback
Recently, I read the theory of double-loop learning. The idea is that you need to have time to receive feedback and reflect in order to learn. As Argyris writes, you can’t just expect to learn information by downloading it—you’ll need to internalize it. You need to “change the underlying assumptions and values that govern the actions in the strategy.”
I started thinking a lot about how we learn in a corporate setting. Too often, we seek opportunities for professional development opportunities like training and conferences, but we never think about what to DO with that information.
How might we all use those opportunities to build a community of learning, both bringing information back to our professional communities, but also seeking feedback from others in how we apply that information moving forward?
As a coach, I would love to challenge my clients to set one achievable goal after each learning experience in the workforce: Bring it back to a colleague and engage them in conversation.
Sparking one conversation about new material not only helps people understand the new material better, but may internalize that information even more by seeking input of others. A double loop is formed!
Argyris, C. (2005). Double-loop learning in organizations: A theory of action perspective. In K. G. Smith & M. A. Hitt (eds.) Great minds in management (pp. 261-279), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Culture Chameleons
We all know that we’re shaped by our surroundings—our parents taught us this as an early age (who else got the “bad influence” speech?). As adults, it can be harder to leave workplace cultures that are harmful to us. It’s easy to stay with what you know in a job, even if it’s mildly uncomfortable.
Recently, I read this quote: “Culture is the accumulation of past learning and thus reflects successes, but some cultural assumptions and behavioral rituals can become so stable that they are difficult to unlearn even when they become dysfunctional” (Schein 1993, p. 87).
There is a LOT to unpack in that quote. Specifically in the context of adults in the workplace, I have been wondering—how much of our skills are actually culture-influenced rather than concrete and can’t be transferred to new places?
For example, workplaces generally have different etiquette around what to put in the subject line of your emails. (I learned this the hard way working in federal consulting.) Sending an email might seem like the most BASIC activity until you go to another workplace where they do things differently. How do you categorize these instances as cultural “unlearning” rather than a default of your own skillset?
I think it will take focus, but most importantly confidence. Excited to help affirm my client’s skills and start conversations about skill vs. culture.
Schein, E. H. (1993). How can organizations learn faster? The challenge of entering the green room. Sloan Management Review, 34(2), 85-92.
Goal Orientation
I’ve never been someone who has a long-term plan. (In fact, my Hogan Assessment tells me that I value spontaneity and learning for myself on the fly.) And yet, I’ve DONE things that normally require a commitment to the “long term”—I’ve run two marathons, hold a Bachelor’s degree, and own a car. And yet, my three dead house plants would tell you otherwise.
It’s easy to see that people who set goals and commit to achieving them are generally more likely to achieve those goals. Why? “A high level of goal commitment…is conducive to a positive relationship between goal level and performance” (Vandewall et al, 2019, p. 126).
Do you have to set long-term goals in order to be successful?
Sometimes, I think “goals” aren’t rooted in the right thing. You can figure out the value of doing something as you go—the benefit is to learn from the experience, not just go through the experience.
For example, are you going to get your Master’s because you want a Master’s? Or because your goal is to learn about the topic? You’ll have vastly different levels of commitment and success choosing one or the other.
Keeping a learning mindset during goal setting is crucial to success.
Vandewalle, D., Nerstad, C. G. L., & Dysvik, A. (2019). Goal Orientation: A review of the miles traveled and the miles to go. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 6, 115-144.
Armchair Expert
When I was 18, I started taking violin lessons for the first time in my life. I had played piano at a concert-level, but had always wanted to learn what new sounds a violin had to offer. I wanted to dive in—I begged my teacher to skip the beginner books.
I was humbled very quickly.
I was left wondering—why is it hard to be bad at something? Why is it hard to learn new skills as adults?
I think part of my answer is found in an earlier blog I wrote on failure—re-framing our expectations of a situation to make failure an option.
I also think approaching a new skill requires an understanding of the cycles and stages of how we actually become experts.
I resonate with Anders Ericsson’s framework for developing expertise outlined in “Peak: Secrets from the new science of expertise.” He writes from a perspective that I think most adult learners would understand: The opportunity cost of learning is high, and a lot of learning has to be done on-the-job. There will be cycles of practice accompanied by heavy feedback. Learning and expertise is developed when someone is willing to be bad at something and then reflect on what to do next time.
I’m excited to work with clients on the reflection piece, and perhaps pinpoint ways to accept or filter feedback to help continue in the cycle of learning and expertise.
To-Learn Lists
How many people are reading this with a to-do list next to their computer? Written in a note on your phone? A sticky on the front of the refrigerator?
A concrete set of tasks and reminders can simply help get things done.
Recently, I read Jim Collin’s article The Learning Executive where he raised a challenge:
Look at your personal list of long-term objectives, mid-term objectives, and your current to-do list. How many items fall into the performance genre and how many fall into the learning genre? How many begin with the structure, “My objective is to learn X,” rather than, “My objective is to accomplish Y”?
I love this idea. It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day tasks that need to be completed. But, what if we took the time to think about how some longer-term tasks were interrelated, and set an intention to learn. According to Jim, it would open greater opportunities to build a learning mindset.
As a coach, I want to focus on some of these small, tactical ways (“To-Learn Lists”) that decrease a reliance on performance and help pivot perspectives to life-long learning habits.
Eyes on the prize
Last month, I was invited to a “Vision Board” party. We were told to bring magazines and newspapers and would spend time cutting out images that we liked or that inspired us. The exercise was a powerful way to not only personally reflect on preferences and passion, but also share that with other people.
Recently, I read about the power of Big Picture Thinking and (to use a fancy verb) visioning (thanks, Ryan Smerek!). Professionally, there is a lot of emphasis on a company’s strategic plan—tactically, how will you beat out the competition? On an individual level at a corporation, employees are generally told to write goals (short term and long term).
What would happen instead if we were to first write a vision statement and write tactical goals aligned to that vision?
I’ve learned that spending time to add detail to a vision helps add certainty and passion to decisions you make about your future.
~ epic Fail ~
“Fail” is one of those words that has a universal, visceral response. While the definition of failure is unclear (Ryan Smerek in his book “Organizational Learning and Performance: The Science and Practice of Building a Learning Culture” describes it as a “Failure Continuum”)…we learn to avoid failure at all costs.
When I think about my career choices, some of my best insights have actually come when things didn’t work out as planned. I failed. I’d work hard for a coveted internship or job position only to find it wasn’t what I expected. Or, that I wasn’t what they expected.
As a coach, I see huge benefit from addressing failure together in two ways:
Practicing how to talk about failure (Gain insight from others on how the situation might be approached differently next time. Acknowledge failure is an opportunity to learn.)
Re-framing failure from a lens of expectation and opportunity (How might you anticipate or frame an opportunity differently in the future to open yourself up to failure?)
Hello there!
It all begins with an idea.
Welcome to my blog! I recently started a journey to become a certified coach (“Capital C,” as I jokingly call it). I have ALWAYS had a passion for listening and mentoring others, and I can’t wait to learn and practice with my fellow classmates as part of Northwestern’s Organizational & Leadership Coaching Certificate.
So, what’s up first? I want to tell you about the kickoff event for our cohort. Coming out of the session, I started thinking a lot about the TYPE of coach I want to be. I’ve had the privilege of learning from experienced coaches throughout my professional career, and I’m inspired by the clarity they were able to help me find during pivotal points of indecision.
I’ve worked in 4 industries throughout my life and each turn of focus I’ve wondered, “What’s next? Is this all there is?” Feeling meaning-less in your position can be scary. Feeling like there’s no next step can be even scarier.
I want to embrace this quote presented during our kickoff session:
“The task…is to get people from where they are to where they have not been.” —Henry Kissinger.
Over the next year, I hope I can grow into the kind of coach that helps people find uncharted paths—whether that means exploring new professions or just new ways of approaching work. I want to grow into a partner, someone who uses active listening as the most powerful tool in changing lives.
Here we go!