An Update on Goal Achievement

Last summer, I posted about finally achieving a goal I had pursued for  seven– count ‘em – seven summers.  The very difficult and elusive (for me) deep water start on the slalom ski.  For anyone who has learned to water-ski on two skis, the norm is to get up on two and then drop one.  When you are hanging out with real skiers this is untenably gauche and it became imperative that I master the ability to simply get up on one ski.  At the end of last summer I finally got it. 

So this summer the big question was – could I do it again?  Lo and behold, I popped right up and pretty much have been able to do it all summer.  I am still surprised to find myself up on the water in one piece!

But of course now that’s old news and there has to be a new goal.  Now I have to cut.  It isn’t enough just to go back and forth across the wake and have fun…no.  Cutting is when you hunker down, pull your own weight and shoot across the wake at god only knows what heinous speed so that when it comes time to turn back you are leaning so far in you practically touch the water.  My husband looks like a demi-god when he does this.  And he makes it look so fun. 

And I am writing about this to re-iterate how important it is to my quality of life to have a goal that has nothing to do with work, saving the world, the well being of my children or my own moral betterment.  It is just absurdly fun.

 Wish me luck.

Unplugged

I recently spent seven days on a deserted island with just my husband.  No children, no family, no friends, no cellphones, no iPhone, no blackberry, no computers, no internet, no TV. No work projects that make us feel guilty that we said we would do but don’t.  This is the 6^th year we have done this, we try to do it every year but with work and four kids, sometimes we just can’t swing  it.

We walked, we read, we paddled around in the water, my husband played his guitar.  We did some light snorkeling.   When we walked,  we talked  about our kids – we have four,  22,19,14 and 12, all of whom need something different from us-  about our jobs – we work together and we work constantly-  about our health, about our disappointments and dreams.  How we are different today that we were 6 months or a year ago.  How we are growing, how we would like to grow.  We always have a few epiphanies.  This year I realized that I had let my work dictate my schedule and that my health is suffering because of it. Now, some folks don’t have a choice in this area, but I specifically built my life so that I would, so it is completely my own doing.

The jury is out on the topic of what this modern 24/7 connectedness is doing to our brains.  I am quite certain it is making us smarter in a lot of ways, and that my children’s brains will literally be wired differently from my own.  But I do know this for sure:  taking seven days to completely unplug is one of the healthiest things you can do to refresh yourself and get some perspective.  If you are married, doing it with your spouse will result in a healthier marriage.  You don’t have to go anyplace fancy or expensive.  It is really hard to get coverage for work and kids but it is so worth it.  Nobody died because I didn’t answer my phone for seven days. 

No, a four day weekend won’t do it.  If you give yourself permission,  and save up vacation days, you can actually do it.

Preoccupied?

Working with a new client, the planned 360° Feedback is delayed so we are having the conversation about what we can accomplish with coaching without the benefit of clear data to create a development plan.  We start with, “well, I’m not perfect but I can’t really think of anything I should be working on.”  Out comes the magic wand question: “if you could wave a magic wand what would be different (at work) a year from now?”

Well, it turns out there’s plenty to work on.  I can hear the client’s mental wheels whirring through the phone!   A week goes by and client comes back with “wow, it’s amazing what one hour of thinking can change.” (And I get paid to do this?  After 20 years I still pinch myself.)

Client decides to start at home and polls his family.  The unanimous response from all quarters is that he is over stressed and absent – not there even when he is there.  The word preoccupied comes to mind – literally previously occupied and therefore NOT AVAILABLE.  Not present.  So client then asks “I have wonder to what extent my employees feel that way?”  Indeed.

We have reams of research – thank you Daniel Goleman for your work on Emotional Intelligence and to Kurt Kaufman and Marcus Buckingham for First, Break All the Rules – that support the notion that people are desperate for a decent manager who pays attention to them.  And not just negative attention when something goes wrong.  But the kind of attention that signals:

I see you.

I hear you.

I notice distinctions, details, differences, growth, and effort.

I notice when you are struggling, rise to a challenge, go above and beyond.

You are important.

And we all know that we can’t pay attention, at home or at work, when we are pre-occupied.

It is true that if the client changes only this one thing in a year, if he in fact disciplines himself to be present with whomever he is with (at work and at home), his quality of life is guaranteed to go up.  The possibilities of what can come from this tiny shift are endless.

How are You Sharing Your Heart?

You know, sometimes people are just so amazing.  I recently started work with a new client whose reads like an exemplars manual for management and leadership excellence.  I combed through it looking for something that she could possibly work on.  There were a few communication details we can polish, maybe refine some delegation skills.  It was all practical and straightforward. We spent an hour setting some goals that weren’t particularly compelling because, let’s face it, she is in good shape.

I realized after we said goodbye that I needed to ask her the bigger questions.  Questions like:

• Are you sharing your heart the way you always wanted to?
• Are you having enough fun?
• Are you connected with the meaning that sustained you the first twenty years in your field?
• Are you making the impact you dreamed of making when you were young?

I feel better already – I hate wasting clients’ time.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

The Needs Exercise

For those of you following the Needs conversation here is what to do about it if you decided to do a better job getting them met.

1. Identify and articulate specific highly personal needs.    The easiest way is to do The Needs Exercise. To do this visit this website – when you get there you can gain access to the website by pressing USE IT and using the log in: coachme and the PW: now.

Once you access the site click on the Needs Identification Exercise.  This site is free for anyone and is loaded with fun and useful tools.

Some may have already occurred to you. One of the best ways to quickly identify a need is to think back to a recent moment when you felt you were simply not yourself. This would be a moment in which you behaved in a way that you simply do not condone and are ashamed of because you knew it didn’t represent what is true about you.  Ask yourself: what need was not getting met?

2. Surrender.  You only need permission from yourself to get your needs met..  One of the prime motivators for doing so comes from recognizing that not giving in and admitting to a need will end up hurting you more in the long term.

3. Identify the people in your life who can help. It is a really good idea to cultivate relationships with people who know you and can listen to you, and to learn to return the favor.

4. Set a goal and design a set of activities to move you toward it: Once the problem is clear, it is much easier to come up with solutions.  Often, a plan will come as a blinding flash of the obvious because the obstacles to getting needs met are usually self-imposed. Read the rest of this entry »

Getting Your Needs Met

This is part two of a series on Needs.

Let’s face it.  Most of us didn’t have a lot of great role models of people who persistently and graciously got their personal needs met.  What we did have is models of people who got their needs met in ways that were perceived as pushy, whiny, or shrill. Selfish. We hear others talking about these people and we think “oh, well, no one is going to be saying that about me.”

From an early age many of us learn to dismiss our needs, afraid we will appear selfish, or rude, uncooperative, not in the team spirit.  We often view our habit of dismissing needs as a useful or even healthy one; we’ve gotten this far after all.  However dismissing needs gets you only so far and no farther.

In order to function at the kind of level you demand of yourself without burning out, you will simply have to give yourself permission to get your needs met- to be selfish – but in a way that won’t alienate  your friends or diminish your influence.  The paradox you will discover is that as you understand yourself, others will find it easier to understand you. They will help you more often than not.

Linda Berens, an expert on Psychological Types and the way personality differences affects relationships has this say about needs: “The Needs represent…the driving force. Individuals unconsciously and consciously seek every avenue to get the Needs met.  When these Needs are met the individual is energized and light of spirit.  When these Needs are not met, the individual is drained of energy and suffers dissatisfaction or stress.”

Drained of energy?  Dissatisfied in some unidentifiable way? Sound familiar?

So just for now think about what thoughts (the Greek Chorus of judgment in your own head) gets in the way of your getting your needs met.  Examples include:

Are Your Needs Met?

I was recently asked if we had a recommendation about a good article about Needs.  I really don’t know of one, though there are some good books.  Because Needs are a critical building block for a productive coaching experience, I thought it would be helpful to start a small series on the topic.  So here is the first installment:

A personal need is that which you must have met to get to and maintain a peak state. Needs and your ability to get them met are a fundamental part of your coaching journey.  We aren’t talking about basic survival needs like food and shelter – we‘re referring to deeply personal, often emotional needs.

Because needs are so personal, it can be hard to admit we have them. God forbid that we appear “needy.” Having needs can make us feel so terrifyingly vulnerable that we develop a habit of denying them to ourselves, or if we are aware of them, of trying to hide them from others.  But that we all have needs is a simple fact, an undeniable reality. It is also true that they cause much less trouble if they are identified and taken care of.

Trouble?  How do needs cause trouble? By getting met, consciously, or unconsciously – and productively or unproductively. Because needs simply will get met you can make a choice to understand them well or you can choose to let them rule your behavior in ways that take you (and others) by surprise.  Let’s be clear that the choice is not “do I get my needs met?” It is “How do I get my needs met?”

Next time: Getting your needs met.

Oh, Stop Whining!

My dog has become a whiner.  She is an absolutely dear 11 year old tri-color Australian Shepherd who for reasons not quite explicable has started to whine.  A lot. When she hears me roll over the first time at 6 am, whimper whimper.  Every tiny event seems to require canine commentary.  Now, I can kind of tune it out – I do after all, have 4 kids – but it is driving my husband nuts.  That I can’t tune out.

I call the vet to get his advice.  He calls the dog’s behavior “dramatics” which makes me laugh. So a propos, my vet is funny.  He suggests that we can possibly medicate her.  Doggy downers.  Again, I laugh out loud.  Almost everyone I know is medicated, why not the dog?

Then he asks: Is she getting enough exercise?

Suddenly I am not laughing.  For the last 6 months I have been going to gym most days instead of taking Indiana Jones for her regular 3 mile walk every day.  It was great for her, but I needed to lift weights and challenge myself so our routine changed. Lately she has been getting meager  15 minute trots down the hill and back. And voila –birth of an anxious drama queen.

So isn’t that just perfect?  It isn’t just we humans who are medicating ourselves up down and sideways instead of unpeeling our sore eyeballs from whatever screen to jog around the block.  Now it’s the dog.

The medical profession has told us with no equivocation that exercise is the number one prescription for just about everything that ails us from diabetes to dementia.   When I asked one CEO (this is 2009 in global manufacturing – he had a good reason to whine!) how he was getting by, he said vodka and exercise (an hour a day at the gym).  Another client whose company is very close to shutting his R & D department told me that he is running.  Every morning between 6 and 7 am.  He has 848 unread emails but he is out there running.

Feeling whiny?  Get a sweat up.

The Myth of Balance

This post was originally published on Womens Media on April 2, 2009.

What we have today are hordes of high achieving women who, in addition to making a living, raising children, being dutiful friends, daughters, siblings, wives and community service providers, are now beating themselves up because they don’t have “balance.”

Let’s stop the balancing charade. It is an unworthy goal and unachievable to boot. We don’t want or need balance. What we need is a sense of autonomy and control over what we have promised to others and ourselves. What we need are some tools that will help us to decrease our fear that we aren’t doing the essential things we need to do to in the various areas of our lives.

What I offer you are two tools with which to build a long-term strategic approach. They will help you to change your perspective so that you can make more effective choices and deploy your most precious resource – YOU. I can confidently assert, as a perfectionist, driven, ambitious Working Mother, Wife, Daughter, Sister, Friend (affectionately known as a WMWDSF) devoted to sucking the last bit of yumminess out of life – these concepts have kept me from being completely certifiable.

Boundaries and Standards
Boundaries and standards are tools that coaches use to help clients get a grip on their personal reality so they can stop pinging around like pin balls reacting to everyone else’s expectations.

Don’t Be Afraid to Set Boundaries
A boundary is what people can and cannot do to and around you. I was coaching at a NY investment-banking house when Mary came to her session and said, “I don’t need to get coached because I am going to quit.” “Oh?” said I. “Do you have a wonderful new job to go to?” It turned out that Mary’s boss was so unreasonable and demanding that she wasn’t getting home to see her kids, was missing doctor’s appointments, was always on the run. You know the score. Obviously, she had done no job search, had no resume prepared, and was ready to walk out because she was desperate for some “balance.” In actuality, Mary was about to shoot herself in the foot. She didn’t need balance, she needed boundaries.

As Mary and I worked together, she was able to identify what was making her so frustrated and to practice handling some of the typical situations she encountered. As an encouragement, I shared some of my observations about boundaries:

Mary learned new language, which she immediately started using:

Next time you feel that your life is running roughshod over you, and your priorities are way out of whack, look to see where boundaries are needed to prevent people from stepping all over you.

Adjust Your Standards
Standards are the behaviors and practices to which you hold yourself. Standards determine what you expect of yourself, even when those behaviors may have outlived their purpose. For example, think about your standard for returning phone calls. Is your standard to return calls within one hour? …24 hours? …three days? Does that fit your current work situation?

We often have our standards set in stone, or we have no standards at all where we should. Standards must be changed as our lives and our responsibilities change. I worked with an executive woman who insisted on designing and hand-making her own holiday cards even though she was literally crying with exhaustion by the 20th of December. I asked Kristen what was so important about making the cards herself and she said, “I’ve ALWAYS made them, and if I stop now, people will think I don’t care about them anymore.” We brainstormed other ways that she could communicate how much she cared and came up with a solution that suited her situation. Kristen would design a card and pay an artist to hand-make them. Instead of trying to catch up with the season, Kristen would send out the cards to celebrate the coming of spring. In this way, Kristen could still communicate that she cared, celebrate a new season in her life and encourage others to do the same.

Unknowingly, Kristen had been trapped in the rut of her standards. If you find yourself in the standards rut try this:

Ask yourself the question: “How am I a slave to my standards?” I recently caught a ride with an acquaintance, an extremely well regarded and successful playwright, professor and Mom. Her car was a disaster area. Instead of apologizing, she laughed and said, “Well, something had to give. If you really hate how dirty my car is, we can pull over and you can help me clean it out.” It was liberating to be with someone who didn’t care if I judged her by the interior of her car.

In what areas do you decide how you spend your time because of what someone else might think? Standards should be flexible; they need to change as your life changes. Stop and re-assess them often.

Forget balance. Put yourself first and everything else will fall into place.