Pause. Think. Go.

Flash back

It was several years ago that I met him on a Bombay Walk - the ones where they take you around to see and learn about the colonial aspects of S.Bombay. He was a journalist working for a well-known newspaper and I liked his articles on the art and culture of the city. I was happy to see him and for an opportunity to talk to him about his work. So I walked up alongside, introduced myself and told him how much I admired his articles.

'Which article?' he asked.

I mumbled something like. 'Er...I do not remember which one exactly....but...but....

To which he snapped back, 'You haven't read my articles.'

Though I  had genuinely meant my appreciation of his work, as often happens when asked specifically what, you tend to fumble for words. You are hard put to explain what it is you have liked. For, it is just a feeling you have about the person or the work they do.

The person you have expressed your admiration for, thinks your inability to express the feeling is a sign of your insincerity.

Flash forward 

Even after all the decades that have passed since the incident, I still remember the experience with an acute sense of embarrassment. It was Carl Buehner who said, 'They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.' And his words describe the experience perfectly! 

I think the words of Buehner are particularly relevant in today's lockdown times, when cooped up at home, we tend to spend inordinately long periods of times on social media. Given the large number of posts and messages we have to go through, and the conversations we have on them, it is wise to remember to be careful with our responses. Given the urge to respond quickly to messages, we tend to overlook the feelings our words are likely convey to the receiver. Especially so with the abbreviated words we tend to use to save time and even with the emojis which we choose to respond with.

So before you  respond to messages on the social media, remember to;

•  Pause
• Think - spend a few moments rereading what you have written. 
• Does the language you have employed, convey exactly what you have in your mind? 
• How is it likely to make the receiver feel? Remember, your words may very well have an impact on the nature of your relationship with him or her.
  
• Go - press the Send button.
  

 

 

 

The Soft Side of Leadership

SoftBank president Nikesh Arora’s corporate identity has been of a no-nonsense high achiever who valued his privacy. However, at a recent business awards ceremony, Arora, held his wife's hand through much of the evening. And when it was his turn to speak, he choked up talking about his ailing father and family.

Insight
When a leader reveals his soft human side, people warm to him. Displaying vulnerability is as much required of a leader,  as showing the strong invincible side. The wisdom of leadership lies in knowing when.

Navigating Emotions

To navigate something as intangible and changeable as cologne, industry “noses” require a vocabulary of sorts. But the key among all the nomenclature is the ”family” to which the fragrance belongs (eg ‘floral’, ’aquatic’, woody’). Like human families, these boxes often bleed into another and you can end up with unusual hybrids. - Bloomberg

CoachConnect
Human emotions, like fragrances, are just as intangible and changeable, and they too can end up as unusual hybrids. The coach, by helping the client give appropriate labels to his emotions provides a handle to better deal with them. 

Unproductive Emotions Take a Toll

The key to projecting an air of power is being self-confident, says the Business Insider. And the worst thing for self-confidence is having a nagging thought about a flaw in your appearance. No one may notice the missing button on your jacket, but as soon as start to worrying about it, your behavior may unconsciously draw attention to it.

CoachConnect
Has it happened that what you are worried most about, turns out as inconsequential as that missing button on the jacket? Unproductive emotions take a toll on our priorities. Conversations with a coach, help take a healthier perspective on life.

Using Emotions to Your Advantage

#LivingStories
“McEnroe needed to believe that the world was against him, he needed to get angry, to stoke the competitive beast inside of him. He played his best when hard done by - with justification or otherwise. Especially in the 70s and early 80s when the world hadn't been exposed to the ‘competitiveness’ and ‘aggression’ of the modern age, Mac the Mouth was an aberration.”
“…..but being too nice comes with a price too, especially if you are nice to the wrong person.” - R. Kaushik In the Wisden

#MyLearning
Anger and politeness, both have their uses. Use with discretion.

Acts of Kindness

#LivingStories
“If you are unemployed and need an outfit cleaned for an interview, we will clean it for free”, says a sign outside the establishment of In The Bag cleaners. Below this is a personally signed note from Team Leader Dave Coyle, which says,  “When times are tough, we will help you look your best.”

#MyLearning
Reading the sign aroused a mixture of emotions in me - a slight constriction of the throat followed by a sunny feeling which Wodehouse would have described as, “The bird’s on the wing, the snail's on the thorn,  God’s in his heaven, all's right with the world“. If those my emotions, one can only imagine the feelings of the receiver of the act and the giver.

Each of us, whether In business or employed, have the capacity to do an act of kindness to those who are less privileged than us. It does not cost much, but can be immensely gratifying and emotionally rewarding to both the giver and the receiver of the act.

Doing and Being

LivingStories
American businessman Mark Cuban believes the worst advice he has received is, “Follow your passion.“ He says everyone has multiple passions, “but those don't lead to career success.” What does, he claims, is finding something hard to work at. By following your effort instead of your passion, you can develop skill and learn to appreciate it.

#MyLearning
Doership has shades of nishkama karma, effort without expectation. But behind every effort is an emotion; anger (vengeance), fear (of loss) or passion (happiness). I'd rather let passion the healthiest of them all, drive my efforts.

Emotional Intelligence

Speaking about the making of her recent film Talvaar,  filmmaker Meghna Gulzar says for her, it was curiosity that triggered  the immediate, spontaneous urge to do the film.  Emotions started coming in during her research on the story. But she shut them down when when working and discussing the script with Vishal Bhardwaj and during the making of the film. Now that the film has been released, emotions are coming back.  And she is letting them.
#MyLearning
Emotions can lend sharpness and acuity to our thinking. They can also lead us astray by making us act in impulsive and unwanted ways. Wisdom lies in knowing when to engage with our emotions and when to keep them in check.

The Relationship Dance

"Love is not the only emotion felt between a mother and child.  The relationship is like a dance - sometimes you are close, sometimes you pull away;  there is passion, anger and forgiveness;  and much like a dance,  the relationship will end one day." - Anita Ratnam, Indian classical dancer.

#MyLearning
Every relationship goes through the motions of this very dance - whether personal or professional. While relationships with no expectations attached are the most lasting, it is good to occasionally reflect on what a relationship means to us - what emotional sustenance does it provide us?  Does it make me feel wanted? Does it give me joy and happiness? Does it insire and motivate?  And more such questions. The idea being not to treat the relationship a transaction,  but to make us aware of it's importance in our lives.

Picture: aninception.com

Focused Motivation

"To compose, I need to be happy and to have free mind space, " says A.R. Rahman the Oscar winning music composer. While Leander Paes, who won the US Open Mixed Doubles title along with Martina Hingis says, "if I can keep Martina happy,  if I can keep her relaxed,  the tennis I don't even have to worry about. "

#MyLearning
Focusing our motivation results in our single-minded immersion and harnessing of our emotions into performing and learning. The emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand.

Life is About The Choices We Make

Mohan was a charming fellow, every time I ran into him on the street, he would flash his good-natured smile and wave at me. Then one day, he happily told me that he had started a catering business, and pressed his newly printed visiting card into my hand. i told him I certainly would recommend his services to people and keep him in mind when the occasion arose. And I did hire his catering services for a few family functions. At these times, i noticed, it was his wife who was running the show. A grim-faced woman, who unlike Mohan, never smiled, she would be busily looking after the details of the service, keeping a close watch on every aspect of the service. Mohan was employed in a pharma company, but when his catering business started flourishing, he quit his job, and he became the smiling front for his catering service, winning over people with his charm and good nature. Soon, I lost touch with Mohan, and my running into him became less and less frequent, and soon, he just slipped from my mind. Then one day, after years, I ran into him again. He wasn't his usual decently dressed self - his clothes seemed slightly disheveled, and so was his hair. Moreover, he passed me on the street without looking at me! I was surprised, this wasn't the Mohan, I knew, but I just dismissed at it being one of his bad hair days. This happened on a couple of more occasions - his appearance was disheveled and he did not acknowledge my greeting. Finally, one day when i met him again, i stopped him and asked him whether he had forgotten who i was and why he was behaving in this strange manner. He was silent for a while and then in a sad voice he told me, "My wife is no more." He did not say anything more, and neither did I pursue the matter further. I later learnt from people that he had given up his catering business and had devoted himself to looking after the house and his only son.

Dealing with life situations and events

Tragedies are a part of our life - we lose people and things we hold dear, jobs are lost and relationships broken, which are actually a test of our Response-ability - the ability to cope with life's situations and events in the most appropriate manner.While we may not be responsible for most of what happens, we are completely responsible for our reaction to what is happening. Rather than placing blame, this way of thinking acknowledges personal power. Response-ability is the capacity to choose. Out of many possible responses, I can always choose the one I make. Response-ability is remembering to be in charge and make careful, thought-out choices.When we respond with the best of our ability, and accept and handle whatever consequences we have helped to create, we not only benefit from your choices, but our life and relationships will improve immensely. 

Coaching Using Principles of Behavioral Economics

Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, Thaler and Sunstein, authors of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, explain, being human, we all are susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes make us poorer and less healthy; we often make bad decisions involving education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, the family, and even the planet itself. Decision makers do not make choices in a vacuum. They make them in an environment where many features, noticed and unnoticed, can influence their decisions. The goal of Nudge is to demonstrate how thoughtful “choice architecture” can be established to nudge us in beneficial directions without restricting freedom of choice. The person who creates that environment is, in the authors terminology, a choice architect. 

Reading more on Nudge in the various web references gave me more and more the feeling of just how remarkably similar the role of a choice architect is to that of a coach. Here's why: 

• Anyone  who indirectly influences the choices people make, the authors say, can be called "choice architect". A coach does exactly that, hence he is a  "choice architect" too.
• Choice architecture, can be used to help nudge people to make better choices (as judged by themselves) without forcing certain outcomes upon anyone. This is one of the basic tenets of coaching. 
• The tools described by the authors (though differing in nature and application) sound very similar to the ones a coach would use. For instance, the tools highlighted are: 
• Expecting error (the coach tool: empathy) 
• Understanding mappings (the coach uses assessments to map client needs) 
• Giving feedback (a primary coaching tool)
• Structuring complex choices (the coach is a clarifier)
• Creating incentives. (the coach uses small wins as incentives so client is motivated for the big wins)

The remarkable similarities set me thinking. How could one incorporate the discipline of behavioral economics on which the book is based, with the practice, and business, of coaching?

This article is my attempt to do just that.

Applying Principles of Behavioral Economics to Coaching

The use of behavioral principles is fundamental to any coaching practice. Behavioral economics can help coaches understand better what every coach always understood, albeit unwittingly: That people are not rational.  Any new understanding of people's behaviour can only give coaches a better understanding of how exactly coaching works. Or how they can make it work better. 

Stephen Covey the personal development guru applied his mind to why humans behave the way they do and what they could do to avoid human susceptibilities that lead to wrong decisions. The result was his book The 7 Habits of Effective People, and the first of the seven habits is Be Proactive. Proactive people, says Covey, are those who are in control of themselves and do not surrender to a stimulus in the external environment but use their personal power to deal with the stimulus, whether people or situation. How are they able to do this?

Stephen Covey's Proactive Model

Proactive people know that there is a gap between a Stimuli and Response and within that gap is their freedom to choose the right response to maintain control over their self and be above circumstances.

What about people who are not proactive? Often, resistance to change is the result of lack of clarity because of a conflict between the rational and the emotional mind which comes in the way of allowing any change to stick. Ideas, and in turn change, is effective when it stays with you over time and changes the way you think.

Weaving the two models together- Thaler and Sunstein's derived from behavioral economics and Covey's based on new age theories of personal development, could, I realized, help create a useful model for coaching: Nudge Coaching

In his Proactive model, Covey talks of the four tools humans have at their command to effectively exercise their freedom to choose. The four 'hot buttons of pro-activity' being:

1. Self-awareness
2. Imagination
3. Conscience
4. Independent Will

Through the process of Nudge Coaching applied to each of the four 'hot buttons of proactivity', the coach would be able to resolve the conflict between the rational and emotional mind, and makes change happen.

The Nudge Process of Coaching 

Choice architects, according to Thaler and Sunstein, can have considerable power to influence choices. Or to use our the authors preferred language, they can nudge. The authors explain this term as "...any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives." Most important from a coaching point of view - nudges are not mandates.  

Coaching clients are busy people who are trying to cope in a complex world and cannot think deeply about every choice they make. They adopt rules of thumb that sometimes leads them astray. The Nudge Coach brings organization and structure to the contexts in which people take decisions. Choice architecture does not seek to reduce choices - just influence them in order to improve the client's lives, as judged by themselves. Humans are susceptibile to various biases and hence the way an issue is framed makes a huge difference to the success of a coaching engagement. In other words, people are nudgable. In the Nudge coaching process, a coach helps clients to structure their choices and create strategies that makes it easier for them to do things that improve their lives. He uses four types of nudges to achieve these coaching goals:

1. Nudging Client Self-awareness: Faced with important decisions about their lives, people often make pretty bad choices—choices they would not have made if they paid full attention and possessed complete information, unlimited cognitive abilities and complete self-control. They adopt rules of thumb that sometimes lead them astray. The explanation, according to Thaler and Sunstein, is rooted in some well-documented human behavioral quirks that are amplified by information overload and trying to cope in a complex world. All this leaves people with little time to think deeply about every choice they have to make. The Nudge Coach helps create awareness of their cognitive abilities and the resources available to them for better self-control.
2. Nudging Client Imagination: Sunstein and Thaler have spent a lot of time thinking about how people can be encouraged to make better decisions, and they offer some intriguing ideas. Their central thesis: People will make better choices if they are given a clear and well-designed set of options that acknowledge and offset human idiosyncrasies. For helping client's design and structure the options available to them,  the coach has to take into account his knowledge of behavioral science. By helping to rightly structure the choices available to the client, a coach helps to nudge clients to do the 'right' thing.
3. Nudging Client Conscience: Mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik explains that the ideas of right or wrong, good or bad exist only among humans. No animal is good or bad - only humans would pity the antelope being being made meal of by a predator such as a a cheetah in a National Geographic documentary. Humans are greedy, unlike animals, who stop eating once their stomachs are full. Thus says Pattanaik, humans have the capacity to be worse than animals (greedy) and better than animals (generous). And it is in these subjective choices - greed vs generosity, right vs wrong and good vs bad that the coach, by structuring choices available to the clients, helps them to to improve decisions about their health, wealth and happiness.
4. Nudging Client Will: One of the basic tenets of behavioural economics is that people do not always take rational decisions. They have  status quo bias and change doesn't come easily. For reasons of laziness, fear, and distraction, many people will take whatever option requires the least effort, or the path of least resistance. All these forces imply that if, for a given choice, there is a default option—an option that will obtain if the chooser does nothing. The solution - helping coaching clients first make their choices, and then hold them accountable to their choice. Holding them accountable can at times  make the client feel challenged. A useful approach to overcome this is the one akin to the program in gmail. Every time a user mentions the word attachment but does not include one, prompts a pop-up, “Did you forget your attachment?” Similarly, by reminding the client of his commitment to the choice he has made, the coach can nudge the client will in non-threatening manner.

The Nudge Coach

By keeping an eye on the four nudges, a coach aka a choice architect can improve the outcomes for clients on their journey of the head and heart to fulfill their potential.

On Why CEO's Procrastinate. And What They Could Do About It

And when is there time to remember, to sift, to weigh, to estimate, to total?

                                                                                                   - Tillie Olsen

From my years of coaching CEOs, one of the important understanding is that the first and most prominent challenge for CEOs in the pursuit of their goal is - procrastination. In other words, getting started on the key priorities that will make their biggest ideas a reality.The reason for the procrastination? The threat of uncertainty.

Timothy M. Pychyl, who specializes in the study of procrastination has an explanation for this on his blog. According to him, people when faced with a task about which they are uncertain on how to proceed, experience negative emotions and threats to self. To cope with this experience, they end up delaying the task, escaping the negative emotions and rationalizing the choices they make. I have had CEOs come up with all kinds of excuses for not implementing the tasks they had committed to. Excuses such as "I cannot think beyond a three months planning horizon" (to delay their long-term planning exercise). Or "My customers insist on speaking only to me and not my subordinates" (to avoid delegating to them). Or even rationalizations such as the executive in the cartoon below.

 What such CEOs are doing is that instead of self-regulating their behavior to stay on task such as mustering their creativity to make a plan of action, they self-regulate their emotions. Mood for them, takes precedence. While useful in the short-term in terms of mood repair or protecting self-esteem, this short-termism can have serious long-term consequences for their companies. Consequently, they end up undermining their company's, as well as their own performance.

Strategist and author Kaihan Kippendorf, is right on target when he says that most CEOs invest their energy at any one time on four initiatives:

1. Wastes of time: hard-to-execute ideas that would have little impact on their achieving their goals. 

 
2. Tactics: easy-to-execute ideas that will not significantly impact their success. 

3. Winning moves: easy-to-execute ideas with huge impact. 

4. Crazy ideas: difficult-to-execute ideas that, if you could figure out how to make them happen, would really make a difference.

Investing Time Wisely

If they have the best interests of their companies at heart, and wish to invest their time and energy more efficiently, CEOs should practice the following.

• Dump the Wastes of Time and focus energy on more productive activity.
• Execute the Tactics or the easy-to-do stuff of the second , but bear in mind that they are not strategic priorities.
• Attend to the Winning moves NOW.
• Instead of dismissing the Crazy ideas as "go to the moon" ones, spend their time figuring out how to make them feasible.

To begin practice, they should ask themselves two questions: 

( i ) If I successfully executed this initiative, what impact would it have on my ability to achieve my goals? and 

( ii ) How easy is it execute this initiative?

An an even better way; they can get themselves a Business coach who can support them to question themselves in sifting and weighing their options and estimating chances of success. And most important - remember the commitments they made to themselves!

To know more on how I can help you, check out my website http://arurbizcoach.com/

Move Over Visioning. Enter the Future Story

Jeremy King is an English restaurateur whose interview with Vir Sanghvi appeared in a recent issue of Brunch. Asked what his principles for starting a new hotel were, Jeremy made a point which appeared to be of particular interest to me for my Visioning workshops which I conduct as a strategic coach. This was about how every hotel must have a back story. 

A back story is an essentially cinematic concept. What it means is that the events you see on screen have a background, a story that explains their provenance, even if we don't have to confront that back story in the actual plot. An example is the story actor Michael Caine created around his role as the butler in the Batman series. He fleshed out a story about how Alfred the butler was a former British commando who took up to cooking on difficult postings and who went to work for Thomas Wayne (Batman's civilian avatar) when he retired. This story helped Caine to not only understand Bruce Wayne's motivations, but also to understand Batman's world of violence. Moreover with his commando background, the butler could actually help Batman in his fight against crime. All this Caine made up because he reckoned nothing made sense with out a back story. 

Jeremy applied the same principle to the new hotel he is opening in London's Oxford Street. According to the story,  the hotel was built in the 1920s by a rich American who loved London. It was the toast of the town, Then as the American owner went back to the States and the hotel fell on bad times and was sold to a modern chain which destroyed its character and now King and his partner are renovating it to recover its lost lustre. None of this of course is true, so why bother? Because, says King, it gives the new owners, the architect, the designer, the management and the staff an idea of what the hotel should be. They don't just say, "Let's convert this office block into a hotel." They say, "What would the hotel have looked like at its peak in the 1920's?"And while designing the rooms, they ask themselves, "What would a luxury hotel built in the Jazz Age have offered to its guests?" The back story serves as reference point for everybody in the same way that Alfred's back story told Michael Caine how Alfred would react to any situation. According to King unless a hotel had a convincing back story, it failed in the long run.

Source: Philantopic

Source: Vision Ohio

 And this brings me to the connection between the back story and the 'future story' people can create for their companies. Just like a well-thought-out and crafted back story serves as a reference point for everyone involved with the project of building or renovating a hotel, a carefully crafted future story can serve as a fleshed out story of future success in companies. The individual stories help people to understand the dreams and concerns of their colleagues, and the stories lead to significant themes around which an energizing  and motivating picture of the future can be painted. The resulting one story, embodying critical themes from all the stories, helps to create an irresistible pull which acts like a compass, a battery pack, and a talking map all in one.

So instead of making people rack their brains and go thorough an exhausting day(s?) of a  Visioning exercise, move to the Future Story, it will enable your people to:

• make up stories, plausible or fantastic, to paint the future
• understand organizational issues better because they are presented in the form of a story
• sort out and describe what has happened to oneself or others, often with a richness of context and detail, and often with great relish
• envision chains and webs of causation
• build scenarios and to plan and think strategically
• resonate with the stories of others; to see another's viewpoint when presented with the stories which underlie or embody that viewpoint
• to discover themes in the events of the story
• to recognize (or select) certain elements as significant, as embodying certain meanings and to draft a road map of the future

And finally, don't forget to tell your people to give their stories a touch of the cinematic. The  gloss, and shine will illuminate the future everyone can look forward to.

To make it a shining beacon to the future.

References:

1.  http://www.co-intelligence.org/I-powerofstory.html

A Note to Ms Kalpana Morparia@JP Morgan

"...there was certain comfort in walking across to your boss and talking to him - that always helps in making decisions. As a CEO, I can reach out to my colleagues, but otherwise I am pretty much on my own." That was Kalpana Morparia, the top gun at the Indian arm of JP Morgan, talking to the Economic Times about the change she experienced when she moved up from her earlier position as the Joint MD at ICICI bank.

Most leaders experience a range of emotions on any given day - anxiety loneliness, frustration, grandiosity and for dealing with it, as Ms Morparia describes, they are pretty much on their own. At such times, what senior executives need is a sounding board, a conversation partner a 'truth speaker' - and they cannot find any of these within their organizations.

And that is where a coach comes in.

The coach isn't tied to the organization or anyone else, they are tied only to the coachees, so  they support them in these times. Even more importantly, the coach also supports them in what they want and where they want to go. As Washington, D.C.-based executive coach Linda Finkle put it, "Even our families, who want the best for us, can't be unbiased or totally objective. What you do or do not do impacts them, whether it's positive or negative. A coach is not impacted by your decisions, your wins or losses, or anything else."

This doesn't mean that company goals aren't supported by coaching—indeed, the coach was most likely hired by the company to support the executive's efforts to achieve those goals. Even so, the role of the coach is not to represent specific company needs or interests. "The perspectives they provide, the alternatives discussed, and everything else has no agenda except to support the coachee," says Finkle.


Ms Morparia, are you listening? Now that you do not have the comfort of walking over to Mr Kamath's cabin and talking to him to unburden yourself, would you care to have a coach?

You know whom to contact!

The Emotional Investment Finder

You are what your 

deep driving desire is,

As your desire is

so us your will,

As your will is

so is your deed,

As your deed is

so is your destiny

                  - Upanishads

Will stemming from desire, aka commitment, says Michael Neill, is that place inside ourselves, that recognizes the inevitability of creating any result we are willing to put 100% of our mental and physical energy into achieving. Will also calls for a deep driving desire - an emotional investment in the lengths one wishes to go in achieving the goals. A commitment born out of an emotional investment says, "I will get there or I will die trying" - and as much as it is one of the most powerful forces in the universe and one in which any one can tap into at any moment, simply by making the decision to do so.

But for J my client, this decision wasn't simple. Long on planning and short on commitment, at every one of our coaching sessions, he made enthusiastic plans and actions to achieve his goals - even making a careful note of them in his diary. However at the subsequent session, when I asked him about the action taken on his earlier commitments, he would have acted on none. On probing further, I discovered that he never referred to his diary to check on his commitments.

The challenge for me was to make J act on his commitment, but how? Just then I happened to came across a Michael Neill tip, which I thought with a little bit of tweaking, could help me push J across the chasm from interest to commitment. Based on the tip, I designed an exercise to help me evaluate his degree of commitment to achieving his goals, and called it The Emotional Investment Finder Scale  Here's a quick look at it from the bottom up:

Exercise

The Emotional Investment Finder

To achieve my goals, I commit to...

Want them

Choose them

Strive for them

Act on them

Give them priority

Honor them consistently

Find them satisfying/affirming/pleasing

Miss them when they are gone

Adhere to them under pressure

Uphold them when facing resistance or opposition

Sacrifice for them

Fight for them

Suffer for them

Working through the exercise helped J evaluate just how much his goals meant to him and the degree of  commitment he was willing to invest in achieving them. The exercise brought about a significant improvement  in his "actions done" rate.