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More With Less

The newsletter for high achievers who wish to have more impact with less Struggle

IN THIS ISSUE

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

OnFire Coaching Retreats

• WomenLeadersOnFire

FEATURE ARTICLE: More Resilience Less Powerlessness: 10 Things High Achievers Know About Responding Productively to Adversity in Business

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ANNOUNCEMENTS:

WomenLeadersOnFire™: Fall Muskoka Retreat

September 20 and 21, 2008

Huntsville, Muskoka

Calling all women leaders from the corporate, non-profit, governmental and entrepreneurial sectors!

It has been said that progressive leadership is about the increasing ability of a leader to expand her influence. Expanding the influence of a leader is accomplished by growing the leader themselves.

• So in what ways do you need to grow? Is it in skill or is it in character?
• What impact do you want to have? How do you increase that impact in a way that aligns with who you wish to be as a woman and as a powerful leader?
• Where do you struggle? What takes you out of the game?

Knowledge has little value unless it is applied. Getting real is about practical learning, self-reflection, clearly setting goals, articulating a plan, taking action, accepting accountability, establishing great habits and managing the use of your time, over time.

Some of the things you will take away include:

• Increased self-awareness and how to leverage this awareness to maximize performance and fulfillment
• An exploration of how to deal with self-limiting beliefs, fears, and habits that hold you back and stop you from following through on what's most important
• Knowledge and application of proven success habits and avoidance of factors that lead to underperformance and failure
• A framework for the development of a Personal Strategic Plan that reflects your core strengths, the root cause of your gaps and organizational outcomes that matter.

Join Professional Certified Coaches Sharon Miller and Jennifer Britton in the beautiful setting of Muskoka as we explore what it means to be, and grow, as a leader.

What’s included:

·         1.5 day retreat in beautiful Muskoka (2.5 hours North of Toronto): Saturday(9:30 – 4:30), Half Day Sunday (9:30 – 12:30)

·         WomenLeadersOnFire Manual and Workbook

·         Lunch on Saturday, and coffee breaks throughout the weekend

·         A 30 minute one-on-one coaching session

·         A group follow-up teleconference session (1 hour) after the retreat, and

·         An opportunity to network with other powerful women leaders in the beautiful setting of Muskoka (priceless!).

* Accommodation is not included in the retreat pricing. We would be happy to recommend places to stay near the retreat location.

Early Bird rate of $249 Canadian (plus GST) to August 15^th, $349 (plus GST) afterwards.

Other OnFire programs include:

• LeadersOnFire
• TeamsOnFire
• WorkRelationshipsOnFire
• SelfEsteemOnFire (added after this latest newsletter!)
• Stellar Team Diagnostic Assessment (a product of Team Coaching International)

For more information on these and other OnFire programs, please feel free to visit http://www.retreat2muskoka.com or contact:

Sharon Miller: (416) 484-8018, sharonamiller@rogers.com

Jennifer Britton: (416) 491-9680, jennifer@potentialsrealized.com

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Call me for further information on any of these offerings or to schedule a complimentary one-on-one sample session. Take advantage of the opportunity to leverage all my learning and use simple tools that work.

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Feel free to forward More With Less (in its entirety please) to anyone you think might be interested. This is how I grow. Please include full authorship and subscription information. Thanks!

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FEATURE ARTICLE: More Resilience Less Powerlessness: 10 things High Achievers Know About Responding Productively to Adversity in Business

"Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly."

Thomas H. Huxley, scientist, educator

"I love the man who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection."

Thomas Paine, statesman

Adversity Quotient, or AQ, is the science of human resilience. It is based on the work of Paul Stoltz, president and CEO of PEAK Learning, Inc., a research and consulting company based in California. According to Stoltz, a high AQ is an exceptionally robust predictor of success.

Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of any significant source of stress. It does not mean that a person doesn’t experience difficulty or angst. It does mean rebounding back from trying experiences.

For people with low AQ, the typical response to adversity is a feeling of powerlessness and despair that can go beyond the real facts. The pattern of their responses leads often to panic and indecision.

People with high AQ remain optimistic and resilient in the face of difficulties, focusing on what they can control and how they can positively influence what is.

Those in the middle comprise 80% of the workforce. While they handle most adversities relatively well, they also have a fair amount of untapped potential. As importantly, difficulties wear them down more than they should.

Resilience involves behaviours, thoughts and actions that can be learned and developed. It is based on what Stoltz describes as your explanatory style, which has four dimensions:

1. Control – the extent to which you feel able to influence a situation positively and the extent to which you can control your own response to a situation

2. Ownership – the extent to which you take personal responsibility for improving a given situation, regardless of its cause

3. Reach – how extensively you allow a particular kind of adversity you face to affect other areas of your work and life, and

4. Endurance – your perception of how long an adverse situation will last.

So how does an organization, a team, a relationship or individual build resilience?

The most important strategy I’ve learned in studying high achievement and coaching high achievers is to increase the self-esteem of the corporation, the team, the relationship and/or the individual. Self-esteem is a measure of ‘mental fitness’. Usually we talk only about the self-esteem of the individual. People may have a positive view of themselves which makes it easier for them to bounce back from sub-optimal experiences in relationships, teams and organizations.

How much more would be possible if we moved from the personal experience to the collective experience, and committed to increasing self-esteem and resilience at those levels?

Below are 10 things High Achievers know about raising the AQ factor:

1.    Resilience is increased when people and organizations believe they are involved in work that ‘matters’. Create a sense of shared purpose and significance at all levels (organizational, team, relationship, individual) that tap into the healthy aspirations of people. A statement such as being the number one service provider of financial services just doesn’t tap into the hearts and passions of the collective. It’s great for the company but at the individual level, who cares?

2.    Then set big, challenging goals aligned with a shared purpose that matters, make written plans of action to achieve them and then execute them. Putting endless hours into strategies that fail in execution creates negativity and reduces resilience.

3.    Have clear standards and values at all the 4 levels, act in a way that is consistent with them, and call out behaviour that is incongruent. Much of the stress that people and organizations experience comes from believing one thing and then doing another, or observing others behave inconsistently without accountability, usually because they drive financial results. Somehow that’s OK. It’s not. It creates stress, erodes the self-esteem of the organization, and reduces resilience.  

4.    People need leaders who speak and act in service of shared ideals. I would submit that often the self-esteem of leaders is not high enough to have the courage, energy and strength to stand up and awaken the ‘warrior’ within. Instead, they feel scared, anxious and powerless, without enough self-esteem (internal sense of worthiness), self-respect (finding your voice, speaking your truth, particularly when there is pressure to do otherwise) or self-confidence (belief in one’s ability to do/overcome). This creates an organization with the same qualities.  

5.    Make the quality of relationships within organizations as important as the quality of the relationship with the client. We teach people selling skills and don’t teach them how to be in relationship with each other. Dumb. Studies have shown that poor relationships are a significant source of stress within organizations. Ignoring this reduces positivity which research has shown negatively impacts productivity and sustainability.

6.    Treat people, relationships and teams in a way that haves them believe that they in fact matter. Create trust and respect. Deal with differences openly and constructively. Encourage camaraderie. Call out politicizing, gossiping, stonewalling, defensiveness and finger pointing. Value differences in ideas, perspectives, backgrounds, and personalities. Take care of (not enable) each other.

7.    Say ‘yes’ to adversity. Take a more positive, constructive view. Many people believe that they should not have to suffer. However, as they say in Star Trek, ‘resistance is futile’. Accept it. Organizations and individuals will accelerate their growth if they instead move through adversity consciously, awake and aware. Read that last sentence again.

8.    The corollary is let yourself, your team, and your organization experience strong emotions. Allow people to ventilate their feelings. In a surprising way this can allow closure in that people feel they’ve been heard. Then they are able to go to what’s next.

9.    Make the effort and accept and pay the price to overcome obstacles. Just do it. People and organizations get stuck in procrastination because they haven’t clearly articulated the cost of moving forward. Instead they awfulize what that means and remain mired in blame and rehashing the past. When you are clearer on the worst case scenario, the price that needs to be paid, and the strengths you can draw on to make your way through, it’s easier to take even one small step to make sure the worst doesn’t happen. This creates energy and hope.  

10. Stoltz talks about the very act of noticing your response to a difficult situation can lead to profound changes in your ability to handle adversity. Like anything to do with changing human behaviour, awareness is the first step. Notice, take a different perspective and choose a different response. Identify and take steps to increase your control over a situation or to minimize the adversity’s reach or duration. As you do this repeatedly, you hardwire these different responses into your brain.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

1.    What is your plan to increase your resilience? The resilience of your most important relationships, your team, your leaders and your organization?

2.    When adversity happens, stop and notice what’s going on within you. What are you feeling and where in your body are you feeling it? What are you assuming as though it’s the truth? What if you assumed something more empowering and less comprehensively awful? What if you stopped railing about the essential unfairness of the situation and took 100% responsibility for the results you want to achieve?

If not you then who? If not now then when? Take charge of creating More With Less and remember, CoachingWorks!

Sincerely,

Sharon Miller, B.Comm., CPCC, PCC
CoachingWorks
sharonamiller@rogers.com
(416) 484-8018
http://www.sharonamiller.com

"You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take risks, jump over the hurdles and break through the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you. If you don’t have that kind of feeling for what it is you’re doing, you’ll stop at the first giant hurdle."
George Lucas, Director

“The greatest revolution of my generation is the discovery that by changing the inner attitudes of your mind, you can change the outer aspects of your life.”

William James

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