Ditch the Reasons
June 26, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
I’m observing that people focus on reasons when they resist change.
It can be a considerable obstacle to my helping people and businesses take a new direction. Reasons run the gamut and include, for example:
- why they spent instead of saved
- why they responded late instead of on time
- why they resisted instead of accepted
- why they spoke instead of listened
- why they did nothing instead of acting
The time I spend listening to reasons is mostly wasted because it doesn’t help me help clients with change. This is particularly true post crisis because the reasons are mostly about responding to a world that now no longer exists anyway. Reasons repeated over and over bind people to that world. Reasons aren’t learning, aren’t beliefs and aren’t feelings. They’re obstacles to those and that’s why its important to be vigilant about what triggers reasons.
It makes perfect sense to me that clients made choices and decisions based on what they believed to be true for themselves at the time. What matters most to me is, does that truth serve them now, and if not, what are the beliefs to examine, change and replace?
Leading Through Resistance
February 6, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
Whether you’re leading a company of one or hundreds through a period of uncertainty and change, you’ll reach a point where action is required yet met with resistance, even after a period of time to adapt to uncertainty.
A default response is fighting resistance with more resistance through boundaries, control and force of will. Lines get drawn for self-protection but backfire, further increasing fear, anxiety and hostility.
A different response is to meet resistance, and replace structures that no longer exist, by committing to and modeling for others the highest possible attention to quality in, and respect for doing what’s in front of you to do, including: making decisions, communications, actions and interactions.
Attention to quality may be easier and more expected and accepted in some areas, like providing customer service and team-building. In other areas it may be more challenging, for example: cutting costs, letting people go, dealing with financial loss and making downwardly mobile lifestyle changes.
In every case, attention to quality and respect means there’s awareness. Awareness is not a strategy, its a practice. You practice by noticing when negative beliefs, assumptions or expectations compromise your commitment to quality and respect for the humanity in yourself and others. These contradictory thoughts lose their power over you when you’re aware of them.
When that happens, you’re conscious that how you respond to challenges now, directs where you’re going and how great that experience will be for you, your business, your clients and your community and beyond.
Leading with Presence when Nothing is Certain
January 23, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
Leadership programs have helped executives be empathetic to employees facing organizational change. Soft skills help change leaders give employees the time and space to wander around in a jungle of uncertainty until they’re ready to accept new models, systems and structures.
That uncertainty is now magnified as the world’s financial, economic and business foundations have shifted beneath us. Uncertainty is no longer a place on the path to something different. It is the path.
For today’s leaders – of organizations, teams, start-ups and even solo professional and creative firms (self-leadership) – its all the more important to increase self-awareness and presence in order to hold the space for events to unfold, and for people to adapt.
Holding space, or presence leadership might sound counter-intuitive to habitual change responses that attempt to reduce confusion. Those typically include more doing, telling, reacting, trying to “make things happen” through force of will, jumping to conclusions about the future and making assumptions about the past.
But confusion results when people believe they don’t know something they should know, or need to know. Confusion will be reduced or eliminated only when that belief is replaced by unconditional acceptance of uncertainty.
Presence leaders will communicate and model how this acceptance is a pivotal point of power (not weakness). In doing so, they naturally influence people in their organization to see themselves as cause, not effect, and to be poised for the best, not resigned to the worst.
The jungle metaphor transforms to a still mysterious, but friendlier, supportive and more orderly place where people can wander, but not be lost.
Communications Leadership in Challenging Situations
January 15, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
Times of increased stress and anxiety provide a great staging area for self-aware communication. Although Its increasingly important to nurture relationships, create natural influence and expand social capital, anxiety and stress means more conflicts, misunderstandings and more chances to turn people off.
Its not always the result of a big argument or conflict. Turn-off can be the cumulative result of, subtle, one-word put-downs (“whatever” and “obviously” come to mind), or interrupting and cutting off others.
The effect is to verbally slam the door on people who quickly back off from, or avoid you. The consequent feelings of rejection and insecurity increase fear and accelerate the cycle through which what is expressed constantly contradicts what is desired: that is, connection, acknowledgment, appreciation and understanding.
When mindfulness is neglected in personal and professional conversations and interactions, social equity can quickly slide into a negative balance state. The overdraft, and the unconscious communication habit, can be cured.
There’s a lot of emphasis placed on increasing social IQ in order to better pick up on the subtle cues people exhibit when they negatively respond to you. These are good intuitive skills to learn, but paradoxically, the negative response is often exactly the thing that’s unconsciously desired.
There’s a hidden payoff when words result in the other person feeling threatened, unfairly accused, rejected, discounted, marginalized or drained. The jolt of satisfaction gotten from lashing out or sniping is powerful, and feeds the ego’s need to be right, and superior. But it doesn’t last. What lasts, is Klesha, described in Sanskrit as trap of suffering that can be eradicated only through awareness.
Conscious communication results from practicing a different response in challenging situations. This is done by noticing how the mind races to assumptions and judgments, and how strong negative feelings follow those thoughts. Stopping the mind, and giving the fearful or angry emotion some space, can be done in a matter of seconds. The technique’s effectiveness is increased with slow deep breathing.
Gradually, a shift occurs in which you realize that what you thought you so desperately needed from others, was within your power to give yourself, all along. Interactions and conversations will then initiate from a point of power, not need, and a place of giving, not getting.
Making this shift means fully living up to, and modeling, communication and service leadership.
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The RedShift Web Site Pages and the corresponding Blog: Creating Natural Influence, do not enable comments. I'm more comfortable getting feedback on social sites than here, where the work is so close to who I am, where I've been and where I'm going. If you have a comment or question, or would like to suggest a topic for an upcoming blog article, please contact me. Thank you.
