The Settle

April 18, 2010 by · Comments Off 

Picture 13My business is change facilitation and my sport is rowing. I’ve learned a lot about both from cox’ns who provide the inspiration for this 4th in a series of four posts about change leadership using social business initiatives as an example.

The first 3 posts were about:

  • Shifting the vantage point through willingness, not willfulness.
  • Releasing the fairy tale and attendant story-lines identified with what’s non-integral and non-sustainable.
  • Creating the conditions in which innovation and productive friction can take place by embracing different perspectives and individual lenses on the new direction.

This post is about execution and action which require one of the most important parts of a race or practice that the cox calls: the settle. A lot of business leaders get this wrong. They launch a new project with a racing start and push everyone to hold that pace indefinitely. But its the settle that results in purposeful attention, high quality and finding the optimal rhythm together. Just like in the racing shell.

Like cox’ns, business leaders facilitate the shift from urgent desire to unity and trust, through giving the right feedback at the right time. Doing so requires a multi-dimensional awareness, what you and your team sense, feel, believe and embody..not just what you know or want.

The settle can’t be confused with settling for less because its a moment by moment refusal to be less, especially when it hurts. It must be understood as the collective action that creates shared responsibility for aligning with the desired results. In social business, those desired results are some form of creating natural influence in your communities and networks and with your audience.

If you lead like a cox’n, that natural influence could show up as gold.

Post to Twitter

Filed under: alignment, change leadership, inclusion, intention, intuition, multi-dimensional, Natural influence, rowing, self-awareness, shift, social business, trust
Tagged: ,

Let It Run

March 10, 2010 by · Comments Off 

In rowing, one of the calls that coxswains and coaches make is “let it run”. That means the rowers stop rowing and the boat continues to move through the water on its own momentum, until it stops. Pause drills are similar. Rowers stop rowing and start again at different points in the stroke in order to feel balance, synchrony and flow.

Speakers can use these techniques because the need to “run-on” and never, ever pause completely prevents them from connecting with or relating to their listeners.

This stems partly from fear of being interrupted and losing air-time. Interruption is rampant in the attention economy. Politicians interrupt, commentators interrupt and celebrities interrupt each other even if it means hijacking a major award show:
Roger Ross Williams / Elinor Burkett at the 2010 Oscars.
Taylor Swift / Kanye West at the 2009 VMA’s.

Those aren’t the only kinds of interruptions. Others include the streams on listeners’ devices as well as on the backchannels that are now being integrated with talks and presentations. Anonymity gives cover to troll-like, negative behavior that can spread through the audience, sometimes turning it against the speaker.

These changes present new kinds of challenges for facilitators and moderators. But what can a speaker do other than try to outrace, drown out or crowd out interruptions, multi-tasking and waves of unfavorable reaction?

Stop, feel and accept the individual, collective and spatial energy in the room.

Connect with one person at a time on the deepest possible level through the pauses, letting the message resonate. Its better to be in relational presence with a few listeners by holding the space rather than to desperately or forcefully fill it up.

Rowers practice letting the boat do the work for them by allowing it to glide under them as they take their rest. In the collaborative, connected world, the lines between speakers and listeners are blurred and the dynamic has shifted. To attempt to control and resist those changes is a missed opportunity to “let it run”.

Post to Twitter

Filed under: Communications, communications leadership, presence, resistance, rowing, self-expression, social communications
Tagged: ,

From Anticipation to Poise

October 1, 2009 by · Comments Off 

Its encouraging to read about emerging change leadership models where the emphasis is shifted from reaction to anticipation. But I think poised for change is a better approach than anticipation of change, and my daily rowing provides a great metaphor for why.
Picture 13

The photo shows the rowers at what is typically called the catch, when the oars go into the water at the right time and place, and in the right way, relative to many variables, all of which are continually changing. Doing it right used to mean anticipating the rowing catch. Our coach Gordon’s approach is more current and cutting edge. Gordon doesn’t call it the catch, which implies “something to do”, but calls it the entry, for which you need only to be poised.

That poise requires stability, stillness, relaxation and deep breathing in addition to the obvious physical strength, conditioning, technique and training required to excel at rowing. Anticipation is contraindicated because it translates to “make it happen” and results in interference with the natural laws of motion and force involved in the rowing stroke. The more you anticipate, the less efficiently you move the boat. Poise, on the other hand, is a “let it happen” approach, through which the rower naturally and positively influences boat speed.

Gordon coaches us to be still and quiet and let the riggers glide past us. Practicing this “non-resistance” rowing technique, I often think of meta physician Florence Scovel Shinn’s truth statement: “Man must live suspended in the moment.”

Anyone in a change leadership position, from the solo service provider to the CEO of large organization will more efficiently direct business response to change by shifting from an anticipatory to a poised state. But it doesn’t work if its just a role, no matter how seriously its played. Poise, and its underlying qualities and requirements need to be embodied in order to create natural influence as a change leader.

Recently, I mentioned to Gordon that my improved confidence comes from consistency through hundreds of miles of practice. And that poise and consistency has made me more competitive, not less. The only thing that’s lessened is the stress that previously accompanied my competitive rowing and racing.

Are you creating stress and resistance in yourself and others to gain or maintain competitive advantage? Suffering is always the best indicator of the need for a shift from “make it happen” to “let it happen”.

Post to Twitter

Filed under: alignment, change leadership, metaphor, Metaphysics, Natural influence, rowing, self-awareness, shift
Tagged: , , ,

Anxious or excited?

July 8, 2008 by · Leave a Comment 

I recently attended a workshop for people who race. It was tailored for competitive rowers but applicable to all sports competitors. What I liked so much about this presentation, given by a former national team rower/psychologist, was her in-depth explanation of why race anxiety is ok and should be accepted by the competitor as a natural combination of adrenaline, excitement and a small amount of anxiety, but not a debilitating amount. I totally related to what she was teaching us because I often get anxious at the start-line and then I get anxious about being anxious. Its a downward spiral of my own creation.

Her presentation also reminded me of Ken Wilber’s shadow work that I’d once read and saved and which teaches that anxiety is a symptom and its original shadow form is excitement. In other words, when we deny or avoid feeling excited, we pay the price by feeling anxious. So why would we deny or avoid excitement? Well that depends on what we believe about our experiences, situations and changes.

If you’re feeling anxious and depressed and race_flag.pngbelieve that some things or everything is falling apart, are you willing for at least a few moments a day to shift your belief and feel the excitement and adrenaline of being at the start-line?

Because in every moment and with every breath, the start-line is exactly where you are.

Technorati Tags:
, ,

Post to Twitter

Filed under: career, going solo, In Transition, rowing, stress relief
Tagged: ,

My paradoxical weight loss story

July 2, 2008 by · Leave a Comment 

I’ve been asked by so many people how I lost weight and went down several sizes that I wanted to share my thoughts. I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve never had weight problems; everyone is fairly tall and thin in my family. But over the past 15 years its crept up even though I figured a lot of it was muscle bulk due to taking up the sport of rowing 10 years ago and also, just getting older.

I workout most days for my rowing and I started doing the Five Tibetans after every workout to re-balance strength and energy. I don’t pay anywhere near strict attention to diet although I cut back on deserts. I found I just couldn’t leave them alone working from home, so I stopped buying them. A rower friend helped me improve my rowing technique, rhythm and posture. That, and the Five Tibetans, and the resulting improvements, translated to how I carry myself all the time. And that’s the sum of what I did physically that likely contributed to the inches I lost off my waist. It may sound like a lot, but I didn’t significantly increase my activity or radically change my diet. I just paid more attention to the quality.

But I also have this very strong intuition that the pounds I lost are directly related to the interior baggage that I lost over the winter. I was worried about my business, I wasn’t inspired to write or develop anything new, my closest family members had moved across country and I deeply missed them, the weather got me down and I got discouraged. On one hand, I was telling myself to work and try harder to improve and change things. But instead, I obeyed some impulses which included getting rid of TV and excess stuff and immersing myself for 6 weeks in self-awareness practice, reading, journaling and just letting go of trying to control anything at all. And that was significant. After that immersion period I found it easy to continue the practices in the normal course of the day because I’d formed habits.

I started noticing that my clothes, especially jeans, started to feel big, and then really big so that I had to give away 2/3′s of my closet. I replaced my jeans with a size that I wore 30+ years ago. I want to stress that losing weight was never a goal or even a back-burner issue; I was happy to be fit, healthy and to excel at the sport I love. Besides, I love food and would not dream of depriving myself of the pleasure of eating.

So the more I tried to explain it to everyone who asked me “how I did it”, the more I realized that my weight/size loss was tied to the old limiting beliefs that I’d shed and replaced during my self-imposed retreat. My weight loss, which meant I went from size 12 to size 6 jeans, presented itself more like a totally unexpected gift and surprise, because although I was not looking for it I really love and appreciate the results.

So its simply not possible to put my weight loss story into a “how-to” context because I believe if anyone tried to do the same, they would not have my experience…because they “tried”. All I can definitively say is that deep stillness, relaxation, consciousness examination and letting go of all concerns and control opens doors, especially doors that you don’t try to open because you don’t even know they exist.

If you’re curious about The Five Tibetans:


Technorati Tags:
, ,

Post to Twitter

Filed under: alignment, Belief, career, going solo, In Transition, intention, rowing, shift, weight loss
Tagged: ,