Angeles Arrien wrote a wonderful book years ago titled “The Four Fold Way” detailing the wisdom of indigenous peoples for creating healthy relationships for community.  I had the pleasure of speaking with Ms. Arrien two years ago and received her permission to use a modification of her model in the business world to give leaders a framework for their coaching and creating high performing teams.   I have seen this model work for leaders and teams around the globe.  Over the next four entries, I will describe the Four Fold Way as it applies to business leadership.

Part One:  Show Up!!

This may seem like a simple thing, and I challenge you to try it!  When done well, “Showing Up” will have a huge impact on your personal effectiveness as well as improve the outcomes of meetings and individual interactions.

“Showing Up” means more than just arriving on time or being physically present in a meeting or conversation.  It means being mentally present and focused as well.  When you “show up” you are not replaying the conversation you just had in the prior meeting; you are not wondering if your admin put the international conference call code in your BlackBerry for the meeting after this one; you are not wondering if you’ll be out of this conversation in time to catch the last quarter of your child’s soccer game or make it to the dry cleaner before they close.  You are definitely not checking your BlackBerry or laptop for messages.

So what are you doing?? (This list is not exhaustive and not in order of importance!)

• You are making eye contact
• You are listening to what the other person is saying without formulating your response while they are still speaking
• You are attending to their body language and seeking to understand all of what they are saying.
• In a larger meeting you are looking around the room to see what other dynamics are going on–who is paying attention, who is grimacing, who looks surprised …?
• You are paying attention to your own reaction to what’s going on–am I feeling defensive, suspicious, relieved, intrigued, engaged, invited …?
• You are demonstrating to the other(s) that you have “shown up” by reflecting back your understanding of what they’ve just said and gaining clarity on their view before moving forward with your own response.
• You are focused and present to the people and situation you are in.
• You release the distractions of what came before, what’s waiting for you after, and all the people and tasks vying for your attention now in order to pay full attention to what is in front of you.

As Stephen Stills sings, “Love the one you’re with!”

So try really showing up at your next conversation or meeting and feel the difference your full and true presence can make. And by the way, this is one you CAN try at home!  I’d love to hear about your experiences with “showing up!”

It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends. -J.K. Rowling, author (b. 1965)

I find this to be an excruciatingly true statement for myself, and I hear many of my clients struggling with the same thing.  They ponder the dilemma–”How can I understand and motivate those around me without coming to know them well … yet once I know them well I struggle with delivering difficult messages about poor performance.”  I think there are probably volumes to be written about how, as a society, we have come to  equate agreement and lack of challenge with support and nurturance.  That is a dangerous equation.

When faced with the need to give developmental feedback/coaching to someone on our team (or in our family) we often treat it as if it will, by definition, be a negative confrontation.  On one hand we develop our “what if ”  strategies to prepare ourselves to counter any argument, and on the other side we create a list of “softeners” to remind the person that we really are still caring and supportive.  We don’t want to hurt anyone, or worse, have them think badly of us for having spoken up on the topic.  I’ve even heard of strategies to “sandwich” negative feedback in between two compliments–that’s fine as long as the sandwich isn’t too heavy on bread without enough meat!

Years ago I picked up a little word shift that has been helpful to me and many clients.  Instead of looking on developmental, difficult conversations as confrontation, try thinking of them as CAREfrontations.  Think about it–what is the purpose of telling someone they’ve underperformed?  Usually it’s to help them learn from mistakes and get them back on a high performance path. That concern for their success in itself demonstrates a caring attitude.  How much support are you really giving by letting them continue to make career killing mistakes while smiling and pointing out only the positives?  Handled with respect, a caring conversation about improvement opportunities is what any good friend and great leader does.

So try looking through the lens of CAREfrontation rather than confrontation, and see if it relieves your own heartburn and increases the effectiveness of your coaching conversations.

I’ve been working with a number of clients this month and a common theme seems to be delegation–making that shift from doing FOR people to doing THROUGH other people. The lure of perceived control is strong, especially after years of praise and promotions for one’s ability to “get things done.” Suddenly, the list grows exponentially and multi-tasking on a single project becomes multi-tasking across multiple projects and something has to give!
We know we can’t do it all, and yet so many of us cling to the illusion that we can–even when the cost to us climbs high and must be paid in our health and relationships and, left unattended, potentially career failure.
Robert Kegan wrote years ago about a powerful concept called “Competing Commitments” suggesting that the reason people don’t change behavior, even when they see clearly that change is the right thing, is that underlying everything is another commitment that competes with and is stronger than the desired change. The competition creates resistance and the efforts to shift are thwarted.
As coaches and leaders who must regularly ask others to change, it’s vital that we recognize that there are competing commitments everywhere at the market level, organizational level, team level, not to mention within any single individual. Our job is to help our people identify resistance and do the hard work of drilling down to the source. Without that understanding the odds of repeated goal setting and backsliding are likely to continue.
And when it comes to our own resistance to delegation, it pays to ask ourselves “What purpose does doing it myself serve? What do I fear most if I actually succeed in learning to delegate?” You might surprise yourself with the answer!