Mound Mix and Woodpeckers

As the old saying goes, “Spring is in the air.” In my case, spring is on the rooftops and on the baseball fields.

As my kids were having their breakfast and my husband was grinding his coffee beans, we all heard a familiar sound that had been absent over the winter. It was the sound of our resident woodpecker. This woodpecker sounds like a gentler version of a jackhammer on concrete. “Woody” (doesn’t that just want to make you mimic the sound of Woody the Woodpecker from the cartoons?) likes to perch on top of a metal cylinder that protrudes from our chimney. It is the perfect place to see and be seen.

This morning, after several years of hearing Woody's wakeup call, I went outside in the backyard to get a closer look. Woody is a smallish, colorful bird with a pipette-shaped beak that stands up to some heavy duty drilling. Sitting atop my chimney, he made a warbling sound to announce his presence, looked around to see if anyone was watching, and put beak to metal. My sons and I burst out laughing. It was a spontaneous cackle that we let out, signaling a mix of amazement that such a small creature could make such a racket and acknowledgment of the quirkiness of this spring ritual. I think Woody took offense at this as he immediately flew off the chimney, to the side of the house. It won’t be the last time that he gets laughed off the chimney nor will it be the last time we hear his jackhammering.

Spring is also on the baseball fields. My husband is the baseball coach for the local high school. It’s his first year working with kids and everyday has the feel of opening day. Well, at least after the first week of practices, it still has that feel. His day is filled with going to Gart Sports for shin guards and baseballs, researching online the best dirt to use to build up pitching mounds (he’s looking for the perfect “Mound Mix”), and figuring out how to keep 17 teenage boys of varying abilities motivated and engaged during practices. I answer calls from parents and kids, asking for Coach Ross, and I have to hold back the temptation to say, “Speaking.” My husband and I vie over who actually did the best coaching on any given day.

As a side benefit to the job, my hubby uncovers some great behind the scenes stories about maintaining baseball fields. This quote comes from the groundskeeper of the New Orleans Zephyrs baseball field, recounting getting ready for a concert on the field:

"If the problem with the trucks wasn't bad enough, while all of this was going on, our Operations guy had set himself on fire out in the levee. He was trying to light a bird pile on the levee, and got some diesel on him. When he lit the match he caught on fire. He somehow drove himself to East Jefferson Hospital with no feet because both legs were sticking out of the window. We didn't know how he did it."

Spring doesn't officially come for another 21 days. Find your own quirky way to celebrate the changing of the seasons.

What I Know Now About Being Self-Employed

About once a year, since I started my business, I’ve written an article about what I’m learning in this journey of being self-employed. I recently came across a wise saying from Dan Sullivan, aka The Strategic Coach : “Make your learning greater than your experience.” That’s exactly what this is about. So here goes.

1. Work with the best people you can find. What looks like “best” is up to you but I look for ethical, intelligent, creative, courageous, and compassionate. It doesn’t matter if this is a collaborator, a vendor, or a customer. I have been enriched many times over by sticking to this and found myself depleted more than once by ignoring this. Unlike employees, who come into a company with built in co-workers and customers, as an entrepreneur, you get to choose who you work with.
2. Start conversations with people you admire. I’ve started email conversations with an author of a book I really resonate with, a marketing and branding guru who wrote a great article about branding, and a fellow coach who created an innovative product. I made sure my emails were sincere, thoughtful, and concise. In return, I’ve learned how to get testimonials, what it takes to build a great brand, and how it doesn’t cost anything to encourage others.
3. Ask for feedback. I launched Version 2 of my website last fall. Before announcing it to the world, I sent it to a list of 20 people in my network, with a range of perspectives—my closest confidantes, individuals with marketing and communications experience inside large companies, analytical engineers, past clients, and creative colleagues. As a result of this feedback, I completely changed my home page and made numerous changes to make the website more appealing and useful.
4. Know who your ideal clients are and why they are attracted to you. It was eye-opening for me to review everyone I had coached over the last few years, pick out the people I most enjoyed working with, and look for patterns. My ideal clients are change agents, entrepreneurial (inside as well as outside of companies), intelligent, with strong analytical backgrounds. They come to me for more balance in their lives as well as to get a clearer picture of the next chapter of their career. Knowing this has helped me understand how to market myself, where to focus my energy in getting new business, and what services to offer.
5. Do your homework but don’t over prepare. When meeting with clients or doing workshops, it’s easy to get caught up in being fully prepared. But what’s even more important is how I’m being in the moment. Am I fully present or am I thinking about the set of notes I put together and what I will say next? The biggest gift I can give my clients and customers is to be tuned into what they need in the moment and then have the willingness to zig instead of zag.
6. Read. I read to keep interested in the world and to be interesting to the rest of the world. I read 2-4 books a month and the Wall Street Journal six days a week. I skim a lot of e-books, magazines, and newsletters. I try to keep up with Seth Godin’s blog. All this reading keeps me fresh, gives me perspective and provides something to offer to clients and colleagues alike.
7. Create a network of supporters. They will help you find center when you’ve strayed off the path, remind you who you are instead of who you think you are, keep you true to your calling, and help you figure out the right questions when you are desperate for answers. When I was brainstorming with colleagues to articulate my “sweet spot,” they helped me to see that while clients appreciate my professionalism, they also want the playful, creative part of me just as much.
8. Give away flowers. Yes, you heard that right. I like to bring flowers for workshops to brighten up spaces that otherwise would be unremarkable. After the workshop, I often give away those flowers—to my co-facilitator, to the sponsor of the workshop or to a participant. It costs very little and adds joy to someone else’s life. You won’t think much of it but the person receiving the flowers will remember you for a long time. If there ever was a simple way to create good will, this is it.
9. Hang around irreverent people. Running your own business can get way too serious, thinking about getting new clients and how to pay expenses. The people I enjoy the most are the ones who will poke fun at my own seriousness and remind me that it’s all made up. Their irreverence reminds me that building a business doesn’t have to be a struggle, that laughing and having fun actually attracts people to me.
10. Be willing to give up good work in order to do great work. This one still takes faith on my part. And what I know is that great work has an excitement that is not present with good work. In the words of a colleague, good work has rigor and elegance. Great work moves us in mysterious ways. In some cases, I’ve put conditions on good work in order to make it great work (e.g., I’ll only do X if Y is part of the picture.) In other cases, I’ve stopped chasing leads that didn’t have that excitement as part of it.
    
    

Over the last year, I’ve learned to work smarter, be bolder, and enjoy this journey even more. If I can continue to make my learning greater than my experience, I’ll be a happy camper.

My Life in a Pack of Cards

I just had the hard drive on my laptop replaced. After the Geeks on Call guy was finished, he gave me the old hard drive. It's no bigger than a thin pack of playing cards. When I saw how small it is, I pointed to it and said, "My whole life is right in there." Okay, so it's an exaggeration. But in the footprint of an object no bigger than the end piece of a loaf of bread, you could find every article I've written, email I've sent, material for workshops I've given, thoughts made concrete, in the course of doing business and living my life for the last few years.

I had this realization that the evidence that I have lived and breathed and worked and loved has gotten larger, while the physical space that it takes up has gotten smaller. It's an odd feeling. I wonder if it's better to have old shoe boxes stuffed with letters from family and friends and old boyfriends, hidden away in the mustiness of a crawl space. I'm nostalgic and I'm also practical. I'll file away my old hard drive, in a shiny, static-repelling bag, someplace between extra staples and a box of 3.5 inch diskettes.

A Few Confessions

Okay, like the title says, I have a few confessions to make.

• I rarely read other blogs. When I was starting up my blog, I had gotten the clear message from different people that it was a good thing to read other blogs and comment. Not only did it help to create links to my own blog, but there seemed to be thing about "if you read my blog, I'll read yours." The only one I read with any regularity is Seth Godin and that's only once a month and because Seth is so pithy (doesn't that word sound like a seven-year old with two front teeth missing, trying to say "pissy?") Some people have even suggested that reading other blogs will give me material for my blog (as in, "I was reading Joe's posting the other day and it made me think about.....") The truth is, I like reading books, not blogs. So for those of you who have me on your blogrolls (notice my lack of one), thanks. It's very gracious. And know that it's unlikely that I will change my own personal reading habits any time soon.

• I blog in spurts, like today. Another tip that I got early on was to save up my postings so that I could dole them out over time. It's hard for me to do that. Once I write, the full expression of it is what matters most, not whether I can create a smooth stream of postings for the blog. So I'll continue to write when the floodgates open up and not write when it's just a trickle. It goes against what I know about writing (which is to write even when it's a trickle) but it's what I do.

• I sometimes wonder if I've gotten off-topic in my postings. Is everything I write about looking at the ordinary and turning it into the extraordinary, seeing the big things in the small things? Maybe not. So indulge me when I get off-topic. It's either I write here or it gets put in a Word file on my PC, never to be seen again.

So there, I've said it. Thanks for reading. I feel better already.

The Smell of Fresh Bread

Last week, I was in a local bakery, a franchisee for Great Harvest Bakery Company. They are known for giving out fresh slices of warm bread and making available butter for slathering on. It’s a great way to make a sale. I go in there after I’ve gone to the ski rental place next door, thinking about a free slice of bread. And I walk out with soft rolls and heavenly loaves of bread.

What struck me last week was the smell. It embraces me as soon as I open the door, the equivalent of a cashmere sweater around my shoulders. I remarked to the guy at the counter how wonderful the bread smelled. He replied, “Yeah, it’s great when I come into work everyday, the smell of the bread.”

Which got me thinking. What would it be like to be in a workplace where all of our senses come alive—not just our gray matter? It’s why people put colorful screensavers on their PCs, to create an oasis in a sea of black type on white background (just as it is as I’m writing this posting.) It’s why I used to bring flowers into meetings and put them in the break rooms when I was an employee. It’s why people listen to iPods at their desk (a few years ago, people listened to music on their PC but I’m sure by now, it’s all iPods.)

While I’m on a tear about bringing the human spirit into the workplace, here’s another way to do it. Create work environments that remind all of us that we are human beings with keen senses, not automatons from a sci-fi thriller.

It's All Made Up

Try this out. Find a quiet place. Get comfortable and relaxed. With pen and paper handy,

Imagine that your annual salary is $5K. How do you feel and what are your thoughts?

• Now imagine that your salary is $25K. How do you feel and what are your thoughts?
• Now imagine that your salary is $50K. How do you feel and what are your thoughts?
• Now imagine that your salary is $75K. How do you feel and what are your thoughts?
• Now imagine that your salary is $100K. How do you feel and what are your thoughts?
• Now imagine that your salary is $250K. How do you feel and what are your thoughts?
• Now imagine that your salary is $500K. How do you feel and what are your thoughts?
• Now imagine that your salary is $1M. How do you feel and what are your thoughts?
  

This was an exercise from a teleclass I took on money beliefs, based on the book, Secrets of Six Figure Women: Surprising Strategies to Up Your Earnings and Change Your Life by Barbara Stanny. I have not read the book. The facilitators of the teleclass talked about the author’s findings after studying high-earning women--their beliefs, habits, and strategies. Not a lot it was new information for me—declaring intentions, moving out of your comfort zone, having a good support network, being fully committed, persistence, having what I call good “financial hygiene” (e.g., not spending more than you earn.)

What was eye-opening were the comments from the participants from the exercise above. People talked about not deserving the salary as it increased to larger and larger sums, feeling guilty, having to sacrifice other things for the money (e.g., time). This is all without a lot of context for the exercise other than “You have this salary. How do you feel?” It made me realize that what we believe has a tremendous impact on what we manifest. We make assumptions that may not have a bit of relevance to the situation.

If an individual unconsciously has a belief that they don’t deserve a specific salary, they will never create opportunities for that to happen. They’ll do all the right things so it won’t happen. Becoming aware of our beliefs is the first step to having choice in our lives.

In case you are wondering how I answered the above questions, here’s what I wrote down during the exercise:

$5K—low self-esteem
$25K—starting to understand the landscape
$50K—sustainable business
$75K—yippee! success and more growth is possible
$100K—blessed, receiving fruits of hard labor
$250K—more than enough to live on, give back and create more impact
$500K—same as at $250K
$1M—Big Impact on World

I wrote my comments in the context of being a solopreneur. At an annual salary of $75K, I felt like I could invest in my business to fuel growth. That’s a belief that I need to examine.

This makes me think of a long-time coach, Rick Tamlyn, whose mantra is "It's all made up." If it's all made up anyway, isn't it better to make up something good?

Love in the Workplace

I just finished the book, Love is the Killer App by Tim Sanders. Sanders talks about love in the business world, lovecats, and bizmates. While I couldn’t always go with the language (and I’ve been out of Corporate America for several years), I could resonate with his main point. When we genuinely care about the people we work with, whether it’s a colleague or a customer or a supplier, and we allow ourselves to express it, good things happen. For you and others. This is one more aspect of bringing the human spirit into the workplace.

Happy Valentine's Day....

Coming Around

“It’s your destiny to do this work. You are the complete package.”

My coach wrote this in an email to me today. She is talking about work that I had largely abandoned after I left my last corporate gig (Avaya), over three years ago. I started on this coaching path back in 2003, learning what I needed to about connecting with individuals in a way to wake them up, bring forth their divinity, and enable them step into their own power. It has been wonderful. And it has not been enough.

The passion that I have not let my heart fully embrace for the last few years is transforming workplaces by bringing the human spirit into companies. When this happens, people thrive and companies are that much better—with their customers, for their shareholders, and to their employees. I fooled myself by rationalizing that I was changing workplaces, one person at a time, through my individual and corporate clients.

Several years ago, when I was still at Avaya, I joined a group called the Association for Spirit at Work (ASAW). It’s a national organization whose mission is to nurture and support the human spirit in the workplace. They use the term spirituality. I use the phrase human spirit. I drifted away from this organization after I started my own coaching and consulting firm, thinking I had to put my “cause” on the shelf in order to focus on starting a business. And deep down, I wondered what I could do from the outside, if what I did from the inside could be so quickly undone after I left. I didn’t want to feel the hurt and I didn’t want to fight the battle. I was tired.

I was a pioneer at Avaya. I brought in speakers to talk about doing the work you love (thanks, Tama, for that wonderful connection we made several years ago), created brown bag seminars about soul in the workplace and sacred space in the office, and showed up at project meetings with a small vase of flowers. I knew intuitively that people needed this, that just as I was waking up to the hunger within me, so were others.

Since that time at Avaya, I’ve been able to round out the picture so that it isn’t just my intuition that tells me this is a good thing to do. Daniel Goleman’s book, Primal Leadership, speaks to the impact of emotions in groups and how our brains are wired differently for the logical part of business vs. the emotional part of business. The book, A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink, provides the economic basis for paying attention to and developing our right brain faculties. Being able to work with the “soft stuff” is not just about good leadership or feeling good. It’s about being competitive in a global economy.

My own experience with coaching clients is that they don’t need help with engaging better logic. They need help in engaging their own inner voice, the one that knows when someone is not the right person to work with or a project is set up for failure or that they’ve been spinning their wheels needlessly, just to please the Gremlin. And they need additional tools—ones that aren’t analytical in nature but rather organic and girded by bodily and emotional awareness.

I have come home to myself with this work, the work that I’m destined to do—to transform workplaces so that the human spirit thrives. I have not yet figure out how this will look, other than it is a place of the Big Gulp. It is also a joy to know that the work I do is so much bigger than me. It is bigger than a single individual client. There is boldness in serving at the highest level one is capable of.

My coach told me that I might not see workplaces transformed in my lifetime. But that I could start the work. Get started, keep moving…….

Working Identity

I just finished the book, “Working Identity” by Herminia Ibarra. The author was on the faculty of Harvard Business School for many years and in her research on how young professionals advance or don’t advance in up-or-out firms (e.g., consulting firms), she noticed another population. One that was actively seeking to move to new careers.

In her study of many professionals moving into new careers, she realized that new careers are closely linked to new identities. Hence, the title of the book. What’s even more interesting is that the way people go about successfully changing careers is in small experiments—trying out a possible new self, creating a new network of supporters, and staying in action.

I know this to be true for myself. The full transition from one working identity (engineer) to another (organization development consultant) took years. I started experimenting with team building and team effectiveness several years before I took a formal role as retention leader in R+D. I read journals in the field—Organizational Dynamics and Harvard Business Review. I read books about being a change agent. And I moved into action. My fellow engineers accepted my interest in the people side of things and let me try new things out on them. Ways to communicate better as a large team. Conflict resolution through the discipline of Dialogue. Using metaphor as a way of brainstorming a new process. All of this was “extracurricular” and all of it excited me.

Now looking back, I can see the emergence of a network of supporters—those engineers who were hungry for the human side of work to be addressed in parallel with the technical side, mentors who validated the need for my new work in the work world, and new colleagues in the same field.

I also know the milestones that told me I had changed too much to go back to the old working identity. I had crossed over for good. After one round of layoffs, I was asked to take a temporary three-month assignment in the software testing group to help get a software release delivered—an area in which I had expertise but which I had left more than two years prior. I had already been operating as a full-time internal consultant by that time. I agreed to take the assignment but vowed to myself that I would finish in two months, because the work was so meaningless and draining for me. Those two months taught me that I could never go back to being an engineer. I had become someone else.

Those two months in the lab, locked away with servers and software, disconnected from other human beings, also gave me compassion. Compassion for fellow workers who found themselves loathing a job they used to love and feeling stuck. These are people who have outgrown their current working identities but who are not yet conscious of the need to create a new one. They can only focus on the pain.

I met a friend for lunch recently. We both worked for the same large telecommunications company where the running joke was that if you stayed long enough, you would develop a Bell-shaped head. She left last year and went to a start-up, as head of their marketing and sales. I have never seen her happier. She remarked that when she went back to visit colleagues at our old company, she could see the pain in people’s faces and the resignation that there were no options for anything different. Working identities can be lethal when they are so closely tied to a single company.

What she and I both know now is how much larger the world is than what we could allow ourselves to believe several years ago. My network has dramatically changed since leaving my last corporate job. It’s bigger, more diverse, less insular, more interesting. Instead of transferring into new departments or business units every couple of years, we cross over into new cultures, new companies, new industries, new ways of living every day.

It strikes me that if I’m growing, I’m always in transition from one working identity to another. From engineer to organization development consultant to coach and entrepreneur. This in turn has influenced my view of the world. I see the world as more accessible, full of opportunities with fewer barriers.

Start down the path of reinventing yourself. Today.

When Reality Intrudes.....

I’ve been wanting to write about getting old. I see the signs that I’m not 25 or 30 anymore and I don’t like it.

I look in the mirror and see more white mixed in with my thick dark hair. I notice dark streaks under my eyes—well-hidden with glasses but clearly evident when I’m putting makeup on. I have trouble reading the name of the color printed on the bottom of my lipsticks. I yearn for more light at band rehearsal so I can see the notes as they race by me.

A few months ago, I had a Mary Kay lady visit me. She asked me to put all kinds of goop on my face—to cleanse, to moisturize, to blend my uneven skin tones. All the while, I looked into the small mirror provided. I asked her about spots on my face that I hadn’t noticed before. “Oh, those are age spots.”

What?! I’m too young for age spots. Age spots happen at 70, not at 44. But there it was on my face, a dark splotch where there should be skin the color of my palms. Take note. This is how the cosmetic industry makes a great buck—through our fear of becoming old. I bought $70 worth of moisturizers and night creams that day. Me, who for years, watched my older sister and mother use all kinds of potions to keep their faces smooth and fresh, and said to myself, “Yeah, well, if it makes you happy.”

What this points to is what happens when reality intrudes on our self-image. The question arises, “Who am I now?” I am no longer the fresh-faced twenty something. I’m not even the more mature and still fresh-faced thirty something. Who is this forty something with bags under her eyes, age spots on her cheeks, and an outstretched arm to read the fine print?

Getting older is an exercise in creating a new self-image. Acceptance creates the base of the new self-image. Yes, I’ll put moisturizer on my face daily and night creams on nightly. But I won’t go for the “blemish concealer with heavy duty coverall mask.” Yes, I’ll live with the white hairs for now and let my hairdresser decide how white might look just right for me. Yes, I am in my forties, old enough to have kids in college instead of being in college. (Although a few years ago, a sorority cook did mistake me for a co-ed when I was staying on campus to recruit for my high-tech employer).

Who am I now? I’m a middle-aged woman who loves life, has a sparkle in her eye, and lives in a body that shows its age, beautifully and naturally. Now that’s a self-image that sounds true.

Is It Up or Down?

A recent retreat I attended took place at a lovely community center with Arts and Crafts furniture, built in bookcases, and lots of windows. It was a cozy place to gather. It also had only one bathroom for 30+ people.

I noticed that whenever I followed a certain man in line for the bathroom, I would be greeted with a not so lovely image of a toilet seat in the raised position. This happened three times in two days. At the end of the second day, I decided to say something to this man, as he obviously had no idea of the impact he was having. He looked to be a nice enough fellow, maybe in his late 30's and probably single, as no wife would stand for such an annoying habit.

I approached him with a smile and this invitation: "Would you like to hear something that will improve your relationships with women?"

He perked up. I could tell I had gotten his attention. "Oh, yes. What is it?"

Ahh....I had him now. "I've followed you in the bathroom line three times over the last two days. Each time, I found the toilet seat raised. Women don't like that."

He was amused. "Oh. I live alone, so I never give a second thought."

Yep. Just like I thought. A single guy who is oblivious to how the other half lives.

"Well, I have a husband and two sons and they're well-trained."

"Which is to say?"

"That they leave the seat the way they found it, in the down position."

"Oh, well in that case, I did just that. I found the seat in the up position to begin with."

What? There was more than this one man at the retreat who had not been trained to put the seat down?

And yet, I suddenly understood that my way was just that. My way, but not necessarily the right way. We both laughed, realizing what this small incident had taught us.

"Who is to say which is the right way?" Yes, who is to say what is the right way. I smiled and nodded.