Embodiment - What Do You Embody?

I posted recently on Linked in about Embodiment. I was suggesting that if you wanted to change you needed to interrupt your embodiment.  It raised, understandably a few eyebrows - metaphorically that is.

Embodiment is one of those terms that we kind of know what we mean and then when asked to define our own embodiment we draw a blank - a say whaaaat….?

So let me put some meat on the bones (notice the Body based metaphor 😃) by inviting in a little imagination…. 

Imagine you grow up in a household where you learn that conflict is dangerous.  

You learn this from your parents who grew up vicariously exposed to the dangers of war. 

They themselves as children learnt that keeping quiet was the safest way to be. Protection from exposure, from persecution and betrayal even. Over time, they withdrew from widely asserting their opinions always checking first for the safe places where they could do so.  

Asserting a view contrary to the ‘commanded wisdom’ is dangerous. Becoming tight lipped (another body metaphor) is the safest way to be in the world. Overtime, the body takes on this form also, the musculature shaped to be quiet and small, un-noticed. It becomes collapsed in on itself, perhaps a little contracted through the chest and the rib cage. A little loss of dignity and the right to be heard disappeared.  

And then you join these parents already shaped by the need to keep their heads down, to not cause a fuss. To blend into the background. 

You however, grew up in a different time. A world no longer ravaged by war, a more liberal period of opening up again. And you rebel against this familial timidity.  

You fight against this handed down parented wisdom. Your own unconscious drive is to speak up, to stand up, bring it on! But, there is a but. 

Before you found your own psychic drive towards asserting your own world view you’d absorbed unconsciously the shaping of your parents. You’d absorbed that speaking up wasn’t safe, although you didn’t have words to explain it this way - this was unconscious learning.  

The messaging you received that the world was dangerous shaped part of your own internal embodiment to protect against conflict - to hunker down inside, contract a little, keep safe.  This, conflicted with your own need to be heard, to be seen, to offer something that matters.  You own volition and move towards taking a full seat at the table. 

This then becomes part of your embodiment. 

Almost two positions on a continuum. At one end the shaped in embodiment of contraction, keep small, don’t make a fuss. ‘Inherited’ we might say and locked deep within, not often seen in the world - literally, invisible to others, but it is there. 

At the other end a rebellion against this way of being, paired with a powerful personal drive and motivation for justice, fairness and respect. Forceful enough to show up as an outspokeness, a fight for the underdog and an orientation towards having to always fight.  

The fight is held in the intellectual domain with the use of argument for what is ‘right’.  Sharp, quick, incisive. A powerful gift. 

You have learnt how to create a particular space for yourself in the world. 

Everything that you are is there for a reason. It’s worked so far. And.  

How long is this way of being sustainable? How long can you continue approaching the world through this lens? What is the cost benefit analysis? What are the wins and the losses? How long can you fight hard whilst at the same time inwardly bracing ready for the blows? 

What when you meet another person who is a natural ‘fight’? Is there space for both of you? How do you compromise?  

How, when something that really matters to you, does fight/brace support you? 

What if instead you could ‘fight’ for what you wanted from another place? A place in which you set down the learned tensed embodiment of ‘move away/stay small whilst move toward/fight’ and instead learn to embody a way of being that was centred and grounded. A ground from which you could assert and advocate for what you needed, you could even fight for coming from centre rather than out of that place which rebelled against keeping quiet, avoiding conflict. Not being like your parents. 

And this, I fear is as far as I can currently take you through the medium of the written word. Centre and ground is not some written conceptual idea. It’s not even an intellectual concept. Not if it is to be lived, to be part of a way of being. It is a felt sense, created within and lived from within the body.  

A previous post on this (https://bit.ly/3jSafEr) invited the reader to consider their own embodiment. It might sound complicated. Many of us, me included have a propensity to over complicate and intellectualise. No need.  Instead, just feel and observe. To take one of the examples from the original post…

How is it for you to say No?  To say no to someone you care about?  To someone you do not care about?  How is that experience lived in your body?  Literally what does your body feel and where is that? What do you feel moving in your body? Can you even feel your body? 

And for many, the answer sadly is no. Conflict maybe one of the ways in which we have learned to shut down from our bodies, hampering our learning and capacity to lead and grow from a place of genuine compassion and authenticity. 

And that is another post. 

Being Enough is empowering

With thanks to a couple of great people I know, Dan Dackombe being one of them, I’m encouraged to occasionally sharecase studies based on my work in the last decade. I stress two things: the stories are composite to protect confidentiality, and they are absolutely realistic and reflect people coping in every day life, the kind of people you'll recognise. If we look at the statistics around trauma, adverse childhood experiences et al, we will quickly see that these pen drawings reflect what is very real for many more people than we realise. 

Why put these stories out there? Simple really. We are in a world where awareness of the need for good mental and emotional health is thankfully on the rise. We are in a world where compassion, empathy, tolerance and understanding are not only key to our ability to work with mental health - for ourselves and others, but they are also key for surviving this messy upside down world that we live in. 

When a client shows up for coaching, there’s always a reason for it, some declared goal to be achieved. What’s often not seen by the client (or their Line Manager) is the relationship between what is manifesting today and the backstory. So here goes, ‘Every One Has A Back Story #1. Meet Joanna’. 

Joanna goes to work wearing a tailored navy skirt suit, navy elegant heeled shoes and high shine gossamer flesh coloured tights. Her hair is always immaculately organised into either a french pleat or a dutch braid. She is the epitome of elegance with her manicured nails and flawless make-up. 

And there is more. Joanna is highly successful within the financial services company that employs her. She is respected for her intellect and her capacity both to manage projects, and the competing demands upon her time. As you might suspect from the way she presents, she is also a perfectionist. This drive for ‘getting it perfectly right’ has been a major contributing factor to her success. She’s swift in her thinking and she’s had her fair share of promotion in a business that is very results focused.  She is efficient and matter of fact and, people know exactly where they stand with her, especially given her clarity of decision making and direction. She is always in control. 

Recently however, cracks are beginning to appear in her armour. There have been a few mistakes recently which have led to friction within her team. She is quietly frustrated at these mistakes and she blames herself for not being good enough, for not having seen the mistakes coming.

Outside of work Joanna doesn’t invest much time in unwinding or relaxing. She often takes her work home with her and to be fair, she loves her work and her career. She believes that if she had worked harder or, had been smarter then she would have seen the problems occurring ahead of time and been able to head them off. She’s especially upset that her boss has called her out on these issues recently and she’s very worried that her so far unblemished track record is not quite so unblemished. Joanna hasn’t asked for help and was surprised when her boss suggested a coach.  

Joanna engages someone and begins by saying that her reason for coaching is that she needs to be better at her job, find a way in which she can do more, and be more effective at managing her team.  They get to work and it doesn’t quite go as Joanna expected. 

Here is Joanna’s back story.

Joanna is the eldest of two children, by 7 years to her younger sister.  When Joanna was 10 her parents divorced after lots of marital conflict and her father became estranged.  Joanna sought refuge with her grandmother, a stabilising solid influence in her life at a time when Mum was numbing her own distress with alcohol.  Her grandmother died when she was 13, a critical time in Joanna’s teenage development. 

By the time she was 16 her mother had remarried a man who also had children. They became a blended family, but not a happy one. There was always the threat of physical abuse, and alcohol remained a present feature of her mum’s life.  During her teenage years she rebelled before finally escaping to university at 18. Out of this environment she was determined to succeed, and not be defined by her history. She graduated with an excellent degree, the usual student debt and then some, but undeterred she set about building a career and found her way in to financial services. 

This experience taught her that to be successful she needed to work hard, be smart, strive for perfection. This would bring her success and therefore safety, although that latter isn't something she would recognise or put into words. If she could just be perfect then maybe the approval and recognition she so desperately desires will be found.  Deep down, very deep down she always has and still, yearns for the acceptance and acknowledgement of her mother and her estranged father.  

Our life's experience is wired into our neuopsychobiology. For evolutionary reasons, the body always looks for safety. If working hard brings recognition, and validation, then Joanna has a sense of being safe. She is seen, recognised and has a basis on which to make her way in the world. And when this strategy stops working, a break-down will occur. (Breakdown, not in the sense of a 'nervous breakdown' as we colloquially speak of it, but rather a rupture in her day to day equilibrium.

But Joanna doesn’t realise the connections in any of this and of course neither do her colleagues - why would they? They don’t know the back story, and even if they did, would they make the connection? 

With her coach's assistance, Joanna begins to make sense of how her history shapes and influences her behaviour, how it works for her - and will always work for her - and how she might also be able to create different choices once in a while. Over time she finds that she can more deeply embody a felt sense of being enough. Simple in words but a really powerful and positive shift in how she feels about herself, the actions she takes and the mistakes she makes. She can always be enough, and there will be more too. It feels empowering. Instead of living in a mood of 'constantly pushing harder'. She begins to find moments when she can just slow down a little, survey the horizon from a different perspective, exercise more self-care and compassion. In turn this impacts her team with a softening around the edges and, she's more approachable. Of course she still has high standards, of course she can still turn up the gas when she needs to, but she can now also turn it down when that is a better more fruitful course of action.

Empathy (and a short aside on how rats do it) Read on for relevance… Are Rats More Empathic Than Humans?

If you can’t wait for the answer, go straight to the end. If you can wait, start here, tick all that apply

• You are working in or with a team that keeps mis-communicating

• You are working in or with a team where collaboration and co-operation isn’t up to par

• You believe that it’s all about the results first

• You can do empathy at home, but not at work, or vice versa

• You’ve had some feedback that you could do with being more empathetic in at least one domain of your life. 

If none apply, you’ve got it taped. Scroll to the end for the answer to the rat question. If you are however a bit curious about how to develop and manage more empathy, stick with me. 

It’s widely accepted that empathy is social glue. Daniel Goleman argues it’s one of the key competencies for social awareness. No social awareness, relationships suffer, no co-operation, anarchy ensues and we don’t get much done. Dan Siegel refers to empathy and compassion as the key to our connectedness, both to each other and the planet. If that seems a bit of a leap, I’ll paraphrase. If we develop our empathic skills, we increase our capacity for compassion and concern, we recognise our connection to each other and the world becomes a kinder place. 

(Anyone who doesn’t think the world needs to be a bit kinder, feel free to find out about the rats.)

We interpret empathy as the ability to ‘stand in another’s shoes’. Look at bit deeper and it can be broken down into 3 or 5 types of empathy depending upon whose research you go with. 

Cognitive Empathy - that which is often the basis for many texts/blogs on how to develop empathy. Essentially it’s the ability to take on another’s mental perspective.  This is me being able to put myself in your shoes, to understand your viewpoint and well, empathise. I can see you are upset and I respond by acknowledging your distress with something like “I can see how annoyed this makes you’. There is less of a felt sense with this form of empathy but there is definitely an understanding that others have a different perspective and a willingness to try and know more about this. 

Emotional empathy steps it up a level and brings in the felt sense. With this type of empathy I can feel what you feel. Think of a time when you saw someone get hurt. Our bodies respond to others pain with pain of our own.  When there is emotional empathy between myself and a friend, I will feel her distress. It might have a different texture or sensation (we can never know whether our pain feels exactly the same) but we do know that if I see her in pain, I will similarly feel pain and often in the same part of the body.  

The third type of empathy is empathic concern, the difference here being that we not only understand and feel the pain, sadness, distress or joy of our friend but we are motivated to do something to help them, (or celebrate with them). Empathic concern can be otherwise named compassion. 

The science bit - how do we know all of this. 

One of the key, now famous studies I imagine, opened up our knowledge in this area was done in Italy. A group of Macaque monkeys were being studied in Italy. Via an MRI scanner, the brain of a monkey had been observed whilst trying to open a nut. In a synchronistic moment, another ‘hungry’ scientist walked in, picked up a nut and started opening it. The monkey sat back and watched - curious I guess. The monkey’s brain lit up as if he were also opening the nut, even through he was merely observing. Scientists were able to re-produce this effect over and over, including in Chimpanzees and Humans and so, mirror neurons were discovered. These neurons form part of what is known as a resonance circuit in our brains, and which extends into our bodies.  (Think of how the hairs on your arm might stand up when learn of something distressing that happens to a friend. This is your body resonating.) 

We know from studying babies that we enter the world with this system already primed. If you’ve ever been in the company of more than one baby at a time, you’ll no doubt be familiar with the experience of one starts crying, they all start crying. We know from studying young children whose years in wretched orphanages has a major adverse impact on their ability to feel, let along empathise. Their feeling systems shutdown and along with it their empathy. We know that adverse experiences in our early years impacts our ability to relate and build connection with others. Conversely we absolutely know that being raised in loving homes with caregivers attuned to our needs will help us develop the neural circuits for compassion and empathy. As our caregivers bring their love and care to us, so our systems mirror theirs through our mirror neurons - and our bodies resonate with theirs in response. 

We also know that our neural circuitry is highly malleable, throughout life. This means that our capacity for compassion and empathy can be turned off, and it can be turned on. 

We can ‘learn’ to turn off our empathy. 

There are all sorts of reasons why we might intentionally or unintentionally do this. Here’s another tick list. 

• You believe that results are the be all and end all. You believe it and furthermore the environment you work in encourages you to believe it. This shapes you away from connecting in an empathetic way with other people, which you may or may not believe is important. Connection is a means to an end, you are there and you are not. 

• You experience too much empathy, get overwhelmed and so, put up barriers - you learn how to shut it all down. This way you maintain a sense of equilibrium in order to get stuff done. (The cost of this is lack of shared meaning and connection.)

• Your sense of safety or sense of your own self-worth got threatened at some point - in an big way, or in a small continuous, gnawing kind of way. Eventually, you learn to stop feeling, or at best, to feel and ‘block’ it or keep a lid on it.  This is a vitally important protective ‘safety’ mechanism, especially valuable at the time, but when left ‘on’ can get in the way of keeping you from feeling stuff when it’s actually safe and important for you to do so. 

It is of course really important that we can keep a handle on our empathy. The classic is those in the medical professions who need to be both empathetic, (studies show patients of Dr’s who demonstrate more empathy have better outcomes) and calm, dispassionate even. We’d all absolutely want a surgeon who could both understand our emotional worries and, dispassionately disconnect from them and their own emotional perturbance as they cut into our skin. If I’m badly injured I want someone who can empathise with what I’m going through but still have the presence of mind to be able to help me right there and then. I don’t want them falling about overcome by their own felt sense of my pain. 

Or you may not turn off empathy at all. Instead your relationship with empathy is healthy. You take notice of how others feel, can feel it yourself and when needed, are moved to help. You have the ability to feel and hold the feelings and perspective of another person at the same time as holding your own sense of self. We can say that you know what is theirs and what is yours.  

Whatever you ‘ticked’ above we can all practice developing empathy. A quick google search will bring up a list of ‘the 5 things you can practice’ to develop more empathy.  Most of these lists include active listening, turning away from distractions, dialling down your opinions, being curious.  These are all really important of course… and I want to suggest just one other practice that will help you to develop empathy from the ‘ground up’, to develop something that begins to feel more innate, natural and authentic. 

The practice of mindfulness whereby you notice your felt sense taps right into those basic empathetic neural circuits that we were born with.  We are seeking to deepen the furrows of our neural circuits in the body making them sharper and faster.   

Mindfulness is very much in vogue at the moment, often advocated for managing stress and anxiety. Mindfulness brings us the gift of observing ourselves from a distance, something Dan Siegel calls introception. By mindfully paying attention to what is happening for us internally, in time we create the space to observe our reactions, we create the space to become more choiceful in how we respond. 

By adopting a mindful practice that literally asks what are my sensations right now, and what might these sensations be telling me about my emotions right now, we gain all sorts of insights into what is important to us in the moment. We learn to stay in the present moment - a valuable ‘side benefit’. As we continue to explore, staying present to the felt sensations of NOW, we will being to notice we experience sensations which may not actually be 'ours'.  

If this is completely foreign to you, think of a time when a friend cried and you had a sensation of wanting to cry along with them. That’s empathy in action. Same with joy. A time when a friend is joyful over something going on for them and your heart could burst with joy with them.  

Sometimes it’s OK to cry and laugh along with a friend. It may be so at work too, although imagine a Line Manager learns that the child of a Direct Report is gravely ill. Whilst the empathic emotions of distress, sadness, worry may be present and shared, the Line Manager needs to be able to feel all of this and move to more cognitive, linear thinking as well, in order to be able to provide the caring support the DR needs.  It’s a case of being able to do both - be genuinely in touch with the felt sense, and finding out what help the Direct Report needs. 

Mindfulness is directed inwards. What is happening within me right now? Am I actually feeling anything right now? If so, what is it, what are the sensations? What is this emotionally? Is this me, is this you? Could you be feeling like this? If this is you, what might you need from me right now, how best might I help, what might be the best response from me to you? If, that is a response is needed at all. How might I bring my very self present to be with you, whilst maintaining my own integrity. 

Mindfulness for the sake of more empathy can be practiced anytime. We don’t need to wait until we are with someone else to begin practicing. We can practice it walking down the street. Just noticing how we are and in time, it’ll be there when we also need to know how another person is. 

It seems so simple, and, I know it's a big practice. As babies and children we are primed for empathy. In the right environment and circumstances it will develop. As adults, we need to pay more mindful attention to its development. We need to be actively engaged and intentional. Dan Siegel again argues that for it really to work we also need to recognise that we are all connected, connected to each other and to our planet. Our systems are malleable, but to reshape towards more empathy we have to make more of a conscious effort.  And, we will each find our own reasons for doing so.  

For those looking for the answer to the rat question… here’s what I found. 

The following link will take you to details of an experiment which constantly demonstrated that rats are empathic regardless of whether they were part of the same family.  https://bit.ly/2CAHyHt

In short, two rats are placed in an arena. One is placed inside a clear tube with a door on it, within the arena. The ‘free’ rat opens the door to release the other rat and it does this consistently regardless of whether the trapped rat is going to be able to enter the arena so that they are together. When a tube of chocolate chips is also placed in the arena, with equal frequency, the free rat would choose to open the chocolate chips or free the trapped rat. Even when the rat had chosen the chocolate chips first, some chips were always saved for the trapped rat, which it then freed. 

What do you think?  

And why did this catch my attention? It wasn’t just the topic of empathy but rather that for much of last year, the external walls, ceiling and loft of our home became part of a rat run - that is until we worked out how to get rid of them. Now, that revelation may have produced an empathic probably gut based reaction in you - perhaps the sensation is a cramping in the gut, a tightening of the throat, and chest, shortening of the breath and then, disgust, ’yuk’, and, ‘how horrid’. It was. 

As an aside, for anyone who is experiencing their own ‘rat trauma’, let me know and I’ll share how we solved the problem - it went on for literally months. 

Connecting to courage and competence - a somatic approach

The Magic of the Dragon Tail

A wonderful coaching client once shared with me his experiences of being in Hong Kong.  He'd been on a work visit and being new to the region and culture, he experienced a very quick immersion into business practices.  

Aside from some of the insights he shared about doing business there, he was particularly struck by the holes in tall skyscrapers.   Purposely built this way, he discovered that they are called Dragon Gates and are designed so that the dragons can fly through as they pass from the mountains to the sea.   I love this idea.  A blend of mythology and reality.    

And especially relevant because a key feature of something I work with is a Dragon Tail.   Everyone is invited to grow one.   We all have imaginations and so we can usually find some way of feeling, seeing, hearing, perhaps even smelling a heavy stabilising, grounding Dragon Tail that extends from somewhere along our back line way behind us, much like the train of a wedding dress or long cape.   

Clients choose whatever type of Dragon Tail they like.  Tails can be any shape, size, colour, texture, weight.  They can be knarled, spiky bumpy, scaly, smooth, decorated.  It really does not matter.  What matters is why.    For the sake of what would I ask perfectly 'responsible, sensible adults' to engage in imaginary fun like this.  

Here's why.   

Clients most frequently report using their tails when they need additional felt strength, courage and support.  They use it to consciously hold their life's experience, good and not so good, their support network, their skills, competencies, gifts, achievements.  Anything and everything that helps them experience more gravitas and a greater, purposeful sense of 'I can do this'.   With a Dragon Tail we can move forwards into whatever challenges lie ahead with greater ease and support.   The tail helps us to slow down for a moment, to breathe more deeply and to feel more grounded.  We can occasionally use the tail to figuratively flick or swipe an obstacle out of the way and we can use it to provide us with a momentary rest when we just need to press pause before opening our mouths or moving to action again.  

The Dragon Tail is the place where our history resides.  Behind us, to the sides of us, not in front of us.  Our history, our life’s experiences, the good, the bad and the ugly is everything that supports us as we move from the here and now, the present moment, into the future, moment by moment with anything from big bold steps to tiny small, tentative yet courageous movements.  

The tail connects us to our courage and competence.   It helps us to feel calmer and more confident.   And yes it might be imaginary but who cares.  If Dragon Tunnels can be built in buildings surely we can grow them?   

Feeling Your Sense of Self-Worth

Education is a given, but maintaining her self-worth is the priority’.    

A few months ago, one of my pre-teen daughters was having a tough time with friendships.   And I felt helpless.   I came to realise that underneath all the frustration and annoyance at our joint inability to communicate properly as she tried to navigate her way through this,  was my own angst at not being able to ‘solve it for her’.  Not being able to find the words that would help her, my much loved daughter, settle.  

In the end I realised this one truth.  She has one major priority as she navigates her education.   Education is a given,  but maintaining her self-worth is the priority, 

Studies show that girls will reach their highest level of felt self-esteem by the age of 8 (https://bit.ly/2Sf1YNb) and thereafter it’s all down hill.  What a damning and depressing piece of information.    I’m beginning sadly to see why this can happen as girls are thrown into the minefield (and sometimes it feels like a battlefield) of navigating forming relationships whilst jostling for position in a pubescent state.  

This week I read a quote which said “your opinion of me is none of my business”.  I shared it with my daughter who has been using it as and when she needs to, most often in her own head; why fan the flames when they appear?     And if it helps, it’s worth it.  

Aside from using affirmations such as these, how does she maintain her sense of self-worth?   She likes herself and the way she is - which I am grateful for, and long may it continue.   And what else - when it gets really tough?  

I describe self-worth to my clients as the felt sense that exists when they can hold a space for themselves that says “yep, that didn’t go well, or that feedback hurt and regardless, despite all that, I am still OK, I am still a worthy human being”. They are not thrown into a sense of not good enough, less than, or worse, shame.  

My experience is that this felt sense is to be found in the body.  It’s not something that we can just think ourselves into.  Of course, it goes without saying that self-talk focused on positive and supportive messages are really helpful.   Better than verbally berating ourselves with nothing but negativity.  

It’s even more useful however if we also know how to organise our physical selves to being able to feel worthy.    

To do this we first have to be mindful of how it is to feel less than worthy.  Usually there will be some sort of contraction and tightness, some sort of collapse and it’s worth knowing where/how this occurs.  If we stay present and curious to the sensations that may also be present we may also learn other pieces of information about the internal landscape of who we are.  If we become a student of the felt and physical experience we can learn a lot about our stories, our triggers, what we care about and what we desire.  

Developing, through practice, this level of awareness, offers us the possibility of developing the the skill of letting go of the feelings and sensations, or perhaps, letting them be there and re-organising the internal state to be more calm, relaxed and ‘full’.    Each mistake we make, or each cruel word aimed at us can easily take something away, chip, chip chipping away at our often fragile self.  

Perhaps, we might become more courageous, try out something new, take a risk, be vulnerable from a place of loving kindness towards ourselves.  It’s the being in the ring that counts rather than being there ‘perfectly’.  Getting it wrong, making a mistake, not being liked by everyone is OK.  We are each, still OK and worthy.   

By learning to welcome our body as the very ‘self’ that we are (and if it’s less of a mind loop for you, think body/brain as the self),  then we have something to work with.  Rather than ‘allowing’ the impact of another person(s) hurtful commentary or our own mistakes and shortcomings to minimise our ‘self’ we can focus on holding onto its wholeness and its full expansiveness, rather than allowing it to contract, collapse, diminish.   We can learn to fully inhabit our skin, feel our sides and our edges - literally, and especially our back sides, feel the full length of our spines, and breathe calmly and slowly.    By inhabiting and loving our own body as the self that we are, we can truly embody our own self worth and no-body or anything can take that away.    

Personal Transformation needs a letting go

Julio Olalla, Founder of Newfield Network says that we coach from our wounds.   It’s not an original  dictum, many others say the same.  

My interpretation of what is meant by this is that our wounds tell us what we care about, what hurts we want to see righted in the world.  And of course, for us to do this effectively we have to do our own work first, before we get anywhere near our clients.   To fail to do so will see those of us who coach not being able to support our clients effectively, falling into the client story at best, and at worst, working out our own stuff through the client.  Ethically and morally this is an absolute no no.  

And so in doing our work we have to know our patterns, our history and the stories that we make up and hold onto about them.  We have to be able to discern what is ‘fact’, and what is the perceived reality that we put around it.  Much, we come to discover is our interpretation of the events that we experience.

In doing my own work I realised that a story I was living in was in fact not true.  It was a memory from childhood and I in that fuzzy space of recollection had recalled an event that didn’t actually transpire as I’d remembered.    The realisation that I’d been holding onto an emotion - that of indignance as a consequence of something that didn’t actually transpire left me feeling, not quite bereft but with a real sense of ‘huh, what now then.  If I have to let go of the indignance, what then will take its place?’     Digging in I found that ‘nothing’ took it’s place.  I couldn’t feel quite joy at the fact that the wrong I had perceived hadn’t in fact happened - not yet anyway.  Instead I reflected in a different way.  

The importance we attach to our stories and how we use them either consciously or unconsciously to drive us onwards, to fire and fuel us towards some greater purpose.   What happens when that driving force, the emotion and story we are attached to falls away?

I often ask my clients what they need to let go of, and what they need to invite in.   This is a big question.  As human beings we are conditioned towards stories.   Some share their stories with others.   Some keep their stories inside.   Wherever we fall on this spectrum, I’m discovering what happens when we have no story, or we have to let go of the story.   My experience is that it can be both liberating and anchorless.  

What story do you live in?  What are story are you still fighting for in your life.  If you let that go, what is there then.  How much deeper do you have to dig?  

The Case For Emotional Health

Like many people I have been encouraged by the candour demonstrated by Prince Harry regarding the death of his mother.  

Naturally this has given rise to discussion in some parts of the media on the state of mental health, and particularly amongst young people.   Good news.  And yet …. 

I want to take a stand for something.  Sometimes coaching conversations with clients reflect and focus upon what they are willing to take a stand for.  So I’m going to walk my talk here.  I’m taking a stand for adding to our language in this domain.  I’d like to see us talking about emotional health and well being and not just mental health.    We insist upon living in a world that separates and delineates mind and body into separate entities and so it seems emotional health from mental health.    Where exactly is the line - and no doubt there are qualified mental health professionals out there who can spell this out for me more fully?  

Why does this matter?  

There are two reasons why I am taking a stand here.  One is simple ‘marketing’.  In a world where ‘mental health’ is still stigmatised and one in which ‘emotional intelligence/empathy/compassion are becoming more widely accepted, surely it would help to talk in terms of emotional health rather than mental health.     I do not seek to further stigmatise mental illnesses, but rather to recognise that we would all do well to pay attention to our emotional well being.  Talking about our emotional health, framing it as such might just make it that bit easier.  Acknowledging that we have emotions and that these come to work with us every day, that they shape our response to events would be a start.     If I showed up to work one the next few weeks/months feeling grief at the loss of someone important to me would I really be declared as having a ‘mental health issue’.  If I am upset by the images of the ravages of war appearing on my TV screen nightly - am I experiencing mental health issues?  No I’m not, I’m simply in touch with and feeling my emotions.    Is grief really a mental health issue?  It’s a human emotion issue, it’s an every day issue, although hopefully not an every day occurrence!  

The second reason I’m taking a stand is to do my bit to move the discussion into recognising our more holistic humaness.    I think it is really important to recognise that we are a whole ‘system’ shaped by our genetics, our nurturing and our life experience.    Our life experience influences how our nurturing and potentially to some degree our genetic heritage plays out.   When we are impacted by events - whether that is Trauma with a capital T (for example the loss of a parent) or whether it’s trauma with a small ’t’ (perhaps being embarrassed or belittled in front of colleagues) - there is a sensational response in the body, in the system which in turn is interpreted as an emotion.   If we are to heal, it is this which we need need to pay attention to.   Emotions give rise to thoughts and actions.  We act as a consequence of emotion, even when they are hidden from us.   The very word emotion originates from the latin word movere meaning to move.   The work of Antonio Damasio et al provides further evidence that it’s the bodily response rather than cognitive interpretations which produce emotions.  

Taking a ‘whole system approach’  is relevant for leadership too.  Recently I worked with someone not dissimilar to Harry.  He’d lost a parent and chose to bury his emotions and feelings associated with his loss.    A survival strategy - because the body is excellent at working to ensure that we survive!   Moving away from his feelings rather than feeling them was his way of not being overwhelmed by them.    It was his valid coping strategy.  

What happens though when this response becomes his natural way of being in the world?   When this response - blocking, denying the sensations and feelings becomes normal when stuff gets awkward or sticky or uncomfortable.  How does this strategy prevent him from connecting with others?  We understand that Harry said that his long-term approach led to two years of chaos, near break down and being very close to punching someone.   The short term response of blocking feelings to deal with the immediate situation is helpful to a point, but not when it becomes a long term way of being.  

The consequence of shutting down our emotions and feelings is that it limits our ability to connect with people from a place of genuine authenticity.  If we cannot feel ourselves and our own emotions because we have learned to anaesthetise ourselves then we cannot feel others.  This means that we cannot connect with genuine presence to our team mates, our colleagues and those we seek to lead.   Not because we don’t want to but because we have wired ourselves not to.   

In days gone by, that might have been OK.  Stiff upper lip and all that.  Stoicism rules OK.  But not today.  In a world in which, particularly younger generations want to be led by real humans, by authentic people who care, who have a passion and a commitment, the ostrich survival technique will no longer cut it.    So let’s start recognising that we are emotional beings andgive proper account toit.  

How To Improve Your Communication

Image by Georgi Guruli on Unsplash

Want to Improve Your Communication?  

A client happily reported recently that she’d noticed her voice had become deeper and more authoritative. This new voice whilst a bit of a surprise for her was helping her to be heard more. She was finding it easier to engage with her team and her colleagues, she was slowing down and feeling more confident in her delivery and that people were listening, being less dismissive.    

The voice is like music - it is a sound that has an emotional impact upon us, a sound that we individually interpret and assess.  38% of the communication we absorb comes from the way in which words are said - the tonality, the sound, the pronunciation and the pace.   We often interpret a person’s internal state from the sound and delivery of their words.  Despite the increasing reliance on written forms of communication, we continue to use video and conferencing technology whichbring another set of challenges for being heard and understood.  

Studies also reveal that deeper, dare I say more ‘masculine’ voices are perceived as more competent, stronger and trustworthy.    It’s a thorny issue that could take us into a whole other debate about the lens through which we evaluate success at work,  the concept of ‘gender bilingualism’, the differences between how men speak (report and declare) and how women speak (test and qualify).   

What is really important here is to remember that the voice comes from within the body.   How we feel is therefore communicated through the voice.  Whether we feel anxious or happy, the listener will hear it in our tone, our choice of words, place of delivery, our breath pattern.  We can choose to have voice coaching to deepen our voice.    Or we can organise ourselves to allow the voice to flow freely, to resonate more deeply, to have a richer quality.  

Try the following:  

• Drop your shoulders away from your ears, and relax through your upper arms

• Reach upwards through the crown of your head, perhaps lengthening the back of your neck

• Lengthen through your spine without arching your back

• Feel the sides of your rib cage

• Soften your eyes

• Let the jaw relax by opening it slightly. Teeth are not designed to meet in the mouth unless chewing!

• Move your breath deeper into your belly. Try and go for expanding the abdomen on the in-breath and letting it collapse on the out breath - the reverse to what is often habitual in most people but very familiar to any yoga enthusiasts among you.

• Keep your belly soft - now is the time to let it all hang out instead of holding it up tight

• Relax your glutes and pelvic floor.

No, this isn’t a bed time routine, although clients often report how much more relaxed they feel when doing this.  You are looking for a relaxed but alert quality with this practice.  

What do you notice inside?   

When we are relaxed the voice can move through the body with greater ease, the breath flows more freely and the brain functions more effectively.    What happens now when you speak?  

How To Get The Personal Development You Need

You know the quote, the one where the CFO asks the CEO what happens if after investing in their people they then leave the business and the CEO replies, what happens if we don’t.

This isn’t a blog post about the stereotypical perception of CFO’s and CEO’s but rather how to go about making sure that you get the investment you need in your career - and specifically coaching investment. 

These days there is much more awareness about what Executive coaching can deliver when offered by a professionally trained and experienced coach.   Coaching is used by organisations in a host of different ways, not always for the positive but increasingly it’s being seen as a vital development intervention to help already successful C suite Execs broaden the impact they can have across their business.  

What happens however if you are not a C suite Exec but you think you’d like some coaching this year?  How do you go about persuading your employer that you should be considered for such an investment?  

Firstly check out company policy - written and unwritten.   Is there a policy?  Has coaching been used before and if so for whom - are you likely to be breaking new ground with your request or has the ground already been cracked? 

Then Build your Business Case.  

• Know why you want to engage with a coach. Be clear on your desired outcomes. What do you need to grow for yourself in relation to your current and future contribution in the business? What will you be able to do with more confidence and/or competence at the end of the coaching engagement?

• Consider a possible ROI for coaching. This is a tough one especially when the coaching is in the domain of vital soft skills for getting things done with and through others. It can be hard to quantify the exact financial impact off coaching on the business. Look at the metrics used to measure your performance anyway including those that are employee related such as engagement and retention.

• Provide examples of how previous investment in you has paid off. How did you put the investment to good use in your direct role and perhaps more widely across the business?

• Link coaching to your career progression - vertically or horizontally - within the business. How will it help you?

• Compare coaching with other investment alternatives. Coaching is unique in that it provides provides personalised support, tailored just for you and the outcomes you seek. It’s impossible to compare it with an MBA for example, but consider what the coaching investment might equate to in terms of other types of development opportunities.

• Anticipate possible objections and how you might respond. An objection that often comes up is that coaching, because it can be a significant investment, is often only offered to very senior employees. The wider the scope for impact in the business, the easier it is to justify the higher level of investment. I know of businesses that are worried about opening the flood gates if they include a wider population. Think about how you might respond to that, perhaps relying on the uniqueness of your case, the business case that you have put together for why your employer should invest in you. Each case on its merits perhaps.

• Talk with your boss. A key feature of successful coaching assignments is line manager sponsorship and support. This is clearly vital if you need HR approval, and also because your line manager will have a view on the necessary outcomes, as well as being able to offer you support when you need it. Be ready to talk through you business case with your boss, and if HR does need to sign off, get him or her actively engaged in building the case for WHY and YES.

Prepare Yourself     The can often the big one:  you may need to do some work around mindset here.  Asking for financial investment in your future with the organisation can be a bit like asking for a salary increase or discussing a promotion.  Some people will find this easier than others.  Remember this;  you bring value to your business already and will continue to do so.  You are inviting your organisation to invest in you for the future.  It’s a simple invitation posed as a request.  No more than that.    Let me know if you need help with making requests and or accepting a ‘no’.  

What does Brexit teach us about personal development?

Image by Nick Page on Unsplash

The ongoing turbulence of the last few weeks both here in the UK and further afield is for many perturbing.  Although the initial hiatus of Brexit seems to be settling we will undoubtedly be ’in it’ for quite some time to come.   Everywhere you look, the political landscape appears to be changing.  I find myself asking whether what we are going through will be valuable enough.   My purpose in what follows is not to enter a political debate about what has happened, but rather to look at change through the lens of transformation and ask what it might evolve if we were to take a different and deeper approach.  

We are moving through something that is referred to by the Strozzi Institute as ‘The Arc of Transformation’.  

We are in a process of transforming from an old relationship to a new relationship with Europe and the rest of the world, we don’t know how and what that new relationship will be.  We are, in Strozzi terms, in an ‘unbounded shape’.  That is to say much of what we know is shifting and moving to a new ‘shape’ or a new form.  We are, to some degree in that place we British refer to as ‘no-mans land’.   Although we now have a new Prime Minister, somebody ‘in charge’, no-mans land naturally produces huge uncertainty as we set out to determine the best way forward, the best way to put one foot in front of the other, and in what direction.    

Brexit offers us a large scale metaphor through which to consider what takes place in a journey of personal transformation.  It’s rarely a linear process, rarely is it sequential even though for ease of understanding we present it as such.   

We begin with what we call our current or ‘old shape’.  By shape we can literally think of how we are each physically shaped to move and act, as well as cognitively, emotionally and spiritually shaped.   We are shaped each by our own molecular environment right through to the universal forces that we experience.  Much of our shaping is oblivious to us, unless we make the effort to explore and understand, and even then we don’t see it all.  

The old shape comes to recognise that something is not working, that there is a breakdown or a yearning that wants to come to form.  This we call Somatic Awareness.  We begin to become aware of the possibility of something new.  We may move to a space where we make a commitment to the ‘new’, the evolution that is to come.   Whilst on our journey we are invited to become aware of how we are, what patterns we produce in ourselves, and how these help and hinder us.  We look for sensations to accompany the verbal descriptors that often come before.  By dropping into our world of sensation, and increasing our ability to notice how we are, we begin to improve our Somatic Awareness, vital if we are to change how we are.    

Awareness is but one element.   Our development journey also has to include Somatic Opening.   That is to create a body that is open to the new, open to letting go and to healing.  This can be achieved through regular bodily practices and enquiry.   We say that to work on the ‘self’, the most effective way is on, with and through the body.  The body is much more than a vessel for transformation.  The body is the ‘self’.   The body transforms.     As we engage with the body, we both increase our awareness as well as create new opening.

We are what we practice.   Somatic practices, those purposeful activities that we engage in regularly in the service of the new commitments we make and our personal transformation are the key to embodying a new way of being - however we choose that to be.   Somatic practices, when we pay attention, also create somatic awareness and  somatic opening.  It depends on how much we pay attention, how much we listen to our inner landscape.  

Here however is the rub.   We can be aware that we want or need to move through a period of transformation.  We are dedicated to practice, but unless we have been through the phase of opening, moving into what we call the unbounded stage (think conscious incompetence), all we do is put new practices on top of old patterns.    

Imagine, I can skilfully learn to be a centred and grounded presence.  Imagine also however, that I have done little to understand why and in what way I am vulnerably triggered.    Imagine I fly off the handle, or shrink and collapse when someone directly or indirectly questions my self-worth, but I know little of how I learned this, just that it happens. 

I can put centering on top of my fear/anger/frustration each time it occurs.    Despite the skilful centering practice, by not understanding my ‘trigger points’ well enough, I remain vulnerable to being easily knocked off centre whenever I feel my self-worth is questioned.  My personal survival pattern (aka fight, flight, freeze response) rears its head in an instant.  I haven’t deepened my Awareness and am caught.    

The Arc of Transformation asks us to recognise in our old shape how we are triggered - where we naturally go under threat and how this shows up somatically.   We are invited to consider what new shape we might like to have - what qualities for example might we like more or less of?  We are invited to make a commitment to that, which we eventually come to embody through practice.  

The challenge for me in Brexit is that we will move from ‘In Europe’ to ‘Out of Europe’ without deeply considering how we got here in the first place.  We will not spend enough time understanding how the vote to leave was ‘triggered’ in the deeper sense, how the greatest fear underneath it came about and how else it shows up in the British psyche.  

One hypotheses is that the vote to leave was a protest vote because the populous is not being listened to.  If we give proper credence to that, take time to understand what is really underneath that and its evolution, then what might emerge?  

Instead, referring back to SI model of Transformation we will begin our negotiations to leave Europe, we will move from ‘old shape’ (A) to ‘new shape’ (C) without actually going through ‘B’.  We will not that is, take the time to really explore why the leave vote and what is being called for.    Without listening deeply, we will be out of Europe with a new ‘shape’, and most likely not the one that was really being asked for. 

For a video explanation of The Arc of Transformation given by Staci Haines of The Strozzi Institute go to http://bit.ly/29VMJHW

Self-Belief - is it time?

This weekend I attended Workfest, a day long event organised by mumsnet.  It was a day packed with inspiring round table discussions, workshops and coaching focusing on work and careers.  

I'm grateful to all those I talked with on Saturday and post this beautiful poem in the hope that it inspires them and any others who read it.  

The Invitation by 'Oriah Mountain Dreamer'  

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, 'Yes.'

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

Emotions in the workplace - are we really still leaving them at the door?

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

Last week a client told me that he believed he had to leave his emotions at the door when going to work.  Surprising because the guy was young, and worked for a cool, forward thinking company - who I thought would allow people to be themselves, and express their emotions whilst at work. But obviously, this is not the case. So, I was compelled to ask how it is that we still haven’t quite grasped the fact that our emotions are important.

Humans are Emotional Beings

When Daniel Goleman talked about emotional intelligence he highlighted the fact that humans are emotional beings, and that we cannot part with them. He insisted that we had better learn to work with our emotions if we want to be successful - and so surely we should not feel that we have to leave our emotions at the door when going to work. 

Emotional Intelligence

Have you ever been told directly that you need to improve your emotional intelligence in order to improve your performance at work?  Probably not.  Instead we are told that we need to improve our presence, stature, confidence, the ability to engage more effectively with others, to influence more widely, to be tolerate ambiguity and conflict more resiliently. However, it is important to realize that in order to improve any of these things; we must first work on our emotional intelligence.  

Emotions and the Body

Emotions are a bodily phenomena.  We know that they are expressed through the body.   They are not purely a ‘cerebral activity’.  Stanley Keleman highlighted the relationship between the emotions and the human body by arguing that our emotional life experience changes our physical form throughout our lifetime.  For example, a chest that has learned to collapse inwards and away perhaps through fear, shyness, timidity, will continue to do so and perpetuate those same feelings unless the 'owner' moves to ‘re-shape’.   

Daniel Goleman suggests that one of the fundamentals of emotional intelligence is self-awareness, paying attention to moods, emotions and their effect on others.   Often ignored, the body, offers us a fast insight into noticing how we and others are doing.   To develop our self-awareness we would do well to pay attention to how we are feeling, and where in the body we are feeling it.    The body in the end, can become our early warning system. 

Regulating our Emotions

We regulate our emotions through the body as well as feel them through the body.  Self-regulation is a major component to developing emotional and social intelligence.  Being able to self-regulate puts us in a much better position to co-ordinate and blend more effectively with others.  These are key skills to success in the work place, lost without emotional awareness and the early warnings the body shares with us. 

Blending with Others    

Another client needed to persuade and lead a cross cultural team with more finesse and greater intra-personal acuity.  The client needed to develop an awareness of the deeper social and cultural influences that shape us, as well as learning about her own patterns of influencing and persuasion. 

Goleman and Boyatzis refer to a social guidance system, described by scientists as the ultra rapid connection of emotions, beliefs and judgements, tied together in less than one-twentieth of a second by spindle cells.   Our spindle cells working so fast, tell us what we feel about someone, as well as how to respond to situations - what decisions to make, what priorities to set.  

In order therefore, to be able to influence and blend more effectively with her team, my client developed the skill of observing her own felt sense of her emotions and reactions.  This gave rise to her noticing more of how she felt about her team, the assessments she held about them and the reactions that these generated within her.   She entered a much more powerful place from which to self-regulate. 

Conclusion

Our bodily experience serves us well in developing our emotional range.  The body is omnipresent and therefore what we experience internally is reflected externally. It is important to know that we are in part the sum of our emotions because our emotional states affect the chemical cocktail being released into our bodies, and thereby affects, and shapes our physical form - something that we absolutely cannot leave at the door.   

If we seek to lead others, to influence, to be authentic and trustworthy then we need to befriend our internal landscape (i.e. be in touch with our emotions) in order that it can inform us and show us the way.  Finally, we must acknowledge that it is our relationship with others that determines our success in and out of the workplace, and therefore as this success ultimately comes down to the degree of emotional and social intelligence that we possess, surely our emotions need to be welcome at work. 

Journey Through Transition - a somatic approach

Last summer my family and I bade farewell to the leafy suburbs of North London, a place that had been home for more than a decade.  

Our departure from this place that we loved was brought about for very practical reasons appertaining to what we needed and believed was best for our family over the next decade or so.  

The adjustment over the last 8 months, along with some changes in my family has me reflecting on what it means to be in transition and how we human beings adjust - or not.  

I’ve found myself at various periods of my life applying rational logic to situations, understanding the need or the reasoning behind a particular course of action.  I get it.  I might even decide it.  But I’m coming to recognise that my body and my rational self work at different paces.   

When we left London I was sad at leaving friends, our children's school, the place I’d called home for a while.   As we are settling into our new ‘home’ my body begins to notice the changes, the differences.  It starts to notice things that I need to adjust to, what it misses about London.   This starts to show up in how I feel emotionally and even physically.  My rational brain however is taking longer to work out what is going on and why, what’s at issue.   My rational brain is taking longer to come up with the reasons why my body is experiencing xyz.  

I'm slightly surprised by this.  I'd thought that maybe the rational brain was faster then my limbic brain (the seat of my emotions)   But no.  As I reflect on my life to date I can see many occasions when my body has been responding to a change before my brain has realised what is actually going on - what, in some cases, is bothering me.   The process seems to be - understand the change cognitively - body notices the impact sensationally - cognitive brain rationalises and understands what's going on with the body.

I’ve also come to understand that transition is never ending.  It is a constant.  I could be very literal and talk bout how often our cells renew themselves, the body itself changes daily (at least).   I could be ‘Zen’ like and say that no moment is the same as the previous one , there is transition moment to moment.  Some transitions are major life changes, others happen day by day, week to week.  

Given this constant state of change, flux, transition, the question arises - how am I with this?  How am I with the change?  What else is there beyond ‘Oh, it’s fine we are adjusting’?  What, might I be reacting to more deeply within me that I haven't yet seen? 

Often it’s easier to know what we think about something than what we feel, and even if we get a handle on what we feel, this may only be at surface level.  Our real feelings maybe buried three layers down.  It’s vitally important that we keep questioning, exploring, and noticing what is happening in our body.  What changes are afoot within the body?  The odd new twinge today, sudden onset of a skin rash, a change to dietary habits, all of these changes can signify that the body is adjusting to something, and maybe isn’t adjusting so well.  It’s called psychosomatic.   I think of the body as an early warning system.  

I remember hearing an old boss use the word psychosomatic to refer to someone he thought was making up their illness, that it was all in the mind.   It was used in a derogatory way despite the definition of psychosomatic being 'a physical illness or condition caused or aggravated by internal conflict or stress'.   The body and mind are totally connected.   

Psychosomatic or not, pedant or not, there are ways of holding situations that can help us through transition.  

• Ask ‘what am I being invited to step into here?’. Change and transition bring new opportunities. These maybe new experiences, new ways to be with situations. Even a redundancy situation, or a death can be an invitation to practice something new. It could be to practice being with grief, painful as it is but we can learn along the way. Such drastic life changes are often an invitation to step into resilience with softness and self-care.

• Ask ‘What is there that I can be grateful for here?’ The practice of gratitude changes one’s physiology. Try it for a moment. Notice what you are truly grateful for and feel how your internal system changes. Gratitude is the anti-dote to bitterness and resentment.

• Practice curiosity. Be curious about your reactions. Don’t pass judgement. Curiosity produces freedom within us, it can be invigorating. We are curious beings. And be curious with lightness. Don’t go beating the hell out of curiosity to ‘emphatically know the answer’. Explore with wonder.

• Notice where you are getting stuck. A change or threat to identity, the creation of a void, a change to social relationships. Dig into why the stuckness, what’s the root fear. Where does that show up in your life and, can you notice it in your body? Is there gripping, tightness, fizzing, temperature? Ease it with breath, movement, stretching.

• Ask what might be available to you on ‘the other side’, once through the transition. How and where might balance be found? What is the yin and yang of the situation?

• If you can think beyond the transition, as far ahead, as large as you can, what do you dream might come from now. Can you make a commitment to focus on the dream, the bigger picture? The transition becomes part of a bigger plan, a small roadblock rather than a major structural change to the highway.

• And perhaps the most powerful questions of all.... ‘What would it take to be comfortable with this transition’? What might you need to let go of?

Whatever transition you find yourself in, with a good dose of grounded, pragmatic optimism and wisdom, you can find the internal resources to journey your way through your path. 

9 Steps For Building Intrepid Confidence

One of the key tenets of leading others, although rarely talked about in ‘leadership publications’, is having the confidence to lead others.   People look to Leaders for surety and although there are many definitions of leadership one of the common themes is being able to inspire others towards a collective goal and/or vision.  

But what happens if you are lacking in confidence?  How do you build it?  How can you inspire others if internally you are lacking in confidence?  

I see this so often.  Externally we might appear to be confident, but internally we are self-doubting, self-questioning.  Some people can fake it, of course they can, but how can you develop a really grounded, unassailable confidence that will both serve you and keep you connected to your team with humility and not arrogance?  

It’s healthy to be have a degree of self-awareness that provokes questions of doubt.  Those questions are there to serve and guide us, just as is our certainty, but how do we keep this aspect of ourself in check.  

1.  Start by recognising that self-doubt is normal.  You are wired for doubt - it helps keep you safe.   I think of my internal doubting voices as little gremlins.  Some of the time they are useful.  Other times, it’s important to see them for what they are - internal voices designed to keep me safe from risking something such as embarrassment, foolishness, being found wanting.  

2. Take a good look at your experience - the good stuff and not so good stuff.   OK, what got you here might not get you there as the saying goes, but your experience is still valuable.  Your previous experience and everything that you have learned along the way stands you in good stead to make adjustments and to try something new.  Your experience is with you always.  It’s your past and it can metaphorically be thought of as being able to push you forwards.  Sheryl Sandberg talks about ‘Leaning In’ so lean into your experience and your capabilities.

3.  Recognise that taking a risk is OK.  Every leadership book, every successful entrepreneur will tell you that you have to be willing to risk.  You have to be willing to risk walking on the edge.  Brené Brown in her book Daring Greatly (http://brenebrown.com) tells us that in order to manage feelings of shame one of the best things we can do is be willing to share our shame story with a buddy.   I think it is the same with taking a risk.   Share your concerns about your risk (which is no more than an assessment anyway) and share it with someone who cares about you.  Be clear what you need from them - anything from simply listening to offering reassurance.  Be willing to share how you think you will feel.  It’s more likely that the feelings (that you anticipate if you do take a risk and it doesn’t go smoothly) are more likely to be in control than the ‘technical’ elements of what you are stepping up to.  

4.  Learn to recognise how lack of confidence feels for you.  Literally how does it feel at the level of bodily sensation.  Where does your breath go?  What happens in your body?  Lack of confidence - much like all emotional states comes with a set of sensations.  Knowing what they are gives us the ability to take a look at them and acknowledge them.  We potentially have a better chance of managing our felt sensations if we can observe them.  By calmly observing what we are feeling we create a micro second of space to slow things down and to choose to do something different. 

5.  Do something different.  Get a hold of these sensations by staying with them and replacing them.  Learn to centre and ground.  (Read a 'Centered Way of Being' for how to do that.)   Think of centering as a way in which we can organise ourselves to be more effective, more in control, more calm and impactful.   Notice how you feel when centred.  Most people report feeling calmer, more dignified, more confident.  Learn to recognise these feelings, practice accessing them.  Practice constantly in order to make it a new (conscious) habit. 

6. Connect with your purpose.  How does what you need to deliver or step up to connect with your leadership purpose?  Your reason for being here, leading a team of people?  Shift the balance of your self-doubt towards why you are doing this job.  What is the purpose for today, for this ‘event’ and how does this link to the bigger picture of what you need?

7.  Imagine your success.  What does success look like, feel like, sound like?  Lean into that vision.  Let it stay with you a while.   Learning to visualise, hear, and feel sensationally is great for re-wiring the body towards success, rather than being held by the risk of failure.    

8.  Begin with small steps.  How do you eat an elephant?  You do you climb a mountain?  It’s one step at a time.  Make them small steps, so small they may seem trivial and eventually the obstacles will have melted.  

9.  Savour each step of success.  Don’t move away from it too quickly, allow the feeling of success to be present.  Some of us brush ourselves down and move onto the next thing , the next step quickly, not honouring what we have achieved so far (a bit like not really paying attention to praise for a job well done).  Others of us, stay too long in the savouring stage as a way of avoiding moving onto the next step.  Know which camp you fall into and practice staying just that bit longer, or moving on just that bit quicker.  

And remember the next time the gremlins creep up on you, turn and look them in the eye, kindly thank them for their help.  And then let them know that you are going to be fine anyway.  Today is the day to start feeling confident, moving confidently, to being open, to being less afraid, or at least comfortable with being afraid.   We have all heard of fake it until you make it - pay heed to the pointers above, practice and eventually you will no longer be faking it. 

A Centered Way Of Being - For Wisdom, Grace And Power

Photo Credit: Bjorn Saw, Sensei, Aikido Alive London

If you have ever watched experienced and skilled martial artists at work you will notice speed, grace, power, intention, and a spatial awareness of all that is around them.   Although in some disciplines the movements can look almost violent, there is always control; control that takes the move just to the very edge of what is necessary, no more, no less.  

The skilled martial artist has practised the art of connecting with and moving from his or her centre.  He is connected to the art of feeling what is possible.  In physical terms we can think of centre as our centre of gravity, and usually this is located two or three finger widths below the navel.  Think of those old physics lessons!

However, centre is much more than that.  Once we find centre in ourselves we find we can access a particular energetic quality.   We can organise ourselves to move and engage with others from this place with a grounded, intentional purpose.  We can move with more gravitas, dignity and presence.  We find greater possibility and choice when organised around our centre.  

Very few of us pay attention to how we show up physically and many of us have limited awareness of sensation in our body.  Why would we - it’s something that rarely gets attention - other than possibly by our parents telling us as children to walk up straight! 

If we were to pay attention we would notice all sorts of new things about ourselves.  Pay attention next time you are sitting in a coffee shop at how people on the street move.  You will notice they all move and hold themselves differently.  In time you might notice those whose heads are in the clouds, those who are not looking where they are going, those whose bodies push against the world, those whose bodies collapse inwards, away from the world.  Those bodies that are unbalanced in movement, those whose stride is smaller than it needs to be, those who walk timidly or boldly. 

Then notice what assessments of these bodies arise for you.  Of course you have no way of checking them out, but just think, if you can make assessments of others, then they can do the same for you.  We constantly assess each other unconsciously by reading other people’s bodies.  We communicate to each other all of the time and often it’s below our level of awareness. 

Similarly, our bodies communicate to ourselves.  Amy Cuddy is about to release a new book called Presence (amycuddy.com/presence/) in which she refers to research that now proves what many in eastern traditions have known for centuries that there is a feedback loop between how our bodies are, what we feel sensationally, and the stories that we tell ourselves.  This is good news.  It means that if we make a change in one domain, we will see an effect in another.  After all it’d be really hard to feel the joy of happiness or peace, whilst collapsing the ribcage and walking with your chin on the floor.  

So how can we organise for greater effectiveness, for greater balance, for calm graceful intention, and for handling greater intensity and pressure.  

We need to learn to Centre - to find centre and return to centre.  

Read on… 

Finding a place of centre

Centre is typically located about two or three finger widths below the belly button.  This is known as the Hara in Japanese martial arts or Dantien in Tai Chi.   By simply breathing into this place and paying attention to it we can start the process of learning to centre.  

The most effective way however to find what centre feels like is to work with the three body dimensions of length, width and depth. 

If practising centering in a static position, you may place your feet in parallel, somewhere between shoulder and hip width apart or you may place your feet one in front of the other, a comfortable distance apart, the front of your back foot may be turned out slightly.  Your knees should be relaxed and ever so slightly soft.  It may be helpful to imagine that you have a third leg extending from your body positioned to provide you with greater stability.    You do not however have to be static to practise, you can also practise whilst moving.

Dimension of Length: Connection to your vision for your life and the grounding to carry it out.  Balance in this dimension evidences itself as a person who embodies dignity, meaningful and purposeful work and lasting relationships. Being out of balance with too much length, may be someone with great vision but little ability to manifest it. On the other hand, not having enough length can mean a person with his or her nose to the grindstone, preoccupied with the busy details of life and not connected to their vision; not really engaged with full energetic vitality and at its worst, resigned and defeated.

To centre along the dimension of length, align your head, shoulder girdle, torso, pelvic girdle, knees and feet directly on top of each other, releasing any tension in any of these areas.  Once there is alignment along the vertical axis, relax into the downward flow of gravity by releasing the tension in the eyes and forehead, jaw and chin (opening the mouth to a natural state can help here), shoulders and abdomen, hips and pelvis, and legs.  This has effect of lowering your centre of gravity.  

Dimension of Width: Our outward movement into the world. Balance in this dimension offers a person the possibility of clear personal boundaries while still being able to influence and be influenced by the world.  Balance in this dimension communicates being ready and available for connection.  When someone is out of balance in their width (too much width), they may generate a sense of ‘stay away’ in others - a pushing away.  Alternatively, they may be unable to say no, and people will either be clinging to them or they will be clinging to people. The need for connection is out of balance.  At the other extreme (too little width), maybe someone keeping people at a distance, communicating ‘please don’t come near’ or ‘I’m fearful of connection’.  People with too little width are often afraid in some way of human contact – the smaller width is a withdrawal,  protective response.  

To centre along the dimension of width, balance left to right, stand equally on the left and right feet.  Most of us are uni-lateral. either left or right handed, we usually find ourselves tilted to one side or the other.  Balance in the dimension of width will mean that there is symmetry between both your left and right shoulders and left and right hips. 

Dimension of Depth:  Balance in this dimension occurs when there is consistency between one’s internal life and sense of self and what shows up physically - externally.  When we say some one seems ‘comfortable in him or herself, their bearing is the mark of someone who embodies authentic self-acceptance.  A person balanced in depth is able to fully honour and accept their history without damaging critical judgement.  A person balanced in depth is able to connect with a powerful inner sense of ‘self’ from which they are able to act spontaneously and without being careless.  If we think of the human body as moving through time, the front of the body may be regarded as facing into the future, the back of the body facing into, or reflecting upon what has gone before.  People who tilt forwards can show up as hurrying or rushing from one thing to another without fully allowing ideas and internal perceptions to mature and come to fruition, always on to the next thing.  People who lean further back, can be communicating a meekness, and un approachability, a sense of ‘laid back’ and away from the future.  

To center along the dimension of depth, balance from front to back so that you are neither tipped forward nor leaning back.  Human beings are typically future-orientated, pre-occupied with thoughts.  We can often find that we are pre-disposed to be ahead of ourselves and out of contact with our back, our shadow, our history and traditions.  By aligning front to back, neither forward nor back, we rest into our spine and open the heart and the belly, able to move into the future from with the strength and support that our past has to offer us.    

Practice

Learning to centre has to become a practice.  The way in which you organise yourself physically and sensationally (eg holding your breath when stressed or concentrating hard, biting your lip of frowning when reading a hard text) is something you have been practicing since you started walking.  Your ‘shape’ in this sense was probably formed by the time you were about 7 years old and you have been bedding it in ever since. 

It stands to reason therefore that you will not learn this new way of organising yourself overnight.  It’s not a few goes and you’ve got it.  You need to practice.  It is said that 300 repetitions are needed for muscle memory and something like 10,000 for mastery.  Don’t let the numbers put you off - and I’d say, ignore the big one.  If you practice 20 times a day, 5 days a week, in 3 weeks your body knows how to organise around centre.   Then you just keep at it.  You do not need to find extra time in your day either.  Your normal day to day activities can all be done from center, e.g. every time you go to get a coffee, wait for a bus or a train, do the washing up, unload the dishwasher.  Finding repetitive activities that happen daily that you can attach centering practice to will provide easy triggers to remember to move and organise in a new way.    Eventually, with enough practice you will find yourself remembering more and more to center, and when you really need it in say a tough or intense situation you will find yourself centering.  And even if people don’t notice anything, or can’t say what it is is that is different, I guarantee reactions - yours and theirs, will be different. 

It’s also worth noting that the trick isn’t to be centred all of the time, the skill is to notice when you are not centered, and return to it, so please go easy on yourself.  

Finally being able to find balance and center along all dimensions, in time we come to experience a greater acceptance of self, less self-judgement or criticism, increased self awareness, improved perception of others and situations, and a greater capacity for powerful and concrete action, which after all is what most of us seek. Enjoy the practice, as much as the results!

For a beautifully written piece on the spiritual aspect of being entered check this blog from Richard Strozzi Heckler https://theembodiedlife.wordpress.com/2016/01/22/embodying-the-mystery-centering-as-a-spiritual-practice/  

Conflict - Are You Owning Your Own Stuff? That takes Leadership

I’ve been giving some thought to the nature of conflict recently and the assessment that it would be an inevitable part of our humanness.   I’ve always loved my work exactly because people bring and offer such variety, nuance and depth but it is this same variety and difference that gives rise to conflict.   Whether that conflict is localised or plays out on an international scale. 

Information on the subject of conflict is plentiful and why therefore add to it?  It is often said that conflict is a source of creativity, that it can be positive and generative.   That maybe so, but from my world view, in order for that to be so, these things will occur only when we are skilled and masterful at managing ‘ourselves’ in conflict.  If I withdraw from, or fight against conflict, I am less likely to find anything positive or creative or generative.  

I assert that much of what comes out of conflict has to come from how we ourselves are with it – whether we are in it, or observing, managing or leading others through conflict.    Primarily it isn’t about the other person ‘causing conflict’;  it’s about how ‘I’ am with it.   Recognising this takes courage, vulnerability and leadership.

Fred Koffman in his book Conscious Business offers a model for understanding why conflict arises in the first place.  He refers to:

1. Disagreement – a difference of opinion

2. Scarcity of resources – a limitation which prevents each from obtaining what each wants. It creates inter-dependence which can create conflict

3. Disputed property Rights – a dispute about ownership of decision making power, or budget as a couple of examples

I do love the model for it’s simplicity and ease of recall and by removing or resolving anyone of these elements the conflict will be resolved.  Simple yes?  Not quite.  It takes practice and skill to be open and constructive in conflict. 

These elements play out every day on a global scale and a local scale. 

Here is a ‘local’ scenario, not dissimilar to one I have witnessed many times. 

Frank is runs a large division of a big corporate.  He considers himself a strong leader.  Jim has been with the business for the last five years and has been instrumental for securing significant growth for the division.      Jim would like a stake in the company though the employee share scheme.  Typically the scheme would not extend to his level within the business.   Jim sees it as a reward for his effort, Frank sees it as a reward that he will consider for some future performance – if he can get past company policy that is!   Both people have apparently different personal drivers, different perspectives on the situation, a different version of the history that lies between them, different attitudes towards entitlement, appreciation, gratitude, different skills around tolerance, listening and understanding.  And all this is just for starters and takes no account of other stakeholders.   

They appear to be poles apart and for this scenario the fastest way to resolution is likely through mediation of some sort.   A third party, an intermediary is probably going to have to get between them in order to get them together.   (Unless HR simply says ‘No’.)

But imagine that they had time to practice their own capacity to process and constructively ‘be’ in a conflictive situation?  What might they practice in order to generate something positive or even creative from this situation?    Start here. 

1.      Own Your Own Stuff.   In any dialogue it’s up to us to take responsibility for our own reactions, feelings and opinions.   If I feel angry or frustrated, it’s down to me.   The situation or the people within it might produce a particular reaction in me, but it’s me that produces it.   Consider the difference between “You make me so frustrated” and “I am so frustrated with what this proposal”.   Acknowledging that I own my stuff is vital to that old adage ‘choose your attitude’.   

Expressing ourselves place of “I” conveys responsibility for our thoughts, feelings, opinions, requests and commitments.   Using ‘I’ or “My’ can be a really great place to enquire from… ‘my hearing in this is… my understanding is that…  am I correct in this assessment… ?  These are all ways in which it’s possible to enquire more without sounding accusatorial, keeping the onus on ourselves to understand and hear.    How easy do you find it to own your own reaction and state it so? 

2.      When we take responsibility for owning our Own Stuff, it’s easier to create space for ‘other’.    Allow for “Other”.    If we are quiet, listen well, actively, openly and curiously, we can hear and acknowledge the other person’s feelings and opinions.  If we truly accept other people as ‘independent actors’ in the world, we can find ways to greater tolerance and acceptance.   Greater tolerance and acceptance creates space for something creative and positive to emerge.    How easy is it for you to regard others as truly independent and not as a person to move or flex to your call?   

3.      Acknowledge the Facts – what facts are there for both of us?   Allow for different interpretations of those facts, but do more than this.   Commit to understanding those different perspectives.   Do more than pay lip service by suspending your own thoughts and opinions for a moment.  Through genuine openness and curiosity, whilst we may not agree, we will at least be heard and understood.   We will each be seen by the other.    When did you last understand another perspective – one that you vehemently disagreed with? 

4.      Understand and work with the difference between ‘position and interest’.   In the scenario above both Frank and Jim both have a clear position.   We might conjecture that both ultimately have interests around reward and performance, although it is clear that they are coming from different perspectives in time, conversation and potentially value sets.   Taking a clear position without sharing the underlying interests potentially creates positions of adversity – win/lose rather than win/win.  (Ref Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury).  Sharing the underlying interest brings another level of communication that may feel cleaner and more honest. 

5.      Let go of Being Right.  Communicate with the intention of being understood rather than persuading.  Be willing to express your reasoning and rationale.  Be vulnerable.  Be willing to allow that for another.     When was the last time you let go of being right in the service of something bigger? 

Leading with Wisdom - 7 wise moves

As our global leaders sit down in Paris and contemplate the future of our planet, I wonder - did you know that in 2014 the World Economic Forum published a report on the Top 10 Trends expected for 2015?   It revealed that Trend No 3 was a Lack of Leadership.   Nothing new here I think to myself, as we lurch from crisis to crisis across our global village.   What does feel new is that the burning platform for change is getting a bit hotter.   At least we are talking about leadership in from a different place than we were 20 or 30 years ago.

I think that there’s a case to be argued that we all have to play a role in this.   That it isn’t all down to our global leaders, our politicians, our corporations and the system; although this isn’t about letting them off the hook. 

Leadership behoves us all.   If leadership is about showing up for what you care about, taking a dignified stand to employ your talent and skills in what matters to you, we all get to be leaders.

What we need to be able to do is employ our passions and our talents cannily.   We need to employ them with wisdom but what really is wisdom and how is it developed? 

We live in a world that values knowledge and information.  How many years has it been since ‘to google’ became a recognised verb, reflecting our ability to access any information we required at any point in time?    We fill our children’s heads with information so that they can pass tests and exams but do we teach them to be ‘wise’?   

The Oxford dictionary defines wisdom as ‘the quality of having experience, knowledge and good judgement’ but I think that there is something that is slightly more nuanced than this definition, if one takes it literally. 

Nonaka and Takeuchi in ‘The Big Idea: The Wise Leader (HBR 2011) refer to the ‘Practical Wisdom’ of Aristotle.  Practical Wisdom, according to their studies is experiential knowledge that enables people to make ethically sound judgements [often for the common good].   

They ask the question of why the acquisition and application of knowledge doesn’t always result in ‘wisdom’.  We can all think of people who are very knowledgeable but significantly lacking in common sense.

The nuance of wisdom can often be felt.  When someone speaks something wise to us, we are offered something new, a new perspective, a gap opens up that we hadn’t previously observed.  How can we learn to do this for ourselves?  For me there is a sense of some intangible quality that I can’t quite grab hold of but feel that I know it when I experience it.   Where does wisdom come from and how is it developed? 

Human beings have a wealth of capacities.  We are logical, rational, analytical, intuitive, spiritual, at times even mystical.  We are mind, body and soul, or if you prefer, head, heart and spirit.    I would argue that our wisdom comes from the alignment of these dimensions, these facets of ourselves. 

Wise leadership is dependant upon much more than our ability to cognitively acquire information (facts, models, theories) and apply it.  Wisdom for ourselves depends upon our ability to understand deeply who we are and how we observe and experience the world.   If we throw in some curiosity and reflection we can arrive at a place where we start to understand how or where we might be able to produce new meanings and interpretation for ourselves, of and potentially for others. 

The evidence would suggest that wisdom comes from an inner knowing.  The ability to take what is known and synthesize this with what is felt and sensed at a deeper biological and physical level.  Intuition plays a big part.  As we now know thanks to the work of Daniel Kahneman (and others) we are far more emotionally led than we typically acknowledge.   Wisdom would seem to come from that place where we can read situations, contexts, relationships and connections, combine it with our insights on the deeper motivations and desires of self and others, work through consequences and impacts, and somehow arrive at the next wise move. 

So how do we develop a deeper inner knowing from which we might be ‘wise’?   

We need to know who we are – well.

In the first instance we have to know who we are, how we are.   I would tentatively suggest that there is no end to knowing who we are, that we are so layered, so deep that we could spend a lifetime exploring what makes us tick, how we show up, for what purpose and how we got to be that way.    This requires us to learn what kind of ‘observer’ we are.

The way I typically describe what I mean by ‘observer’ to my clients is this.  Imagine you and I were sitting in a coffee shop one day and we see a car accident.  We observe the same accident.  However the way in which we respond physically and emotionally, the way in which we interpret events and re-tell them will be different.  This is because we are unique individual observers in the world.  What is true for me, is different for what is true for you, even though the event was the ‘same’.    Once we understand the observer that we are (or at least have some insights) we can then begin to create if we want to, different realities for ourselves.  This isn’t about going of into some fantasy land, but simply, being able to look at what else there might be that we haven’t previously seen.  

Understand the context

We need to understand that we do not operate in isolation.  Whilst we live in highly individualised societies, in reality we operate in a context.  Our actions, our wisdom is influenced, applied within and from that context.  The two are inseparable.    Our ability to quickly grasp the meaning and essence of any situation and the people within it is critical to our ability to understand the operational context. 

Pay attention to the inner world

Our inner world offers us a mine of information.  Developing our ability to tune into the full range of our sensations, our feelings, emotions, moods, and inner dialogue we are cultivate for ourselves yet more perspectives on the situation and what might be needed.   Wisdom comes from paying attention to what comes from within as well as ‘without’. 

Be non-judgemental, be accountable and be responsible

Being judgemental with ourselves deprives us of the learning opportunity.  Being non-judgemental doesn’t mean letting ourselves of the hook, being accountable and responsible in the service of wisdom, requires us to reflect, review and learn from our actions and those of others.

This came home very recently when I found myself driven quickly to anger.   My reaction was inconsistent with the situation and I could have easily moved to shame and guilt.  Instead, I became be curious about the deeper reason for my outburst.  I had to move beyond the circumstances and ask why, given what I know about myself, I was so deeply triggered.  Listening to the real inner voices behind my angry words, I learnt something new.  I learnt that I have still have work to do.  As for accountability and staying on the hook, I apologised, explained the inner conversation, and asked for some support to move forwards.

Cultivate different perspectives and possibilities

We are familiar with the idea of standing in another’s shoes.   I think we should be actively cultivating different perspectives and possibilities.    I have engaged in so many coaching conversations where the client has one or two perspectives on a situation and yet there are many more that can be considered.   This is so important for our relationships with others.  Given that for the vast majority of us, relationship in some shape or form is a constant in our lives, the ability to see another possibility, another scenario for a person’s words, actions or mood is invaluable. 

Reflect on the common good

Research on Wisdom suggests that there is always an element of thinking beyond the immediate, being able to see different moves ahead and having genuine concern for the greater good.   The wise actions, the wise words are often in the service of something greater than individual gains.  Finding purpose for our actions – for the purpose of what – would I do or say this, supports wisdom. 

Commit to the path of wisdom – for the benefit of all

The path of wisdom could easily be a lifetime’s path.  If we think of the great and the good, those we hold up to be exemplars of wise words and acts, we could assess that their work was never complete.  Whilst they gave us many gifts of wisdom they stayed in their practices for a lifetime (Mother Theresa and Ghandi, the obvious ones immediately spring to mind)   I would conjecture that there are always new levels of wise knowing available to be discovered. 

Perhaps if we stand up wisely for what we care about we might one by one and collectively start to make a beautiful difference in the disordered and chaotic world that we have created. 

Time, Technology And Leisure

Photo by Andy Beales on Unsplash

About 40 years ago we were told that advances in technology would automate our lives to such a degree that by now we would all be swimming about in so much leisure time we wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves. 

As we approach the end of the year I am wondering what happened.  More people than ever report feeling stressed and harried, and most if asked would dispute having more leisure time.  If however you spend some time researching this topic you will learn that in fact overall leisure time has increased and working hours have fallen.   Research by the OECD suggests that Britains and Americans are working about 120 hours less per year now since they were I990.  Leisure time has increased by about 8 hours per week for men and 6 hours for women.  Even when digging into the statistics a little more deeply I find these conclusions surprising. 

So why is it that we do not recognise our increased leisure time?  Is there something else at play?    I wonder whether it is actually to do with the choices we make?   Do we not recognise leisure time for what it is?  Do we not know how to take time out?  A friend’s husband commented recently that it was she who is addicted to her blackberry, in contrast to her school age children who do know when to put their tablets down.   The friend in question works 4 days a week, runs a family home and organises three other lives aside from her own.  I suspect that she feels so harried and pressured about what she has to do, or so scared of what might get dropped at work that she cannot leave her email alone.  

In her latest book ‘Pressed for Time’ Professor Judy Wacjman argues that we like to blame technology for speeding up our lives and for that feeling that it’s all getting out of control.  Instead she argues it is the choices that we make around technology that are responsible and that sometimes we are not making enough choiceful decisions.  The speed of technology and the change that it brings does make it feel like the world is going faster, but as she points out very eloquently units of time have not actually changed! (http://bit.ly/1yDaJSD)

In 2011 Barley, Meyerson, and Grodal published ‘E-mail as a Source and Symbol of Stress’.  The paper drew on data collected in 2001/2002 from engineers within a large global computer company.  The results then, revealed what we intuitively know today.  Ask anybody feeling overwhelmed at work the major cause and high up on the list, if not at the top will be the volume of email (unless they work for ATOS, Daimler Chrysler, Volkswagen or the Labor Ministry in the German Government*).   Having a full inbox causes anxiety and it is for this reason that email is often the first task of the day, shaping the way the day will unfold, and again it is the last task of an often extended day.   It’s easy to blame the technology but in fact it’s the way in which we use email and the context in which it sits (ref Prof Judy Wacjman).   Changing patterns of work, working across time zones, meeting attendance, tele-calls and conferencing and an increasingly networked world all make a significant contribution to feeling overwhelmed.   Add to that the unwritten and unexpressed expectations for how we handle and respond to email (timing, frequency, cc’ing), as well as the accountability that that comes if we miss an something important, and it’s no wonder that most blame a tool that was not originally intended to replace telephone conversations.    There are studies that seem to suggest that the order of the day is receiving between 100-200 mails per day of which only 15% or so may actually be useful.  I wonder whether in fact when we rush to blame technology we are actually referring to email, exacerbated by the unspoken expectations and rules that we put in place when using email and possibly, other forms of social media. 

So where do we go from here?    How do we be more choiceful about our engagement with technology – or do we really mean email?   Our technological advances without a doubt had a positive impact on many aspects of our lives, becoming an essential part of the way in which we live, work and co-ordinate with each other professionally and personally.  Families, not just workplaces rely on technology to co-ordinate with each other on a daily basis. 

How should we be organising work experiences and expectations in order to reduce our overwhelm and stress?   What personal change do we need to make to quell the anxiety and the feeling that we are servants of the technology rather than the other way around?   What boundaries and conversations do we need to negotiate our way through to bring about change for ourselves?    And of technology, should we be asking for what purpose we intend to use it, rather than blindly accepting it is ‘all good’.    Whilst Big Ben is busy marking time, what commitments do we need to make with ourselves and with others that will keep the impact of technology to something that it more personally manageable?   Maybe we can start with delineating clear time for leisure, putting the email on hold. 

Why Do Change Programmes Fail To Deliver?

Have you ever wondered why so many change programmes fail despite the constant stream of advice and guidance?  According to McKinsey about two thirds of programmes fail to live up to expectations which is a staggering statistic.  The programmes either over promise at the outset, or there is something significantly wrong with the project implementation.

What might be happening?  Putting aside for a moment any weaknesses in the implementation plan, I’ve often thought that we are missing a trick when it comes to asking people to take on something new.    We know that change is constant – regardless of its scale.  Stuff happens on a daily basis that requires a different response from us.   Is it I wonder, time to include a different perspective on change?

Many reports suggest that we fail to appreciate the ‘irrationality of human nature’ in the planning and management processes.   Scott Keller and Carolyn Aiken in ‘The Inconvenient Truth About Change Management’  refer to a number of counter-intuitive insights that could help us to adopt more productive approaches.   Whatever new recipe we use for improving change management I think that there is something else that we could be paying attention to.

An Ontological Approach to Change

Taking an ontological approach to change (ontological – from the Greek word that translates into the science of being) asks us to accept that we develop and grow through three domains.  They are the domain of language (knowledge/cognitive understanding), the domain of emotion and the domain of the body.  The term ‘body’ in reality refers to much more than a our simple physical presence, but for the purposes here we will limit it to awareness of our physical selves.

The short version to the relevance of this approach is that language is generative not just descriptive, we live in a mood and experience daily a gamut of emotions, our physical selves are both shaped by, and shape our language, moods and emotions.

Try this quick experiment.  Call to mind something that makes you angry and frustrated.  Notice the language you use to think about it, notice how you feel emotionally, notice your physical sensations (eg changes to breath, collapsing, contraction, gripping, temperature).  Now call to mind something that makes you joyful – same process.  You will I am sure be aware of feeling different in both states.  It’s obvious isn’t it.  You could try the same thing calling to mind different changes that you have experienced, ones you welcomed and ones you did not and you will notice differences in each of these domains.

The point is that we rarely if ever, pay attention to change through these lenses.   Let’s take language of a moment.  Think about the terms we use – managing change, managing resistance, change agent, change champion to name but a few.   I’ve worked on change projects and still the terminology generates for me a sense of ‘control’ although ironically, that, says as much about me as it does the terms.

Change is Personal

Our very personal response to change internally is governed by our own history, experience and perspectives.  What one person finds dis-orientating another will welcome.   How I wonder can we create the kinds of conversations and awareness that will support people to understand with more colour their ‘habitual’ or ‘conditioned’ reactions to change?  How can we   help them discover for themselves responses that will propel them towards a way of being with change that is more choiceful and helpful?

The possibilities for embracing what is unknown with confidence and for feeling far more empowered to navigate our own destiny with greater ease is available to us once we look more broadly at not just what is being asked of us, but how we are with what is being asked.
Perhaps a fundamental tenant of change management programmes should also include investment in teaching people to explore for themselves their reactions to change using an ontological approach and then equipping them with the wherewithal, the skills to be able to generate for themselves a response that more productively serves them and their organisation.

Why Somatics and Somatic Coaching?

In 1999 Tony Deifell (http://www.wdydwyd.com) was asked by a 12 year old child ‘Why do you do what you do?”.  Such a powerful question, Tony had to really work for an answer.  In 2004 he and a friend Mardie Oakes started asking other people the same question.  In 2009 Simon Sinek published his first book called ‘Start With Why’ and by 2014 the accompanying Ted Talk has had in excess of well over 20M views http://bit.ly/1ur9H7s     

So why do I do what I do?   I can come up with lots of ‘whys’ but it all boils down to the fact that I believe that our world desperately needs new forms of Leadership.    I’d like to think that I could have the influence and power to be able to create seismic shifts but that’s pretty unrealistic.  Instead, it’s about joining a community, being part of a voice that is calling for more present, more conscious and connected forms of Leadership.

What do I mean by that?

At it’s simplest level I think that we are out of touch with who we are and what makes us happy. Many of us get caught up in the treadmill of life, the rat race, the ever spiralling quest for bigger, better, faster at any cost.   We have disconnected to what is really important to us.   And yet, I meet people every day who have a deep deep desire to find another way.  That’s my big picture ‘why’.  We need to create a seismic shift in our world which requires that we all courageously step into Leadership.

At another level, I recently had a client who emailed to say that the work we did was still helping him, that he was able to remain connected to what was really important to him as a Leader, remember what he was good at and what he was there to do.  He’d been passing on what he had learnt to others who were experiencing anxiety, stress, who were not performing as they were really able to.  That’s my smaller picture ‘Why’.   The ripple fffect, or put another way, from little acorns grow big trees.

Why do I do what I do?   Because grand stage or small stage, what got us here, will not get us there – deep down I think that we know that we need different forms of Leadership.

I specialise in Somatic Coaching, a very often unfamiliar term.   Grounded in Neuroscience it offers a powerful and effective road to change in a way that other forms of coaching do not.   Derived from the Greek “Soma”  (roughly translated as the body in it’s living wholeness) it offers a comprehensive approach to change and transformation that envisions individuals as conceptual, biological, emotional, spiritual and social beings (http://www.generativesomatics.org).

Call it change, transformation, growth or development, Somatics argues that achieving something new in our lives needs complete attention to ‘everything that we are’.   How many times do we ‘know what we need to do’ and yet we are not able to do it?   Knowing cognitively is often not enough, quick tips and fixes are often not enough.  Instead we can be caught in patterns of behaviour, often operating below our conscious awareness, that need exploring, changing or adding to.

As human beings the cultural, institutional, political and historical forces that we are immersed in shape and influence our every day life.  These forces have a significant often unobserved impact on how we have grown and evolved.  They shape our language, our emotional response and how we physically show up.   Think for a moment on ‘blonde jokes’ prevalent certainly in English speaking, western cultures.   We talk about having a ‘blonde moment’, without a second thought.  Where does this idea come from – what does it say about how we regard blondes?  There are many ways in which our language both reflects and shapes our thinking.   It’s the same with our emotional and physical presence.

It is the role of the somatic coach to help the client bring attention to everything that is at play for them within the domain of the challenges they face.  It requires the skill of mindful attention and awareness to what is on and below the surface from both the client and the coach.   It requires determination to integrate new practices and new ways of working with ourselves beyond the self-talk of ‘come on, you should be able to do this’.   By taking more than a functional approach to our lives, we can find ourselves enriched, more capable, with more confidence, more determined and more connected to why we do what we do.