Cleaning your own temple first: a primer for coaches (part two)

Energy Work and Coaching Community of Practice
Led by Rhona Post, MA, MCC
When: April 16, 2012

In March, we began the discussion of what it means to get our acts together so that when we meet with clients, we can meet them where they are, and be confident that we will bear witness to their experience, fully present to what is being shared. 

The funny thing about being present is that it is not a thing, rather it is a way of being, spacious and lucid, a result of our intention to consistently recognize and release stories to which we are attached. This skill is built over time employing various practices, including mindfulness meditation and clutter clearing.

First you have to recognize that you’ve got some cleaning to do; then you have to start the practice. Cleaning our own temples first is not a psychological exercise.  It requires a felt experience, our ability to observe our emotional, physical, spiritual and even intellectual clutter. Clutter can obscure all our sense faculties and reduce our ability to be spacious and whole. 

No matter how much control we exert to contain/avoid/negate the impact of our stories on others, the containment and control create mental agitation/stress. We’re just so impervious to our own stress that we don’t realize how spacious we can be until we eliminate the stressor.

Rhona Post

I’m inviting my coaching colleagues to bring their clutter cleaning practices to the conversation on Monday, April 16th. What are some of your best tools, including energetic modalities you use to keep your temple clean? The more the merrier on these calls.

For more Information on healer coaching,  contact Rhona Post: www.facebook.com/rhonapost or by email at rhonapost@gmail.com.

April - Spring is here!

Spring has certainly arrived.Warmer weather, flowers everywhere and a fresh feeling in the air.

Whether you are celebrating Easter or Passover or any other seasonal festival, the chances are you've been doing some cleaning and sorting, organizing and maybe disposing.

I love that it's the perfect opportunity to think about what we really need; what we don't have space for and what we can let go of.

It seems to me that this is so important when we apply it to running a business.

It's also what happens in a good coaching session.

I want to explore this on a few levels.  Will you join me?

So let's take your physical space.  How do you feel when you go into your office and sit down to work? 
Is the space comfortable and clutter free? 
Do you feel stressed about the filing you need to do or the drawers filled with papers that you haven't yet sorted? 
Does your office become a storage place for toys, bags or junk belonging to other members of the family?  I can really relate to this one!

And let's consider your mental and emotional space.Are you living in stories of stress and overwhelm?
Do you have a scarcity mindset – are you worried about having enough income or the rising costs of your business and life?
Do you work too hard and support your clients, family and friends without considering your own needs?

Well, spring is here.
It's time to clean up your life!

Here are 2 simple ideas – no excuses, do it today!

1. Take a morning to sort out your physical space.  Clean out the drawers, tidy your table and get rid of the items that should not be there.  You've been avoiding this forever, but it'll only take a few hours to sort out. 
2. Acknowledge that we are living in an abundant universe.  We don't have to create abundance, we simply have to recognize and open up to what is already there.  Once you truly accept this, you're life and business will change, promise!!!

Lisa Bloom, PCC

Take a walk, breathe in the beautiful sounds and scents of spring, and create the story of your perfect spring day – rebirth, re-energize and celebrate as your story creates your reality!

Lisa Bloom, PCC is founder of Story Coach Inc. and the Certified Story Coach Program.  Download her ebook ‘Using Stories to Get Great Clients’ at http://www.story-coach.com.

Time to say thanks!

In the United States, April is considered National Volunteer Month. Though our reach is far beyond the US, the ICF would like to pause and thank all ICF volunteers this month. If it weren’t for your tireless efforts, countless hours, and imagination, the ICF would not be where it is today. So whether you currently serve on a committee, a Board of Directors (global or chapter level), or in some other capacity, or you have served the ICF in some way, shape, or form in the past, know that you are appreciated. We are forever grateful for you.

Learn how to listen so that others can do the same

"Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery." Dr. Joyce Brothers

There is a big difference between being heard and being listened to. In any organization, it is fundamental that any decision or plan that is communicated, to be efficiently applied on time. However, my practical experience in business shows that all this can only be achieved with one cost, a cost that fewer and fewer managers are willing to pay for. Working with Alex as a coach, has given me the chance to observe the impact of turning a work environment into a complete “business machine.”

He was a manager whose decisions and actions were exclusively based on lists: of the tasks that must be fulfilled, of deadlines, programs etc. Almost every employee had a stash of papers on the desk with every task that must be finished by the end of the day. Usually, tasks were fulfilled and everyone always had something to do, leaving little time for communication or other explanations. The business was running like a machine. Sometimes, employees had to work twice as much, making them think only about ways of diminishing that stash of papers, without encouraging them to be creative or to bring new ideas…At one point however, this mechanism started to fall apart, as people became used with the work at the office, but with a pointless job as well. Always worrying about the work that they had to do left little time to focus on efficiency or bringing new clients. Nobody was stressed because there was no such thing as a priority; everyone always received an email or a list with all the things that they had to do, but without having a global view of the situation.

The business continued with this working system until Alex asked his key employees, as always, to finish a set of documents for the next day. But the deadline was not respected because everyone still had to finish the work that was left from the previous days when they couldn’t finish every task. But Alex became aware of the situation the next day, when he was supposed to use the required documents for an important press release. It was then when Alex realized that he was not being listened by his people.

There is, indeed, a big difference between being heard and being listened, but most people are too busy to notice it. In any successful business, every decision, action or even minute counts. Many managers believe that there is not enough time to reflect on what should be improved and waste important resources on making other people act on time. It’s easier to be heard, to teach people how to react mechanically, without showing them the big picture, but on a long term, this system will undoubtedly fail, making people lose their potential or the possibility to build performance. An easy, but inefficient way to run a business, is also the one in which you witness peoples’ regress, who prove that they don’t listen, and do nothing about it because you think “that’s just the way they are”. But without action, they will be like that for a long time.

In short, how can you put your soul into logic? How can you afford to invest in feedback or in follow-up sessions where you check what has been done and what not? How can you show your employees what the company objectives are?

The biggest difference between being heard and being listened to is that in the former situation, people act from a mechanical reflex and  are not responsible for the results -  in the latter, they act because they understand certain processes and are able to make connections.

Rodica Obancea, ACC

Listening is an active process which creates the environment for development and new ideas.

So before you invest in convincing your clients to listen and buy, make sure that you convinced your team to listen and act, and in order to achieve this, you must face the situation, and see if you are being heard or…listened to!

Rodica Obancea, ACC, is passionate about change, emergence, living systems. She works within business environment, with managers, teams for achieving ambitious results. For more information, visit www.successcoaching.ro.

Three key mistakes to avoid in setting goals

The below post first appeared on CBS MoneyWatch:

If you set goals for yourself or for others as part of your job, it is imperative you don't make the goal-crushing mistakes discussed below. You already learned how positive fantasies hurt real-world success -- namely, that when you imagine the positive result too vividly, you experience some of the joy and become less energized to actually do the work. But that's just the beginning. Not all goals are created equally. According to research from Harvard Business School, you need to avoid these common errors in setting goals:

1. Goals that are too specific. One benefit of goal is that is focuses your attention. It forces you to focus all of your attention, resources, and energy on a single objective, rather than a range of disparate and even conflicting goal. That can be incredibly powerful. People without goals diffuse their energy across multiple objectives. But have them train their sights on something specific and you will begin to see results. That's the good news.

The bad news? Goals can be too specific. The biggest problem is when you set the wrong goal. You decide to lose 15 pounds. Seems reasonable, but it may be too focused on a specific number and distract from what you really want -- better health. Remember Enron? Their goal was laser-focused on hitting revenue targets -- so much so that bonuses and other incentives were pegged to sales, when a much better goal would have been to target profits.

Another side-effect of excessively targeted goals is that you can become blind to important, but seemingly unrelated, issues. A tragic example of this is the Ford Pinto, which had a tendency to explode in rear-end collisions. The automaker's goal was to bring the car to market, overriding safety concerns.

2. Too many goals. According to the Harvard report, "Individuals with multiple goals are prone to concentrate on only one goal." But which one? Research shows that when we have both quantity and quality goals, we will focus on meeting the quantity goals because they are easier to achieve and measure. The lesson here is to strip away as many of your goals as possible and focus more intensively on a smaller number of objectives.

3. Inappropriate time horizon. We see this play out every quarter in the stock market. For many companies, it's all about hitting this quarter's earnings, even if if that harms long-term growth. It's the kick-the-can approach to goal achievement. And if your time frame is off, your goals may act as a ceiling to performance.

Take an enduring question that the Harvard report addresses -- why it is so hard to get a taxi on a rainy day. Too much people looking for a cab, right? Yes, but there is more to it than that. Cab drivers typically set daily fare goals -- usually double the amount it costs them to rent their cabs for their shift.

With rain comes more customers, so they hit their daily goal early and then go home early. In short, for cabbies the daily goal time-frame is not the most effective. If they set weekly or monthly targets, they could work longer hours when it rains and get off early on days when it is dryer (and slower).

Robert Pagliarini

What are your goals? Are they too focused? Do you have too many? Or do you have time limits that aren't realistic? Review each of your goals so you don't commit the mistakes above and to ensure your goals are designed for maximum success.

Robert Pagliarini is a CBS MoneyWatch columnist, bestselling author, professional life coach, and founder of Richer Life—a community for people who want to achieve more at work and in life. He has appeared as an expert on 20/20, Good Morning America, Dr. Phil, Dr. Drew's Lifechangers and many others. Sign-up for Richer Life Tips at RicherLife.com to get a daily email that provides inspiration and insight each morning.