Gravity Works Blog

How we view our history colors how we view our future.

There was a great article about how our outlook on the future is colored by the stories that we tell ourselves – see New York Times, “This Is Your Life (and How You Tell It),” May 22nd, 2007.

There are snippets of the article below and here are a few thoughts on how this idea relates to coaching:
• Coaches can provide perspective to clients as they face their challenges. A client that is stuck in their thinking can get unstuck if they view their challenge differently, perhaps as a small roadblock to overcome to attain a larger goal.
• Coaches can help clients construct a narrative in which they achieve their goal. This visualization can define for the client a path to follow toward their goals.
• When dealing with a roadblock, coaches sometimes ask clients about times in their past when they’ve grappled with similar challenges. Encouraging the client to view the past experiences in the third person may help the client better identify lessons learned, and allow themselves to see how they’ve changed over time.

A few snips from the article:
Every American may be working on a screenplay, but we are also continually updating a treatment of our own life — and the way in which we visualize each scene not only shapes how we think about ourselves, but how we behave, new studies find. By better understanding how life stories are built, this work suggests, people may be able to alter their own narrative, in small ways and perhaps large ones.

Generative adults — those who score highly on tests measuring civic-mindedness, and who are likely to be energetic and involved — tend to see many of the events in their life in the reverse order, as linked by themes of redemption. They flunked sixth grade but met a wonderful counselor and made honor roll in seventh. They were laid low by divorce, only to meet a wonderful new partner. Often, too, they say they felt singled out from very early in life — protected, even as others nearby suffered

The point is that the narrative themes are, as much as any other trait, driving factors in people’s behavior, the researchers say.

Yet the research so far suggests that people’s life stories are neither rigid nor wildly variable, but rather change gradually over time, in close tandem with meaningful life events.
The investigators found that the third-person scenes were significantly less upsetting, compared with bad memories recalled in the first person.
“What our experiment showed is that this shift in perspective, having this distance from yourself, allows you to relive the experience and focus on why you’re feeling upset,” instead of being immersed in it, said Ethan Kross, the study’s lead author. The emotional content of the memory is still felt, he said, but its sting is blunted as the brain frames its meaning, as it builds the story.
Taken together, these findings suggest a kind of give and take between life stories and individual memories, between the larger screenplay and the individual scenes. The way people replay and recast memories, day by day, deepens and reshapes their larger life story. And as it evolves, that larger story in turn colors the interpretation of the scenes.
She added, “We think that feeling you have changed frees you up to behave as if you have; you think, ‘Wow, I’ve really made some progress’ and it gives you some real momentum.”

One of my favorite clients recently told me a networking horror story that’s too good not to share. My client is a senior executive at a well known and well regarded company. She’s very successful and is a truly wonderful person. She receives 8-10 requests for informational interviews every week, many from recent graduates of the business school that she attended. A dedicated alumna, she agrees to a few of these interviews to help out. For the sake of this story, let’s call her Martha.

“Robert” is one of these recent graduates that contacted Martha for an informational interview. He was persistent – he called her at her office every other day for two weeks. It wasn’t that Martha was ignoring him; it was the busiest two weeks of the year for her.

To her annoyance, during a break between meetings, Martha received yet another note from her assistant that Robert called yet again. With 15 minutes of discretionary time, she called Robert.

The call opened something like this:

“Hi Robert. This is Martha. I’m returning your calls. They haven’t gone unnoticed or ignored – you’ve called every other day for the last two weeks. This is the busiest time of the year for me. I’ve got 15 minutes right now, so what can I do for you?”

“Hi Martha… Well, I’d like to network with you.”

“Ok… I’ve got 15 minutes right now, so what can I do for you?”

Robert gave his background and described his ideal job in terms so broad that you could fly the new Airbus A380 through it. Through gritted teeth, Martha tried to help him improve his focus and describe the industry realities that he’s facing.

As Martha started to wrap-up the call to head off to her next meeting, Robert asked for the names of people within her industry with whom he could follow-up.

Martha was annoyed. Open her rolodex to this gentleman? No. Though he persisted in asking for names, she told him how it is in her industry: if she passed him along to another person, she’d also be giving her implicit endorsement. You do this selectively. You don’t do if for someone that has spent 15 minutes underwhelming you.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but here are a few networking lessons from this story:
• Do leverage your alumni network. Get in touch with people with whom you went to school or with whom you’ve worked in past jobs.
• Do be considerate of your networking target’s time. For you, speaking with them is a top priority. For them, speaking with you is an act of kindness or consideration.
• Do your homework on the target company. Be up-to-date on the latest news with the company. What’s their overall strategy? What are they selling? What bad news have they had to deal with? Be aware of the environment in which your target is operating.
• Do prepare for the conversation. What 2-3 pieces of information would you like to get from the networking target? Hint: don’t ask “do you have a job for me?” This is an informational interview! If there’s a fit between what you want to do, your experiences, qualifications and the needs at the networking target’s company, they’ll connect the dots.
• Do not expect the networking contact to give you the names of other people to call. This advice flies in the face of some traditional advice for networking, but it isn’t realistic to have someone that you’ve just met vouch for you by opening their address book to you. If they offer names, by all means, follow up.
• Do write a thank you note. Do not send it by e-mail. Write it longhand on nice stationery. Its old fashioned. Not many people seem to do it anymore. It’ll make you stand out.

Finally, if you don’t think that the above applies to you, I’ll bet it does.

Let me know your networking stories. If you send me a really good one that I publish here, I’ll send you a copy of a great book that I’m currently reading – Are You Ready to Succeed, by Srikumar S. Rao.

I was inspired to read about Tony Dungy’s preparations for the Super Bowl last weekend.  For those of you that don’t know, he’s the head coach of the Super Bowl winning Indianapolis Colts.

What was inspiring was this tidbit from Peter King’s terrific “Monday Morning Quarterback” column at Sports Illustrated.com:

There is no better lesson in the sport of coaching-office-couch-sleepers than for Dungy to win a Super Bowl with a brilliant defensive gameplan while spending time with his family Thursday night, Friday afternoon and night, and Saturday afternoon.

Its wonderful to see individuals performing at the highest levels of their professions while maintaining balance in their lives.  Coach Dungy could have chosen to spend every moment of the week leading up to one of the the biggest games of his career preparing for the game.  Instead, he chose to include “family time” in his priorities for the week.  Most inspiring.

Providing follow-up coaching to a training program can improve skill transfer over 80%

Wow.  Quite an impact.

This claim has been extensively studied in academic circles – according to Olivero, et al in Executive Coaching as a Transfer of Training Tool: Effects on Productivity in a Public Agency; Public Personnel Management, Vol. 26, 1997

…after trainees underwent one-on-one executive coaching, archival data were collected indicating that training alone increased productivity by 22.4 percent. Most importantly, training, when augmented with coaching, yielded productivity increases almost four times the level achieved by training alone (88.0 percent).

I found references to the earlier work of Joyce and Showers (1988) and Oldroyd and Hall (1988) which shows that engagement of coaching assists the translation of training into increased impact on job performance.

The clear implication of this research is that coaching should be an integral part of corporate training programs.  I’m interested in finding out if and how companies are applying this research.

In my coaching, I often find it useful to create metaphors to help clients looks at challenges from a different perspective. As an avid skier and current ski instructor, I’ve found that a number of concepts from skiing translate nicely into the business world. I’ll grant that this is a bit of a light-hearted approach, but I find it works. A few metaphors that I find to be useful follow. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

If you stare at it, you’ll hit it - In skiing, if you focus on the patch of ice in your path, you’ll probably ski over it. If you see the patch of ice and look further for other options, you’re more likely to find a better way down. Similarly in business and careers, there are often obstacles in our chosen paths. We have choices in how to address them. We can choose to take on the obstacle directly. We can also choose to find a way forward that doesn’t require us to take on the obstacle.  If we keep our focus on these obstacles, however, we’re sure to run into them.

If you’re not in balance, not much else matters - A good definition of ‘balance’ for a skier is ‘being able to make the next turn on his/her terms.’ As the skier finishes one turn, in balance, s/he can make the next one; left, right, faster or slower, however s/he chooses. If out of balance, the next turn or movement may not be dictated by the skier, but by gravity, momentum, inertia or other factors. Being in balance doesn’t mean that there are no forces acting on the skier, but that the skier has found a way of organizing these forces into an equilibrium. In business, are you positioned to do what you want to do next? Do you recognize the forces that are acting on you / your business? What has to change for you to find balance?

Dress for the weather - If you’re a skier, you might ski in freezing cold weather, you might ski in the rain and you might ski through sleet or driving snow. You don’t have much say over what the conditions are and you won’t change them. If you’ve got the right gear and are ready, you can be comfortable in pretty much any of these conditions. What are the conditions in your part of the business world for which you need to be prepared?

Feel free to add a comment to this blog entry to say ‘hi,’ offer some feedback or make a suggestion for blogging topics.

I’ve gotten really interested in the ripple effect produced by coaching. I’ve seen that coaching a team leader also improves the performance of the leader’s team.

I found this effect when one of my corporate clients challenged me to measure the value of coaching. I created a survey instrument to assess the client’s performance before and after a coaching engagement based on input from his team. The instrument would show the ‘before’ and ‘after’ status and explicitly show what changed as a consequence of the coaching engagement. I included questions about team and organizational performance in the survey.

Surprisingly, the survey showed that team performance improved along with client performance. I found it surprising because the only interaction that I had with team members was the two interviews that I conducted with each of them. I’ve seen this result in as soon as three months from the start of a coaching engagement.

I believe that the ripple effect is caused by the positive changes that the client makes in his/her interactions with his/her team. The team leader sets team norms with the behaviors that he/she exhibit and the standards that he/she sets. Team members reap the benefits of the leader’s improved performance. Team members may also note the change and follow this model in their interactions with their teams and colleagues.

This finding shows the impact that a leader has on his/her team. It also suggests that overall organizational performance can be improved through a very limited intervention.

I wonder if there is also a ripple effect upwards through the organization. Would coaching a Director improve the performance of his VP? I’m looking for opportunities to measure and assess the upward ripple in future coaching engagements.

I welcome your reactions and thoughts.