Recently, a colleague asked for my advice to help prepare for a meeting she plans on facilitating. She anticipates the participants to be…ummm, confrontational. Here is what I gave her.

The concept of driving fear out of an organization has been around for a very long time (thank Dr. Deming - Out of the Crisis and Dr. Maslow - Hierarchy of Needs) but it is not outdated or obsolete. The idea that we might know the right thing to do, or at least have ideas for different things to do, but hesitate to speak of them or give them a try because we are afraid is still relevant today. I find these four bullets: prediction, understanding, control, and compassion very interesting. While these bullets are presented in The Knowing-Doing Gap in the context of what an organization can do during “hard times” (like layoffs, re-structuring, etc.) to mitigate negative impacts on staff both directly and indirectly effected, I think there are other contexts in which they apply.

This simple outline: They to We to Me, was so effective, I have continued applying it to coaching, teaching, and operations optimization.

Comedians often use a very effective technique called a callback. A callback is a joke referring back to a previous joke in a set. This is a great tool for developing courses in which the objective is not to teach a skill but to influence attitudes, critical thinking, making judgements, building culture, developing leadership skills, etc.

I share this experience because I believe professional coaching/mentoring is a two-way street that has the potential to greatly impact both parties. As this example illustrates: neither one of us came anywhere near these ideas on our own.

If we want our culture to change we must start with ourselves. We must be purposeful as we seek to improve. We need to continually look for new ideas and inspiration from all sources because we don’t know what we don’t know; we can’t fix something if we can’t see it or if we don’t know it is broken. This is just a single example the circular nature of the influence attitudes and behaviors have on each other. Our mindset drives our behaviors while our behaviors reflect our attitudes. When we are part of a team/organization/family, these collective behaviors create and drive the culture.

The Strategic Maturity Model from the NIST Balanced Scorecard has become a valuable tool to get a quick assessment of where my clients’ operational structure is and what to focus on next.

Laura Cooley shares her notes and thoughts while reading Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends On It by Ian Leslie

8 COMMON PRACTICES OF EFFECTIVE EXECUTIVES

When I read books for professional development, I have a few "rules":

1 - Always buy a printed version of the book (hard cover is best)

2 - Always have a pen, pencil, highlighter, index cards and post-it notes in hand

3 - Only read for as long as I can process what is on each page

4 - This book is mine! It is now a notebook: margins and end pages are left blank for me to write and draw in.

I can't help but notice that there is only 1 CEO per company. Does that mean that no one else is worth studying and quoting?