Michele Woodward

Powerful Coaching. Powerful Results.

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Becoming UnBusy

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Last week my coaching sessions with various clients covered these topics:

  1. Navigating office politics
  2. Creating and shaping critical work relationships
  3. Managing competing priorities
  4. Recovering from disappointment and frustration
  5. Career planning
  6. Owning and claiming success
  7. Making a plan for the future

Know what the solution to each of these things is?

It’s having the time and space to step back, reflect, understand and plan.

Know what else? Everyone in the world thinks they are too busy to step back, even for a moment, to reflect, understand and plan.

I guess that’s why coaching was invented, amIright?

The Cult of Busyness has billions of adherents. Members drink the Kool-Aid, which is flavored with a heavy dose of If-I’m-Not-Busy-I-Don’t-Matter (which tastes a little like Mylanta, if you were wondering).

Busyness is too many meetings where nothing gets done.

Busyness is where nothing gets done because there are too many meetings.

Busyness is exhaustion.

Busyness is snapping at others because you’re exhausted.

Busyness is the illusion that you matter, that what you do matters, that you’re making a difference – but only if you’re busy enough.

But you really aren’t sure because you’re often too busy to assess whether or not what you’re doing is actually working.

The famous theologian Henri Nouwen wrote:

“Why are people so busy? Perhaps they want to have success in their life or they want to be popular or they want to have some influence. If you want to be successful, you have to do a lot of things; if you want to be popular, you have to meet a lot of people; if you want to have influence, you have to make a lot of connections. The problem is that your identity is hooked up with your busyness: ‘I am what I do; I am what people say about me; I am what influence I have.’ As soon as you fail, you get depressed; as soon as people start talking negatively about you, or as soon as you feel you have no influence whatsoever, you feel low…

“Solitude is listening to the voice who calls you the beloved. It is being alone with the One who says, ‘You are my beloved, I want to be with you. Don’t go running around, don’t start to prove to everybody that you are beloved. You are already beloved.’ That is what God says to us. Solitude is the place where we go to hear the truth about ourselves.”

Becoming UnBusy is hard work. Because it requires solitude. And solitude requires boundaries.

You have to have limits, and limits are hard to establish and harder to enforce. We live in a world where having boundaries and standards seems counter-cultural and weird.

A couple of clients asked me this week about my work and my boundaries. “How,” they asked, “do you do it?” The “Miss Smarty Pants” part was fully implied.

Here are some of the ways I do what I do:

  • I only attend meetings or events if my presence makes a difference
  • I only attend meetings where something gets done
  • I always know who’s accountable for what
  • I know I’m a morning person so I front-load my day – meaning, I don’t work after sundown
  • I also don’t look at my phone after 9pm
  • I have a maximum of five client sessions a day
  • I create systems and procedures and stick to them
  • I go to sleep at the same time-ish every night and wake about the same time-ish every morning
  • I honor my priorities around my health, my need for learning, and my desire to be connected with my closest loved ones – these things I attend to first

What does these boundaries do for me? Why, each of these things allow me to have the time and space to reflect, to understand, to plan.

To be UnBusy.

To be strong, effective, focused, balanced and unstressed. To have time to do things other than work.

To live a life fully – fully engaged, fully curious, fully in love. 

Being UnBusy, though, does make it difficult at social occasions where everyone says “Gosh, I’m so busy!”, and I say, “I’m not! I’m totally engaged with my work and having a blast!”

You should see the expressions on their faces.

Who could have known that disruption was this much fun?

 

Who’s Ready For Some Homework?

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I have the firm belief that it’s impossible to make a really great plan for the future unless you take time to reflect on the past.

That’s the thinking behind the Personal Planning Tool I’ve been offering you since 2009. Every year I update it for the coming year and this time when I wrote out the new date, I said something eloquent and thoughtful.

I said, “Whoa.”

As in, whoa, what a great opportunity to reflect on everything that’s happened in 2019 as we plan for 2020, but why not look waaaay back? Why not look at where we all were in 2010?

So I sat down, and I am known to do, and created a tool to do that reflection. What were the most powerful questions? What got to the heart of the matter?

I made a copy of my handwritten draft and walked myself through the emerging process. Tweaked. Refined.

Then I sent my handwritten, scrawled out notes to a dozen helpful souls who offered to try it and provide helpful and critical feedback.

I waited. But before long my email started to ping with messages like this:

“I was surprised by the theme of taking care of my physical body. I’m seeing my family age and it suddenly feels URGENT to care for my vessel in ways it never did before. This came through so loud and clear as I filled this out.”

“I thought the whole review was thought provoking and valuable. The big surprise to me was the question: If you could send a message from today to your 2030 self, what would you say? As I read it, I teared up. Big time.  At first I thought the question didn’t make sense – easier to give advice/share wisdom with 20/20 hindsight –  but then why did it bring tears to my eyes?! I realized the reason was that my thoughts about the future were pessimistic (which is not my usual personality default) and I didn’t know what to tell my future self beyond “Savor the butterflies now.” ;/ Not a useful way to move forward action-wise. And that I could do better for myself and values than that. Where I am currently is to say to my 2030 year self that the future is still wide open (props to Tom Petty) and to stay sturdy; my work here is not done.”

“I think the biggest thing I learned from this exercise is that you have no idea what the future could bring. Ten years ago, I was single, had not met my husband and could not have dreamt of what my future life could hold. I also noticed today – 10 yrs. later – that I omit my career and myself in much of this plan. I am in a supporting role and put my needs after those of others. However, this process reinforces a few things that I need to make a priority – working out, reconnecting with friends. I also realized how much I am driven [now] by personal vs. professional goals. It also makes me fear a bit for the next 10 years since things have been so good, similar to that of a recession after good economic times.”

“I cried on page 4.  These questions were POWERFUL.  When you compare 10 years the things that need to be fixed are in such plain sight. I focused on what was still not going well but, I also need to celebrate that I have doubled my income in 10 years.”

Deep and abiding thanks to the brave and kind folks who took the time to test drive the 10-Year Tool. Which is now up and ready for you!

Go to www.michelewoodward.com/resources to access both the new 10-Year Tool and its big sister, the 2020 Personal Planning Tool. These two worksheets are designed to complement one another – and also designed to be the sort of thing you take your time with. To think. To reflect. To grow your understanding.

This ain’t no Cosmo quiz, friends.

And, as always, the resources on my page are available to you at no charge.

After you use the 10-Year Tool or the 2020 Personal Planning Tool, drop me a note and let me know what you think. I can’t wait to hear about the things you learn!

Say This, Not That

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You may know that one of my core values is learning.

There’s nothing I love more than digging in, coming to understanding and integrating that knowledge into my life.

I know, it makes me so fun to be around at parties.

One of the most important learnings of the last ten years has been around how to speak.

Yes, it’s entirely possible that I emerged from the womb reciting Elizabeth Barrett Browning – but that’s talking and anyone can do that.

What I’m talking about is speaking in a way that opens up conversation and relationships.

The simple rule I’ve learned is: Ask so that others can answer fully, and truthfully.

Mind-blowing, huh?

Here’s the example:

“Are you having a good day?”

vs.

“How’s your day?”

In the first instance, the way you’ve constructed the question suggests that the listener needs to experience a “good day” to be in your good graces. You are, in fact, telling them what to feel.

Maybe your intention is to keep things light, superficial. Or you think you’re being optimistic and sunny, all Law of Attraction-y. Regardless, the result is the person responds with, “Yeah…sure”, which might be untrue, and your relationship is now touched by that small little lie.

But when you simply ask, “How’s your day?”, you allow a response that’s real. The person can say what’s on their mind, something like: “It’s a tough day – I had to put my dog down.” How honest. How revealing. How real.

Then you can be with that person, in that moment, in their reality and sorrow.

You have an opportunity to be a supportive friend, family member, colleague. You can know them more fully by understanding their truth. And they can know you, too, by experiencing your kindness.

Yes, being empathetic might take something from you. And you might feel like you’re not up to the task.

I imagine you are, though. Because I know you’re a kind, thoughtful, compassionate person who wants close connections with others.

You can do it. You can be open to hearing the truth, and dealing with whatever that truth brings along with it.

So, say this: “How are you feeling?” rather than “Feeling good?”

Say, “Where are you on the Framastam contract?” rather than “Are you done with the Framastam contract yet?”

Say, “What are your plans tonight?” rather than “You’re not going to that block party on Garfield St., are you?”

Say, “What do you think of the succotash?” rather than “Don’t you love this succotash?”

You can open doors with the questions you ask, or you can close them. It’s a powerfully simple learning that leads to a fuller, richer experience for all involved.

 

 

Trust & Respect

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Imagine a world where you trusted and respected everyone you came into contact with.

People in your family.

People in your community.

People in your workplace.

Imagine that.

I know, I know – I’ve gone all John Lennon on you.

So many of us live in a trust and respect deficit and even the idea that we might actually close the gap seems impossible.

This became top of mind for me this week when writer from Arianna Huffington’s Thrive Global reached out to ask if I could give her some thoughts on delegating. Why is it necessary? Why is it so stressful? How can you make it less stressful? How can you make it work?

As I prepared my answers, I realized that delegation is so easy when you trust and respect the person you’re giving the task to, and when they trust and respect you, too.

When there’s plenty of trust to go around, all the angsty stress vanishes.

I give you work because I know you’ll do a good job. I trust that when you have a problem, you’ll come to me with questions. End of story.

I accept the work you give me because I know you trust me to do a good job. I respect you enough to come to you for clarity when I need it. End of story.

It’s a critical skill you’ve probably never had a minute of training on. Do you know how to build trust and respect with other people? In my experience, it’s these five things:

  1. You allow yourself to be known
  2. You follow through on your commitments
  3. You’re honest and transparent
  4. You’re predictable and consistent
  5. You’re kind

When you have trust and respect with people in your orbit, things just get easier. Here’s a model I use a lot in my work – it comes from Patrick Lencioni’s work on teams:

 

Notice how Trust is the foundation of the pyramid? If we trust one another, we can manage conflict effectively. If we can do that, we can create a shared commitment to the decisions we make and hold one another accountable. Only then do we get to results.

So, focusing on building trust is vital to success.

Let’s say you work somewhere or are in a relationship and you know that trust and respect are lacking. And you know it extends both ways.

Think of how much better it might be if you were able to build a tiny bit of trust. To grow a small measure of success. To start to allow yourself to be known just a little bit, to follow through on what you’ve promised, to be a little more honest and transparent, to be more predictable and consistent, to choose to be kind. Even when you’re stressed.

Especially when you’re stressed.

I’m not saying you have to go from zero to sixty in .3 seconds and change everything all at once – I’m saying, change it a little bit and see what happens.

If things don’t get better, if you don’t move toward more success and fulfillment, well then, you know.

You know it’s time to move to something different.

And, as a side note, with US unemployment figures so low, there’s never been a better time to find a new role.

Because life is too short to live in a trust and respect deficit.

Life is too short to live without getting those things that really matter to you accomplished.

Life is too short to be so walled off that you can’t allow anyone else to touch your stuff – meaning you can’t/won’t/would never delegate.

Life is way too short to be that kind of jackass.

 

The Thing About 3.6% Unemployment

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News broke this week that US unemployment reached a new low in April, falling to 3.6 percent. Who would have thought, in October of 2009 when unemployment peaked at 10 percent, that we’d ever see this sort of robust hiring?

All I can say is that 2009 was bleak for a lot of people, and it left a lot of scars.

I still see those scars in some organizations who continue policies and approaches they put into place then.

But what got you there won’t get you where you need to go. In light of what is, in fact, nearly functional full-employment for professionals, most organizations have to get smarter on how they treat their people.

In 2009, it seemed like there were forty or fifty out-of-work people in line for every job available. They would take anything – anything! – to keep themselves afloat, and some took significant pay cuts. Today, the unemployment rate tells us that there are too few people for the available jobs, so the surefire way to attract talent is to do everything you can do to take care of them.

This means your human resources function has to be on the ball and in the game. They have to focus on finding talent who will not be looking, and they have to be empowered to make solid, significant offers to the right people.

Your HR team also has to advocate for people who are doing really well in their jobs within the organization. If you don’t promote, grow and reward your top performers, you will lose them to an organization that will.

Where I live, Washington, DC, Amazon is coming into the market as an employer. They have committed to creating 25,000 new jobs at an average salary of $150,000. Average. This will put tremendous pressure on other employers in the area to up their game.

Imagine: You’ve got a great IT manager on your team who makes everything run smoothly. But you’ve held back raises for two years and routinely asked her to work on weekends and evenings when things get hairy. That talented woman? If she lives in the DC area, she’s already sent her resume to Amazon because she knows she’ll make more money doing more interesting work. And if she lives somewhere else, she might be making a plan to move.

She leaves – who are you going to find to replace her? It’s not going to be easy since there aren’t forty or fifty people in line for that opening, trust me. If you wait to see what resumes you collect from your online posting, there might be one. Who’s been out of work off and on for their entire career, and not entirely an ideal candidate.

When I raise this issue with some leaders, they tell me that their team is so happy and so committed to mission that their people would never leave. Never! In a million years.

Oh, but they will. For more pay, more opportunity, saner working hours, better bosses and more interesting work.

I’m already seeing it in my own clients.

So, to survive – I’m not even talking about thriving here – organizations have to begin to futureproof.

  • Compensate people fairly. Give raises. Give bonuses. Extend raises and bonuses beyond the C-suite to every single person within the organization.
  • Open up hiring to people who don’t look like you and don’t think like you. Diversity and inclusion leads to innovation. Innovation leads to success.
  • Stop paying your people for 40 hour workweeks and asking them to put in 60 hour workweeks. Those people will be among the first to leave.
  • Focus on creating an outstanding HR function within your organization, one that’s focused less on admin and more on strategy, recruitment and retention.
  • Jettison bad bosses. You know who they are – you simply lack the will to either manage them to better behavior or let them go. Truth is, either they go or everyone else will.
  • Provide professional development for junior people in the organization. Because once you fire the bad bosses, you’ll need someone good to step in and do a great job.
  • Say thank you. The vast majority of working professionals want their sacrifices – the missed family events, the crunch times, the difficult choices – to matter. When you see commitment in your team, acknowledge it and express your gratitude. It goes a long way toward creating a cohesive team.

There are particular challenges managing organizations when there is functional full-employment. In many ways, the Great Recession created an employers market where salaries could be trimmed and overhead reduced.

Those days are gone.

Today, right now, it’s a talented and skilled candidates market. Are you prepared to everything you can to manage that reality?

The Thing About Culture

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People throw the word “culture” around like there’s a shared concept of what in the world they’re talking about.

“Culture”, for some, means for others to “do what you’re told.”

For snarky cynics, it means “what the website says and what no one actually does.”

For hopelessly optimistic folks, it means “that we’re all friends and we get along.”

Close, but no cigar, if you ask me.

Culture is, as I recently read, simply “The way we do things around here.”

How powerfully elegant is that?

The way we do things creates the culture in which we live and work.

So, if we want to change culture – we just change the way we do things.

Sounds easy, huh? But you know I like a process, so here goes:

First, we need to understand how it is we do things. This requires a little step back, and the detachment to catalogue our “how” without judgment.

How do we want people to spend their days? In back-to-back meetings? In the field? At their desks? On their feet?

What’s our paperwork flow like? What’s our approval process like?

How we spend our time reveals our true focus – so how does your organization (including your family) spend its time?

That’ll show you something really important.

Once we know how we do things, we need to ask the critical question: Who benefits from our culture?

If the only people benefitting are senior management, you’ve got a problem. Like, if senior leaders get their own suites at the Ritz Carlton while middle managers and others on the same trip have to double up at the Days Inn – what are you saying to your people? What are you creating?

If the only person benefitting is Carol in accounting whose fear of making a mistake means a ton of paperwork and molasses-like response time, you’ve got a problem. When you center your entire organization on the quirks and foibles of one personality – what are you telegraphing about what you value? About what’s important?

If the entire organization is centered around the CEO’s reluctance to have difficult conversations, you’ve got a problem. We’re talking about power grabs and petty tyrants and office politics and dysfunction kinds of problems.

And no one needs that nonsense.

If the only people benefitting are white men with a college degree, you have a very big problem. And I would argue that it’s time to move your organization beyond 1989 and firmly into 2019.

Just sayin’.

You have to be brave when you examine who benefits, because that person might be you. It’s entirely possible that the system is set up to mirror your strengths, values and priorities. Entirely possible.

But if you’re the only person benefitting, you owe it to your organization’s success to open it up. To allow more people the opportunity to grow and learn and thrive.

Creating a system which gives more people a chance to bring their knowledge and expertise to the table means building a culture that works.

Because any group makes better decisions with diverse voices and perspectives. You’ll also keep people on the team longer.

You’ll have more success.

The thing about culture is that it’s often created in a fractured set of vacuums – HR does things one way and Finance does something their way and Sales is a creature unto itself. All of this adds up to “the way we do things around here”.

And if the way we do things around here isn’t working, we have a responsibility to make it work. For everyone.

 

A Big Life

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One of the things I find intriguing in life is fame. So many pursue it, so few catch it. Fewer still hold onto it for a lifetime.

Maybe I’m sensitive to this subject because I live in Washington, DC, a town filled with “formers”. Or maybe it’s because the coaching profession has a small but ardent crowd who are convinced that fame is the only litmus test for success.

I don’t know, but I’m trying to understand. What’s the difference between living a Big Life and living a Small Life?

On Friday night I watched a concert by someone who’s had fame – the big, glitzy, lifetime sort of fame so many seek – Rosanne Cash. Born the eldest child of legend Johnny Cash, her life has been full of both opportunities and gawkers.

When she began singing and writing songs in her teen years, she started getting acclaim herself. Forty-plus years later, she’s been nominated for 15 Grammys and remains a recording and touring artist. She’s a genius.

As I listened to her play the other night, it occurred to me that this was a woman who’d had hit after hit after hit in the 1980s. You couldn’t turn on the radio and not hear “Seven Year Ache” or “Never Be You” or “I Don’t Know Why You Don’t Want Me”. She released ground-breaking albums and collaborated with the biggest names in music.

Now, however, you’re not likely to hear her songs anywhere on the radio.

(And that’s not just because country music has a thing about women artists.)

I wondered about that. I wondered what that would feel like to not have your music on the radio.

I wondered how Rosanne feels about fame.

On Saturday morning, it hit me. I think she’s sort of transcended fame. I mean, she’s had it and I imagine there were parts which were nice, and she’s still famous to a degree, but what Rosanne Cash is here to do now is to express herself.

Regardless.

Because she has something to say.

There are things she needs to create.

And she’ll do it whether or not she’s on top of the charts, on the radio or filling football stadiums.

Expressing herself is enough. Creating is enough. Being in that artistic moment is enough.

Whatever comes after that is fine.

And so, I realize, it has to be for me. As ong as I’m expressing myself, committed to creating things that matter to me, being the kind of person I aim to be – then life will be right-sized.

Fame, no fame. Big, small. Won’t matter. What will matter is the way in which I say – the way in which you say – what we’re here to say in the time we have left.

It’s really all that matters.

 

(photo courtesy: RosanneCash.com)

I Was Just Going To Ask You The Same Question

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You probably know that I’m not about making New Year’s Resolutions. They can be forced and unsticky and, therefore, fall by the wayside before February even starts.

I am, as you also probably know, more of a planner. So last week I sat myself down with my Personal Planning Tool – yes, I created it and I actually use it! – and the stuff that came up for me was really helpful.

The Tool is designed to get to a few action steps which you can easily do. For me, they were :

  • Look at client list for 2018 and chronicle successes
  • Create a spreadsheet tracking business revenues for the last four years
  • Create a revenue forecast for the first six months of 2019
  • Create three workouts I can use at the gym; schedule gym time

I’m proud to say that I knocked these things out in the lull week between holidays and I’m feeling rather smug about myself.

The Tool also gave me the ability to clearly see my priorities for 2019, and that’s where you come in. It’s clear that I want to step it up in the coming year. I want to be in the position a year from now to say that my work made a difference. So let me tell you about what I have planned.

I have executive coaching programs for individuals as well as organizations. One of the happiest things I’ve done in my coaching career is to partner with organizationswho want to really support their leaders. I coach people, facilitate learning and change – and it’s the thing I love doing.

With individuals, you can work with me in three, six or twelve month programs. I have space for one person in my unlimited coaching program, so let me know if that person is you.

In 2018, folks in my unlimited program negotiated better deals, dealt with office politics and stress, learned new skills and basically had more fun in their work. It was also pretty fulfilling for me to fully partner with them and not worry how many hours we were using.

That was wonderful. I love these people and look forward to working with them again in 2019.

My lower-cost program, The Club, is terrific but full at the moment. You can email to get on the waiting list if you’d like.

I have some groups this year, too. For men, I’m doing a new program this year. Did you know that the number one thing which gets people promoted and creates more success is social/emotional intelligence? I work with a lot of men clients and this is an area which – once guys get a sense of the rules and how it all works – gets results quickly. You can find more information here: Emotional Intelligence for Men

For coaches, I have my Circle of 12 mentored mastermind program starting up on January 8th. There are eleven people committed, so if you’re looking for a close community of like-minded peers who have good practices that need to move to great practices – think about joining us.

Also for coaches, I have my Executive Coach Mentoring program beginning in March. This one is designed for people focusing on working with organizational clients. We’ll learn about best practices, client acquisition and tools to support your business. It’s great, if I do say so myself.

And, for coaches who are on Facebook, I continue to moderate The Business of Coaching group which has been serving the coaching community since 2012. We have 1200 coaches from all around the world who participate in thoughtful and supportive conversations about our work. If you’d like to join this “secret group”, please let me know.

Finally, I recently was on a panel with an executive recruiter and an executive communicator, talking with a group about personal branding, career progression, leadership, mentoring, speaking and a host of other matters. We took questions, so, believe me – we ran the gamut! It was a delight, and I am looking forward to working with these two in other venues. Maybe your venue?

So, yeah, maybe this year will be ambitious. But I am planning for it to be the right kind of hustle – you know what I mean. Engaging, fun, feeding my curiosity, connected and connecting. I get sort of giddy thinking about it.

How about you? What’s on your dancecard for the coming year? Where are you going to have the impact only you can have?

I am all ears, sugar.