Michele Woodward

Powerful Coaching. Powerful Results.

executive coaching

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?

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

What I’m Here To Do

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A few weeks ago, I told you about my friend Laurie Foley who moved into hospice when it became clear there were no treatment options available for her ovarian cancer. I shared with you that I began to ask myself the powerful questions:

  • What am I doing with myself and my work?
  • How do I want to show up?
  • Is there any place I’m hiding?
  • Where can I be more real? More raw? More true?

Being me, I undertook a intensive review of these questions and coached myself like a pro.

And in the course of my investigation, I got all up in my own business around an idea I’d had last spring and hadn’t really moved on.

See, it was a big idea, and at the time I came up with it I had a vision of how it needed to be delivered. But, technology wasn’t my friend and that approach had to be scuttled.

Then, I sat on it. 

For a while.

Then, picked it back up and considered a new approach.

Which fizzled.

Then, I lost interest.

Or, maybe it just got too complicated.

Or, maybe I was afraid of putting this big idea out there.

But when I asked myself: “What am I doing with myself and my work?”, I knew I had to get this project going.

Then a friend asked me – when I was complaining about some minuscule vexation: “If it was you in hospice, what would you want people to know?”

I’d want them to know what I know.

And that’s why I’m stepping forward with this program.

Welcome to  Michele Woodward University.

It’s made up of fourteen webinars on subjects I know inside and out. Fourteen subjects you need to know about to be successful today. Subjects like how to build a network, what to do when you’re stuck, managing toxic work situations, reducing stress and many more.

With each class you’ll get access to the live webinar, a recording of the class, a transcript and worksheets.

It feels big to me. Sort of a legacy piece.

[Taking a deep breath and letting it out slow.]

Take a class or two – the first one on networking is available to all with no charge – and maybe, just maybe, you’ll learn something that will make a difference in your life and work.

That, my friends, would make it all worthwhile.

The Fierce Velocity of Living

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Dust on the notesLife comes at us with a certain fierce velocity these days.

Due dates, deadlines, status updates, pressure – the pace is frenetic and the intensity is off the charts.

And that’s for parents of pre-schoolers.

Your life is pretty daggone intense and fast, too.

Even your favorite executive coach feels the pressures of workload, but fortunately I have plenty of tactics and skills to bring to bear when the speed gets to be a little too…overwhelming.

First thing I do?

Take a break.

I know, I know – “bear down, get through it, push, shoulder to the wheel” – but, really, no. Taking a small stop when things are hectic is a sure way to prevent errors.

Like, let’s say you’re using a crane to lift a piano out of a third floor apartment, so you pause right at the window to make sure you’re at the precisely correct angle. Just a pause before you go forward. Before you scrape the entire left side or, heaven forbid, totally shatter the instrument.

You take a minute and you check.

So that’s why I haven’t written in the last couple of weeks. I’ve been taking a wee pause to make sure:

– I want to keep writing

– I know what it is I want to say

– I understand how it is I want to write

And, it occurs to me that I could use your perspective.

You see, since 2005, when I started a monthly newsletter (and a special shout out to the 52 of you who read that first issue – I have a list, I know who you are, and I really appreciate your continued steadfastness), I have written with an eye toward what you, the reader, would like to hear. To find a topic, I’ve often thought, “Two of my readers are having coffee today… What are they talking about?”

I think of you.

What you need, and what you want, matters to me. So I’d appreciate it if you would take 90 seconds to answer five simple questions for me: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Z6M7PKH

That way, I can put your feedback into the mix of what I’ve been thinking and come out with even more clarity around what I do.

And it will make our time together than much more rewarding, and fun.

Thank you.

One of Those CrazyGood Weeks

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There are times in your life – specific days or maybe even entire weeks – you will always remember. Weeks which are indelible, with so much happening, full of such a feeling of profound change.

This past week was that kind of week for me.

On Monday, I unveiled a new look for my website – MicheleWoodward.com – designed to make things simpler and easier for you to find and enjoy. To me, it’s gorgeous, and powerful. Inviting. And just what I wanted,  thanks to the talented Victoria Potts Keale, my Everything Web guru who pulled off an amazing feat in an incredibly short period of time.

Because, you see, I had learned on Friday that The Wall Street Journal would be running a feature on my work with a client on Wednesday of the next week, and I wanted my site to be ready to handle the people who’d come to check me out. And, boy, they came by the boatloads. Folks signed up for the newsletter, sent me messages via email and LinkedIn, and said, “atta girl” profusely on Facebook and Twitter.

The client, Becky Johnson, also received a lot of love from her friends, colleagues and even strangers, including a heartfelt phone call from a reader on the West Coast – just to say how inspired she’d been by Becky’s journey.

Although client confidentiality is in my marrow and I never disclose who I’m working with unless the client discloses first, when the WSJ reporter contacted me to see if I had a good story to tell about a client who made a career breakthrough after getting coached, I immediately thought of Becky. How thrilled was I that both she and her CEO, Lisa Gable, agreed immediately to participate. Their openness and generosity allowed thousands if not millions of people to see that there might be a new way to manage leadership growth within organizations. They saw Lisa and Becky’s success and learned from it. Maybe they’ll even model it.

And, for the curious, all the work Becky and I did together consisted of five coaching sessions. Five. Hours. With some email thrown in there. Five hours and Becky got promoted to VP.

For long time readers, you know I love being a coach. But having a story like Becky’s out in public reminds me about why I deeply love this work. It’s transformational. It’s positive. It’s powerful.

And it works.

Can you say that about your job?

I sure wish you could. Wouldn’t that be something?

This busy past week I also interviewed Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-Arkansas, retired), who was the youngest woman in history to be elected to the U.S. Senate. Blanche talked about how she ended up in public service, and how she managed to chair the Senate Agriculture Committee while raising twin toddlers. Seems we like to beat up on politicians these days, but listen to Blanche talk about her work with heart, and passion, and you’ll understand her drive to serve – it’s  inspiring.  Take a listen: WiseWork radio show

This week, too, I am launching my Annual Coaching Program for 2014. It’s a rather novel approach to coaching – a deep dive into whatever you want to transform with all the coaching your schedule will allow. I tested the program with six clients this year, and I have to admit – the successes have been compelling. And amazing. And, once again, I am reminded how much I love what I do. Look at the information page for more details, and let me know if you have questions.

And people have started using  the 2014 Personal Planning Tool which is up and ready for your use. It’s a downloadable pdf worksheet you can use to review 2013 and make a solid plan for what you want to accomplish in 2014. There’s no charge for this 13-page tool – it’s my gift to you.

Because when I stop to think about my legacy and what I hope to create in the world, you figure prominently. I want you to have the success Becky’s found. I want you to be clear, and confident, and visionary, and able to handle crisis. To step up and out, as needed. To make changes where changes will help you, and to have the clarity to go out and do the kind of work you can be proud of.

It’s a big vision, I know. But in my experience, utterly, entirely, totally doable.

Let’s get started.

 

Challenge Assumptions

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Grocery shopping cart“So, Michele, it must be nice to be paid to tell people what to do,” says the friend I ran into at the grocery store. I noted the raised eyebrows and head shake, and sensed that he was…amused at my livelihood. “Well, the sad news is that I don’t get to boss anyone – not even my kids, it seems, unless I’m holding their car keys and my wallet. Coaching is more about guiding a client to find the right answers for them.”

As I rolled on down the aisle, I was sort of wincing, wishing I had thrown out a better comeback. C’mon, Michele – What is executive coaching and why does it matter?

Thankfully, the folks at Harvard Business blogs posted something this week that really helped. In Before Working with a Coach, Challenge Your Self-Assumptions, author John Boldoni says to those  thinking about getting a coach:

“Effective coaching is often a matter of challenging assumptions, and the biggest assumptions often reside in the mind of the person being coached.”

Yes! That’s it! I help people challenge their assumptions so they can get extremely clear. And working from that clarity, take the steps necessary to get the results they need.

[Now I am fully prepared for the produce aisle, thankyouverymuch.]

Case in point: my client Joe. Now, of course his name isn’t Joe, but we’ll call him that to preserve his confidentiality. Joe came to me a couple of years ago to reinvigorate his career. See, after a divorce he’d made a decision to throttle back a little on the career front so he could be a custodial parent. Once one kid was in college and the others nearly finished with high school, he decided to throttle his career back up. He wanted to get promoted, use his leadership skills more and do something more meaningful.

But he had a few assumptions about what was really possible, all tied up in confidence, self-esteem, and comfort with risk-taking – key elements required for effectively putting himself back in the mix. We had to tackle those assumptions and plenty of others as they came up before we could construct the plan that he would execute. And day by day, over about eighteen months, Joe executed on the plan.

And just this week, he said to me, “Michele, this coaching thing has really paid off. I wasn’t so sure there for a bit, but everything we’ve covered has put me where I am.” And the place he’s in is this – the candidate for a new big position internally and being recruited for a big position externally.

A few weeks ago, I sat down and crunched some numbers about my executive coaching practice. Who are my clients, and why do they come to me? How do they come to me? Anyone who’s in business for themselves can benefit from this sort of analysis. I learned:

Since January 1st, I have coached 10 men and 21 women in one-on-one, hour-long sessions. This excludes the laser coaching I do in The Club program, which has 44 members.

Of those 31 individuals, nine were senior executives, and seven were lawyers. Six were senior-level job seekers. Five owned their own businesses. Three were mid-level professionals and one was a coach. The bulk of them came to me by referral from past clients or professional colleagues.

With the exception of the job seekers, everyone wanted pretty much the same thing – “how can I be better at my job? How can I lead better? Communicate better? Manage crisis better? Create a strategy? Build?”

And every single client needed to challenge assumptions. Like the assumption that they are too old. Or too young. Or that the gap on their resume is too large. Or that Charlie won’t change. Or that Charlotte is their mortal enemy. That their lack of a specific degree is a deal-breaker.

That this isn’t the path I thought I’d be taking at this point in my life.

Oh, man, I love my work. I truly do. Because all day long, I’m challenging assumptions. All day long, I’m helping people find a new way.

Each day, with every session that concludes, I see minds opening and possibilities born.

I gotta tell you – it’s so much more fulfilling than bossing.