The Graduation. My daughter’s graduation was a joyous event.  Our family gathered in Madison, WI to celebrate the successful end of her four years as an undergraduate.  JJ Watt delivered a simple yet touching commencement speech recounting his time on campus and the years since, exhorting the new graduates to “Find a way to make a difference!” as he has done through his leadership both on and off the football field.   He asserted that while the young adults in front of him may not yet fully know how they were going to do that – as he hadn’t while he was a proud Badger, either – hard work and giving to others should lead the way. My daughter and her friends were effervescent in their giddy sense of accomplishment, one foot firmly planted in adulthood and the other foot eagerly rising to join it. The Visit. Earlier that same week, I’d traveled to my childhood hometown of Cincinnati to see family and to spend time with a childhood friend who has stage three breast cancer.  She’s one of the lucky ones, if there is such a thing with cancer.  Her prognosis is hopeful, with the recovery and survival statistics soundly in her favor.  Yet the chemotherapy treatments, the best means of ridding her body of the rogue cells, are wreaking short-term havoc on her health (which is already compromised by having lived with Type I Diabetes for 37 years). This visit marked the first time I’d seen her since her diagnosis.  We held each other long and hard after she opened the front door of her house.  She whispered into my ear, “I don’t want to have cancer anymore.  I’m so tired.”  We wept together. Two days later, we ventured out for blueberry pancakes…and her chemotherapy session.  While there, she spent much of the time lying with eyes closed, concentrating on the work her body was doing to heal itself.  She had asked me not to expect to talk with her during this process.  So, instead, I gazed at her periodically, memories of our many moments together flitting through my mind.  And I prayed for her.

The Juxtaposition. A college graduation and a visit with a sick friend.  Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois and Ohio. A busy week that involved hours driving from one section of the Midwest to another. A heart-filling sequence of events, most definitely.  But it turned out to be more than that. Hang on for the connection. And for an offering of my internal musings for those of you who care to listen and reflect alongside me.

Running…to what? A few days after returning from both those events, on mile two of a run, I pulled up short to better listen to a passage in a podcast.  Eckhart Tolle was describing a chapter from his best-selling book, A New Earth, and a particular lesson about conscious being.  He raised many interrelated points which go well beyond the space I’ll use here.  The most important points, filtered through how I heard them, were these:  1)  Many of us approach life by focusing on ego-related pursuits and ways of defining our sense of self (see this link for another blog about defining self); 2) this orientation tends to result in a lot of doing so that we mostly experience ourselves as “human doings” versus “human beings;” and 3) the opportunity – he and other thought leaders in this space might even say the greatest calling –  is to see through this DOING experience of the world and ourselves and instead drop into the more fundamental experience of our selves as BEING. What does that mean? It means being in the world, being present, in each moment, as purely and consciously as possible.  Of course, yes, we have lives to lead and they require taking action in the world. But how much do we define ourselves by our actions?  And judge others by theirs? And here’s the podcast excerpt that caused me to stop mid-way through that run.  Eckhart was describing a thought from another book, Stillness Speaks.   Here it is, recounted from my experience of it: envision the gravestones in any cemetery. Think of your future gravestone. Each has a birth year and a death year with a one- or two-inch dash in between those two dates.  That dash represents all the activity, all the hopes, fears and anguish, that occurred in between those two dates.  That’s it – a dash that takes up about one to two inches of space. And yet that’s what many of us pour our precious energies into, day in and out.  Filling out that little dash with DOING. Here is the actual excerpt from the book: “What will be left of all the fearing and wanting associated with your problematic life situation that every day takes up most of your attention?  A dash, one or two inches long, between the date of birth and date of death on your gravestone. To the egoic self, this is a depressing thought.  To you, it is liberating.” The distinction Tolle is making in that last line is between what some call our egoic self, or false self, and our real self.  Our egoic selves revel in puffing up the personal resume that stands behind that dash; our real selves know that authentic joy and our deepest sense of comfort come from releasing the need to prove anything.

Time as both vertical and horizontal.   Try this: take a blank sheet of paper.  Draw a horizontal line mostly across the width of that paper.  Then draw a vertical line in the middle of that horizontal line, so that it bisects the horizontal line. Perfect. This is a model that can be used to gain a quick but profound perspective on orientation to time, or the being and doing distinction. The horizontal line depicts the passage of chronological time – all the days and months and years that make up your life.  The vertical line, in contrast, represents full awareness, full BEING, in any moment in time along that horizontal dimension of life.  It’s the depth that is available, the tuning into the fullest experience of being present at any one point in time.  It can therefore be a shorter line or a longer vertical line, depending on how tuned in we are to just being present in a moment.

Finding Our Way. The connection struck me as I stood stock still. My friend has found this practice for her chemotherapy sessions, without even knowing that’s what it’s called.  She has found a way to stop time and just BE with the experience she is going through, tuning into all that it holds.  Her organic, bodily sense of how to best care for herself through the experience of chemotherapy has led her there naturally, amidst the noise of the infusion pump and thin curtained-alcoves containing other nearby cancer patients and their loved ones. And my daughter and her friends, suspended in time through the events of that graduation weekend, on the precipice of beginning their “grown up jobs” or heading off to gap year adventures seemed wholly immersed in the moment as well, even while being gently guided by their commencement speaker to think ahead along their own horizontal lines. There I stood, mid-run, also suspended in time, as I made the connection between these recent big life events. The juxtaposition was now feeling more meaningful than random. New awareness washed over me. Then I re-started my run. Ha! The push to finish that aspect of my horizontal journey taunted me.  This time, though, I practiced holding onto each present moment of the remaining miles as they flew by: the feel of my footfalls on the pavement, the sensation of my breath as it moved in and out of my chest, the sunlight as it warmed my head. Is that what an awakened life is:  holding both the horizontal and vertical, consciously?  Hanging out in the intersection.

Practices to Strengthen the Vertical.  How can we strengthen our ability to hang out in the vertical dimension, in BEING, more often?  I’ve covered several methods in other blogs, so I’ll provide a brief overview of three methods here (listed from least time consuming to most):

1. Seek Novelty: Ellen Langer, who some call “the mother of mindfulness,” promotes an eminently practical approach to mindfulness.  To combat our tendencies to engage in automatic, mindless, patterned behaviors for much of our day, she urges us to simply find novel ways to engage in everyday situations.  So, as you are engaged in a routine activity, or any time you need to increase your ability to pay attention to the present moment, adopt a practice of looking around the situation and noticing 5 new things (e.g. the color of someone’s sweater, the way the carpeting meets the walls in the corner of the room, etc.).  Or vary your routine – walk a different path to the meeting room in which you have your leadership drumbeat meeting every Monday.  Pay attention as you do so.  It doesn’t work to introduce novelty to your routine if you aren’t dialed in as you do it.
2. Tune into Your Heart Center: the HeartMath Institute provides a portfolio of powerful methods for accessing deeper states of awareness that do not require more than a couple of minutes of practice each time you use them. If you are new to their methods, try the Quick Coherence® and Inner Ease®

For your convenience, here is an overview of the quick coherence technique:

Step 1:  Focus your attention in the area of the heart.  Imagine your breath is flowing in and out of your heart or chest area, breathing a little slower and deeper than usual.  You could try to inhale for 5 seconds, then exhale for 5 seconds (or whatever rhythm is comfortable for you).

Step 2: Make a sincere attempt to experience a regenerative feeling such as appreciation, gratitude or care for someone or something in your life. Continue your heart-focused breathing as you do so.

2.  
3. Build a Meditation Practice: I know many folks who have struggled to build a regular meditation practice…and more who have benefitted greatly from sticking with the attempt to do so.  Even 5 – 10 minutes a day of centered breathing and non-judgmental observation of your thoughts and feelings can make a difference.  There are a number of wonderful apps you can download on your phone at this point.  A personal favorite is Headspace (I’ll confess to having a slight crush on the voice of the founder, Andy Puddicombe, who narrates all the Headspace meditations).

Turning a Minus into a Plus.   Taking a step back and re-reading what I’ve written here, it strikes me that someone could get lost in confusion about my usage of the two geometrical metaphors: the dash and the vertical/horizontal axes. I’ll try to reconcile them, provide an application, and then pose a final reflection. Here it is: do we want to live as horizontal line people (or “dash people,” since a dash is an abbreviated horizontal line, after all) – chasing achievements, more stuff, and better stories to tell about ourselves that satisfy our egos? Or do we want to live more as vertical line people – more fully present with our real selves, with others, and with our experience? I’m suspicious of binary choices, so I’m thinking the way to go is a “both/and”.  Doubtless, we each naturally spend time in the vertical dimension during one-of-a-kind life events where time feels suspended, as it was for my daughter and for my friend in those recent scenes.  And, frankly, it’s rather illogical to suggest we stop living in chronological time.  The opportunity before us, then, is to live and lead (ourselves and others) with more awareness of the vertical, of BEING, as well as to cultivate practices to spend even more time hanging out in that intersection. Approaching life as a plus sign – horizontal and vertical in balance – now there’s a thought. And perhaps if we do enough intentional living of life as a plus sign (which for most of us would mean spending more time cultivating the vertical aspect of our life lines), we can actually make our horizontal line thicker.  In other words, our actions would become more conscious, purposeful, aligned with our real selves, and therefore, more meaningfully impactful in the world.

Application.  I recently worked with a coaching client with whom this balanced, “doing AND being” approach led to a deeply insightful conversation.  Reflecting on several career path choices she has in front of her, she expressed a sense of being overwhelmed and uncertain about how to go about making the decision.  “I feel frozen in place – I’m not sure whether to stay in this job several more years, accept an offer to join the start-up company that’s been courting me, or leave the corporate world entirely to finally begin the think tank work I’ve long envisioned for myself.”  It seemed clear that she’d spent time analyzing the decision thoroughly from an intellectual standpoint, without achieving enough clarity to move forward. Sensing it might be helpful to drop her into a different mode of exploration, I guided her through a drawing of the horizontal & vertical line illustration, explaining the distinction between the two orientations to time.  Then we engaged in some heart-focused breathing together.  As we sat in the stillness afterward, I invited her to talk about the elements of each option again.  This time, however, we tuned into her organic sense of being energized or drained as she did so.  We found ourselves mapping the variations of energy in her voice, stomach and chest – the highs and lows – associated with various factors that distinguished the options, such as “provides flexibility for the mom part of my life,” “helps me build a network that could also support the philanthropic organization I dream of starting someday,” and “represents work that feeds my deeper sense of purpose.” She left our session palpably lighter in spirit, with a commitment to repeat this type of inner attunement process to continue advancing her decision making.  While her final decision is yet to be made, the exercise helped her to break through her sense of being stuck and increased her confidence that a deeper wisdom is available to guide her if she taps into it. For me, the experience was a wonderful reinforcement of the value of dropping into the inner guidance available in deep presencing or the BEING dimension – and then using what we learn to inform our actions or DOING.  Living the plus sign.

Final Musing. Because I am a visual thinker, Eckhart Tolle’s powerful words about that dash frequently call a personal scene to my mind these days, both while running and not.  When my gravestone is etched someday, I’ve decided I’ll take my stand (metaphorically speaking) as a plus sign person. I now plan to ditch the dash and instead, have my gravestone inscribed as follows: How about you?

The post What Are You Doing with Your Dash? appeared first on Liminal Solutions.

The Scene. 

He looks over at me.  “What do you think I should I do?”

The Ubiquity.  I often bear witness to leadership clients struggling to make major decisions.  One privileged aspect of being a coach and consultant to others as they make decisions is that you often walk alongside them during their key inflection points.  My experience during this kind of moment is that many leaders fall into a double loop of confusion and self-flagellation when feeling unclear about how to make a key decision. The first loop of internal dialogue contains the confusion over how to make the right decision; the second loop holds the confusion (with a chaser of self-criticism) about why they are even in this quandary.

If that second loop had a voice, it would angrily mutter things like: “I got to this level because I have a track record of good decisions.  So why aren’t I better at this?!”

The Ego’s Lament.  These leaders aren’t alone in their frustration, despite their egos’ lament.  Decision-making dilemmas comprise one of the most frequent reasons people seek help, professionally and personally.  Multi-day workshops are dedicated to the topic of effective decision making.

We all admire a decisive leader.  In feedback interviews of various clients’ key stakeholders, they often raise decision making as a key element of leadership efficacy.  At the other end of the spectrum, indecisive leaders are castigated by their followers, the media and political pundits alike.   The Harvard Business Review declared that an indecisive boss is one of “three particularly ineffective kinds of leaders.”

Closer to home, decision-making angst is also a common lunch topic with friends.  Searching together for the “right” answer about love relationships, kids, family dynamics, work lives and even spiritual meaning is the glue through which many a friendship has been cemented.

Ultimately, our personal and professional lives are indelibly shaped by the decisions we make – as is organizational success.  Indeed, as the authors of the article “The Decision Driven Organization” assert, “A company’s value is no more (and no less) than the sum of the decisions it makes and executes. Its assets, capabilities, and structure are useless unless executives and managers throughout the organization make the essential decisions and get those decisions right more often than not.”

Consequently, the sense of frustration and stress that comes with being stuck in a decision-making dilemma, whether professional or personal, can be significant.  As one client recently said to me, her face a canvas of desperation, “I can’t seem to find my internal compass on this decision.  I feel completely lost.”

So how can we better navigate through times when the decision isn’t coming easily?

Decision Making Basics.  Myriad decision-making models exist out in the decision-making literature.  With some variation, most models depict the following steps to decision making:

• Define the problem
• Establish decision making criteria (e.g. what would good look like?)
• Weigh the decision making criteria (which are most/least important)
• Generate alternatives
• Evaluate alternatives against the criteria
• Choose the best alternative
• Implement the decision
• Evaluate the decision

In addition, important considerations around roles and decision-making authority exist, aided by well-known models like RAPID and RACI. These models, and others like them (every consultant has his/her favorite decision making model), can be helpful guides from a process standpoint. My observation after twenty-plus years of leadership consulting and a substantially greater number of years living my own life is that the more “struggle worthy” moments of individual decision making aren’t usually due to a lack of rational process, however.  Rather, we get stuck because we’re not engaged in an exclusively rational decision process.

Parts of Self.  If a decision has significance to us, we are rarely operating solely from our intellect or “rational selves.”  As far back as Plato, those who make it their business to explore why we do what we do have distinguished between various aspects of self that exert their influence in decision making situations.  Freud famously proposed that we have a superego, ego and id, each of which plays a unique role in determining behavior.  More recently, the field of leadership development has taken notice of research suggesting that our decision making emanates from the interplay among the components of a tri-partite system: simply put, our head brain, heart brain, and gut brain.  Each component relies upon a complex neural system that contains its own intelligence.  One author depicts the primary functions of each brain in the following way:

• Head Brain Functions: cognitive perception, thinking and meaning making
• Heart Brain Functions: emoting, values, and relational affect
• Gut Brain Functions: core identity (self/not self), self-preservation and mobilization

If this model feels brand new to you, consider how often you have said, “my gut instinct on this one is…” or “my heart just wasn’t in it…” in sorting through a matter of significance.   Viewed through this lens, all three types of intelligence affect our decision making.  Indeed, an emerging field of leadership development known as mBIT (multiple brain integration techniques) purports to assist leaders in building strategies to integrate all three systems to achieve superior decision making.

Enter the Elephant.  One of my favorite (and most practical) models in this space comes from Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and expert in ethical leadership.  In his book The Happiness Hypothesis, he offers the evocative metaphor of the elephant and the rider to explain the dualistic forces that influence most decisions (quick sidenote:  Chip and Dan Heath built extensively on Haidt’s metaphor, with great success, in their book Switch).  In brief, Haidt proposes that we view our emotional selves as an elephant, upon which is perched a rider, our rational selves.  Both elements of self ideally work in concert with each other to create effective action.

The reality is often less than ideal, however.  Given deep-seated cultural values and social conditioning that favor rationality (not to mention years and years of formal schooling), most of us pour energy into our rider, using the “reins” of intellect and objective analysis to lead our elephant in the direction our rider has decided is correct.  If our emotional self, the elephant, is not in alignment with the rider, our rider attempts to overpower its brute force by ignoring it or offering rational explanations to appease it.

These tactics can work for a while but if we make a habit of suppressing misaligned emotional needs, the rider eventually grows weary from the effort expended to hold those needs at bay.  The elephant bucks the rider and havoc may be the result, leading to behaviors that may seem shockingly out of character.

Alternatively, if we tend to lead excessively from our emotional selves, letting the elephant guide us, we may find that our decisions and actions create unintended consequences or suffer from inconsistency, driven by the emotions of the moment.  One need look no further than the recent presidential race for examples of this kind of behavior.

Netting it Out.  So, what are we to do?  First, self-awareness is key…or should I say, “multiple-selves awareness is key”? In using this model, we must become comfortable with the concept of having multiple aspects of self with which to work. Indeed, in working with coaching clients, I liken this parts-of-self way of processing to their experiences with making decisions in a team setting.  Our parts of self (head/heart/gut or emotional self/rational self, you choose!) form a team of a different sort – all internal.  Thus, similar to working a decision within a team, it’s important to check in with each team member to gather input for optimal decision making. Particularly on the more important decisions.

How to execute that checking-in process? You might begin by assigning one chair in your office to each part of self and then move from chair to chair, giving voice to the viewpoint of that part of self on the matter at hand (helpful hint here:  unless you want a crowd to gather, shut the door first).  Or, if playacting isn’t your thing, draw several columns on a whiteboard or sheet of paper. Assign one column to each aspect of self as you write out the pros and cons of a decision.  Then sit back from the parts-of-self processing you’ve just done and see what you’ve got to work with.  At that point, you are back in what I (and some others in this space) call your “executive self.”  Your executive self is the leader of that internal team, the master processor who observes all the parts, without whom you couldn’t work through a process like this.

Involving Living, Breathing Others.  Which brings us to the next decision making tip –  the value of gathering input.  Your various parts-of-self aren’t the only “others” who can provide assistance to decision making; so, too, can the walking parts-of-selves containers that you call your friends, co-workers and employees.  Many decisions will be improved through the collection of input from, or even sharing the decision-making rights with, relevant others.  Particularly if those others either hold valuable information and/or have a stake in the outcome.

As one of those card-carrying, model-toting consultants I referred to earlier in this article, I call upon a favorite decision-making model around how to involve others that has proven useful to a number of coaching clients. It looks like this:

(Note: I believe this model was originally developed at Toyota as a part of its quality programs but I have been unable to find a clear trail of attribution. I learned it from some wonderful OD colleagues earlier in my career.)

Every position on this model is a viable approach to making a good decision.  The most straightforward approach is to make a decision entirely on your own (fondly referred to as a “D&A”).  On the high end, you can also give the entire decision away to others, as long as any pre-conditions (“constraints”) are made clear as you do so (e.g. “Team, I’m going to let you determine the sales targets for this product line.  The only constraint you have to work within is that the full set of targets must, at a minimum, result in an average growth of 5%.”).

The magic lies in choosing which decision-making approach to use and when.

The Magic.  In deciding which approach to choose (e.g. “should I just decide on the new organizational structure and announce it or should I work with the leadership team to build it?” or “should I just break up with this woman or should I talk about it with her?”), you might first consider:

• how valuable the information is that the others may hold;
• whether their support is important to the success of the decision and
• the tradeoff between involving others and the time required to reach the decision.

Additionally, I believe you also should reflect on your values as a leader, parent, partner and/or friend as another consideration in choosing the approach you want to adopt.  How do you want to be experienced by the others as you make decisions over time?  In other words, what would you say is the ideal distribution of all the decisions you have to make across those 5 points on the model? Would you like to be experienced by others as primarily a consensus-builder, with periodic forays into D&As?  Or would you prefer to operate as a person who keeps to his/her own counsel most of the time?

Once you’ve set that vision for yourself, it can be useful to periodically perform an audit of how much time you spend in each position on the model.  Are you engaging in too much D&A or giving too many decisions away?  Or are you living up to your vision?  Is your vision delivering the results that you want (or need) to deliver? You may need to make some adjustments.

The Next Right Move.  Sometimes, decision making your way out of a tough corner is not about painstakingly working through your parts-of-self considerations or putting effort into engaging others in your decision making.  Sometimes, the best decision-making process is to simply identify the next right move to make.

Have you ever been confronted with a life or leadership decision so big, so complex and/or in such an uncharted part of the terrain that you feel lost, despite your best and most valiant efforts to wrestle it to the ground?  Then rest your weary head (heart and gut) in the comfortable lap of Oprah Winfrey, whose advice to a Stanford Business School class had almost two million hits at my last check.  Her guidance for navigating through times of feeling lost is to get quiet, then ask (and answer) “what’s the next right move?”    After making that move, you just keep asking that same question and finding the next right move, repeatedly.

This approach is similar to a more rigorously researched method from the HeartMath Institute called the Freeze-Frame Technique.

Research into the use of Freeze-Frame and its effects on physiological markers of stress, self-reports of internal state, and a range of performance indicators demonstrates that:

As a result of using Freeze-Frame, perception can shift markedly: individuals find they can think more clearly and often transform an inefficient, emotionally draining response into a proactive, creative one.  With practice, this tool can be used effectively in less than one minute. (extracted from Science of the Heart, a free publication from the Institute of Heartmath)

The steps are as follows:

1. Take a time out from the stressful situation or thought (e.g. working hard at making the decision)
2. Engage in heart-focused breathing (shift your attention to your heart area and visualize drawing breath in through your heart and out through your solar plexus for some number of breaths)
3. Activate a positive heart feeling (e.g. think of someone or something you appreciate or love, reflect on something you are grateful for)
4. Ask yourself what an efficient, effective decision or action would be in the situation
5. Quietly sense any change in perception or ideas that come forward (the shift may be subtle, requiring you to be patient and stay tuned in)

The bottom line here: once again, sometimes a vexing problem is not solved by relying on what we would traditionally call a “rational” decision making process.

Take Time to Defrag.  I used to work with a very insightful coaching client who talked about periodically needing to defrag her life.  It might not surprise some of you to know that she is a senior IT leader (note: I have her permission to include her story in this blog).  Not being particularly conversant in IT lingo, I asked her for a working definition of “defragging.”  She described it as process of gathering up all the disparate fragments of information, data and experience that she collects during a busy time and making sense of them.  To do so, she schedules some open time in her calendar and uses it to step back from the action.  She reflects on significant issues and relevant information she has collected since the last defragging.  Then she sits and waits for new patterns or insights to emerge.

By the end of the defragging process, she has potentially reorganized how she is viewing or approaching an issue.  Her decision making improves, as does her sense of clarity and confidence.

As I wrote this blog, I quickly ran a definition search of “defrag” through google.  Turns out defragging is not just a process to reduce fragmentation of the way data is stored on a computer’s hard drive.  My favorite related definition came from the Urban Dictionary:  “Antonym of frag. le, to bring someone back to life.”  You see, it turns out fragging is also a slang term for shooting an enemy in a single person shooter computer game.  So defragging is a process of bringing back to life.

I love this additional level of meaning to my client’s metaphor.

How much might all of us be “brought back to life” in a difficult decision-making situation by stepping away from the hustle and bustle of a busy day, or our concentrated efforts to make a big decision, or all the conversations we might be having with other people about it, to breathe deeply, sit quietly, and wait for the patterns or insights to emerge?

Back to the Beginning.  Back to the scene that opened this article. What did that leader decide to do?

After we spent some time walking through the various trade-offs involved in whether to make a D&A, a consensus-based decision, or leverage the decision with constraints, we ended the session.  At our next session, I asked him what had happened.  He answered by sharing a version of the following:  “Well, I thought about making the decision myself and almost did that.  That would have been quick and easy.  But then I was out doing some yard work this weekend when suddenly I had this feeling that I should direct the team to work on it together and bring their decision to me.”

He went on: “I’ve been building this team for some time now and I felt there was value in telling them to lock themselves in a room and figure it out together.  I got some push back on it, particularly from the folks who are used to a more traditional hierarchy of decision making at the top, but my gut instinct told me to stay the course.  So they did it.  And came out a better team for it, I think.  They will really stand behind that number now.”

Excitedly, I described the head/heart/gut model to him, cueing on his reference to all three decision-making centers in the way he told his story.  I mentioned that, coincidentally, I was writing an article on the very same topic.  He sat musing for a minute or two.  “Does this mean I will be featured in your next article?”

Why yes.  Yes, it does.  And my elephant and rider are aligned on that decision.

The post When Deciding Gets Hard appeared first on Liminal Solutions.