The Coach Approach

How To Fight Fair In Important Relationships

MOST relationships are important for one reason or another.

Maybe you care about someone in an intimate relationship. Your relationships with your parents and your kids are probably important as well as your relationships with friends. And then there are your professional relationships - how you get along with coworkers, vendors, bosses, and other professionals impacts your ability to succeed and how much you enjoy your work - among other things.

Since we don't always see eye to eye on everything, there are going to be disagreements.

Disagreements can be highly toxic and damaging to these important relationships, even destroying the relationship if we don't learn to fight fair.

20 Habits You Need to Break to Get to the Next Level

"You can get there.  But you have to understand that what got you here won't get you there."  Marshall Goldsmith

Executive coach Marshall Goldsmith's book "What Got You Here Won't Get You There" identifies 20 behaviors that successful people need to change to get ahead at work.  The book elaborates on each of these negative habits and provides useful remedies and strategies for modifying the offending behaviors.

Worth a a read and what I notice is you can apply them at work, at home, in relationships and other places in your life as well.  They don't need much explanation.

1. Winning too much.

2. Adding too much value.

3. Passing judgment.

4. Making destructive comments.

5. Starting with "No," "But," or "However."

6. Telling the world how smart you are.

7. Speaking when angry.

8. Negativity, or "Let me explain why that won't work."

9. Withholding information.

10. Failing to give proper recognition.

11. Claiming credit that we don't deserve.

12. Making excuses.

13. Clinging to the past.

14. Playing favorites.

15. Refusing to express regret.

16. Not listening.

17. Failing to express gratitude.

18. Punishing the messenger.

19. Passing the buck.

20. An excessive need to be "me."

The only one I didn't really get on first read was the last one.  An 'excessive need to be me" is justifying a behavior with "That's just the way I am." 

Which of these behaviors might be coming between you and your next level of success?

Save Time and Energy by Visualizing Your Goals

Visualizing your goals is not simply day dreaming or wasting time.� It is a well-documented tactic for accelerating progress toward your goals and improving performance.

The Science.� In the 1980's, Dr. Denis Waitley discovered in working with the astronauts at NASA that your brain does not tell the difference between a real and an imagined experience.� Through a process called "visual motor rehearsal" at that time and using sophisticated biofeedback machinery, he discovered that when you visualize an event, your brain produces the same pattern of impulses and sends instructions to your biological systems just as if you were doing the event.

The Facts.� Dr. Waitley went on to use this process to improve the performance of Olympic athletes.�Surgeons, successful business people, and elite athletes, such as Michael Jordan, have reported using visualization techniques to reach their goals. Virtually every team at the Beijing Olympics will be employing the services of multiple sports psychologists to continue training these athletes to visualize their success among other things.

Before You Complain Over Someone's Head - Try This

I answer questions over at AllExperts.com on work group relationships.  My single most frequent question is how to deal with difficult coworkers and bosses.  And the single most common inclination is to take the issue over someone's head and to complain to a higher level.

This is not a good STARTING point for common complaints and conflicts!  When you have a problem with a boss or a coworker, speak to the person who can most easily fix it - the person you have the problem with.  Here are a few tips for having that necessary conversation.

• Do it one on one
• Start with the facts and just the facts - "Remember at the meeting yesterday when I suggested that..."
• Add your perception - "I thought/felt/noticed that you rolled your eyes."
• Describe the impact the action had on YOU - "It made me think that you were discrediting my input."
• Listen
• Make a request - "The next time you feel uninspired when I am speaking at a meeting, would you mind giving me some useful input?"
• Create accountability by asking this question, "If this comes up in the future, how would you like me to handle it with you?"
• Find something to appreciate - thank the person for their time, honesty, sharing their perspective, clarifying etc.   Note to self: If you can't find SOMETHING to appreciate YOU are probably being too hard on the other person in the conversation.

The direct conversation takes a little more courage but builds better work relationships.  Think about the idle office gossip that could be eliminated if more people took constructive action.

Excuses, Allies, and Forward Progress

It's been awhile, since January actually, and I am tempted to make excuses for falling off the face of the blogosphere.  I've got plenty of good ones.   Managing my company and leading training programs keeps me pretty busy.  Business is good.  I have been teaching at San Jose State University with Marci Rinkoff, CPCC of MBR Coaching and I am making considerable progress in my vision to positively impact millions of people.  The Coach Approach will be going to India to lead two training programs for industry leaders in New Delhi and Mumbai in a few weeks. 

I also have some pretty lame excuses.  Don't have enough time.  Nothing compelling to write.  And, anyway you look at them, they are just excuses.  Excuses get in the way of forward progress.  They give us permission to take our eye off the ball, to lose focus, miss commitments, get mired in details and forget about the bigger picture.  When you find yourself in this boat, it's a great time to turn to your allies.

Allies are partners in your success, sometimes knowingly and sometimes not.

Secrets of Successful Relationships

I did a couple of workshops last month on Conflict Evolution in the work place and then last week did a workshop for the parent community where three of my children attend school here in San Francisco at Schools of the Sacred Heart.  It is interesting to me, although not surprising, that people everywhere have the same questions and concerns about relationships whether business, personal or intimate.

Anyway, I got several requests for copies of my notes, my cheat sheet on secrets of successful relationships so I thought I would share here.  It is longer than a regular post but I think you will find it quite useful.

The secrets........

Leadership Skill: Recover, Don't Persevere

The big difference between persevering and recovering through failure is that recovery requires a pause and a conscious choice about where you go from here based on what you have learned from failing. Webster defines persevering as, “to go on resolutely or stubbornly in spite of opposition, importunity, or warning.” Recovery is about fully stepping in, once again, to your leadership and moving forward with the new information rather than in spite of the learning. See the difference?

What is here now? What is different now? What is available now that perhaps didn’t exist before this failure?   

 

Leadership Skill: Making Amends

The good news is that when moving through failure, when you get to the point of making amends and looking at the commitments you can make in the future, you are well on your way to recovering. Beware of the temptation to expedite things by apologizing. While apologizing is sometimes what is needed, oftentimes it is the result of the group’s desire to quickly get out of the discomfort of the failure zone.

Leadership Skill: Take Responsibility for Failure with Clarity

Leaders inevitably lose credibility when they don’t take responsibility for failure. And, it is impossible to move past the failure, to recover, without taking responsibility. So, what does it mean to take responsibility? If you continue to lead through the failure and have honestly assessed your actions and your impact, taking responsibility is a natural next step.

You quite simply must speak about the failure.

Leadership Skill: Getting Real with Failure

I often experience an “A Ha” moment with clients when we discuss the difference between “being good” and “looking good.” In this context, I use the phrase, “being good,” to describe consistently acting in accordance with your values. When facing failure, looking good may not be an option. Being good is always an option and in fact, is the most powerful form of leadership in difficult situations.

I wrote yesterday about actively leading through failure, rather than defending or retreating from it. One of the ways you begin to do that is to get real with yourself and those impacted by the failure. situation.