Hero's Code

Emotional Trajectory

Here is an interesting exercise to explore your emotional intelligence.  This is an exercise I have heard from a number of sources.

Imagine you are a four-year-old child and you are offered the following choice.  I’m in the room with you at first but I now have to run an errand.  I place a marshmallow on the table in front of you and tell you that if you don’t touch this one and wait until I get back, you can have two marshmallows.  I also tell you that if you can’t wait until I get back you can only have one marshmallow but you can have it now.  What would you do?

According to research conducted at Stanford University in the 1960’s the choice you make tells us a lot about the character of the child - and your likely success trajectory through life.  In the original research, the four-year olds were studied for twelve to fourteen years in follow-up. 

Those kids able to resist the short term temptation for a higher payoff later were found to grow up to be more socially competent, personally effective, self-assertive and better able to cope with the ups and downs of life. These adolescents were confident, self-reliant, dependable and trustworthy and tended to use their initiative.

The few kids who couldn’t resist grabbing the single marshmallow straight away were more likely to become shy, stubborn, indecisive and easily upset by difficulties.  They tended to see themselves as unworthy and were mistrustful of others.  This led to fights as they always expected rewards in life straight away.

I’m frightened to ask you what your choice would have been as a four-year old.

Can it be true that our emotional intelligence is plotted out by such an early age?
Even if it is, the truth is we can change it and you are well on the way to doing so.

No Surrender

When should we compromise and when should we give in?  It is easy to believe that the only way we can live in today's complex world is through compromise. 

But hang on - there are two kinds of compromise. 

One type is the moment to moment blending of our words and deeds with the environment and the people around us. 

The second type of compromise is based on surrender or escape.  It's that time when we lack the energy or will to struggle through to the achievement of our goals, dreams and aspirations.

Most of the time, most of us choose to compromise on our dreams out of personal convenience, greed or simple laziness.  I meet a lot of people who want success but never quite manage to generate and sustain the self-belief, the excitement and the commitment to see things to fruition. 

As human beings of course we have the right and privilege to let go of our dreams but why do we do so this easily?

But there are complications.  Take me for an instance.  In my heart I know that for many years I unconsciously associated success with struggle.  This had the curious effect of driving me on to achieve success but denying me of any real sense of pleasure. The problem you see was that  by living with an association between success and struggle, I could never stop to enjoy the fruits of my labours.  If I wasn't struggling onward I couldn't deep inside believe that I was a success.  It took me a long time to choose a better way to compromise.

I chose to change my associations for better ones.  My intention has become to only work on fun projects with fun people - and it has been curious how more and more that simple intention has brought exactly those things into my life. 

In letting go of struggle I haven't compromised on my goals.  For my personal goals there can never be surrender and certainly no compromise.  My upbringing and my conditioning was to never accept compromise.  My karate teacher said that if you want to be great you have to work hard.  If your training partner works for one hour you must work for ten.  If your partner works for ten hours you must work for one hundred.  You know how it is when you have truly inspiring personal goals.  Working on them is fun and compromise out of the question.

Unlearning what we know

Have you noticed how people and their organisations trap themselves firmly in what they know?

"This worked in the past and it will work now."
"The trend has always been upward and  I will bet this company's future that it will continue."
"Customers have been happy with this in the past - it must be what they want now."

Knowledge and experience are so appealing, especially in a changing and unpredictable world because they feel comfortable and secure.  That is why they are so dangerous.  They become habits.

But which way are you supposed to go in the strange unpredictable future?  It takes a special person to trust themselves to unlearn the habits of the past.

Salespeople can trap their prospects in knowledge too.  They might say "My job is to educate the customer on our products." 

Whilst there is always value in providing customers with information that matches their needs, too often "education" takes the form of a canned speech or a Powerpoint presentation designed by head office - exactly the type of non-learning that put us into a trance at school.

If you love to sell for a living there is probably a different edge to what you do.  Call it "confidence" or "trust" or "state management".  I like to trust myself to say whatever seems appropriate in the moment but I am never in a hurry to speak.  As your breathing matches your customers breathing remember to smile.  Say to yourself "Everything that comes to mind now is a gift to share with this person."

Resisting the impulse to speak as soon as something comes to mind gives you a curious power.  When you have something to say - pause - speak only when something to say has you.

The truth of the quiet box

I wonder if we agree that the truth of things is elusive.  I have taken pride - a mistake I know - in my ability to judge others and yet have found myself in the past with business partners that were on a very different path to me.  We look at out politicians and wonder who we can trust.  It is all to easy to be dazzled by surface appearance and be attracted to the flashy technique or the loud spectacle.  But is there truth here?

The Master said, "Think on this now.  I have here two small wooden boxes of the same size."  Holding up the boxes one at a time he told his students, "Listen. When I knock on this one, a loud sound resonates around the room.  When I knock on this other one, there is hardly any sound at all."

"Now tell me, from our experience of such things, what do we already know about the loud-sounding box?" asked the Master.  The students understood that the box was empty.

"And what do you make of the quiet box?" asked the Master again.  The students recognised that this box was full of something.

Now the Master posed a question.  "Tell me, with human enterprise in mind, do we use the lessons of the wooden boxes?"

A student answered at once, "We certainly do not, Master.  We only take notice of who makes the loudest noise .  We don't pay attention to the quiet one."

A second student spoke up.  "I can see what you are suggesting but in our democracy the majority rules.  What the majority believes is desireable is supported and will grow in influence as a result."

"I agree," replied the Master.  "But keep in mind that the value of an idea or of a belief is is not determined by how many people believe it or choose to follow it."

In times gone by the majority may have believed that the world were flat or that the sun moved around the Earth.  The majority idea it didn't make it a fact.

There may be a deeper law that is separate from the ideas of majority and minority.  If this law exists it will lie within each of us awaiting cultivation .

Strategy

A friend of mine who is relatively new to coaching asked if I could advise him on something that was troubling him.  He had a coaching client who in the course of their meeting had a revelation that simply blew away a problem he had been facing.  My friend was concerned that he felt as if he had done nothing – he had simply been there for his client and in his heart wasn’t sure that he had deserved his fee. 

I found this quite funny because my friend was in the mistaken belief that coaching is necessarily about a state of “doing” – my feeling is that often mastery in coaching or consulting is very much about a state of “being.”  And that is very much worth paying for.

When a coach is thinking too much about what she or he has to do then invariably their focus is in the wrong place.  I want my attention to be totally on the client, providing them with a safe space to step back perhaps and get a new perspective on their issues.  The last thing I should be thinking about is “first I will ask this question and maybe then I will ask that question.”  The most powerful interventions are those where the client’s problems simply go away and the coach gets the blame for it.

As a coach we allow clients to get a different perspective on their issues – they are the ones that should solve their problems.

My Maori friend Hirini Reedy clued me into a neat metaphor for problem solving based on the patterns of the fern frond.  The idea stems from the warrior arts of the Maori people.

Nature has always taught humankind. The Maori are no different. The animals, the trees, the weather patterns, the waters and nature herself were all teachers of the warrior.  In the wananga (school) of life, the sky is the roof, the earth is the floor and all life forms are teachers.

The Zulu peoples used the horns of a buffalo as a strategic pattern to defeat the British army in the 19th Century.  The Maori used the fern frond as a tactical pattern to encircle, envelop and crush their enemies.  It could be used as a tactical maneuver or a weaponry sequence. Look at the fern frond. Watch how it grows and spirals. Examine the fractal, self-similar patterns of the small shoots.  Notice the same patterns emerging.

Apply the fern frond metaphor to a problem you may have.  Encircle it from different directions. Look at it through different eyes. Approach it from different angles. Upside - down. Back to front. Inside-out. Watch a solution sprout from within your consciousness.  If you can do this maybe you won’t need to pay a coach.

Ordinary Mind - Ordinary Moments

As a younger man I worked in a hospital in Canada.  I noted as Christmas approached that some of the younger doctors would have a private bet on a rather unfortunate event.  They would gamble on who would have to give someone the news that they had cancer on the eve of Christmas.  There was no malice in this.  In fact it was a way of changing their perspective on an event that caused a surge of negative emotions. 

At that time in my life I was working with seriously ill children and when my own wife was expecting our first child I held a secret fear that my child too would not be healthy.  After all, my ordinary, normal life was filled with sick children.  It's only as I look back that I realise how much I was allowing my emotions to be swept along by factors that I could never control.  I never knew I had a choice.

Advanced martial artists work to create a state of mental and physical calm that gradually becomes a normal part of their everyday life; this state is known as heijoshin or "ordinary mind."  This state of ordinary mind is one that allows balance and calm at all times - irrespective of the events of the moment.

The secret to achieving an ordinary mind is to treat ordinary moments as special so that then even extreme or special events will seem everyday matters.  As Dan Millman once said, in truth, there are no ordinary moments.  Every moment of life is special from some viewpoint if we choose to adopt it.

Not don't misunderstand - I am not perfect.  We are all climbing up the same mountain and some people are ahead of me and some are behind.  It's just easier for us all to spot the attitudes and behaviours of others from our personal vantage points.

Do you ever really pay attention to the trees and flowers around you; do you notice the colour of the sky or feel the movement of the breeze.  Most of us are so tied to the events and commitments of our daily lives that we notice none of this.  There are hosts of things that we don't stop to notice.  Many people I meet would see my thoughts and views as pointless and then go back to the struggle of their existence.

Another view might be that these simple things are ordinary all right - but if you miss them you are missing the better part of life.

We were given senses to explore our world and the stream of data that bombards us in each moment is so vast and rich that we "delete" most of it.  It never is perceived at a conscious level. We filter it and reject most of it. Without conscious thought. What are we missing?  In one tiny slice of time we miss an infinite range of sensory flow and a universe of life experience.

The person who has come close to dying and survived, learns to revel in the beauty and uniqueness of each ordinary moment.  This person understands that these moments are what life is all about.

You and I can simply wait until it is time for us to die to experience the specialness of each ordinary moment, or we can take hold of this now and enjoy the rest of our lives.

Relax to release your talent

Most of us carry subtle tensions - and do so for so many years that we no longer know what real relaxation feels like.  One of the worst things about tension is that it leaks energy from us and prevents us reaching our potential for achievement with mind or body.

In Dan Millman's book, "Body Mind Mastery - creating success in sport and life," he cites a research study in which the movement abilities of six month old babies were compared with a group of professional football players.

The athletes tried to copy the movement and posture of these babies for ten minutes without stopping.  The perhaps surprising result was that not a single athlete could keep up and they all dropped out exhausted before the ten minutes were up.  The athletes carried so much tension that their movements were inefficient. 

Working with athletes to raise awareness of their body's tension or state of relaxation has many benefits.  Through relaxation strength and speed are enhanced.  Suppleness, stamina and sensitivity soar to new heights.  Its no surprise that athletes devote so much time to building muscular strength and power.  The wise ones understand the importance of relaxation.

I came to study karate at the relatively "old" age of 35.  After many years of powerlifting, wresting and rugby I was strong and I managed to intimidate my fellow beginners.  Nevertheless, as any practitioner will tell you, just like them after a few minutes of free style sparring and I was simply exhausted.  Following the mistakes of millions of beginners before me I didn't know how to relax and I was trying to use too much force.

Onlookers can't understand why it takes a year to learn how to punch properly in karate.  The key is relaxation.  The speed of the punch is ensured only by relaxing the muscles of the arm except for those that accelerate the fist to its target. At the instant of impact all the muscles of the arm and shoulder instantly contract with many muscle fibres recruited at once before relaxing just as quickly.  Disobey this practice and energy drains from you rapidly and your technique remains ineffective.

My sensei constantly reminded me in sparring never to gasp for breath but to relax and calm my breathing even though this seemed counter intuitive.  I realised eventually that gasping caused tension in my chest and diaphram muscles and this tension actually reduced my bodies ability to breath.  As our skills progressed we learned to disguise our breathing from an opponent - whilst timing our attacks to coincide with particular points in our opponents breath cycle.

I have known for many years that the body and mind are linked.  It took me many years to bring these principles fully into my business life.  Relaxation under pressure brings clarity of thought - and keeps us in a situation to respond rather than react.  When we try to use force with ourselves and others we  eventually run out  of energy. 

People have accused me of "pie in the sky" thinking.  Surely, I will get brushed aside by those people who can be ruthless and use force and deception.  But relaxation doesn't mean inaction or weakness in my world....

"The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be..."
Bruce Lee

The Paradox of Effort without Force

You may have experienced this.  I certainly have.   

We struggle long and hard to create something, only to see its fruition move further and further away - then we give up. 

And then - if we are lucky, we might tap into some inner core of wisdom that allows us to "let go," breath deeply once again and relax.

Then surprise, surprise -  what we desire  seems to flow to us, or is it through us, like a gift from heaven.  This is the principle of non-action  at work.

There  is an apparent paradox in life.   When it comes to what we desire to show up in our lives  it is not helpful to struggle or to try to force things.  And yet that doesn't mean we do nothing!  In order to attain mastery or make progress in anything you can't lie back on the beach and expect your desires to materialise from a blue cloud.  We need to make arduous efforts and yet at the same time not force matters.

Non-action is a creative process and involves a type of waiting but in doing so we make ourselves accessible to the flow of energy in our bodies and indeed our lives.

Take writing as an example.  Inspiration is needed but you can't force it to come - it's about letting go.  If a writer can let go of all the fears and hallucinations that lurk in the background to darken the creative present, he or she will experience this flow.  It is as if the writing moves through the person who no longer blocks its passage.

Learning how to relax and let go is truly hard work, requiring trust in oneself and perseverance.

Vortex thinking

In our work we must learn to cooperate with our colleagues, subordinates and superiors.  We all know that there is a limit to what person alone can achieve even if we always don't behave that way.  We need willing cooperation but control is ultimately limiting in its effectiveness.

I often meet people in my work that say "Yes, I trust my team" and yet they don't realise that their team mates don't see them behave in that way at all.  The harder they try to control, the more they deceive and manipulate the more difficult to get sustainable results.

Charismatic leadership is not necessarily good leadership but it brings a curious power.

With charismatic leaders my observation is that they have an ability to "magnetise" people to their purpose; often and even, without expressely asking for it.  It is a principle of resonance that charismatic people represent a strong, coherent signal that has an ability to entrain others to it.  Resonance occurs when the "head" and "heart" are aligned; when the words and feelings underneath a message are coherent so that the energy contained in them is multiplied.

We have all had that experience of listening to someone and not believing a word they say - an incoherent message if you like, when compared with the feelings we have when exposed to someone who we would say is "speaking from the heart." 

It is difficult to explain but we all have had experience of being exposed to coherence.
Kazuo Inamori, founder of Kyocera Corp, talked of "working in the centre of the vortex."

His feeling was that it is possible to aggressively pursue your work so that people around you spontaneously cooperate with you.  Unless you are an authentic leader, you might end up being outside of the vortex with someone else in the centre of it.

Imagine that in any organisation there will be many business vortexes, like the currents of a river.  If you are just floating round them the danger is that you will be engulfed by them.

To experience joy and zest in work is it possible that you need to be in the centre of a strong vortex?  As you tackle your work enthusiastically will you notice others being drawn into this?

Inamori believed that whether or not your way of thinking is independent or aggressive enough to create your own powerful vortex will decide not only the results of your work but also the results of your life.

Sugar pill coaching

Once upon a time I was involved in designing clinical trials to estimate the benefit or efficacy of various types of medical interventions.  One of the strategies we deployed, as well as one of the trickiest issues to deal with, was that of the placebo and the placebo effect. 

At the back of my mind I have started to reflect on the placebo (expectancy) aspects of business coaching.

When many people hear of placebo they recall tales of sugar pills, deception and "playing tricks with the mind."  This stigma is really misplaced and you will see that this well-researched effect, along with the Hawthorne and other expectancy effects, has surprising relevance to many human interactions.

Based on the Latin for "I shall please," placebo in medicine takes many forms and has indeed been offered as a sugar pill, a saline injection and distilled water.  We have also seen placebo surgery where patients are anesthetised, cut open and stitched up again to appear as if they have had surgical interventions - even when they haven't - and all with beneficial effect. How many times have you heard sceptics dismiss responses to complementary and alternative therapies as "merely" placebo effects?  They need to think again.  There are deeper forces at work.

However, whether in the past you have considered the effect a curiosity, a scientific annoyance or a miracle, its power is becoming much harder to deny.  Now you have certainly heard of this idea and you may well have thought that it only works because the person receiving it doesn't know it's really a placebo - but it actually works because of belief.

Science is showing that the placebo effect is not just all in the mind.  In fact both the mind and the physical body are affected. When you really think about it, patients affected by pain and debility, beyond seeking a lotion or potion, look to doctors and allied health professionals for the words, gestures and deeds that reinforce their belief in medicine's power and generate an expectation that we will benefit from an intervention.  In other words they generate and transfer belief.  See any subtle relevance to coaching yet?

Belief, attitude and expectation - perhaps we could label these as "hope" - can be firmly embedded and shaped by the encounter between a patient and the universe of care they receive.  A change in the mind-set or attitude of a patient alters their brain chemistry, which in turn has a catalytic effect on many other body systems.  Hope is the leverage that can start a cascade of physical effects making improvement much more likely.  Hope produces an effect that can, for example, block pain by releasing endorphins and enkephalins that in turn influence fundamental processes such as respiration, circulation, elimination and motor function. 

Research in treating depression suggests that the placebo effect might account for up to one third of the clinical benefit of modern antidepressants.  Some authors claim an even stronger improvement.  If you are a coach are you starting to wonder if one third of your effectiveness comes via a similar channel?  Do you see the effect you have on your client's state?

In clinical science we are posing a question these days:-

"If now we accept that placebo is real - how can we harness this power and really direct it in clinical situations to support our other strategies?"

As a business coach I pose you this question to reflect on:-

"If now we accept that placebo is real - how can we harness this power and really direct it in coaching situations to support our other strategies?"

Another way of asking this question is how do we generate powerful belief in a coaching relationship? The issues to deal with before getting down to work are face credibility and contractual expectations.  Get these right in order to stack expectations in your favour and then all(?) you have to do is deliver.

Face credibility
There is no doubt that the coachee will consciously interpret the background and experience of the coach. Who the coach has worked with before will count for something because it builds or destroys belief.  Testimonials build belief and are the basic currency of coach credibility.  You might say that what really counts is when you are face to face.  However, the contractual issues and clarity of expectations need to be right or life is going to be difficult from the moment you sit down together.

Contractual expectations
One of main distinctions often made in business coaching is between remedial coaching and performance coaching.  In either case, it is vital to make sure that a coaching assignment will really be at the coachee's behest.  Have you ever tried to change the behaviour of an adult, successful or not, that didn't want to change?  How successful were you?  Probably not very!

Some might argue that the techniques a coach might use are probably the same, so why bother to make the distinction between remedial and performance coaching? 

Whoever is paying the bill, it is absolutely vital that the coachee desires to work with a coach.  It's a question of belief and expectation and you already know that these things have real power.  If the frame of reference provided for coaching is "I need to be fixed" or "I am being punished and I can only see this as a kick before the eventual push out the door" the outcomes from the process are not likely to be measured using the descriptors of exceptional performance.  If the mindset of the coachee is firmly fixed on "I have a problem" probably the expectations for the coaching process are going to be limited.  It's the reason that placebo works well with conditions like pain or fatigue that are often non-specific. It's easier for an individual to build belief in these circumstances than with a broken limb or cancer.

To me, a lot of the power of successful coaching is not at all in the surface detail.  The magic is not about whether a coach asks the "right" question, listens intently or follows some particular process; although of course these things do have value.

With a coaching master, there is an awful lot of power in things that don't smack of technique and probably wouldn't even be grasped by a casual observer.  The coach always works with his or her own state, gets his or her ego out of the way and will aim to simply "be fully present", to fan the flames of brilliance in the coachee.   

In learning this attitude from Michael Breen I saw a parallel with the martial arts where mastery is in a space beyond conscious technique.

I do like to work with people who are already high performers and my intention and state will be "how I can have the biggest impact right now?" Whether we sit together for five minutes or fifty I must trust myself to really make a difference.  If I am the placebo the attitude and belief start with me.  Without that attitude the spark of real transformation is missing.  I suspect that more than a third of the benefit of coaching can come from the attitude and mindset of the coach.